Responsibility, God and Alternative Possibilities

Posted on June 11, 2008
Filed Under Free Will, Philosophy | 23 Comments

I want to get back to some of the questions about free will and responsibility I was thinking through a couple of months ago. One big question that I don’t think has been addressed sufficiently in an LDS context is semi-compatibilism. I want to hold off on the formal arguments about semi-compatibilism and who has the upper hand in the formal philosophical argument there. (I’d simply note that by judging content at The Garden of Forking Paths that there are still lots of semi-compatibilists out there) Semi-compatibilism, for those not up on the lingo, are willing to accept that free will is incompatible with determinism but are more willing to say responsibility is compatible with not having ‘real’ alternative possibilities.

Now the main position in the LDS philosophical community, from what I can see, is agent libertarianism. (Which isn’t to say it’s the main position in the LDS community at large) Agent libertarianism suggests that choices arise via deliberation in an irreducible fashion from the agent. (With the agent themselves being irreducible in some sense – a Cartesian soul or an ontological emergent mind)

The main argument by semi-compatibilists against agent libertarians are called Frankfurt examples. These are basically varying stories where someone doesn’t have real alternative possibilities but is responsible. (Usually a mad scientist with a brain control device forcing a decision if the person were to choose a decision the scientist doesn’t like)

Allow me to quote from the end of Fischer’s “Responsibility and Agent-Causation” on this. (As found in My Way: Essays on Moral Responsibility, 156)

O’Connor complains that the Frankfurt examples are contrived, unusual, unfamiliar, and (presumably) infrequent or nonexistent. But, for all we know, we might be living a giant Frankfurt example. For example, for all we know a certain sort of God exists; his presence would ensure that we lack any alternative possibilities at any point in our lives, and yet he would not play any causal role in actual deliberations and behavior. In such a circumstance, the fact that we able. alternative possibilities would not entail that we are not morally responsible. And even if the Frankfurt thought experiments (first sketched by John Locke) are rarely instantiated, this is irrelevant to their distinctively philosophical potency.

It is a good thing that moral responsibility does not require alternative possibilities. For all we know, causal determinism might turn out to be true. Ad if causal determinism is true, then arguably, none of us ever has had any alternative possibilities. It is nice to know that this fact, in itself, does not entail we are not morally responsible for our behavior.

This is a kind of interesting approach. Let’s call it the appeal to ignorance.

We don’t know what God’s knowledge is. We don’t know if physics entails determinism. Given that, should we commit to libertarianism? Put an other way, is our commitment to libertarianism more of the form “this must be true because the alternative is too horrible to contemplate.”

Now one might say that skeptics about responsibility might say the same thing. That is that our linguistic creation of ‘responsibility’ simply doesn’t prevail. So is Fischer offer anything stronger?

I think so. I think he’s saying that the reason libertarians don’t like Frankfurt examples is because they feel unnatural and so one ought reject them on that basis. But this is simply not a good reason to reject the examples. (The flicker of freedom argument is, of course, a tad stronger – but I’ll address that later) Given that “it seems unnatural” isn’t a good rejoinder, shouldn’t we be more open to semi-compatibilism simply on the basis that if the ontological conditions are true we ought acknowledge that our “unnatural” intuitions were false.

Related posts:

  1. Options & Alternative Possibilities
  2. Responsibility & Open Theism
  3. Block Universes, Free Will, and Alternative Possibilities
  4. Consciousness and Responsibility
  5. Recent Work on Agency and Responsibility
  6. Agent-Libertarianism

