What is free will?

[DBT]

We know the mind is only active in relation to electrochemical brain activity.

We think that some kind of activity that is going on in the brain gives rise to the mind.

We have evidence to support a brain/mind link. Evidence that can be tested, drugs effect the mind, structural changes to the brain effect the mind, etc, etc, which you conveniently ignore.

We use our mind to conclude this not any instrument.

It is the brain that forms 'our' experience of the world and self based on information acquired from its senses. That mental representation may or may not be accurate, however it is being tested against a reality that does not cater to flawed mental representations.

We have no clue what specific activity is giving rise to the mind. We cannot replicate or even model it in any way.

Therefore we have no clue what the mind is.

You are making claims from total ignorance.

You have no clue what the mind is.

You have no clue how the mind can effect the brain.

All false claims based on the given reasons. Just because we don't know how a brain forms mind does not mean that nothing about mind function is known.

PERIOD!!!

Nah:

''The cognitive revolution was birthed as a mixture of work on information theory, artificial intelligence, and cybernetics. It gave rise to the computational theory of the mind, which does indeed offer a solution to a big piece of the puzzle. The computational theory of mind posits that the nervous system is an information processing system. It works by translating changes in the body and the environment into a language of neural impulses that represent the animal-environment relationship. The computational theory of the mind was a huge breakthrough because it allows us, for the first time, to conceptually separate the mind from the brain-body. How? Because we can now conceive of 'the mind' as the flow of information through the nervous system and this flow of information can be conceptually separated from the biophysical matter that makes up the nervous system. To see how we can consider the separation of the information from the actual nervous system itself, think of a book. The book's mass, its temperature, and other physical dimensions can now be considered as roughly akin to the brain. Then think about the information content (i.e., the story the book tells or claims it makes). In the computational theory, that is akin to the mind. The mind then is the information instantiated in and processed by the nervous system.''

 

[untermensche]

We have evidence to support a brain/mind link.

That's what I said.

We think there is some kind of link.

But since we have no clue what the mind is we have no idea what the link is.

We don't know how they are linked because we have no clue what the mind is.

But we do know they are linked. And when one thing is linked to another it can (in theory) have an influence on it.

We use our mind to conclude this not any instrument.

It is the brain that forms 'our' experience of the world and self based on information acquired from its senses. That mental representation may or may not be accurate, however it is being tested against a reality that does not cater to flawed mental representations.

It is our brain constantly making representations for a mind to experience.

It is a brain in service to a mind.

It is a brain a slave to a mind.

The brain is secondary.

The mind is primary.

Without a mind you have nothing. No reason to exist.

The rest is just more of your blah, blah, blah.

You don't have a clue how the mind is attached to the brain.

You don't have a clue what the mind is.

PERIOD!!!!

Which is why all you can talk about is the brain and not the mind.

In all your posts you have never once talked about the mind.

You don't know what it is, beyond your subjective experience.

 

[DBT]

That's what I said.

No, you go much further. You claim autonomy of mind.

We think there is some kind of link.

There is very strong evidence for a link. There is very strong evidence to support brain activity as being the source of mind

But since we have no clue what the mind is we have no idea what the link is.

You may have no idea of what the mind is but everybody else takes the word word 'mind' as a reference to our conscious experience of the world and self, vision, hearing, smell, etc, etc...

We don't know how they are linked because we have no clue what the mind is.

Only if you ignore the meaning of the word and the evidence it is based on.....yet proceed to make a baseless claim of your own, autonomy of mind. You do this in spite of your own claim ''we have no clue what the mind is''

Can you see the irony?

But we do know they are linked. And when one thing is linked to another it can (in theory) have an influence on it.

It is a brain in service to a mind.

It is a brain a slave to a mind.

The brain is secondary.

The mind is primary.

Without a mind you have nothing. No reason to exist.

The rest is just more of your blah, blah, blah.

You don't have a clue how the mind is attached to the brain.

You don't have a clue what the mind is.

PERIOD!!!!

Which is why all you can talk about is the brain and not the mind.

In all your posts you have never once talked about the mind.

You don't know what it is, beyond your subjective experience.

And there it is folks - ''we have no clue what the mind is'' YET ''It is a brain a slave to a mind''

''we have no clue what the mind is'' BUT ''The brain is secondary''

''we have no clue what the mind is'' YET ''The mind is primary.''



