A simple explanation of free will.

[Juma]

Which says as a lot. About you.

Nah, he's right. Bluntly saying something is shit isn't an argument. Saying that something is obvious isn't an argument, saying that you've already demonstrated something, while being unable to cite or link to that demonstration, isn't an argument. Saying lots of people disagree with you isn't an argument.

If people had spent even half the time addressing the actual issues that they have trying to rubbish or intimidate ryan, the discussion would have gotten a lot further.

Wait. What? I thought that first section was about ryan? Because it fits perfectly.

 

[fromderinside]

Consciousness. If nothing is created there is nothing to explain except why the individual who believes there is a consciousness so believes.

This answer requires some expansion.

Not really. If you make the claim that consciousness doesn't exist, then you don't need to create anything. Eliminativism always seems attractive in that way. The problem comes with trying to pretend that nothing on the list actually exists. You need some fairly aggressive criteria to justify it. I'm not seeing those criteria here.

The 'this' in my last sentence refers to those who believe in consciousness. Please to respond to what is written. Referring to your previous post, just as you can claim no argument I can claim no response. Yes, I presumed the arguments in previous posts, as claimed by ryan had been read so 'shit' response applies to his claims based on previous, primarily DBT, argument which is what I was referencing.

That's it for now since I'm off to Bandon by the Sea Oregon for meds, lunch at Toni's Crab shack, to and nearby Coquille ​for tomatoes.

Address the rest later. Have a nice day.

 

[ryan]

Which says as a lot. About you.

Nah, he's right. Bluntly saying something is shit isn't an argument. Saying that something is obvious isn't an argument, saying that you've already demonstrated something, while being unable to cite or link to that demonstration, isn't an argument. Saying lots of people disagree with you isn't an argument.

If people had spent even half the time addressing the actual issues that they have trying to rubbish or intimidate ryan, the discussion would have gotten a lot further.

Thanks Togo

 

[Kharakov]

I'm not interested in guessing my way to your point, so please just state it.

You can find structures, in the brain, that select from various options. These structures pre-exist the options that they select from. They determine the outcome of selections before you are even aware of the selections being made. When weighing possible paths, your brain doesn't have access to certain bits of information, so has to approximate/fill in the gaps with pseudorandom information that it does have, which works most of the time.

If things in reality didn't follow certain paths, it wouldn't be useful to know and select from those paths now, would it?

Will needs to be free of whatever substructures that cause it to select one path over another for LFW.

Why? It needs not to be determined by substructures, but in the absence of determinism, being connected to and influenced by those substructures isn't a problem.

If you assume absence of determinism, sure. If you observe reality, and stop assuming absence of determinism, you'll actually see determinism in action. You can LFW of the gaps all you want, but it's no more real than the invisible pink unicorn neighing in your ear.

Telling lies still won't get you anywhere.

If that were true, would you continue to avoid the truth about your claims?

No, they don't. There is an unsubtle difference between things you observe and things you believe. No amount of being really, really, sure you're right, bridges that gap.

The existence of other minds is observed by their affect upon reality. You don't observe their existence directly, but you do observe their existence (inductive reasoning).

 

[ryan]

If you assume absence of determinism, sure. If you observe reality, and stop assuming absence of determinism, you'll actually see determinism in action. You can LFW of the gaps all you want, but it's no more real than the invisible pink unicorn neighing in your ear.

The deterministic aspect of reality is the result of what QM does. It's not hard to imagine what the universe could have been if QM is fundamental to it. Also, as the universe gets old, it will become more and more random/chaotic; entropy and information entropy increases.

The universe may have started from random fluctuations, and it might end in the "heat death" where it will be ruled by randomness and chaos.

Luckily for us we are at a perfect time in the evolution of our universe and in a very particular universe that supports life. In many other universes, and in many other times in this universe, we wouldn't exist or observe these temporary constant aspects of it.

 

[OLDMAN]

You just expressed them physically on a screen. Thankyou.

Cool. Tell me about the character I'm creating for a story. I've expressed it physically to you, so you should be able to describe it, right? Or is it really a referent to something that isn't expressed physically at all?

Or if you prefer, the next two lines to the poem in point 1). The poem I'm expressing physically.

Most philosophers tend to struggle with the idea that written words are identical with the concept being expressed, for fairly obvious and practical reasons.

Expression and meaning are two different things. A bat may experience a thunderstorm much differently than you and I, because it's sensory perceptions are different...the whole world doesn't need to understand from the same perspective. But that doesn't matter, things exist in the physical world of your mind...through a variety of chemical and electrical reactions...how you understand them is not relevant.

