Free Will

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

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RCSaunders
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Re: Free Will

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Immanuel Can wrote: Sun Aug 01, 2021 4:29 pm
RCSaunders wrote: Sun Aug 01, 2021 3:58 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: Sun Aug 01, 2021 12:58 am
Not at all.

Determinism is not necessary for physical science.

...physical science is not the sum total of all knowledge. It's just one area, and addresses things that are purely physical. All that's necessary for physical science to work is for the things that physical science deals with to work in a law-like way. And they do.
My point is that what the physical sciences study must be physically determined by the principles that describe that physical existence,
And that's fine. But it doesn't even remotely imply that everything science CANNOT study is also Determined.
If "Determinism," assumes everything is determined physically, and that the only alternative to determinism is that nothing is determined,
No, that's not so. There's a third alternative.

"Determinism," on the one hand, and "predictability" or "law-governedness," on the other, are two different things. The latter refer only to those things science can legitmately study...which are physical phenomena, and does not rule against anything else existing, or against other areas of life and experience not operating by the same rules. That's fair enough. And it makes science possible.

So a properly modest science does not lapse into Scientism. It does not arbitrarily declare itself "ruler of all." And it doesn't range into things like consciousness, or identity or rationality or will, because those things are larger than simply physical. There is no reasonable expectation that a purely physical science will ever fathom them. It can, at most, nibble around the edges, wherever those things overlap with the physiological or physical world; but there are limits to what that approach can do...limits we all recognize, especially in areas like aesthetics, creativity, innovation, intuition, cognition, language, and a whole bunch of other things that are essential to the totality of humanity as a phenomenon.

But the latter, "Determinism" is a gratuitous claim that ALL things must operate that way, and anything that does not cannot possibly be real. That has nothing to do with science, and nothing to do with reasonableness. It's a creed, an unwarranted extension from law-governedness.

So you can have science, and science that works, and physical laws, and even predictabiilty -- with no smattering of Determinism. Determinism is a form of Scientism, not of science. In fact, because it's a gratuitous and unproven hypothesis overlaid on the data, it's an impediment to science: it burdens science with things for which science is not equipped, and for which it cannot reasonably be expected to answer.
You can keep on explaining everything that's wrong with determinism, but you're beating a dead horse.

I already said:
I have no interest is defending or refuting anyone's pet view of, "determinism." I'm only defending my view that everything that is merely physical is determined (in the sense that the principles of physics thoroughly describe its behavior) but that those physical entities with the additional attributes of life, consciousness, and volition cannot be thoroughly described by physical principles alone.

I have never, by the way, referred to my view or defended it as, "determinism."
You seem to have some objection to the word, "determined," itself. I actually have some reservation about that word myself, since I know what are mistaken called, "laws," in the physical sciences are not laws in the sense that physical reality is regulated by them or required to conform to them. I prefer the term, "scientific principle," which only describe what exists physically and its nature--only what it is and what it does--not why it is or why it does what it does, because why is a baseless assumption that something makes reality what it is, as though it could be something else.
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Terrapin Station
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Re: Free Will

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henry quirk wrote: Sun Aug 01, 2021 4:49 pm So you can have science, and science that works, and physical laws, and even predictabiilty -- with no smattering of Determinism. Determinism is a form of Scientism, not of science

And this clears up our minor disagreement up-thread. When I talk about determinism I only mean Reality is an A -> B -> C affair. When I say determined I only mean, all things bein' the same, A -> B -> C.

Mebbe I oughta switch to predictability, though that doesn't sit right with me.
"Predictability" doesn't work because that's about epistemology. Determinism is an ontological idea--it would be the case whether there were people around to know anything or not.

Also, "merely" probable phenomena can be predictable but not deterministic. In other words, if there's say, a 99.9999% chance of something occurring, you can correctly predict that it will occur, but it's not deterministic.
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Re: Free Will

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Immanuel Can wrote: Fri Jul 30, 2021 2:53 pm
RogerSH wrote: Fri Jul 30, 2021 2:30 pm ...actions that look remarkably like agency...
Ah. I think I see the problem.

Almost everything a computer does nowadays could be said to "look like agency." But it's just "complexity." They aren't the same thing at all, as you will know.