''we have no clue what the mind is'' BUT Mr untermensche knows that the ''mind is primary.''

 

[untermensche]

No, you go much further. You claim autonomy of mind.

Of course. To have an opinion requires the freedom to make it.

I make mine based on ideas in my mind with my mind.

I use nothing else. And I make them without compulsion. Nothing forces my decisions. I make them as I choose. I freely choose in the madness that is humans communicating which ideas to accept and which to reject.

I reject this bad idea that the mind is not free to make decisions.

I have no clue what you (your mind) thinks you make decisions with.

If you claim you use your brain then it is still a "you" and a "brain" responding to the "you".

There is very strong evidence for a link.

You're beating a dead horse.

Of course there is a link.

That is how I use my mind to cause my brain to move my arm.

You may have no idea of what the mind is but everybody else takes the word word 'mind' as a reference to our conscious experience of the world and self, vision, hearing, smell, etc, etc...

That is the subjective mind.

The objective mind is the exact activity of the brain that gives rise to the subjective mind.

There is a lot going on in the brain and we can look at some of it very well and some of it, like quantum effects, not at all.

When I say we do not know what the mind is I mean the objective mind.

The exact activity that gives rise to the mind.

We know that we disrupt brain activity in general it effects the mind.

But that does not tell us which specific activity is giving rise to the mind.

''we have no clue what the mind is'' BUT Mr untermensche knows that the ''mind is primary.''

We have no idea what the objective mind is. We do not know the exact activity of the brain that gives rise to the mind.

We just know that when many brains are working on their own there is a mind that arises somehow.

And the subjective mind is primary.

It is what all the activity is for.

The brain is in service to the subjective mind.

The mind is an effect that can have a feedback effect on that which gives rise to it. It has potential energy.

There are no claims of magic, just a complicated feedback mechanism that is not understood.

 

[DBT]

Of course. To have an opinion requires the freedom to make it.

I make mine based on ideas in my mind with my mind.

I use nothing else. And I make them without compulsion. Nothing forces my decisions. I make them as I choose. I freely choose in the madness that is humans communicating which ideas to accept and which to reject.

I reject this bad idea that the mind is not free to make decisions.

I have no clue what you (your mind) thinks you make decisions with.

If you claim you use your brain then it is still a "you" and a "brain" responding to the "you".



You're beating a dead horse.

Of course there is a link.

That is how I use my mind to cause my brain to move my arm.

You may have no idea of what the mind is but everybody else takes the word word 'mind' as a reference to our conscious experience of the world and self, vision, hearing, smell, etc, etc...

That is the subjective mind.

The objective mind is the exact activity of the brain that gives rise to the subjective mind.

There is a lot going on in the brain and we can look at some of it very well and some of it, like quantum effects, not at all.

When I say we do not know what the mind is I mean the objective mind.

The exact activity that gives rise to the mind.

We know that we disrupt brain activity in general it effects the mind.

But that does not tell us which specific activity is giving rise to the mind.

''we have no clue what the mind is'' BUT Mr untermensche knows that the ''mind is primary.''

We have no idea what the objective mind is. We do not know the exact activity of the brain that gives rise to the mind.

We just know that when many brains are working on their own there is a mind that arises somehow.

And the subjective mind is primary.

It is what all the activity is for.

The brain is in service to the subjective mind.

The mind is an effect that can have a feedback effect on that which gives rise to it. It has potential energy.

There are no claims of magic, just a complicated feedback mechanism that is not understood.

If you are able to speak, you are able to report your experience. You are able to describe what you see, hear, smell, touch or taste, what you are thinking and feeling.....you are reporting your subjective experience. What you report is a description of your mind, which is indeed a subjective experience.

However, the things you report, the tree in the park, the meal on the table, the cup of coffee in your hand is a body of objective information.....anyone present who has the mental capacity can verify these things, you are sitting at a table, you do have a cup of coffee in your hand, there is a meal on the table and tree in the park over the road.

Your experience of mind is subjective, but the information content of your consciousness can include objective information. Information that can be verified and tested, hence 'objective'

This is the composition of your mind, your experience of the world and self.

An experience that is both subjective and objective.

