Kane then was educated at the College of the Holy Cross, where he studied abroad at the University of Vienna from 1958–1959, and received his Bachelor of Arts (B.A.)
"[5] What allows for ultimacy of creation in Kane's picture are what he refers to as "self-forming actions" or SFAs — those moments of indecision during which people experience conflicting wills.
These SFAs are the undetermined, regress-stopping voluntary actions or refrainings in the life histories of agents that are required for UR.
In his book defending compatibilism, Freedom Evolves, Daniel Dennett spends a chapter criticising Kane's theory.
[8] Kane believes freedom is based on certain rare and exceptional events, which he calls self-forming actions or SFA's.
Kane's followers, Laura Waddell Ekstrom, Richard Double, and Mark Balaguer, as well as the philosopher Peter van Inwagen, agree that chance must be the direct cause of action.
This makes them all radical libertarians, as opposed to those who limit chance to the early deliberative stages of the decision process, such as James, Popper, Margenau, Doyle and Martin Heisenberg, who are conservative or modest libertarians, following the two-stage models proposed by Dennett and Mele.
In his 1985 book Free Will and Values, aware of earlier proposals by neurobiologist John Eccles, Popper, and Dennett, but working independently, Kane proposed an ambitious amplifier model for a quantum randomizer in the brain - a spinning wheel of fortune with probability bubbles corresponding to alternative possibilities, in the massive switch amplifier (MSA) tradition of Compton.
He says What I would like to do then, is to show how an MSA model, using Eccles' notion of critically poised neurons as a working hypothesis, might be adapted to the theory of practical, moral and prudential decision making.
"[11] He explains that the main reason for failure is "locating the master switch and the mechanism of amplification ... We do not know if something similar goes on in the brains of cortically developed creatures like ourselves, but I suspect it must if libertarian theories are to succeed.
"[14] But Kane claims that the major criticism of all indeterminist libertarian models is explaining the power to choose or do otherwise in "exactly the same conditions," something he calls "dual rational self-control."
Kane's latest suggestion for his occasional self-forming actions argues that the tension and uncertainty in our minds stirs up "chaos" that is sensitive to micro-indeterminacies at the neuronal level.
[16] Now I believe these undetermined self-forming actions or SFAs occur at those difficult times of life when we are torn between competing visions of what we should do or become.
Perhaps we are torn between doing the moral thing or acting from ambition, or between powerful present desires and long-term goals, or we are faced with difficult tasks for which we have aversions.