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Physicalism (Materialism) Verifies Free Will Defining free will and physicalism The 'will' is the conscious experience of deciding and initiating human actions. Stefan Molyneux defines free will as the ability to compare an action to an ideal standard, but I will take a broader definition of free will which I would assume Stefan would agree with (without allowing for compatibilism): Free will is the ability to choose between possible actions independently of events that are external to a persons 'will'. That is, a person who decided to pursue action A at time X could have chosen action B under exactly the same external circumstances if he or she had 'willed' to do so. The opposite of free will is determinism which is: the doctrine that all events, including human action, are ultimately determined by causes regarded as external to the 'will'. Another definition of determinism is that events including the 'will' are determined by previously existing causes, however, this definition will not be used because I believe it does not necessarily touch the core of the issue which is whether our 'will' can act undetermined by external causes. If we were to assume this second definition, then determinism would be compatible with free will. Physicalism (also known as materialism) is the doctrine that the real world consists only of the physical world. The contradiction between free will and physicalism In this section, I will play devil's advocate and suggest a contradiction between free will and physicalism. Stefan argues that it is self-evident that free will exists, i.e., that our will causes human actions, as anyone arguing against this is causing their human action of 'arguing'. Not only that, but they are assuming that the other person is in a sense causing their 'listening' or 'acceptance' or 'non-acceptance' of their argument, which are also human actions. An issue with free will that probably troubles the minds of others in this community is that if free will is self-evident, it is true. If it is true, then determinism is false. If determinism is false then physicalism is false. It seems if we accept free will, we must abandon physicalism and adopt mind-body dualism, that is, that the 'will' is real but is independent of the physical world. It seems that the physical world is synonymous with objective reality because all that is objective is in some way measurable and that which is measurable is physical. However, mind-body dualism would mean that reality consists of more than objective reality, which means truth is subjective. However, the statement that 'truth is subjective' demonstrates that truth is objective, which is a contradiction. We are left in a bind. Either determinism or free will is true. Determinism must be false because free will is self-evident, and free will must be false because mind-body dualism is self-contradictory. This is a contradiction. Defending free will and physicalism I believe there is an error in the above reasoning. It does not follow that "if determinism is false then physicalism is false". In fact, I will now argue that if physicalism is true, then free will is true, and hence determinism is false. The 'will', self, or consciousness exists and this is self-evident (cogito ergo sum; I think therefore I am). Therefore, physicalism would imply that the 'will' is physical. This conclusion is in line with physicalist theories of consciousness including Integrated Information Theory (IIT) which states that a system's consciousness is determined by its causal properties and is therefore an intrinsic, fundamental property of any physical system. If physicalism is true, then consciousness is a property of the causal links between neurons in a person's neural network. Then, consciousness is identical to the neural network. They are one of the same. If consciousness is the neural network, then our 'will' is also the neural network. Determinism would suggest that human actions are caused by this neural network but that human actions are caused by events external to our 'will': Determinism would suggest that the neural network itself is determined by external events such as non-conscious 'zombie' networks or neural networks connected to but external to the brain such as the peripheral nervous system. Therefore, if our brain determines actions and our brain is determined by external events, then our actions are determined by external events. However, it is not necessarily the case that external events determine our conscious neural network. According to IIT, the neural network is causally linked in such a way that the system is more akin to a positive feedback loop than a feed-forward system. That is, rather than external events causing consciousness causing action, external events play a role in consciousness (for example, I might say the reason I drank a glass of water is that I am thirsty) but that consciousness is caused by prior consciousness. Therefore, actions would be caused by consciousness, but consciousness would not be caused by external events. And because the 'will' is synonymous with our experience of consciousness, our 'will' has self-caused the action. It is not even that non-conscious processes cause our 'will'. It is that our 'will' and indeed our 'self' is composed in that integrated neural network that plays out causes and effects with itself. This is exactly what free will is, it is the freedom of the 'will' to act without being determined by external events, and because the ‘will’ is equal to the neural networks, the neural networks don’t count as external events. The best way to describe free will would be to say that it is an endogenous system. So we must conclude that physicalism actually demonstrates that free will is true and determinism is false. Looking at it from this perspective, it is completely, both ontologically and metaphysically accurate to say that 'I' convinced myself do to action A or action B. Conclusion The conception of free will I have suggested seems to dissolve much of the worries that people have about determinism. Some may worry that if determinism is true, then how can we ever be satisfied that we act rationally or are responsible for our actions? If external events determined that I would do something irrational or evil, how are we to expect any kind of integrity from ourselves. If we cannot expect integrity from ourselves, how can we say that we are really rational animals and how can we assign responsibility to ourselves and others? It seems that if determinism is true, then we are in a way doomed to a quasi-pathological life and we are fundamentally not in control of our own happiness. I believe this is the fundamental worry among free willers. The conception of free will I suggest solves this issue by suggesting that our self-integrity lies within the physical integrity (literally the integrated information) in our neural networks that retain a self-generating, endogenous system. If we look at free will with a physicalist lense, I believe we can preserve free will without compromising physicalism.

