The play was not produced by the wiring, but by Will. Okay. But: Where’s Will?
I presume you will not point to the wiring, nor to any part of Will’s body, nor to the collection of parts of Will’s body taken together, nor to anything about Will’s environment, nor even all of that taken together. Do I presume correctly?
If so, then what do you point to? (Metaphorically speaking of course, and “in theory.”)
-FrL-
On a quick second reading, it looks to me that PBear may be offering the following kind of argument.
It is not possible for us to explain events at the macroscopic scale by appeal to the collection of events at the microscopic scale which we might take somehow to constitute those macroscopic events. This is the case at least (and even if only) for purely practical reasons: provision of such an explanation would not accomplish any of the tasks we generally wish to accomplish when we set out to formulate an explanation of something. So, instead of explaining things in terms of quarks and electrons and so on, we generally explain things in terms of rocks and globs of water and so on. And we have to do this, in order to get anything done. Since this is the case, let us say we must therefore admit rocks. water, etc into our ontology, even if we think each of these is in some sense “ultimately constituted” by quarks electrons and so on. Now with the case of rocks and water, our explanations can be pretty much deterministic. But certain objects we must admit into our ontology–namely, objects with volition–do not admit of deterministic explanations. You might start talking about the “wiring” which somehow “constitutes” these volitional objects, but you can’t just say “the wiring did it” because that explains nothing–and once you start getting into the serious nitty gritty of explaining what you mean by “the wiring did it,” two things happen. First, the idea of anything “doing” anything seems to get lost. Second, whatever purpose you had in offering an explanation fails to be served, for example (and if only) because it takes you so long the concern that called for an explanation in the first place has passed you by. So, that kind of explanation seems to be right out. What we are left with is the policy of admitting macroscopic volitional objects into our ontology, as volitional. We have to allow their volition, as undetermined as it mus be in this kind of explanatory framework, to be basic data with which we must work.
Well, that’s a lot to read into what little I’ve read, but PBear, what do you think?
-FrL-
The chief reason to believe that there is no such thing as free will is the discovery that the brain is the center of the mind, and that physical alteration of the brain can affect a person’s thought processes. Since the invention of the MRI scanner it is now possible to document the functional action of different areas of the brain, as well as link aberrations caused by strokes to brain damage in specific areas. So far this has been studied primarily in terms of the brain’s information processing capacity. But what if someone could demonstrate a purely physical action upon the brain that affected behavior that has always been considered purely volitional? For example, if there was such a thing as a drug that altered a person’s moral beliefs?
I don’t see what that would demonstrate beyond what we already understand. If you could demonstrate that you were interacting with the very source of the process known as volition, then that would be fine, but in order to be sure you were doing that, you’d have to understand exactly how it all works and that understanding would render the experiment moot.
PBear42
An aside, as this is somewhat of an interest of mine … more accurately it may described as a constant interplay between nested levels of top-down and bottom-up interactions. IMHO the best models are those of Stephen Grossberg and his Adaptive Resonance Theory and related models.
Randy re your soul killing pill. Sounds like a version of the philosophic Zombie argument. And like that argument it fails as it presumes a soul that can be killed off seperate from the machine. Sure, accept the conclusion in advance and the conclusion follows from itself. Yet I don’t hear anyone here taking the Dualist position. There seems to be broad agreement that mental states and processes are the result of physical events within the body, primarily within the brain. Some debate on if the outcomes of those events are theoretically deteminable. Much debate on whether or not the fact that our selves and sense of free will emerges from real physical processes that naturally follow each other (even if subject to some undefined degree of quantum or other randomness) somehow diminishes them as being somehow less real.
If I read PBear42 right (and Frylock’s recapitulation of it), (s)he currently argues from a similar perspective as I do. These are emergent metaphysical phenomena no less real for being able to also be described as an incrediably large number of particles and energy packets with various dynamicly changing coordinates and vectors interacting with each other in a very set of complex patterns.
(shaking my head) No wonder philosophers get beat up at recess. 
