compatibilism

[iambiguous]

What Is Free Will?
Grant Bartley wants to know what the problem with freedom is all about.

Compatibilism is so called because it maintains that free will is compatible with strong determinism, which in turn implies that moral responsibility is compatible with strong determinism.

Then my own predicament here. On the one hand, I believe the compatibilists are no less compelled by their brains to believe that strong determinism and moral responsibility can be reconciled. But at the same time I flat-out acknowledge that I have no way of thinking this through other than as my own brain compels me to. And then the part where all of us are confronted with "the gap" between what we think about all of this "here and now" and what we have no true understanding of [philosophically or scientifically] in regard to this:

All of this going back to how the matter we call the human brain was "somehow" able to acquire autonomy when non-living matter "somehow" became living matter "somehow" became conscious matter "somehow" became self-conscious matter.

Compatibilists argue that although our actions are entirely predetermined, we are nevertheless moral agents because our ‘choices’ are justified by reasons.

But if the reasons are in turn entirely determined by brains wholly in sync with the laws of matter, how is this not but another example of how nature "somehow" sustains but the psychological illusion of autonomy?

But to me compatibilism is the wolf of determinism in a sheepish guise of moral respectability, assigning moral responsibility based on the mere illusion of choice.

More or less my own conclusion. Assuming of course that any conclusion I do come to "here and now" is in fact the actual embodiment of my own autonomy.

But this is would be responsibility an illusion couldn’t have. Thinking that we’re choosing when we’re not doesn’t make us responsible for our acts, any more than we’d be responsible for them if we were hypnotised into doing them. There too we’re thinking that we’re choosing our actions when we’re not.

More to point here [mine] there's the profound mystery of dreams here. Night after night after night I am absolutely convinced that while dreaming, I am not dreaming at all. My interactions in the dream certainly seem as real to me "in the dream" as in my waking hours. But I am choosing only to fall asleep here. The rest is my brain doing its own thing chemically and neurologically.

For these reasons, the onus is on the determinist to demonstrate that physical causation is the only causation, before presuming there’s no such thing as mental causation, ie will.

Right. As though it is not the obligation of those convinced that mental causation is is within our reach autonomously to demonstrate this instead...beyond worlds of words here.

[iambiguous]

What Is Free Will?
Grant Bartley wants to know what the problem with freedom is all about.

Neither Determined Nor Random

Real choice must be reasonable choice. In order to be a choice rather than some arbitrary impulse, free will must operate under the influence of considered reflection.

Arbitrary impulse? Purely random interactions? How is that even possible in a wholly determined universe? Instead, every single interaction of every single material object is entirely sync with its own inherent fate in a wholly natural world. We just don't know what natural actually means for all practical purposes. Or, for others, how things like human brains can be anything but gifts from God.

Acting for no reason, or where reason is of so little influence as to make the choice practically arbitrary, is equivalent to behaving randomly.

No, as with everything else we simply do not understand about the human condition "here and now", the fact that we think we act arbitrarily in a universe where random interactions occur is just one more manifestation of the only possible reality. The fact that we think something does not necessarily make it true. Only that human psychology evolved with the capacity to delude us into thinking that everything that we think must be true. And that we will what we think of our own volition.

We could say, irrationality and random impulses are functionally and ethically equivalent. On the other hand, in order to be free, choice must also not be absolutely determined by anything, including reasons.

Again, what are these but a bunch of words the author put together in order to come up with a conclusion in a philosophy magazine about rationality, impulses and ethics. As though the conclusion itself "somehow" transcends the laws of matter.

And it well might. But just thinking it...believing it...doesn't make it true. Not necessarily.

If our reasons determine our decisions, we’re not in control, our reasons are. But for free will, it must be you, freely operating your will. This is why I call free will sovereign choice. Determinism by reasons we might call ‘logical determinism’. So we need our choices to be not completely without reasons, otherwise we’d be talking about only a random response to stimuli.

What we call things...the things we choose. The reasons we think up to do so. The fact that biological life evolved here at at all on planet Earth.

We. Just. Don't. Fully. Understand. Any. Of. It.

But we also need to avoid saying that our choices are determined by reasons.