Reason Vs. Emotion Vs. Belief Vs. Consciousness Reason, emotion, belief, and consciousness, have a fundamental place in epistemology and psychology but I have not found where they sit. I especially haven't found where they sit from first principles. My hope with this discussion is that these things can find their proper place. Emotions reflect belief and beliefs are always rational I have some ideas, each with their own arguments and evidence. From what I gather, Stefan has an implicit, specific conception of the relation between these things. The two major premises I can identify are 1) Emotions reflect belief, and 2) beliefs are always rational. Now, this second premise seems obviously false, but there is a corollary to it 3) beliefs do not necessarily reflect conscious thought. I should make it clear, by beliefs I mean what we really believe deep down and might not even be conscious of. Evidence for It's from these premises that much of the psychology in this community can be explained. We can explain the true self as rationality and the collection of beliefs. We can explain the false self as the origin of conscious thought that is not wholly informed by beliefs. We can explain free will by saying that it is a choice whether conscious thought wholly informs itself with belief. It also conforms with the evidence. It explains self-defence mechanisms where a person consciously thinks something but believes something else. It explains how personalities as a collective can be fragmented throughout history from all the evils that take place. It gives foundation to how a child protects themselves with false thoughts. It explains how psychotherapy works, by uncovering beliefs using critical thinking and self-reflection. It explains procrastination, as procrastination just reflects the belief of resentment. It would suggest we should follow our emotions as long as we identify them properly. Evidence against The issue is, there is a lot of evidence against these things. Are emotional leftist protesters simply misunderstanding their emotions? Are they masking a true self with a false self? Do people fall for propaganda because of the false self, or maybe we aren't actually innately rational? Another problem is, it seems incredibly redundant to have a true self making calculations, and then a false self making entirely different calculations about the same thing. Cognitive therapies suggest something is wrong with cognition itself. For example, schema therapy suggests that we have core beliefs that are often themselves unconscious and formed in childhood that are irrational and make us feel some ways or generate negative thoughts. It would be strange to have an extra layer to this by saying that those irrational core 'beliefs' are preceded by true beliefs. It is very hard for me to believe that emotions reflect belief and beliefs are always rational. But it also explains so much and makes life a lot easier. Argument for from first principles Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Rather than doing some kind of trial-and-error, making observations, etc, an argument from first principles would take away a lot of doubt about the psychology taught in this community. I would think that arguing for these psycho-epistemological concepts from first principles would be the most important thing, as the psycho-epistemology kind of defines what this whole community is about. I tried to find these first principles, and I found these quotes from Ayn Rand. "There can be no causeless love or any sort of causeless emotion. An emotion is a response to a fact of reality, an estimate dictated by your standards." (Ayn Rand, For the New Intellectual, p. 147) All knowledge is derived from reality, so emotions follow cognition. Perhaps we could further say from this that emotions reflect cognition. And, perhaps we can assume cognition and reason that goes with it have sovereignty. Indeed, doesn't seem logical that a rational faculty would allow something like 2+2=5. It is more likely that anyone who thinks such a thing is not using their rational faculty. It would also seem strange that the rational faculty would switch off, rather than keep working at the background. In fact, I think that our very feeling of having a self and having free will sort of rest upon the idea that we have some kind of sovereignty, and that we know what is best for ourselves, and we trust our faculties to give us the most accurate information possible. Perhaps this should be self-evident. Perhaps this is self-evident to any peacefully parented individual. Argument against from first principles Ayn Rand would disagree with our second premise; that beliefs are always rational. "Your subconscious is like a computer—more complex a computer than men can build—and its main function is the integration of your ideas. Who programs it? Your conscious mind. If you default, if you don’t reach any firm convictions, your subconscious is programmed by chance—and you deliver yourself into the power of ideas you do not know you have accepted. But one way or the other, your computer gives you print-outs, daily and hourly, in the form of emotions—which are lightning-like estimates of the things around you, calculated according to your values." (Ayn Rand, Philosophy: Who Needs It?, p. 