You will also know that lots of people are inclined to feel as though their computers are "understanding" something. (Weizenbaum's "Eliza" experiment was but an early example of this: it seems he had no idea how far it would go.) But they're not. And nowadays, we habitually use plenty of anthropomorphic language to describe computing, like "answers" and "responding": the most extreme example of which might be "(artificial) intelligence." But again, that's all just a mirage created by the sheer complexity of routine operations. The addition of "randomness" increases this impression, but "random" isn't "intelligent" either, of course.

And then there's the problem of justifying the assumption that computer process are the right comparison to whatever is going on in the human cranium -- again, manifestly untrue at the rudimentary level, but somehow more convincing when the complexity of the processes is high enough to fool ordinary judgment.

All that being so, if "quantum computing," entails merely a combination of complexity and randomness, even if we tack on inexplicability (as in the protons) doesn't take us even a single step closer to human cognition. We still have no justification for saying that we understand a thing about free will on that basis.

So what basis would you suggest?
Computers do the work of the brain but without a mind to perceive and interpret. The computer doesn’t create image. Instead it looks up images that have been placed in its memory banks.

Human brains transform external stimuli into sense representations that the mind interprets. This process is fairly well know except the formation of the representation is the last step in the process and is not understood.

Perception is what the mind recognizes from the representations but the process of the mind is unknown.

The mind interprets the images and reacts in (hopefully) appropriate ways but different minds can react differently to similar images. This seems to be the exception to determinism and the basis for free will.
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Re: Free Will

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jayjacobus wrote: Sun Aug 01, 2021 6:38 pm The mind interprets the images and reacts in (hopefully) appropriate ways but different minds can react differently to similar images. This seems to be the exception to determinism and the basis for free will.
You've just described the, "psychology," of an earthworm or bat, perhaps, but certainly not a human mind. Consciousness is not a mind. Only human beings have that volitional, rational, intellectual, conscious which is a mind.

Animals without minds (instinctive animals) might react directly to perception, but the human mind precludes that. To act at all (except for that behavior which is not consciously controlled--reflexes, the autonomic nervous system, etc.) a human being must consciously choose to act (or not act). Before a human being can do anything it must identify what can be done, what one wants to do, and usually how to do it. Very few choices are about what one is immediately perceiving. Most are about what one is thinking about, and most are about things they cannot perceived at all, because they are about the future, like, "later today," "tomorrow," and maybe, "next year."

When you decide you are thirsty and want a drink you think about what there is to drink, remember you have some soda in the frig, and choose to go get one without perceiving any of those things.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: Free Will

Post by Immanuel Can »

RCSaunders wrote: Sun Aug 01, 2021 6:11 pm you're beating a dead horse.
Then I'll stop.
...everything that is merely physical is determined (in the sense that the principles of physics thoroughly describe its behavior) but that those physical entities with the additional attributes of life, consciousness, and volition cannot be thoroughly described by physical principles alone.
What didn't make sense is that you use the word "Determinism" to describe your Dualism.

I have no problem with you being a Dualist: I'm one myself. I believe that the aesthetic, the cultural, the moral and the spiritual are not capable of being exhaustively or even adequately explained by invoking no more than physical principles.

You believe that too, of "life" as you call it. It's the one thing you make an exception to "physical principles."
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Immanuel Can
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Re: Free Will

Post by Immanuel Can »

jayjacobus wrote: Sun Aug 01, 2021 6:38 pm Computers do the work of the brain but without a mind to perceive and interpret.
Not really. They just follow programming. (In fact, even the word "follow" is potentially deceptive, since it can be taken to imply they "know" what they are doing; and they do not. Just so full of foolish anthropomorphisms is the world of computing.) They do their own kind of work. What the brain's real "work" is, we really don't yet fully comprehend. It does many wonderous things effortlessly, things which computers are incapable of inducing themselves to do.
Human brains transform external stimuli into sense representations that the mind interprets.
Well, yeah, but that's certainly not all they do. They also do things like "understanding," "interpreting," "rationalizing," "evaluating," "moralizing" and so on -- things of which no computer is remotely capable. That's why the common analogy "artificial intelligence" is so deceptive and inapt.
The mind interprets the images and reacts in (hopefully) appropriate ways but different minds can react differently to similar images. This seems to be the exception to determinism and the basis for free will.
Maybe not the "basis," but certainly one indication thereof. You're right: computers follow programs. But humans, even the same human at different times, will make different kinds of assessment: and not just one kind, but multiple kinds in concert.
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Re: Free Will