Comments

23 Responses to “Responsibility, God and Alternative Possibilities”

Clark: I’d say the problem with Frankfurt type counter-examples is that they just ain’t really counterexamples. There always remain alternatives — and not mere flickers either. There are are always alternatives that are morally significant. There is more to libertarian responsibility than mere alternatives. No one who endorses libertarian agency holds that mere alternatives alone are sufficient for morally responsible agency. Which of the alternatives is realized must be “up to the agent” in a morally responsible or causally accountable sense. If what I do results from a mere quantum randomness over which i have not control, then I am still not responsible even though there are alternatives. So there is also a control requirement (hence agent causal control is required). In addition, there is a knowledge requirement. If I am morally accountable for doing or refraining from doing X, then I must be able to appreciate the consequences of my acts. However, when this last knowledge requirement is added, then it seems to follow that the agent in a co-called Frankfurt-type counterexample always has control over whether his or her act is a morally accountable act or not — and that in itself is a morally significant alternative. So the supposed counterexamples just ain’t counterexamples to libertarian freedom.

The global manipulation counterexamples attempted by Pereboom and Mele work as examples of determinism, but they don’t work as counterexamples to agent causal libertarianism. I know that you’ll get into agent causal accounts of libertarian agency later, but for the book, neither Mele nor Pereboom have done the kind of work in process thought or neuropsychology to address the plausibility of agent causal accounts. Pereboom believes that agent causal libertarianism is coherent but not scientifically plausible; but his assessment is not scientifically rigorous in my view. In addition, I don’t believe that he take into account process views of events giving rise to organismic behavior at the causal level of the organism rather than the causal level of neurons as explanations for the behavior or organisms.

So I don’t think anyone rejects so-called Frankfurt type counter-examples just because they are unnatural, since counterexamples merely need to be logically consistent and not actual to work as intuition pumps. However, they do have to function as genuine counterexamples to various accounts of alternative possibilities to be successful — and they ain’t counterexamples to genuine and morally significant alternatives possibilities as I see it. It is always up to me whether I act as a morally accountable person or acts as a mere causal result of prior causes over which I have no control despite the Frankfurt intervenors.

2 Rich Knapton on June 11th, 2008 10:00 pm

I’ve got a question for you Clark. True story. I was walking down the streets of Seattle with an umbrella I came to a part where there was a larger than normal amount of trees and bushes. Without realizing it, I slipped into combat mode. I was carrying my unbrella as an M-16. I was searching for any sign of an ambush. Suddenly I realized what I was doing and snapped out of it. However had I not snapped out of it and someone came up to me, someone I perceived as life threatening, and I smashed his face with the handle, as I would have done had it actually been an the butt of an M-16. There was just a trigger – response with no time for reflection. Am I responsible for my action?

Rich

Rich, reminds me of a story from my mission. They were on splits and it turned out the member guy was a former spy-like guy who had assumed a new identity. (Not even his wife knew who he originally was) He had a few issues because of some of the things I guess he had done. This was right at the end of the cold war but the guy apparently was wanted by some foreigners. So – and this is a true story – they are in his car driving down the road in New Orleans and a kid jumps out with a cap gun. (This was in the days before they made all toy guns look fake with the orange tip) The guy they were on splits with whips out a gun from under his car seat and almost blows the young kid away. Fortunately he didn’t.

Of course he freaked out, started crying (he had some serious combat stress or worse) and they had to go home. Totally tripped my companion out of course.

So here’s the question. Would he have been responsible had he shot the kid?

I’d say yes to him and I personally would say yes to you although I’d fully admit that I don’t know with much confidence in either case given the limited ability of knowing what’s actually going on in the heads.

Blake, I’ll address the flicker of freedom arguments later. (I think that in at least a few cases the best one can hope for is a flicker of freedom and not something more robust as you suggest)

4 Rich Knapton on June 11th, 2008 11:31 pm

Neurologically this is what is going on (at least for me and probably for the other fellow). All incoming sensory data first goes through the thalamus. The thalamus gives us our first warning of danger and it is done at the non-conscious level. If incoming sensory data shows a pattern that the thalamus associates with danger (we’re talking here of electro-chemical signaling – think of it as certain patterns of ones and zeros) it does two things. It send a signal to the amygdala. The amygdala is where the fight or flight chemical signals are initiated. Then the amygdala receives a signal to pause. The reason for the pause has to do with the second source the thalamus sends information to.