By, of course, just assuming that "somehow" when the universe did evolve into us here on planet Earth, some of our brains just happened to acquire the capacity -- compelled or not? -- to avoid saying that.

Rather than either extreme, we can say that free will must be informed by reasons but not necessitated by reasons.

Same thing, of course. We can say what we do about these things but that does not demonstrate one way or another whether we opted freely to say it or were wholly compelled to.

Philosophy and free will in a nutshell?

To be free, your mind must not be forced to its decisions by the ideas it’s employing; but reasons nevertheless must influence your choice, even persuade it. Or, as Gottfried Leibniz put it: “The free substance” – the will – “determines itself by itself, following the motive of the good recognized by the understanding, which inclines it without necessitating it” (Theodicy, 1710, my emphasis). He means that reason inclines the mind towards a good choice, but its choice is not necessitated by reasons. We might say that in choice, your mind is the pilot of your will, and your thoughts and reasons are the wind to which you set your will’s sails.

Arguing free will into existence up in the theoretical clouds here.

[iambiguous]

What Is Free Will?
Grant Bartley wants to know what the problem with freedom is all about.

What Free Will Involves

In other words, you're a philosopher grappling with brain matter in a world of words. You sit back and you "think it through" to the best of your ability. Finally, you argue that free will either exists or it does not.

As though this part...

All of this going back to how the matter we call the human brain was "somehow" able to acquire autonomy when non-living matter "somehow" became living matter "somehow" became conscious matter "somehow" became self-conscious matter.

...really was not all that important to pin down. And even the brain scientists can't pin this down yet.

So your choice of next mind state being free requires that nothing ultimately causes the choice except you willing it. We could say, a choice is not a choice unless it is made by the chooser at the moment of choice. In other words, you make the choice, and nothing causes you to make the choice other than the fact that it’s your choice.

And around and around we go. Intuitively, we just know "deep down inside" that we are freely willing our next choice. But what if our knowing and believing this, i.e. what if human intuition itself, is no less but another inherent manifestation of the only possible reality? The chooser makes a choice that he or she was never able not to make.

In more jargony terms, at the moment of the decision, the choosing must be ‘causally undetermined’; or, for your will to be free, your choice must be an uncaused cause. That is, the cause of your willing is your willing it, and nothing else.

Then back to the part where Schopenhauer suggested that "you can do what you will, but in any given moment of your life you can will only one definite thing and absolutely nothing other than that one thing.” How for all practical purposes is that applicable in our interactions with others?

[iambiguous]

The Illusion of Illusionism
Raymond Tallis sees through a physicalist confusion.

Consciousness has always been a serious embarrassment for those who believe that everything is physical and that physics is the most authoritative account of the material world.

On the other hand, as some particularly hardcore determinists might insist, the embarrassment anyone might feel about this -- or, for that matter, anything else -- is merely one more inherent manifestation of the only possible reality.

Then what? How do philosophers go about establishing that, on the contrary, human consciousness really is "above and beyond" matter? After all, not even scientists are able to accomplish this. In fact, isn't this why so many simply accept the explanation that free will revolves entirely around our God-given "souls"?

There is, it seems, nothing in matter or energy as seen through the eyes of physics that explains how a part of the material world might become aware of itself and the world surrounding it, as is the case with conscious subjects, such as readers of Philosophy Now. Physicalism cannot account for the emergence of minds from a purely physical reality.

Okay, but there was once a time when, "through the eyes of physics", Einstein's space-time continuum, dark matter, dark energy, quantum mechanics, etc., were not understood to be crucial components factored into whatever, going back to the explanation for the existence of existence itself, reality itself might be.

In other words, there's what scientists think they now know about the human mind "here and now", and what they might know about it a hundred years from now? a thousand years from now?

As for speculations coming from philosophers, how are they not still basically just arguments? Words defining and defending other words.

[iambiguous]

The Illusion of Illusionism
Raymond Tallis sees through a physicalist confusion.

Physicalist philosophers often try to tame the conscious mind by reducing it to the locus of functional connections between incoming sensory stimuli and outgoing bodily behaviour. Consciousness then becomes a tapestry of causal pathways passing through the nervous system of the organism.