 

[fromderinside]

One would expect consciousness if one created mind in a species that It considered meaningful. No? It's just evolution? Right. No problem then. Let evolution work as it seems to do, opportunistically going from one working iteration to another, using the same basic package. From such a process one wouldn't expect some design concept or even some design. Rather one would expect a bunch of solutions that might be cobbled together into a, perhaps several, functioning entities. This is what cognitive neuroscientists are consistently reporting.

Yes and no. What they report are several very well coordinated functioning entites. To the extent that in some cases the coordination is all that makes the subsystem useful. For example, the visual system doesn't assemble a collection of edges and surfaces and then try and use memory to try and match that to a known scene - it refernces memory very early on, in deciding what the basic shapes are. Yes, it's still a specialised subsystem, but it's an integrated specialised subsystem.

So the functioning entities (vision for instance) are themselves complete systems then? No. Visual information passing up the visual pathways and information interacted by descending processes as well as activities specific to specialized structures along they pathway are all contributing to what field and decision processes require to function as well as other processes doing other chores. The visual system makes no decisions about tokens. It has large responsibilities in forming them, but, even there visual processes don't form tokens used by decision processes or by any other processes.

Several memory processes interact with visual processes to several ends in forming, comparing, using visual bits, tokens, even fields. These do not then become visual bit, tokens, fields. They are appropriately grouped information which is then exercised more or less continuously over some appropriate interval for various uses and outcomes.

It just isn't true that the visual system consisting of structures along the visual pathway from eye to cortex is the thing that produces things for use at the cortex by other chieftain processes which aren't such either. The brain isn't compartmentalized neatly into sensory systems that do just sensory work, memory systems that do just memory work, arbitrate and decide systems which just arbitrate and decide. That's not the evolved brain. For instance comparative analysis has shown executive function in  Pons,  Midbrain, as well as  Cerebral cortex.

Oversimplification just isn't going to get us to where we need to go. Referring to apparent groupings as if they are actual functions isn't right. It is no more right than some latter day Horace Barlow declaring visual rationale for the Togo cortical cell.

Organize all you want. Just don't ascribe function to the structure of your organization. I know its tough for an articulating self referencing being to take scientific findings and not ascribe purpose to those findings. Resist the temptation. There. Now I've said it twice.

 

[Togo]

Consciousness. If nothing is created there is nothing to explain except why the individual who believes there is a consciousness so believes.

This answer requires some expansion.

Not really. If you make the claim that consciousness doesn't exist, then you don't need to create anything. Eliminativism always seems attractive in that way. The problem comes with trying to pretend that nothing on the list actually exists. You need some fairly aggressive criteria to justify it. I'm not seeing those criteria here.

The 'this' in my last sentence refers to those who believe in consciousness. Please to respond to what is written.

If it's clear, I will.

Ok, so you're claiming that consciousness, being nothing, has nothing that needs explaining. And thus that it needs explaining. I'm afraid I don't follow.

The point I'm making is that we know consciousness exists as a phenomenon, as something we experience. Whatever your explanation for that, that needs explaining. Hence, even arguing that consciousness is some kind of illusion, or that it's not involved in decision making, needs explanation. Since we already know very broadly how decision making works, we have an explanation for that. So if you want to include consciousness in decision making, then there are some issues, around determinism etc., but the role does not need to be explained, because it's part of something already in our model. If you exclude consciousness from that, then suddenly you have something extra to explain, which is how this phenomenon works as something separate and distinct from decision making, and yet so closely matched to it. Claiming that consciousness is an illusion means you have more to explain, not less.

Referring to your previous post, just as you can claim no argument I can claim no response.

No, because a response implies an argument to reply to. As long as you or anyone else is just slinging insults, then you can't claim no response.

Yes, I presumed the arguments in previous posts,

And that's the problem. If you can just bring yourself to copy and post whatever portion of the previous argument hasn't been addressed, rather than writing insults, then the argument would be over, because according to you Ryan can't address it. So why not do that?

I'll hazard a guess it's because your argument isn't, in fact, all that convincing. And reposting it would beg the question of what Ryan's response at the time was, and why you have judged that to not answer your point.

Remember, this is a philosophy forum. The end state is an irrefutable argument, or failing that, a very persuasive argument. Your argument? - Well, clearly you don't think much of it, or else you wouldn't be ignoring it to throw random insults.

I'm not trying to pick on you in particular - this is general problem. But ultimately no one cares about the guy who claims to have an argument that's irrefutable but which he won't post.

 

[Togo]

You can find structures, in the brain, that select from various options. These structures pre-exist the options that they select from. They determine the outcome of selections before you are even aware of the selections being made.

Well hang on. Determinism is the idea that the outcome is fixed. Processing does not determine the outcome, it merely contributes causally to the result. As it does under LFW. So what's the point you're making?