The second source is the different sensory cortexes which then analyzes the different sensory incoming data. It is here where that incoming data is assessed as to the actuality of the threat. The data is compared with existing data residing in memory. It goes something crudely like this. “Oh that’s a snake. Snakes can kill you. Run” At this point information from the cortexes is sent to the amygdala, which can be viewed as coiled and ready for action, to GO. The cascading chemical initiate the fight or flight mechanism. Probably in this case this would be flight.

Or the information from memory may be “Oh that’s a snake. You’re in no danger so long as you know what to do. Calm down.” Instruction is transferred from the cortexes that the amygdala is to relax. No fight or flight response is needed. At the same time data is being sent to our decision center to chose the appropriate course of action based on the courses of actions available to it.

The critical item is to have the amygdala pause while the sensory cortexes evaluate the potential threat. Unfortunately for some like myself and the subject of your story, who have had to live under constant threat, that pause becomes almost non-existent. We go from danger alert to action before the threat can be full assessed and appropriate alternative courses of action chosen. I don’t know how many times I’ve tried to will myself not to react that way under those conditions. When those conditions happen, BOOM, I respond as I always had.

Given that all this happens at the non-conscious level and does not rise to consciousness where choice can be made; why am I responsible for behavior that I have no volitional control over. Think of that magician controlling me making me do things I don’t want to do but instead of being outside me he is in my own head.

Rich

I think that we are responsible for the habits we generate in ourselves. (I’m here using habit very expansively) Now not all habits are under our control. For instance victims of abuse may have habits develop that they aren’t responsible for. There there are accidence of development or even genes. But I think that typically we have very indirect control over things that are not directly volitional.

This is also why I think saying in any particular case whether someone is responsible is difficult since it is typically a question of biology and history. So we may think someone is responsible when they are not at all.

Note that this is also very much my theory of belief wherein I don’t believe beliefs are volitional but that we have some control over the belief forming process.

Rich: I believe that your so-called neurological explanation is fundamentally flawed. All info doesn’t come into the thalamas. It comes to the central nervous system as a whole which is already involved at the cellular level in the experience on a very broad involvement of various neural systems. Watching the processing of chemical data in various parts of the brain is hardly the same thing as watching an organism deal with information and respond to it. No one is responsible as you describe the scenario because there isn’t even a person involved. There are only neuron, synapses and dendrytes and parts of the brain involves on your explanation. Neural cells and even brain sub-systems are not morally responsible and no one ever claimed that they are. But that doesn’t mean that a person isn’t an emergent agent. There may be mitigating physiological factors, and some may even make it so that there is no emergent agent that can act, but that isn’t always true.

7 Rich Knapton on June 12th, 2008 10:29 pm

“Rich: I believe that your so-called neurological explanation is fundamentally flawed. All info doesn’t come into the thalamus. It comes to the central nervous system as a whole which is already involved at the cellular level in the experience on a very broad involvement of various neural systems.”

Before I begin I would like to say that before you assume that someone has made a “so-called neurological explanation” you check first on the explanation. Everything I wrote about the neurological system in humans came from neurological standard models used by neurologists to describe how the brain processes sensory information. Moving on.

Blake, your perspective is wrong. As part of the brain, the thalamus IS part of the central nervous system. The central nervous system is composed of the brain and the spinal chord. As I understand it, what you are trying to say is that all sensory data involves the whole brain and spinal chord. This is nonsense. Nerves from our body, involved with our sense of touch, travel up the spinal chord and meets nerves from our other senses at the thalamus and before they enter the sensory cortexes. The only sense that does not pass through the thalamus is our olfactory sense. That these senses pass through the thalamus on their way to the sensory cortexes is a well know fact. This is the standard model of how senses are processed. Granted there are a lot of neurological interconnectiveness in the brain. However the idea that whole brain would be involved with everything at all times makes little sense. I don’t believe the brain has the massive power needed to do this. The brain works under the idea of conservation of energy. Functionally speaking. This is why there are areas of the brain that are quiescent and others that are highly active.

