Definition of free will

[dsayers]

This was my initial thought too.

 

But think of it this way.  The universe didn't suddenly become deterministic the moment you realised it was deterministic.  It has been your entire life and you didn't feel empty and depressed before you realised it, so there's no reason to think it afterward.

 

I don't get this. How could you talk somebody out of that which they have no choice to be in?

 

The reason we can make sense of violent people for example is because of deterministic theories. 

 

I see this mistake being made all the time. Perhaps you could help me understand how it's made. Violent people require abuse in their life, but it's not causal. There are people who are abused that are not violent; their dysfunction manifests in other ways.

 

I myself, am much happier to live in this deterministic world, where we have a chance to solve the problem of human violence, than in a world where people had free will and you wouldn't be able to solve the problem of violence because people have free will and are not bound by previous decisions and experiences.

 

If determinism is the solution to human violence and the universe is deterministic, why is it not solved? How can people break the cycle?

 

I don't understand the connection you're making between free will and violence being unsolvable. Violence is VERY inefficient when its consequences accrue to the perpetrator. It's chosen out of an expectation of getting away with it. This used to be due to lack of population and technology. Today it's more to do with the State, it's inefficiencies, and protection of criminals for the sake of its own preservation and expansion.

 

As for your 2nd post, you're saying exactly what I was.

[Mike Fleming]

I don't get this. How could you talk somebody out of that which they have no choice to be in?

 

 

He's saying he's depressed because he's thinking determinism is a depressing thought.  I thought that too, until I began to think about it for awhile.  That's what I'm saying.   In the same way I would say to a religious person who has realised God doesn't exist and thinks it's depressing.  If he just thinks it through, he won't be so depressed, because in reality, nothing has changed.  Free will was never there just as God was never there and in fact, he now has a more accurate map of reality which helps greatly in the journey through life..

 

 

I see this mistake being made all the time. Perhaps you could help me understand how it's made. Violent people require abuse in their life, but it's not causal. There are people who are abused that are not violent; their dysfunction manifests in other ways.

 

 

 

Where did I say people who are abused necessarily become violent?

 

 

If determinism is the solution to human violence and the universe is deterministic, why is it not solved? How can people break the cycle?

 

I don't understand the connection you're making between free will and violence being unsolvable. Violence is VERY inefficient when its consequences accrue to the perpetrator. It's chosen out of an expectation of getting away with it. This used to be due to lack of population and technology. Today it's more to do with the State, it's inefficiencies, and protection of criminals for the sake of its own preservation and expansion.

 

As for your 2nd post, you're saying exactly what I was.

 

People can break the cycle by learning about cause-and--effect and how actions have consequences.  Believing in some mystical free will short-circuits this somewhat imo.  We have these phrases from the past like "you reap what you sow" and "the wheel always turns" for reasons.  I think free will is just another form of religion and believers in it tend to talk the same way defenders of religion do.  Re-defining it or taking people round in circles.

 

For various reasons, the abuse stuff that Stef talks about is not yet widely disseminated.  Kind of like how the fact that the Earth revolves around the Sun was not widely disseminated amongst the population at one point in time.  And for similar reasons.  

 

Stef is edging ever closer to determinism and will, one day, I believe say that he was wrong about free will.  Although, again, that's just my opinion.

[dsayers]

If he just thinks it through, he won't be so depressed, because in reality, nothing has changed.

 

I got what you were saying. But if he's just a machine and his anxiety is the result of a subroutine processing A, B, and C while conditions X, Y, and Z are just so, wouldn't trying to talk him out of it be ineffectual? Or is the argument that the code is self-correcting and being exposed to an alternative view can sometimes be enough to tweak the values of the variables considered.

 

I'm asking out of genuine curiosity. Although I feel embarrassed to admit it, your input has me curious on the subject for the first time. I've just assumed that because people make arguments to humans and not to spoons, that this was an acceptance of free will. I still think this holds despite this thread, but there is something very sexy about comparing it to losing God. It's like reliving the liberation I experienced when I started re-learning how to think and pursuing self-knowledge.

 

Where did I say people who are abused necessarily become violent?

 

The quote I was responding to made it sound as if the abuse was causal. If I misunderstood, I must both apologize and ask if you could elaborate on what you did mean.

[Mike Fleming]

I got what you were saying. But if he's just a machine and his anxiety is the result of a subroutine processing A, B, and C while conditions X, Y, and Z are just so, wouldn't trying to talk him out of it be ineffectual? Or is the argument that the code is self-correcting and being exposed to an alternative view can sometimes be enough to tweak the values of the variables considered.

