Do you have any reading recommendations on that topic?

All this seems to say, without acknowledging that it is saying it, is that free will is really an illusion caused by our lack of knowledge and understanding of all the ("fine-grained") forces determining our behavior. In other words free will and moral responsibility are inevitably "real for us" even if the world is really inexorably deterministic. Spinoza made that claim, and acknowledged it, some 350 years ago. — John

When I am arguing explicitly that a thesis is false, and propose arguments that purport to show the thesis to be false, that hardly is a way of saying that the thesis is true! I am arguing that the fine-grained description of the physical particles making up your body, which may or may not amount to deterministic processes, aren't relevant to the determination of the intentional action type that, together with the bodily motions that they cause, they happen to realize, then the issue of the real "cause" of them coming to realize a specific (multiply realizable and irreducible) action type remains unsettled from the microphysical perspective.

The question is though, whether those who claim compatibility between free will and determinism really mean to say both that the world is causally closed and causality is not probablistic at all but rigidly deterministic, and that free will of the kind that could justify attributions of praise and blame must be sui generis in a way that would deny either that the causal order of nature is closed or that our decisions and actions are completely determined by it.

If clear, unequivocal, easily comprehensible answers cannot be given to these questions by compatibilists, of whatever stripe, then I would say they are practicing some form of obfuscation or sophistry. They don't want to face the logical consequences of their own beliefs, and they are wriggling like crazy, but making no sense at all.

More than that: our free choice is a determining part of causality. It is born of causality, we are caused to exist with the ability to make free choices, and partakes in causality, our choices are deterministic events that result in certain states occurring rather than others, such that we have the ability to control determined outcomes in our future.

Then you are saying that human actions are somehow not determined by the causal order of nature, as all other physical processes are. You are thus not a determinist at all, so no need for compatibilism.

The point is human choice is part of the usual order of nature itself. Compatibilists point out the traditional dichotomy between free choice and causality (determinism) is incoherent. It lacks awareness of our own nature as choosing beings within causality.

Free will is does not fight causality/determinism but that partakes in it, allowing us to determine our future one way or another.

The question is though, whether those who claim compatibility between free will and determinism really mean to say both that the world is causally closed and causality is not probablistic at all but rigidly deterministic, and that free will of the kind that could justify attributions of praise and blame must be sui generis in a way that would deny either that the causal order of nature is closed or that our decisions and actions are completely determined by it. — John

One problem is that the thesis of nomological determinism seldom is precisely defined. It is often equivalent to the claim that the fundamental laws of physics are deterministic laws, and that physics is somehow "complete" in the sense that all the other sorts of "high-level" weakly emergent features of the world somehow supervene over the totality of the underlying physical facts. This thesis of the completeness of physics can be denied consistently with the acceptance of the fact that everything is materially constituted by physical stuff (e.g. particles and fields and whatnot). When the possibility of strong emergence is acknowledged (as it increasingly tends to be in contemporary philosophy of physics!) then one can be both a compatibilist and an incompatibilist in two different senses: that is, one can hold that freedom of the will is compatible with microphysical determinism and the causal closure of the physical domain and also is incompatible with nomological determinism at the strongly emergent levels of psychology and intentional action.

If clear, unequivocal, easily comprehensible answers cannot be given to these questions by compatibilists, of whatever stripe, then I would say they are practicing some form of obfuscation or sophistry. They don't want to face the logical consequences of their own beliefs, and they are wriggling like crazy, but making no sense at all.

There is also the possibility what you don't fully understand the structure of the arguments that seem sophistic to you, or that your own strongly held metaphysical beliefs generate blind spots.

F=MA was never designed to describe the quantum scale though. Your objection to F=MA would be like an architect telling an astronomer that the standard candle principle doesn't apply to bridge design. — VagabondSpectre

This is the fundamental problem work science. Speculative ideas are just bandied about and people are suppose to unquestioningly accept them because "science"is attached to it. Just a new form of religion. You said that F=ma is applicable every where in the universe and had been and will forever be a force of law. It clearly isn't and never was and never will be, yet you still insist. Why? Because you used it as an example?

