Do we know how it works? If we don't know how it works, do we really know what it is? — mew

Peter Hacker has rather convincingly argued that the most fruitful line of inquiry regarding your second question is to pay attention, in Wittgensteinian spirit, to the manner in which we learn to use the word "consciousness" (and related words such as "attention" and "awareness") and the intersubjective criteria that guide our applications of them. Chapters 9, 10 and 11 in Bennett and Hacker Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience are devoted to such an examination.

Of course, if you managed to formulate an argument that the brain is not computationally universal, and that it could not be programmed (e.g. by training), and that therefore the mind could not be an abstraction instantiated on a brain, then you might have a point. — tom

The rational soul is the form of the human body, according to Aristotle. I likewise prefer to conceive of the mind as a set of powers exhibited by an embodied human being rather than as a feature of her brain, but that won't be my focus here. I would readily grant that humans are smart enough to execute whatever algorithm is given to them. Indeed they can do it as mindlessly as any old CPU, or as Searle would do it in his Chinese Room. I would also readily grant that mental abilities can be multiply realized in a variety of biological or mechanical media (be they better conceived as specifically implementing computational operations, or not) but this shows no more than that possession of mental skills is a formal feature of rational beings.

The mind/software analogy also glosses over other significant differences between rational beings and computers. Computers don't give a damn. Deep Blue could exhibit some level of intelligence through winning chess games, but, if given the opportunity, it will also play the same game one trillion times in a row and never get bored (or interested) in the least. The software can be tuned to exhibit some degree of randomness and learning, but doing so would only fulfill the wishes of the programmers or users. What is missing for the merely computational operations of a computer to constitute true mindedness is embedding and functioning within the animate form of life of creatures who give a damn what they are doing and what happens to them. As John Haugeland might have put it: people follow normative rules that they voluntarily endorse because those rules are constitutive of phenomena that they care about. So, people are quite unlike computers passively running programs on whatever data they are given to process.

Chalmers has admitted to being a dualist, but I don't know if he's admitted to being a physicalist. I suppose he and Searle and others of that ilk, take issue with materialism but at the same time, they don't want to defend any kind of traditional dualism. (Need to do more reading.) — Wayfarer

I haven't kept up with Chalmers's recent views. He's recently endorsed a sort of a functionalist view of the mind that accommodates externalist and "extended mind" theses regarding cognitive functions and propositional content. His joint paper with Andy Clark regarding Otto and his notebook (The extended mind. Analysis. 58 (1): 7–19) explicitly brackets out issues of phenomenal consciousness ("what its like" questions; qualia and such). So, he may have remained an epiphenomenalist regarding the phenomenal content of consciousness. This, together with the idea of the intelligibility of P-zombies, is a position that seems to flounder on Wittgensteinian considerations regarding the necessary publicity ("publicness"?) of criteria that ground our abilities to learn and to understand the meanings of words that purport to refer to felt sensations.

6. Like you, I'm not a huge fan of how the scholastics welded Natural Law ethics to theology in order to provide justification for their faith-based ethical percepts. That said, I think that the main idea behind Natural Law theory (ethics in accord with the principles of natural reason) could possibly bear interesting philosophical fruit if allowed to develop unencumbered by the presuppositions of Christian theology. I'm sure there are probably some thinkers who have charted some territory in this domain, but I haven't taken the time to research it. — Aaron R

You can try David Wiggins's Ethics: Twelve Lectures on the Philosophy of Morality, HUP, 2009, for a historical survey from which emerges Wiggins's own subtle, brilliant and seemingly unforced weaving together of the best strands of Aristotelian, Humean and Kantian ethics.

"Almost every thoughtful person wonders at some time why morality says what it says and how, if at all, it speaks to us. David Wiggins surveys the answers most commonly proposed for such questions--and does so in a way that the thinking reader, increasingly perplexed by the everyday problem of moral philosophy, can follow. His work is thus an introduction to ethics that presupposes nothing more than the reader’s willingness to read philosophical proposals closely and literally.

Gathering insights from Hume, Kant, the utilitarians, and a twentieth-century assortment of post-utilitarian thinkers, and drawing on sources as diverse as Aristotle, Simone Weil, and Philippa Foot, Wiggins points to the special role of the sentiments of solidarity and reciprocity that human beings will find within themselves. After examining the part such sentiments play in sustaining our ordinary ideas of agency and responsibility, he searches the political sphere for a neo-Aristotelian account of justice that will cohere with such an account of morality. Finally, Wiggins turns to the standing of morality and the question of the objectivity or reality of ethical demands. As the need arises at various points in the book, he pursues a variety of related issues and engages additional thinkers--Plato, C. S. Peirce, Darwin, Schopenhauer, Leibniz, John Rawls, Montaigne and others--always emphasizing the words of the philosophers under discussion, and giving readers the resources to arrive at their own viewpoint of why and how ethics matters."

Aaron R Hah! Knocked it out of the park. — apokrisis

Indeed!

Computers are not "of this world" so can be used as devices to freely imagine worlds.

Brains are devices constrained by a world. But in making that relationship structurally complex, brains gain the functional degrees of freedom that we call autonomy and subjective cohesion. (The freedom to actually ignore the world being a central one, as I argued.) — apokrisis

Yes, I broadly agree. The interplay of worldly dynamic constraints and freedom to imagine (and, centrally, to plan actions) is explained in relation with the faculty of memory in an interesting way by Arthur Glenberg in his paper What memory is for, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 20, 1, 1997.

