If you can show that societies that developed outside that tradition (e.g. rain forest, Sub-Saharan African, and Native American societies) emerged with no sense of free will, then that would be supportive of your position, but I question if that's true. — Hanover

I think you're assuming that "free will" is a space of concepts, whereas it's a fairly demarcated one in public parlance. People think of a self causing mind able to manifest choices in a body.

This is consistent with doxatic volunteerism, the belief you can choose your beliefs. The reductio conclusion for one who disbelieves in free is that they don't believe in free will because they are determined not to. They'd be similarly forced to accept a believer believes because he must. If that's the case, we argue not to persuade or effectuate our opponents to choose our way of thinking, but because we simply must argue and bend as programmed. That is, the very concept of deliberation and consideration collapse in a determined world because the thought processes and conclusions were just another set of pool balls colliding. We don't choose option A bc it's most rational. We choose it because we're compelled. — Hanover

You may as well be quoting Aquinas.

Man has free-will: otherwise counsels, exhortations, commands, prohibitions, rewards, and punishments would be in vain. In order to make this evident, we must observe that some things act without judgment; as a stone moves downwards; and in like manner all things which lack knowledge. And some act from judgment, but not a free judgment; as brute animals. For the sheep, seeing the wolf, judges it a thing to be shunned, from a natural and not a free judgment, because it judges, not from reason, but from natural instinct. And the same thing is to be said of any judgment of brute animals. But man acts from judgment, because by his apprehensive power he judges that something should be avoided or sought. But because this judgment, in the case of some particular act, is not from a natural instinct, but from some act of comparison in the reason, therefore he acts from free judgment and retains the power of being inclined to various things. For reason in contingent matters may follow opposite courses, as we see in dialectic syllogisms and rhetorical arguments. Now particular operations are contingent, and therefore in such matters the judgment of reason may follow opposite courses, and is not determinate to one. And forasmuch as man is rational is it necessary that man have a free-will. — Summa Theologiae, Q83

the evil which consists in the defect of action is always caused by the defect of the agent. But in God there is no defect, but the highest perfection, as was shown above (I:4:1). Hence, the evil which consists in defect of action, or which is caused by defect of the agent, is not reduced to God as to its cause.

But the evil which consists in the corruption of some things is reduced to God as the cause. And this appears as regards both natural things and voluntary things. For it was said (Article 1) that some agent inasmuch as it produces by its power a form to which follows corruption and defect, causes by its power that corruption and defect. But it is manifest that the form which God chiefly intends in things created is the good of the order of the universe. Now, the order of the universe requires, as was said above (I:22:2 ad 2; I:48:2), that there should be some things that can, and do sometimes, fail. And thus God, by causing in things the good of the order of the universe, consequently and as it were by accident, causes the corruptions of things, according to 1 Samuel 2:6: "The Lord killeth and maketh alive." But when we read that "God hath not made death" (Wisdom 1:13), the sense is that God does not will death for its own sake. Nevertheless the order of justice belongs to the order of the universe; and this requires that penalty should be dealt out to sinners. And so God is the author of the evil which is penalty, but not of the evil which is fault, by reason of what is said above. — Summa Theologiae, Q49

This view of decision is inimicably Christian. The concept of will must be inherently unconstrained so that the horrible crap in the world can be our fault. That's what it's for. Free will gives humanity legislative authority over our own evils.

Compare:

All activities are carried out by the three modes of material nature. But in ignorance, the soul, deluded by false identification with the body, thinks of itself as the doer. — Bhagavad Gita 3.27

Totally opposite metaphysics. You have humans as unique willing agents vs human choice as relatively demarcated, somehow deluded, and part of the broader acts of nature.

We've then ended up thinking the broadly Christian concept of it applies everywhere and it's just "natural" and "innate" to see humans as legislative authorities on our own actions like existence is our own little fiefdom. It isn't even a cultural universal to see ourselves like this. People end up equating this Christian model of the agent with the concept of choice simpliciter, because we don't know any different.