 

I'm asking out of genuine curiosity. Although I feel embarrassed to admit it, your input has me curious on the subject for the first time. I've just assumed that because people make arguments to humans and not to spoons, that this was an acceptance of free will. I still think this holds despite this thread, but there is something very sexy about comparing it to losing God. It's like reliving the liberation I experienced when I started re-learning how to think and pursuing self-knowledge.

 

 

OK, let me see if I can articulate this properly.

 

We are machines, but we are very sophisticated machines.  We care.  We love.  And all that stuff.  Now you can break it all down to biology ultimately of course, but we still feel these things.  I'm still as much human as anyone else.  I care about others, love some people.  I still feel special and I assume that special feeling we have about ourselves is a type of survival mechanism.  It's the body saying that it's survival is important, I think.  But to me it just comes across as a special feeling. 

 

I should stress that I'm still working out determinism and all it's implications for myself.  There really isn't a whole lot of satisfying literature out there about what it all means for ourselves and society as a whole.  I understand why because it's so challenging, it literally makes my head ache but I always find myself coming back to it.   Partly because it almost seems like the last frontier.  Somewhere where someone could come along with some good theories and ideas surrounding it and really make a mark.  I've seen Sam Harris, in particular talk about it, and for me it's a very unsatisfying experience.  While he makes a good case for it he doesn't really talk about implications much.  He either isn't communicating it well or hasn't properly worked it all out in his own head at the moment.

 

But it was a very profound moment for me when I realised, yes, determinism is true.  It came after a long process of reading books, reading articles, watching videos from many people and thinking it through in my head.  When I got there it all seemed so obvious, kind of like with God, but the journey was necessary.  I think it's a more profound truth than there is no God, which itself is a very profound truth.  

 

So coming back to your question, we all effect each other.  There's strong empirical evidence for that.   If you give someone some information that they didn't previously have, or even just a different perspective, it can change that person's philosophy.  It's happened to me from reading things people have posted on the internet.  The guy said he found it depressing.  I was trying to articulate why it wasn't depressing from my perspective.  Obviously, I can't make him do anything.

 

 

 

The quote I was responding to made it sound as if the abuse was causal. If I misunderstood, I must both apologize and ask if you could elaborate on what you did mean.

 

 

No problem.  Causal in one direction.  Violence has reasons behind it, whether it is abuse in the past or whether it's a tumour in the brain.   But abuse itself doesn't always lead to violence as you pointed out.  I myself, was bullied and abused but yet I have not been violent as an adult.  I've been more self-destructive than anything else.

[june]

I got what you were saying. But if he's just a machine and his anxiety is the result of a subroutine processing A, B, and C while conditions X, Y, and Z are just so, wouldn't trying to talk him out of it be ineffectual?

no. because since his anxiety is the result of those variables, then once the variables change, so does his reaction (to something other than the anxiety he had previously)i think the most important perspective to view this topic from is from the perspective of solutions. what solutions does the avenue of free will offer? free will says a person is 100% responsible for their actions, because they have this incorruptible orb in them that is always representative of their 'true' choice, so any choice anybody makes can only be traced back to that person -- not their environment, not their abusive home, not their lack of food and water, not the fact that they've just lost a loved one. none of that can be accounted for with free will, because the buck stops at the person. this is why free will can not lead to solutions, because it does not account for everything that is causing the problem. imagine if there is a child in a violent home, a person with a deterministic perspective can say to this child: "your home is a violent and dangerous place, not only will you physically suffer, but over time you will also be degraded mentally. you should remove yourself from that environment, because it will cause your self-integrity to be compromised over time." this quote recognises that environmental factors (the violent home) will have negative influences upon a person and will impair their "free choice" (so to speak), and so the solution that can be proposed is to remove oneself from that violent home to avoid such consequences.the free will perspective however cannot propose such a solution, because free will implies that a person's mental state is uncompromisable (and thus always responsible), so warning a person that their violent home will cause them to be mentally compromised doesn't make any sense, because it's essentially acknowledging that their "free will" is corruptible, and thus won't necessarily be "free" at all.

[Mike Fleming]

this is why free will can not lead to solutions, because it does not account for everything that is causing the problem. imagine if there is a child in a violent home, a person with a deterministic perspective can say to this child: "your home is a violent and dangerous place, not only will you physically suffer, but over time you will also be degraded mentally. you should remove yourself from that environment, because it will cause your self-integrity to be compromised over time." this quote recognises that environmental factors (the violent home) will have negative influences upon a person and will impair their "free choice" (so to speak), and so the solution that can be proposed is to remove oneself from that violent home to avoid such consequences. 

 

I think this is a great point.