Here is the abstract:

"Let's start from scratch in thinking about what memory is for, and consequently, how it works. Suppose that memory and conceptualization work in the service of perception and action. In this case, conceptualization is the encoding of patterns of possible physical interaction with a three-dimensional world. These patterns are constrained by the structure of the environment, the structure of our bodies, and memory. Thus, how we perceive and conceive of the environment is determined by the types of bodies we have. Such a memory would not have associations. Instead, how concepts become related (and what it means to be related) is determined by how separate patterns of actions can be combined given the constraints of our bodies. I call this combination “mesh.” To avoid hallucination, conceptualization would normally be driven by the environment, and patterns of action from memory would play a supporting, but automatic, role. A significant human skill is learning to suppress the overriding contribution of the environment to conceptualization, thereby allowing memory to guide conceptualization. The effort used in suppressing input from the environment pays off by allowing prediction, recollective memory, and language comprehension. I review theoretical work in cognitive science and empirical work in memory and language comprehension that suggest that it may be possible to investigate connections between topics as disparate as infantile amnesia and mental-model theory."

The problem with 'mind as software' is that it surely is an analogy. — Wayfarer

I quite agree. Its usefulness rests in helping clearing up some issues regarding inter-level material-realization v.s. functional-level causal relationships and the threat of causal over-determination that always lurk. Its drawback it that it encourages what Susan Hurley had called the sandwich model of the mind that portrays mental operations as being located in a linear causal chain mediating (i.e. being sandwiched) between raw sensory "inputs" on one side and bodily actions (raw motor "outputs") on the other side.

I don't mind having my preconceptions challenged, if you don't mind elaborating? — tom

My comment was directed at Querius who resolved to stop reading my post further than the first sentence lest I would issue a retraction. The rest of the post was of course an elaboration. Querius thought my assertion that my neurons don't need themselves to act "in accord" with my intentions -- as opposed to their activity, as I explained, merely enabling a molar (high-level) bodily behavior that itself constitutes my enacting those intentions in dynamic interaction with my environment -- was incredible. Was there something in my explanation that also rubbed against your view regarding the "mind/brain" relationship, which I propose may be viewed as a matter of high-level to low level structural (i.e. "implementation") relationship (as opposed to a boss/employee relationship, say)?

The purpose of the digital computer analogy was to show that, in this case also, individual transistors, or logic gates, or even whole collections of them -- i.e., the CPU -- need not have the high level software instructions "translated" to them in the case where the implementation of this high level software specification is a matter of the whole computer being structured in such a way that its molar behavior (i.e. the input/output mapping) simply accords with this high level specification. In cases where the code is compiled or interpreted, the CPU need not know what virtual machine, if any, is being implemented.

According to you, neurons don't need to act in accord with the intention to raise one arm ....

Unless you are willing to retract this claim, our discussion ends here — Querius

In a sense they do (metaphorically) and in another sense (literally) they don't. Which is why I took the pain to disambiguate the two senses, charitably ascribed to you the reasonable one, and attempted to warn you against the easy conflation. The tendency to make this conflation is a core target in Bennett and Hacker, Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience. But if you don't like having your preconceptions challenged, suits you. I may keep on answering some of your already stated questions and challenges. You are of course free not to respond.

If so, how does downward causation work? How do we get from the intention to raise one’s arm to neurons which act in accord with that intention? — Querius

The neurons don't need to act in accord with the intention since the intention isn't directed at the neurons. If my intention is to grasp a glass of water standing on a table before me, what would it mean for my neurons to act in accord with this intention? Neurons and blind and impotent. The electrical activity of my neurons must, for sure (and this is what you must mean), be such as to enable the suitable muscular contractions so that my hand will move towards the glass, etc. This neural activity may sustain a sensorymotor feedback loop that realizes, in context, my voluntarily taking hold of the glass of water specifically in conditions where I had both the opportunity and an intelligible reason to do so.

Such a molar activity of my body/brain/environment may have become possible, while I matured, through the progressive tuning and habituation of the underlying physiological processes. Those processes need only sustain, albeit not control, higher level sensorimotor feedback loops as well as (at an even higher level) proclivities to act in a manner that is rationally suited to the circumstances. So, both the learning of the abilities and their actualization always are top-down causal processes from the intelligible and perceptible circumstances of our embodiment in the natural and cultural world to the tuning and (conditional) actualization of the underlying mindless (albeit adaptative) enabling responses from our low-level physiology. Our proclivities to be thus behaviorally trainable (which we share with other animals) and to be acculturated (which we don't) are of course evolved.

There is no need for the person, her body, or her mind, to instruct neurons on what to do since it is rather their function -- through their mindless and automatic (previously selected and/or tuned and/or habituated) low-level activities -- to enable whole persons to move about in a manner that is expressive of rationality and of sensorimotor competence. Likewise, in a simpler case, the cells of the heart are collectively organized in such a way as to enable the whole organ to pump blood without its being necessary for the heart to "instruct" individually its own cells about what to do. The cells respond directly to local variation in blood flow, adrenalin, electric potential, etc., in such a manner that the result of the overall dynamics is adaptative.

I'll comment later on the topic of the role on the compiler/interpreter in the computer analogy.

