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Unfolding Nature Shop: Unfolding Nature: Being in the Implicate Order

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Re: No Free Will [Re: Hobozen]
    #15879898 -

Just another way of saying the same thing. :cool:


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Om Bhur Bhuvah Svaha
Tat Savitur Varenyam
Bhargo Devasya Dhimahi
Dhiyo Yo Nah Prachodayat

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Re: No Free Will [Re: Desert Elf]
    #15879904 -

Thought so.  I wasn't so sure :smile:

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Re: No Free Will [Re: Hobozen]
    #15880207 -

Quote:
I have no idea where you get the idea that if something is a chemical reaction it doesn't matter.


It doesn't "matter" anymore than water freezing at 0 Celsius or weather patterns. It matters to us, but we can't project normative values on nature. In a sociological context it can be said to matter, but physical process aren't sentimental.

Quote:
Certainly, there is no room for freedom of an entity separate from the laws of nature. However, this still assumes a dichotomy between our will and nature which need not exist.


The view of free-will is that dichotomy... I'm saying it's nonsense in a materialist worldview and it looks like we're in agreement on that(unless I'm missing something).

Quote:
I disagree, I believe a materialist can safely take a compatibilist position, for the reasons outlined above.


Sure, because compatibilism has a watered down definition of free-will... if we accept that definition, then we'd agree. But the compatibilist view of free-will is fairly trivial and doesn't provide much apart from the obvious.

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Re: No Free Will [Re: saintphotios]
    #15880316 -

saintphotios said:
It doesn't "matter" anymore than water freezing at 0 Celsius or weather patterns. It matters to us, but we can't project normative values on nature. In a sociological context it can be said to matter, but physical process aren't sentimental.


1. Humans are sentimental.
2. Humans are composed of physical processes.
3. Therefore, the sentimentality of humans is composed of physical processes and is produced as a natural result of them.
4. Therefore, physical processes can be said to be sentimental themselves (in the same way bees can said to be protective of their hive, despite each individual bee not knowing or caring about the whole).


Quote:
The view of free-will is that dichotomy... I'm saying it's nonsense in a materialist worldview and it looks like we're in agreement on that(unless I'm missing something).



Quote:
Sure, because compatibilism has a watered down definition of free-will...


Watered down in what sense? For all intents and purposes we have free will. Talking about us being controlled by the laws of nature is every bit as dualistic as talking about a free soul, since again, it implies a dichotomy between the rest of the Universe and us, produced by the natural processes of that Universe.

Quote:
if we accept that definition, then we'd agree. But the compatibilist view of free-will is fairly trivial and doesn't provide much apart from the obvious.


It seems like your way of getting around problems in debates is by dismissing them as trivial. I personally don't consider it trivial, as it touches at the heart of the linguistic problems in the free-will debate.


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Re: No Free Will [Re: NetDiver]
    #15880337 -

blankk said:
Your point in relation to my post?


The point of your post to begin with?


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Re: No Free Will [Re: NetDiver]
    #15881321 -

Quote:
4. Therefore, physical processes can be said to be sentimental themselves (in the same way bees can said to be protective of their hive, despite each individual bee not knowing or caring about the whole)


This is a good point and it's one of the reasons I adhere to metaphysics as a viable school of thought. (Just so we're clear I actually do believe in free-will, but I'm also not a materialist. My argument is that if you're a materialist, you can't. I'm arguing from a materialist POV here...)

You're equating experience with that thing being experienced. Physical processes themselves can't be described as sentimental. We interpret physical stimuli as sentimental. But really that's just a word describing our experiencing those physical processes manifesting themselves in our consciousness. Take pain -- the word pain (as we use it) is a symbol for our experiencing of... well, pain. Take burning your hand on a hot stove. There's the physical process that occurs locally, where extreme heat meets tissue and nerve endings. There's then chemical reactions in our brains that cause the experience of the pain. But the experience itself of that entire process is not physical. We can observe and measure every part of of the sequence, but not the subjective experience itself. This is totally derailing the free-will discussion but you're the one that brought up phenomenology hah

Quote:
Watered down in what sense?