So much more to the point [mine] to what extent are physicalist philosophers [or any other philosophers] able to take their arguments -- their definitions and deductions -- to the scientific community in order to confirm that indeed how they construe the brain functioning is in fact how it does function.

The part, in other words, where it can all become truly surreal because it is the brain that is faced with the task of explaining itself.

Given that the links in this causal chain are physical events, most importantly neural discharges, the conscious mind can then be fitted comfortably into the physicalist world picture, so the physicalist claims.

Again, from my frame of mind [compelled or not], the dilemma revolves more around attempts to discover if the claims being made [by anyone] are in and of themselves wholly determined given the only possible material reality. Even pursuits by the scientific community may well be only what they could ever have been.

Quite rightly, this does not satisfy many philosophers.

Same thing? Could not the satisfaction and dissatisfaction that philosophers feel [about anything] not in turn just reflect the only possible reality?

David Chalmers famously distinguished between ‘the easy’ and ‘the hard’ problems of consciousness. While functionalist stories, he argued, may account for some overt behaviour associated with being conscious, it cannot deal with the experiential (aka phenomenal or subjective) dimensions of consciousness – the ‘what it is like to be’ an entity having awareness. His hard problem is how brain activity can produce conscious awareness at all.

This reminds me of the arguments that go back and forth in regard to artificial intelligence. Okay, the machines can beat a Grand Master at chess. The "easy" part?" But what about human emotions and psychological states? What about acquiring a sense of humor, an understanding of irony? Or the absence of a physical body, the equivalent of the id, the super-ego, the subconscious and unconscious mind?

As for "deal[ing] with the experiential (aka phenomenal or subjective) dimensions of consciousness" given free will, look at all the philosophers here who cannot deal with my own defense of moral nihilism...dasein, Benjamin Button, the gap, Rummy's Rule.

[iambiguous]

The Illusion of Illusionism
Raymond Tallis sees through a physicalist confusion.

In his most detailed development of the hard/easy distinction, Chalmers’ list of ‘easy’ problems in the philosophy of mind includes: how the brain can discriminate, categorize, and react to environmental stimuli; our capacity to describe our mental states; our ability to focus our attention, or deliberately to control our behaviour; how our cognitive systems acquire and integrate information; and the difference between wakefulness and sleep.

Of course, I'd be particularly interested in "the difference between wakefulness and sleep". And that is because I have yet to come upon argument that explains how the brain itself calls all the shots given our "behaviors" in dreams, whereas when we wake up the brain, what, kicks everything over to the autonomous components?

From Quora:

"There is free-will in dreams, but most people do not become aware of it as it is possible to interrupt your sleep, for once you become aware of free will and your ability to bend reality, you are no longer unconscious but conscious. People experience this during lucid dreaming or sleep paralysis.

How about this...

Note a recent dream you had and explain how the above is applicable to it.

On the other hand...

Of late, I have been experiencing mind games that truly baffle me. I use THC gummies to help me fall asleep.

About an hour or so after taking them, while lying in bed, the drug takes effect. Then for an hour or so I get these "images" in my head. Sort of half way between sober and stoned. A dream-like experience but not really a dream at all.

After a few days, I began to note this: that the awake me was actually able modify the "dreams", exercising some measure of control.

The human brain!

Yet for me, understanding all these aspects of consciousness is as hard as explaining experience. Attention, deliberation about one’s behaviour, and wakefulness, are also things about which we can ask the question, “What is it like?”

Then my part: the distinction between what an experience was like for you and what it was like for others. Given the same set of circumstances. The part that, in regard to value judgments, I root existentially in dasein.

Likewise dream-filled sleep. Indeed, if these features did not feel like anything – if there was nothing it was like to experience them – they would not be what they’re supposed to be.

Not sure what he means by this. How is this applicable to our behaviors in dreams? How is it applicable in your dreams?

What’s more, difficult questions would remain about why they at least seem to feel like something. ‘Seeming to feel like’ is no more amenable to a physicalist explanation than ‘feeling like’, as seeming also presupposes experience.

Again, if some renditions of hard determinism are true, then what we think, what we feel, what we say and what we do in every single experience that we have from the cradle to the grave is necessarily embedded in the only possible reality. Then all of the "metaphysical" imponderables going back to how matter itself evolved into biological life.

