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 Frog
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I am not understanding what you mean by "materialism" in the context of your statement.
I will have to go look up "qualia.
"material account of" ???
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The day will come when, after harnessing the ether, the winds, the tides, gravitation, we shall harness for God the energies of love. And, on that day, for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire. -Teilard
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 Mal_Fenderson
Space Monkey
Registered: 07/31/03
Posts: 132
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 Re: "Freewill problem" check  [Re: Frog]
#2427953 - 03/13/04 04:12 PM (19 years, 20 days ago) |
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Materialism: "The view that everything that actually exists is material, or physical. Many philosophers and scientists now use the terms `material' and `physical' interchangeably (for a version of physicalism distinct from materialism, see physicalism). Characterized in this way, as a doctrine about what exists, materialism is an ontological, or a metaphysical, view; it is not just an epistemological view about how we know or just a semantic view about the meaning of terms." (Dictionary of Philosophy of Mind, http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~philos/MindDict/)
Qualia: "The 'what it's like' character of mental states. The way it feels to have mental states such as pain, seeing red, smelling a rose, etc." (Same as above.)
I perhaps maybe should have said physicalism instead of materialism, but I think that in an informal way, materialism captures what I want to say.
If everything is material, how does free-will emerge? It seems at least "possible" for a dualist to say that his mind somehow has a freedom because it is not subject to material constraints, but given what we think about matter and material interactions, it does not seem as though freedom can come from them. We can perhaps get systems where the final output is not determinate---but I think we can with fairly good accuracy make statements of the form "between N and M" for lots of various types of statements. Some people believe that free-will and _determinism_ are compatible. I do not believe in that sort of nonsense =]
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"Better Dead than Red."
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gotmagog
searching fortruth andlogic...
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Quote:
Mal_Fenderson said:
It seems to me that "free will" cuts much like how "mind" cuts.
Yeah, exactly, the real problem of free will is whether our brains or minds have free will, what is controlling our thoughts and emotions, and so on, which influence our choices and actions. Is it a soul with free will, or a completely deterministic result of interaction of hormones, neurons, electrical forces and chemical reactions?
And about the argument of causality, of course we are influenced by it, even if free will exists. The world around us is the work of many independent actors and random factors. The point is whether the part of us that observes this , our mind, our "self", is free to observe and change things.
A bit off topic, I am really interested in this, this semester I took a course of artificial intelligence. The philosophical questions excited me much. The notion of "Free will" is crucial to the question of whether "real" artificial intelligence (in the sense of a machine thinking as good as a man) is possible, is the mind a unique feature of living creatures, or a possibly programmable deterministic program.
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Mal_Fenderson
Space Monkey
Registered: 07/31/03
Posts: 132
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Re: "Freewill problem" check [Re: gotmagog]
#2428014 - 03/13/04 04:29 PM (19 years, 20 days ago) |
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Well, it really has to do with whether we really have "minds" in the sense that many of us every-day think we do. I don't know how much recourse we can have to "souls", tho, if we want to do philosophy instead of theology.
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"Better Dead than Red."
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filthysock
puresoul
Registered: 01/12/04
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Re: "Freewill problem" check [Re: gotmagog]
#2428031 - 03/13/04 04:37 PM (19 years, 20 days ago) |
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I think the answer to that is no in my opinion. You can detail an artificial brain with as much technology as you want but when it comes down to it it has been programmed to do programmed things randomnly to simulate free will, but it will in any case have artifical programmed free will. Therefor I think our free will roots down to our soul and emotions and feelings and our individuality... our soul in other words. I think our soul is both independant and codependant so all our choices affect others and others can choose what they will do about how they've been affected. The action is independant, the result is codependant.
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Magic mushrooms are not addictive, the shroomery is!
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Mal_Fenderson
Space Monkey
Registered: 07/31/03
Posts: 132
Loc: North American Plate.
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Re: "Freewill problem" check [Re: filthysock]
#2428061 - 03/13/04 04:47 PM (19 years, 20 days ago) |
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filthysock, this is the question. How are we substantively different from very complex computers? Are we? even if we _are_ different insofar as computers are deterministic, does a lack of determinism give us anything closer to freewill? I can even grant that I have emotions and feelings and qualia and all sorts of strange things...but does this mean that I could have done other than write this message? I don't know how I can ever get that sort of idea as true.
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"Better Dead than Red."