[QUOTE=PBear42RaftPeople: I notice that you skipped over almost all of my post, especially the hard part of how we construct an ethical, legal or moral system not grounded on volition. Also, what about alcoholism, ADD, OCD and tardiness? And, for that matter, you didn’t actually answer the questions posed in my last paragraph. Observe, please, that I’ve never advanced the QM theory of free will, which I agree isn’t a free will theory at all. Heck, I’m not even defending free will, but rather only volition. As for whether volition is deterministic or random, the answer is that it neither. What philosophers might choose to call it bothers me little. Self-caused or uncaused will do. If it exists or, more importantly, is useful as a model, the label is trivial.[/QUOTE]
I skipped that stuff because, while it can be interesting, my focus in this debate is whether it’s possible to have free will. Whether the universe is purely deterministic or mostly deterministic with random events thrown in, I don’t see room for free will.
As for volition and emergent properties, etc.: I chalk those up to illusion built on top of complex determinstic processes, nothing more. Even though it may be cumbersome to talk about high level abstractions using low level components, I don’t see how the “answer” is any different. I can either talk about a rock, or I can go through elaborate mechanisms to arrive at that same point using atoms, etc., but ultimately I feel I am guaranteed to arrive at the same point.
So, when you say Will wrote a play, I picture in my mind a time sequence of a whole bunch of processing going on inside a brain that can be sliced and diced at whatever level of abstraction you like, but ultimately produces muscle action resulting in a play.
So, I guess I don’t understand the difference between volition and determinism, or volition and free will. I guess I’m not sure, mathematically, what you mean by volition.
XXXXX
Started to do this last night, then decided I didn’t have my thoughts well enough organized. Here goes.
Randy & Frylock: Not sure what else I can say. Will’s brain wrote Hamlet. It looks like a volitional act to me, neither random nor determined.
Frylock II: Regarding #202, sort of but not really. What I’m saying is that I don’t have to understand how the brain works to observe what it does. We can observe gravity with great accuracy, yet don’t have a clue how it works. We can observe volition, albeit with less accuracy, but not knowing how it works is irrelevant to whether it exists. BTW, I submit that the microscopic level for purposes of this discussion is neurons, not atoms.
Lumpy: I think everyone agrees that whatever is happening is happening in the brain. This has been understood for millennia. As for your question, there are drugs, as I mentioned above, which improve, for example, impulse control. I take this as evidence of volition, not the other way 'round.
DSeid: Grossberg sounds like an interesting fellow. But so many papers. Please direct me to two or three which give a nice overview of his theory.
dropzone: Or, at least, don’t get taken very seriously.
RaftPeople: You have it backwards. If theory conflicts with observation, it’s theory which yields. If volition is real (or, more importantly, is a useful model) and is neither random nor deterministic, then a third category must be constructed. Maybe algorithmic (influenced by the code, but not deterministically). But you can’t make volition an illusion by declaring by fiat that there are only two. Conversely, my position is not dependent on volition being nondeterministic. Some have argued, e.g., Daniel Dennett, that volition is compatible with determinism. (But, in a way very different from Hume’s.) I don’t find the argument persuasive, but not because I’m wedded to nondeterminism. Rather, it’s simply that I think he’s describing a third category. Show me he’s right, or show me a similar model which fits, and I’ll happily agree. It’s volition I care about, not nondeterminism.
First: I’m confused. What’s the dif btwn saying “Will’s wiring wrote Hamlet” and “Will’s brain wrote Hamlet?” You agree with the second, but not the first?
Second: I agree that there can be events which are neither random nor determined, but its not easy to say what this means. To a lot of folks, “not determined” is just the same thing as “random,” and “not random” is just the same thing as determined. I have yet to fully successfully articulate what I mean by saying that just because something is not determined, it isn’t random. I am hoping you can make a further contribution to taha cause.
-FrL-
That’s right: Just because we don’t know how something does what it does, does not mean that we do not know that it exists. But who on this thread has argued in that way? Who has said:
–If there were volition, we would know how it works
–We do not know how it works
–Therefore, there is no volition.