1.) Depends on which compatibilist you talk to, they all bring their own definitions to the table that nobody else has agreed on. 2.)It's watered down because compatibilism uses definitions of free-will that nobody would have disagreed on in the first place. It's like jumping into the theism/atheism discussion and saying everybody is right because God is just "that which is the most powerful entity in the universe"... that's great, except no one was talking about some hypothetical most powerful entity -- they were talking about a supernatural being. If they were, there never would've been a disagreement... which is why nobody has ever taken compatibilism seriously in the determinism debate.

Quote:
It seems like your way of getting around problems in debates is by dismissing them as trivial.


If I had just said "it's trivial" then maybe... but I explained why it was trivial -- and it's why no one takes it seriously. If they did, the free-will debate would be over, and everyone would realize they actually agreed all along. And the only linguistic problem in the free-will discourse is the one compatibilists created by making up a useless definition of free-will to escape the crux of the issue... But as soon as you bring up the shortcomings, compatibilists quickly become determinists that shy away from the slave-to-nature talk.

Edited by saintphotios (02/29/12 03:40 PM)

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Re: No Free Will [Re: saintphotios]
    #15883310 -

How could you prove free will was being exerted?
Someone says look I want to wave my hand *waves hand*
they can do that, but the event can be seen in a deterministic shell of logic anyway.
It borderlines.
So the problem is that free will depends on the quality of the information which pertains to the choices made.

So I almost see it that free will fluctuates in an ecology of struggle, and its interior quality depends on the governing dynamics of the "total circumstance" it is deployed, certain overshadowing themes glow in the transposed space of activity

This leans to assume that ever having complete free will can never happen unless a god scenario is reached, you control everything and anything.Zwan WaZan!

it doesnt mean that to simply imagine complete godliness is not impossible,there would be a resevoir of godlike knowledge in which the willing perputrator would dip thine flask of wishful thinking and remancipate itself with fresh choicefulness

Perhaps the advanced growth of the brain is more like a byproduct of the accumulation of imagination.
it is imagination feeding into the reflexes of the animal body which launches it into possible gain and stimulus,its feeding habits and choices, thusly in time the very structure of brain tissue itself, and in our era the possible deliberate engineering of brain tissue.

There may be a free will of archetypes, or symbolic thinking, its not that our choices are made in a vast quantum array of movements and analyzations ,perhaps hinged upon the physical brain and body, but are made in a non-time bound dimension of symbolic cohesions. We may be hinged to a body but our ability to imagine the maximum diversity of something allows some sort of hovering in a non-physical psychic certitude.
and this comes from that we are all accessing the fountain of our choice making code from similar configurations of circumstance in the overbrane of the world

Now, rise and be phoenixed
choose the archetype of transcendance, not the eel or slug.
But the Albatross/Lion

Sorry I didn't choose to do that, it was the ecology of will!


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Re: No Free Will [Re: krin]
    #15885181 -

"Allow me to articulate a perfectly rational and concise explanation with step-by-step logic to obviously illuminate the fact that there is no such thing as true experience, we are instead all entirely inanimate and therefore if worked out in an equation to quantify the objectivity of subjectivity we can see that free will is merely..."

I think you're over-thinking it.

Free will appears to me, to come about through higher awareness / consciousness.  As animals become more conscious and self-aware they seem to show more capacity to exercise free will.  As humans we have a much better ability to use free will, but it's up to us whether we use it or not.  (As in adhere to mostly instincts, like a less aware animal would do).

So less aware animals and organisms have less free will and more instinctual behavior.

More aware organisms have a greater capacity for free will and less instinctual behavior.


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See my shadow changing,
Stretching up and over me.
Soften this old armor.
Hoping I can clear the way
By stepping through my shadow,
Coming out the other side.
Step into the shadow.
Forty six and two are just ahead of me.

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Re: No Free Will [Re: Yith]
    #15885209 -

How did we come to the point of thinking about things and making decisions? Isn't that just a human instinct?

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Re: No Free Will [Re: Sleepwalker]
    #15885922 -

Yah, but the mental reflection of this instinct in our brain made a room for more possibilities to choose from.