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filthysock
puresoul
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I'm convinced that we have souls that go on after our life... I'm convinced to such and extent that its not a philosophy of mine even, I know this doesnt help my arguement any more than to prove how I feel about my own arguement, huh ... Moving on...
We can build anything we want as humans, there is no end to what our imaginations can come up with and create, we can create a human body to the finest detail when the day that our technology provides us with what we need for such an operation, but to give that aritifcial human free will would be impossible as it needs a soul to have free will. Say you create the perfect AI with everything looking exactly the way it does in a human body... you would still need to attach a program to the AI giving it randomn feelings at randomn. It is that "attached program" if you will that is our soul for us, except our soul controlls itself and doesnt go by programmed randomn, it goes how it pleases....
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Magic mushrooms are not addictive, the shroomery is!
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Mal_Fenderson
Space Monkey
Registered: 07/31/03
Posts: 132
Loc: North American Plate.
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Re: "Freewill problem" check [Re: filthysock]
#2428263 - 03/13/04 05:56 PM (19 years, 20 days ago) |
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Well, OK, as soon as you're going to say that there's a soul and it has properties X Y Z and these are not material properties but somehow different, you've made it very difficult for there to be much discussion...it's a bit like trying to frame a discussion about elephants with someone who insists that there are pink elephants. In the strictest sense, you can't prove that there are no pink elephants, but you can certainly demonstrate, I think, that even if there were pink elephants, it wouldn't matter one bit =]
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"Better Dead than Red."
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gotmagog
searching fortruth andlogic...
Registered: 01/18/04
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Re: "Freewill problem" check [Re: buttonion]
#2428281 - 03/13/04 05:59 PM (19 years, 20 days ago) |
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Well, I also believe there is a soul, my personal experiences with salvia and shrooms somehow made me even more aware of it and I am less of the materialist than I was before.
But than again, this is just intuition, a personal feeling. The more materialistic explanation that we are more like computers may also be equally valid. Chaos theory in math and physics show how from apparently "deterministic" rules, the inevitable natural laws, random behaviour comes, quantum mechanics also predicts some random behaviour.
Perhaps one day "free will" will be scientifically defined like a force to change the quantum particles which exactly of their probable trajectories they take, a scientific descripiton of souls in action? (I am being creative now , it is 2 am by me , but I won't sleep yet )
The feeling of a soul may be just a high level function of programs. There are not proofs yet, and here we are just saying our personal opinions and whatever information makes it a bit more probable.
This reminds me again of my AI course. At the end we discussed the strong and weak AI hypothesis, will machines think like humans, or will they only become to act like a thinking human in the same situation. But if they act "like" a human in this situation, and the only thing different in machines than humans is the supposed invisible and not materialistic free will and soul, than is this strong enough argument to dismiss that the machine is thinking?
And in general, what does it mean a machine can think, can a machine swim or fly like a bird ? It depends on the definition.
But going back to free will, I thought right now whether its existance is directly connected to the queston of whether we have souls or not, is this one and the same question?
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Frog
Warrior
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I'm going to have to pick up where I left off tomorrow in this discussion. I went to your link, and found "Page Not Found @artsci !"
I've had a scotch and water and there will be no further serious conversation out of me today. Or, I should say, conversation that makes me have to think. 
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The day will come when, after harnessing the ether, the winds, the tides, gravitation, we shall harness for God the energies of love. And, on that day, for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire. -Teilard
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filthysock
puresoul
Registered: 01/12/04
Posts: 2,080
Loc: Bergen, Norway
Last seen: 16 years, 9 months
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Re: "Freewill problem" check [Re: gotmagog]
#2428535 - 03/13/04 06:54 PM (19 years, 20 days ago) |
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Quote:
Mal_Fenderson said:
Well, OK, as soon as you're going to say that there's a soul and it has properties X Y Z and these are not material properties but somehow different, you've made it very difficult for there to be much discussion...it's a bit like trying to frame a discussion about elephants with someone who insists that there are pink elephants. In the strictest sense, you can't prove that there are no pink elephants, but you can certainly demonstrate, I think, that even if there were pink elephants, it wouldn't matter one bit =]
Well yes I see this, and I even predicted this would be the situation after my last arguement, thats because it IS hard to discuss something that goes beyond the physical when discussing the nature of its function upon the physical since there is very little people know about spiritual and especially how our physical lives interact with the spiritual. Spirits... Our Souls are just the sense that is your self, the "I" in you, your conscience clean from any material values or material impressions... the soul is what controls the machine you are in right now which is your physical body. From our discussion I think we can agree that free will doesnt and cant come from our brain alone, will doesnt come from a series of biological tissue and nerves and whatever... its being driven through our brains to be able to move our body's and function on the physical much like you drive a car to function on the road. Does this seem illogical to you?
