I woke up this morning, my will formed by my brain/body/whatever. I wasn't willing anything while I was asleep.
So?
Follow the causal chain. At what point does your will magically separate from your brain and become an autonomous entity, instead of something more akin to the magnetic field caused by an arrangement of atoms that (the magnetic field) influences the atoms?
Why would LFW require any of that? Please be specific.
LFW requires that the brain does not
cause decisions to be made.
No, it doesn't. It requires is that decisions are not pre-determined. That's everything to do with the thesis that all events in the universe are (secretly) determined in advance. It's very little to do with the structure of the brain.
Is it possible you are confusing 'determined' with 'caused'? If I push a boulder down a hill, I've caused the boulder to fall down the hill. But I've not determined it.
In other words, the will caused by the brain must become autonomous in order to have LFW.
Only autonomous from pre-determination, not from the brain.
Anyway, LFW is not supported by neuroscience. No room for LFWoo.
Please state the conflict, without assuming determinism. Feel free to use as much technical language as you like. None of your examples appear to be incompatible with LFW.
You need to break your habit of defending LFW. There are plenty of morons who believe in it, but you are sharp enough to know better.
I don't consider determinism to be a workable thesis. Once determinism is ruled out, there's not really any reason to reject LFW.
So physicists consult with philosophers on anything other than philosophy of science courses?
Telling lies still isn't an argument.
So you weren't...
Telling lies still isn't going to get you anywhere.
You're arguing that the entire history of the universe is a single unbroken chain of determined events
A 4+ dimensional web of events is not a single chain by any means.
A single interlocking branching and weaving chain, but still a single-source unbroken chain nonetheless. An event in the present is still linked to the distant past, and events in the distant past are still, by definition, better predictors of future events than events in the present.
LFW has no requirement for non-existent stuff.
For something that doesn't exist to exist, it requires non-existent stuff to exist. LFW doesn't exist. I know, it's a tautology,
Then why are you presenting it?
but I'm not going to explain the whole non-existence of LFW in every single comment about its non existence.
How about doing it once? I don't believe you have anything to dismiss LFW that doesn't boil down to assuming determinism.
If you believe that 'brains generating our will' is incompatible with LFW, you need to say why.
The brain causes the will's existence, the will is not free from the characteristics the brain and
its own existence* cause it to have. *
In other words, after the will is caused to exist, its influence on the brain influences itself.
How does that make it incompatible with LFW? Do you believe that LFW is somehow dependent on will being unrelated to the brain, or it's own existence? Can you explain why?
I feel like I'm just asking the same questions over and over again, each time peeling back another layer of assumptions. You seem to have quite well-established views about what LFW requires that don't match those of anyone who supports LFW. If that's the point of disagreement, then it's not profitable to support your opinion by just referencing another opinion, equally disputed. Ideally we should be able to tie your objection back from a definition we both agree on (and we seem to be on the same page there) to something about LFW that is either true by definition, or can be argued to be logically necessary.
The problem there, of course, is that doing so in a complete and unambiguous fashion would be a huge amount of work for you. So practically we have to go with fairly scrappy references to arguments and expand where necessary.
But the gap is pretty huge. For example, I've not seen a convincing argument for:
LFW requiring independence from a physical brain
The output of physical systems (such as the brain) being predetermined
LFW requiring anything other than purely physical systems
LFW contradicting science in any way, not even by implication
Causation requiring or implying determinism
and so on. So assuming these things is just going to generate more requests for explanations, because I don't think these are points that you demonstrate.
The qualia of strawberry sundae (in a consciousness) cannot be broken down into individual momentum, position, charge, etc. portions and maintain an adequate description of the whole. In other words, you can't look at something as simply momentum, position, charge, etc. and capture the essence of the whole. The wavefunction of a strawberry sundae definitely does not capture the qualia, or describe it in a very meaningful way.
This is a discussion of qualia and the question of whether descriptions of qualities can scale. I'm not seeing the connection between this and QM.
So you can't see how the qualia of a strawberry sundae can be reconciled with the measurements of QM, since the measurements of QM do not include all of the properties of the system?
If you can't measure the strawberryness of an electron...
But that's a problem with any reduction. When you break down an explanation of the whole into an explanation of the parts, then information is lost. That's not a problem with qualia in particular, or even with QM. You can't measure the fire-stationess of a pile of bricks, but that doesn't mean that you can't build fire stations, or that fire stations aren't made of bricks. Same problem, no qualia involved, no QM involved. So how is this a problem with QM?
and you still havent' demonstrated anything about determinism being true or false.
Reality demonstrates that determinism is true.
Please state how. Without assuming determinism a priori.
Test reality for determinism, then test for non determinism.
Please state how. Without assuming determinism a priori.
Have you ever observed anything changing without something changing it? You don't have to assume anything.
Yes, of course I've observed something changing without observing anything changing it. So have you. This forum's posts change without us observing anything changing it. Granted you may have a fairly robust theory as to how they arise, based on theorising the existence of an entity called 'Togo' who originates infuriating messages. But that theory could be wrong, if the posts marked 'Togo' are actually created by a bot, or ryan wearing a wig and false moustache. Because you don't observe Togo changing the information on the forum. You just observe the change and then assume the cause. That's entirely typical.
Turn the question around. Have you ever observed an event, and
every single factor that was involved in that outcome. I haven't. I don't think it's possible. Yet this is what you're telling me you're observing. So it doesn't seem unreasonable to ask how.
The determinism you're proposing, in which there are no events other than determined events, is fairly hostile to local cause and effect, because all events are pre-determined in any case.
There can be nonlocal variables that weigh into decisions as well as local factors.
Of course, but that's not the point.
Take an event, a ball, that was at rest at the top of a hill, rolls down the hill.
Now, under cause and effect, the effect is the ball being set into motion, and the cause is me pushing it with a big stick. Other factors are involved, of course, but the proximate local cause is me.
Under determinism, the effect is still the ball being set into motion. It was set into motion by the stick, which was set into motion by my hand, which was set into motion by my brain, which was set into motion by my upbringing and genetics, which was set into motion by my existence, which was set into my motion by my parents, who were set into motion by a power cut, and so on back to the dawn of time. It doesn't make sense, under this system to assign the status of 'cause' to any specific step in the chain. Everything, all phenomena, and all events throughout all of history, have at best a single cause, the Big Bang, and even the status is that is dodgy (since it violates determinism). At worse, the concept of cause becomes an illusion.
If reality causes you to think certain things about reality (brain structure, environmental variables that impact brain structure, etc.), you don't actually have to argue for the position. It could be that certain individuals are simply unable to understand reality, because it is deterministic in the sense that you can't mix potato with a cucumber and get a toccata and fugue in d minor any more than you can get understanding from an inadequate neural substructure.
Great, so the world is divided into the believers and the unbelievers, who lack the undefinable substance to fully appreciate the majesty of G- sorry, of your theory.
Do I really need to explain the flaw with that one?
Why can't you share identity with your brain?
Why can't a magnet be the magnetic field it generates?
That doesn't answer the question. Can you give the actual answer, to either question, so I can understand what you're going on about?