If things in reality didn't follow certain paths, it wouldn't be useful to know and select from those paths now, would it?

And you're assuming this doesn't happen under LFW because?

Appreciate I'm pushing you here, but I asked you to state your point, and you still haven't done so.

Will needs to be free of whatever substructures that cause it to select one path over another for LFW.

Why? It needs not to be determined by substructures, but in the absence of determinism, being connected to and influenced by those substructures isn't a problem.

If you assume absence of determinism, sure.

Ok, so contrary to what you said, will does not need to be free of it's own substructures.

If you observe reality, and stop assuming absence of determinism, you'll actually see determinism in action.

Nope. Determinism still isn't an observation, not matter how sure you are.

Telling lies still won't get you anywhere.

If that were true, would you continue to avoid the truth about your claims?

Telling lies still won't get you anywhere.

No, they don't. There is an unsubtle difference between things you observe and things you believe. No amount of being really, really, sure you're right, bridges that gap.

The existence of other minds is observed by their affect upon reality.

No, the patterns of reality are observed, and we postulate or infer the existence of other minds from that observation.

This distinction between theory and observation is critically important, to science, to logic, and great deal else besides.

You don't observe their existence directly, but you do observe their existence (inductive reasoning).

No, inductive reasoning is not an observation.

You can come up with as many different ways to say the same thing as you like , but it still isn't true.

If you like, we can take this particular disagreement to the science boards, and you can try and convince them that having a theory of something consistent with observation is the same as observing it. I don't give much for your chances though.

 

[Kharakov]

Well hang on. Determinism is the idea that the outcome is fixed. Processing does not determine the outcome, it merely contributes causally to the result. As it does under LFW. So what's the point you're making?

Determinism: the side of the scale that is higher (selected for) is due to factors
LFW: the side of the scale that is lower (selected against) is not due to factors

In LFW, the scale ultimately decides which object is heavier, given objects that are very similar in weight. A witch would be at the mercy of the scale if she was of similar mass to a duck.

In determinism, the mass of objects on either side of the scale determines which object is heavier, as long as the weight difference between the 2 sides is greater than the contribution of magma density fluctuations to the weighing of the object, the atmosphere is controlled in the weighing room (so pressure fluctuations, etc. do not contribute), the light density of the room is controlled (for radiation pressure contributions), etc. Without LFW, the witch is totally at the mercy of environmental fluctuations, assuming she weighs very close to the amount that Schrodinger's duck weighs. And even then, we cannot rule out fluctuations due to solar neutrinos passing through the objects/scale, so we have limits of precision of measurement. Lots of stuff going on.

So LFW just says "write off everything we've seen in reality- don't explore, there is this LFW stuff in the gaps in our explanations".
Determinism says "eliminate variables until you can eliminate no more. You cannot eliminate certain variables, but this does not mean they don't exist- learn, refine your knowledge, explore, and be part of what is."

It really boils down to LFW of the gaps. As more scientific knowledge is accumulated, LFW has less places to hide.

Telling lies still won't get you anywhere.

If that were true, would you continue to avoid the truth about your claims?

Telling lies still won't get you anywhere.

So why don't you correct your false claims? Because others have to? Why aren't you honest about your mistakes- do you gain something by deceiving others?

No, they don't. There is an unsubtle difference between things you observe and things you believe. No amount of being really, really, sure you're right, bridges that gap.

The existence of other minds is observed by their affect upon reality.

No, the patterns of reality are observed, and we postulate or infer the existence of other minds from that observation.

Observation through inference is still mental observation. Observe: to come to realize or know especially through consideration of noted facts

If you like, we can take this particular disagreement to the science boards, and you can try and convince them that having a theory of something consistent with observation is the same as observing it.

Take it up with a dictionary first.

 

[Togo]

Determinism: the side of the scale that is higher (selected for) is due to factors
LFW: the side of the scale that is lower (selected against) is not due to factors

In LFW, the scale ultimately decides which object is heavier, given objects that are very similar in weight.

A scale has free will? According to whom?

In determinism, the mass of objects on either side of the scale determines which object is heavier, as long as the weight difference between the 2 sides is greater than the contribution of magma density fluctuations to the weighing of the object, the atmosphere is controlled in the weighing room (so pressure fluctuations, etc. do not contribute), the light density of the room is controlled (for radiation pressure contributions), etc. Without LFW, the witch is totally at the mercy of environmental fluctuations, assuming she weighs very close to the amount that Schrodinger's duck weighs. And even then, we cannot rule out fluctuations due to solar neutrinos passing through the objects/scale, so we have limits of precision of measurement. Lots of stuff going on.

So LFW just says "write off everything we've seen in reality- don't explore, there is this LFW stuff in the gaps in our explanations".

No, it doesn't.

