I tried to read Tse's book about fifteen years ago, but I have to admit I found it unconvincing (assuming that I understood it). Mental causation, for me, undoubtedly exists, but what if the mental if merely the post hoc idea of what are really neuronal processes? It is obvious, as I said, that if anything is causal, chemical reactions, all and any events of any kind, then neuronal events will also be causal. What is the gist of nay purported substantive, as opposed to merely phenomenological, epistemological, conceptual or perspectival, differences between neuronal and mantal events?

what if the mental if merely the post hoc idea of what are really neuronal processes? It is obvious, as I said, that if anything is causal, chemical reactions, all and any events of any kind, then neuronal events will also be causal. What is the gist of nay purported substantive, as opposed to merely phenomenological, epistemological, conceptual or perspectival, differences between neuronal and mantal events? — Janus

I expect neuronal events ARE causal - the brain controls the autonomic nervous system, for example.

Are you you suggesting that all mental activities are just neuronal events and that mental causation is illusory? That's what Jaegwon Kim has said (he says mental causation would imply overdetermination). This is possible, of course, since theories in philosophy of mind are all conjectural. I'd just say that I consider Tse's theory more compelling because it jives with the intuition that mental causation is real.

IMO Tse's overall theory is flawed - he tries to make a case for free will by assuming quantum indeterminacy plays a role. I never bought into that, and more recently, Robert Sapolsky ("Determined") has shown it to be problematic. But Tse does make a case for "criterial causation" that I find compelling. If you still have the book, it's described in Chapter 3.

I don't think "you" exist apart from your physical body, but you do have a mental life. IMO, agential control is not an illusion if mental causation exists. It certainly seems like we have it, and it can be accounted for with purely physical processes (Peter Tse provides such an account in his book, "The Neural Basis of Free Will"). — Relativist

I tried to read Tse's book about fifteen years ago, but I have to admit I found it unconvincing (assuming that I understood it). — Janus

I have started the book a couple times. I'll try again. But I can't find it in me to be overly hopeful that Tse provides an account of how mental causation exists, Relativist, when he begins the book by saying:

§0.4 The deepest problems have yet to be solved. We do not understand the neural code. We do not understand how mental events can be causal. We do not understand how consciousness can be realized in physical neuronal activity. — Tse

Even though mental states are the product of neural processes, it's still the case that there is mental causation. So your thoughts and feelings actually do affect the world in a unique way. The 'self' is your consciousness; a "machine" that develops intentions and acts upon them. You are caused to be what you are, but you were not caused through prior intent (not entirely). — Relativist

What if we build a robot that does various things under various conditions. When it's optic sensors detect something of a certain size range coming into the room, it sprays that thing with water. When its auditory sensors detect sounds within a certain frequency range, it opens a can of cat food and puts it in the dish on the floor. We can go on and on, programming it to compare different sensory input, having it act on only one in some cases, act on multiple in other cases, modify a typical action under shine circumstances, as complex as we can manage.

In what way is this robot less a casual agent, affecting the world less, less of a "self" than we are?

So it's still possible that the "future" you changed to was the future that it was guranteed to be all along, yeah? — flannel jesus

that's correct. — Barkon

I think this is the main problem here when we start from the logical premiss of "the future is what really will happen".

To change the future assumes a variety of "possible futures" that then don't happen, through our actions. Which goes against the definition that the future is what really will happen.

I think this is the main problem here when we start from the logical premiss of "the future is what really will happen".

To change the future assumes a variety of "possible futures" that then don't happen, through our actions. Which goes against the definition that the future is what really will happen. — ssu

Indeed. There is no such thing as a future that "really will" or "is supposed to" happen. We only have what comes to be. Planning to do something is not establishing a future state, and changing that plan is not changing the future.

doesn't that take all the sufficiency out of a plan, in that by creating a plan to follow, we end up following a different route into the future. The claim that the plan was the future then, doesn't change the fact that had we not created it, the future would be different. To suggest the query of whether determinism is or not, and address it with a blind 'it could be', is not a true argument. You can say 'how do you know it isn't determined?', but you can't say with any accuracy that plans don't change the future. I can say with accuracy that plans do change the future(without routing back under the false impression that determinism 'is', or 'makes a stand here'). I then would question whether I had any choice in both matters, but that's not siding with either argument originally.