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henry quirk wrote: Sun Aug 01, 2021 4:49 pm Mebbe I oughta switch to predictability, though that doesn't sit right with me.
There are a number of ways of saying it: "law-governed," "subject to physical principles," "cause-and-effect," and so on. But you're right: there's a problem with "predictability" in that it seems to suggest somebody actually doing some "predicting."

Determinists will frankly admit that we can't actually "predict" all of the causal chains in play, but they will also insist that they are all so rigorously constrained by a single dynamic that the outcomes are entirely a natural and sequential product of their prior causes; so in principle they're predictable, but not in practice.

I'm not sure of what expression to use to explain propertly the idea that straightforward physical dynamics of cause and effect are real for many things. But I'm sure that "Determinism" is going too far, because it wants everything to be that way.

And for that, it has no sufficient reasons and no proof, and we have good reasons to say that things like "will," "choice," "creativity," "ingenuity," "innovation," "inspiration" and so on are noteworthy and generally-experienced exceptions to any such sweeping claim.
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Re: Free Will

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RCSaunders wrote:
Any other factors are irrelevant. If A cannot happen without B, than A is dependent on B. No matter how many other factors you want to pile on. Without B there is no A.

No matter how you describe it, like, "consciousness flowing through it," if there can be no, "consciousness flowing through it," without the corresponding brain behavior, that consciousness is dependent on that brain behavior, because it would not exist without it.
The questions to ask are as follows: are brains "dependent" on minds, or are minds "dependent" on brains, or are brains and minds two aspects of nature?

Your first paragraph describes the fact "cannot happen" that both mind and matter are necessary to existence as we know it. This is undeniable.
Your second paragraph implies that mind is subsumed under matter and that this is the one and only ontological option. Other ontological options are that matter is subsumed under mind i.e idealism; that matter and mind are each subsumed under nature i.e. neutral monism; and that mind and matter are unconnected** substances i.e. Cartesian dualism.

**except for God's occasional interventions, or except for pre-established harmony. Also except for atheistic existentialism.
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Re: Free Will

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Immanuel Can wrote: Mon Aug 02, 2021 3:52 am
RCSaunders wrote: Sun Aug 01, 2021 6:11 pm you're beating a dead horse.
Then I'll stop.
...everything that is merely physical is determined (in the sense that the principles of physics thoroughly describe its behavior) but that those physical entities with the additional attributes of life, consciousness, and volition cannot be thoroughly described by physical principles alone.
What didn't make sense is that you use the word "Determinism" to describe your Dualism.

I have no problem with you being a Dualist: I'm one myself. I believe that the aesthetic, the cultural, the moral and the spiritual are not capable of being exhaustively or even adequately explained by invoking no more than physical principles.

You believe that too, of "life" as you call it. It's the one thing you make an exception to "physical principles."
So you call someone who believes that matter has more than one property a dualist? If material existents have mass and size, is that dualism? I thought dualism was a belief in more than one kind of fundamental ontological material, like, "physical," and, "spiritual," for example. I have no such belief.

Material existence has many different attributes, including all the fundamental physical attributes, like mass, momentum, gravity, electrical properties, magnetic properties, states (solid, liquid, gas, plasma), and all the chemical properties and biological properties, etc. Among those attributes are the attributes of life, consciousness, and that unique human volitional consciousness called the human mind. If you are going to call the fact that material existence has more than one attribute something, dualism is wrong, because it would only account for two different attributes, when there are a multitude of them. You could call my view, "multitudinism," perhaps, but dualism is just plain wrong.

There is only one kind of material existence. Physicality is only one aspect of its nature. It is obvious material existence also has the attributes of life, consciousness, and minds in some entities (just as it only has some chemical properties in some entities). Even if you want to call the fact that there are additional attributes of material existence to the merely physical ones, something, since there are at least three, you would have to call that quadulism.

