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Let's redo a classic: Freewill vs Determinism

drug_mentor said:
so I am not sure what your point is there. Clarity and precision are cornerstones of fruitful philosophical discourse, I make no apology for attempting to adhere to these standards.
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my goal was showing you i wasn't saying the criterium for punishment should be the illusory sensations. to clear up what i meant and what i didn't.

it feels to me that you're just being nitpicky. for example:

neurotic said:
there can be some counter examples for this but even then you can say that in a society who appeals to social good, illusory sensations end up being morally significant.
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drug_mentor said:
Furthermore, we can imagine scenarios where people who commit crimes do not feel the usual illusory sensation of responsibility, for example some cases where people commit violent acts whilst extremely disoriented on drugs. Some cases like this we generally think it appropriate to lock the person up, but an appeal to an illusory sensation would not be possible in such a scenario, so in these sorts of cases you would need to appeal to social good to justify any sort of penalty.
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i already had mentioned that, and yet you still pointed it out. clarity and precision are necessary but so is reading correctly. you can say that i'm not being precise enough (granted, i do have trouble expressing myself, plus not sufficient patience or attention span to be as clear as i want to be, without sacrificing the abrangence/width of what i'd like to say), but then i can say that you're just not reading all that i say. you did get wrong what i was implying about the punishment and the illusory sensations, after all. in the end it doesn't matter. if exchange of ideas is desired then both are in the interest of both parties, the weight is in both shoulders. if there is a misunderstanding, it is then explained, and so on. this combined with your tone is why i can't help but feel that you're not really interested in the exchange of ideas, just nitpicking.
 
neurotic said:
my goal was showing you i wasn't saying the criterium for punishment should be the illusory sensations. to clear up what i meant and what i didn't.
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In the post which I was responding to in my previous post you made the following assertion:

neurotic said:
but even then you can say that in a society who appeals to social good, illusory sensations end up being morally significant.
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As you pointed out earlier in the discourse, if we presuppose determinism (as we have for the purposes of this discussion) then justice is not possible. I feel justice and morality are two sides of the same coin, there is no prospect for one without the other. Since we have presupposed determinism, it isn't clear how "moral significance" could be relevant, unless you are using the phrase to mean it provides justification for a socially imposed penalty. In light of this, it seems to me that you are contradicting yourself, but it is certainly possible that I have misinterpreted what you are saying.

neurotic said:
i already had mentioned that, and yet you still pointed it out. clarity and precision are necessary but so is reading correctly.
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I pointed it out because you clearly missed the implication that in such a scenario illusory sensations are not morally relevant. My example was intended to highlight why illusory sensation is not morally significant.
 
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I suppose everything is predetermined however it is unpredictable hence free will can exist.
 
Predetermined by conditions, unpredictable by us (mostly), so the will we have is not free to fall out of line. It is will is free for us to have, but will in and of itself is dependent on enviornmental factors.
 
What I mean to say is that both are possible the same as an electron can be in more places than one. We just don't understand it fully yet. Still it is good to realise the limitations of the environment because to overcome limitations we need to be aware of them first.
 
I have to disagree. The electron thing is a whole other discussion of particle physics and QM.

If actions are predetermined by enviornmental conditions, awareness is consequently determined by enviornmental conditions. No matter how much you can understand, it is still a product of nature. Even will, which is free to us minus that the freedom of choice is illusionary.



On the other hand, maybe choice IS truly free... if nature is a predictive force and not a controlling one, much like Thomas Aquinas said about God. Except his existence is unjustified wihout redefining him so we'll have to use nature instead of an intelligent architect.

Another one.
 
Actions of the macroworld are pre-determined by the actions of the microworld a not the opposite way? Hence QM does matter and we just don't know yet enough to say if we have a freewill or not.
 
I've spent many years at druggie philosophy forums. The longest running and most unproductive as far as conclusion goes is the free will debate. Emotional bias seems to play a huge part in these discussions, for me also lol. So I'll put my emo 2 cents in. I hope and pray we don't have free will. This lets me off the hook for so much of my dysfunctional life.
 