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Though lovers be lost love shall not  And death shall have no dominion
......................................................
"Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men."Martin Luther King, Jr.
'Acceptance is the absolute key - at that moment you gain freedom and you gain power and you gain courage'

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Re: No Free Will [Re: saintphotios]
    #15899145 -

saintphotios said:
You're equating experience with that thing being experienced. Physical processes themselves can't be described as sentimental. We interpret physical stimuli as sentimental. But really that's just a word describing our experiencing those physical processes manifesting themselves in our consciousness.


So here what we have is an argument for a form of dualism by implicitly asserting that consciousness is something different from physical processes. Who are we? What is this "consciousness" in which physical things (somehow different?) manifest themselves? That's not really materialism, there are a bunch of Cartesian assumptions that sneak in.

Quote:
1.) Depends on which compatibilist you talk to, they all bring their own definitions to the table that nobody else has agreed on. 2.)It's watered down because compatibilism uses definitions of free-will that nobody would have disagreed on in the first place. It's like jumping into the theism/atheism discussion and saying everybody is right because God is just "that which is the most powerful entity in the universe"... that's great, except no one was talking about some hypothetical most powerful entity -- they were talking about a supernatural being. If they were, there never would've been a disagreement... which is why nobody has ever taken compatibilism seriously in the determinism debate.


I think that free-will is a term without a solidly agreed-upon definition in the first place (especially since there's no way to empirically demonstrate whether or not it exists). Everyone is bringing their own definition to the table, whether it be determinists, libertarians, or compatibilists.

Quote:
If I had just said "it's trivial" then maybe... but I explained why it was trivial -- and it's why no one takes it seriously. If they did, the free-will debate would be over, and everyone would realize they actually agreed all along. And the only linguistic problem in the free-will discourse is the one compatibilists created by making up a useless definition of free-will to escape the crux of the issue... But as soon as you bring up the shortcomings, compatibilists quickly become determinists that shy away from the slave-to-nature talk.


I think as long as the question of free-will continues to bother people it's far from trivial. Many people still take it seriously. Daniel Dennett, one of the most important contemporary writers on physicalist theories of consciousness, has also written in support of compatibilism. Incidentally, the nature of the self happens to be another frequently discussed topic in his work, which I think is the real crux of the issue. Both strong determinist and libertarian positions revolve around the false dichotomy of man and nature, and a self separate from the rest of the world with which nature could be in conflict.


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Re: No Free Will [Re: NetDiver]
    #15900035 -

Quote:
So here what we have is an argument for a form of dualism by implicitly asserting that consciousness is something different from physical processes. Who are we? What is this "consciousness" in which physical things (somehow different?) manifest themselves? That's not really materialism, there are a bunch of Cartesian assumptions that sneak in.


Not that consciousness itself is something other than physical processes, but rather the experience. It's like looking at a red apple. We see it, and we experience what we call the color red, but on a purely physical level, apples aren't red. "Red" just refers to coloration that occurs in visual fields. Apples just have physical properties that cause this phenomenon called "red" when light bounces off of them and is intercepted by the eye(and of course processed by the brain). So red is something that happens in sense-perception -- it is not the same as the physical properties that cause those sense perceptions, even though there is definitely a causal relationship between them.

So when we experience sadness or anger -- that experience is not the same as the physical occurrences that produce it. If it were, we would be able to reduce "sadness" to a chemical formula. But even if we reproduced that chemical formula, where does the experience occur? Maybe neuroscience hasn't gotten there yet, but until they do, I think this question will pose a problem.

Quote:
I think as long as the question of free-will continues to bother people it's far from trivial. Many people still take it seriously. Daniel Dennett, one of the most important contemporary writers on physicalist theories of consciousness, has also written in support of compatibilism.


It's not trivial if the compatibilist can address points of disagreement with the determinist. But in my experience, there is no point of disagreement between determinists and compatibilists. Compatibilists just use additional terminology. So if there is nothing to differentiate a particular brand of compatibilism from determinism, then I would say that definition of free-will is trivial because the only difference is libertarian terminology -- it's just the determinist position, nothing more.

Quote:
Both strong determinist and libertarian positions revolve around the false dichotomy of man and nature, and a self separate from the rest of the world with which nature could be in conflict.