[iambiguous]

The Illusion of Illusionism
Raymond Tallis sees through a physicalist confusion.

Be that as it may [above], most philosophers think that the phenomenal, or quality of sensation, of ‘what-it-is-like’ consciousness – qualia, such as the smell of cheese, the sight of red, and the feeling of pain – present an especial challenge to physicalism.

Of course, that's the point I come back to over and again: that philosophers will tell you what they think about this. On the other hand, haven't philosophers been telling us what they think is going on when the brain thinks about thinking about things like this now for literally thousands of years?

And the fact that brain scientists themselves are still grappling to come up with a way to most rationally grapple with a brain given the task of explaining itself...? And to the best of my knowledge they too have failed to resolve it.

There is nothing in neural activity – which physically speaking is simply the passage of ions through semi-permeable membranes – that accounts for these experiences. After all, similar neural activity in the spinal cord, the cerebellum, and most of the cerebral cortex, is not associated with consciousness.

Okay, the libertarians among us might argue, "somehow" when matter evolved into biological life here on Earth, that life "somehow" evolved into us and we "acquired" free will. Yet how is that not but another "leap of faith" for philosophers?

Nature vs. God? With God, everything can be reduced down to His "mysterious ways". But what is any less mysterious than connecting human consciousness to Nature?

[iambiguous]

The Illusion of Illusionism
Raymond Tallis sees through a physicalist confusion.

Enter the illusionists. The most lucid and committed among them is Keith Frankish, who embraces ‘strong illusionism’. According to Frankish, “phenomenal consciousness, as usually conceived, is illusory”.

More to the point [mine], do the illusionists themselves enter into all of this of their own free will? After all, if we embrace or conceive only that which we were never able not to embrace or conceive...?

In case you’re wondering whether you read that correctly, he adds, “According to illusionists, our sense that it is like something to undergo conscious experiences is due to the fact that we systematically misrepresent them (or, in some versions, their objects) as having phenomenal properties.” So phenomenal consciousness is an illusion – the product of introspection misrepresenting cerebral events. This remains true even when the phenomenal experiences are projected onto external objects – as when we see a red apple or locate a pain in our foot.

Here, I am not at all sure what "for all practical purposes", given day to day interactions with others that precipitate conflicting goods, this means. Anyone here able to connect the dots between this particular world of words and the experiences they have had? All the while having to assume that one can accomplish this of one's own free will. A leap of faith given the gap and Rummy's Rule.

In this way, illusionism denies any need for radical theoretical innovation to deal with phenomenal experiences – because they are illusory.

Or so some philosophers will argue. Others however will argue just the opposite. On the other hand, if there is no real distinction between theory and practice here, then what? Then back to being stuck or being "stuck". Or, for particular compatibilists, being "stuck"?

The challenge now becomes, not to explain why experiences have phenomenal properties, but why they seem to have them. And so the problem of phenomenal consciousness is replaced by the illusion problem; of how it comes about that we misrepresent complex physical events in the brain as simple phenomenal ones.

In my view, the challenge here revolves first and foremost around accepting the fact that neither science nor philosophy has yet to come up with anything in the way of a resolution. Even explaining how -- why? -- the brain can go about resolving this given all that we still do not grasp about the existence of existence itself, raises a ton of uncertainty.

[iambiguous]

The Illusion of Illusionism
Raymond Tallis sees through a physicalist confusion.

There is an obvious objection to illusionism. How can I be wrong about the existence of something for which I have inescapable evidence? Of course, I can be mistaken as to the existence of something that I believe is out there because of my experiences: I may incorrectly think I have seen a red apple. Or I may incorrectly classify it as a plum. I cannot, however, be mistaken that I have had an experience of a colour (even though I might misname it because I have a poor grasp of colour terminology). But while phenomenal consciousness can be mistaken as to its description or its object, it cannot be mistaken as to its own existence

This seems to be another rendition of "I think, therefor I am". On the other hand, might it not be, "I think only what my brain compels me to think, therefore I am behaving only as I am able to behave."

