An Interesting bit of Wrongness from my Silly Years

[TheDungorm]

interesting post thanks - free will arguments hinge on the assumption that a finite agent [self] exists and that such a 'free' agent has the ability to choose from a position of seperation. However science is rapidly showing that the neural networks of the human brain assemble one or probably more 'self' ideas or selfplexes. These 'self' centered operating systems are useful from an evolutionarily perspective in that they work.

[Roenazarrek]

@TheDungorm

multi self ideas? now that is a facinating notion.

I've been toying with the idea that the "self" is actually purely conceptual in nature, like the equator or information. fully dependant upon a physical medium and yet not quite the same as it. Due to the fact that this would not be matter or energy per se many would argue that this means the self doesn't actually exist, like sam harris does. But I think that would be similar to argueing that information doesn't exist

[integralmath]

@Roenazarrek I'm sorry, perhaps I failed to properly parse what you've just written. Are you positing that Sam Harris the self doesn't exist? Or that there is a distinction between the brain and the mind?

[Roenazarrek]

@integralmath There is a distinction between the brain and the mind in the same sense that there is a distinction between sound waves and spoken words. As far as the self existing as long as what you mean by self isn't somehow paranormal or romanticized It seems a bit odd to assert that the self doesn't exist. People mean wildly different things useing words in this kind of discourse though that so often people are accidently argueing against possitions their opponent doesn't hold.

[integralmath]

@Roenazarrek spoken words, at least in an atmosphere, are a subset of sound waves. You might as well say there's a difference between food and steaks. Not all food is a steak, but all steaks are food. Not all sound waves are spoken words, but all spoken words are sound waves. I fail to see how this relates to the mind being a property of a brain.

[EllyMcCormack]

I once wrote an essay on proving that Free Will was an illusion. Rather than scientific evidence, I used the example of a chessmatch against my computer as an example of how the other opponent appears to be making actions utterly automated, but in reality are apart of a domino effect originated from me, who always has to initiate the first move. I view the big bang as the first move, and now so complex are the toppling dominoes, we believe we have free will.

[Roenazarrek]

@EllyMcCormack I think the only reason people don't think what we have is free will is because we're in a possition to potentially Understand our will. And if you can understand how something works that means it's not real magic. For some reason people have it in their heads that it isn't real free will if it isn't real magic. Because as dan dennett often says some other guy said lol real magic refers to the magic that isn't real, while the magic that can actually be done is not real magic.

[EyeLean5280]

@Roenazarrek It's not an issue of magic for everyone. For some, the belief in free will comes from a willingness to live with uncertainty. We don't yet know where creativity and originality, and the will to implement the ideas they suggest come from, but that does not necessarily mean they do not exist. It doesn't necessarily follow that everything must be determined by evolution or any other force.

[Roenazarrek]

@EyeLean5280  Sure, the real buggar is causality. That's why quantum indeterminacy did not really put determinism down. I agree that creativity and originality exist, what does that have to do with determinism though?

[EyeLean5280]

@Roenazarrek - Perhaps my understanding of the term is flawed, but it was my impression that determinism states that we don't have free will, that everything we think, do and feel is determined by forces (especially evolutionary ones) beyond our control.

If so, how can we be original or creative? According to that paradigm, if we do something differently than has been done before, it is because we were destined to do so, not because we've created something on our own.

[Roenazarrek]

@EyeLean5280 That is a very common misconception. But everything that makes us who we are is involved with the supposed determinism calculus, It is so all inclusive that the only thing that wouldn't be part of it is profound randomness, making it almost meaningless. It boils down to "whats gonna happen is gonna happen" which is tautological and which we knew anyway. Dan Dennett laborously explains this in his defense of compatibleism

[EyeLean5280]

@Roenazarrek - Thanks, I guess I have some reading to do!

[integralmath]

@Roenazarrek right. It's not magic to posit that free will is illusion anymore than it's magic to posit that a mirage is an illusion, though fully explicable by deterministic laws of physics. It would be tremendous if free will exist in that we have current and future states of the brain (particular arrangements of physical matter and chemical interactions) which are not determined by antecedent states of the brain. Indeed, free will, if extant, would be magical in that sense.

[Roenazarrek]

@integralmath How do you define free will exactly? How would life be different if we actually did have it?

[integralmath]

@Roenazarrek how would a universe look with it versus without? No clue. This bears on whether it exists in what way? Free will, I suppose loosely, would be the state of being the conscious author of one's own thoughts. What do you think it is?

[Roenazarrek]

@integralmath Bit of a strange way to define it. Imagine the process of choosing what thoughts to think. This would necessarily have to be prior to having thoughts, and what sort of thoughtless decision could bear any sort of meaning? If this is how you would define it it is no wonder you wouldn't suppose it exists, as it is utterly incoherent.

[integralmath]

@Roenazarrek and yet it our awareness of the thoughts we're thinking come rather late in the process of the thinking. The actual decision to think of a cartoon, say, isn't a free choice. Why that cartoon versus another? What decision did you make which determined it would be Smurfs and not Voltron?

If we aren't the conscious author of our thoughts, then we aren't the free agents who determine what we think. Something else does that for us, and then we know about it.

[integralmath]

@Roenazarrek oh, and I chose that definition on purpose. Because, you know, you allude to what Sam Harris thinks on the subject. The definition I chose is his. So, if you think the definition is incoherent, please call Sam up and tell him he knows fuck all about human consciousness and neurology. =^_^=

Again, what do you use to whiten your teeth? Sorry, I'm a tooth kind of guy; I ask everyone with apparently white teeth.

[Roenazarrek]

@integralmath  some kind of white strips things a while back, didn't think they're effect was still going

[Roenazarrek]

@integralmath Thought is necessary for decisions to truely be decisions, therefor if free will is to be anything at all it is to say that your choices are truely the result of your own thoughts. Nothing supernatural about that, I would say that is what it is to be responsible for your actions.

[integralmath]

@Roenazarrek There is nothing about thinking which entails that one freely determines the thinking. There is nothing about thought which implies free choice. Indeed, even a minor decision like picking up a glass of water originates before we're aware of the thought we attribute as that which causes the effect. It would appear that thinking is a consequence, and not a cause, for we are not aware of the decision until after it has already been made.

[Roenazarrek]

@integralmath should probably take this to the message system because the character limit is brutal.

[integralmath]

@Roenazarrek well, I've had worse offers for one-on-one behind the scenes action than this I must say. But I'm game if you are.

[integralmath]

@Roenazarrek if you'd like the one-on-one conversation public, I actually have forums where you could open a thread, a link to which is on my channel's homepage under the link titled 'forums'. <):o)~

[Roenazarrek]

An interesting (to me) side note, is that the facts of science are not the true problem for "free will". It is the definition of free will. It is the requirement that every nanoevent within your psyche be the result of consciousness, and the regress quickly demonstraites that this simply cannot be so. Even if cartesian dualism were true we would not have free will.

[integralmath]

@Roenazarrek actually, that isn't required. Free will falls within a range of constraints, a necessary one being that the cause precedes the effect. If, when we're about to undertake some action, and material causes of that action precede our decision to take that action is not a cause of the action. We become aware of our decision late in the process that gives rise to it. Otherwise, the efferent impulses would not precede the decision as they, in fact, do.

[dudejohnny]

I thought about this before I went to bed last night and thought I might make it as a video response. Then today, I come home and see this. One day, I shall have something to say.