Basically it's being suggested by the opposition that if we make a plan, it's not us, but some universal force controlling us to make a plan, and thus, no will is involved.
I argue that plans/acts do alter the future course, but that we can be in a mode where we're doing mostly one mind-module, for example, constantly picking the righteous choice, and thus we stray not too far from a determined path; however, the simple forced act of changing mode directly, indirectly changes the future.

In what way is this robot less a casual agent, affecting the world less, less of a "self" than we are? — Patterner

It is a causal agent, but lacks a mind. Our minds mediate our actions, and provides our sense of self.

it seems you believe query of whether everything is determined or not, outweighs 'what is.' In this way you suggest that 'determinism means that you can't tell the act was willfully chosen', but what is, is a indirect change in future happening before our eyes. — Barkon

I have absolutely no idea what you mean. I will try to make heads and tails out of it, but we may be talking past each other. I do not think one question is more important than the other one. I simply mean that your defense of free will is flawed. There are many indirect or direct changes (direct being caused directly by something and indirect meaning caused by something but via something else) the onus is on you to show that some of these changes have been willfully chosen and that that will itself is not determined by something prior to it.

Various neuroscientists suggests that what is chosen is a response of the brain to some kind of outside stimulus. What sets apart humans is that they have a function in the brain which rationalizes choice and gives an account of this choice. Those choices, even if the ancient perceives having made the choice by his own volition, was actually triggered by an outside stimulus. These finding are in line with materialist metaphysics. Everything we hear, see and feel is made of matter. Matter behaves in determinist fashion, therefore it is logical to conclude that you, since you are made out of matter act in determinist fashion.

Of course it could be otherwise, but than you have to account somehow for this fee will. It is a kind of uncaused cause (If it was caused it would not be free at least not in your definition of free will as it appears to me). Uncaused causes are very very rare things. So before I conclude there is such an uncaused cause, you should give me a good argument to believe in it.

Yes, he's laying out the problem at that point, and then proposes a solution in Chapter 3:

The impossibility of self-causation has been at the root of the strongest criticisms of the possibility of mental causation (§§A2.2–A2.5) or free will (§§7.1–7.5); criterial causation gets around this problem.

.... The criteria for what makes a neuron fire can change. For example, a given physically realized mental event can set up new criterial triggers for future input by changing the code for future neuronal firing, either in the neuron(s) realizing that mental event, or other neurons, presumably using the physical mechanisms summarized in §§4.54–4.60. Any future input that satisfies these new criteria will lead to a response that will in turn either lead to a physical action or a change in how information even further in the future will occur by again changing criteria for neuronal firing. Thus, even though mental events are realized in physical events, they (i.e., their physical realization) can cause subsequent physical and mental events by preparing new decoders, or changing the criteria for firing on already existing decoders. This kind of online and continual resetting of the criteria, or code, whereby decoders decode input, and thereby realize information, is crucial to all aspects of mental life, including volition and mental-on-physical causation. Thus, mental events are not epiphenomenal. They are informational states realized in neural decoders that play a role in determining how future information will be decoded by future neural activity and therefore in determining how the physical/informational system will behave in the immediate and more distant future. Of course, the information realized in a decoder cannot change the present physical system in which it itself is realized (there can be no causa sui). But it can lead to subsequent physical changes, such as the resetting of criteria for neuronal firing, in which future information will be realized upon the satisfaction of those neuronally realized criteria. Thus, we can talk about causation that operates at the level of information processing in the brain, rather than simply of causation at the level of energy transfer among elementary particles (see appendix 1).


Tse, Peter Ulric. The Neural Basis of Free Will: Criterial Causation (p. 47-49). MIT Press. Kindle Edition.

I found this diagram from Tse's book helpful in understanding criterial causation (which entails mental causation):



The prototypical sequence of criterial causation among neurons is represented in terms of the setting and resetting of physical criteria for neuronal firing. The triple arrow here represents physical criterial causation, where some proportion of the criteria C1, C2, . . . Cj, must be met before P2 is released. In this case P11, P12, . . . P1i at t1 are the dynamic neuronal inputs from multiple neurons to a second neuron that fires at t2 only if these criteria C1, C2, . . . Cj, which that neuron imposes on P11, P12, . . . P1i, are met beyond a certain threshold. The firing of this second neuron is P2, and information M2 [the mental state realized by physical state P2] is realized in this firing. The firing of this neuron at t2 can in turn change the criteria for the firing of multiple neurons at and after t3. For example, a neuron k that takes input from the neuron that fires at t2 might have criteria C3k for firing at t2, but will have criteria C3k' after t3. The double arrows represent noncriterial physical causation. The single arrow represents the supervenience relationship of the mental on the physical.