1) Free will as a concept arose as a response to the theodicy. AFAIK this is just true. As a concept it was never meant to make sense of the human on its own terms, it was meant to make sense of our relationship with god and the world's evil. — fdrake

I don't agree with this. The fundamentals of the modern concept of free will were developed by St Augustine, from principles derived from Plato and Aristotle. The basic premise is that a person chooses what is apprehended by that person as good, whether or not that good is consistent with the true good in the mind of the divinity. The problem Augustine grappled with was to make this understanding of the human being's freedom of choice, compatible with the idea of God.

So it's not that "free will" is an attempt to make sense of our relationship with God, but rather the contrary. The reality of free will tends to make God incomprehensible. And there is a number of ways that this is demonstrated. For instance, if God is omnibenevolent, why does He allow human beings to choose evil? If God is omnipotent, then He must know what a person will chose prior to the person making the choice, making that person's choice predetermined. These are the types of problems which Augustine had to deal with in his attempt to make the understanding of human choice, as derived from Plato and Aristotle, consistent with the idea of God.

This view of decision is inimicably Christian. The concept of will must be inherently unconstrained so that the horrible crap in the world can be our fault. That's what it's for. Free will gives humanity legislative authority over our own evils. — fdrake

I don't think you understand what you quoted. Notice: "Nevertheless the order of justice belongs to the order of the universe; and this requires that penalty should be dealt out to sinners. And so God is the author of the evil which is penalty..."

Yes, we are to blame for our own bad choices, but obviously it's God, not us, who has legislative authority over our evils. If we had authority over ourselves, we would never punish ourselves, always seeing what we choose, as good. And so the difficulty of making "free will" compatible with "God".

Do we in fact know that the dream precedes, or grounds, the kicking? Might it not be the case that my legs kick for some independent, strictly neurological reason, which then causes me to dream about kicking, in the same way that a full bladder causes me to dream about urination? — J

Daniel Dennett proposed that we don't dream, that we do not have an experience over a period of time while asleep, but that rather a memory of dreaming is confabulated on waking. Dreams are not lived but merely recalled as if they had been.

Not likely, given other empirical evidence, but curious.

This view of decision is inimicably Christian. The concept of will must be inherently unconstrained so that the horrible crap in the world can be our fault. That's what it's for. Free will gives humanity legislative authority over our own evils. — fdrake

Christianity isn't a monolithic belief system, so to argue a Catholic theologian holds consistently with a Kantian concept of freedom being necessary for moral responsibility doesn't make it Christian.

The freedom of the will position I've described is consistent with Judaic beliefs and Greek views pre-existing Christianity.

For a general overview of theological position on free will: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_will_in_theology

There are Christian views on predestination of course as well, meaning Roman Catholic views do not define Christianity. Consider too that Christianity comes with a whole host of other theological baggage when it comes to moral responsibility. My eternal reward will not come from just a benevolent use of my free will, but it will require acceptance of Jesus as the messiah.

All activities are carried out by the three modes of material nature. But in ignorance, the soul, deluded by false identification with the body, thinks of itself as the doer. — Bhagavad Gita 3.27

I'm open up learning Hinduism, but my running down the rabbit hole trying to understand this didn't lead me to the conclusion that Hindus universally argue we lack free will or that one's karmic rewards aren't tied to freely chosen decisions. From the Wiki article, it's apparent there are differing views within Hinduisn on this issue.

Your quote I take to mean that only through transcending your physical being can you understand the soul as entirely without physical ability, which is the way to ultimately cease the birth/rebirth process. Sacred literature is often interpreted in highly contextualized ways, and it's hard to conclude much from a literal, four corners interpretation of a quote.

We could consume 100s of pages of debate on what Genesis 1:1 means for example.