So, our intentions, deliberations and thoughts are direct instructions for neurons. Neurons listen in and understand our mental stuff directly and know what to do? No problemo? — Querius

Our thoughts are not instructions for neurons at all. The intentional contents of our beliefs and intentions aren't directed at neurons. They're typically directed at objects and states of affairs in the world. Our neurons need not be told what to do anymore than transistors in computers need be told by the software what to do. The installed software is a global structural property of the suitably programmed computer. What it is that the transistors are performing -- qua logical operations -- is a function of the context within which they operate (i.e. how they're connected with one another and with the memory banks and input devices). Their merely physical behavior only is governed by the local conditions, and the laws of physics, regardless of the global structure of the computer.

Well, in order to function, hardware does require translation of high-level programming language, so this analogy seems inapt.

The hardware must only be suitably structured in order to deal adequately with the software instruction; it need not have instructions translated to it. If the high level code needs to be compiled or interpreted before it is run it's only in cases where the hardware is general purpose and its native instruction set isn't able to run the code directly.

I think part of the trouble in conveying the significance of my hardware/software analogy stems from the fact that the term "hardware" is highly ambiguous. The term can either refer to the material constitution of the computer qua physical system, which merely obeys the laws of physics. It can also refer to the computer qua implementation of a program that transforms significant inputs into significant outputs. Understood in accordance with the latter acception, the hardware, in virtue of its structure, already embodies a specific algorithm -- an abstract mapping from input sequences to output sequences (including the possibility of non-termination). It can be represented formally by a Turing machine. When a definite part of the input to the hardware (maybe accessed by the CPU from an internal memory store) encodes a virtual machine, then non-native code can be interpreted. In that case, the hardware in conjunction with the interpreter can be conceived as embodying a higher level algorithm.

"The programmer need not concern herself with the way in which the hardware enables her program to run." -- PN

Because a compiler — translator — bridges the gap. Right?

That's right. But that's a special case. The task of the compiler (or interpreter), though, isn't to translate high level instructions in a language that it understands. The hardware understands nothing, of course. Rather, the task of the compiler merely is to transform the structure of the input such that when this transformed input is mapped by the low level hardware to the corresponding output, the result of the computation accords with the specification of the high level program. The composite system consisting in that hardware, augmented with the compiler, constitutes a virtual machine that behaves exactly in the same way (though maybe less efficiently) as a more complex hardware that would have the high level language as its native instruction set.

So, in a way, a mature human being understands natural language thanks to her overall physiological structure embodying a "virtual machine" that has this language as its native language. The neurons need not understand what their individual roles is in the underlying causal chain anymore than transistors in a computer need understand anything about their electrical "inputs". The relevant level of information processing (or of human natural language understanding) resides in the overall structure and behavior of the whole computer, including its compiler/interpreter (or of the whole human being).

To be clear, I am not saying that the hardware/software analogy furnished a good or unproblematic model for the body/mind relationship. The purpose of the analogy is quite limited. It is intended to convey how top-down causation can be understood to operate unproblematically, in both cases, without any threat of causal overdetermination or violation of the causal closure of the lower level domain.

To pursue the analogy, how is an intention translated into instructions (‘software’) for neurons? And what power does emergent consciousness have over matter, such that ‘creating software instructions’ is an apt analogy? — Querius

The intention does not get translated into instructions for the neurons and needs not get so translated. The intention is directed outwards to the intended goal, in the world, not inwards to neurons or muscles. ("...I am not only lodged in my body as a pilot in a vessel..." -- René Descartes) In my analogy, talk of intentions, beliefs, perceptions, actions, etc., concerns the functional/psychological "software" level. Neurophysiology enables it rather in the way the hardware enables the software to run in the case of a computer.

So, likewise, the computer programmer can write instructions that directly govern the logical manipulation of significant symbols and not concern herself with the task of the compiler, interpreter, or hardware. The programmer needs not concern herself with the precise way in which the hardware enables her program to run. The high level software causally directs and controls the steps in the computational task, while the hardware enables but doesn't direct the execution of the intended calculations or symbolic manipulations. (The proof of that is that if there is an unintended result -- a bug -- it often only is required to fix the software. The hardware need not be at fault, though it may sometimes be). Since the activity of the hardware gains its significance only through this merely enabling relationship, and doesn't stand in the way of the software control, this is a typical example of top-down causation.

One final note: as this example shows, there need not be a materially identifiable distinction between the software and the hardware levels. The software doesn't float over the hardware and control it from outside, as it were. Rather, when the software has been suitably loaded (and possibly, compiled, or hard-coded) then the functional structure of the computer has changed. The software level is thus a functional level rather than a mereological level (i.e. a simple part/whole relationship). It refers to the functional organization of the suitably programmed computer; while the correspondingly modified hardware it its newly informed material "body".

This is not an explanation. You note that ‘striving to survive’ is necessary for life to succeed, and from there you go to (paraphrasing) 'and therefore organisms strive to survive’. This is not an explanation, since organisms don't necessarily exist. — Querius

It's not an explanation of the event of abiogenesis and was not meant to be. It's rather a description of the observable teleological structure of all known living things as contrasted with the more primitive dissipative structures and the complex "organic" (proleptically so called) chemicals that existed before that event. I don't have an explanation for the event of abiogenesis itself; and it probably involved some large measure of contingency. It may have been a lucky accident.

