There isn't really a 'freewill problem'.

[ruby sparks]

But I thought I made myself clear, Emily. I'm a compatibilist. I'm not arguing against free will. I'm arguing that there is no conflict between what we normally mean by that expression and determinism, because choice is a fully determined process.

What 'we mean' is.....often vague. The term 'free will' means different things to different people.

 

[Subsymbolic]

Cool. I guess I was also wondering what where the content holders of rationality - are the conceptualised or non conceptualised. Are we talking about something like acting on your beliefs to bring about your desires and avoid your fears in a propositional attitude sort of way (Using something none too different from the laws of logic and narrative). Or do you have something more arcane in mind?

Basically, memory function enabling recognition. Without which, consciousness, the ability to associate information, reason and make decisions falls apart.


Quote;
Neuroscientists have repeatedly pointed out that pattern recognition represents the key to understanding cognition in humans. Pattern recognition also forms the very basis by which we predict future events, i e. we are literally forced to make assumptions concerning outcomes,and we do so by relying on sequences of events experienced in the past.

Huettel et al. point out that their study identifies the role various regions of prefrontal cortex play in moment-to-moment processing of mental events in order to make predictions about future events. Thus implicit predictive models are formed which need to be continuously updated, the disruption of sequence would indicate that the PFC is engaged in a novelty response to pattern changes. As a third possible explanation, Ivry and Knight propose that activation of the prefrontal cortex may reflect the generation of hypotheses, since the formulation of an hypothesis is an essential feature of higher-level cognition.
A monitoring of participants awareness during pattern recognition could provide a test of the PFC’s ability to formulate hypotheses concerning future outcomes.

I can see all of that as necessary, but not sufficient conditions for rationality. Rationality feels like it’s a bit more than pattern completion. Can you, for example, do justice to someone being asked, why did you do that?

 

[DBT]

Cool. I guess I was also wondering what where the content holders of rationality - are the conceptualised or non conceptualised. Are we talking about something like acting on your beliefs to bring about your desires and avoid your fears in a propositional attitude sort of way (Using something none too different from the laws of logic and narrative). Or do you have something more arcane in mind?

Basically, memory function enabling recognition. Without which, consciousness, the ability to associate information, reason and make decisions falls apart.


Quote;
Neuroscientists have repeatedly pointed out that pattern recognition represents the key to understanding cognition in humans. Pattern recognition also forms the very basis by which we predict future events, i e. we are literally forced to make assumptions concerning outcomes,and we do so by relying on sequences of events experienced in the past.

Huettel et al. point out that their study identifies the role various regions of prefrontal cortex play in moment-to-moment processing of mental events in order to make predictions about future events. Thus implicit predictive models are formed which need to be continuously updated, the disruption of sequence would indicate that the PFC is engaged in a novelty response to pattern changes. As a third possible explanation, Ivry and Knight propose that activation of the prefrontal cortex may reflect the generation of hypotheses, since the formulation of an hypothesis is an essential feature of higher-level cognition.
A monitoring of participants awareness during pattern recognition could provide a test of the PFC’s ability to formulate hypotheses concerning future outcomes.

I can see all of that as necessary, but not sufficient conditions for rationality. Rationality feels like it’s a bit more than pattern completion. Can you, for example, do justice to someone being asked, why did you do that?

''Why did you do that'' is a question, rationality is putting the 'patterns' of the reply into a coherent whole, listening, learning, acquiring information, developing an understanding of the elements of the reply, the possibilities, is it true, what are the motives, is something being hidden or downplayed...

 

[fromderinside]

When we make putting puppets on a string rational we've lost the thread.

 

[Subsymbolic]

I can see all of that as necessary, but not sufficient conditions for rationality. Rationality feels like it’s a bit more than pattern completion. Can you, for example, do justice to someone being asked, why did you do that?

''Why did you do that'' is a question, rationality is putting the 'patterns' of the reply into a coherent whole, listening, learning, acquiring information, developing an understanding of the elements of the reply, the possibilities, is it true, what are the motives, is something being hidden or downplayed...

