Human Instinct and Free Will

[Speakpigeon]

Er- yes there is a difference.

"Will" may exist but not necessarily as free will, as hardcore materialists could explain to you. "Free will" on the other hand, is tautologically construed as necessarily free, and therefore cannot exist as hardcore materialists could explain to you.
EB

But that is not what how you used "free will" in your posts above. You used "free" as in "not externally coerced".

I was responding to Juma making his comment on my post that the point of free will is the freedom to will it, not the freedom necessarily to actually do it, and I took his perspective on things ("as hardcore materialists could explain to you") to show him he was contradicting himself.

Freedom to will it only requires freedom from coercion (i.e. external coercion). Whether it is the brain or only the mind that does the will personally I don't know and it depends on who is the purported subject of our free will, i.e. the spirit, the living body or the person.
EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

For all I know it might well be my body that does the thinking. I could not explain subjective experience from physical principles, obviously, but I can conceive that all that my mind is doing, it is doing it as an activity of my body (or more accurately, of the whole universe).
EB

Is your bile your body?

Or is it something your body produces?

It is something that my body produces (or more accurately, of the whole universe).

So what?
EB

 

[untermensche]

Is your bile your body?

Or is it something your body produces?

It is something that my body produces (or more accurately, of the whole universe).

So what?
EB

The same is true of the mind.

It is something your body produces.

It is as much your body as your bile is.

And saying the whole universe is doing something is about as empty a phrase as could exist. It contains no insight.

 

[Speakpigeon]

It is something that my body produces (or more accurately, of the whole universe).

So what?
EB

The same is true of the mind.

It is something your body produces.

It is as much your body as your bile is.

And saying the whole universe is doing something is about as empty a phrase as could exist. It contains no insight.

Your mind seems to know so much stuff my mind is impressed.

I'm not about insight. I'm about truth.
EB

 

[untermensche]

The same is true of the mind.

It is something your body produces.

It is as much your body as your bile is.

And saying the whole universe is doing something is about as empty a phrase as could exist. It contains no insight.

Your mind seems to know so much stuff my mind is impressed.

I'm not about insight. I'm about truth.
EB

The truth is my mind is something that controls my body, to a degree, and receives information from my body.

It is not my body any more than my bile is my body.

So what truth are you talking about?

 

[Malintent]

If you truly have free will, then you can decide to climb to the top of a building, and fly off of it.
Can you do that? No? Then your will is less than free.

Obviously, we are bound by the laws of the universe we inhabit.
and we are bound by the gravity of our planet
and we are bound by the laws of our country
and we are bound by the norms of our culture
and we are bound by the chemistry in our brains
and we are bound by the resources to which we have access
and we are bound by our principles and our prejudices
and we are bound by our drives and our reflexes

where the fuck is freedom at all?

oh yea. I can choose to wiggle my finger.. but only if someone suggests it.. .because I never have just thought to wiggle my finger before for no fucking reason whatsoever.

Freedom my ass.

Janis Joplin said it best, "Freedom is just another word for nothing-left-to-lose"

If somebody asks you to move your finger you are free to move it.

Or free to not move it.

The choice is yours.

We are not bound by suggestions of others. That is a desperate reach and clearly wrong.

Absurd.

The lack of freedom comes down to the making of the choice. I may have "freedom of movement", but I do not have "freedom to not choose". Since it seems we agree that the mental process of choice is entangled in the "will", this is evidence of a lack of "free will".

 

[untermensche]

The lack of freedom comes down to the making of the choice. I may have "freedom of movement", but I do not have "freedom to not choose". Since it seems we agree that the mental process of choice is entangled in the "will", this is evidence of a lack of "free will".

This makes no logical sense.

The ability to move or not move is the freedom.

Any freedom exists within a scheme of choices. That is a logical necessity.

So saying that a choice must be made is absurd. Since a free choice can't be made unless a choice in some matter must be made.

 

[ryan]

From Wang's paper,

"In this introduction, we focus on two quantum principles as examples to show why quantum cognition is an appealing new theoretical direction for psychology: complementarity, which suggests that some psychological measures have to be made sequentially and that the context generated by the first measure can influence responses to the next one, producing measurement order effects, and superposition, which suggests that some psychological states cannot be defined with respect to definite values but, instead, that all possible values within the superposition have some potential for being expressed."

from http://cdp.sagepub.com/content/24/3/163.abstract

So from how I understand it, choices are in a superposition.

And the new working model of this explains how using QM.

That doesn't actually describe the decision making process. Higher order structures and processing effect changes in structure, connectivity, etc, all the way down to the quantum building 'blocks'

You need whole and complete functional neural architecture in order to process information and generate behaviour.

Quantum effects alone won't work. Add chemical agency and the system and its output is altered...right down the its quantum 'superstructure'

Sever connectivity between synapses and coherent thought is diminished or destroyed, depending on the severity of connectivity breakdown.