Instead of trying to explain to me quantum physics, because you or no one can't (it is basically Schrodinger's equation + the Heisenberg principle), go back and look at your claims and observe how outright absurd they are, just like any religious belief. The problem with scientists is they v demands c proof from everyone else but themselves, because as all evangelists, they are on a mission.

Free will is does not fight causality/determinism but that partakes in it, allowing us to determine our future one way or another. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Choice doesn't determine anything. It gives impetus in a direction. The outcome is always indeterminate and resolves itself as time flows. Everyone is making choices and something will happen. The universe is composed of probabilistic (choice) waves.

When the possibility of strong emergence is acknowledged (as it increasingly tends to be in contemporary philosophy of physics!) then one can be both a compatibilist and an incompatibilist in two different senses: that is, one can hold that freedom of the will is compatible with microphysical determinism and the causal closure of the physical domain and also is incompatible with nomological determinism at the strongly emergent levels of psychology and intentional action. — Pierre-Normand

You say there is compatibility, but you provide no account of how it could be so. I'll believe it when I see a clear, convincing explanation of how microphysical processes which are completely deterministic could give rise to macro events that are really somehow free from that microphysical determination not merely in the epistemic sense (for us), but in the ontological sense (absolutely). I would want to know what that "somehow free" consists in, and how it could emerge from the "definitely not free".

If there is such an account then you should be able to outline it here in a way that is coherent and understandable to the intelligent lay person.

There is also the possibility what you don't fully understand the structure of the arguments that seem sophistic to you, or that your own strongly held metaphysical beliefs generate blind spots. — Pierre-Normand

I am yet to see any arguments; all I've seen are vague assertions.

Do you have any reading recommendations on that topic? — Mongrel

From a compatibilist perspective, Anthony Kenny, Freewill and Responsibility, is a favorite of mine, and it is written in an engaging style. From an incompatibilist perspective, Michael Ayers, The Refutation of Determinism is hard to beat but it is both difficult and hard to find (though there might be cheap second hand copies available). You will easily find papers by Michael Smith or Kadri Vihvelin online. (See for instance Vihvelin, Free Will Demystified: A Dispositional Account). Erasmus Mayr's Understanding Human Agency is excellent but not cheap. Also quite relevant, and excellent, are two papers by Don Levi: Determinism as a Thesis about the State of the World from Moment to Moment and The Trouble with Harry (this last one is available online and is especially relevant to the principle of alternative possibilities).

This is the fundamental problem work science. Speculative ideas are just bandied about and people are suppose to unquestioningly accept them because "science"is attached to it. Just a new form of religion. You said that F=ma is applicable every where in the universe and had been and will forever be a force of law. It clearly isn't and never was and never will be, yet you still insist. Why? Because you have it as an example? — Rich

But so far as we know it DOES apply everywhere in the universe, it's just not suitable for describing individual quantum particles.

It clearly still applies to the same massive bodies to which it has always applied, and clearly will continue to do so...

Instead of trying to explain to me quantum physics, because you or no one can't (it is basically Schrodinger's equation + the Heisenberg principle), go back and look at your claims and observe how outright absurd they are, just like any religious belief. The problem with scientists is they v demands c proof from everyone else but themselves, because as all evangelists, they are on a mission. — Rich

I went back and looked at my claims, but I still find them to be reasonable...

Perhaps you could explain to me why you think F=MA will stop being a valid description of the relationship between acceleration, mass, and force at Newtonian scales?

Just because something is not an accurate description of X doesn't mean it's therefore not an accurate description of Y. (because X and Y might be different).

If you want evidence for F=MA, here's some :D

When someone starts claiming that something is applicable everywhere but not applicable everywhere we start getting into the realm of religion which I rather stay of. However, such an argument is very suitable for a thread where deterministic free will is seriously being discussed.

As much as possible, I try to stay with the concrete because I actually apply my philosophy to my life and it's not simply a game to pass the time of day. I am always on the lookout for a new idea that can advance understanding of the human condition.