We know that thalamus interacts with the amygdala because scientists have discovered the nerves which connect the two. We know the sensory cortexes communicate with the amygdala because scientists have found the connecting neurons. The neuron passing from the sensory cortexes to the amygdala are larger than the neurons passing from the amygdala to the sensory cortexes. That the amygdala pauses to allow the sensory cortexes to do their work is the standard model for explaining the impulsiveness of trauma survivors.

“There may be mitigating physiological factors, and some may even make it so that there is no emergent agent that can act, but that isn’t always true.”

But that’s just the point. It doesn’t have to be all the time to indicate that there are times in which there is no choice.

“No one is responsible as you describe the scenario because there isn’t even a person involved. There are only neuron, synapses and dendrites and parts of the brain involves on your explanation. Neural cells and even brain sub-systems are not morally responsible and no one ever claimed that they are.”

They are not abstract neurons just floating in space. They are my neurons and they are generating my responsive behavior. So you are saying that I am not responsible (morally not legally) because I have no choice? You can’t say ‘I’ am not there. I’m purposefully holding my umbrella as a weapon. I’m searching for ambushes thus interacting with the environment. Who else is doing it if not me?

Rich

Rich: You’re missing the point. While I grant that the thalamus, as part of the brain, is also a part of the CNS, it certainly is not the case that the translation of data and its meaning waits until it gets to the thalamus. The thalamus is a late-comer in the process of processing sensory data. Our cells in our bodies are involved in that process before anything happens in the thalamus. Nor is it true that all sensory data except for smell is processed first through the thalamus. Experimental data show that various neurons are specialized to deal with specialized sensory data.

What I am suggesting has been proposed along lines of a global workspace theory. I claim that a person emerges from a functioning brain of a certain complexity and working order, but is not identified with that process of function. I claim that the newly emergent person acts as an entire organism and person and that there is not merely bottom-up causation from neurons, but top-down causation from persons. If there is only neural activity and there are no activities of an organism as a whole, then there is no person and no moral responsibility. There is a difference between a functioning brain and a person as should be obvious for anyone who has seen a person in a coma and realized that no one is home.

It doesn’t matter whose neurons we are talking about — neurons themselves are not morally responsible and if there is nothing more to explanation of human psychology than neural activity, we are not free or responsible. Frankly, neurons are not persons and your identifying of your neurons with yourself as a person is a massive mistake in my view. I take it that you are a materialist who believes in mind-body identity — specifically, brain-person identity. When you say, for example, “I am purposefully holding an umbrella” (while typing on your computer?) you identify “I” with the activity of your neurons, synapses, and so forth. Yet your neurons are not holding your umbrella. So I am suggesting rather boldly that such identity is mistaken.

I think you must admit Blake that radical emergence of a dualistic ‘mind’ is a pretty minority view. If one doesn’t accept such a phenomena then I think Rich’s point is much stronger.

10 Rich Knapton on June 15th, 2008 12:47 pm

“Rich: You’re missing the point. While I grant that the thalamus, as part of the brain, is also a part of the CNS, it certainly is not the case that the translation of data and its meaning waits until it gets to the thalamus.”

Blake: you are calling into question one of the standard models used by neurologists. Let me give you and example. From the retina, neuronal information is passed to the ganglion cell axons and then to the optic nerve. At the optic chiasm, visual information is separated into left and right worlds. The optic nerve then connects to the lateral geniculate nucleus which is part of the thalamus. There is no meaning information being processed between the eye and the thalamus.

Blake: “What I am suggesting has been proposed along lines of a global workspace theory.

But Blake global workspace theory has to do with consciousness. I’m talking about behavior. A lot of our behavior is controlled at the non-conscious level. Walking for example. We may decide to walk, but the actual signals sent to our muscles occur at the non-conscious level.