Sure, so how would you reply if asked?

 

[Subsymbolic]

When we make putting puppets on a string rational we've lost the thread.

Really? So don't you think that following the laws of logic is just as restrictive (in a slightly different way) than the laws of physics? Because there is a problem, neatly summed up by Davidson here:

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/anomalous-monism/

Even if you don't buy the whole argument, the independence of some logical (mathematical) and intentional features is hard to ignore. There are simply things that one can do in logic and physics that the physical world cannot do. My current favourite example is the Banach -Tarski paradox, but there are other applications of the axiom of choice that are equally only possible in the Platonic spaces of maths rather than the physical world, despite being instantiated in the physical,

 

[ruby sparks]

When we make putting puppets on a string rational we've lost the thread.

To a large extent, it's semantic. What is meant by words like rational, choice, will, free, agency, etc?

They are fine as 'machine or system' terms, imo.

It's only when they are doused in 'special sauce' as far as we (human machines/systems) are concerned that we run into problems. Ideas about 'something more' often creep in, because we like to think we're spechul (more than 'just' machines) in a way that makes us fundamentally different. Religion hasn't helped dispel this notion, and we still live in a world saturated with religious influences, even if they are in many cases cultural remnants.

Imo, there are ways in which we are different, but not fundamentally. We have sophisticated capacities and features, which seem to be unique, as far as we can tell. We are sophisticated meat robots (or a conglomeration of subsystems of meat robots, which amounts to much the same thing).

Also, we don't really understand our own capacities very well, hence there is wiggle room for things we don't understand. Some fill this space with magik. To some, 'free will' is an everyday miracle, all the more compelling because it strongly feels like we have it.

I do not know, for example, what Jimmy Higgins and Emily Lake mean by the term 'free will'. As such, it's possible that everyone here is basically (more or less) agreeing without realising it.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

You have to train them because, according to determinists, you don't have a choice.

Don't have a choice or lean towards the path of least resistance?

Wiploc make joke.

I'm not a determinist myself, but a determinist would say that if you something, then you had to do it.

My apologies. My determinism sarcasm meter is a piece of crap. Got it on sale during Black Friday and regret ever buying it.

 

[Wiploc]

Wiploc make joke.

I'm not a determinist myself, but a determinist would say that if you something, then you had to do it.

My apologies. My determinism sarcasm meter is a piece of crap. Got it on sale during Black Friday and regret ever buying it.

Corduroy pillows are making headlines.

 

[Subsymbolic]

Wiploc make joke.

I'm not a determinist myself, but a determinist would say that if you something, then you had to do it.

My apologies. My determinism sarcasm meter is a piece of crap. Got it on sale during Black Friday and regret ever buying it.

Corduroy pillows are making headlines.

Corduroy pillows are a groovy way of getting your head down!

 

[Speakpigeon]

Stochastic processes are not inevitable until they have concluded. I'm happy to dump will and freewill, but you are going to struggle to sell rejecting ideas like choice, especially in a system that is in the business of predicting and explaining itself.

However, I'm keen to see the argument.

”Choice” and ”decision” are high level terms we use to describe perceived behavior. There is nothing physical to it.

But there is something physical.

People are human beings, which all have a physical body, and a human body has a reasonably well-defined physical boundary, which in turn defines a physical inside and a physical outside of this body, the latter being something which is the object of meticulous and detailed studies and research by perfectly respectable scientists.

The upshot of this fact is that whatever happens inside a human body at any given point in time is determined by its physical state at that point. And then, I'm pretty sure all scientists concerned are convinced that whatever a human being does is best explained by the physical state of his body immediately before doing it. That's true because that's true of just about anything physical, save perhaps some weird particles and fundamental things.

And then the difference between a human being and, say, a rock, is that the rock does not have anything like a representation of the world to decide what to do next. It does not have, like humans do, the ability to represent a number of alternative actions, all different, select one among them, perform the one he will have selected, and perform this action in a way pretty close to the one imagined initially. We definitely do that.

We even make computers perform a vastly simplified but nonetheless very effective version of what we do.