Ehhh... I don't see that. I think whether or not that's a false dichotomy is precisely where the determinist and libertarian disagree. I think rejecting that dichotomy is the basis for strong determinism. Compatibilism rejects it, but persists in using terminology that would suggest otherwise. As I've been saying, free from what? Compatibilism doesn't have an answer for that. They just use the word "freedom" to affirm some kind of normative claim about the superiority of consciousness within nature.

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Re: No Free Will [Re: saintphotios]
    #15900166 -

saintphotios said:
So when we experience sadness or anger -- that experience is not the same as the physical occurrences that produce it. If it were, we would be able to reduce "sadness" to a chemical formula. But even if we reproduced that chemical formula, where does the experience occur? Maybe neuroscience hasn't gotten there yet, but until they do, I think this question will pose a problem.


Nobody knows the solution to the "hard problem of consciousness" of course, but I wouldn't be so quick to accept this bit of dualism.

Perhaps our experience IS the exact same thing as the physical manifestation.  That is to say, what we experience is what this arrangement of matter "feels like" from the inside.  Do we really need anything extra tacked on to explain this?

I think people get tripped up by this idea because it requires that all matter, when sufficiently arranged, will have an experience;  that subjectivity is in fact an essential part of all matter.

:shrug:  It's not very intuitive, but none of my education says it is impossible.

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Re: No Free Will [Re: Sleepwalker]
    #15900257 -

Quote:
Perhaps our experience IS the exact same thing as the physical manifestation.  That is to say, what we experience is what this arrangement of matter "feels like" from the inside.  Do we really need anything extra tacked on to explain this?


Maybe a better analogy would be physical pain. If you get stabbed in your leg with a knife, your brain interprets that as "ouuhhfuckfuckshiiiitthathurts"

But the physical occurrence involving the sharp piece of metal, and the muscle tissue in your leg, and nerve endings -- is definitely not the same thing as the flood of adrenaline and endorphins. If someone with nerve damage gets stabbed in the leg, the brain doesn't do any of those things. We know enough about anatomy now to know that pain is actually a full-body experience. It isn't just interpreted by the brain, but involves various chemical reactions through the body, and even affects things like heart rate and blood pressure. But the experience of all these things occurs exclusively the brain.

So maybe it's a harder sell to say that experience is not identical with the experienced with emotive states like anger. But with physical pain, it seems fairly obvious that the experience of pain is merely one element of the full-body process.

EDIT:
"feels like" is important... because what are we talking about? When you say "feels like" you're talking about the experience of feeling. That's assuming that the experience is the same as the physical occurrence, but there's no evidence of it apart from prior commitments to materialism. We can even see parts of the brain light up on a screen during certain controlled experiences. But one person's experience is never identical to another, and the closest we can get to bridging the gap between experience and matter is showing that certain regions of the brain light up a little more than others... but nothing at all to suggest that the two representations are the same event.

Edited by saintphotios (03/04/12 08:01 PM)

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Re: No Free Will [Re: saintphotios]
    #15900281 -

I get what you're saying, but I think it's probably not far from the truth to say I am my brain...and the nerves are just an extension of that. 

But yes, the world 'out there' is something we never directly touch.

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Re: No Free Will [Re: Sleepwalker]
    #15900696 -

Sleepwalker said:
saintphotios said:
So when we experience sadness or anger -- that experience is not the same as the physical occurrences that produce it. If it were, we would be able to reduce "sadness" to a chemical formula. But even if we reproduced that chemical formula, where does the experience occur? Maybe neuroscience hasn't gotten there yet, but until they do, I think this question will pose a problem.


Nobody knows the solution to the "hard problem of consciousness" of course, but I wouldn't be so quick to accept this bit of dualism.

Perhaps our experience IS the exact same thing as the physical manifestation.  That is to say, what we experience is what this arrangement of matter "feels like" from the inside.  Do we really need anything extra tacked on to explain this?


I intuitively agree with this, but at the same time it's a mindfuck and a half to understand how it works.  I think neutral monism is the best viewpoint philosophy of mind has to offer: the mental and physical are but different aspects or perspectives of the same substance.  (But what is that fundamental substance?  :drgonz:)


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We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.

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Unfolding Nature Shop: Unfolding Nature: Being in the Implicate Order

General Interest > Philosophy, Sociology & Psychology
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