On the subject of consciousness, I think you would enjoy Thomas Metzinger’s “Being No One: The Self Model Theory of Subjectivity.” According to Metzinger, there is nothing we can call ‘selves’. What exists are phenomenal selves. Phenomenon is not a thing but rather a process. He is a fairly young German philosopher (studied at Stanford, I believe) who has studied the latest research in neurology. He brings a blend of philosophy and neurology to the study of the mind.

Blake: “I take it that you are a materialist who believes in mind-body identity — specifically, brain-person identity.”

I find the whole materialist – idealist thing to be a bit to confining and comes with too much philosophical baggage.

I believe, for behavioral purposes, our brains operate on the basis of mental representations. These representations are created from groups of active neurons. Just like in the Morris Code where dot and dashes form patterns which spell out words, groups of neurons create patterns called mental representations. The dots and dashes only have meaning when they exist in groupings. They have little meaning in themselves. The same goes for neurons. It is only when they are grouped do they have meaning. However, without neurons there is no meaning. When the brain reacts, it reacts to the pattern or mental representation made by groups of neuron, synapses, etc. Some of these patterns or mental representations, which have personal significance for us, are held by our biographical memory. Memory seems to be retained in the dentratic spines. However, the individual neurons, themselves, have little meaning. It is only when they are grouped that they create meaning. Going down to the individual neurons, synapses, etc., is a bit too reductionist.

When I was typing ‘I’ I was referring to the remembered ‘I’ which is generated by mental representations located in the biographic memory. Current thinking is that memory is not in one location of the brain but may be spread out throughout the brain in clusters.

If you thinks this is mistaken then I would love to know how it should be corrected and some of the literature you’re basing your thoughts on.

Rich

Rich: I believe that the literature simply refutes your view that nothing happens between the retina and the thalamus. The mere translation of photons into photoelectric energy and then into a chemical pathway is a massive re-interpretation of data that is already influenced by the conscious state and past experiences of of individual. This conclusion is especially true if we are talking merely of behavior (and that is all that there is on the view you propose) and not consciousness per se. The retina of a conscious person reacts differently to light than an unconscious person, so consciousness has effects and is effected long before we get to the thalamus.

Your view of the self as a mere phenomena is interesting — and I am familiar with Metzinger’s work. How is there any moral responsibility at all on this view of a merely phenomenal self? How could there be any free acts? There is no causation at all by the self precisely since there really isn’t a self to cause anything. There is mere behavior — and a zombie could answer to the behaviorist description as well as the phenomenal self you suggest. If the self is the result of sub-parts of the brain, as you suggest, and is a phenomenal self remembered from past experience, then how could the “self” ever act? It seems to me that this view is in fact reductionist though you want to resist reductionism. Subparts of the brain are no more a self or morally responsible agent than neurons. I don’t have time, but I believe that Jaegwon Kim’s work shows that your view is fully reductionist. Because I believe that persons are in fact morally responsible (as opposed to being treated behaviorally as if they were morally responsible) I don’t believe such views are tenable.

I am very unclear as to what you mean when you assert that our brains “operate based on mental representations.” It seems that you say that our brains are caused to be the way that they are by the mental representations. However, if I have understood you, then you say that these mental representations are caused by groupings in the brain. That means that the brain processes are causally prior to the mental representations and not the other way around as you seem to assert. That is, our mental representations are caused by the brain; our brains are not caused by the mental representations. However, when you explain that the “dots and dashes” have meaning in themselves, whatever that means, you seem to be saying that the mental is identical to brain activity. They gain meaning by being grouped — but I just don’t see how what you say is either coherent or explanatory. What does it mean that there is grouped meaning? How does a population of neurons have meaning?

Clark: In process thought the emergence of mind is not dualistic.

As a practical matter Blake it’s dualistic in that the mind is more than the matter and that ‘more’ influences matter. It’s certainly not Cartesian – that I’ll grant you.