As I see it, that's essentially what people mean by free will and we all have that.

This is also independent of the precise nature of the world we live in, whether deterministic or not.

To be fair, I have to say that perhaps this view is in fact wrong. For example, maybe what we do is in fact decided by some almighty god. However, the view I have outlined is the one most people believe is true, including most scientists, including people who repeat 'free will doesn't exist' from sunrise to sunset.
EB

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Can someone explain manners and a lack of free will? You have young children and older children. Young children are dumb when it comes to social etiquette. Why is it, when taught about it, that they change their behavior. How is a lack of free will not interfering with such a substantial change in behavior?

Take this chart which is a basic chart showing proper social behavior for a child and how it improves. I'm supposed to believe there is no free will when children, who are taught to behave, behave and act more socially appropriate? That the bump in the graph is meaningless, in the context of being taught to act in certain manners?

View attachment 13955

Again, this isn't remotely my position, but the standard response would be that all that training in the social niceties is simply deterministic input - each lesson a little billiard ball nudge changing the vector of the child's dispositional states.

I don't think I can accept that. We are nudging a child's vector for making choices? We are doing a lot more than that. The path of least resistance never gets easier. Choosing to do right requires input.

Move on to drug dependence. How can one argue that someone who becomes an alcoholic, but then refrains from alcohol use after realizing a problem. How can determinism explain that? The person is susceptible to addiction, becomes addicted, but then becomes free from the addictive actions.

I can say for certain people, there can be a range of likely actions for them to take, but to declare it set in stone seems way too binary for a gray world. In general, we are not steadfast entities. We are not the same person from moment to moment as our observation and experiences change who we are. Determinism would seem to imply that we are the same person, and each choice is brought about by whatever switches go off in our minds.

 

[Subsymbolic]

Can someone explain manners and a lack of free will? You have young children and older children. Young children are dumb when it comes to social etiquette. Why is it, when taught about it, that they change their behavior. How is a lack of free will not interfering with such a substantial change in behavior?

Take this chart which is a basic chart showing proper social behavior for a child and how it improves. I'm supposed to believe there is no free will when children, who are taught to behave, behave and act more socially appropriate? That the bump in the graph is meaningless, in the context of being taught to act in certain manners?

View attachment 13955

Again, this isn't remotely my position, but the standard response would be that all that training in the social niceties is simply deterministic input - each lesson a little billiard ball nudge changing the vector of the child's dispositional states.

I don't think I can accept that. We are nudging a child's vector for making choices? We are doing a lot more than that. The path of least resistance never gets easier. Choosing to do right requires input.

Move on to drug dependence. How can one argue that someone who becomes an alcoholic, but then refrains from alcohol use after realizing a problem. How can determinism explain that? The person is susceptible to addiction, becomes addicted, but then becomes free from the addictive actions.

I can say for certain people, there can be a range of likely actions for them to take, but to declare it set in stone seems way too binary for a gray world. In general, we are not steadfast entities. We are not the same person from moment to moment as our observation and experiences change who we are. Determinism would seem to imply that we are the same person, and each choice is brought about by whatever switches go off in our minds.

What I don't get here is why you think that someone who is determined, (not that I believe this, of course) who has all the processes going on in their head, all the neurons firing and so on leading to entirely determined thought processes including utterly determined praising, blaming and so on. Why can't this be any less able to appear to work than whatever your option is. Describing it as 'switches going off in our minds is simply a leading description - determined certainly doesn't mean simplified - it can be as complex as you like, just determined. A determined person is exactly as mutable over time, it's just that these changes are determined. Which reminds me, how exactly are you imagining a non determined person escaping addiction. What is your account of a reforming addict?

 

[Subsymbolic]

Stochastic processes are not inevitable until they have concluded. I'm happy to dump will and freewill, but you are going to struggle to sell rejecting ideas like choice, especially in a system that is in the business of predicting and explaining itself.

However, I'm keen to see the argument.

”Choice” and ”decision” are high level terms we use to describe perceived behavior. There is nothing physical to it.