Tse, Peter Ulric. The Neural Basis of Free Will: Criterial Causation (pp. 48-49). MIT Press. Kindle Edition.

Thanks for pointing me at these things. When a page or two after what I quoted last time says

Endogenous attentional binding/tracking is realized in cholinergic/noncholinergic bursts sent from the basal forebrain and other areas that trigger a transition from tonic to phasic processing in pyramidal circuits from retinotopic areas up to anterior inferotemporal cortex and hippocampus, facilitating recognition. — Tse

I fear I'm not going to get too much out of the book.

The quote in your post before the diagram post makes me think of this analogy. I don't know if this is what he's saying, so let me know.

There are an uncountable number of air molecules in my living room. They are all flying about in various directions, at various speeds. We have nothing resembling the slightest hint of hope of tracking them all. But we can measure the temperature of the room. As Anil Seth writes in Being You : A New Science of Consciousness

Importantly, thermodynamics did more than merely establish that mean kinetic energy correlated with temperature—it proposed that this is what temperature actually is. — Seth

We, likewise, have no hope of tracking the activity of every neuron and synapse in someone's brain. As with the air molecules, the numbers, alone, make it impossible. But it's even more complicated, because, due to the nature of neurons, as Tse says, "The criteria for what makes a neuron fire can change." If we have no hope of mapping out the motion of the molecules of air in the room, then "no hope" is a pitifully inadequate way of expressing our ability to map out neutral activity. Nevertheless, if I'm understanding this, Tse is saying that, to paraphrase Seth, neural activity doesn't merely correlate with thought— this is what thought actually is. Although we can measure the macro property of temperature in a room, but cannot map out the motion of the air molecules, we know that the temperature is nothing more than the motion of the molecules. And, although we can comprehend thoughts, but cannot map out the neural activity of the brain, we know that the thoughts are nothing more than the neural activity.

Am I correctly understanding what he's saying?

You can say 'how do you know it isn't determined?', but you can't say with any accuracy that plans don't change the future. — Barkon

I can. Because the future isn't something that exists in the present. Something can only change if it exists. My television can be on channel 2, and I can change it to channel 4.

I can cut the legs off of my table, and screw skies onto it, thus changing my table into a sled.

I can add a floor to my house, changing it from a one-story to a two-story.

I can sell my Nissan and buy a Ford. I won't have changed the physical object, but I will have changed the car I own.

But if I take saw, hammer, nails, and wood, and build a chair, I will not have changed the future because I had said I was going to build a table. I only changed my intention, my plan of what I would have in the future. There was no table in the future that ceased to be and was replaced by a chair.

Basically it's being suggested by the opposition that if we make a plan, it's not us, but some universal force controlling us to make a plan, and thus, no will is involved. — Barkon

Yes, I believe the opposition is saying that. However, I don't think they are saying the force that is controlling us is doing so with intent, thought, or purpose. I think they are saying it's the laws of physics, or physicalism, or whatever the best term is now.

Are you you suggesting that all mental activities are just neuronal events and that mental causation is illusory? That's what Jaegwon Kim has said (he says mental causation would imply overdetermination). This is possible, of course, since theories in philosophy of mind are all conjectural. I'd just say that I consider Tse's theory more compelling because it jives with the intuition that mental causation is real. — Relativist

If mental events just are physical events looked at from a different angle, then both would be causal. and mental events would not be illusory, but simply the elements of a different way of looking at what is going on than the neuronal view.

:up:

Cool way of describing it!

Cheers :cool:

Indeed. There is no such thing as a future that "really will" or "is supposed to" happen. We only have what comes to be. Planning to do something is not establishing a future state, and changing that plan is not changing the future. — Patterner

Exactly.

And here's what people don't get: the future that really will happen is out of bounds from us, because we have an effect on what the future is.