Clark: To be dualistic the mind has to be a substance that is disparate from matter. In process thought the mind is neither a substance nor disparate from matter. So you’re right, it’s not Cartesian and it doesn’t suffer from the usual problems of dualism.

Blake, the term dualism typically is used more expansively than that. For instance even though I’m basically a monist who thinks all ‘stuff’ has proto-mental properties I’d probably be called a dualist. A property dualist, for sure.

I don’t think one can say it doesn’t suffer from the usual problems of dualism. Certainly not the usual Cartesian problems. But even among substance dualism there are ways to avoid a lot of those. (Say the Thomist approach)

The reason I think people will be skeptical about it not suffering from the usual problems of dualism is because downward causation doesn’t seem particularly less mysterious than mind-body interaction for Descartes.

16 Rich Knapton on June 17th, 2008 7:10 pm

Blake: “Rich: You’re missing the point. While I grant that the thalamus, as part of the brain, is also a part of the CNS, it certainly is not the case that the translation of data and its meaning waits until it gets to the thalamus.”

Blake: you are calling into question one of the standard models used by neurologists. Let me give you and example. From the retina, neuronal information is passed to the ganglion cell axons to the optic nerve. At the optic chiasm, visual information is separated into left and right worlds. The optic nerve then connects to the lateral geniculate nucleus which is part of the thalamus. There is no information being processed.

Blake: “What I am suggesting has been proposed along lines of a global workspace theory.

But Blake global workspace theory has to do with consciousness. I’m talking about behavior. A lot of our behavior is directed at the non-conscious level, walking for example. We may decide to walk, but the actual signals sent to our muscles occur at the non-conscious level.

The retina of a conscious person reacts differently to light than an unconscious person, so consciousness has effects and is effected long before we get to the thalamus.

This difference has nothing to do with consciousness. It has to do with the decrease in blood flow in the retina when a person is unconscious. We can have sensory input, analysis and motricity all outside of consciousness. We can operate in a non-conscious mode (as opposed to unconscious mode). It’s called sleep-walking. There was a famous case of a man getting up, dressing, driving cross-town, murdering his mother-in-law, going back to sleep while never once being conscious. As a lawyer, I’m sure your remember the account. He was found not-guilty because in that state he had no volition.

Blake: “Your view of the self as a mere phenomena is interesting — and I am familiar with Metzinger’s work.”

You’re granting me way too much understanding. I picked up Metzinger’s book and began reading it because of his references to Damasio in a recorded speech I watched on the net. As I said, Metsinger’s ultimate interest is in consciousness. My is behavior.

Blake: “I am very unclear as to what you mean when you assert that our brains “operate based on mental representations.”

Mental representations are patterns that are created when bands of neurons pass a packets of information. Each packet has a distinguishing pattern thus they have a different mental representation or a mental design. A packet of information carry the information of “Hi honey” spoken in a normal voice would have a different pattern than one carrying the same message only spoken in a whisper. For example, incoming packets of information traveling over a particular band of neurons intersecting with the thalamus would be scanned by the thalamus for unfamiliar patterns which might indicate danger. The thalamus doesn’t translate the packet. It only looks at it’s design. This design is a mental representation which can trigger some part of the brain, the thalamus in this case, to respond in a particular way. In this case, a particular pattern can trigger the thalamus to send an alert to the amigdala to get ready for the chemical cascade that will trigger the fight or flight response.

OK councilor, I’ve been on the witness stand for some time now. I think it’s your turn. Where are you coming from? Does Kim hold the key and is there a work of his, available online, that will help me to understand what you are objecting to.

Rich

Rich: “The optic nerve then connects to the lateral geniculate nucleus which is part of the thalamus. There is no information being processed.”

