the conquest of the will

Is the mind the same as the body? What is consciousness? Can machines have it?

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Dimebag
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Re: the conquest of the will

Post by Dimebag »

Advocate wrote: Sat Mar 27, 2021 11:29 pm
Dimebag wrote: Sat Mar 27, 2021 11:09 pm My question is, if the feeling of volition was just that, a feeling, could we tell the difference between true deliberate action and appropriated volition all “feeling”?

Another question. When a person KNOWS they shouldn’t do something, but due to temptation and LACK of willpower, they give in to desire and do it anyway despite negative consequences, why do we treat them as if they made a free choice?

Is it because we truly believe they chose freely, or because we don’t want them doing such behaviours due to consequences towards others?

Put another way, do we punish as a preventative and warning to others, or because we truly believe the person deserves it?

What’s weird is, a person who does something wrong, would likely admit they had no choice or felt compelled, but THEY chose to do it.

It’s like your job as the agent, is to hold back the inner demons that would sabotage us, and those who are strongest are deemed morally right, while the weaker are judged.
From the outside we are one person to everyone else, but from the inside there is a constant tension between subconscious and conscious desires. What do you want v. What do you want to want? The bits that are the way you want to be, that you claim for yourself, are "the real you".
Yes, it’s rather Freudian looked at that way, in this case, the conscious moral agent, the ego, is charged with denying the lower drives of the id, and being beholden to the moral standards of the super-ego.

The id is short term desire and lower impulse, the super-ego is learned social rules and long term interest. The ego must use “willpower” or rather “won’t-power” to withstand the impulses of the id and allow the higher standards of the super-ego to drive behaviour.

By withholding the id’s desires, the ego will at some stage hopefully be rewarded by the promises of the super-ego. It is of course still some kind of cost benefit analysis. No doubt the balancing of this equation might be driven in some way by energy conservation. If the withholding of desire for the short term is deemed to pay off much more in the longer term, the bargain is made, the lower drives suppressed.
Belinda
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Re: the conquest of the will

Post by Belinda »

Skepdick wrote: Sat Mar 27, 2021 12:20 pm
Belinda wrote: Sat Mar 27, 2021 12:13 pm If I follow up all the causes of if, and when, I go to make the coffee I find I have no freedom to choose. However if I want to defy all these predispositions, these causes of my preference for coffee, I can choose to drink water despite my preference for the coffee.

The most and best freedom lies in my knowing as many of the causes of my preferences as I possibly can. For instance, if I know I have a caffeine addiction I thereby empower myself to at least consider drinking decaffeinated coffee or herbal tea.
I am not entirely convinced that doubting your desires/predisposition is a fruitful exercise.

Least you begin questioning the very cause of why you doubt. And then it disappears.
A main cause of why I doubt is the culture of belief I have been immersed in from infancy to now. Another main cause of why I doubt is I have/am a brain-mind that seeks causes and effects. True, I have reason to doubt the wisdom of my culture of belief and causality itself , that is why this conversation is soul-searchingly worthwhile.
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bahman
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Re: the conquest of the will

Post by bahman »

Advocate wrote: Fri Mar 26, 2021 7:49 pm Of all the things happening in the universe, indeed of all the things happening in your body, you have the hypothetical possibility of controlling precisely one, whatever you're paying attention to at the present moment. To what extent that control is meaningful must be reduced by things which are obviously beyond your control like the laws of physics and society, what will be allowed, and the physical location you currently inhabit. You must also reduce it by the amount of your own character; what kind of things would you definitely not/do because of their compatibility with your self-conception? You must also reduce it by whether what you want happens to be currently possible, regardless of whether you could do it hypothetically.

After all these discounts are applied, what exactly are you left controlling even if you do have free will?
Free will is the ability to choose among options. Options are obviously available otherwise they are not option.
AlexW
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Re: the conquest of the will

Post by AlexW »

Advocate wrote: Fri Mar 26, 2021 7:49 pm ...
After all these discounts are applied, what exactly are you left controlling even if you do have free will?
Good question... :-)
As I see it - and please let me know if you do not agree - "free will" is always connected, or rather based on thought.
No thought, no will (free or not) - yet, even without thinking about what to do next, "doing something" still happens (automatically).
It is actually possible to go through hours, maybe days, without ever making a decision, without ever exercising "free will" - yet... your day doesn't really change very much... you still get up, go to the bathroom, make a cup of tea/coffee, drive a car or catch public transport... etc etc... (the only thing that changes is that it's more quiet "in here" - less thoughts drifting through your head).
So what about free will?
As I see it, the idea of free will (of making apparently "self-controlled" decisions) only arises when thought gets caught in one of its own feedback loops - thought talking about thought talking about more thoughts...
Thus the question should be: is one thought talking about another thought the same as "free will"? And where exactly is the one that exercises this free will? Where is the thinker?
You might say: I am the thinker! Yet.. "I" is again a thought, nothing else... its a dog chasing its own tail :-)
RogerSH
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Re: the conquest of the will

Post by RogerSH »

Advocate wrote: Fri Mar 26, 2021 7:49 pm Of all the things happening in the universe, indeed of all the things happening in your body, you have the hypothetical possibility of controlling precisely one, whatever you're paying attention to at the present moment.
That's certainly an interesting point, worth reflecting on, but in the end I don't think it is a big problem. Every word in Advocate's post was individually the subject of his/her attention, but none of those words took on any significance except in relation to the rest of the post. In the same way, significant decisions can be made up of many micro-decisions related to each other.
RogerSH
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Re: the conquest of the will

Post by RogerSH »

Advocate wrote: Fri Mar 26, 2021 7:49 pm ....To what extent that control is meaningful must be reduced by things which are obviously beyond your control like the laws of physics... and the physical location you currently inhabit. You must also reduce it by the amount of your own character; what kind of things would you definitely not/do because of their compatibility with your self-conception?....
These are all facts that define the situation of choice and the "you" who is confronted with that choice, not facts that constrain them. For example, if the person making the choice had a different character from mine, that person wouldn't be me (or at any rate, not me-at-that-instant), so my freedom is in no way affected.