 

From one perspective, enlightening the population at large to the reality of determinism, I think, leads some people to think that it means people will decide they are not responsible for anything and go out and kill, thieve or whatever and say they had no choice in the matter and therefore can't be criminally prosecuted.  But to me, this is like people warning that anarchy will be chaos and we are better off with the lie, or necessary evil, of government.

 

If we do have the situation described above by June, then because the person knows that determinism is true, because society at large knows, and what the consequences are, they will be more effectively able to remove themselves from that situation, with the blessing of society, than what currently happens where it is not clear to people what the consequences will be and societal guilt allows the abuse to continue, even into adulthood to some degree, with the attendant negative effects on society.  

[Josh -Lel-]

 

This was my initial thought too.

 

But think of it this way.  The universe didn't suddenly become deterministic the moment you realised it was deterministic.  It has been your entire life and you didn't feel empty and depressed before you realised it, so there's no reason to think it afterward.  The universe hasn't changed.

Actually, that makes me feel a lot more depressed.  

 

Determinism is really a wonderful concept when you come to grips with it.  It also removes the last bit of "specialness" that humans hang on to, but doesn't detract from life at all.  How could it?  It has been that way all along.  It's like losing God.  He was never there in the first place.  And the reality is, it helps you gain a good grasp on your own life and your experiences and motivations that brought you to where you are.  The other benefit, is that you see through superstition much more easily because there is no magic, no free will.  And so, you can just understand things as the result of physical processes and toss out nonsense which doesn't make sense in that regard.

Although the feeling of "specialness" is probably a basic survival mechanism built into our brains, I'd find it hard to argue there is anything more unique or special in the universe than consciousness.

Stef is edging ever closer to determinism and will, one day, I believe say that he was wrong about free will.  Although, again, that's just my opinion.

Well, he wouldn't be "wrong" because there was no possibility of him being anything else. He'll just be aware of the train tracks.I think the only way we'll ever figure this out is if we push these thoughts and theories to their full boundaries, and I believe the best way to do that is to make the theories as close and as easily practicible as possible.Here's a question we can start with: Do I CHOOSE whether or not I continue to believe in free will?We'll just work off that and see where it goes.

 

EDIT: Ignore these empty quotesEDiT: I hope my question wasn't too stupid; I know determinism concludes that we don't have choices, but I'm wondering how a determinism deals with the question as a whole.

[Kevin Beal]

Determinists, you are mistaken as a matter of fact about your conception of causality and scientific reduction. So here's a short lesson.

 

 

Causality

Did you know that the first way that infants learn about causality is through push and pull exercises? They learn to have an effect on the world in that way, and in an instant they understand particle physics.

 

But then we learn many many more forms of causality that aren't push / pull, that aren't atoms bouncing off of each other, because surely the world would be pretty ridiculously simple if that's the only causality there were. A soup of non-descript particles like an aether never amounting to anything we know is real about the world.

 

The causality of states of systems producing emergent phenomena is another example. Molecules that come together in a lattice structure produce the solidity we experience every day. Accumulations of H2O molecules producing liquidity, and large neuronal systems producing consciousness.

 

The term "causality" only means that effects have causes. That's it! It's not a law of physics. It's even more basic than that. That's why we can have equally valid causal descriptions at higher levels (I chose to lift my arm) as on lower levels (the motor neurons signaled my muscle fibers to contract). That's why there are other sciences that are not physics-based:

• psychology gives a causal account of adult dysfunction by looking at childhood trauma (for example)
• biology gives an account of the features of species through an evolutionary model
• economics with an a priori look at how bubbles form, etc.

These are not physics or push pull causality and we accept their validity without much reservation (except Rainbow Dash on biology).

 

 

Reduction

There are two ways that reductions happen in science: eliminative and non-eliminative. That is the reduction should explain why the phenomenon is illusory or give us a deeper understanding of it's mechanics.

 

We now know that sunsets are illusory, that the sun isn't setting behind the mountains, but rather that the earth is spinning on it's axis relative to the sun. That's eliminative reduction.

 

We learned that solidity is actually to do with the structure of molecules in a lattice formation causing fields of force to form a boundary. But there is still solidity. We just understand it a little differently now. That's non-eliminative reduction.

 

When you try and reduce consciousness (much less free will) you immediately run into problems. There is a naivety in thinking that it's just a matter of gathering more variables to account for. This is actually mistaken.

 

If you take the eliminative approach (which you have to if you are a determinist for reasons I explained in my first post) then you've already failed. That's because, as Descartes accurately pointed out, if there is nothing else that I know, I know that I am conscious. And that's because the illusion of consciousness would itself be consciousness, as consciousness is our first person subjective experience of the world. It is the perceiving, the judging, the deciding, etc.