5) also, "An emotion as such tells you nothing about reality, beyond the fact that something makes you feel something. Without a ruthlessly honest commitment to introspection—to the conceptual identification of your inner states—you will not discover what you feel, what arouses the feeling, and whether your feeling is an appropriate response to the facts of reality, or a mistaken response, or a vicious illusion produced by years of self-deception . . . . In the field of introspection, the two guiding questions are: “What do I feel?” and “Why do I feel it?” (Ayn Rand, Philosophy: Who Needs It?, p. 17) Rand is seeming to suggest emotions can reflect irrational thoughts. It seems beliefs held in the subconscious can be 'programmed by chance'. She says that using the rational faculty is not automatic but voluntary. So it has sovereignty, but it is up to a person to use it. Her view does make a lot of sense. Our working memory is incredibly limited, so thinking rationally would be incredibly limited. Perhaps there is no 'true self' beyond our ability to reason consciously. If Rand is right, I believe it challenges the psychology of this community. Rather than listening to a true self, and to emotions and their origins, her views would suggest we should rather use reason alone to find what is the right thing to do and to create habits out of it. Perhaps one problem with her view is that there is no ought from an is. It makes a lot of sense to me that only emotions can tell us something as trivial as what flavour of ice cream to have and something as serious as whether I should really marry some person. Maybe the truth is somewhere in between. Maybe the subconscious can be 'programmed by chance', but maybe it a somewhat active system which holds our true beliefs, while our conscious thoughts themselves can differ. What do people think? Can these premises be proven from first principles? Maybe you think the premises I outlined are inaccurate? How do you think is the best way to approach and deal with emotions and choices? Have any podcasts/books to share about this stuff?

In FDR358 (Stef's wager) Stefan argued that it is better to believe in free will when lacking information to its existence. He calls this argument Stef’s wager. If you believe in free will but determinism is true then you were determined to believe in free will so you lost nothing. If you believe in determinism but free will is true then you lost your ability for personal responsibility which is worse. In this post, I will argue against the wager and utilise my argument against the wager to provide a case for, and to defend determinism. I will not cite all my paraphrases of Stefan for obvious reasons, but that is not a problem given that others may correct me if they believe I have misrepresented Stefan. Also, phrases with single quotation marks are quoting Stefan. Free will is defined as that which any person who possesses it could have chosen differently in a circumstance given that the circumstance is unchanged, hence choices being uncaused by any physical effect. Decisions may be caused by something non-material like a soul. Or they may be self-caused, as Stefan has favoured. This definition of free will is the same definition Stefan has used. No sane determinist truly believes that beliefs cannot be changed or that choice does not exist. No sane determinist truly believes people cannot be rational or cannot debate. So naturally, a determinist will probably not find Stef’s wager convincing given that the determinist had probably considered the ability to choose when they adopted their belief in determinism. A determinist will not believe that beliefs cannot be influenced. Therefore, I argue that a better wager would be to show the pragmatic consequences of a determinist morality vs. a free will morality. This is more in line with the original Descartes wager. Descartes did not argue that if you believe in God but God does not exist then you cannot have lost anything because then morality does not exist anyway and so free will doesn't exist and you could not have changed your mind. Rather, he weighed up the consequences of the belief without changing epistemological postulates. He said if you believe in God but there is no God then you have not changed much in your life. If you believe in no God but there is a God then you will go to hell. Nowhere in this argument are one’s epistemological beliefs challenged. The wager is a pragmatic rather than a philosophical argument. Speaking in pragmatic terms, the wager favours neither position particularly strongly. There are many changes that a person makes if they are committed to determinism, for which it would be costly if they didn't make if determinism is true. Firstly, you stop evaluating people based on the decisions they make and start evaluating them on their behaviour. This makes life much simpler because you stop judging your own desires about people. You don't try to convince yourself someone is worth your time because they are trying their best to be a good person. You don't feel guilty for being selfish with regards to your relationships. According to a study, 44% of trait conscientiousness is heritable. This study supports the claim that virtue is predetermined. Secondly, you become compassionate