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From: tmoody@sjuvax.UUCP (T. Moody)
Newsgroups: net.philosophy
Subject: Acausal Brain Activity, again
Message-ID: <1243@sjuvax.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 10-Aug-85 01:52:17 EDT
Article-I.D.: sjuvax.1243
Posted: Sat Aug 10 01:52:17 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 12-Aug-85 06:16:29 EDT
Distribution: net
Organization: St. Joseph's University, Phila. PA.
Lines: 39

[]
In a recent posting, I pointed out that the extremely small scale of
the events involved in neural electron transfer would render them
subject to quantum indeterminacy.  Paul Torek, in a private
communication, pointed out that the large number of such interactions
involved in typical congitive processes might tend to make the quantum
indeterminacy negligible.  He suggested that I say something about
this (a good idea), so here goes:

Paul is right, I think, but the tricky part has to do with the word
"negligible."  If the debate were strictly concerned with the
prediction of human behavior, then I would agree that neural
indeterminacy might indeed be negligible, although it *need* not be.
This is an interesting question in its own right.  The context of my
posting, however, was the seemingly endless  free will debate.  In
particular, I was responding to Rich Rosen's challenge to "show that
there is something more going on in the brain than causal neural
activity (not an exact quote, I'm afraid)."  In this context, nothing
is negligible, since Rosen has insisted that only a strictly
"micro"-level description of the world has objective validity.  My
only point was to show that if he indeed rejects the objective
validity of "macro"-level descriptions, then he must also reject his
hard determinism.  That the brain is a deterministic machine is a
description at an emergent level, as Paul Torek's reminder suggests.
But if Rosen doesn't insist that only "micro"-level descriptions have
objective validity, then he has lost whatever facsimile of an argument
he might have had for insisting that all descriptions of free will as
an emergent phenomenon are erroneous.  He can't have it both ways.

I hope this clarifies things.  It rehashes some things I've already
posted.  I did not bring this subject up in order to demonstrate that
quantum indeterminacy is, in itself, a kind of freedom.  That would be
a very perverse kind of freedom indeed.


Todd Moody       {allegra|astrovax|bpa|burdvax}!sjuvax!tmoody
Philosophy Department
St. Joseph's U.
Philadelphia, PA   19131