It simply isn’t true that no information is processed. The point that the retina of a conscious person reacts differently than that of an unconscious person demonstrates rather conclusively that the very information and data we receive is determined already by our consciousness states. Reducing the difference to differences in blood flow misses the point that it is the state of consciousness that determines blood flow — just like in bio-feedback where a person intentionally directs blood-flow. What could it be called if photons are translated into chemical pathways? If that isn’t processing information, what could possibly qualify on your view?

“Each packet has a distinguishing pattern thus they have a different mental representation or a mental design.”

This very characterization of “packets” assumes what must be shown. What is the evidence for such “packets” of information that are readily recognizeable by the thalamus? How does the thalamus recognize the patterns?

I also note that I have asked twice how a person could possibly be morally responsible on your view — and I don’t see any response. I suppose you could always say that as a behaviorist, you don’t care about the moral qualities of human behavior because that isn’t given in behavior? Yet behavior is definitely influenced by our moral assessments — isn’t it?

“Where are you coming from? Does Kim hold the key and is there a work of his, available online, that will help me to understand what you are objecting to.”

Rich, there is a long and sustained discussion between reductive materialists and non-reductive physicalists as to whether non-reductive physicalism is a viable position. Kim argues that non-reductive physicalism, which maintains that properties of mind and consciousness cannot be reduced to merely physical properties, is ultimately incoherent and that the mind/consciousness has nothing left to explain once one adopts the assumptions of physicalism. This article may be a good introduction: http://www.lehigh.edu/~mhb0/physicalemergence.pdf

18 Rich Knapton on June 24th, 2008 7:50 pm

Blake, “It simply isn’t true that no information is processed. The point that the retina of a conscious person reacts differently than that of an unconscious person demonstrates rather conclusively that the very information and data we receive is determined already by our consciousness states.. Reducing the difference to differences in blood flow misses the point that it is the state of consciousness that determines blood flow — just like in bio-feedback where a person intentionally directs blood-flow. What could it be called if photons are translated into chemical pathways? If that isn’t processing information, what could possibly qualify on your view?”

There is another set of nerves, which I didn’t mention, that goes to and from the eye and the cerebellum. This controls the widening and narrowing of the iris and eye movement. This is also checked to determine is someone is conscious or not.

If we put pressure on the neck and constrict the flow of blood that person will pass out. That does not show a direct relationship between blood flow and consciousness. All it show is that some of those portions of the brain by which consciousness emerges has been shut off and consciousness disappears. It’s like turn the gas off and seeing the flame disappear. The challenge for neuroscientists is to discover which portions of the brain are needed in order for consciousness to exist.

Blood flow is affected by arteries and chemical components with the blood itself. If consciousness affected blood flow, we would all die when we went to sleep. There is a brain state in which blood flows normally, sensory input functions normally, is analyzed and output is generated for appropriate goal directed motricity all without consciousness. THE ZOMBIE LIVES! No. It’s called sleepwalking, mentioned earlier. None of those operations are dependent on consciousness.

I can understand the idea of downward causation. An argument can be made that the nature of the human body could have downward implications on lower levels of somatic functioning. I just don’t think you will find it in consciousness.

Blake, “This very characterization of “packets” assumes what must be shown. What is the evidence for such “packets” of information that are readily recognizable by the thalamus? How does the thalamus recognize the patterns?”

Information being passed neurally to the leg muscles was measured and found to be not continuous. That is, there is activity followed by no activity followed by activity followed by no activity. Information bracketed by no activity becomes isolated from other pieces of information bracketed by no activity. Thus they can be seen as ‘packets’ of information. Sensory information is simply too large to be handled by single neurons. It requires bundles of neurons. Thus sensory information is passed in packets along bundled neurons.