You don't consciously choose quantum states even if it effects changes to system function.

There is no escaping the fact, that it is the state of the system in any given moment that's reflected in its output, conscious thoughts, feelings and actions.

But with this new model, there is no single state of decision-making; they are in a mathematical superposition. And then the working model came along, and from what I understand, it gives a mechanical explanation for this using QM.

 

[fromderinside]

You need an occipital lobe for vision.

I have described nothing about the physiology of vision.

There is no known physiology of consciousness.

And the "I" that is aware of things is also the "I" that directs the brain to describe to others what is seen.

1. Don't need lobe, need visual cortical cells, aklso need a claustrum or other integration and exchange sensory motor system component that arose with amniotes

2. I chose vision because differientation between thing and other arise when there is a claustrum

3. Some imprtant articles on the physiology and neurobilogy and evolution oc consciousness.
Consciousness and Neuroscience http://authors.library.caltech.edu/40355/1/feature_article.pdf
Speculations on the Evolution of Awareness https://www.princeton.edu/~graziano/Graziano_JCN_2014.pdf
Evolution of Consciousness: Phylogeny, Ontogeny, and Emergence from General Anesthesia http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK231624/
Brain stem reticular formation and activation of the EEG http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0013469449902199
[h=1]Higher Nervous Functions: The Orienting Reflex http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.ph.25.030163.002553?journalCode=physiol
[/h]
4. that bit is a repeat of your previous circular definition.

 

[fromderinside]

You are none of those. You are the being who does such stuff. Try touching your skin or jamming your finger down your throat if you believe otherwise.

Aren't you at least a little bit moved by the poetic value of a body denying itself?
EB

Yes. Bowls moved.

 

[untermensche]

You need an occipital lobe for vision.

I have described nothing about the physiology of vision.

There is no known physiology of consciousness.

And the "I" that is aware of things is also the "I" that directs the brain to describe to others what is seen.

1. Don't need lobe, need visual cortical cells, aklso need a claustrum or other integration and exchange sensory motor system component that arose with amniotes

2. I chose vision because differientation between thing and other arise when there is a claustrum

3. Some imprtant articles on the physiology and neurobilogy and evolution oc consciousness.
Consciousness and Neuroscience http://authors.library.caltech.edu/40355/1/feature_article.pdf
Speculations on the Evolution of Awareness https://www.princeton.edu/~graziano/Graziano_JCN_2014.pdf
Evolution of Consciousness: Phylogeny, Ontogeny, and Emergence from General Anesthesia http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK231624/
Brain stem reticular formation and activation of the EEG http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0013469449902199
[h=1]Higher Nervous Functions: The Orienting Reflex http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.ph.25.030163.002553?journalCode=physiol
[/h]
4. that bit is a repeat of your previous circular definition.

You spew the same irrationality over and over. A dog incapable of a new trick. Locked in some failure loop.

Talking about areas of the brain associated with certain functions is a million miles away from explaining what is going on.

You have explained NOTHING with it.

There is no known physiological process that leads to consciousness.

Which makes speculations about the evolution of consciousness amusing.

Consciousness may very well be a quantum effect. It's absurd to try to make arguments down that empty rat hole at this point, but it may be true.

 

[ryan]

1. Don't need lobe, need visual cortical cells, aklso need a claustrum or other integration and exchange sensory motor system component that arose with amniotes

2. I chose vision because differientation between thing and other arise when there is a claustrum

3. Some imprtant articles on the physiology and neurobilogy and evolution oc consciousness.
Consciousness and Neuroscience http://authors.library.caltech.edu/40355/1/feature_article.pdf
Speculations on the Evolution of Awareness https://www.princeton.edu/~graziano/Graziano_JCN_2014.pdf
Evolution of Consciousness: Phylogeny, Ontogeny, and Emergence from General Anesthesia http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK231624/
Brain stem reticular formation and activation of the EEG http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0013469449902199
[h=1]Higher Nervous Functions: The Orienting Reflex http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.ph.25.030163.002553?journalCode=physiol
[/h]
4. that bit is a repeat of your previous circular definition.

You spew the same irrationality over and over. A dog incapable of a new trick. Locked in some failure loop.

Talking about areas of the brain associated with certain functions is a million miles away from explaining what is going on.

You have explained NOTHING with it.

There is no known physiological process that leads to consciousness.

Which makes speculations about the evolution of consciousness amusing.

Consciousness may very well be a quantum effect. It's absurd to try to make arguments down that empty rat hole at this point, but it may be true.

How would QM help explain the consciousness?

 

[untermensche]

You spew the same irrationality over and over. A dog incapable of a new trick. Locked in some failure loop.