But there is something physical.

People are human beings, which all have a physical body, and a human body has a reasonably well-defined physical boundary, which in turn defines a physical inside and a physical outside of this body, the latter being something which is the object of meticulous and detailed studies and research by perfectly respectable scientists.

The upshot of this fact is that whatever happens inside a human body at any given point in time is determined by its physical state at that point. And then, I'm pretty sure all scientists concerned are convinced that whatever a human being does is best explained by the physical state of his body immediately before doing it. That's true because that's true of just about anything physical, save perhaps some weird particles and fundamental things.

And then the difference between a human being and, say, a rock, is that the rock does not have anything like a representation of the world to decide what to do next. It does not have, like humans do, the ability to represent a number of alternative actions, all different, select one among them, perform the one he will have selected, and perform this action in a way pretty close to the one imagined initially. We definitely do that.

We even make computers perform a vastly simplified but nonetheless very effective version of what we do.

As I see it, that's essentially what people mean by free will and we all have that.

This is also independent of the precise nature of the world we live in, whether deterministic or not.

To be fair, I have to say that perhaps this view is in fact wrong. For example, maybe what we do is in fact decided by some almighty god. However, the view I have outlined is the one most people believe is true, including most scientists, including people who repeat 'free will doesn't exist' from sunrise to sunset.
EB

Ok, now tell me about a mathematician calculating the Banach Tarski paradox:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banach–Tarski_paradox

Everything supervenes upon the physical but there are plenty of people who recognise that some things, especially logical and mathematical things, are irreducibly emergent - such that the physical state doesn't allow you to work out the logical or mathematical outcome. The Banach Tarski paradox (so called because of the clear disjunction between physical expectation and mathematical proof) is one example and Donald Davidson and Jaegwon Kim discuss other examples in exhaustive detail.

I'd also note that rather a lot of cognitive scientists are also externalists and are increasingly less convinced that the boundary of skin and skull is as much of a cognitive boundary as it is a physical one.

The state of the art moves on while the Free Will Problem remains frozen in amber like some sort of Jurassic mosquito.

 

[ryan]

”Choice” and ”decision” are high level terms we use to describe perceived behavior. There is nothing physical to it.

Would that be a nonphysical entity then?

 

[fromderinside]

I'm pretty sure the humans as articulating agents could make similar arguments for frogs, leopards, whales, catfish,. .... and bacteria. They don't because doing so would defeat their claims of uniqueness.

 

[Juma]

”Choice” and ”decision” are high level terms we use to describe perceived behavior. There is nothing physical to it.

Would that be a nonphysical entity then?

No. What I meant is that there is nothing special that occurs when we press the left button instead of the right. There is no specific shift in how the mind works. There is no point of decision. There can be a point when we realize what we are doing and it is that that fools us into believing that we make a choice.
The brain continously steers its way through reality.

 

[ryan]

”Choice” and ”decision” are high level terms we use to describe perceived behavior. There is nothing physical to it.

Would that be a nonphysical entity then?

No. What I meant is that there is nothing special that occurs when we press the left button instead of the right. There is no specific shift in how the mind works. There is no point of decision.

So you say. Yet QM says differently.

There can be a point when we realize what we are doing and it is that that fools us into believing that we make a choice.
The brain continously steers its way through reality.

 

[DBT]

I can see all of that as necessary, but not sufficient conditions for rationality. Rationality feels like it’s a bit more than pattern completion. Can you, for example, do justice to someone being asked, why did you do that?

''Why did you do that'' is a question, rationality is putting the 'patterns' of the reply into a coherent whole, listening, learning, acquiring information, developing an understanding of the elements of the reply, the possibilities, is it true, what are the motives, is something being hidden or downplayed...

Sure, so how would you reply if asked?

I couldn't guess. I'd have to be in that situation...whatever it is.

 

[Juma]

No. What I meant is that there is nothing special that occurs when we press the left button instead of the right. There is no specific shift in how the mind works. There is no point of decision.

So you say. Yet QM says differently.

The brain is not a quatum computer.