towards others. You understand anger does not appeal to their rationality. Given that you evaluate them on their behaviour, you can infer that they are not worthy of your time if they don't change their behaviour. You may call them stubborn without any need to grant them free will. Thirdly, you have a richer understanding of human nature. How anger could change someone even if free will is true is difficult to imagine. A much simpler approach is to understand our emotions do not necessarily have any moral content. Anger may be a fight or flight mechanism. Shame may be a way of keeping the integrity of a tribe. Hatred depends on subjective values. There is not necessarily an unconscious 'true self' that 'knows everything' and then the extra component of free will. Rather, we can understand how people think by analysing their biology and experiences. According to free will, brain damage may affect a person’s emotions or unconscious motives, but it should not be able to affect a person’s virtue or moral worth, which should be solely determined by free will, and free will not being determined by physical effect. However, a study found that brain damage can casually make changes in the way that people reason which can causally change moral beliefs. Fourthly, you become compassionate towards yourself. A meta-analysis found a large effect size for the negative relationship between self-compassion and psychopathology, r = − 0.54 (95% CI = − 0.57 to − 0.51; Z = − 34.02; p < .0001). We can come to understand that when we say ‘sorry’, we don’t really mean we are worthy of shame, but rather that we understand that we should change how we behave in the future compared to the past. We also stop comparing ourselves to others. Under the dictum that reason equals virtue equals happiness, we may feel compelled to compare our levels of happiness to others, or to compare our virtue to that of others. This is not a good approach. We can accept that we are not all dealt the same hand, and there may as well be things that determine our virtue for which are difficult to control. It is not to say that we ought not to strive for virtue, but that virtue should not necessarily be the determinant of self-esteem. What is more appropriate is to compare oneself in the present to oneself in the past. Stefan has argued that determinism is paradoxical because it presupposes that a person is capable of choice, that is, changing their beliefs, while at the same time asserting that choice is impossible. Determinism is the opposite of free will. So, determinism is defined as not being able to have chosen differently in a circumstance given that the circumstance is unchanged, hence choices being caused by physical effects. According to this definition, whether a person has actually made a choice remains untouched. So, the ability to choose and the fact that a person could not have chosen differently are compatible. Choice itself does not require free will. Choice is the ability to change behaviour in virtue of being rational. Rationality is simply conceptual ‘fidelity to reality’. This does not entail free will. Rationality distinguishes us from animals. Animals cannot think conceptually, and we can. Free will then is not required to distinguish human and animal thought. Stefan has argued that if a determinist attempts to debate because they believe others are 'inputs and outputs', then it explains why other people debate, but it would also mean the determinist is also an input-output machine. And therefore, a determinist has not chosen to debate with others and cannot attempt to debate in the first place which is a performative contradiction. To this argument I rebut. If free will does exist and we are watching two others debate, we can explain their behaviour without appealing to free will by labelling them as inputs and outputs much like philosophical zombies. A determinist simply takes that further to say that this is also a characteristic of the observer. We can still choose to debate even if it was determined. I am yet to have heard a philosophical argument from Stefan against determinism without him appealing to the argument of performative contradiction. If there is no contradiction with the belief of free will, we should look at the evidence and the simplest explanation. Stefan has acknowledged that determinism should be accepted only if it is non-contradictory given that it is simpler. The evidence overwhelmingly supports that determinism is simpler to free will for the following reasons. Firstly, everything else seems to be determined by all effects acting as also as all causes. Stefan has argued that we should not be surprised to find that the human mind possesses free will given that it is only the brain that possesses consciousness. However, I am not sure whether it's correct to assume that only the brain possesses consciousness. Consciousness cannot be objectively observed. If it were not for what we have observed in the physical human body and comparing it to our subjective experience, there would have been no way to know that consciousness resides in the brain. In fact, we still don't really know whether animals are conscious. In that regard, a rock could even be conscious in some manner, a position known as panpsychism. If a computer was capable