From stapp@thsrv.lbl.gov Wed May  2 15:55:01 2001
Date: Wed, 2 May 2001 15:20:03 -0700 (PDT)
From: stapp@thsrv.lbl.gov
Reply-To: hpstapp@lbl.gov
To: John R. Searle 
Cc: 
Subject: Your Seminar

Dear  John,

Many thanks for allowing me to sit in on your seminar. I found it
useful, and would like to push things forward a  bit, based  on my
understanding of your position expressed there.

You alluded to things covered earlier in your set of seminars, including
Hume's contention that we are entitled speak of regularities, not causes.
Physicists generally accept this, but when the window-pane
shatters just after being struck by the baseball it is hard to resist 
the idea that the shattering was caused by the impact of the baseball:
few would deny the right of the lady in the house to accuse the batter
of "causing" her window to break..

I was not sure whether or not you accepted Hume's view for those cases
in which only physical processes are involved.

But as you, and others, have pointed out, when human psychology is
involved we do seem to have some warrant to speak of cause: I am now
"causing" my arm to rise!

But you note that at the psychological level the "causes" of our
actions, which are often "reasons", do not seem coersive": what caused 
me to swerve my car was my desire not to hit the dog; my reason for 
swirving was my desire not to kill the dog. But if I actually reflected 
before swerving, perhaps I could have vetoed my swerving, in order to get
rid of that pesky dog.

In any case, it seems clear that "reasons", while they are "causes", in
some sense, may not be sufficient to completely determine the action: 
something could possibly override that reason. 
Or maybe there are, in nature, such things as causes that simply are
non-coersive: maybe there are tendencies for regularities that are 
less than absolute rules, and these tendencies might be called "causes",
even though they are not coersive.
 
So this is my way of understanding what (I think) you were driving at
in your seminar.

I raised several times the point that, while  all  this is true,
what is needed is a theory of the connection between these
psychological "causes" and the physics of the brain: that when
people believe that the complete causal structure should be coersive
(i.e., deterministic) they are including also the physical aspects.
It is only the complete psychophysical causal structure that could be
deterministic: the psychological "reasons" that we can cite are at most
only part of the causal story, and they alone are obviously not
sufficient to fix our every action.

Classical physical theory is coersive (deterministic)
at the physical level alone: the psychological aspects are
the either epiphenomenal or basically nothing beyond the motions of the
particles and local (EM and Grav) fields. I believe that you reject
both the latter (identity theory) thesis, and also the epiphenomenal
view: you stress "irreducibility", and cite the difficulties
in understanding the evolution of consciousness if consciousness 
cannot DO anything.

So it seems to me that your positions ought to lead you, rationally, 
to reject the notion that the classical-physics understanding of nature is
adequate to deal with these issues.

Let me emphasize this point. You may think that you do not know enough
about quantum theory to embrace it, but you do understand
the essential features  of classical physical theory

---namely that the world
is  made up of tiny BB-like particles that produce fields that act the
other particles in such a way that this whole physical structure is
deterministic: given the structure over all space and over any tiny time
interval, this physical structure is determined  for all times ---

to understand that this conception of nature reduces each of us to 
a robot whose every action was determined before the human race came
into being, and was determined, moreover, by local mechanical processes
that need never acknowledge, or admit the existence of, human thoughts
or efforts.
 
But quantum theory fits very well with your ideas about the non-coersive 
character of those "causes" of which we are directly aware, and with
Hume's argument about our lack of any rational reason to assume more than
the existence of regularities.

QT is a theory of "statistical regularities".
It does not provide a closed (coersive/deterministic) causal account.
Certain aspects do follow "causal" laws, in the sense that what comes
before determines what comes later, but this causal structure is
incomplete: there are "dynamical gaps". Thus QT conforms, in this way,
to the only causal structure  that we are directly aware of, namely, the
one associated with our non-coersive "reasons". 

QT has TWO KINDS of dynamical gap. The first is associated
with a "choice on the part of nature". It conforms to certain 
regularities at the statistical level. The second kind of dynamical
gap is the NEED for a choice of the part of the human person (the
observer/participant). Exploitation of this second dynamical gap
allows the conscious effort of the person to influence his actions. 
Thus quantum theory, while basically a theory of statistical regularities
at the physical level, does yield non-coersive causes at the psychological
level.

I said in your seminar that I believe that philosophy has an important
role to play in  making progess on these issues. You sometimes seem to
suggest that we have to let the neuroscientist tell us how the brain works. 
But philosophy must help the neuroscientists determine what is important
to measure.

For example, the present discussion focusses attention on the
"cause" of the choice between veto and consent.

Suppose the subject is instructed to veto any thought that tries  to
enter his consciousness for a while (less than a minute) and then to
consent to some thought and hold it in place for a while, and then, later
on, report what that thought was.

If the subject's brain is being monitored then variations of this
experiment should tell us something about how volition is related to
brain activity, Where is the activity that vetos? What is the sequence of
brain activities that occurs during the transition from veto to
consent? What "causes(?)" the thought to be held in place for a long
time?

Philosophical considerations can focus the attention of neuroscientists
on empirical studies that might be more relevant than others to our
understanding of ourselves, but that might not otherwise be performed. 
Experiments pertaining to how our "Free Will" operates, at the
brain level, should be high on the wish list of philosophers. 
I forsee a fertile field of collaboration between philosophers,
neuroscientists, and physicists on the psychoneurophysics of Free Will.

Henry