I am yet to see any arguments; all I've seen are vague assertions. — John

Well, it's true that I haven't presented a full blown and fully argue defense of my thesis, but I have also been lambasted for my posts being too long. I have explained what appears to me to be the weak links in the arguments for the traditional forms of (anti-PAP) compatibilism and agent-causal incompatibilism, and provided links to the relevant literature where those positions are criticized. I've also provided several pointers to the theses that underlie my own position, with more references to the relevant literature. You may think it's too sketchy, but I've mainly been laying my cards on the table and answered all the requests for clarification.

You've somehow managed to say very much and very little...

Did you not watch the third grade Indian child? His experiment may illuminate you.

Quantum particles are not a place (a "where"), they're are things. "The quantum realm" isn't some separate place, it refers to certain (small) distances and scales of measurement of space where fundamental particles (these interesting and distinct things) exhibit observable behaviors. That fundamental particles exhibit different behavior from massive objects should not be taken as some clever rebuke of science.

Anyhooo, I'm not sure how what I've said is religious, but it would be nice if you could redress your point while taking into account my own.

You say there is compatibility, but you provide no account of how it could be so. I'll believe it when I see a clear, convincing explanation of how microphysical processes which are completely deterministic could give rise to macro events that are really somehow free from that microphysical determination not merely in the epistemic sense (for us), but in the ontological sense (absolutely). I would want to know what that "somehow free" consists in, and how it could emerge from the "definitely not free". — John

I did provide such an account in this post.

In any case, current understanding of quantum physics (probably the closest we can come to a fundamental understanding of nature and this time) pretty much undermines determinism. — Rich

Isn't quantum physics about randomness? If it is then it sabotages determinism but that still isn't enough to infer free will. After all, we still can't be sure that the quantum randomness is within our control.

So, if you're trying to say free will exists (are you?) based on the above I don't think the argument works.

Isn't quantum physics about randomness? If it is then it sabotages determinism but that still isn't enough to infer free will. After all, we still can't be sure that the quantum randomness is within our control.

So, if you're trying to say free will exists (are you?) based on the above I don't think the argument work — TheMadFool

Quantum physics it's basically the probabilistic Schrodinger equation which leaves plenty of room for choice but pretty much crushes determinism. But hope springs eternal for scientists who desire to play God and control everything as they insist somewhere, sometime in the distant future, far, far away, the Law of Quantum Physics will change and no longer be probabilistic and absolute predictably will once again become possible. And who am I to dash such dreams. After all, Scientific Laws are indeed always changing.

OK, I read that, but it just seems to me to be saying that the Laplacean 'perspective' ( which is really the God's eye 'view from everywhere') is different from the subjective (limited human epistemic) view. If subjective intentions, purposes, plans and understandings are limited perspectives on our decisions and actions, that ( necessarily) do not include the complex microphysical events that determine them, then what reason do we have to think that they are not merely epiphenomenal rationalizations?

Also "1)" could not be a subset of "2)" because if subjective intentions are exhaustively emergent form microphysical processes which are rigidly deterministic then they are not causal of any of those objective microphysical processes, but only of decisions, actions etc understood from the subjective perspective. The two are correlated; and as Spinoza points out it would not be proper to say that one is causal of the other at all. BUT, the microphysical is understood by determinists to be the prior determining matrix, and we are back to the position that our decisions only seem to be free from our necessarily limited subjective perspectives. Laplace's Demon should be able to see all our reasons as well as the physical causes that they are rigidly correlated with.

Also, your account does not seem to explain how it is possible for something utterly deterministic to give rise to something really free (undetermined). Waving towards complexity only explains why our actions would nonetheless seem free to us in a deterministic world; it cannot explain how freedom could be an actual reality.

I am not a determinist, by the way. I believe in freedom but I also believe it is irreducible; which means it cannot be explained in terms more basic than itself. All our objectivist explanations are produced in terms of causality; but to explain freedom in terms of causality would be to contradict it; to deny its reality.

If freedom is impossible to explain without contradicting it, then explaining how freedom could be compatible with determinism is obviously impossible. I think the fact is that the human intellect can understand its own logics of determinism and freedom; which apply properly to the space of causes and the space of reasons respectively, but the two cannot be made compatible, because those logics contradict one another; they are mutually exclusive.