It is a mistake to try forcing everything into your own mistaken view of ontology.
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Re: Free Will

Post by Immanuel Can »

RCSaunders wrote: Mon Aug 02, 2021 2:28 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: Mon Aug 02, 2021 3:52 am
RCSaunders wrote: Sun Aug 01, 2021 6:11 pm you're beating a dead horse.
Then I'll stop.
...everything that is merely physical is determined (in the sense that the principles of physics thoroughly describe its behavior) but that those physical entities with the additional attributes of life, consciousness, and volition cannot be thoroughly described by physical principles alone.
What didn't make sense is that you use the word "Determinism" to describe your Dualism.

I have no problem with you being a Dualist: I'm one myself. I believe that the aesthetic, the cultural, the moral and the spiritual are not capable of being exhaustively or even adequately explained by invoking no more than physical principles.

You believe that too, of "life" as you call it. It's the one thing you make an exception to "physical principles."
So you call someone who believes that matter has more than one property a dualist?
Well "life" is not a material property. A corpse has all the material properties of the person alive 10 seconds ago, but none of the "life."
Material existence...Among those attributes are the attributes of life, consciousness, and that unique human volitional consciousness called the human mind.
But "materials," as Locke pointed out, have material properties. They are divisible, have weight or mass or density, are tactile or produce waves, and so on. But you can't give me a wave life, a half of consciousness, or the specific gravity of a mind. You can't put any of them in a beaker, or on a scale, or in Vernier calipers, or even get them to displace a cloud of vapour.

These things you seem to believe are "material" have none of the same properties as material things. Yet you insist...
There is only one kind of material existence.
So all "real" things should have physical, material properties.

But they don't.
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Re: Free Will

Post by jayjacobus »

RCSaunders wrote: Sun Aug 01, 2021 8:27 pm
jayjacobus wrote: Sun Aug 01, 2021 6:38 pm The mind interprets the images and reacts in (hopefully) appropriate ways but different minds can react differently to similar images. This seems to be the exception to determinism and the basis for free will.
You've just described the, "psychology," of an earthworm or bat, perhaps, but certainly not a human mind. Consciousness is not a mind. Only human beings have that volitional, rational, intellectual, conscious which is a mind.

Animals without minds (instinctive animals) might react directly to perception, but the human mind precludes that. To act at all (except for that behavior which is not consciously controlled--reflexes, the autonomic nervous system, etc.) a human being must consciously choose to act (or not act). Before a human being can do anything it must identify what can be done, what one wants to do, and usually how to do it. Very few choices are about what one is immediately perceiving. Most are about what one is thinking about, and most are about things they cannot perceived at all, because they are about the future, like, "later today," "tomorrow," and maybe, "next year."

When you decide you are thirsty and want a drink you think about what there is to drink, remember you have some soda in the frig, and choose to go get one without perceiving any of those things.
You have written a post which merges with my post when you end with "choose",
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Re: Free Will

Post by RCSaunders »

Immanuel Can wrote: Mon Aug 02, 2021 3:00 pm But "materials," as Locke pointed out, have material properties. They are divisible, have weight or mass or density, are tactile or produce waves, and so on. But you can't give me a wave life, a half of consciousness, or the specific gravity of a mind. You can't put any of them in a beaker, or on a scale, or in Vernier calipers, or even get them to displace a cloud of vapour.
Locke was no scientist. He was totally confused about the nature of perception and believed in government and the supernatural. The only thing he ever got right was that the human mind must be developed from scratch by every individual.

I have very clearly explained before, IC, that I do not equate the two concepts, "physical," and, "material," and unless you have a very bad memory, you know that.

I make the distinction, because I regard material existence identical with ontological existence, or nature. Material existence is all that exists and has the nature it has independent of any human knowledge or consciousness of it. That material existence is absolute in the sense that it is all there is and is not contingent on anything else.

Since material existence is everything that exists as it exists, it necessarily includes all living organisms, including human beings, which all exist independent of any human knowledge or consciousness of them, with the single exception, of course, of one's own consciousness and knowledge. With the possible exception of Aristotle, no philosopher has ever stated that simple obvious fact.