The topic being the reducibility of the laws of nature, though, I am merely pointing out that the nested teleological structure of living things (also termed autopoiesis) whereby the parts (i.e. the organs) have as a function to promote the survival of the whole (the organism) and the molar activity of the organism reciprocally are directed at maintaining the function of the parts does not afford bottom-up reductive explanations. The reason for this is that the component processes (the physiological functions of the organs, cells, etc.) only make sense in relation to their functional embedding in the whole.

Moreover, in order for ‘striving to survive’ to be one thing — contrary to a collection of unrelated behaviors — there must be a binding principle like ‘fear of death’, which logically requires a concept of death.

It certainly does, though it is not required that the plants or non-rational animals that strive to survive and reproduce have any reflexive awareness that their physiology and behaviors be thus structured so as to favor such outcomes. In fact, rational animals don't need it either though it comprehensibly tends to becomes a genuine concern for them.

To pursue the analogy, how is an intention translated into instructions (‘software’) for neurons (‘hardware’)? What power does emergent consciousness have over matter, such that ‘creating software instructions’ is an apt analogy? — Querius

What power does the act of perceiving of a bird have over matter such that the cat is able to jump on the bird and catch it? What power does the hunger of the cat has to motivate (and move) the cat to pursuing birds? Is there a philosophical mystery there? Our states of mind (and of consciousness) have among themselves motivational and perceptual states. In the case of rational creatures such as ourselves those states take specific conceptual forms such that they can be expressed linguistically and their conceptual contents can be articulated in episodes of practical and theoretical reasoning.

But this sharp qualitative increase in cognitive power that we exhibit compared with the simpler and more straightforward behavioral engagements that non-rational animals have with their perceived environments need not introduce any new mind-over-matter interaction problems. Our conceptual abilities just are reshaped animal abilities that we acquire though initiation/training into a linguistically mediated culture. This is how we are being "programmed", to get back to the computer analogy.

Bach, cantata BWV 125, Mit Fried und Freud ich fahr dahin,
Bach Collegium Japan, Masaaki Suzuki.

I'm just cycling through the whole cantata set. It's a seemingly endless collection of stunning masterpieces (as is almost everything else Bach composed).

If we are going to discuss a higher level, and a lower level, then we need to distinguish the two distinct aspects of the free will act. First, we have the impulse to act, and second, we have the will to deliberate. The first inclines us toward action according to instinct reflex, or existing habits. The second is the capacity of the will to decline, or resist this action, we call this "will power". It is this second aspect which makes rational decisions, and conscious deliberations possible. Do you agree that the first is the lower level, and the second is the higher level? — Metaphysician Undercover

No, I don't endorse this rather empiricist psychological model. It portrays the rational mind as residing on top -- as a controller/inhibitor -- of antecedent "raw" instincts, drives or impulses. I prefer an account of practical rationality that views the habits and motivations of a mature human being as being largely constitutive of her ability to appraise goals and putative values in point of rationality. What it is reasonable to do in specific circumstances comes to be felt as something that it is desirable to do from the practical epistemic standpoint of someone who has grown to be motivated by the right things and to be sensitive to the morally and/or prudentially salient features of a practical situation.

This is broadly an Aristotelian view of the essential interdependence that holds between phronesis (practical wisdom conceived as a capacity for practical knowledge) and virtue (acquired excellence of character/habit conceived as a set of good motivational dispositions that don't blind individuals to their duties) as described in the ethical and practical-philosophical writings of Elizabeth Anscombe, John McDowell, David Wiggins, Jennifer Hornsby, Philippa Foot, Michael Thompson and Sabina Lovibond, among others.

On that view, desire and rational will operate at the same molar, personal-level, of practical cognition/motivation. The low level consists in the component "cognitive"/neural abilities that merely enable high level (personal-level) cognition to function in the relavant context of embodiment, environment and culture.

I'll comment on the rest of your post separately.

Ok, so you have described a "higher level" of neurological activity, which you say is responsible for the intentional, rational, free will acts. — Metaphysician Undercover

The person -- the human being -- is responsible. The "higher level" isn't a higher level of neurological activity. It's a functional level (see functionalism in the philosophy of mind) of mental organization that relates to the lower level of neurology rather in the way that the software level relates to the lower hardware level in the case of computers.

To pursue the analogy, the hardware level deals with the implementation and enablement of basic logical functions. But what makes the execution of those basic logical functions logical (or computatonal) at all, and what makes the intended effects (e.g. the screen or printer outputs) results of meaningful computations is their participation in the specific global hardware+sofware architecture.

Since you can identify no efficient cause for this activity, you assign the cause to the "individual as a whole".

That's not the reason why I am looking for something other than an "efficient" cause. I am rather looking for a final (intelligible/teleological) cause -- something like a goal or reason -- because of the form of the question and the formal nature of the event: Why did so and so intentionally do what she did.

The "efficient" (so called) cause that you are highlighting figures as an answer to a different question: why did this or that piece of meaningless bodily motion occur at the time that it did. If you would also ask in what manner those muscular/neural events are capable of enabling genuinely cognitive function (and intentional behavior) then you would already have left the narrow explanatory space of bottom-up "efficient" causation.

(I put "efficient" between scare quotes since efficient causation was originally an Aristotelian notion quite unlike modern "Humean" (universal law exhibiting) causation. The efficient cause of the existence of the house, according to Aristotle, is the builder -- a substance rather than a process or event.