Laplace's Demon should be able to see all our reasons as well as the physical causes that they are rigidly correlated with. — John

For the compatibilist, there is no Laplace's Demon. Sure, one can suggest someone who knows all causes (including dress choices) ever to be, and so know which events will occur, but this does not eliminate possibility.

Prior and without those causes, including choices, the known future cannot occur. Consider the future of my creating this post. I had a choice whether to make this post or not. Faced with your post, I had a choice to make: I possibly could have ignored it or possibly could have responded. Without this choice, the one future which occurs (me making the post) cannot be defined.

Determinism is not predeterminism. Laplace's Demon, which knows what will happen by what happened in the past, is incoherent. Only by knowing each event in terms of itself can someone know what will happen. So called "perfect knowledge" is not achievable by looking at some other state and deriving from it what must necessarily happen. One can only know by each event itself-- God knows the free choices everyone makes and so knows what will happen, without the elimination of either freedom or possibility.

Under compatibilism choice is not a "reason" someone acts. It is an event of the world itself-- I exist making a free choice and so determine myself to respond to you post rather than not.

The mistake of the libertarian will/(pre)determinism dichotomy is to envision choice as a "reason" for action, as if we were "influenced" to act either by free will or mindless matter, rather than recognise our choices are states/actions in themselves.

OK, I read that, but it just seems to me to be saying that the Laplacean 'perspective' ( which is really the God's eye 'view from everywhere') is different from the subjective (limited human epistemic) view. If subjective intentions, purposes, plans and understandings are limited perspectives on our decisions and actions, that ( necessarily) do not include the complex microphysical events that determine them, then what reason do we have to think that they are not merely epiphenomenal rationalizations? — John

Our intentions, and the practical reasons on the basis of which we act are causally efficacious, as are, in a different sense, our episodes of practical deliberation. (Those are instances of rational-causation and mental-causation, respectively. They are complementary forms of explanation. The first one cites the reasons of the agent as causal antecedents whereas the latter cites psychological 'states' such as beliefs or desires). But the sorts of causal explanation that they provide have different forms from the causal explanations (nomological causation) that subsume isolated physical events under universally quantified laws. The belief that all causation is nomological causation is what led Davidson to assert his principle of the "nomological character of causality", which is a principle that has no basis in science and merely seems to be a wild inductive generalization from familiar modes of explanation that focus on classical Newtonian physics (and classical electrodynamics) and ignore the actual scientific explanatory practice that have currency in almost every other fields, including chemistry, biology and modern physics.

When you explain the occurrence of an event with reference to the normal function, or natural power, of an object, or living organism, then the form of causality at issue is substance-causation (of which rational agent-causation is a special case) and those explanations aren't reducible to processes of event-causation neither do they disclose causal antecedent that belong to the same category as the objects and events which obey the laws of physics belong to. A philosophy that argues on the ground of some inchoate reductionism (or flawed supervenience arguments) that the causal efficacy of our intentions are preempted by the causal efficacy of our material constituents is no more prima facie plausible than a philosophy that argues that our perceptions of the external world constitute a veil between us and the way the world is in itself.

Also "1)" could not be a subset of "2)" because if subjective intentions are exhaustively emergent form microphysical processes which are rigidly deterministic then they are not causal of any of those objective microphysical processes, but only of decisions, actions etc understood from the subjective perspective.

What you are gesturing at is an argument for causal exclusion. Such arguments are based on supervenience relations between high-level descriptions of agents described in intentional terms and low-level realizations of those actions in terms of non-intentional bodily motions and their neural causal antecedents. Such arguments (such as Jaegwon Kim's) typically fail due to their overlooking issues of multiple realizability, among other things.

The two are correlated; and as Spinoza points out it would not be proper to say that one is causal of the other at all.

Spinoza also was arguing for the epiphenomenalism of mental phenomena on the basis of causal exclusion at the level of material embodiment. Kim attempted to make such arguments more rigorous but failed, on my view.