Talking about areas of the brain associated with certain functions is a million miles away from explaining what is going on.

You have explained NOTHING with it.

There is no known physiological process that leads to consciousness.

Which makes speculations about the evolution of consciousness amusing.

Consciousness may very well be a quantum effect. It's absurd to try to make arguments down that empty rat hole at this point, but it may be true.

How would QM help explain the consciousness?

I said it might be some quantum effect. A completely unknown effect.

But that is much more complicated than saying it is an electrical effect or a chemical effect. Things we understand better at the level of the cell.

We are nowhere near being able to understand what kind of effect it could be if it were some quantum effect.

But matter has quantum properties so it is possible.

But it's nothing but a rat hole at this point. There really is nothing that can be done with the idea. We have very little, if any, understanding of quantum effects at the level of something like a protein, no less a cell.

 

[ryan]

How would QM help explain the consciousness?

I said it might be some quantum effect. A completely unknown effect.

But that is much more complicated than saying it is an electrical effect or a chemical effect. Things we understand better at the level of the cell.

We are nowhere near being able to understand what kind of effect it could be if it were some quantum effect.

But matter has quantum properties so it is possible.

But it's nothing but a rat hole at this point. There really is nothing that can be done with the idea. We have very little, if any, understanding of quantum effects at the level of something like a protein, no less a cell.

Do you think that the consciousness and a particular process in the brain are the same thing?

 

[untermensche]

I said it might be some quantum effect. A completely unknown effect.

But that is much more complicated than saying it is an electrical effect or a chemical effect. Things we understand better at the level of the cell.

We are nowhere near being able to understand what kind of effect it could be if it were some quantum effect.

But matter has quantum properties so it is possible.

But it's nothing but a rat hole at this point. There really is nothing that can be done with the idea. We have very little, if any, understanding of quantum effects at the level of something like a protein, no less a cell.

Do you think that the consciousness and a particular process in the brain are the same thing?

It is some continual process. Since consciousness is continual. While awake.

It is not a temporal process but can be effected by temporal processes.

Yes, probably in the brain.

 

[ryan]

Do you think that the consciousness and a particular process in the brain are the same thing?

It is some continual process. Since consciousness is continual. While awake.

It is not a temporal process but can be effected by temporal processes.

Yes, probably in the brain.

So you don't believe that the consciousness is a sort of hard emergence that is separate yet dependent on some process in the brain?

 

[untermensche]

It is some continual process. Since consciousness is continual. While awake.

It is not a temporal process but can be effected by temporal processes.

Yes, probably in the brain.

So you don't believe that the consciousness is a sort of hard emergence that is separate yet dependent on some process in the brain?

It appears to be an emergence from matter arranged in a specific manner undergoing a specific activity.

Kind of like how magnetism is an emergence.

But that is very far from having an actual clue what it really is.

 

[ryan]

So you don't believe that the consciousness is a sort of hard emergence that is separate yet dependent on some process in the brain?

It appears to be an emergence from matter arranged in a specific manner undergoing a specific activity.

Kind of like how magnetism is an emergence.

But that is very far from having an actual clue what it really is.

So, for you, a possibility is that the consciousness is not just a specific dynamic arrangement of common particles from the Standard Model, but is something that is not composed of particles from the SM. Is that accurate?

 

[untermensche]

It appears to be an emergence from matter arranged in a specific manner undergoing a specific activity.

Kind of like how magnetism is an emergence.

But that is very far from having an actual clue what it really is.

So, for you, a possibility is that the consciousness is not just a specific dynamic arrangement of common particles from the Standard Model, but is something that is not composed of particles from the SM. Is that accurate?

No. Consciousness is not a specific dynamic arrangement of matter. The brain is the specific dynamic arrangement of matter.

Consciousness emerges from this dynamic arrangement in combination with stimulation from the world.

And like magnetism and gravity it cannot be composed of matter. It does not have mass.

It is an emergent ability. The ability to experience and be effected by "subconscious programming".

 

[ryan]

So, for you, a possibility is that the consciousness is not just a specific dynamic arrangement of common particles from the Standard Model, but is something that is not composed of particles from the SM. Is that accurate?

No. Consciousness is not a specific dynamic arrangement of matter. The brain is the specific dynamic arrangement of matter.

Consciousness emerges from this dynamic arrangement in combination with stimulation from the world.

And like magnetism and gravity it cannot be composed of matter. It does not have mass.

It is an emergent ability. The ability to experience and be effected by "subconscious programming".

Using Occam's razor reasoning, why can't the consciousness just be something that we already know exists, just a process in the brain without anything emerging? Why do we have to install a new property/entity?

In other words, can't we simplify this and say that you are "process in the brain" instead of a possible redundancy by saying that you are a "mind" as well as "process in the brain"? So the thing we call "mind" can be really just another term for "process in the brain".