Yes, you can argue that there is exactly a way that things happened in history (in this dimension of the multiverse or whatever you think reality is) and hence there will be exactly one future that will happen. This is simply meaningless to us as we cannot know it. It simply goes against logic.

It simply goes against logic. — ssu

I don't think it "goes against logic", rather it is one logically possible way we can imagine things being.

Am I correctly understanding what he's saying? — Patterner

I think so. Great analogy. (And your quote was hilarious!)

Am I correctly understanding what he's saying?
— Patterner
I think so. Great analogy. (And your quote was hilarious!) — Relativist

Thanks. And yeah, he's awful funny. Lol.

So if Tse is correct, let me ask about this:

In what way is this robot less a casual agent, affecting the world less, less of a "self" than we are?
— Patterner
It is a causal agent, but lacks a mind. Our minds mediate our actions, and provides our sense of self. — Relativist

Certainly, the physical interactions taking place among the components of our brains are more complex than those taking place among the molecules of air in a room, among the robots parts and programming, and maybe even among the components of anything else in the universe. Still, our minds are the product of nothing but physical interactions. What is the value of our sense of self if it can do nothing other than move from one arrangement of its constituent parts to the next, as the laws of physics require? Even wondering about the value of itself is nothing but the progression of arrangements, as determined by the laws of physics. One person's thought that there is value in the self, and another person's that there is not, are, ultimately, both the result of the properties of particles and the forces that act upon them.

I don't think it "goes against logic", rather it is one logically possible way we can imagine things being. — Janus

Perhaps I should have been more precise: We can assume that there's the future that will certainly happen. But it is illogical then to think that we, being part of the universe and actors in the universe, could then now this future, because there is a correct model of the future. It's similar basically to the measurement problem.

I have no idea what this topic is about. If I go to my refrigerator and take out the ham and cheese for a sandwich, then put it back and make pb&j, have I changed the future? Is that the idea? — Patterner

Did we really change the future or our belief of the future? We believed that we were going to have a ham sandwich, but are now preparing a pb&j sandwich, so we believe that we will be having pb&j for lunch except for the fact that we were ignorant to the fact that our friend is on their way to our house with chicken wings to share with us for lunch, so we end up having chicken wings for lunch and the pb&j is eaten for dinner instead. In this case, it wasn't any decision that I made that changed my possible future. It was my friends choices that determined my future.

there is a distinction between what the future is and our knowledge about the future. The same could be said of our knowledge about the past and even the present. We do not have access to all the information necessary to say with certainty why any particular event happens.

Ideas of possibilities, probability, randomness, etc. stem from the act of conflating our knowledge of the future with the future that is (the determined future). Where do possible futures exist relative to the present, past and the future that is, prior to us making some decision? Are possible futures ontological or epistemological?

Some future event will have a causal relation with another future event further down the causal chain. Do possible future events have any causal power? In what sense are possible futures real? In what way do possible futures exist independently of our minds to say that these things exist prior to making a decision and then change based on some decision that is made?

Possibilities and probabilities are just ideas in the present moment. They do not exist apart from the process of our making some decision in the present moment.

Those are the future possibilities, and it is because such future possibilities exist, it can be reasonable to hold people morally accountable for their actions. Knowledge that one will be held accountable may very well result in better behavior than would be the case if no accountability were expected. — Relativist

I believe that what makes one morally accountable for their actions is that one's actions contribute to a much higher degree to the consequences of those actions than some event prior to making the decision. The Big Bang and the formation of the solar system and evolution have much less of an impact on the consequences of some action than the act of some individual does. Some "possible" future has nothing to do with it because "possible" futures are just ideas in the present when making some decision. There is no "possible" future that can exist independently from the act of making some decision in the present.

But it is illogical then to think that we, being part of the universe and actors in the universe, could then now this future — ssu

Well sure we cannot know it.But the really question is,could Laplace's Demon know it indeed?

Plus do we have a say on it??Even a tiny one?Or are we just automatic biological systems that just watch like in a theater what their brain does??

It is a damn deep problem and for me at the end it just lies on general consciousness problem.Do we accept that mind is just a different state of matter?Do we actually know if that matter can produced a 'self ' that can change the route of the "other matter" (neurons) just by having some degrees of "freedom"?Just breaking even for a second the pure deterministic laws?

Well personally i can't tell really.I just believe that in such issues you can never be dogmatic.You have to have a open mind.