 

If however you take the non-eliminative approach you have an enormous challenge that no one as yet has been able to accomplish. And many academics who are determinists and materialists in the philosophy of mind don't even try. They concede that consciousness cannot be reduced and go back to trying the first approach. Daniel Dennett for example says that consciousness is fluff, it's meaningless, has no causal powers of it's own, humans would be the same with or without it.

 

 

1st Person & Qualia

The reason they don't try is this: with 3rd person objects in the world like trees and mountains, we can give a non-eliminative reductionist description of these things, and we do all the time in science. The reduction leads to a third person description, but with consciousness you have to start with a first person object that is inescapably subjective in it's mode of existence. If you try and only give an account of behavior while ignoring the qualia of consciousness, you can absolutely reduce it. We may even get to a place soon where we can find pains in the body by looking at brain scans. But you have left out the qualia and your description explains nothing whatever about it.

 

Consider the color red. A color blind person may know everything there is to know about the color red. They know it's wavelength is 600 nanometers. They know how it is received in the eye by the cones. They know how that sense data is communicated chemically and electrically to the visual cortex and have seen it get incorporated into a unified conscious experience of a rose from the outside. But they will never know what red actually looks like. Actually, they might if they take LSD or psilocybin mushrooms, but you get what I mean.

 

 

Conclusion

Just take a little time to ask yourself why you think "causality" necessitates a determinist worldview. There is a premise there that's taken for granted. And that's not very scientific of you

 

Just try and give an account for the color red with a reduction. You can't and nobody bothers trying.

 

Please familiarize yourself with what the debate actually is before making obvious points about the physical world that take 2 seconds to consider and portray it as if free will proponents have not really considered it. "Oh, the universe is causal? Why did I never think of that!?" It's insulting and it's obvious and it neither adds or explains anything.

 

I considered myself a determinist for a long time. I would guess that I could argue the determinist position better than anyone on these forums. And the performative contradiction Stef points out bothered me, the necessary illusion conclusion bothered me, the obviousness of the arguments bothered me. So I decided to look into it. I actually know what serious and sincere consideration to the free will side looks like because I've done it. And simply repeating over and over again that determinism == causality is just annoying. I don't believe that's sincere at all. At least saying it doesn't make it so. It is a failure of your imagination as it turns out.

 

I don't actually expect this to convince you. Arguments never do. I just want to show you that there is more to the debate that determinists ever realize. I don't mind it at all if people are determinists, my problem is with completely obvious arguments advanced as insight into what is actually a very complicated issue. It may well turn out that I'm wrong, but not because "causality == determinism". You are going to have to try just a little harder than that.

[Josh -Lel-]

Wow, Kevin. good longpost!!! :) 

We still has to figure out the applicability of causality to all parts of universe before we create any conclusions; especially those about human consciousness and behavior.

[Rainbow Dash]

Kevin,

 

This explanation seems to imply that animals have free will, because they have consciousness, which can't be reduced to matter and energy. This conflicts with other explanations of free will. Can I get some clarity?

 

I will respond to more of your post when I have more time.

[Kevin Beal]

This explanation seems to imply that animals have free will, because they have consciousness, which can't be reduced to matter and energy. This conflicts with other explanations of free will. Can I get some clarity?

No, consciousness is necessary, but not sufficient. I think we can agree on that.

 

And absolutely consciousness and free will are physical and are causal. I'm not sure how that could be denied. I just take issue with the idea that this results in determinism (which it doesn't).

[TheRobin]

no. because since his anxiety is the result of those variables, then once the variables change, so does his reaction (to something other than the anxiety he had previously)i think the most important perspective to view this topic from is from the perspective of solutions. what solutions does the avenue of free will offer? free will says a person is 100% responsible for their actions, because they have this incorruptible orb in them that is always representative of their 'true' choice, so any choice anybody makes can only be traced back to that person -- not their environment, not their abusive home, not their lack of food and water, not the fact that they've just lost a loved one. none of that can be accounted for with free will, because the buck stops at the person. this is why free will can not lead to solutions, because it does not account for everything that is causing the problem. imagine if there is a child in a violent home, a person with a deterministic perspective can say to this child: "your home is a violent and dangerous place, not only will you physically suffer, but over time you will also be degraded mentally. you should remove yourself from that environment, because it will cause your self-integrity to be compromised over time." this quote recognises that environmental factors (the violent home) will have negative influences upon a person and will impair their "free choice" (so to speak), and so the solution that can be proposed is to remove oneself from that violent home to avoid such consequences.the free will perspective however cannot propose such a solution, because free will implies that a person's mental state is uncompromisable (and thus always responsible), so warning a person that their violent home will cause them to be mentally compromised doesn't make any sense, because it's essentially acknowledging that their "free will" is corruptible, and thus won't necessarily be "free" at all.