Both you and Locke make the brilliantly profound observation that life cannot be described in terms of the merely physical attributes. Therefore, there are additional attributes of material existence to the merely physical ones, unless one denies the material existence of living organisms. It is equally obvious that the attribute of life does not exist except as an attribute of physical entities.

Life is not a substance, a mystical 'force,' a spirit, or anything separate from or added to a physical entity which is an organism. It is an attribute that differentiates those physical entities called organisms from those without that attribute and are merely physical.

Like all other attributes of material existents, life is identified by how it is observed. Unlike many physical attributes that can be observed by direct perception (color, shape, size, weight, taste, texture, etc.) life is more like mass or momentum, which can only be described in terms of how physical entities behave, because mass and momentum cannot be directly perceived. (Neither can, gravity, magnetism, electrostatic charge, or fields).

like all attributes of material existents, the life attribute simply identifies what differentiates living organisms from those entities without that attribute, like the fact that the behavior of organisms sustains those entities as the kind of entities they are, which no entity without life does.

I have elsewhere outlined exactly what the characteristics of the life attribute are which cannot be explained as physical attributes and include: 1. The life process is self-initiated and self-sustained, 2. As an entity an organism's existence is self-determined, 3. All life exhibits sentience, 4. The unity of living organisms, and 5. the continuity of living organisms.

Life is a perfectly natural attribute like all the physical attributes of material reality. There is nothing mystical about it, but it has a specific nature like all natural or ontological attributes.
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Re: Free Will

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Immanuel Can wrote: Mon Aug 02, 2021 4:44 am
henry quirk wrote: Sun Aug 01, 2021 4:49 pm Mebbe I oughta switch to predictability, though that doesn't sit right with me.
There are a number of ways of saying it: "law-governed," "subject to physical principles," "cause-and-effect," and so on. But you're right: there's a problem with "predictability" in that it seems to suggest somebody actually doing some "predicting."

Determinists will frankly admit that we can't actually "predict" all of the causal chains in play, but they will also insist that they are all so rigorously constrained by a single dynamic that the outcomes are entirely a natural and sequential product of their prior causes; so in principle they're predictable, but not in practice.

I'm not sure of what expression to use to explain propertly the idea that straightforward physical dynamics of cause and effect are real for many things. But I'm sure that "Determinism" is going too far, because it wants everything to be that way.

And for that, it has no sufficient reasons and no proof, and we have good reasons to say that things like "will," "choice," "creativity," "ingenuity," "innovation," "inspiration" and so on are noteworthy and generally-experienced exceptions to any such sweeping claim.
I'm just gonna stick with C & E from now on. The free will is exempt from its domination. 'nuff said.
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Re: Free Will

Post by Immanuel Can »

RCSaunders wrote: Mon Aug 02, 2021 4:44 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: Mon Aug 02, 2021 3:00 pm But "materials," as Locke pointed out, have material properties. They are divisible, have weight or mass or density, are tactile or produce waves, and so on. But you can't give me a wave life, a half of consciousness, or the specific gravity of a mind. You can't put any of them in a beaker, or on a scale, or in Vernier calipers, or even get them to displace a cloud of vapour.
Locke was no scientist.
Not relevant. That which is essentially not physical is not a subject of any legitimate scientist's inquiry.
I do not equate the two concepts, "physical," and, "material,"
Everybody else does.
Since material existence is everything that exists as it exists,

This is actually the definition of "universe," not "the material."
..the attribute of life does not exist except as an attribute of physical entities.
So far as you know. But let's assume that. The problem is, that while it is an attribute of physical entities, it is not a physical attribute of those entities, as I pointed out. It lacks all physical characteristics.
Life is not a substance, a mystical 'force,' a spirit, or anything separate from or added to a physical entity which is an organism. It is an attribute that differentiates those physical entities called organisms from those without that attribute and are merely physical.
If the second sentence is true, then the first is necessarily false. It's either a differentiator, or it's not.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: Free Will

Post by Immanuel Can »

henry quirk wrote: Mon Aug 02, 2021 4:56 pm 'nuff said.
That works.
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