Quote:
This reminds me again of my AI course. At the end we discussed the strong and weak AI hypothesis, will machines think like humans, or will they only become to act like a thinking human in the same situation. But if they act "like" a human in this situation, and the only thing different in machines than humans is the supposed invisible and not materialistic free will and soul, than is this strong enough argument to dismiss that the machine is thinking?
Well the action of the robot is enough to say its thinking, cause its doing the action of thinking.. IMO. But its only thinking based on what is the norm from a human.
Quote:
But going back to free will, I thought right now whether its existance is directly connected to the queston of whether we have souls or not, is this one and the same question?
I brought up this about the soul up because I think it is the prime source to free will, I think free will and soul are one and the same (just that souls is more ofcourse).
Ofcourse this is from my beliefs and anybody who believes this is bull shit feel free to criticize...
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Magic mushrooms are not addictive, the shroomery is!
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Phred
Fred's son
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Re: "Freewill problem" check [Re: buttonion]
#2428815 - 03/13/04 08:14 PM (19 years, 20 days ago) |
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buttonion writes:
So we have the apparent ability to step outside of the causal chain and cause things to happen independent of past influences on us. We get to take ?responsibility? for our actions. We are held ?accountable.?
Nothing "apparent" about the ability at all. It is readily observable.
You are still hung up on your inability to describe to your own satisfaction the mechanism by which the ability is exercised, yet you persist in handcuffing yourself to a limited set of possibilities.
If everything that occurs in a deterministic universe is predestined, then clearly there can be no such thing as free will. But there is free will. Therefore, not everything that occurs in a universe in which living entities exist is predetermined.
Perhaps the truth is that entities which exercise free will act in the observable universe, but are not entirely of the observable universe.
pinky
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Mal_Fenderson
Space Monkey
Registered: 07/31/03
Posts: 132
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Re: "Freewill problem" check [Re: Phred]
#2429621 - 03/13/04 10:05 PM (19 years, 20 days ago) |
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Sorry, action is not evidence for free will.
But you're perfectly free to think that it is, I guess.
This ability that you find so "intuitive" could very easily be made quite unintuitive if enough people were raised as such.
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"Better Dead than Red."
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Phred
Fred's son
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Mal_Fenderson writes:
Sorry, action is not evidence for free will.
Action per se is not, agreed. Purposeful action is. The series of actions required to compose and type a coherent response to a post on a message board, for example, demonstrates the existence of free will.
This ability that you find so "intuitive" could very easily be made quite unintuitive if enough people were raised as such.
I'm not speaking of intuitive at all here. I refer to actions that are directly observable. And no matter how people are inculcated during their rearing, some would be capable of observing that their actions are self-directed.
pinky
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Mal_Fenderson
Space Monkey
Registered: 07/31/03
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Loc: North American Plate.
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Re: "Freewill problem" check [Re: Phred]
#2429762 - 03/13/04 10:43 PM (19 years, 20 days ago) |
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Well, I seem to be able to observe that it seems like my actions might in one sense be free. But I need to know how this freedom is at all compatible with materialism, and either determinism or the idea that everything is random. Neither of those seems able to give me free will. It seems that our senses give us the hypothesis, but shouldn't there be an empirical test?
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"Better Dead than Red."
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Phred
Fred's son
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But I need to know how this freedom is at all compatible with materialism, and either determinism or the idea that everything is random. Neither of those seems able to give me free will.
Agreed. If all is predetermined, there can be no free will. Therefore, since there is free will, all is not predetermined. Similarly, since there is free will, all is not random. Even a mixture of predetermination and randomness does not adequately explain free will.
The thing is, buttonion and I have been round this merry-go-round before. He (and others) seem to have convinced themselves that all actions of all living entities must be either pre-determined or random. They admit no possibility of a third alternative; that some actions of some living entities are neither predetermined nor random but purposeful and self-initiated.
This amounts to nothing more than saying, "My theory cannot explain free will, therefore free will does not exist."