of conceptual processing, it is likely that the computer would be conscious at a level similar to our own. Consciousness may have to do more with complexity and feedback loops than it has to do with the brain. I had a dream a while ago in which I saw consciousness and life itself arising from feedback loops, weird dream. Secondly, I do not know what it means to feel free. At least from my perspective, I see my thoughts as constant dialectics. I have said sorry enough times to my girlfriend where I really feel like I don't have much control as I thought I had. Do any men concur? Split-brain patients will often have opposing preferences in separate hemispheres. For example, one hemisphere may have atheistic leanings while the other has theistic leanings. Whether the person is actually theistic may have to do with what ever preference dominates consciousness as a unitary experience, but it does go to show the power of causality in the brain. Also, in my experience the biggest changes in my behaviour have arisen from changes in my environment rather than changes in my attitude. Thirdly, morality requires rationality but it does not require free will. Nowhere in the UPB framework is there a requirement for free will. If a person is rational, they will be moral by adopting universal preferences. Whether a person is rational may be predetermined. Fourthly, it is difficult to articulate what free will actually is. If you were asked to pick a random grass leaf from a field, it is difficult to claim you could have chosen differently. Every choice must depend on knowledge. Picking a grass leaf from a field is not an informative decision. You cannot for example say to have free will about whether to steer a ship east or west while in the middle of an unknown ocean at least without some scientific acuity. Likely, you will pick based solely upon gut feelings, or some kind of patterns of thinking or heuristics. Indeed, this is why neuroscientists can predict such behaviour before the person is aware of their decision. But even if a decision were to be more informative, like for example whether to watch this movie or that movie, there is nothing in your environment which informs you about what you ought to do. It is not intrinsically more rational to watch either movie. There is no ought from an is. Now, we can still say that morality exists. We can say it’s rational to be moral, for your behaviour to be universally preferable. However, choosing to watch a movie is not a moral decision. Subjective taste would largely determine which movie to watch, which arises from unconscious processes. If you are rational, unconscious motives will drive your specific behaviours. If you are irrational, unconscious motives will still drive your specific behaviours. Then, free will might not exist in the behavioural decisions per se, but rather in the choice about whether one acts rationally or irrationally regardless of what behaviour that entails. This is certainly what Ayn Rand believed. The point here is that free will how it is typically conceptualised as existing in every choice we make is unnecessary, and creates the problem of supposing some open system where we get inspiration or information from something that is neither in our environment or biology. To conclude, whether or not a person believes in determinism has significant effects on their life regardless of whether determinism is true. Determinism is not incompatible with the ability to choose. Therefore, it does not contradict how we act. Given that determinism is the simplest explanation, determinism is true. Determinism is defined as a lack of the ability have chosen differently. Free willers would argue the corollary to determinism is that choice does not exist. Conventionally then, determinism is also defined as the lack of choice. But I would argue that this belief is the idea of fatalism and not determinism. Given that morality exists and free will is an important concept in moral reasoning, I am in favour of compatibilism which states that free will does not contradict determinism if we define free will conventionally as the ability to choose and determinism as not having been able to have chosen differently. A person who is a compatibilist is still a determinist. I also wish not to do a disservice to free willers by abandoning the term known as free will used to describe the position of believing in the ability to have chosen differently, so I think it is appropriate to call that position free will while separating it from conventional free will.

Logic begins when it is discovered that A is A, however, how does one discern what is discoverable without first knowing that A is A? Empiricism is a precept to our nature. After all, we are born as little scientists. Empiricism is a given. One cannot argue against it or for it without presupposing it. But if empiricism requires an understanding of logic, then is logic also a precept? (By precepts I mean involuntary knowledge about the world that is not conceptual, no different to how animals know things. It is regulated by our neurobiology.) If logic is a precept, then is it the case that logic is not a concept. But if logic is not a concept, then does logic exist in reality after all? Embedded in the neurons of our brain, so to speak?