Now we have some extremely vague notion of, "an individual as a whole" being the cause of this neurological activity.

First, the individual isn't the efficient cause of the neurological activity. It's rather that what global cognitive economy this or that neural event (or neurophysiologcal function) is a part of determines its functional nature (See Davidson on radical interpretation). So, this is a species of formal causation. Second, the notion of the individual as a whole just is the notion of a human being like Joe or Sue. Though the notion of an individual living organism has some inherent vagueness due to questions of persistence and identity criteria, its not any more vague than the notion of a neuron, a mouse, a tea cup or a hydrogen atom.

Why is it that you believe that this vague notion of "an individual as a whole", being the cause of this activity, is a better description than the classical description which holds that the immaterial soul is the cause of this activity?

Because we can improve on the notion of the immaterial soul through reviving Aristotle's notion of the rational soul as the specific form (i.e. the specific functional organization) of the mature and healthy human body.

Why is it that e.g. a bacterium avoids death? Does it fear death? Does it even have a concept of death?

Or do you guys assume that ‘striving to survive’ is just one of those things that ‘emerges’ due to a ‘limit’ or some similar 'cause'? — Querius

My point was to characterize what it is that natural selection selects for (or against) from the moment of abiogenesis onwards. It selects among processes and bodily structures that already have vital functions (i.e. functions that promote the vital organization and procreation abilities of the organism.) But natural selection remains an enabling force in this story. When mutated heritable vital functions are defective, or relatively inefficient (compared to those of kins and foes) then they are selected away. Organisms strive to survive, under local constraints, since those who don't so strive die off and fail to reproduce. This story just is a fleshing out of the standard Darwinian theory of evolution -- one that frees itself from the unnecessary strictures of reductionism while characterizing the isolated processes and activities.

(See Ruth Garrett Millikan's What is Behavior for similar anti-reductionist points regarding the evolution of behavioral abilities).

Thus, are we fooled about reality when we take our models to be more real than reality itself by ascribing ontological/physical significance to their results? To what extent is Heisenberg's uncertainty principle anything more than simply the limitation of our capacity to model reality? — Agustino

It was Einstein's view that reality is more determinate than the knowledge limitation imposed by Heisenberg's uncertainty principle suggest it to be. It was the point of the famous Einstein, Podolsky, Rosen paper ("EPR") to argue for this. But experimental tests of the hypothesis of a more determinate underlying reality have put Einstein's hope for the vindication of "local realism", and the merely epistemic intepretation of Heisenberg's inequalities, under severe stress. It now rather seems like the uncertainty principle really is a true indetermination principle, as proponents of the Copenhagen interpretation had always argued. My favorite discussion of the EPR entanglement, and of non-locality and quantum measurement in general, figures in Michel Bitbol's paper Reflective Metaphysics: Understanding Quantum Mechanics from a Kantian Standpoint (Scroll down just a few pages or search on the linked page for "bitbol").

In that case there are only ~3 life forms - prions, viruses (based on RNA) and everything else (based on DNA). — tom

On my view there are as many life forms as there are individual species. Prions and viruses are akin to parasites, so their life forms aren't quite distinct from the life forms of the animals or plants that they infect. The main point is that what is being selected by the environment (selected for or against) always is something like a behavioral ability (or defect) or a bit of physiological function that always already has its significance, as the sort of process/ability that it is, owing to the functional (and hence teleological) rôle that it plays in a distinctive living organization -- an already organized forms of life within a specific ecological context.

We cannot ignore the facts of neurological involvement in the free will act. The question for the metaphysician is the cause of such activity. It seems very clear that the activity of the nervous system is the cause of the activity of the human body. — Metaphysician Undercover

Low level neurophysiological processes play a dual role in the etiology of intentional human behavior. The first role consists in its causal relevance for such things as muscular contraction, and hence of "raw" (physically describable) bodily motion, and can be traced back to low-level "efficient" causes: e.g. to previous neural events and to the physical stimulations of sense organs. But intentional human behavior also has a higher level characterization where it is evaluated in point of practical rationality.

Free actions are actions that an agent can be deemed personally responsible for and that manifest her sensitivity to reasons; and this sensitivity rests on molar ("person level") rational abilities that are merely enabled, rather than caused, by underlying "low level" cognitive functions and neurophysiological processes. (They are also enabled by normal maturation and acculturation within the social context of a rational form of live). The neural cause of a specific muscular contraction can tell you why some muscle contracted at the time that it did, and hence why an arm rose but it leaves you clueless as to why the agent raised her arm (or even whether the motion was intentional at all). It's only from the standpoint of the rational/teleological organization of the cognitive economy of an individual as a whole that rationality transpires and that sensitivity to practical reasons is manifested as a form of top-down causation.

You cannot pass this off as apokrisis' point, because this is completely distinct from and inconsistent with, what apokrisis argues. Apokrisis assigns telos to the universe in general, so it is not as if telos emerges with the existence of life, it was a property of the universe already. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, I'm aware of this feature of his view, and it was indeed to accommodate this point that I used the qualifier "autonomous teleology" before the passage you quoted to characterize the qualitative break when the teleology manifested by a primitive replicator become its own (meaning that of the life form that it now exhibits) rather than just a general "pansemiotic" teleology. I'll let Apokrisis comment further on my gloss on his argument. I also wanted to add, regarding the alphabet of life, that each life form has, in a clear sense, an alphabet of its own.