The way to approach it is instead to say, "Free will exists, therefore since my theory cannot explain it, my theory is at best incomplete and at worst incorrect."
pinky
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BleaK
paradox
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Re: "Freewill problem" check [Re: buttonion]
#2429989 - 03/13/04 11:55 PM (19 years, 20 days ago) |
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i didnt take time to read through all your posts. but id like to bring up a term i came across in sociology; "soft-determinalism" the idea that u have to make choices among a certain set of options that was pre-determined.
like u go to an ice cream store and u can pick whatever flavor u want.. as long as its something they have stocked.
but then u ask youself. "why did i pick that?" cause it tastes better.....
so mebe we should look into biochemistry now.. and see why 1 thing tastes better to one person, and worse to another.
i see the problem where it seems choices are determined by pre-cursing phenomenon, that one may or may not be aware of. but how about if we could tap into our unconsicous? would that change anything?
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"You cannot trust in law, unless you can trust in people. If you can trust in people, you don't need law." -J. Mumma
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The_Visionaire
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Re: "Freewill problem" check [Re: buttonion]
#2430471 - 03/14/04 04:13 AM (19 years, 20 days ago) |
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One of the problems in your reasoning is that you think the laws of nature are in a way "out there" and that they rule YOU. This is a strange and incorrect way to separate the world.
I shall not begin to write my whole reasoning once again (it obviously does not have effect anyway...), but an essential issue to comprehend here is that of wholeness. It is not like effect only goes one way, from matter to mind. There is also a cause going from mind to matter as well. If you try to make a dualistic interpretation of this you will end up with all sorts of problems. Why is it so hard to see that we ARE the universe. We are not some kind of explicate phenomena suddenly caught in the grip of some mechanical external forces. We go much deeper than that.
We ARE meaning. We do not stand "outside" of anything, making a free choice. But the higher your consciousness, the higer the comprehended context. The meaning unfolding from such "higher" perception, is quite different from the "pursuit of pleasure" driving meaning in the lower realms.
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There are no differences between men and gods,
one blends softly causal into the other.
-Frank Herbert, Dune.
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fireworks_god
Sexy.Butt.McDanger
Registered: 03/12/02
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I'm going to have to agree with Visionaire here. 
Our way of thinking and consequently what we feel, etc, was all picked up from our interaction with the outside world. From the very beginning, we have been observing, and the same time interacting. We aren't a computer that is programmed and then booted up. We are programmed (taking in meaning, basically) while we are running the program itself. We make ourselves as we go, and what meaning we take on depends on our interactions with the external as we go along.
Quote:
pinksharkmark said:
If everything that occurs in a deterministic universe is predestined, then clearly there can be no such thing as free will. But there is free will. Therefore, not everything that occurs in a universe in which living entities exist is predetermined.
How did you come to the conclusion that there is free will? The fact that we are living entities and are capable of self reflection and making conscious choices doesn't say anything for free will.
Every moment and every action before this exact moment has led up to this one and any action or further moment in this exact moment and beyond it definitely relied on what happened in the previous moments.
Look at the way water flows in say a river. Water is formless. It follows the path of least resistance. Where the river was flowing two minutes ago IS going to determine where it is flowing two minutes after that.
While, theoretically, the water *could* flow anywhere, as it is formless, where it starts IS going to determine where it flows next. This is unavoidable. (until, perhaps, time is transcended and no longer binds us) 
What is the difference between water and us? The only difference is that we are conscious (could be attributed to a soul, or perhaps just the insanely structured brain of ours, sort of like mycelium in a way.... multiplied by 5 trillion or so.  ) of the fact that we are flowing. This allows us to make choices, basically we have more possibillities for where we will direct our flow, but that doesn't in any way make us free from this Universe and the way it works.
Hehe, one thing I was thinking of is how we can consciously direct our flow agansit the path of immediate least resistance to reach some future, better position.... like how someone might have an addiction and will resist that addiction in order to break free of it... something like that....
But ja. The more conscious we become the more ability we have at influencing our interactions with what is in this reality and the more ability we have at influencing how this reality interacts with us... 
Who we are is who we were and who we, in this moment, decide to become over the future moments approaching.
Peace. 
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If I should die this very moment
I wouldn't fear
For I've never known completeness
Like being here
Wrapped in the warmth of you
Loving every breath of you
  
 
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