Your referenced article helped me to visualize how these packets are processed in the thalamus. The authors revised Kim’s suggestion, as to how causation occurs, by adding relations to that of organization. Given this, there is no reason why the electro/chemical activities within the packet of bundled nerves would not give off a specific signature. Thus internal organization provides a signature which can be ‘read’ by the thalamus. (The thalamus/amygdala connection need only engage when threat has been detected.) This signature can then be compared to earlier signatures retained by the thalamus. We know that there are reciprocal nerves leading to and from the thalamus and the cerebral cortex. If a packet(s) displays a signature which is associated with danger, neurons leading to the amygdala fire prepping the amygdala to send out a cascade of chemicals in preparation for the fight or flight response. The thalamus would go through the same process if the signature was not recognized. Thus it was the organization of the signature and its relationship to other to other remembered signatures which initiated change.

OK enough neurobiology. What I have described can be found in any good neurological text book. It seems we have more than just consciousness and unconsciousness. We have a non-conscious state were the most of the brain is operating just fine but without being conscious: sleepwalking. We also have a semi-conscious state; something Heidegger call being in the world. We are conscious but not necessarily conscious of what we are doing at that particular time.

I think there are some similarities between “being in the world” and a non-conscious state that are illuminating. In both states we are able to perform activities without having to focus on those activities. I can jog and think about how to answer Blake while being oblivious to my jogging. Most of our behavior is at this level. The reason we can do this lies in the cerebellum. In order to walk, for example, we need to coordinate quite a number of nerves and muscles. This coordination occurs in the cerebellum. It is here that patterns of coordination are created. Everything we do, we do because there are patterns established within the cerebellum. As we’ve seen in sleepwalking, sensory information can go to the cerebellum and it will make adjustments based on that sensory data without reference to consciousness. It’s like we are operating on “auto-pilot.”

If we wish to perform a particular behavior that is not in our repertoire, such as rolling a kayak, we have to create that coordination within the cerebellum before we have access to that particular behavior. The same is with thoughts. I’m sure we all know people who, when something goes wrong, tries to determine who is at blame. It seems to me that blame can be assessed after the situation is corrected. These people can’t do that. I’m not saying they can’t learn to do that. What I’m saying is their response is automatic; and will remain automatic until such time as they teach themselves an alternative behavior. They can’t even say ‘no’ the behavior is so engrained.

This is my point about “Free Will.” Free Will requires alternatives. We don’t always have alternatives. There may be a dysfunction in the brain (the lack of time to evaluate a stimulus before the engagement of the amygdal), the behavior is so engrained that it engages automatically, or we may not know an alternative and ‘no’ is not an option. Unlike being in a non-conscious state, these are not acceptable moral excuses. It is expected that people with problems such as these fix their problems. There is medicine for amgladas firing too quickly. We all have the capacity to build new patterns of thinking and new behaviors and use them. This is not automatic, we have to prepare ourselves in order to have access to the proper moral behavior. Do we have the freedom to make moral choices? Only those of us who have prepared ahead of time. Those choices must be available to us prior to the time of choice.

Rich

Clark, just skimming some of your old posts here. I thought I’d mention Richard Williams’s article in Turning Freud Upside Down, if you haven’t seen it. He takes a fairly semi-compatibilist view, if I remember right….

Rich: Amazingly I think that we are in essential agreement. We agree that free will requires alternatives. It requires downward causation and emergence of consciousness. It requires consciousness of choice and actively engaging in the act of making a choice. We can quibble about the relation between our neural networks and consciousness, but once it is agreed that choices require conscious activity as an initiator, it seems to me that the rest follows.

I’m not sure the rest follows Blake (without beating a dead horse). I think the crucial issue is what counts as alternatives and what emergence and “downward causation” are.

Clark: If we’re talking about free will and moral responsibility, the rest follows. Tell me what downward causation could mean in the context of emergence that doesn’t entail the ability to choose without being determined by the lower levels of unconscious neural activity.

Well I think to unpack that we have to unpack what we mean by causation and emergence. For instance if I say the bat his the ball and caused it to fly through the air we know what really happened involved all the atoms, electric fields and complex interactions. Causality in normal speech is always a kind of short hand.

If, of course, by downward causality you presuppose ontological emergence then it’s more complex. But that was the whole point of my comment. I find ontological emergence and related claims rather problematic.

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