I do not agree that...

I hold that...

and I also hold that... — Querius

Why? Why? and Why?

Let me google that for you. — Querius

I think this is missing Apokrisis's point. I may try to put it differently. There was a sharp qualitative break when abiogenesis occurred a few billion years ago. Prior to that event, there may have been chemical evolution in the sense that more complex molecules grew from random interactions from simpler molecules, and some crude process of selection. But this movement towards complexity didn't have any autonomous teleology since the complex molecules, or their parts, didn't have any organic function. It is only when early replicators not only were passively selected by environment pressure according to fitness, but also began to strive to survive and replicate, that they could be considered alive. They then had teleology in the sense that their parts became functional organs and they acquired autonomous behaviors.

Thus, the alphabet of life -- what is being varied, mutated and selected by environmental pressures -- doesn't consist in meaningless nucleotide sequences. It rather consists in functional (and thus meaningful) elements of anatomy, physiology and behavior. This teleology is manifested in the structure of whole organisms, and their organs, only in the ecological context of the holistic forms of life that they instantiate. From the moment of abiogenesis onwards natural selection became a top-down (and teleological) causal process.

The question about the odds that "you" could have been born some other animal rather than a human being only makes sense on the assumption that "you" refers to something other than an embodied person; an immaterial soul, maybe. If your are not distinct from the embodied form of life that you instantiate then it doesn't make sense that you could possibly have been a giraffe, a turnip or a tea pot instead of a human being.

Emergence from nothing it is.
There are those who demand understanding and those who do not. — Querius

This is a gross mischaracterization of the position of the nonreductivist/emergentist/pluralist. What is denied is a unique "fundamental" material explanation of "everything". The thesis of strong emergence is not a claim that there is something at the bottom that we must not seek an explanation of. On the contrary, a plurality of explanations is sought that is sensitive to the specific context of existence of the entities being inquired about. The pluralist is much more curious and investigative than the reductionist since she doesn't only look down; she also looks up and sideways.

EDIT: Emergence does not explain the level on which it sits. — Querius

No, of course not, and neither do explanations in terms of material constitution explain the laws and features of the constituted entities, except in he odd case where reductive explanations are available. But that is the exception rather than the rule.

Correct me if I am wrong, but does the very concept of 'emergence' not imply a lower level of (more) fundamental laws? Emergent stuff emerge from fundamental stuff, right? — Querius

There need not be any such implication. One can argue for a notion a strong emergence in a context of explanatory pluralism without endorsing a stratified and foundational view of nature (Bitbol's paper is titled "...without Foundations". Alan C. Love also argues for a notion a emergence that doesn't rely of a stratified view of nature in his Hierarchy, causation and explanation: ubiquity, locality and pluralism.

The relevant distinction of higher/lower "levels" is local (to a specific explanatory context) and is relative rather than absolute, as is Aristotle's distinction of matter and form. Material bottom-up causal explanations appeal to features of implementation or constitution while top-down explanations appeal to features of systemic organisation. But "lower level" entities have form too, and "higher level" entities have material properties too. There need not be an ultimate level at the bottom, and strong emergence allows us to dispense with the need for one.

Unless you are arguing that it is emergence all the way down, which seems incompatible with the concept of emergence, I do not see the relevance to a discussion about fundamental laws.

Yes, in a sense, it's emergence all the way... But there need not be a bottom, fundamental, level. There need not be an ultimate formless material constituent of everything, and such a notion is dubiously coherent anyway.

Also every post on this forum is a cogent example of top-down causation. Question is, do we find such causation in inanimate nature. — Querius

There are many examples in physics. George Ellis (responding to Sean Carroll) provides an example in the comment section of this post on emergence by Massimo Pigliucci:

"However this billiard ball point of view, based in Newtonian physics, is invalid once one takes quantum physics into account. A classic example is the fact that the mechanism of superconductivity cannot be derived in a purely bottom up way, as emphasized strongly by Bob Laughlin in his Nobel prize lecture, see R B Laughlin (1999): `Fractional Quantisation'. Reviews of Modern Physics 71: 863-874. The reason is that existence of the Cooper pairs necessary for superconductivity is contingent on the nature of the relevant ion lattice; they would not exist without this emergent structure, which is at a higher level of description than that of the pairs. Hence their very existence is the result of a top-down influence from this lattice structure to the level of the Cooper pairs. The concept of a given set of unchanging interacting particles is simply invalid. They only exist because of the local physical context. One can also find many examples where the essential nature of the lower level entities is altered by the local context: neutrons in a nucleus and a hydrogen atom incorporated in a water molecule are examples."

(Notice that the neutron example provided by Ellis was also given by Wayfarer recently.)

I take it that you are not attempting to explain fundamental laws with emergence. As such the topic emergentism is irrelevant to our discussion. — Querius

You initial query in the first post of this thread was about "laws of nature", quite generally, and the source of their universality. What makes you think that some laws are fundamental and some aren't? It's only on the assumption of reductive physicalism, and/or some rather strong thesis of supervenience, that some laws are believed to be fundamental in the sense that they would govern everything that happens in the world.

But what distinguishes the laws of physics (or of "fundamental" physics) from other laws of natures (or from normative principles of biology, cognitive sciences or social sciences) may only be that the former focus on rather general features of material constitution while abstracting to some arbitrary degree from formal principles of organization and contingent boundary conditions.