MY stance is that humans are incapable of knowing anything, incapable of gaining any knowledge. This I believe is the strong form of epistemological nihilism, the weak form being 'there is no truth' which I am not defending, and I do not believe. Knowledge is a justified true belief. With each of the three components being necessary but not sufficient for knowledge. IF you do not believe it, then you do not know it. If it is false, then you do not know it. And most importantly, if you are not justified in believing it, you do not know it. For example if you 'know' that tomorrows powerball numbers will be 1, 15, 17, 22, 34 and then tomorrow we learn that those were in fact the powerball numbers and we ask you how you knew and you say "well I just sort of had a feeling I guess" then it cannot be said that you actually have knowledge. The justification is the biggest problem, in my opinion, with knowledge. Because any piece of knowledge needs justification, and any justification is going to be another claim of knowledge. Eventually you will end up getting to a point where you have to admit that you do not know, or you admit that you simply assume that it is the case. This means that all claims of knowledge, if they are founded on anything at all, are ultimately founded on assumptions. Assumptions are by definition something that we cannot know, they are things we have no evidence of, no proof for, and we just accept it as true because it is convenient for us to do so. Some of the basal assumptions that we try to build knowledge on may include things like 'the universe exists' and 'I exist' and 'my senses are fairly trustworthy' and 'my memory is fairly trustworthy' etc. These are all fine assumptions, there are assumptions that I make as well. But when these assumptions are the basis of your knowledge then you cannot claim that you actually know the thing. Because justification needs further justification, there is a recursion problem with knowledge as a whole. Truth has no recursion problem, because statements are true or false, independent of us. Even if nobody believed that the earth was round, it would still be round and "The Earth is round." would still be true. Belief has no recursion problem either, as believe requires no justification. As someone in chat pointed out, this means that anyone can believe anything for any reason. Sure. Why not. I don't see any problem with this, you are free to believe that the earth is flat for instance, it's just that you are wrong. (How do I know? I don't, but I am fairly confident.)

If there is one thing that I never "came to terms with" in regards to Stefan's views on the major areas of philosophy is his take on epistemology. I could not identify from the very beginning what exactly was bothering me when he would argue epistemological problems but after a while, I think I identified the source of my distress, that is the synthetic-analytic distinction. I do not actually remember him ever specifically addressing this issue but by deduction from his viewpoints on epistemology, in general, it seems to me that he rejects the synthetic-analytic distinction (I have also read that Ayn Rand rejected this distinction too and since Stefan said that his views on epistemology mostly come from her, I would not be surprised if he does indeed reject this as well). The synthetic-analytic distinction basically puts propositions in 2 categories: -analytic propositions: those propositions "which are true by virtue of their meaning" Ex. There are no married bachelors. -synthetic propositions: those propositions which "are true by how their meaning relates to the world" Ex. Gases expand when heated. What I am arguing is that there is a fundamental difference of certainty we can have in relation to those 2 categories. The difference is that we can prove (100% certainty) whether an analytic statement is true or false, in other words, we have knowledge regarding those but we cannot prove whether a synthetic proposition is true or false since we must rely on external observation and experimentation and not on the laws of logic. How could we prove for example that we are not a brain in a vat? However, my impression is that Stefan does not believe in this distinction (is my impression wrong?) for him "gases expand when heated" and "there are no square circles" are equally "provable". How come? Did he ever give any arguments for this? Ultimately, what is your take on this subject?

Hi guys, A question that has been bothering me lately is: why do we sometimes use objective truth (science, logic) to acquire knowledge but yet sometimes we are comfortable using the Aristotelian mean as a way to answer a question? Why is virtue treated separately from, let's say, ethics (objectivity) or aesthetics (subjectivity)?

