Enactive cognition and free will?

""The robber of your free will," writes Epictetus, "does not exist"

I would just add that neither does your free will.


Paraphrasing Alan Watts about what it feels like after the free will v. determinism problem goes away: "It feels as if everything were myself, or as if everything—including my thoughts and feelings—were happening of itself. There are still efforts, choices, and decisions, but not the sense that 'I' make them. They arise of themselves in relation to circumstances."


A blog with a bunch of Buddhist's trying to come to terms with life without free will: http://www.thinkbuddha.org/article/173/life-without-free-will

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• free
• will
• enactive
• cognition
• enactivism
• determinism
• organism
• biology
• brain

[unseenstrings]

You put the cart before the horse when you stated the body is a self-determining system, since you didn't first clarify where the body comes from. Is the development of the brain and the rest of the body free from the laws of cause and effect? Does mentioning determinism when discussing plant and animal development become incoherent to you, since you can only understand determinism in the context of freedom? Would you be the "autonomous" agent you are today if you'd never been taught language?

[0ThouArtThat0]

A bacterium is also an autonomous agent.

[unseenstrings]

I suspected you realized as much. But I wasn't so sure the average viewer would fully grasp the implications of your video. A super-sophisticated robot would be an autonomous agent also, according to your argument. But I fail to understand why determinism would be incoherent when discussing the inter-dynamics of the robot, even if part of the neural network of the robot were biological instead of purely computational electronics using probabilistic algorithms to function and make choices.

[0ThouArtThat0]

Agency comes from self-production. So far as I know, a robot built by humans would not be self-producing (autopoietic). Maybe there is a technology yet discovered that will allow for it, but until I know of the possibility I'm going to say that only living organisms can be autonomous. The non-determinism is just a fact about how physics works since the uncertainty principle. So not only agents are non-determined (them especially!), but everything is.

[unseenstrings]

Well I can't help but wonder where the self-production comes from that produces the agency you refer to. Does it just magically appear? Or is it the consequence of natural processes? What is the difference between a genetic-environmental process that gives rise to bacterium and human-environmental process that gives rise to the robot? If the bacterium came into existence through natural processes, then wouldn't a robot's agency be the result of natural processes too? Or are humans supernatural?

[0ThouArtThat0]

It is certainly a natural process, but we tend to think of nature as deterministic. It isn't. This doesn't mean it is supernatural, though "magic" in the sense that its processes are deeply mysterious is not necessarily a bad metaphor to use. I think we need to come to see that the cause-effect grid work we project onto nature is just that, a projection. Sure, everything in nature can be described as obeying certain sequences, but ultimately there is no way of predicting what will happen next.

[0ThouArtThat0]

Self-production comes from the same place the whole cosmos comes from (ie, I don't know where it comes from! But it obviously happens, it is real, we can observe it and in fact our very act of observation is possible only because of it).

[silversoul7]

I get what you're saying, but I think the organism is an emergent phenomenon of these self-directing agents that forms a higher level of agency. That is, there are lower self-directed holons with create a higher-level self-directed holon.

[acrislazoiu]

ok so the self is driven and therefore addiction is controlling the free will which is why people have decided to no longer call it free will in the way he has stated it in this video...

[acrislazoiu]

the environment nurtures the body to a high degree such that the body becomes more a part of that environment and that is when the free will is gone

how about when there is free will but not free actions

the human body of one can be controlled by another

using resources in a specific manner

the will remains...

free..

[Muffinfordinner]

These kind of arguments that say freewill and determinism is a meaningless dichotomy seem to me to be obfuscating the issue. The whole point of freewill is why do we praise people, why do we blame people? Do people deserve anything?

You can only claim that the question of freewill needs to be unasked if you dont see this question which underlies it. Obviously it doesn't make sense to talk about it otherwise

[phobosx12]

i am seeking and so is science, but paradigm shifts happen, and could be happening now, the current one for science, space time and matter are primary, the possible coming one, that consciousness is primary.

And dont be afraid to say you dont know aswell.

I know about awarness, not about freewill

[unseenstrings]

Okay, one last comment just for you. You don't seem to have been listening. When our ignorant ancestors couldn't figure something out, they said "Goddidit." When science can't figure something out, they say, "we don't know but we'll continue striving to find out." In areas where the scientific method can't be used to answer all the questions, philosophy is there to take up the slack. Don't be afraid to say you don't know. Quit fearing the unknown and possibly the unknowable. Seek

Naturalism Org

[phobosx12]

and i did tell you how the universe could be happy sad or smart, and its you, your are as much a part of the universe as the sun, or the galaxy, you must see the correlation its not blind mechanics because why the illusion of meaning, the sense that there is more to life than self replication and the perpetuation of a mass of mold called humanity, even if that meaning is to settle down with a wife have a kid and find peace before you die

[phobosx12]

and evolution applies to all things not just the biological spectrum of the universe, high order and complexity, electrons to stars, to atoms, to molecules to planets, to organic compounds to viruses, to amoebas, to coomplex sponges, land plants, land animals,reptiles, mammals, then humans, now its time for the evolution of the mind to wherever that takes us

[phobosx12]

you can answer what the more is...or do you consider life no more than a deterministic flow of biochemical reactions devoid of anything close to meaning, or at the very least, worth. And by the way those things that crick said are not facts, absolutly none of it explains why anybody should ever have an experience. just the goings on of an organ in the body

[unseenstrings]

Evolution isn't about "higher" order and complexity. Evolution is merely about genetic mutation, genetic drift, procreation, selective pressures, and survival. Evolution is a blind watchmaker. A giant meteor impact or a nuclear war could result in humans and apes changing places, as in the Planet of the Apes. Humans wouldn't deevolve in such a case; they would merely evolve according to existing selective pressures as always. This is my last comment. I hope I've been helpful in your truth quest.