And for one thing i m sure, if you support that there is not at all free will then you have to embrace the futility of everything.And that you cannot held people moral responsible for any of their acts.It is a tremendous existential thing to do.
Well in fact for those who support no free will the verb "do" also loses its meaning here ;)

I have heard many people argue about no free will and at the end they close their speakings,or articles with something like "..so what that tells us is that we have to think,do etc".Like urging people to act in a certain way (as if they can....).And they don't even understand that that is totally incoherent with what they have argued about for hours.

If you wanna support that we humans are just automatic biological machines you have to go all the way till fatalism my man.Sorry you can't have it all.

Knowledge that one will be held accountable may very well result in better behavior than would be the case if no accountability were expected. — Relativist

I agree. If there is no free will (however anyone wants to define that), and we all do what we do only because that's how the billion bouncing billiard balls in our heads landed, then, yes, the knowledge that we will be punished if caught also becomes part of the bouncing.

Well sure we cannot know it.But the really question is,could Laplace's Demon know it indeed? — dimosthenis9

Yes, that's the question. Knowing where every particle in the universe is, and what each is doing, would LD be able to calculate exactly what we were going to do, think, and feel at any point in the future? Or would it say, "I don't know, because there is something going on in conscious beings that is not determined in the same ways everything that is not conscious can be determined."

Or would it say, "I don't know, because there is something going on in conscious beings that is not determined in the same ways everything that is not conscious can be determined." — Patterner

Not determined in the same way?

To conclude, I have proven I can change the future indirectly by interrupting the flow of the present. I also assert that at junctions we can change the future directly. This is my argument that life is both determined and has free will, but neither purely. — Barkon

I happen to agree with your conclusion that, in the real world, FreeWill and Determinism co-exist in the paradoxical synergy of statistical Probability. But proving that union of opposites will be like prying apart a paradoxical black box. FWIW, here's my personal take on the philosophical Compatibility Question from a few years ago. :smile:


Paradox of FreeWill :
Thus, the incompatibility of Fate and Freedom has been debated for millennia. . . .
So, it seems that any self-determination or freedom-from-causation we humans possess must be found in that tiny statistical gap between cause & effect.
https://bothandblog5.enformationism.info/page13.html
Note --- The world is predestined by probability (maybe -- maybe not).

Mathematical Probability :
Probability means possibility. It is a branch of mathematics that deals with the occurrence of a random event. The value is expressed from zero to one.
https://byjus.com/maths/probability/
Note --- Einstein didn't like the gambling odds of quantum physics. But the sub-atomic world has since been proven to be founded on a crap shoot. So, the appearance of "pure" determinism is an illusion.

We do not have access to all the information necessary to say with certainty why any particular event happens. — Harry Hindu

Not even so. Even if you have all the information, it still isn't possible. Let me explain:

Even if you would have all the information necessary to say with certainty why any particular event happens, that doesn't mean you can say the what will happen. You are part of the universe. You saying something can effect what is going to happen. Hence you saying anything, doing anything, can have an effect on what you ought to forecast. And what about when the future depends totally on what the forecast you give about it? You basically have the possibility of negative self reference and you cannot overcome that law of logic: you cannot say what you don't say.

Possibilities and probabilities are just ideas in the present moment. — Harry Hindu

Or I would say a great way make a useful model of the future what we cannot exactly know, especially many times when we do have this kind of interaction going on.

They do not exist apart from the process of our making some decision in the present moment. — Harry Hindu

So, cannot we then define the future to be what really will happen? We can, but that doesn't help us much. Far better models perhaps can be the idea of a multiverse where we end up in some distinct reality.

Well sure we cannot know it.But the really question is,could Laplace's Demon know it indeed? — dimosthenis9

Only if he doesn't interact with us, he can know. Then it is really that computable extrapolation with total information of the past on forward. The Demon simply cannot interact with us.

And since he cannot interact, it really is a fictional character to us. Or at least doesn't give us any information. Because just think of it when a person comes to the Demon and asks what should he or she do? Well, how does the Demon extrapolate from the facts the future when the future likely depends on the extrapolation? That's circular reasoning. And what if the person doesn't like what the Demon says and does the very opposite? Then the Demon obviously cannot say the future what the person will do, because it will be the opposite (hence wrong) what the Demon says.