I appreciate that lack of determinism can be scary to some people. Gödel's findings caused a huge crisis of faith amongst those who sought absolute precision in their work. QM is roundly condemned by those who acknowledge its accuracy. But Science never needed a deterministic universe, any more than it needed the ability to observe every factor.

Determinism says "eliminate variables until you can eliminate no more.

That's Reductionism, not Determinism.

Telling lies still won't get you anywhere.

If that were true, would you continue to avoid the truth about your claims?

Telling lies still won't get you anywhere.

So why don't you correct your false claims? Because others have to? Why aren't you honest about your mistakes- do you gain something by deceiving others?

Telling lies still won't get you anywhere.

No, they don't. There is an unsubtle difference between things you observe and things you believe. No amount of being really, really, sure you're right, bridges that gap.

The existence of other minds is observed by their affect upon reality.

No, the patterns of reality are observed, and we postulate or infer the existence of other minds from that observation.

Observation through inference is still mental observation. Observe: to come to realize or know especially through consideration of noted facts

No, it really isn't. Coming to realise something is not observation.

If you like, we can take this particular disagreement to the science boards, and you can try and convince them that having a theory of something consistent with observation is the same as observing it.

Take it up with a dictionary first.

What would be the point? Dictionaries record informal and colloquial uses as well as rigorous ones.

Try an example: There are millions of people, who, through noting the very factual existence of various holy books and historical events, have inferred the existence of a deity. You're seriously arguing that they have observed this deity?

 

[ryan]

I appreciate that lack of determinism can be scary to some people. Gödel's findings caused a huge crisis of faith amongst those who sought absolute precision in their work. QM is roundly condemned by those who acknowledge its accuracy. But Science never needed a deterministic universe, any more than it needed the ability to observe every factor.

I hope this is not what is underlying all of this. But if it is, determinism seems to be the worse of the two. What if our determined future is just hell and horror for all of eternity? At least with free will or indeterminism we seem to choose paths that are good for ourselves and others.

 

[fromderinside]

Now we get to the meat.

Having such does not imply mind nor consciousness underlying,

Not in and of itself, no. But then that's not being claimed. The point is that if you don't want to have a mind, or a functional consciousness, then[.strike] you still need all the coherance and cross checking and processing that we appear to do in the mind. If you want to argue that consciousness is an illusion, then you need to work out how all this is being done. If your explanation is simply that physical systems do everything that our consciousness would do, then you're not eliminating consciousness at all,you're just claiming it's physical. To claim it's illusory, is to claim that there is a different process, that works differently, and yet still produces a picture coherant with out mental experience. That's a lot of coordination between the mechanism and behavior the consciousness, none of which is strictly necessary to explain what's going on.

Basically, the further you get from a theory of mind, the more you need to explain deviations from it, and the more difficult the apparent coordination between mind and action becomes.

I accept your descriptions sans the terms 'mind' and 'consciousness'

Finally. It is not legitimate to presume consciousness from attended since attended is known to be various and disparate simultaneously.

So is consciousness. What of it?

good question. Its one I began to answer below without using references. I shall supply some further below.

That is they are attendings first where one of several attends is selected at articulation as social demand products

No, you can have pre-articulation attention. And attention can retard performance as well as boost it, so the question still remains why it is necessary at all? Why does it exist, why is it unitary, why is it more closely related to mental experience than other forms of processing?

I agree attending is also associated with other than articulations. As for necessary, it isn't. the illusion argument demonstrates that. for Again, there are references.

For the the above arguments one shouldn't, IMHO, presume mind.

No one is. That's not a list of reasons to presume mind, but rather a list of problems to resolve if you wish to remove mind.

I see the list otherwise. I see it as invented impediments to defeating mind and consciousness presuming self evidence based theory.

Here are a list of references I've provided on this topic in the past.

The claustrum’s proposed role in consciousness is supported by the effect and target localization of Salvia divinorumhttp://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3935397/


You should love this one. It presumes a 'unifying function' they label as consciousness. On that I disagree. In fairness even they find other structures and processes demonstrating many of the same attributes as does their target the claustrum. I'd like to add, if they haven't already, the   locus coeruleus which is significantly involved in arousal, attending and integration with one pathway reaching across the cortex at right angles to afferent processes. The references contained within this article reflect studies from anatomical/physiological/evolutionary perspective as I was dong when I was doing such research in the seventies.

Is consciousness epiphenomenal?Social neuroscience and the case forinteracting brains http://www.euresisjournal.org/public/issue/pdf/EJv2012-03.pdf#page=31

This article more nearly supports an approach similar to the one I'm presuming based on my experience in sensory, motivational, and evolutionary neuroscience. It is only one is a set of articles, all of which are available to you via the above citation, that are interesting and divergent on the topic of consciousness published in 2012.