As many writers have pointed out, the meaningful sense of freedom is the ability to envisage and choose between actions (including mental actions) that would be possible if chosen. Even if a choice is apparently inevitable, so long as the chooser is able to consider the possibility of a different choice that would be possible if chosen, that choice is free.
Advocate
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Re: the conquest of the will

Post by Advocate »

[quote=RogerSH post_id=508061 time=1618826373 user_id=21734]
[quote=Advocate post_id=504405 time=1616784541 user_id=15238]
....To what extent that control is meaningful must be reduced by things which are obviously beyond your control like the laws of physics... and the physical location you currently inhabit. You must also reduce it by the amount of your own character; what kind of things would you definitely not/do because of their compatibility with your self-conception?....
[/quote]

These are all facts that [i]define[/i] the situation of choice and the "you" who is confronted with that choice, not facts that [i]constrain[/i] them. For example, if the person making the choice had a different character from mine, that person wouldn't be me (or at any rate, not me-at-that-instant), so [i]my[/i] freedom is in no way affected.

As many writers have pointed out, the meaningful sense of freedom is the ability to envisage and choose between actions (including mental actions) that would be possible[i] if chosen[/i]. Even if a choice is apparently inevitable, so long as the chooser is able to consider the possibility of a different choice that would be possible if chosen, that choice is free.
[/quote]

What's left after you take away all the freedom is still freedom? I don't buy it. There's no sense in which our will is free. Also, the word "will" itself does all the world you're trying to do. It's one thing, and entirely right, to say the appearance of choice is real and meaningful, and entirely a different, wrong thing to call it actual freedom.
RogerSH
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Re: the conquest of the will

Post by RogerSH »

Advocate wrote: Mon Apr 19, 2021 2:31 pm

What's left after you take away all the freedom is still freedom? I don't buy it. There's no sense in which our will is free. Also, the word "will" itself does all the world [work?] you're trying to do. It's one thing, and entirely right, to say the appearance of choice is real and meaningful, and entirely a different, wrong thing to call it actual freedom
Facts which define a choice do not "take away" any freedom at all. They determine the question, not the answer.

So how would the world have to be for there to be "actual freedom" as you understand it? You don't say what it is, but it appears to be an entirely empty concept, incapable of referring to anything.

Interestingly, I would say that "will" does all the work when considering the obstacles to free will! Coercion, addiction etc. don't reduce formal freedom, they just make the will divided.
Advocate
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Re: the conquest of the will

Post by Advocate »

[quote=RogerSH post_id=508138 time=1618916075 user_id=21734]
[quote=Advocate post_id=508086 time=1618839104 user_id=15238]


What's left after you take away all the freedom is still freedom? I don't buy it. There's no sense in which our will is free. Also, the word "will" itself does all the world [work?] you're trying to do. It's one thing, and entirely right, to say the appearance of choice is real and meaningful, and entirely a different, wrong thing to call it actual freedom
[/quote]

Facts which define a choice do not "take away" any freedom at all. They determine the question, not the answer.

So how would the world have to be for there to be "actual freedom" as you understand it? You don't say what it is, but it appears to be an entirely empty concept, incapable of referring to anything.

Interestingly, I would say that "will" does all the work when considering the [i]obstacles[/i] to free will! Coercion, addiction etc. don't reduce formal freedom, they just make the will divided.
[/quote]

Freedom is in that class of words that references the infinite - infinite lack of constraint. The only way it's meaningful is as a placeholder. We exist in the ignorance gap between chaos and causality, and freedom Only exists in the mind. The extent to which you feel free is the extent to which you are ignorant of your constraints. The act of measuring anything proves it is not free. The act of prediction proves causality. There's no room for Actual freedom in the universe, only psychological.
commonsense
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Re: the conquest of the will

Post by commonsense »

Skepdick wrote: Sat Mar 27, 2021 11:56 am
Advocate wrote: Fri Mar 26, 2021 7:49 pm Of all the things happening in the universe, indeed of all the things happening in your body, you have the hypothetical possibility of controlling precisely one, whatever you're paying attention to at the present moment. To what extent that control is meaningful must be reduced by things which are obviously beyond your control like the laws of physics and society, what will be allowed, and the physical location you currently inhabit. You must also reduce it by the amount of your own character; what kind of things would you definitely not/do because of their compatibility with your self-conception? You must also reduce it by whether what you want happens to be currently possible, regardless of whether you could do it hypothetically.

After all these discounts are applied, what exactly are you left controlling even if you do have free will?
You are conflating free will and control. They are related but different concepts.

Trivial experiment to convince yourself of this: you can choose to be in control or you can choose to give it up.
Well put, Skep.
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