I would have thought 'the placebo effect' provides a cogent example of top-down causation. — Wayfarer

For sure. It's Jaegwon Kim's argument that Bitbol is rehearsing here. Kim's argument also is sketched in the section Argument against non-reductive physicalism from his Wikipedia page. It this this argument from causal closure that Bitbol responds to.

I am not sure how a discussion about emergentism is relevant to fundamental laws of nature. As I have stated before I have no problem with a secondary (emergent) law like ‘every snowflake is 6-sided’, as a direct consequence of fundamental laws. — Querius

If laws that govern phenomena from a variety of empirical domains (e.g. chemical reactions, natural evolution, the actions of human beings, etc.) don't reduce to the laws of physics, or to so called "fundamental" laws of nature, them there is no reason to think that they are a consequence of them. The laws of physics may explain, partially, how the higher level processes are implemented, but they leave open what the higher level laws themselves are.

The higher level laws (or systemic principles of organization) may depend on contingent facts about boundary conditions, or historically contingent facts about the evolution of those entities. The higher level entities can also be governed by general principles that are quite independent from the laws that govern their low level material constituents since those higher level entities are multiply realizable in different sorts of materials or components (e.g. the same software can run on different hardware architectures.) In that case, it's not the lower level laws that determine the higher level laws. At most, they may enable them though providing a contingent form of implementation. Enablement, though, falls short from causal determination.

Sean Carroll in his book ‘The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself’, Dutton, 2016 writes: ... — Querius

Sean Carroll objects to the notion of downward causation because he doesn't understand it. He wrongly believes the possibility of downward causation to contradict the causal closure of the micro-physical domain, as if a macroscopic or systemic cause of a micro-physical event entailed a violation of the laws that govern micro-physical interactions. But downward causation doesn't have this consequence. It isn't something queer, magical, or unphysical. Sean Carroll is thus shooting down a strawman notion, though, to be fair, he isn't alone in wrongly portraying downward causation in this manner; so does philosopher Jaegwon Kim. In his paper Downward Causation without Foundations, Michel Bitbol (while discussing Kim's objections) sets up the problem of physical closure thus:

"The first statement is meant to dismiss the idea of strong emergence, according to which the high-level processes are endowed with autonomous causal powers, and with ability to alter the low-level processes. It does so by assuming that for high-level processes to count as causal powers in the fullest sense, and to be able to alter anything significant in the lower level, they must induce a deviation in the laws of the micro-processes. But if this were the case, two common presuppositions of the scientific picture of the world would be denied: (a) the presupposition of nomological closure of the lower micro-physical level, and (b) the presupposition of causal fundamentalism, according to which “macro causal powers supervene on and are determined by micro causal powers” (Bedau 2002, 10). Strong emergence thus apparently amounts to an indefensible variety of ontological dualism."

Bitbol later adresses the problem of physical closure thus:

"No level of organization can claim any privilege for itself, because every such level is defined (or “constituted”) by a certain scale of intervention and observation. Moreover, no absolute meta-observer, no “view from nowhere,” is available to select one pattern of causes at a certain agent-relative level as the “truly efficient” one. This does not threaten the thesis of causal closure of the domain of physics, but only denies it any ontological significance. Causal closure here means only that it is possible to establish a systematic and self-sufficient network of causal connections relative to a single scale of intervention and experimental access, without having recourse to any other scale of intervention and access. This being granted, causal closure of a low level of organization (say the level of micro-physics) is perfectly compatible with the thesis that there are also efficient causes at an upper level of organization."

Scott Sehon, Free Will and Action Explanation: A Non-Causal, Compatibilist Account, OUP, 2016

George Ellis, How Can Physics Underlie the Mind: Top-Down Causation in the Human Context, Springer-Verlag, 2016

Andrea Kern, Sources of Knowledge: On the Concept of a Rational Capacity for Knowledge, HUP, 2017

How a system behaves is dependent not only on its constituent parts but also on the organization of these parts, which creates a causal web/network in which general behavior arises. — darthbarracuda

Also, in many cases (i.e. many ontological domains, including the objects of quantum physics) the very nature and existence of the material parts causally and/or constitutively depends on properties of the system of which they are proper parts. This can include boundary conditions, topological properties of space-time, etc. George Ellis argues for this in his recent book on the topic of top-down causation. This general point also has been argued by Michel Bitbol in some of his papers on emergence and on the foundation of quantum mechanics.

Ellis's and Bitbol's arguments are quite general, not very controversial, and free of the obscure and speculative quantum woo-woo that sometimes permeates the discussions of natural scientists when they turn to the topic of the mind. This ontological dependence of parts on whole also had been argued by John Haugeland in Pattern and Being and in Truth and Rule Following (both collected in his Having Tought: Essays in the Metaphysics of Mind). Haugeland's ontological points are quite general but Ellis's and Bitbol's discussion show that physics, even so called fundamental physics, is no exception and affords no refuge to the reductionist.

Natural laws are the natural extension of a Cartesian epistemologically-oriented metaphysics, one that rejects teleology in favor of mysterious, immutable forces that exist for whatever reason. One of the alternatives would be a rejection of natural laws as such, in favor of a re-instituted teleology based upon threshold dispositions and power networks. — darthbarracuda

Yes. I think there is much truth to this. According to Cartesian epistemology, the world can never be known directly through perception. There is a disconnect between the things that we (seem to) know empirically from our temporally situated perspective -- substances that have fallible powers -- and the fundamental (so called) entities posited by the exact sciences, that are subject to exceptionless laws.