I'll conclude my comments on this reference with a quote from other than my target in this set.

The main topic of all reductionists, eliminativists, scientists, materialists is that every activity,thought, feeling, desire or experience implies (but not depends upon) brain activity.These data are reported as a novelty made possible by modern exploration techniques ofcortical functions. But neurologists knew about this for almost 200 years: the structure andfunctions of the brain were, in fact, discovered by observing and studying these natural experiments,which are the diseases of the CNS. For example, neurologists know that a lesionof Wernike’s cortical area, in the posterior third of the superior temporal gyrus, that allowsthe understanding of spoken and written language, determines the appearance of a real andsevere dementia: the disappearance of the opportunity to realize the meaning of words impliesthe loss of opportunity to think. Therefore it is important to realize that this does notimply that mental activity is then generated, determined, caused by brain activity!

From: Understanding consciousness:Need for a sound and reasonablestarting point in the citation above.

Finally, let me provide some slog work. This is a two experiment study "where ... in perceptual information processing is whether stimuli are composed of separable dimensions, which are highly analyzable, or integral dimensions, which are processed holistically". Normally I'm opposed to two level studies, but, this one is interesting in that it diverges from previous separable dimension stimuli study results.

The results of this study highlight a fundamental distinction in the architectures underlying the processing of separable- versus integral-dimension stimuli in tasks of rule-based categorization.Past tests of the logical-rule models indicated that in cases involving separable-dimension stimuli, rule-based classification decision making operates via serial or mixed serial/parallel processing ofthe individual dimensions that compose the stimuli (Little et al.,2011). From a psychological perspective, the idea is that the observer makes separate decisions along each individual dimension regarding the category region in which a stimulus falls. These separate decisions are then combined to determine which logical rule has been satisfied. By contrast, the present results suggest that a dramatically different coactive process operates when people classify integral-dimension stimuli into rule-based categories. In coactive processing, rather than making separate decisions along each individual dimension, information from the individual dimensions is instead pooled into a single channel that governs categorization decision making. These results converge with past classic ones in the field that suggest that integral-dimension stimuli are perceived and processed in “holistic” fashion (e.g., Garner, 1974).The work goes well beyond classic previous results, however, by formalizing the manner in which the pooled, holistic perceptual information is accumulated to yield classification decisions in rule-based categorization tasks.

Such leaves in place the possibility that stuff is funneled through a single processor where decisions are made IAC with holistic mind models. Again not my result, but, interesting in that procedural differences produce differing results, which when thought about, are suggestive of a many processor model.

We both have a lot to play within this little sand box which we can add to Wegne, Jon Dylan Haynes, and your corresponding academic neuroscience counters.

A last study including Patrick Haggard as an author found that there is no 'free won't" either.

There Is No Free Won’t: Antecedent Brain Activity Predicts Decisions to Inhibit
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0053053

Neuroscience cannot straightforwardly accommodate a concept of “conscious free will”, independent of brain activity [42]. However, the belief that humans have free will is fundamental to human society [43]. This belief has profound top-down effects on cognition [44] and even on brain activity itself [45]. The dualistic view that decisions to inhibit reflect a special “conscious veto” or “free won’t” mechanism [46] is scientifically unwarranted. Instead, conscious decisions to check and delay our actions may themselves be consequences of specific brain mechanisms linked to action preparation and action monitoring [19]. Recent neuroscientific studies have strongly questioned the concept of free will, but have had difficulty addressing the alternative concept of free won’t, largely because of the absence of behavioural markers of inhibition. Our results suggest that an important aspect of “free” decisions to inhibit can be explained without recourse to an endogenous, ”uncaused” process: the cause of our “free decisions” may at least in part, be simply the background stochastic fluctuations of cortical excitability. Our results suggest that free won’t may be no more free than free will.

Enjoy.


I really needed to dump this to get the discussion off the usual pap about will, mind, and consciousness. Its a much more interesting discussion than "I've got it", "you've got it", "so its there kind" of thing or the "what we don't know about things (QM comes to mind) explains the mystery of will, mind, and the American, er, British way.

PS

Just a drive by from your post to Kharakov where Togo wrote:

QM is roundly condemned by those who acknowledge its accuracy.

QM isn't accurate. That's the point. Its applicable to what we can't measure. Its utility is impressive. Most recently its organization was most useful in directing physicists to aim at a particular energy for Higgs Boson in their work with CERN's Large Hadron Collider.