 

two points: Determinism doesn't have any solutions, cause you can't DO anything. It either happens or not. Things will get better or they won't. But there's no solution, cause there's no one who could make it happen.The other point is: Free will doesn't mean unlimited free choice for everything all the time. I can't chose to go and do 500 push ups right now, but I could chose to start working ut and do maybe 8 push ups and do the training necessary to build up muscle mass.Or a better example is, a drunk driver doesn't chose to hit the tree, but he chose to get so drunk he can't no longer chose to drive safely. (So he's still responsible for this choice).Or the guy whop hits his wife in a rage. Sure he might not've been able to chose to not hit her in that exact moment, but there's a lot of choices preceding that incident (like not getting help with his anger issues, making excuses, getting drunk instead, blaming others for his actions and such).Or a person coming from an abusive household can't just choose to be a loving and empathetic person (as these muscles/brain regions haven't had a big chance of developing) but he can still chose to acknowledge that lack of capability and do the steps necessary to develop these muscles.So in regards to solutions, free will sure acknowledges the environment to a certain degree. If there's no gym (or knowledge of how to built up muscles) then people don't really have the choice in that regard. In the same sense, if there was no psychotherapy or self-knowledge methods that could help people change their behaviour then there wouldn't be a choice there either. And if there weren't abusive homes that people grow up in then there would be no need for anyone to have to make the choice to spend a lot of time and energy to fix that once you're no longer dependant and surrounded by those people.

I feel this is one of the more common strawmen against the free will position, that it's somehow means you can choose everything all the time or that the only thing that matters is your "willpower" regardless of the environement you live in, which it isn't (at least as I understand it)

[ProfessionalTeabagger]

I would like to know what determinists would do if a neural basis for free-will was found or at least know what they'd guess they think they would be determined to do. 

[dsayers]

This explanation seems to imply that animals have free will, because they have consciousness, which can't be reduced to matter and energy. This conflicts with other explanations of free will. Can I get some clarity?

 

With the free will discussion abound in multiple places across the forum as of late, I've found myself thinking of it in terms of requiring consciousness. The question of animals has entered my mind every time. Near as I can tell, animals having free will is not logically problematic. That they cannot reason limits the motivations behind their decisions, but doesn't eliminate or challenge the idea that animals have free will.

 

Assuming there's such a thing as free will, would you arrive at the same conclusion I have? If not, why not?

[TheRobin]

That they cannot reason limits the motivations behind their decisions, but doesn't eliminate or challenge the idea that animals have free will.

 

Assuming there's such a thing as free will, would you arrive at the same conclusion I have? If not, why not?

 

I'd argue to opposite. Decisions require choice, which requires knowledge of multiple options and the ability to compare the options relative to a desired outcome. As far as I understand it, this happnes in our Frontal Cortex (or is at least linked to it). Without that, everything happens as a direct result of an emotion rising and a desire forming, but without any decision to act on it or not (as that would require comparing doing it to not doing it and weighing the advantage of each).So I don't see how free will could happen in an animal. Or what do you think?

[dsayers]

You're describing reasoning, not free will. Free will means I can choose. Reasoning means I understand the choice.

 

If you don't accept this distinction, then I'd point out that eating is an expression of preference of staying alive and well over sick or dead. I think this fits the criteria you've offered.

[TheRobin]

How can you chose when you don't know what it is that you're choosing?Like, if you lack knowledge of an idea, how is that not the same as the idea not existing for you?I don't deny that animals have preferences btw, I just don't think they can chose to act a certain way, but merely go with whatever feels right to them in the moment. 

In the example of food, I don't think there's an animal that, when hungry, could choose to not eat the food right in front of him, to safe it for later or something like that, though a human could.

 

Maybe it would be easier if you could give me an example of a choice an animal could make.

[dsayers]

I thought I had. Birds don't only turn down food that's in front of them, they turn down food that is already inside of them for the benefit of their offspring. Caring for offspring is another choice, and one that comes with personal sacrifice.

 

That last one just occurred to me and I find it fascinating as it challenges my previous grasp of reasoning which included the ability to conceptualize beyond one's self and survival.

 

I don't think you've established that what they are choosing is unknown.

[TheRobin]

I thought I had. Birds don't only turn down food that's in front of them, they turn down food that is already inside of them for the benefit of their offspring. Caring for offspring is another choice, and one that comes with personal sacrifice.

 

That last one just occurred to me and I find it fascinating as it challenges my previous grasp of reasoning which included the ability to conceptualize beyond one's self and survival.