An experience that can be traced to the presence and activity of a brain and nowhere else.

An experience that is directly related to the state and condition of that brain and not the other way around as you falsely claim.

 

[DrZoidberg]

Hey, guys. How about eating a piece of humble pie and realizing that you all have good arguments. Everybodies perspective, in this thread, is valid and makes perfect sense. It's just a question of perspective.

So much dickish arguing here.

 

[DBT]

Maybe we can't help ourselves, ha,ha, a sickness, an addiction, a perverted need to respond?

Plus, the claim of autonomy of mind, a smart mind operating a dumb brain, is not a good argument.

 

[untermensche]

Hey, guys. How about eating a piece of humble pie and realizing that you all have good arguments. Everybodies perspective, in this thread, is valid and makes perfect sense. It's just a question of perspective.

So much dickish arguing here.

The positions are in direct opposition to one another.

One side is claiming that all decisions are somehow made by the brain and there is no freedom in the mind at all.

The other side claims the mind is free to decide things.

<edited>

 

[untermensche]

Of course. To have an opinion requires the freedom to make it.

I make mine based on ideas in my mind with my mind.

I use nothing else. And I make them without compulsion. Nothing forces my decisions. I make them as I choose. I freely choose in the madness that is humans communicating which ideas to accept and which to reject.

I reject this bad idea that the mind is not free to make decisions.

I have no clue what you (your mind) thinks you make decisions with.

If you claim you use your brain then it is still a "you" and a "brain" responding to the "you".



You're beating a dead horse.

Of course there is a link.

That is how I use my mind to cause my brain to move my arm.



That is the subjective mind.

The objective mind is the exact activity of the brain that gives rise to the subjective mind.

There is a lot going on in the brain and we can look at some of it very well and some of it, like quantum effects, not at all.

When I say we do not know what the mind is I mean the objective mind.

The exact activity that gives rise to the mind.

We know that we disrupt brain activity in general it effects the mind.

But that does not tell us which specific activity is giving rise to the mind.



We have no idea what the objective mind is. We do not know the exact activity of the brain that gives rise to the mind.

We just know that when many brains are working on their own there is a mind that arises somehow.

And the subjective mind is primary.

It is what all the activity is for.

The brain is in service to the subjective mind.

The mind is an effect that can have a feedback effect on that which gives rise to it. It has potential energy.

There are no claims of magic, just a complicated feedback mechanism that is not understood.

If you are able to speak, you are able to report your experience. You are able to describe what you see, hear, smell, touch or taste, what you are thinking and feeling.....you are reporting your subjective experience. What you report is a description of your mind, which is indeed a subjective experience.

I know what subjective reports are.

I have told you over and over that the only place the mind exists in any of this tedious research you post is in subjective reports.

There is no objective understanding of the mind.

We have no clue what it is objectively.

However, the things you report, the tree in the park, the meal on the table, the cup of coffee in your hand is a body of objective information.....anyone present who has the mental capacity can verify these things, you are sitting at a table, you do have a cup of coffee in your hand, there is a meal on the table and tree in the park over the road.

No subjective report can be objectively verified.

People may have similar reports but you have no idea what I am experiencing and I have no idea what you are experiencing. We can use crude language to confirm that we are possibly experiencing the same thing.

But if you say the sky is blue and so do I we have no idea if we are experiencing the same color.

Your experience of mind is subjective, but the information content of your consciousness can include objective information. Information that can be verified and tested, hence 'objective'

No amount of subjective reports creates an objective report.

No amount of guesses about the timing of subjective activity creates an objective report.

 

[DrZoidberg]

Maybe we can't help ourselves, ha,ha, a sickness, an addiction, a perverted need to respond?

Plus, the claim of autonomy of mind, a smart mind operating a dumb brain, is not a good argument.

Libertarian free will doesn't claim autonomy of mind in the physical sense. Only in the philosophical sense. Since it's impossible to predict with a 100% accuracy, they see it as evidence that it's free. It's a fine argument

- - - Updated - - -

Hey, guys. How about eating a piece of humble pie and realizing that you all have good arguments. Everybodies perspective, in this thread, is valid and makes perfect sense. It's just a question of perspective.

So much dickish arguing here.

The positions are in direct opposition to one another.

