Dear Professor Kane,

I am an astrophysicist and cosmologist by training and have long been studying the way information (actually structure in general) is created and maintained in the universe. I earned my Ph.D. at Harvard in 1968 with a thesis on the quantum mechanics of the hydrogen molecule.

The fundamental process of information creation, whether an atom forming from sub-atomic particles, a molecule - including DNA and biological structures, or a bit being set to one or zero in a computer, involves a quantum mechanical event in which a "measurement" is made that allows any "observer" to see the new structural element.

Measurement is accompanied by radiating away an amount of entropy (or disorder) that more than compensates for the increase in order (negative entropy or information) that the structure represents in the universe.

There are remarkable parallels in this process to what I would like to suggest to you is the "intelligible" model for free will you have sought for many years - I believe it extends your notion of Relativistic Alternatives and R-choice of Free Will and Values.

Measurement begins with a thoroughly unpredictable microscopic quantum process, followed by a macroscopic process for which indeterminism is negligible. The core assumption in quantum mechanics is that the microscopic world is unpredictable, but the measurement apparatus can be treated classically because it is macroscopic.

In my study of many philosophers and scientists who have pondered the question of free will, I find three thinkers who have discussed such a two-stage model for a free will - free, in the sense of random alternative possibilities, and will, in the sense of an adequately deterministic choice from the alternatives based on values in one's character (your UR if the choice has already become a fixed belief or habit, as Charles Peirce would say).

They are William James (1897), Henri Poincaré (1906), and Karl Popper (1960).

Daniel Dennett's "Valerian" model in Brainstorms (1868), which he eventually rejects, is derived from Poincaré, as reported by Jacques Hadamard, who quoted Valery. He also read Popper, but may have rejected Popper's mind/body dualism.

I am beginning to put my thoughts onto some web pages, and would greatly appreciate your critical comments before approaching your philosophical colleagues, including Dennett, who is nearby (I am still in Cambridge).

Perhaps we might have a chance to chat after the academic year ends and you have a bit of time?

At your convenience, please take a look at my draft History of Free Will here:
http://www.informationphilosopher.com/freedom/history/

Please correct any wrong impression I may give about your own work there - and here.
http://www.informationphilosopher.com/solutions/philosophers/kane/

I am available to talk anytime at 617-876-5678, and would be happy to call you if you prefer.

Cheers.

Bob

Dear Bob,

I've read your history and found it quite interesting and well done. I'd quibble with a few historical points here and there, but would agree with most of it and find it's presentation of the history of the problem congenial to my way of looking at it. Some of the stuff, including the role of certain figures to the debate (e.g. Quetelet) were new to me. I also think that the two-stage approach is an important part of the solution to the problem of incompatibilist free will (and indicated as much in Free Will and Values, the Significance of Free Will and other works). But I think it must be supplemented by other moves to get the full picture. I in fact formulated a "Valerian" version of my own in the 70s about the same time as Dennett's, but never published it, because in my view it needed to be supplemented, which I did in subsequent works. Nonetheless it is an important key, as you suggest.

I would enjoy talking sometime by phone. Unfortunately, it is a very difficult time for me right now, since my wife has been seriously ill and I am absorbed with family matters and other things. If things clear up as the summer unfolds, I will let you know by email and set something up.

Best wishes,

Robert Kane
University Distinguished Teaching Professor
Department of Philosophy
The University of Texas at Austin
1 University Station C3500
Austin TX 78712

Office Phone: 512 471 6776
Department Phone: 512 471 4857
Department Fax: 512 471 4806

Dear Professor Kane, Thanks for your encouraging words. I look forward to a conversation with you sometime this summer when your wife is well again and you can find the time. Cheers. Bob

Hello Professor Kane,

Thanks very much  for your response.

I do hope the summer finds your wife better and family matters working out well for you.

I write now to tell you I just read your remarks in response to Fischer, Pereboom, and Vargas and am delighted with your following lines:
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"As it happens, on my libertarian account of free will, one does not need large-scale indeterminism in the brain, in the form, say, of macro-level wave function collapses (in the manner of the Penrose/Hameroff view mentioned by Vargas). Minute indeterminacies in the timings of firings of
indeterminism neurons would suffice, because the indeterminism in my view plays only an interfering role, in the form of background noise. Indeterminism does not have to "do the deed" on its own, so to speak. One does not need a downpour of indeterminism in the brain, or a thunderclap, to get free will. Just a sprinkle will do." (Four Views on Free Will, p.183)
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You are quite right. Quantum (and even some thermal) noise is all we need to supply random unpredictable alternative possibilities.
http://www.informationphilosopher.com/freedom/cogito/

The only reasonable model for the indeterministic contribution is ever-present noise. We call it Micro Mind. (subconscious id)

And indeterminism is NOT involved in the de-liberating will. We call it Macro Mind. (Critical superego apparatus) The major difference is how the two process noise in the brain circuits.

Our "adequately determined" mind can overcome the noise whenever it needs to make a determination on thought or action.
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We distinguish six increasingly sophisticated ideas about the role of chance and indeterminism in the question of free will. Many libertarians have accepted the first two. Determinist and compatibilist critics of free will make the third their central attack on chance, claiming that it denies moral responsibility. But very few thinkers appear to have considered all six essential requirements for chance to contribute to libertarian free will.

1. Chance exists in the universe. Quantum mechanics is correct. Indeterminism is true, etc.

2. Chance is important for free will. It breaks the causal chain of determinism.

3. Chance cannot directly cause our actions. We cannot be responsible for random actions.

4. Chance can only generate random (unpredictable) alternative possibilities for action or thought. The choice or selection of one action must be adequately determined, so that we can take responsibility. And once we choose, the connection between mind/brain and motor control must also be adequately determined to see that "our will be done."

5. Chance, in the form of noise, both quantum and thermal, must be ever present. Naive models of a single random microscopic event, amplified to affect the macroscopic brain, never made sense. Under what ad hoc circumstances, at what time, at what place in the brain, would it occur to affect a decision?

6. Chance must be overcome or suppressed by the adequately determined will when it decides to act, de-liberating the prior free options that "one could have done."

Compatibilists and Determinists were right about the Will,
but wrong about Freedom.

Libertarians were right about Freedom, but wrong about the Will.