 

[Kharakov]

In determinism, the mass of objects on either side of the scale determines which object is heavier, as long as the weight difference between the 2 sides is greater than the contribution of magma density fluctuations to the weighing of the object, the atmosphere is controlled in the weighing room (so pressure fluctuations, etc. do not contribute), the light density of the room is controlled (for radiation pressure contributions), etc. Without LFW, the witch is totally at the mercy of environmental fluctuations, assuming she weighs very close to the amount that Schrodinger's duck weighs. And even then, we cannot rule out fluctuations due to solar neutrinos passing through the objects/scale, so we have limits of precision of measurement. Lots of stuff going on.

So LFW just says "write off everything we've seen in reality- don't explore, there is this LFW stuff in the gaps in our explanations".

No, it doesn't.

The gap is apparently too small for belief in LFW to exist anywhere without the twin pillars of ignorance and denial. You're lucky: someone who knows very little is born each second. That is the basis of all financial speculation.

Show

Telling lies still won't get you anywhere.

If that were true, would you continue to avoid the truth about your claims?

Telling lies still won't get you anywhere.

So why don't you correct your false claims? Because others have to? Why aren't you honest about your mistakes- do you gain something by deceiving others?

Telling lies ...

Since you've established that you defend things which you must know to be false, why should anyone trust anything you say? Why wouldn't you just have admitted what you said was not true? To sustain a conversation that would die if you admitted the truth?

Observe: to come to realize or know especially through consideration of noted facts

No, it really isn't. Coming to realise something is not observation.

Tell that to Merriam Webster. Ohh- yeah, you don't believe in dictionaries, because they include common usages of terms.

In the context of this conversation, my usage of the term is quite obviously the common one that is not concerned with primary acquisition of sensory or instrument data, rather it refers to secondary data acquisition (such as other minds exist) based on primary data that has been acquired (realize through consideration of noted facts).

There are millions of people, who, through noting the very factual existence of various holy books and historical events, have inferred the existence of a deity. You're seriously arguing that they have observed this deity?

You do know that people directly observe hallucinations, don't you? They don't infer them (secondary observation), but they perceive them directly, even if they are caused by a disruption of their normal brain activity by a spirit that can only interact with sufficiently developed brains in a meaningful manner (without causing confusion about reality).

 

[DBT]

But if it is, determinism seems to be the worse of the two.

It hardly makes any difference. Your physical makeup, character, thoughts and actions are determined by antecedent events, shaped and formed by a determined world. On the other hand, if quantum randomness acts upon your brain at micro level, altering perception and thought in random and non chosen ways....you are shaped and formed and act and think in non chosen, non willed ways...which may be contrary to your developed wants and needs. Which thwarts and frustrates the course of your desires.

At least with free will or indeterminism we seem to choose paths that are good for ourselves and others.

Nah, you are still equating non chosen random input into decision making on a micro scale as a choice....something which quite clearly is not chosen. You are just saying something that appeals to you * free will* - whoo Hoo - but has no apparent relationship to the means of production of conscious will.

 

[Togo]

Not in and of itself, no. But then that's not being claimed. The point is that if you don't want to have a mind, or a functional consciousness, then[.strike] you still need all the coherance and cross checking and processing that we appear to do in the mind. If you want to argue that consciousness is an illusion, then you need to work out how all this is being done. If your explanation is simply that physical systems do everything that our consciousness would do, then you're not eliminating consciousness at all,you're just claiming it's physical. To claim it's illusory, is to claim that there is a different process, that works differently, and yet still produces a picture coherant with out mental experience. That's a lot of coordination between the mechanism and behavior the consciousness, none of which is strictly necessary to explain what's going on.

Basically, the further you get from a theory of mind, the more you need to explain deviations from it, and the more difficult the apparent coordination between mind and action becomes.

I accept your descriptions sans the terms 'mind' and 'consciousness'

Absent those terms, it's no longer my description.

For the the above arguments one shouldn't, IMHO, presume mind.

No one is. That's not a list of reasons to presume mind, but rather a list of problems to resolve if you wish to remove mind.

I see the list otherwise.

That's nice, but that doesn't change what the list is for.

Again, my view of the essence of eliminativism is that it seeks to narrow the field of discourse (not necessarily a bad thing) not by answering questions, but by restricting the kinds of questions that can be asked. Which is fine for some purposes, but not for others. I'm happy to ignore consciousness and mind in certain explanations, but if we're answering a question ostensibly about mind and consciousness, then I'll be looking to you to justify their exclusion, not just assume it, just as I look to Kharkov and DBT to justify determinism rather than just assume it. Simply editing accounts to remove such references won't cut it.

As for the rest of the references, I'm happy to talk about them, and they're a good read, but I'm not really sure where you're going. Is your point simply that it's possible to talk about brain and behaviour without invoking consciousness?