 

I don't think you've established that what they are choosing is unknown.

 

Well, unless you want to argue that knowledge either doesn't require reasoning capacities or that reasoning isn't limited to our frontal cortex,I thought I did demonstrate how it is unknown.

 

But to use your example, are you saying to motherbird could have kids and then choose to not feed them (efven thoguh there was enough food)? If so, has this been recorded somewhere?

[HasMat]

My take is that free-willers refuse to acknowledge what causality really is within the hierarchies of discovered science.

 

If you look at photosynthesis and say its a 'law unto itself', a distinctly unique causality, you are wrong. All 'scientific' laws are aggregations of the grand unifying theory.

 

Mystifying 'laws' just clouds the issue. Either causality plays out according to solely the grand unifying theory, or else we have magic.

 

The defining characteristic of free-will is uniquely personal ownership over your causality. a billion ppl cannot each uniquely 'own' GUT, and in a monistic universe GUT is the only option. you need more causality fields for free-will to exist.

 

if quatum chaos is a universal and distributed property of the universe then ppl cannot uniquely own it. The idea that quantum 'chance' can hide free-will is hogwash, unless that chance (as a legion of distinct chaoses) has some special binding to each 'you'.

 

Where that the case (legion of distinct chaoses, mapped to specific 'you's) you have a strong argument for spirits.

[june]

OP, this thread has garnered many responses and arguments from various angles; do you feel a sufficient definition of "free will" has been provided?

[Kevin Beal]

More about causality

Mystifying 'laws' just clouds the issue. Either causality plays out according to solely the grand unifying theory, or else we have magic.

Does GUT show that entities exist? Well, no. Existence existing is prior to scientific questions. Does it show that a thing is itself and not another thing at the same time? Well, no again.

 

There are necessary presuppositions we all have to make before we can even have anything like a GUT or physics or any other scientific discipline / theory. "Causality" is one of those things we have to accept before going anywhere. It's not a force like gravitation of electro-magnetism. It's not something that is measured anymore than existence is measured.

 

I'm not a physics guy so physicists please correct me if I've got it wrong, but when you do a physics model, you are not measuring "things were affected", but rather you measure the features of objects in relation to other objects or forces. There is no "change-o-meter" so to speak. When these molecules are brought down to X temperature they move around at X speed. You know, that sort of thing.

 

The idea that "causality" (and I hate that word since it's a noun like it's a thing in itself) is a force of it's own is what is magical. It's not a force anymore than existence is a force. It's prior to forces.

 

 

Functions vs features and why there is a distinction

I think the trouble is when we confuse features for functions or vice versa.

 

All things that describe the way that an object exists (including it's relation to other objects) like the fact that I have ten fingers and two eyeballs are are features. That's what is literally happening. However when we talk about the world we understand things by describing them functionally. That is, my eyeballs serve the purpose of letting me know that there's a spider coming down it's line next to me in the shower. Or that a worker bee's job is to care for the larvae and produce wax. My job at my company is to be the front-end developer.

 

But nowhere are these things ingrained on cells or tissues of my body, or the worker bee's or my eyeballs. It's just a convenient way of understanding the features of these objects. Functions are observer relative, that is they don't exist, but are true according to standards we use to understand it. That is, we can look at my eyeballs and if they get cataracts then we say that it's not serving its function as well (it's dysfunctional). But as far as features are concerned, cataracts just are.

 

That isn't the say that functions are illusory or bad or anything. It's convenient to talk about my computer being affected by bad programming without proper garbage collection such that it is dysfunctional, or that it's getting overloaded with too much information or it's misbehaving or something like that.

 

The reason I think this is important is that we infuse functions into features sometimes in our heads and conflate the two and create magic! An example being that we look at the amazing order and beauty in evolutionary biology (sorry Rainbow, I know you disagree, but you're wrong) and we see how the worker bees do their "job" so well and we might think that it's intentional, that a creator made those bees to work that way, when that is boloney.

 

Why I think this is relevant is because our understanding of things is causal in form: "this effects that which effects another thing" when the only thing real in the description are the features themselves. The velocity, the mass, the molecular structure etc. What is not happening is a "process" or calculation or anything like that. The process is in our minds, in the physics model.

 

 

Simulations

An analogy that may help is to think of the difference between the weather and weather simulation software. There are ways that we understand the weather as doing rain when these conditions are met and tornadoes in this other condition and we recreate via the symbol manipulation that computers perform. But it's not as if there is an actual storm going on in your computer. The process is observer relative.

 

This is the exact same mistake that people make when they say that the mind is a computer program, and the brain it's hardware (Strong Artificial Intelligence).