I am not claiming no one has argued in this way (though at the same time I am not aware of anyone who has). I am asking for names and posts so that the logc of your own argument can be made more clear by having it placed in its context more prominently.
Why do you say this? What difference does it make, for your purposes or for the purpose of this discussion, what we stipulate to be the relevant microscopic level?
-FrL-
Frylock, do you have a theory to advance? If so, please do. Because questions a three-year-old can do. Why, why, why?
PBear42, for reasons that may become self-evident, I am partial to last year’s paper on autism. For your purposes skip over the clinical sections on autism and go to the sections that summarize his models. The 1999 article on consciousness is also a particular relevant read.
But to have something that is neither random nor deterministic would be a new class of events (as far as I know) that would be big news. I guess I just don’t understand what that type of event would look like and how it would work. It’s almost like you are saying:
“we can’t explain it in physical or logical terms, but we see something happening that looks like it and therefore we should assume that class of events exists”
Is that close to what you are saying?
Or are you saying:
“regardless of the physical underlying mechanisms, at the macro level it looks like “this” and so we will talk about it like “this”, even if “this” is purely for high level modeling purposes”?
I’ll have to read the link later.
For the record, the OP’s guest membership expires in a couple of hours (after making his 30-day pass span three calendar months 
).
Henceforth, I’ll be watching this thread from the sidelines. I don’t know if/when I’ll be able to buy membership.
Ok, I read Dennet. I basically agree with him (if I interpreted him correctly) except he complicates things he shouldn’t. Here are some thoughts:
Animals vs Humans
He claims humans are unique in that we have this freedom to choose. I disagree. We are only different by degree.
Determinism vs Fatalism
Yes, of course it’s determinism not fatalism. We are a key part of the giant calculation, but each state of universe determines the next. But yes, Kennedy was going to get shot (if we forget about random influences).
AI Rules Machine vs Choice Machine
Strongly agree but for reasons that probably go deeper into the technical workings than he is thinking. Sequences of rules are fragile, difficult to abstract, and simply not the way we work. I have always felt strongly that anyone that thought expert systems were AI hadn’t thought about it enough. Our brains are pattern matchers, categorizers, optimizers, etc. which makes us choice machines (things neural networks are good at).
I know whether you will, but if I tell you it could change the outcome.
I’ve already explained my position elsewhere in this thread.
I’m not asking “why,” I’m asking “what do you mean?” You are absolutely and utterly unconstrainedly free to ask the same about my articulation of my position.
And to be frank, the post of yours that I am responding to is absolutely not in the right spirit. I am going to try to forget I read it, because til I read that post, I was finding our conversation to be positive and interesting.
-FrL-
To be clear, articulations of my own position can be foud (in varying degrees) in my posts numbers 29, 37, 38 and 52.
To be clear again: I do not think it is actually necessary or important for me to have a position of my own to bring to the discussion. One can perform a valuable service by asking the right questions.
Also, in looking for the posts above, I found a post on page one by you (Pseid) wherein you say you have no use for Libertarian free will, but that you also can’t accept (or words to that effect) a Deterministic view.
The usual way of classifying positions on free will makes Libertarian views and Deterministic views mutually exhaustive and exclusive. You are a Libertarian if and only if you are not a determinist. Meanwhile, amongst determinists, there are compatibilists (“free will is compatible with determinism”) and hard determinists (“determinism is true and therefore there is no free will.”)
I think but still am not sure that you are articulating what amounts to a compatibilist position. That’s a position that includes the view that free will exists, and that the existence of free will is not incompatible with the fact of determinism. Most compatibilists also believe the world is in fact deterministic. But that is not strictly necessarily a part of compatibilism. (I myself am a compatibilist but do not insist the world is deterministic.) Do you think you fit any of the categories I’ve described, or do you think the categorization is in some way inadequate?
-FrL-
Frylock, my apologies. In retrospect, that post was indeed overly snippy. As for substance, I’m afraid other duties intervene. Will post further later.