As this is a foreign theology to me, it's hard to follow, as are many theologies, because they are not entirely rational. That is to say, I'm not convinced with what I've come across that freedom divorced from causation is not something you find within. Hinduism, and it's certainly something that pre-existed Christianity.

so to argue a Catholic theologian holds consistently with a Kantian concept of freedom being necessary for moral responsibility doesn't make it Christian. — Hanover

The ideas you expressed approval of, through Kant, are very Christian though. While his views on the matter had {at best} a mixed reception from theologians of his day, his stance on God is still firmly within the Christian tradition - closer to Catholic and Orthodox ones. I'm sure you're aware of his comment that he needed to "deny knowledge to make room for faith" regarding the limits of reason. The contradiction between the concept of will we're discussing and the causal structure of the universe was something he highlighted within his own philosophy, it's one of his antimonies. And he sided with that view of free will faithfully.

I dunno what to say, Kant's image of the human mind facing a decision is not particularly secular in origin. Even though his view on the relationship of reason and God, and maybe God's less literal existence, made him a bit of a heretic. Or not {seen as} particularly good at apology.

I'm open up learning Hinduism, but my running down the rabbit hole trying to understand this didn't lead me to the conclusion that Hindus universally argue we lack free will or that one's karmic rewards aren't tied to freely chosen decisions. From the Wiki article, it's apparent there are differing views within Hinduisn on this issue. — Hanover

I hardly know a thing about it.

Daniel Dennett proposed that we don't dream, that we do not have an experience over a period of time while asleep, but that rather a memory of dreaming is confabulated on waking. Dreams are not lived but merely recalled as if they had been. — Banno

I remember this, and I believe there was at least one experiment that provided possible evidence: An experimenter awakened a subject by (doing something like) placing his hand in a bucket of cold water. The subject then described a dream he said he'd been having, with a complicated plot that led logically to his being thrown into a pond. The idea is that there was no time between the immersion of the hand and the awakening in which the subject could have had such a purportedly long dream. So he must have retro-fitted it somehow; perhaps dreams appear all in an instant, but can only be remembered as sequenced stories.

That would hold so long as what constitutes the choice to move that leg as it was moved, in the body, is causally implicated in the leg movement and vice versa. Whether it construes choice as a spectator on what's already happened, or whether some actions count as choices and some don't based on other bodily processes. — fdrake

Yes. I think this whole issue is troublesome because of disagreement on what actually "constitutes the choice."

I think the paper Hanover linked ultimately sides against seeing choice as purely post hoc, since the experiment elicited a greater degree of intention to actions when a subtle pain signal was given to the body prior to making a choice. A bit like someone almost imperceptibly shouting "GO!" at the beginning of a race, you'll find your body moving as if on its own, even though you choose to run. "GO!" makes you experience your legs moving of their own accord as an act of your will. — fdrake

As you've heard me say many times, this issue cannot be addressed empirically. It's metaphysics.

In this, a subject's brain was stimulated which caused him to want to move his arm and he actually thought he moved his arm (although he did not). This would suggest the feeling of volition is simply a sensation that precedes certain activity, but not that it has special ontological status.

That is, the feeling of free will that precedes the act is just that - a feeling - and not s cause. Our attribution of the will as the cause is just our programmed interpretation. — Hanover

An interesting article, but I don't think it really says anything about whether or not there is free will. Why is it significant that "the feeling of volition is simply a sensation that precedes certain activity, but not that it has special ontological status," in this context?

An interesting article, but I don't think it really says anything about whether or not there is free will. Why is it significant that "the feeling of volition is simply a sensation that precedes certain activity, but not that it has special ontological status," in this context? — T Clark

It's really confusing, right?

Here's the way I look at it. When I raise my hand, it can be the result of a variety of things:

1. I internally desire to raise my hand, so I raise my hand.
2. I have no desire one way or the other, but someone raises my hand for me.
3. I have a spasm and my hand flies upward.
4. Someone shocks my brain and me hand goes upward (I meant to say "me" here so I could sound like Oliver Twist).

I think we can say that 1 is the result of free will. We can also clearly say that 2 and 3 are not the result of free will.