It's not that he is classifying an apple as a plum incorrectly. After all, if his brain has compelled him to do so what does if really mean for all practical purposes to be either correct or incorrect? Someone may note that he has done so. But only because they were never able not to note this.

Though, again -- click -- I'm always willing to concede I am simply unable "here and now" to grasp this in the most reasonable manner.

The belief that I am seeing a pink elephant may be erroneous; but not that I am having the experience of seeing a pink elephant.

Then around and around in circles the hardcore determinists and libertarians seem to go in reacting to this. Some will believe one thing, others another. Then the manner in which the compatibilists claim to...reconcile determinism and free will? He had to classify the apple incorrectly but he is still responsible for doing so?

But believing what you do is one thing, demonstrating that what you believe [correctly or incorrectly] you believe autonomously another thing altogether.

In short, a phenomenal experience does not have to be veridical to exist, or to have happened, or to require explanation. My being wrong about the intentional object of my experience does not prove that I did not have the experience.

Nor, in my view, does it prove that because you believe/think you had a particular experience, this means you must have experienced it freely. We're no less stuck trying to explain the gap between what we do believe is unfolding "in our head" here and all that we simply do not comprehend about the manner in which the human condition fits into an explanation for the existence of existence itself.

[iambiguous]

The Illusion of Illusionism
Raymond Tallis sees through a physicalist confusion.

The obvious problem for anyone denying the existence of phenomenal consciousness is that they have to doubt something whose existence is indubitable.

Unless, of course, a more obvious problem is that Tallis does not grasp [cannot grasp] how [let alone why] it is our brains compelling us to deny it. Doubt and certainty then reflecting both sides of the same wholly determined reality.

Just try doubting the reality of toothache when you’re in the grip of it.

While such experiences may not portray what’s going on in your brain, they are no less real for that.

That's not my point, however. I'm just not sure if my point does in fact reflect anything in the way of...of what exactly? Unlike most, I often find myself coming back time and again to this:

All of this going back to how the matter we call the human brain was "somehow" able to acquire autonomy when non-living matter "somehow" became living matter "somehow" became conscious matter "somehow" became self-conscious matter.

In other words, I will almost certainly go to the grave just as bewildered about the reality of human existence as I've ever been. Whereas others here might go to the grave absolutely convinced their own understanding of the human brain really, really is the correct one.

And what does it mean to argue we don't grasp what is actually going on in the brain when we experience things, but that this doesn't make them any less real? And -- click -- how far are we today from grasping the human brain fully? 10%...20%...90%?

Barely scratched the surface?

There is no appearance-reality gap for the sufferer from toothache, or indeed for any ‘hard’ (to explain) conscious experience. The other phenomenal experiences that you have while you are looking about you as you sit in the waiting room, clutching your jaw, are no less real, either.

Now all he has to do is find a brain scientist who, step by step by step, can explain precisely how our material brains did acquire the capacity to experience things autonomously. I am myself "here and now" convinced that this is certainly possible. As with most others, there's a "deep down inside me" self that "just knows" I have free will. But that's hardly the same thing as actually demonstrating it.

[iambiguous]

The Illusion of Illusionism
Raymond Tallis sees through a physicalist confusion.

The Experience of an Illusion

Even if its explanations of the nature and purpose of phenomenal consciousness were valid, illusionism would not make consciousness, and in particular phenomenal consciousness, any easier to fit into a physicalist world picture. To the contrary, it becomes a more awkward customer

All the while, however, he's in the same boat the rest of us are in: speculating about how to speculate about his own interactions with others given all that he simply does not grasp about the human brain itself going all the way back to, what, the Big Bang? God?

If the physicalists are compelled to explain phenomenal consciousness only as they are able to, why might it not be that Tallis is reacting to them given the only manner in which he is able to?

What doesn't change [click or not] is the profound mystery embedded in matter able to "somehow" become conscious of itself as matter able, in turn, to acquire moral "convictions".

. If the experience of red is to be judged an illusion on the grounds that it is not like anything going on the brain, or indeed in the rest of the physical world, the illusion of an experience is even more difficult to accommodate than just an experience.

And if, instead of color, the experience revolves more around, say, the war in Gaza or Ukraine...? What can or cannot be called an illusion there?