 

And observer relative doesn't mean we can't say anything objective about it, it just means that the actual meaning is dependent on human observers. Just because there isn't anything inside the electric existence of a bitcoin that makes it as valuable as $620, that doesn't mean that it isn't true that it is worth $620.

 

 

Conclusion

Yes, in fact causation is very broad and vague and applies in mutually exclusive ways all goddam day!

[Mike Fleming]

No, consciousness is necessary, but not sufficient. I think we can agree on that.

 

And absolutely consciousness and free will are physical and are causal. I'm not sure how that could be denied. I just take issue with the idea that this results in determinism (which it doesn't).

 

Consciousness is an emergent property.  it arises from the physical interaction of neurons.  Not the other way around.  Our consciousness does not and can not control the physical neurons in our brain.  

 

To realise this just try to control a neuron in your brain and get it to fire.   Of course you can't.

[ProfessionalTeabagger]

My take is that free-willers refuse to acknowledge what causality really is within the hierarchies of discovered science.

 

If you look at photosynthesis and say its a 'law unto itself', a distinctly unique causality, you are wrong. All 'scientific' laws are aggregations of the grand unifying theory.

 

Mystifying 'laws' just clouds the issue. Either causality plays out according to solely the grand unifying theory, or else we have magic.

 

The defining characteristic of free-will is uniquely personal ownership over your causality. a billion ppl cannot each uniquely 'own' GUT, and in a monistic universe GUT is the only option. you need more causality fields for free-will to exist.

 

if quatum chaos is a universal and distributed property of the universe then ppl cannot uniquely own it. The idea that quantum 'chance' can hide free-will is hogwash, unless that chance (as a legion of distinct chaoses) has some special binding to each 'you'.

 

Where that the case (legion of distinct chaoses, mapped to specific 'you's) you have a strong argument for spirits.

What is causality?

[Mike Fleming]

I would like to know what determinists would do if a neural basis for free-will was found or at least know what they'd guess they think they would be determined to do. 

 

That's like saying would I believe in the soul if scientists found there was a soul.  The question doesn't make any sense.  Either we are part of the causal chain of events of the universe or we aren't.

[ProfessionalTeabagger]

Consciousness is an emergent property.  it arises from the physical interaction of neurons.  Not the other way around.  Our consciousness does not and can not control the physical neurons in our brain.  

 

To realise this just try to control a neuron in your brain and get it to fire.   Of course you can't.

Is your consciousness exercising any control over Kevin Beal's neurons?

[Mike Fleming]

Is your consciousness exercising any control over Kevin Beal's neurons?

 

No.  I don't have control over another person or their neurons. 

[ProfessionalTeabagger]

That's like saying would I believe in the soul if scientists found there was a soul.  The question doesn't make any sense.  Either we are part of the causal chain of events of the universe or we aren't.

This neuroscientist thinks it makes sense 

 

What is the causal chain of events?

No.  I don't have control over another person or their neurons. 

Okay so none of Kevin's neurons fire when you interact with him?

[Kevin Beal]

Consciousness is an emergent property.  it arises from the physical interaction of neurons.  Not the other way around.  Our consciousness does not and can not control the physical neurons in our brain.  

 

To realise this just try to control a neuron in your brain and get it to fire.   Of course you can't.

I don't understand what this means... I'm so confused

[Rainbow Dash]

Determinists, you are mistaken as a matter of fact about your conception of causality and scientific reduction. So here's a short lesson.

 

 

Causality

Did you know that the first way that infants learn about causality is through push and pull exercises? They learn to have an effect on the world in that way, and in an instant they understand particle physics.

 

But then we learn many many more forms of causality that aren't push / pull, that aren't atoms bouncing off of each other, because surely the world would be pretty ridiculously simple if that's the only causality there were. A soup of non-descript particles like an aether never amounting to anything we know is real about the world.

 

The causality of states of systems producing emergent phenomena is another example. Molecules that come together in a lattice structure produce the solidity we experience every day. Accumulations of H2O molecules producing liquidity, and large neuronal systems producing consciousness.

 

The term "causality" only means that effects have causes. That's it! It's not a law of physics. It's even more basic than that. That's why we can have equally valid causal descriptions at higher levels (I chose to lift my arm) as on lower levels (the motor neurons signaled my muscle fibers to contract). That's why there are other sciences that are not physics-based:

• psychology gives a causal account of adult dysfunction by looking at childhood trauma (for example)
• biology gives an account of the features of species through an evolutionary model
• economics with an a priori look at how bubbles form, etc.

These are not physics or push pull causality and we accept their validity without much reservation (except Rainbow Dash on biology).