Note that 1 and 3 are similar in that they are entirely the result of internal stimulation, but they are different in that 1 is a free will event and 3 is not.

Note that 2 is clearly not a free will event, and it's externally caused.

#4 is our interesting case and the subject of the article I cited (and which got a rave review by you, calling it "interesting"). #4 straddles the fence in being external and internal. It's external because some external fucker is sticking shit inside my brain, but it's internal in the sense that it directly stimulates as if it were an adjacent neuron.

What also makes it interesting is that the subject (the guy with electrodes coming out his noggin) self reports that he raised his hand on his own volition. That is, he insists he had free will, yet I'm sitting here staring at a dominatrix mashing a button and making him like a marionette.

What then is free will? The argument here is that it's just a feeling one has, much like the feeling one has of a gentle breeze up one's kilt. Free will, under this discussion (which I'm trying to pepper with ridiculous comments to keep you interested) is not a divine spark, a something from nothing, or a sudden spontaneous force. It's just a feeling fuck heads have when they do something. If it feel free, it is free. Nothing more, nothing less. There is no ontological, metaphysical difference.

When someone steals your mama's purse, the question of whether it was stolen freely then isn't whether it came from an uncaused event or even an entirely internal event. The question would be whether one would have expected the bastard to have had that feeling of freedom, much like a draft up the bawsack.

But there's more to be said about this. I've just run out of words. I don't actually buy into this because I believe in Cartesian freedom, a mind seperate from a body, a divine spark, and the holiness and sacredness of humanity. That will always be my belief. I feel it like an unmistakable gentle breeze. I just like to talk to the godless and hear what they have to say. It's important to listen to everyone so you can say you did it right before you go back to believing what you always did.

Here's the way I look at it. When I raise my hand, it can be the result of a variety of things:

1. I internally desire to raise my hand, so I raise my hand.
2. I have no desire one way or the other, but someone raises my hand for me.
3. I have a spasm and my hand flies upward.
4. Someone shocks my brain and me hand goes upward (I meant to say "me" here so I could sound like Oliver Twist).

I think we can say that 1 is the result of free will. — Hanover

I see this as a misconstruing of what libertarian free will entails, aka that divine spark you mentioned, as some might interpret it.

How can there be consciousness's free will involved if there is no conscious deliberation involved as to whether or not one should raise one's hand? Yes, I get that we intend outcome X and then it happens without being in any way obstructed. We willed X (in this case to raise the hand) and it became real as we intended without any bars, so to speak, to our so doing. Many thereby deem this a volition, will, that was free to do what it intended, and ergo conclude it to be "free will". All the same, it's ain't the conscious agent which so decided between alternatives that it do so. Not unless there was that conscious deliberation which I just mentioned in which one deliberates between which alternative to choose.

Most of what we do on a moment by moment basis is freely willed in the sense of being done as we consciously wanted without any obstruction. We don't for example, deliberate on which words, what intonations, what volume of sound, etc. to express when speaking a sentence to another - and we end up (usually) communicating that which we wanted to communicate. Willed without obstructions to (or constraints upon) our so realizing and hence free in this sense, but this misses the point of that spark which is pivotal to the issue of what in philosophical literature is formally termed "free will".

And I find that this can easily converge with #4 which you've presented. No deliberation between which alternative to pursue, no (technical) free will. The electricity to the brain stimulates the same unconscious processes (a complex topic I'm seeking to keep as simple as possible) that determine our voluntarily raising our hand in manners devoid of deliberation. If there are no second thoughts to do so between which we deliberate, then there is no free will in the sense of that spark involved.

But whenever one deliberates between alternatives, then one does, or at least can be argued to, make use of one's libertarian free will as conscious being.

Technically, free will is defined as freedom of which choice to make in moments of choice-making. And not doing that which one as a total mind (conscious and unconscious) wants in the absence of any conscious deliberation (i.e., conscious choice making) so long as the outcome is not obstructed.

I'll keep this short and see how that goes. So I'll stop here.

