Just wanted to add that I agree with untermesche's position in the thread.
OK.
We can't tell because he never actually defends his position. He just declares this or that. So we keep pointing out that is all he is doing.
Maybe you can explain how a being who receives information well after the present can successfully form a decision how things are going on in that present.
1. I make self evident statements that can be disputed. Nobody even tries. Are these people free? Maybe not. Maybe just me.
2. Statements like an unfree mind can't make decisions about truth. Every decision is forced by some unseen "master" in the unfree mind.
3. To know something is true is to make judgements about it.
4. If these judgements are not made freely they can't have meaning.
5. These statements can be disputed. One must be free to do that though.
6. All I am really proposing is one mind, not two. There is no master mind controlling the mind that experiences.
7. The brain is the slave to the experienced mind. The brain is constantly trying to give the mind information about the world.
8. The brain goes to all this trouble because a mind that makes decisions is better than a dumb brain without language or ideas that makes them.
9. Where we see a free mind is the mind that was abused in childhood and indoctrinated to believe some religion but later in life rejects the ideas because they are unsupported.
10. That could only be done by a free mind. Why would a brain care what the mind it controls believes? The mind cares.
So here we go again.
1. The is no evidence in you statements so they can't be 'self' evident. If you are referring to yourself you are not talking to anybody else so there in no need for others to respond. your statement is only to and of yourself. IOW you talk to yourself a lot.
2. Really? Why? How? What? Where? By whom?
3. To others than the one knowing? How?
4. How does meaning depend on judgements made freely? Coerced judgements have meaning do they not. the are, after all, coerced.
5. Machine actions contradict sentient judgements every action by acting other than had been judged. See how easy it is?
6. Non statement. You are making a straw man. It's not even an argument. No one, as far as I know, you don't provide reference, has proposed more than one mind. I propose no minds.
7. First experience is derivative put in place to wish away the requirement to document how something is done. So the brain can only be slave to it by those who propose it is slave, self identified to do so so to speak.
Brains don't try. Brains IAW their structure and history of becoming, process, integrate, etc. They aren't beings beings who we observe trying. Reifying apart isn't useful since it takes away from what the entire entity can be observed doing, in effect saying the being is doing it twice.
8. Again with the personifying of a constituent structure. Doesn't help your communicating at all. While you are at it you even redistribute functions and attributes to the subjective experience at the expense of processing capacities found in the brain. You can't point to experience so you can't give experience the machine that interprets, makes, and produces signals that provide the being capability to articulate. Brains aren't dumb. beings may be dumb. Sheesh!
9. First I disagree that proposed antecedent causal histories produce what you claim. I also disagree with your cause and effect statement. It hasn't been been shown that a particular history produces conditions where one arrives at a particular opinion. Such would be determinism taken to excess. That one can't even connect the instantaneous causes to outcomes is why the singular definition of cause and effect is an open question. And, by the way one reason I support the idea of relative free will. That along with the idea that humans are after the fact behavers. We could spend the rest of the year unwrapping what I just exposed in your flawed thinking.
10. The Preacher is back on his soap box. Since neither the mind nor the brain are beings they don't care.
You propose a mind because you think you need to explain why one might be caring? What a waste of effort. Look to the autonomic nervous system. the basis for most motivation should become evident after you insert voluntary and vegetative aspect drivers of that system to organs in the being. It explains my (re)finding the basis for three trial operant learning 'Ahah' effect in Teleost fishes back in the '60s.
It's amazing what a little actual research can yield.
