Two-stage model of free will
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A two-stage model of free will separates the free stage from the will stage.
In the first stage, alternative possibilities for thought and action are generated, in part indeterministically.
In the second stage, an adequately determined will evaluates the options that have been developed.
If, on deliberation, one option for action seems best, it is selected and chosen. If no option seems good enough, and time permitting, the process can return to the further generation of alternative possibilities ("second thoughts") before a final decision.
A two-stage model can explain how an agent could choose to do otherwise in exactly the same circumstances that preceded the first stage of the overall free will process.
[...] The two-stage argument is designed to defeat the standard argument against free will. In that very simple and logical argument:
P1. Either determinism or indeterminism is true
P2. If determinism is true, we are not free.
P3. If indeterminism is true, our decisions are random and we lack responsibility.
In the first "free" stage of the two-stage model, the indeterminism is limited to the generation of alternative possibilities, it does not directly cause the willed decision, thus negating P2.
In the second "will" stage, the decision is not predetermined by events in the distant past, before the agent was born, indeed possibly back to the origin of the universe in the extreme determinism view.
[...] William James, Henri Poincaré, Arthur Holly Compton, Karl Popper, Daniel Dennett, Henry Margenau, Robert Kane, David Sedley and Anthony Long, Alfred Mele and Martin Heisenberg have all proposed two-stage models.
[...] Around 1906 Poincaré speculated on how his mind works when he is solving mathematical problems. He had the critical insight that random combinations and possibilities are generated, some in an unconscious way with chance involved, then they are selected among, perhaps initially also by an unconscious process, but then by a definite conscious process of validation.
Quote:"It is certain that the combinations which present themselves to the mind in a kind of sudden illumination after a somewhat prolonged period of unconscious work are generally useful and fruitful combinations… all the combinations are formed as a result of the automatic action of the subliminal ego, but those only which are interesting find their way into the field of consciousness… A few only are harmonious, and consequently at once useful and beautiful, and they will be capable of affecting the geometrician's special sensibility I have been speaking of; which, once aroused, will direct our attention upon them, and will thus give them the opportunity of becoming conscious… In the subliminal ego, on the contrary, there reigns what I would call liberty, if one could give this name to the mere absence of discipline and to disorder born of chance."
[...] In his 1977 book with John Eccles, The Self and its Brain, Popper finally formulates the two-stage model in a temporal sequence, and makes the comparison with evolution and natural selection,
Quote:New ideas have a striking similarity to genetic mutations. Now, let us look for a moment at genetic mutations. Mutations are, it seems, brought about by quantum theoretical indeterminacy (including radiation effects). Accordingly, they are also probabilistic and not in themselves originally selected or adequate, but on them there subsequently operates natural selection which eliminates inappropriate mutations. Now we could conceive of a similar process with respect to new ideas and to free-will decisions, and similar things.
That is to say, a range of possibilities is brought about by a probabilistic and quantum mechanically characterized set of proposals, as it were - of possibilities brought forward by the brain. On these there then operates a kind of selective procedure which eliminates those proposals and those possibilities which are not acceptable to the mind.
