Here’s why so many physicists are wrong about free will

[Secular Sanity]

It’s very similar to Peter Tse’s "Neural Basis of Free Will", which was earlier than George Ellis' work. Tse does make a minor reference to George Ellis in his book but nothing significant.

I liked most of Tse's other work but this one, not so much. He attempts to show that mental causation is not mere physical causation but he does so through the physical properties of brain. I thought he might save me from being a zombie but no such luck. He explains the mechanisms very well but doesn’t really engage with the actual philosophical argument.

[C C]

It’s very similar to Peter Tse’s "Neural Basis of Free Will", which was earlier than George Ellis' work. Tse does make a minor reference to George Ellis in his book but nothing significant.

I liked most of Tse's other work but this one, not so much. He attempts to show that mental causation is not mere physical causation but he does so through the physical properties of brain. I thought he might save me from being a zombie but no such luck. He explains the mechanisms very well but doesn’t really engage with the actual philosophical argument.

Thanks, SS.

He's interviewed at the ten-minute mark for those who want to jump ahead to Peter Tse.

Why Obsess about Free Will? June 17. 2020

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/_H7Zdwaj9Ho

Purely addressing Kuhn's quandary here, or what he says after the discussion with Tse ends.

ROBERT KUHN (but not excerpted from video above): "The typical scientific response to that would say the mental world is just an expression of the physical brain and so it is an artificial phenomena. It is not real. It is just something that is evoked by the physical brain. "

Robert Kuhn is arguably struggling with the free-will issue (as he's framing it) because he's popularly taking something that was abstracted from experience ("physical") and treating it as prior in rank to experience. He can't give up that "in reverse" dogma of treating the rooftop as more fundamental than the ground which one climbed up a ladder from. The brain is content like everything else. But "special" in the sense that it's one of a multitude of similar brain "avatars" that the countless manifestations (and their internal stories) correlate to or identify with. But otherwise it's yet another object of outer appearance plus an entity of detailed description in science -- it is not existence independent of observation and conception.

In contrast... For Donald Hoffman, it is the physical that is epiphenomenal or "artificial" instead of "mental" being slotted as that. The perceived corporeal world is a representation constituted of experiential properties, where space/time is a cognitive template used to distinguish phenomena from each other. And the complementary quantitative or causally mapped version of the physical world (that physicalism appeals to) is outputted by reason and experiment. IOW, such technical description is an invented representation. Neither version of "physical" (perceptual or quantitative model) is a supposed non-mental way of existing.

"Hoffman has said that some form of reality may exist, but may be completely different from the reality our brains model and perceive. Reality may not be made of space time and physical objects." (If "reality" is proclaimed by whatever _X_ institution to be non-mental, then certainly not if one wants to avoid contradiction.)

"Our perception is nothing more than a useful fiction. This is the core of Hoffman, Singh, and Prakash’s Interface Theory of Perception [...] The empirical teeth come in the form of evolutionary game simulations and genetic algorithms to model natural selection. Scenarios were set up in which the probability of the evolution of different perceptual strategies could be assessed. [...] The result of many such simulations under a range of scenarios is strikingly consistent: fitness wins every time and truth goes extinct. In fact, truth never gets on the evolutionary game board."

[Zinjanthropos]

What is the role of memory if we aren’t in control of our own destiny?

[stryder]

One of my deeply theoretical excursions considered the point of free-will by looking from the perspective of the universe being an artificial construct and life as an agreeable abstraction.

The universal construct is a colluded product of order of extreme computations and exacted results (empirical in nature, the fundamental rule set) where as the entropy of life is a collusion pushing the limitations and bounds with the intention of exceed the parameters. (the rules are there to be broken not as a form of anarchy but to extend beyond limitations)

This means from one perspective (the Universal Construct) that Causality exists for entities that are free from will (such as the "not capable of being" humble rock), where those entities that have free will are there to be as abstract as possible. (You're all butterflies.)

[C C]

What is the role of memory if we aren’t in control of our own destiny?

For Robert Kuhn (and others who subscribe to similar), it seems to be that only the conscious level qualifies as "will" (and either self or illusion of self). So he might regard memory to solely be part of the unconscious system that undermines the conscious level being in control, classifying the latter as epiphenomenal. (Not that he likes that or is satisfied with it.) But memory exhibits itself phenomenally all the time, too.

For some of the rest who differ by simply concerning themselves with the human body being autonomous or free from its environment... Behavior would be random and arbitrary without memory to provide discrimination and guiding preferences for actual selection-making. To be implemented, even innate actions and mindless habits require some form of information storage or retained structural operation pattern that they're falling out of.

Memory, of course, is also what the psychological identity of the agent depends upon (why the agent has the preferences it does). Will has a template, so though randomness can produce outcomes/results, they aren't legitimate choices resulting from decision-making ability and "I want this, not that."