After all, if the material world is incapable of generating phenomenal consciousness, it’s hardly going to be able to generate consciousness that misrepresents neural activity as phenomenal consciousness!

And if somehow matter in a No God universe did manage to evolve into living, self-conscious entities -- us? Who can really know for sure what it is or is not capable of? It simply remains what may well be the most profoundly problematic mystery of them all. One that we will all probably go to grave merely believing "in our heads" whatever we happen to believe is true about it.

If matter can’t generate experiences, it seems even less capable of creating the illusions of experiences, since misrepresentation presupposes presentation. Presentation is a relationship between an entity (an object, an event, or a process), and a subject conscious of that entity. The reflection of a cloud in a puddle becomes a representation only when it is observed by a phenomenally conscious subject. Similarly, all illusions presuppose experience.

Again, the assumption being that matter can't generate experiences when, in fact, the matter that is my brain is integral to the experience I am having right now. But how integral? I simply shift the focus from colors and clouds to conflicting goods.

[iambiguous]

Trump guilty on all 34 counts.

Pick one:

1] in a free will world
2] in a wholly determined world

[iambiguous]

The Illusion of Illusionism
Raymond Tallis sees through a physicalist confusion.

Which brings us back to our starting point and the problem illusionism was supposed to solve: the challenge of seeing how phenomenal consciousness arises in a material world as seen through a physicalist lens. It seems no easier to accommodate an illusion, a misrepresentation of neural activity to an introspecting subject, than to accommodate phenomenal consciousness itself.

Actually, as with any philosophical speculation that takes us back around to grappling with the human brain itself, there is in fact no "starting point" other than a particular set of assumptions someone makes about relationships that evolved over literally millions of years. Instead, he makes arguments about physicalism in much the same manner that physicalists make their own arguments. But we are all embedded in "the gap" here. And the part where we don't actually know what we don't even know about where human beings here on planet Earth fit into an explanation for the existence of existence itself. We don't even know if the human brain is capable of grasping that. Some just make all of this more trivial than others.

Matter, taken by materialists to be the universal stuff of the world, having only those properties ascribed to it by physical science, would hardly be able to fabricate conscious subjects mistaking the nature of their own consciousness, never mind philosophers such as Keith Frankish arguing that phenomenal consciousness is an illusion.

On the other hand, physical scientists, employing the scientific method and working with ever more sophisticated fMRI technologies, are still unable to pin down whether or not human consciousness is actually autonomous. Unless, perhaps, a link can be provided challenging that.

What illusionists mobilise to put phenomenal consciousness back into the materialist box requires invoking processes even more out of reach of physicalism. Thus, the claim by Frankish that “If phenomenal properties are… a sort of mental fiction, then we need no longer be embarrassed by them” could not be further from the truth.

The truth. The truth here? Tallis can provide us with a scientific assessment establishing that human interactions are unequovocally not just embodying the illusion of free will? He's just here to provide us with a philosophical confirmation?

Mental fictions do not seem like the kinds of items brewed up by the physical world acting in accordance with the laws of nature identified by physicists. Illusionists, far from dealing with the embarrassment of phenomenal consciousness, have compounded the challenge it presents by requiring a slice of matter and energy to generate a fiction about itself.

Okay, then back to dreams. My own are bursting at the seams with mental fictions. The "interactions" in the dreams are created by the brain itself. We wake up noting that none of it really happened at all. Except "in our head". Indeed, how many times have we woke thinking, "whew, it was just a dream!".

Let's try this...

In regard to your own interactions with others, what do you propose he means above?

Or, going back to my own main interest here...connecting the dots existentially between the behaviors we choose and moral responsibility...how do we go about determining what either is or is not wholly determined by the laws of nature?

[Iwannaplato]

The Illusion of Illusionism
Raymond Tallis sees through a physicalist confusion.

Which brings us back to our starting point and the problem illusionism was supposed to solve: the challenge of seeing how phenomenal consciousness arises in a material world as seen through a physicalist lens. It seems no easier to accommodate an illusion, a misrepresentation of neural activity to an introspecting subject, than to accommodate phenomenal consciousness itself.