Finally, let me provide some slog work. This is a two experiment study "where ... in perceptual information processing is whether stimuli are composed of separable dimensions, which are highly analyzable, or integral dimensions, which are processed holistically". Normally I'm opposed to two level studies, but, this one is interesting in that it diverges from previous separable dimension stimuli study results.

How so?

These kinds of studies are being better done than they were in the past, but then I was never as hostile to them as a category as you were.

A last study including Patrick Haggard as an author found that there is no 'free won't" either.

There Is No Free Won’t: Antecedent Brain Activity Predicts Decisions to Inhibit
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0053053

Neuroscience cannot straightforwardly accommodate a concept of “conscious free will”, independent of brain activity [42]. However, the belief that humans have free will is fundamental to human society [43]. This belief has profound top-down effects on cognition [44] and even on brain activity itself [45]. The dualistic view that decisions to inhibit reflect a special “conscious veto” or “free won’t” mechanism [46] is scientifically unwarranted. Instead, conscious decisions to check and delay our actions may themselves be consequences of specific brain mechanisms linked to action preparation and action monitoring [19]. Recent neuroscientific studies have strongly questioned the concept of free will, but have had difficulty addressing the alternative concept of free won’t, largely because of the absence of behavioural markers of inhibition. Our results suggest that an important aspect of “free” decisions to inhibit can be explained without recourse to an endogenous, ”uncaused” process: the cause of our “free decisions” may at least in part, be simply the background stochastic fluctuations of cortical excitability. Our results suggest that free won’t may be no more free than free will.

This is interesting. Haggard has built his career out of the point that it's no use just talking about precursor processes, you actually have to study them and work out what they do. Last time I spoke to him he had been sharing a venue with the philosopher Mele, and they'd been talking about free won't experiments.

I feel he's rather missed Mele's point though...

The issue they were discussing was the point Mele had made, that you get the same precursor processes when you ask subjects to press a button, as you do when you ask subjects to choose a button to press, but then not actually press it. Which, Mele concluded, showed that whatever the Libet series experiments were showing, what they weren't showing was a decision to act. Haggard has put a bit more detail on this, and is comparing a button press with a delayed button press, but that's not really a veto, nor does it reveal the precursors to be a decision. Indeed what he's found is that, when measuring a decision to inhibit an action temporarily, the mechanisms involved turn out to be behavioural control and coordination mechanisms. Is that surprising? He's claiming to have disproved the role for a causeless mechanismless, independent of brain, veto to action, but that was never really in doubt. Because only determinists regard a free decision as being independent of brain in the first place.

What the study does appear to be is a fine extension to his already impressive work in tracing precursor processes to actions, identifying particular processes concerned with coordination and control over action, further cementing the view that these precursors are about action coordination, and not decision making.

 

[Togo]

No, it doesn't.

The gap is apparently too small for belief in LFW to exist anywhere without the twin pillars of ignorance and denial. You're lucky: someone who knows very little is born each second. That is the basis of all financial speculation.

I notice that you make wild claims about LFW and what it is, and then when challenge, resort to insults. Is there anything to back up your idea that LFW tells you to ignore reality, or are you just flailing here.

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Telling lies still won't get you anywhere.

If that were true, would you continue to avoid the truth about your claims?

Telling lies still won't get you anywhere.

So why don't you correct your false claims? Because others have to? Why aren't you honest about your mistakes- do you gain something by deceiving others?

Telling lies ...

Since you've established that you defend things which you must know to be false, why should anyone trust anything you say? Why wouldn't you just have admitted what you said was not true? To sustain a conversation that would die if you admitted the truth?

Telling lies won't get you anywhere.

Observe: to come to realize or know especially through consideration of noted facts

No, it really isn't. Coming to realise something is not observation.

Tell that to Merriam Webster. Ohh- yeah, you don't believe in dictionaries, because they include common usages of terms.

In the context of this conversation, my usage of the term is quite obviously the common one that is not concerned with primary acquisition of sensory or instrument data, rather it refers to secondary data acquisition (such as other minds exist) based on primary data that has been acquired (realize through consideration of noted facts).

Then it does nothing to contradict the idea that it's an assumption.

There are millions of people, who, through noting the very factual existence of various holy books and historical events, have inferred the existence of a deity. You're seriously arguing that they have observed this deity?

You do know that people directly observe hallucinations, don't you? They don't infer them (secondary observation), but they perceive them directly, even if they are caused by a disruption of their normal brain activity by a spirit that can only interact with sufficiently developed brains in a meaningful manner (without causing confusion about reality).

Absolutely. Even direct observation is not infalliable. However, most religious are not hallucinating, a real and physically identifiable medical symptom. They are simply inferring the existence of god as based on known facts. That's the same status you're claiming for Determinism.