BUT, the microphysical is understood by determinists to be the prior determining matrix,

Yes, that seems to be the dogma, but it is poorly argued for and it goes beyond the thesis of microphysical determinism. There is more to what many macroscopic objects (such as artifacts and living organism, and even some inanimate natural entities such as stars, candle flames and hurricanes, than their material constituents and the laws that govern those constituents. There are emergent principles of organisation and individuation that are only weakly constrained by the laws that regulate the constituents.

and we are back to the position that our decisions only seem to be free from our necessarily limited subjective perspectives. Laplace's Demon should be able to see all our reasons as well as the physical causes that they are rigidly correlated with.

We only get back to this position if we accept the arguments for bottom-up causal exclusion that purport to establish it. It's not a default position in contemporary philosophy of science anymore. Even theoretical physicists like Michel Bitbol and George Ellis now are arguing against this position and in favor of strong emergence instead. And there is nothing magical or unnatural about it. Modern cognitive science, evolutionary biology, chemistry and even physics all have superseded the old metaphysics underlying the Cartesian/Newtonian/Galilean/Laplacian world view.

Also, your account does not seem to explain how it is possible for something utterly deterministic to give rise to something really free (undetermined). Waving towards complexity only explains why our actions would nonetheless seem free to us in a deterministic world; it cannot explain how freedom could be an actual reality.

I think it's a common misreading of the thesis of strong emergentism that deterministic processes "give rise" to non-deterministic processes. Maybe this is encouraged by a narrow focus on diachronic emergence where new forms of organisation of matter arise that didn't previously exist, as a result of evolution or change in boundary conditions. But focus on cases of inter-level synchronic emergence, where both the deterministic and non-deterministic processes characterize simultaneously two separate levels of organization, and thereby two different domains of entities, provide a more conspicuous picture of what is going on and why causal exclusion arguments are problematic.

I am not a determinist, by the way. I believe in freedom but I also believe it is irreducible; which means it cannot be explained in terms more basic than itself. All our objectivist explanations are produced in terms of causality; but to explain freedom in terms of causality would be to contradict it; to deny its reality.

I agree. But I don't think microphysical determinism constitutes a threat to freedom. It doesn't even entail determinism simpliciter.

If freedom is impossible to explain without contradicting it, then explaining how freedom could be compatible with determinism is obviously impossible. I think the fact is that the human intellect can understand its own logics of determinism and freedom; which apply properly to the space of causes and the space of reasons respectively, but the two cannot be made compatible, because those logics contradict one another; they are mutually exclusive.

John McDowell has proposed that the space of reasons and the space of laws are disjoint, but the space of causes intersect both. Human intentional actions (and their beliefs) are disclosed within the space of reasons. Human neurophysiology is disclosed, at lest partially, within the space of laws. But it is only excessively narrow conceptions of causality that make problematic the top-down and bottom-up causal relations between the two levels.

It might help if you could sketch the case against reductionism-- I remember finding Fodor's argument pretty convincing in that paper about special sciences, but it's been way too long since I read it.

It might help if you could sketch the case against reductionism-- I remember finding Fodor's argument pretty convincing in that paper about special sciences, but it's been way too long since I read it. — Srap Tasmaner

Yes, this paper by Fodor has had a significant impact on my thinking also, as well as Putnam's 'square peg through the round hole' argument (in his Philosophy and our Mental Life paper). Both papers are anti-reductionist classics. I also have been helped a lot in overcoming my old physicalist prejudices by John Haugeland's Truth and Rule Following and Wiggins' Sameness and Substance Renewed. Those two works elucidate in two different ways how different levels of material organization relate to one another in a way that accounts both for their ontological independence and their undeniable mutual dependencies.

So do you think you could manage an executive summary of the argument? I spotted bits of it here & there in your posts, but I couldn't possibly reconstruct it.

I think it might help make your position clearer. A change of scenery. Anti-reductionism is more or less a lemma for you, so maybe if you just presented the lemma separately, that would be tidier. (I was going to say something about people not having entrenched views about meteorology, but ...)

So do you think you could manage an executive summary of the argument? I spotted bits of it here & there in your posts, but I couldn't possibly reconstruct it.