I just finished reading a fantastic little book called Mind, Language and Society by Berkeley philosopher John R Searle. It's an introductory work to philosophy focusing on epistemology and ontology. Not that I'm some great philosopher or anything, but I was super surprised by how much I learned reading a 161 page introductory work. John Searle focuses on the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of language and is a controversial figure in academia (apparently). I just heard about him a few months ago. And I would say that he takes a very different, but complementary, approach to metaphysics as Stef. The value I see in this and the other material I've consumed of John's is the focus on distinguishing different senses of the word "objective", in that something can be objectively real (ontology) or can be objective knowledge (epistemology). Like how you've heard Stef talk about how the state and the collective doesn't exist, John offers an interesting framework for thinking about how something can not exist, but still be objectively true, and how, if you think about it, that's actually a pretty trippy thing to think about. How can it be the case that a collection of fibers and inks can constitute a 100 dollar bill. It's almost completely identical with a one dollar bill, or a sheet of printer paper for that matter, and yet we recognize collectively a significant amount of value that it represents, and objective ways that we know it's valuable, because counterfeits aren't and not all paper is. How can an electronic signature like a bitcoin be worth $580 to us? Money is an interesting example, but there are a ton more, like how is it that we can collectively agree that carrying a football across the opposing team's in-zone constitutes a field goal in american football, and that a field goal is worth 6 points, and that these "institutional facts" be objectively true? And how that can seem arbitrary yet objective, but math not at all arbitrary and objective in the same sense (epistemically speaking). How might we confuse this sense of the word "objective" with objective statements about the physical constitution of a dollar bill in terms of mass, and volume and chemistry, etc? It turns out that this confusion happens all the time and it gets us in trouble. The ways you are familiar already with are that we can say outrageous things like the state has opposite moral rights, or that we need to give our lives for the collective like how Stef talks about. Another way is in confusing simulations with the things they are meant to simulate. For example, we tend to think that if we can get a robot programmed well enough that it's "machine learning" causes it to gain new capabilities or accept new inputs, that this is actually real learning, real intelligence, and that the difference between ourselves and the robot is merely a difference in sophistication, that we have a better "program" in our brains. This, as it turns out, is a categorical error. The Turing test is for computer simulations of human beings, where Alan Turing says that if you can have a chat with a computer and not know that it's a computer, it's responses so well programmed, that this means that you have achieved true "artificial intelligence". And there are a lot of people who've been trying to do this and succeeding to different degrees, but even if this was accomplished, it's still worlds away from actual intelligence, and this is because the program doesn't actually understand any of the meaning of the responses it gives. Consider the following thought experiment: you are asked to go into a small room with no view or contact with the outside world except one slit in the wall where sheets of paper with questions written in chinese symbols are pushed in. You are tasked with sending out an answer sheet of paper with chinese symbols so that the person outside thinks that there is a native chinese speaker inside of this room. You have a manual that says that if you get X symbols, respond with Y symbols. The manual is very good and you succeed in getting the person outside to believe that they are communicating with a chinese speaker. This is called the "Chinese Room" argument. At no point in this process do you actually understand what the questions are or what the answers mean. A computer is the same way. A computer has no mind at all to think or know anything. It's just a very very very sophisticated symbol manipulation machine. The only meaning that is gotten out of a computer is by human observers, placed there by other users, or at a more dynamic and lower level the developers of the many symbol manipulation subsystems. John focuses a lot on consciousness, language and institutional facts like I described above, and the importance in understanding these topics seems to me now to be of massive importance. I consider finding out how much I don't know, what I just take for granted without really understanding the implications, to be an awesome opportunity, and for me, this book accomplishes that very well. And he's a really good communicator and writer and makes some seriously heavy philosophy accessible to laymen. If you buy it on amazon, make sure to use the amazon affiliate link for FDR: http://www.fdrurl.com/amazon

Hello! So, I recently bought a book on anarcho-capitalism, called The New Libertarianism: ANARCHO-CAPTALISM by J. Michael Oliver. It's an attempt to reconcile objectivism with anarcho-capitalism, and as such it explains the basics of objectivist metaphysics. I'm at the very beginning of the book, where he talks about the existence axiom, but the problem is that I don't get it. The basic argument is that we are conscious, and if we're conscious there has to be something objective (outside of our minds) that we're conscious of, but is that really true? Can't I be conscious of my own fantasies? Thank you! /Sebastian