We don't have to fully understand the implications of QM to see that we cannot have free will. We understand chemistry pretty well, and life is based on chemistry. There is no evidence that the processes in our brain are more than chemistry. No evidence. Sure, there may be something that we haven't observed/understood yet about the way our brain functions (and whether QM effects play a role or not - whether it's deterministic or not), but it's a huge leap to think that that somehow means we have free will. That our "consciousness" can influence the physical reality.

The world is indeterministic due to the uncertainties on the most fundamental level of our world. The quantum world is probabilistic - there are certain probabilities of events occurring on the most fundamental level, so it's not deterministic. Which means that the macroworld, which is based on QM, is also indeterministic.
 
But lets get somewhat specualtive to please (or displease) some spiritualists. Let us say that in 500 years we still don't have conciousness down pat. What is it then? Maybe by some stretch it would be less delusional to assume that it is non physical, or indeed, transcending? What would be the basis for a nonphysical realm? QM? Nope, that's physics. Is there any known phenomena to exist without physics? Afraid not. So what would nonphysical, transcending realities be based on? Nonphysical science? Nonchemistry?

Keep in mind that the speculative realms are not tangible, so an entirely different (imaginary) set of laws would have to exist for (consequently) paranormal noumenon to exist. Then how could sometbing that doesn't exist impact sometbing that does, because existence is physical. Nonphysical existence is not existence.



Tis absence.
 
I don't think we need to wait 500 years to think about what consciousness is. I don't have much direct evidence to back my argument up, but it is kind of logical, isn't it? I hope I can explain it well. Basically, as far as we know, everything in our world is physical. We're made of matter (molecules, atoms, ions etc) that interacts with itself according to certain laws. That is what our reality is. So for free will to exist, it means that there is some non-physical entity, the consciousness, that can influence the physical realm without being a part of it. If you have a good understanding of how matter interacts on the chemical level, then you can see that it's just nonsense. Basically this non-physical entity has to change the course of chemical reactions (because how else would you affect the physical realm, for example produce movement of the limbs). How does it do that? Have we observed that? It would mean that in certain parts of the world (the body), the laws of physics are different, and are constantly being changed.

I think a way more compelling and reasonable way to look at it is that the consciousness is just a virtual entity based on the chemical circuitry in our brain. Just like your computer's operating system is a virtual entity, which is based on silicon "wiring of the brain" of the computer. I mean, after all, a computer is just an interconnected system of gazillions of transistors, that on its own is just that, but to us when it all works, it creates this sort of "virtual entity" that we find useful. To me, this kind of explanation makes sense and doesn't violate my understanding of the real world.

Sorry if I missed the point of your post, but I couldn't really understand what you meant to begin with.
 
I was more directing the post to those who say that conciousness is unexplainable and therfore paranormal. But until nonphysical laws are observed then I doubt conciousness can be nonphysical. I support the circuit theory.
 
Some of the arguements above make my head hurt, so I won't discuss then in the way they've been stated. "Nonphysical existence is not existence" leaves no room for discussion anyways.

Might consider the following thought experiment.

Consider an abstract space of all possible thoughts that a human can have. This is the cognitive space. Now consider mapping those thoughts to chemical processes in a human brain. The human brain has a finite number of configurations one can map to because it is made up of matter and its permutations in space and time. This number is admittedly enormous, but finite nonetheless. Therefor the number of differents thoughts a human can have is finite.

That is one conclusion you might derive from the "consciousness is an epiphenomenon of the brain" hypothesis. I can't prove it necessarily, but don't see it this way. I feel like if you enumerated all the allowed thoughts a human brain can have I could come up with at least one more :)
 
I agree with the thought experiment. I would even go further and say that actually the number of thoughts is really limited, because, as many people don't realize, our world is NOT random. It works according to laws. So given some initial states/values, the permutations follow a certain path determined by those laws(determinism), however it is still unclear to me whether quantum effects can affect this path or not (and thus make it indeterministic, adding more "possible paths"). In any case, this does not give anyone free will.
 