Actually, as with any philosophical speculation that takes us back around to grappling with the human brain itself, there is in fact no "starting point" other than a particular set of assumptions someone makes about relationships that evolved over literally millions of years. Instead, he makes arguments about physicalism in much the same manner that physicalists make their own arguments. But we are all embedded in "the gap" here. And the part where we don't actually know what we don't even know about where human beings here on planet Earth fit into an explanation for the existence of existence itself. We don't even know if the human brain is capable of grasping that. Some just make all of this more trivial than others.

Notice that Iambiguous does not address the argument being made about physicalist use of illusionism in what he quoted. What he does do is repeat positions he has stated many times in a variety of near paraphrases.

Matter, taken by materialists to be the universal stuff of the world, having only those properties ascribed to it by physical science, would hardly be able to fabricate conscious subjects mistaking the nature of their own consciousness, never mind philosophers such as Keith Frankish arguing that phenomenal consciousness is an illusion.

On the other hand, physical scientists, employing the scientific method and working with ever more sophisticated fMRI technologies, are still unable to pin down whether or not human consciousness is actually autonomous. Unless, perhaps, a link can be provided challenging that.

And this is not a response to what is written. Iambiguous begins with 'on the other hand' then makes a point that, if anything, would be supportive of what he quoted. 'In addition' would make more sense here than 'on the other hand'.

What illusionists mobilise to put phenomenal consciousness back into the materialist box requires invoking processes even more out of reach of physicalism. Thus, the claim by Frankish that “If phenomenal properties are… a sort of mental fiction, then we need no longer be embarrassed by them” could not be further from the truth.

The truth. The truth here? Tallis can provide us with a scientific assessment establishing that human interactions are unequovocally not just embodying the illusion of free will? He's just here to provide us with a philosophical confirmation?

I don't think he's talking about free will. He seems to be talking about substance and the limits of physicalism to explain experiencing. The article does not mention free will, it is focused on substance issues.

Mental fictions do not seem like the kinds of items brewed up by the physical world acting in accordance with the laws of nature identified by physicists. Illusionists, far from dealing with the embarrassment of phenomenal consciousness, have compounded the challenge it presents by requiring a slice of matter and energy to generate a fiction about itself.

Okay, then back to dreams. My own are bursting at the seams with mental fictions. The "interactions" in the dreams are created by the brain itself. We wake up noting that none of it really happened at all. Except "in our head". Indeed, how many times have we woke thinking, "whew, it was just a dream!".

This is an argument for solipsism or idealism. It doesn't relate to the topic of the essay and given it only manages to imply some kind of critique, it's incomplete at best. Why the evasiveness? [rhetorical question] In any case, he is not denying the existence of mental fictions, he is pointing out the problem with this for physicalism in relation to experiencing/consciousness [not free will!!!!] Illusions are experienced. So, I ambiguous is rebutting an argument not being made by the author related to an issue the author is not writing about.

Let's try this...

In regard to your own interactions with others, what do you propose he means above?

Or, going back to my own main interest here...connecting the dots existentially between the behaviors we choose and moral responsibility...how do we go about determining what either is or is not wholly determined by the laws of nature?

Showing he does not even know the subject of this philosophical essay. He does not respond to points made in the essay, except in some vague allusive way to the last point about mental fictions - though he doesn't get in what sense they are being used in the essay, I think - it's hard to tell since he avoids actually making a complete argument.

The pattern:

Quote an online text.
Avoid responding to what the text is actually about or the arguments in it.
Repeat statements he has made dozens to hundreds of times as if they relate.
Request other people do some philosophy.

The article is a sustance-focused criticism of physicalist use of illusionism to dismiss concerns about the hard problem of consciousness. Not free will. Not compatibilism.

The odd thing is one can easily find thousands of articles that do focus on free will/compatibilism.

The hammer sees nails.

The hammer is a tool.

[Flannel Jesus]

Yeah, it's apparent that he reads all these articles on free will and compatibilism, not because he's interested in what the author has to say or how the author thinks, but because he's looking for another reason to just say the exact same boring things he always says.

Iambiguous, you don't need to read more articles if you don't want to. You can just think the same boring thoughts without reading more articles. Free yourself of this burden.