One side is claiming that all decisions are somehow made by the brain and there is no freedom in the mind at all.

The other side claims the mind is free to decide things.

<edit>

They are not opposite because it's apples and oranges. You're discussing two different ways of being free.

I don't care if you have a problem with me butting in.

 

[untermensche]

They are not opposite because it's apples and oranges. You're discussing two different ways of being free.

I don't care if you have a problem with me butting in.

It's only butting in if you have nothing to say <edit>.

What you say here is wrong.

There is no freedom in decisions made somehow by a brain. That would be called a "mechanical" decision. A decision that is the end result of preexisting "programming".

Only a decision made by a mind, some extension of a brain that used ideas, not "programming" to make a decision, could possibly be free.

 

[DBT]

Libertarian free will doesn't claim autonomy of mind in the physical sense. Only in the philosophical sense. Since it's impossible to predict with a 100% accuracy, they see it as evidence that it's free. It's a fine argument

Yeah, I was referring to Mr Untermensche's own claims. What I said is what he himself claims in his own words. His claim of autonomy of mind having no merit, not because I say so, but because there is absolutely no evidence for it.

I know it's a waste of time responding, but it does seem a shame to leave his claims unchallenged.

They are not opposite because it's apples and oranges. You're discussing two different ways of being free.

.

I would say that the two positions are not compatible in any way. If the mind did in fact have autonomy, a 'smart mind' operating a 'dumb brain' as Mr Untermensche claims, this is not the same as mind being an emergent property of brain activity, a mind where the attributes and abilities of that mid are being determined by neural architecture, brain state and condition in any given moment in time, hence, not autonomous.

 

[DBT]

Nor does there appear to be a specific location for conscious activity within the brain, being a distributed activity;

''Consciousness is an emergent property of the brain, resulting from the communication of information across all its regions and cannot be reduced to something residing in specific areas that control for qualities like attention, hearing, or memory.

These are the results of a new experiment out of Vanderbilt University, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, in which researchers observed "whole-brain awareness" when individuals were asked to observe an image flashed briefly on a screen. Researchers measured brain function using fMRI imaging technology and categorized participant responses into "high confidence" and "low confidence" categories, according to how sure each person was that they had seen the image.

"They found that no one area or network of areas of the brain stood out as particularly more connected during awareness of the target; the whole brain appeared to become functionally more connected following reports of awareness."

 

[DrZoidberg]

They are not opposite because it's apples and oranges. You're discussing two different ways of being free.

I don't care if you have a problem with me butting in.

It's only butting in if you have nothing to say and are nothing but a bothersome scold.

What you say here is wrong.

There is no freedom in decisions made somehow by a brain. That would be called a "mechanical" decision. A decision that is the end result of preexisting "programming".

Only a decision made by a mind, some extension of a brain that used ideas, not "programming" to make a decision, could possibly be free.

Ideas are memes. They spread like viruses between hosts. A more helpful way to look at it is, seeing the meme as the individual spread over human real estate. It makes it more clear what is going on

 

[fromderinside]

Aren't memes discredited Dawkins fictions?

On the other hand Maezel was a fictional man-in-machine that is clearly intervening variable invention.

Two Doah's don't make a right.

...

''Consciousness is an emergent property of the brain, resulting from the communication of information across all its regions and cannot be reduced to something residing in specific areas that control for qualities like attention, hearing, or memory.

Pretty obvious that nervous connections and chemistry are evolved to produce that 'property' making brain's consciousness a whole which is equal to sum of parts and not emergent.

- bothersome scold?

 

[untermensche]

Nor does there appear to be a specific location for conscious activity within the brain, being a distributed activity;

''Consciousness is an emergent property of the brain, resulting from the communication of information across all its regions and cannot be reduced to something residing in specific areas that control for qualities like attention, hearing, or memory.

These are the results of a new experiment out of Vanderbilt University, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, in which researchers observed "whole-brain awareness" when individuals were asked to observe an image flashed briefly on a screen. Researchers measured brain function using fMRI imaging technology and categorized participant responses into "high confidence" and "low confidence" categories, according to how sure each person was that they had seen the image.

"They found that no one area or network of areas of the brain stood out as particularly more connected during awareness of the target; the whole brain appeared to become functionally more connected following reports of awareness."