What then is free will? The argument here is that it's just a feeling one has, much like the feeling one has of a gentle breeze up one's kilt. Free will, under this discussion (which I'm trying to pepper with ridiculous comments to keep you interested) is not a divine spark, a something from nothing, or a sudden spontaneous force. It's just a feeling fuck heads have when they do something. If it feel free, it is free. Nothing more, nothing less. There is no ontological, metaphysical difference. — Hanover

It doesn't make sense to me that the feeling of intention and agency you are referring to is the free will. We make decisions and take voluntary action all the time without that feeling. The cliche example is driving our car on a route we are familiar with while thinking about beating Donald Trump Jr. with a stick. And now we have an example from the article you linked where we have the feeling of intention and agency without actually having voluntary control. So - the feeling, i.e. our conscious awareness - is not the important part - the part that verifies our choices are freely made. Then what is? I think that's where the whole question just dissolves. You might say there's no way we can know. I would say there's nothing to know.

Of course, that only applies to the metaphysical question. At a human-scale, everyday, psychological level, of course our decisions are influenced by things outside of us, usually without our awareness and you might say without our control or intention. Because my father didn't love me, I have an obsession with beating Donald Trump Jr. with a stick. And that's the name of that tune.

"And that's the name of that tune" was one of Tony Baretta's catchphrases. "Baretta" was a TV police show from the 1970s. Baretta was played by Robert Blake back before he murdered his wife. His other catchphrase was "Don't do the crime if you can't do the time," but that wouldn't have made sense in my response.

I think you could make the case I am stealing your schtick again - using non-sequiturs to send a discussion off on a tangent. Even me using Yiddish words like "schtick" could be considered stealing your schtick. And that's the name of that tune.

It doesn't make sense to me that the feeling of intention and agency you are referring to is the free will. — T Clark

This comment just speaks to your privilege. You didn't grow up in a cage, and so what feels like the sunshine of freedom to me just feels like a normal Tuesday for you.

My people were enslaved for 400 years only to be stuck another 40 years in the hot desert. So I know the bitterness of freedomlessness.

But I digress.

Let me start afresh, de novo if you will. We live our lives partially on autopilot, halfway paying attention to much of anything. It's not until we see the sign welcoming us into Mississippi that we realize that home from Birmingham was right, not left.

So, sure, you can overlook the feeling of freedom just like you can brain fart your way through anything, but if we can't make sense of the notion of free will logically, yet blokes say certain things be free, what be they referencing other than a feeling?

And this is just my odd way of saying, "to be free is to feel free. " Fred sleeps in his crate, door closed or open, just as free either way.

That last sentence actually was interesting despite the rest of the post, designed just to be quirkier than you.

if we can't make sense of the notion of free will logically, — Hanover

Just depends on where the logic starts from. If what you are is a gear in the works, then it sounds like magic that you could rise up from gear-hood and replace what would have been with what you ordain.

But what if you aren't a gear? What if your body acts all gear-like, but what you are is something beyond that? Maybe someday we'll discover what consciousness really is and be amazed.

I had a dream once where I exited this universe. I was in this blackness and I turned to see the universe like a big ball beside me. I experimented on re-entering it. It had something to do with how I looked into it. There was a certain way that everything in the ball would start to make sense, and I'd realize I was re-entering it. But I didn't want to get trapped in it, so I turned and got back out.

Anyway, the point is that there's nothing clear about what's really going on. We have no clue. What drives you to believe this or that about determinism is emotion, not logic.

I had a dream once where I exited this universe. I was in this blackness — frank

Uni means one, which means it's all there is. You therefore couldn't be outside the universe. You were just outside, like being on the sidewalk out front of Taco Bell, wanting to get in, but at the same time wanting to chill outside.

Anyway, the point is that there's nothing clear about what's really going on. We have no clue. What drives you to believe this or that about determinism is emotion, not logic. — frank

So there's a few reasons you might say this: (1) you're the Cartesian devil, (2) you're the Kant's noumena, or (3) you hold that determinism robs us if the ability to judge facts. I'm none of those. I'm one of the faithful, so I do know, but you're unconvinced because you're not. Such is the value of faith.

