Speakpigeon
Contributor
- Joined
- Feb 4, 2009
- Messages
- 6,317
- Location
- Paris, France, EU
- Basic Beliefs
- Rationality (i.e. facts + logic), Scepticism (not just about God but also everything beyond my subjective experience)
People often mix up two very different things, namely, what I call objective consciousness and subjective consciousness.
'Objective consciousness' refers to something we believe exists based on our interpretation of our (assumed) perceptions of the material world. We observe what we think of as other people and infer the cognitive capabilities we assume as necessary to navigate (what we think of as) the world. If there is indeed such a thing, then it must be highly selectable by evolution. But then, the question of its purpose doesn't make sense. It's just a fact of the world and it works, which has to be good enough as a justification for its observed existence.
But there's a second sense of consciousness which is subjective consciousness, often called 'subjective experience', if only to emphasise the distinction with objective consciousness. Subjective consciousness is the brute fact that I am subjectively aware of something. The 'I' here doesn't even refer to me as a person, a human being. Rather, it's the thing that is aware. This species of consciousness can be freely considered independently of any notion of its origin, cause, reason. It's just a brut fact. In my case, and I will guess that of many people, it includes something that the 'I' takes to be its self, its mind, its memories etc. We could speculate why that is, but that question properly belongs to the problem of objective consciousness in the sense that any answer would require going beyond subjective consciousness into the metaphysical realm of some theory of the human mind and of the physical world.
The question of free will does not even make sense in the context of subjective consciousness. And then it only makes sense in the context of objective consciousness if you interpret it away from the usual way it is done. Thus, if free will is defined as just the degree of autonomy of any objectively conscious being that can be regarded as a reasonably well-defined part of reality, then it's really obvious that human beings have free will, just as any ordinary car has it's own impetus relatively to the rest of the universe and each material body has its own weight relative to the Earth. You can try it, it works and it saves time.
Of course, you need to be reasonable. Free will in this sense belongs to the problem of objective consciousness and as such can only be something we believe exists rather than something we know exists.
EB
'Objective consciousness' refers to something we believe exists based on our interpretation of our (assumed) perceptions of the material world. We observe what we think of as other people and infer the cognitive capabilities we assume as necessary to navigate (what we think of as) the world. If there is indeed such a thing, then it must be highly selectable by evolution. But then, the question of its purpose doesn't make sense. It's just a fact of the world and it works, which has to be good enough as a justification for its observed existence.
But there's a second sense of consciousness which is subjective consciousness, often called 'subjective experience', if only to emphasise the distinction with objective consciousness. Subjective consciousness is the brute fact that I am subjectively aware of something. The 'I' here doesn't even refer to me as a person, a human being. Rather, it's the thing that is aware. This species of consciousness can be freely considered independently of any notion of its origin, cause, reason. It's just a brut fact. In my case, and I will guess that of many people, it includes something that the 'I' takes to be its self, its mind, its memories etc. We could speculate why that is, but that question properly belongs to the problem of objective consciousness in the sense that any answer would require going beyond subjective consciousness into the metaphysical realm of some theory of the human mind and of the physical world.
The question of free will does not even make sense in the context of subjective consciousness. And then it only makes sense in the context of objective consciousness if you interpret it away from the usual way it is done. Thus, if free will is defined as just the degree of autonomy of any objectively conscious being that can be regarded as a reasonably well-defined part of reality, then it's really obvious that human beings have free will, just as any ordinary car has it's own impetus relatively to the rest of the universe and each material body has its own weight relative to the Earth. You can try it, it works and it saves time.
Of course, you need to be reasonable. Free will in this sense belongs to the problem of objective consciousness and as such can only be something we believe exists rather than something we know exists.
EB