This makes knowing what the mind is much harder.

And it is not an understanding of what the mind is.

The mind is something that emerges from this widespread activity.

It is not the activity. Whatever widespread activity is the activity that creates a mind and responds to a mind.

And of course none of this demonstrates the mind cannot influence the brain based on ideas in the mind.

 

[untermensche]

They are not opposite because it's apples and oranges. You're discussing two different ways of being free.

I don't care if you have a problem with me butting in.

It's only butting in if you have nothing to say and are nothing but a bothersome scold.

What you say here is wrong.

There is no freedom in decisions made somehow by a brain. That would be called a "mechanical" decision. A decision that is the end result of preexisting "programming".

Only a decision made by a mind, some extension of a brain that used ideas, not "programming" to make a decision, could possibly be free.

Ideas are memes. They spread like viruses between hosts. A more helpful way to look at it is, seeing the meme as the individual spread over human real estate. It makes it more clear what is going on

Ideas are creations of minds.

And since every mind is a unique growth every idea is looked at in a different background.

But none of this has anything to do with the freedom to willfully focus on and move ideas around in the mind until a new idea emerges.

 

[untermensche]

- bothersome scold?

How about eating a piece of humble pie and realizing that you all have good arguments.

I am not arguing against good arguments.

I am arguing against religious certainty.

Absolute certainty despite absolute ignorance.

People telling me what the mind cannot do that have no clue what it is.

People denying clear evidence.

People that use their mind to move their arm yet deny they are doing it.

 

[Copernicus]

/mod

 

[Copernicus]

Not quite. You still have trouble wrapping your head around compatibilism, apparently because you equate "free" with "uncaused" rather than "unobstructed".

Actually, 'uncaused' would effectively be 'random'.

True, but you are still missing the point of the argument, which is that people confuse unpredictability with randomness. Choice can be a fully determined process, but lack of omniscience--full knowledge of chaotic interactions--makes it inherently unpredictable.

The future is where the real freedom lies.

Really? How?

I explained that in the part that you snipped. My point is that you are misconstruing what "free" means here. It is not about the ability to change what one did in the past. It is the potential for having made a different choice in light of what one subsequently knows of the outcomes of choice. Knowledge of the past provides us with the freedom to alter future behavior. It's just that we aren't "free" at the time a choice is made. Freedom is what makes us accountable for our actions and why we don't hold people accountable for behavior that they seem unable to control in that potential sense. If you suffer a psychotic break, it does no good to punish you for your bad choices, because you can't change your "autopilot". Social pressure won't affect your behavior.

Think about how we use the word "automaton". An automoton is a robot that always predictably performs the same actions under the same circumstances. It cannot change its behavior. It has no "free will". We are essentially automatons that can change our behavior to effect different future outcomes under the same circumstances. We do so to avoid punishment, pain, and grief. Or to achieve reward, pleasure, and happiness.

I think you are confusing 'very very complicated' with 'free'. At every point, everything is determined (barring random effects). It doesn't matter how complicated the decision 'algorithm' is. Given the past a machine (including a human one) would do exactly the same again if the same past were rerun. Or at least it appears there is no way to explain events otherwise. Determinism (barring random effects) rules, with an iron fist, it seems, and free will is not compatible with it. To say otherwise would arguably be an oxymoron.

Only because you refuse to acknowledge the whole point of where the "freedom" lies. It is always a freedom to alter irrealis behavior. It is in the mind, not external reality.

And the issue isn't just 'free' but 'will' also. So 'free will' implies both. That's an even higher bar than 'free'. It implies conscious volition to enact the supposed freeness.

The issue I am raising is just the use of 'free' in this discussion, because that is where we differ. 'Will' is about agency alone, so even robots are like us in that sense. They only lack freedom insofar as they cannot be held accountable for their behavior. That is, they are not subject to social pressure.

Compatibilism is, imo, essentially a dodge, or at best a (supposedly) pragmatic way to avoid what seems to be an inconvenient truth, one that you may still have trouble wrapping your head around (touche). I wouldn't have finished with that if you hadn't started with it.

Well, I'm happy to end on the "inconvenient truth" that you are dodging a very good alternative explanation of what we normally think is "free" about "free will".