And really you too have faith, but you just deny it but act as if you do for all practical purposes. Nothing is clear you say, your windshield smudged and foggy in the pitch of night, yet you amazingly navigate. You see clearly, but you're sure you don't, but can't explain how you keep getting home unscathed.

Of course you have free will. How could anything make sense without it?

They say that being struck by lightning is a good thing.

The reductio conclusion for one who disbelieves in free is that they don't believe in free will because they are determined not to. They'd be similarly forced to accept a believer believes because he must. — Hanover

The believer believes as he does at present, because he must due to the history that shaped the way he believes at present. However we can contribute to what will be the history that shaped the way the believer believes in the future, by interacting with the believer now.

If that's the case, we argue not to persuade or effectuate our opponents to choose our way of thinking, but because we simply must argue and bend as programmed. — Hanover

That we can change each others thinking isn't particularly problematic on a determinist view.

One of the curious things about confabulating is that folk do not realise that is what they are doing - the confabulation is, for them, quite genuine. We might picture dreams as the confabulated result of an attempt to make reasonable and coherent the more or less haphazard triggered events of a sleeping brain. That is, we need not choose between dreams being either lived in real time or a confabulated memory created on waking - these are not mutually exclusive. perhaps they a re some combination.

This by way of an explanation for your (3) in the OP.

We live our lives partially on autopilot, halfway paying attention to much of anything. — Hanover

Although I think the driving example is a good one to address the issue we were discussing, there are better ones. Taoism has a concept of wu wei, acting without acting, without intention but with attention. In my experience, that covers many, perhaps most, of my own decisions and actions. Most of the time, there is not the little voice of my consciousness talking to me and telling me what to do.

Might it not be the case that my legs kick for some independent, strictly neurological reason, which then causes me to dream about kicking, in the same way that a full bladder causes me to dream about urination? — J

I suspect not, for two reasons.

1) Most people don't kick in their sleep, yet they kick in their dreams. So the sleeping kick can't be the cause of the dreaming kick in most instances. We don't usually punch, walk, or drive in our sleep either, yet we do those things in our dreams.

2) I've occasionally kicked in my sleep. I remember waking up in some pain because I kicked the wall, while dreaming about kicking something. My sleep kick could not have caused my dream kick, because kicking the wall woke me up instantly. It's the order of events. I did not sleep kick the wall, remain asleep and dream kick, then wake up.

Most of the time, there is not the little voice of my consciousness talking to me and telling me what to do. — T Clark

Sounds Freudian, describing a mediated superego and id by your ego.

If you are constantly being told what to do by your conscious self, you'd have an over active superego. If you are pure urge, you'd be all id.

That's just to say you're normal. Ordinary really. Beige.

That's just to say you're normal. Ordinary really. Beige. — Hanover

And lucky to be.

of course it could also be restless leg syndrome or Periodic Limb Movements of Sleep (PLMS)

Cannabinoids can help.

As you've heard me say many times, this issue cannot be addressed empirically. It's metaphysics. — T Clark

I think that's over general. If we're aware that a coercion, addiction, or being inebriated impacts someone's capacity for choice, then studying how coercion, addiction or being inebriated studies choice. Topics and events in that list are able to be studied empirically, which means that a hypothesis about choice can be inferentially connected to experiment - you can say stuff about a choice concept using a study.

If someone's got a concept of choice which can't be studied empirically, at that point it's on them to demonstrate its relevance to anything. Considering the bar for relevance above is sufficiently light that qualitative connection to events is enough to count as an inferential connection to studyable events, that isn't much a demand. As in, if people report that coercion impacts their ability to choose... that's an empirical connection between choice as a construct and an event. If you end up believing that choice isn't inferentially connected to anything that occurs? Well you can't do any explaining or theorising with it about anything that occurs, otherwise there'd be an inferential connection.