I think it might help make your position clearer. A change of scenery. Anti-reductionism is more or less a lemma for you, so maybe if you just presented the lemma separately, that would be tidier. (I was going to say something about people not having entrenched views about meteorology, but ...) — Srap Tasmaner

I think anti-reductionism may be more of a default position for me rather than a lemma. It is actually a position that is shared by many of the philosophers that I am arguing against. When it was the main topic of the thread, I was happy to straddled myself with the burden of defending anti-reductionism. I did it in this thread, starting on the third page, in a protracted discussion with Frederick KOH. (I may have made some comments, along the way, about the irreducibility of rational-causation and/or mental-causation, and how they operate quite naturally and non-mysteriously).

However, the relationship between reductionism and the principle of alternative possibilities (PAP) is extremely complex. My main beef with the manner in which most compatibilists, libertarians and hard determinists alike seem to dismiss the compatibility between PAP and micro-physical determinism is their main motivation for dismissing the possibility of this compatibility, and this seems to be their inchoate acceptance of actualism. (The 'new dispositionalists' who I mentioned mostly are compatibilists, but they explicitly argue against actualism: the thesis that only what is actual is possible, even in a deterministic universe). The rejection of actualism requires a radical shift from a Humean metaphysics of event-causation to a metaphysics of substances and powers. Since substances have causal powers that are irreducible to the causal powers of their material constituents, that is one step in the argument where reductionism is at issue.

What complicates matters is that, as already mentioned, most contemporary compatibilists reject PAP -- i.e. maintain that free will and responsibility don't require genuine alternative possibilities for the agent to chose from -- and yet they do so (rejecting PAP) on the basis of their uncritical acceptance of actualism in spite of the fact that they aren't committed to nomological reductionism at all.

Indeed, Jaegwon Kim's argument for causal exclusion only explicitly relies on the thesis of the supervenience of the domain of mental events over the domain of physical events. Yet, Kim is an self-avowed non-reductive physicalist who even endorses a weak form of emergence. The reason why, though, he is led to a belief in the causal exclusion of the mental, on the basis of the alleged causal sufficiency of the the causal efficacy of the (broadly deterministic) physical supervenience base, is the lack of attention that he pays to the irreducible principles of individuation of mental phenomena (something multiple-realizability is relevant to) and also to the fact that the causal efficacy of the mental isn't at all a matter of event-event causation. I've also already commented on Davidson's endorsement of the principle of the nomological character of causation. Davidson't also believes mental events to by anomalous (qua belonging to mental types) in spite of them being token identical with physical events. I don't think this is perspicuous at all, but it's not mainly reductionism that is the source of the mischief, since Davidson, just like Kim, isn't a reductionist. Rather, the problem again is the reliance on a narrow Humean conception of event-event nomological causation.

So, the core of my argument consists in showing how an overly narrow conception of event-event nomological causation leads to actualism and why the replacement of this metaphysics with a more Aristotelian metaphysics of substances and their natural powers (and of peoples' 'second-natural' powers of rational deliberation) enables the principle of alternative possibilities to be endorsed consistently with determinism and causal closure both having complete reign at the level of their atomic material constituents. Much of this argument, though, consists in reminders about commonly known facts of ordinary life (and of ordinary scientific practice) and the debunking of commonly endorsed metaphysical prejudices mistakenly believed to be obligatory components of the modern scientific picture of the world. One of the most important reminders is that we don't truthfully withhold ascriptions of powers to ordinary objects, even just temporarily, on the mere ground that the conditions of exercise of those powers aren't currently realized. But I'll have to say more about that because the temptation for believing so in the case of human agency (especially in the context of the free will and determinism debate) seems irresistible to many.

OK, so it seems to me you are saying that microphysical processes, including I would assume, cellular processes, do not exhaustively determine (at least some) macro phenomena, including human decision and thought. If this is correct then we have no argument and there is also no need for you to hold a compatibilist position it would seem, because you are rejecting determinism, at least as I understand it. I still doubt that it is possible to offer any coherent explication of the 'relationship' between so-called "bottom up' and 'top-down' causalities, though.