What do you mean? A choice can be pictured as a cascade of chemical reactions starting from some sort of stimulus and ending with some sort of mechanical movement of the body. If quantum uncertainty does influence the reactions between the stimulus (start) and the end in that there is obvious observable difference between two (or more) outcomes due to the quantum effect, then it just means that each outcome has a certain probability of happening. Of course, in the end only one of them is realized (at least in our universe).

By obvious observable difference I mean for example, deciding to leave the house and leaving A) at 4:09 PM or B) 4:11 PM for whatever reason. Differences that are irrelevant, such as time difference of microseconds or distance difference of micrometers, do not count, although I believe that this sort of uncertainty is actually occurring. I don't know about the "noticeable" one, though.
 
I'll take your acknowledging the possibility of quantum effects as a possible nod BD towards my own inclinations of how thinking happens. There is nothing really quantum in humanities mainstream understanding of thought, just a misappropriation of the word that offends people who have studied it. For full disclosure I've studied quantum mechanics, but it was never the main focus of my research, so I try to make do with the tools I got. We're talking about something abstract enough where calling it physical or not gets to be an interpretation.

What is reality? 3 physical dimensions plus time. Hmm, pretty sure it's more than that. Add one more so we can bend it a bit to accommodate general relativity. Ok, now we cool. Maybe add 7 more if you're a string theorist, oh no, maybe too much, they're the weirdos we keep around on the fringes. That's what we know. I hate it when it gets framed as a spiritual vs material debate. I'm not logging in here to fight. I want to steer clear of those honestly, cause it is never a peaceful discussion and I like being outside of all that turmoil but every time I peak in it affects me and sometimes I fall for it.

I try not to appeal to transcendent arguements but let's face face it: everything you've ever known has been revised at one point or another. We have experiences that transcend our understanding of reality. Then we project it back down to the same old pile of bits. I realize I'm in an illusion of perception, and I appreciate those things that anchor us in consensual agreement so lets discuss those to make progress, but sometimes faith is required to let something new in. Some people are too top down for me. I gravitate towards the ones that can bring it down in a way I can understand. if they value the things I value, it's amazing what they show me. Others are so reductionistic that they think 1+1=2 is a good answer.

I suspect strongly the brain is a quantum computer. There is no direct evidence in our physical understanding of the mechanism of the brain for this so call it faith, but it shouldn't bar one from considering the possibility, since matter is itself quantum mechanical in the most fundamental way we can conceive. All that foundation exists, we just don't know how to compute things quantum mechanically. Quantum computation involves a leap into computation outside of physical reality as we know it. Yes, that what a quantum computer is, and if you throw many worlds at it, that's still more worlds then I experience at baseline, so that's spiritual as fuck or scientific as fuck or whatever you want to call it. Let's go there!

How can a classical computer invent a quantum computer I'd like to know. Maybe Intel is wasting their money.

http://www.zmescience.com/science/physics/intel-quantum-computing-09042015/
 
New research published in the journal Attention, Perception and Psychophysics is being suggested as the first direct evidence of free will....

The team devised a novel experiment tracking a person’s focus of attention without using intrusive cues or commands. Participants, positioned in MRI scanners, were left alone to watch a split screen as rapid streams of colorful numbers and letters scrolled past on each side.

They were asked simply to pay attention to one side for a while, then to the other side; when to switch sides was entirely up to them. Over an hour, the participants switched their attention from one side to the other dozens of times.
‘A kind of high-tech mind-reading’

Researchers monitored the participants’ brains as they watched the media stream, both before and after they switched their focus.

For the first time, researchers were able to see both what happens in a human brain the moment a free choice is made, and what happens during the lead-up to that decision—how the brain behaves during the deliberation over whether to act.
..............
“What’s truly remarkable about this project,” says Leon Gmeindl, a research scientist at Johns Hopkins and lead author of the study, “is that by devising a way to detect brain events that are otherwise invisible—that is, a kind of high-tech ‘mind reading’—we uncovered important information about what may be the neural underpinnings of volition, or free will.”
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http://www.futurity.org/brain-free-will-choice-1203302-2/


Personally I've always been more of a compatibilist. Obviously we are never wholly free from the constraints of physical law, but at the same time, I've always suspected the ability of humans to have moments of conscious will; enacting genuine independant volition.
 
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