With your caveat "most instances," I find this persuasive, thanks.

So in this case, the syndrome would seem to trigger the dream, if any. Clearly it's hard to find a one-size-fits-all explanation.

As is now apparent, this is a little microcosm of the whole mental-causation problem. But I offer it because it’s curiously amenable to analysis, and makes me wonder whether any sleep researchers have actually used brain scans to look into this. — J

Isn't it just contingent or random events or responses? To say X is caused by Y, Y must be possible to repeat for more observations to see if X will happen.

In human dreams, possibility of exactly same dream can happen is very low, if not impossible. And the contents of dreams are not something which can be controlled by external conditioning or by the dreamer himself.

I see the difficulties you're bringing up. But "exactly the same dream" is an unnecessarily high bar. What we're interested in is, e.g., whether physical kicking is correlated with a dream that also involves some kind of kicking. If this turns out to be largely true -- it's easily testable if we accept subjective reports from dreamers -- then the next question would be, does one precede the other? Again, and assuming brain scans are sensitive enough to detect when dreams occur (I don't know if this is the case), we could easily test either hypothesis. Kick, then dream; or dream, then kick?

Well, but what about a long dream which the subject reports as including a kick? How could we tell if the events in the dream caused the physical kick, or whether the kick occurred unrelatedly, and was then incorporated into the the story of the dream? This would certainly be a hard case to determine, but it seems to me that if we gathered enough data from simpler dreams showing that, let's say, the act of dreaming precedes the physical kick, we'd consider it strongly probable that this is usually the case in the longer dreams as well.

Notice, too, that this is all based on the hypothesis that the relation is causal. To me, that's by no means certain. If the physical kick supervenes on the dream-moment of kicking, then at best we might be able to say that the dream as a whole caused the kick, but the dream-kick and the physical kick, on this view, would be simultaneous. This is where the parallel with mental causation in waking life becomes clear: We want to say that my thoughts do result in physical actions, but that doesn't have to mean that there is a moment in time at which thought X causes action Y, with a teeny temporal gap. The thought process as a whole may be the causative part of the relation.

Ok, good point. Another reason that it is not causal reaction is that, when you say X is caused by Y. Y must cause on all instances of X i.e. if the dream caused your kicking, it must cause kicking to all other folks who has the same dream or similar dream kicking. But it doesn't. Maybe it does to some folks, but definitely not to all the folks. Hence it is not causal event. It is random or contingent event or reaction during the sleep.

You mentioned also on supervenience i.e. Kicking was based on dreaming. It seems also not convincing, because when an action is based on something i.e. the dreaming, there must be also thought processes or willful motivations which must accompany the action Kicking. During sleep, your thought and willful motivations wouldn't be present for your Kicking to be based on the thoughts process or willful motivation on the dreaming.

if the dream caused your kicking, it must cause kicking to all other folks who has the same dream or similar dream kicking. But it doesn't. Maybe it does to some folks, but definitely not to all the folks. Hence it is not causal event. It is random or contingent event or reaction during the sleep. — Corvus

Or maybe it's necessary but not sufficient. In order to produce the kicking, some other factors have to be in play as well.

During sleep, your thought and willful motivations wouldn't be present for your Kicking to be based on the thoughts process or willful motivation on the dreaming. — Corvus

Fair enough. I was definitely interpreting "thought process" generously to include whatever a dream is. Maybe we should just say "mental event" instead -- I think we can include more than just conscious thoughts as possible relata in the mental/physical causation problem. Memories, for instance -- where might they fall on the "willful" spectrum?

Or maybe, given all the evidence presented here, there is no causal relation between dream and kick.

We are enamoured of causality, a figment of our rationalisations. We supose that if only we find the cause, all will be well. We rely on causes to explain the way things are, but when pushed we can't clearly explain what causes are. Most especially in the case of disturbances of the mind, which is what both nocturnal kicking and dreaming are.