I thought causality meant that effects were determined by their causes, and that the causes were the past state of the universe, and that effects were the future state of the universe. When you say "effects have causes", is that different from effects being determined by causes?

 

 

When you try and reduce consciousness (much less free will) you immediately run into problems. There is a naivety in thinking that it's just a matter of gathering more variables to account for. This is actually mistaken.

I think it is bad to assume that you can't find an answer to something, because then you stop looking for an answer. Even if we can't fully explain consciousness with a series of variables, figuring out some variables can be beneficial. We categorize different emotional states, and we can give quantities to emotions. We can call these different emotional states and quantities with them different variables. This is incomplete and not very precise, but useful. I also don't see why this can't be analyzed from a deterministic perspective.

 

[Mike Fleming]

I don't understand what this means... I'm so confused

 

i'm not surprised frankly.

[ProfessionalTeabagger]

I thought causality meant that effects were determined by their causes, and that the causes were the past state of the universe, and that effects were the future state of the universe. When you say "effects have causes", is that different from effects being determined by causes?

 

 

I think it is bad to assume that you can't find an answer to something, because then you stop looking for an answer. Even if we can't fully explain consciousness with a series of variables, figuring out some variables can be beneficial. We categorize different emotional states, and we can give quantities to emotions. We can call these different emotional states and quantities with them different variables. This is incomplete and not very precise, but useful. I also don't see why this can't be analyzed from a deterministic perspective.

A cause is more like a description of the relationship between events. 

What caused you to make your post?

i'm not surprised frankly.

I don't really understand what it means either.

[Kevin Beal]

i'm not surprised frankly.

Haha. Well that's not very nice!

 

 

I think it is bad to assume that you can't find an answer to something, because then you stop looking for an answer. Even if we can't fully explain consciousness with a series of variables, figuring out some variables can be beneficial. We categorize different emotional states, and we can give quantities to emotions. We can call these different emotional states and quantities with them different variables. This is incomplete and not very precise, but useful. I also don't see why this can't be analyzed from a deterministic perspective.

It's not bad at all. That's why psychology is a science and it's relations described causally. It's not a push / pull causality, but it's still causal.

 

And the way to understand why it's not just a matter of variables is to imagine the color red example. Try it. Try and account for red the way you would an object's chemistry or physics. It's not even a comprehensible request. Consciousness is a first person mode of existence while basketballs are third person.

I don't really understand what it means either.

I think it means that I'm an idiot.

[Mike Fleming]

 

 

Actually, that makes me feel a lot more depressed.  

 

Although the feeling of "specialness" is probably a basic survival mechanism built into our brains, I'd find it hard to argue there is anything more unique or special in the universe than consciousness.

Well, he wouldn't be "wrong" because there was no possibility of him being anything else. He'll just be aware of the train tracks.I think the only way we'll ever figure this out is if we push these thoughts and theories to their full boundaries, and I believe the best way to do that is to make the theories as close and as easily practicible as possible.Here's a question we can start with: Do I CHOOSE whether or not I continue to believe in free will?We'll just work off that and see where it goes.

 

EDIT: Ignore these empty quotesEDiT: I hope my question wasn't too stupid; I know determinism concludes that we don't have choices, but I'm wondering how a determinism deals with the question as a whole.

 

 

Do you choose to continue to believe in free will?  Not really.  You know the truth and so any attempts at denying it are just going to lead to cognitive dissonance which leads to further consequences.

 

Were you depressed before you realised there was no free will?   We're all in the same boat together still.  It's not like free will has been removed from you.  It's not like anyone else has it either.  It's a meaningless concept in the same way that God is.

 

The reason I like determinism is because it means there is an order to the universe.  That things can be explained, even human behaviour.  That it's not just all randomness and people going round doing the the things they want, but there are clear reasons behind dysfunction.  That I can see the general trend towards more freedom and why it's happening and that we can see a huge reduction in violence in this world.

 

I still feel like I have free will.  The illusion is a powerful one and I don't go round thinking that I don't.  

 

What is it about determinism that depresses you?

A cause is more like a description of the relationship between events. 

What caused you to make your post?

I don't really understand what it means either.

 

You understand that consicousness emerges from neuronal interaction and not the other way round?  That consciousness does not control neurons but that physical neurons determine the conscious experience?

 

How can you say that your consciousness is in control if this is true?

 

it's like saying the computer screen determines what the processor is doing.

[Rainbow Dash]

And the way to understand why it's not just a matter of variables is to imagine the color red example. Try it. Try and account for red the way you would an object's chemistry or physics. It's not even a comprehensible request. Consciousness is a first person mode of existence while basketballs are third person.

Red can be classified as a specific hue on the color spectrum.