Redefining the words doesn't change the problem. Determinsim is not something you can observe. It is something that you can come up with as a model, but then so is theism. This is why Science relies on empirical evidence (deduction from direct observation), rather than stuff that people are really really sure is correct.

 

[George S]

In re: Determinism and Free Will

If determinism were the fact then there would be no free will at all.* Luckily determinism ala Newton (given the position and momentum of every particle in nature the future can be predicted to 100% accuracy) is false. Nature itself knows history by probability only (see Feynman's sum-over-histories).

Free Will is not very free. Decisions thought to be made in the moment were actually made unconsciously some time earlier. The locus of free will is imagination. We make (imaginary) plans and our unconscious carries out the needed action(s). Planning can be from a moment to a lifetime.

If free will is taken to be the fact that plans made affect the future then that much we have. Most of the future is fate; events over which you have no direct control. But plans made like deciding that if this situation occurs I plan to take this action and it is rehearsed do affect the future.

How large a bank error in your favor would it take to call it to the attention of the bank? In my case I reported a wire transfer of $500 to my account that was unexpected. How did that come to pass? I made plans a long time ago to deal with everyone honestly.

When there was a temptation to moral error I had planned in advance what should happen. Is it libertarian free will? No. Is it determinism? No. Is it enough free will to be responsible for self's moral error? Yes.

*See also Dan Dennet's Elbow Room:The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting .

 

[ryan]

Nah, you are still equating non chosen random input into decision making on a micro scale as a choice....something which quite clearly is not chosen. You are just saying something that appeals to you * free will* - whoo Hoo - but has no apparent relationship to the means of production of conscious will.

Here's a scenario to explain how my argument can be reasonable.

Imagine scientists ask a subject questions that the subject has to make decisions about; they are subjective type questions regarding morals, preferences, beliefs, etc. Meanwhile, every part of the brain that is responsible for the subject's decisions are being recorded. Then after the decision had been made, they ask if the subject felt like he made the decision; he assures them that they were his conscious decisions. Then, upon reviewing the information, the scientists see that a part of the decision-making process that is always active when people make decisions had random behavior during the questioning.

So, the subject's decisions could have been different, and they were as free as far as the QM of the decision making goes.

This seems very much possible given certain assumptions/conditions.

 

[Kharakov]

The gap is apparently too small for belief in LFW to exist anywhere without the twin pillars of ignorance and denial. ....

I notice that you make wild claims about LFW and what it is, and then when challenge, resort to insults.

Would you say that you've observed that I've made these claims? What type of observation was it (primary, secondary, tertiary...)?

Seriously- you can't insult an incorrect idea.

Your will is the culmination of billions of years of evolution- you don't control it. You aren't going to will to do something without various things that lead you to select to do that thing. If every time someone dies before they produce offspring every time they will to do a certain thing, eventually you're going to have less people around who will to do that thing, despite everyone thinking they have free will.

I suppose belief in LFW isn't exactly something that can be selected against by evolution unless ultimately minds desire absolute truth, which will cause them to dismiss LFW as a fantasy to be played with, rather than something true.

Show

Telling lies still won't get you anywhere.

If that were true, would you continue to avoid the truth about your claims?

Telling lies still won't get you anywhere.

So why don't you correct your false claims? Because others have to? Why aren't you honest about your mistakes- do you gain something by deceiving others?

Telling lies ...

Since you've established that you defend things which you must know to be false, why should anyone trust anything you say? Why wouldn't you just have admitted what you said was not true? To sustain a conversation that would die if you admitted the truth?

Telling lies ...

I believe your point is that telling lies has gotten you somewhere. Do you think admitting you lied would get you somewhere in this specific case, or will you just keep repeating the same thing?

Should we create a standard single question/statement to include in every single conversation we have?? I'll ask a specific question, and that will be your response, to which I will respond with the same question... we could do it until one of us dies.

There are millions of people, who, through noting the very factual existence of various holy books and historical events, have inferred the existence of a deity. You're seriously arguing that they have observed this deity?

You do know that people directly observe hallucinations, don't you? They don't infer them (secondary observation), but they perceive them directly, even if they are caused by a disruption of their normal brain activity by a spirit that can only interact with sufficiently developed brains in a meaningful manner (without causing confusion about reality).

Absolutely. Even direct observation is not infalliable. However, most religious are not hallucinating, a real and physically identifiable medical symptom. They are simply inferring the existence of god as based on known facts.

Ok. If God exists based on known facts, arguing against God's existence is foolish. I was operating under the impression that some of the stuff presented as fact may be mythological, or rhetorical, rather than factual. This doesn't mean I don't believe God exists, but instead I tend to question things that other people present as true, even if they are right about other things about the same topic. Obviously the meek aren't going to inherit the Earth. (ok... maybe.. repeat..)

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repeat cuz... I like this comic