But the exceptionless laws that govern the theoretical entities posited by the exact sciences (i.e. "basic physics" and the special sciences that allegedly reduce to it) are conceived through abstracting away most or the real and relational properties of the entities that we actually encounter in the natural (and human) world and in the laboratory. The focus of physics is the (mere) material constitution of ordinary objects.

The OP quoted Sean Carroll, a theoretical physicist, who believes that the law of physics express invariant relations quite unrelated to the ordinary time asymmetric notion of cause. The ordinary notion of causality applies to entities that have fallible causal powers -- things that act on one another or that we can make some use of. If we consider a homogeneous set of such entities, seek purely mechanistic explanations of their behaviors and abstract away from their intrinsic teological structure, and also from the practical uses that we can make of them (as real materials or artifacts) then we can achieve some explanations about the manner in which some processes are materially implemented inside of them. But we also lose sight of what those entities are and the real powers that they have. Far from being a fundamental science, physics is a very narrow science. It may appear fundamental to a Cartesian metaphysican who isn't concerned with the fact that the entities that it describes can't be disclosed in experience but rather must be abstracted away from it.

A philosopher could be overrated (i.e. generally being ranked too high relative to her peers) and still be underappreciated. I can't think of any philosopher belonging to the tradition who isn't underappreciated. This includes philosophers who I don't like much. It's a matter of contemporary culture. The same goes with classical music and literature. We could possibly make an exception for Ayn Rand, assuming that she merits the title of a philosopher. She likely is both overrated and over-appreciated.

If the language of thought hypothesis (LOT for short) were right, then the content of a thought would just be the content of the mentalese sentence used by the brain to represent it. I don't see this as a departure from representationalism. It is just one way to cash out the idea that thoughts are the representional contents of representations that are materially implemented in the brain in some way or other. It raises the question who is it who is interpreting the mentalese symbols? If the brain is a syntactic engine, then it does no interpretation. So, the LOT hypothesis threatens to collapse into eliminativism about mental content, it seems to me.

I prefer the antirepresentationalist view that rather equates thoughts (e.g. beliefs, judgments, experiences, etc.) as acts of capacities to believe, judge, perceive, etc. To believe that the cat is on the mat, for instance, is thus an act of representing the cat as being on the mat. It is something that an embodied person does, not her brain. It need not be the representational content of anything. The correct ascription of such mental states to a living individual is grounded on the interpretation of her overall animate behavior (including her linguistic behavior), in such a way that it is disclosed as being rational in light of such a broadly consistent set of mental state attributions. This is roughly Davidson's view of radical interpretation (divorced from his anomalous monism).

Elizabeth Anscombe has rightfully been mentioned as a "significant original" philosophical thinker. If we take care to distinguish significance from influence, then many more philosophers, male or female, have achieved great depths of significance in their work in spite of the fact that they have been underappreciated. Among the male philosophers who's work seem to me to have had deep significance and who might deserve much more widespread influence are Gareth Evans, David Wiggins and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Among the female philosophers are Jennifer Hornsby, Sabina Lovibond and Sarah Broadie. There ought to be many many more who I either don't know or who I (together with Charles Murray) am underappreciating.

Simply put, he is just saying that it is the deliberation of the possible choices or outcomes before a decision is made that affects the beneficiality of the choice. That is not absurd as you say it is and is completely coherent with the determinism that he expounds on. — intrapersona

Yes, he is saying this... often. And when he is saying this, he is effectively endorsing compatibilist conceptions of control and of free choice. The trouble is that Harris also tries to hold on to some version of Van Inwagen's argument for incompatibilism. He indeed is very often explicitly arguing against compatibilism on the basis of such an argument (and also on the basis of Galen Strawson's "basic argument" against moral responsibility), and his endorsement of those arguments is inconsistent with his tacit endorsements of compatibilism. This is why Dennett says that Harris often seems to be compatibilist in all but name (i.e. whenever Harris isn't arguing for the contrary position!) Harris charges against compatibilists, that they are "redefining" free will, just is his attempt to extricate himself from this muddle. Compatibilists at least are consistent in their definitions of freedom and of the ability to choose; Harris himself, while consistently denying the possibility of free will, isn't endorsing consistent arguments.

Just because what one is poised to do already is based on prior events does not negate the necessity of logical thought or reasoning for making a decision. Predestination works just as well if not better with a reasoning mind.

You yourself are entitled to this compatibilist insight, but Harris isn't. You may want to replace "predestination" with "determinism" in the above, though, since Harris claims to be agreeing with Dennett that determinism doesn't entail predestination and that those two theses, as they relate to freedom of action, ought not to be confused.

As for why you think it denies the central insight of compatibilism, I see no evidence to support your opinions here...

You are misreading me. I didn't say that he was denying the central insight of compatibilism. I suggested, on the contrary, that he was tacitly endorsing this central insight while at the same time explicitly arguing for incompatibilism on the basis of arguments that are inconsistent with this insight. Harris is very explicit in his rejection of compatibilism, while being seemingly unaware that he is depriving himself of the the possibility of making his utilitarian argument about consequences that "matter".