OK, so it seems to me you are saying that microphysical processes, including I would assume, cellular processes, do not exhaustively determine (at least some) macro phenomena, including human decision and thought. — John

Sure, I am saying that but this is something traditional incompatibilists proponents of agent-causation have been saying for a long time. But what they have been saying also always had seemed incredulous to the vast majority of philosophers because traditional agent-causalists (such as Roderick Chisholm and Randolph Clarke) thought that since free agents control their own bodies, then the only way for agent-causation to be irreducible to neural-causation is for agent to be able to control their own neural processes, and thus, in some mysterious way, initiate new causal chains in their own bodies at the neurophysiological level that are not themselves initiated by earlier neurophysiological events. Hence, those intentional "acts of volition" are "contra-causal" in the sense that they are "uncaused causes" of neurophysiological events.

This is indeed incredible and it is not at all what I am saying.

If this is correct then we have no argument and there is also no need for you to hold a compatibilist position it would seem, because you are rejecting determinism, at least as I understand it.

Indeed, I am rejecting determinism. But unlike traditional libertarians, and unlike traditional agnent-causalists, I am not denying causal determinism and causal closure at the level of neurophysiology and "raw" (physicalistically described) bodily motions. Rather, I am adducing results in the philosophy of biology and the philosophy of emergence to explain how the specific internal causal structure of 'higher-level' intentional actions, and their integration with our mental lives, make them dependent on their neurophysiological underpinnings in a way such that those underlying processes are merely enabling of our rational powers of agency and not determinative of our responsible decisions.

I still doubt that it is possible to offer any coherent explication of the 'relationship' between so-called "bottom up' and 'top-down' causalities, though.

I've explained how I construe top-down causation (which is somewhat different from the standard interpretations in the literature on emergence) in a previous post. Bottom-up causation, on the other hand, mainly is a manner of the functional organization of our brains being such as to enable our rational powers of theoretical and practical reasoning. How and what those powers are actualized, is another matter entirely, and it isn't determined from the bottom-up. Processes of top-down and bottom-up causation, though, both are irreducible to deterministic causal explanations that only look down at the causally closed level of neurophysiology and 'raw' bodily motions.

One apparent difficulty with my approach concerns the reconciliation of the possibility of top-down causation with the causal closure of the lower level. But this only seems impossible when we assume the token-identity, and hence a one-to-one mappings, of mental-events with neurophysiological events. But I am denying the existence of any such psycho-physical parallelism. Brain events aren't mental events at all. Brain structures and processes enable basic cognitive functions, but our mental lives are a matter of the dynamical actualization of those functions in a rich context of social embedding and scaffolding of our behaviors. This social context consists in a formative preexisting linguistic community and a meaningful environment rich in rational-behavioral affordances.

The explanation why those particular motions happen to be realizing a specific sort of intentional action (characterized in high-level purposive terms) isn't supplied by any sort of understanding of physical laws since physics can say nothing about the way practical reason and intentions relate to intelligible action types. — Pierre-Normand

What you're addressing in this passage is an epistemic issue. That's why you're conflating an epistemic and an ontological issue. Whether possibilities and free will obtain has nothing to do with our ability to explain anything, our understanding of physical laws, what physical laws can say about anything, etc.

I've explained how I construe top-down causation (which is somewhat different from the standard interpretations in the literature on emergence) in a previous post. Bottom-up causation, on the other hand, mainly is a manner of the functional organization of our brains being such as to enable our rational powers of theoretical and practical reasoning. — Pierre-Normand

"Top down" and "bottom up" are nonsensical ontologically. They might make sense re how some people think about causal relations, but they'd have no correlate in the external world.

but our mental lives are a matter of the dynamical actualization of those functions in a rich context of social embedding and scaffolding of our behaviors. — Pierre-Normand

You write a lot of stuff that sounds like it's saying something but that on analysis turns out to just be garbage. It's like con artist or used car salesman hand-waving talk designed to obfuscate and dismantle critical examination. And then your technique if challenged about anything is to write hundreds of words of only obliquely related additional hand-waving, where you make sure some sentences have fifteen or so prepositional phrases in a row. The hope is that that will discourage further critical examination. Most of your posts would be believable as unpublished Sokal texts that were intended to expose the folly of pomo journals.