This sentence from SentientMeat in an unrelated thread struck me as self-defeating.
How can someone consider the will to be an illusion, if the act of considering is an exercise of will? The sentence cannot be logically true unless a new definition of “consider,” “will,” or possibly “illusion” is invented.
EsotericEngima: How can someone consider the will to be an illusion, if the act of considering is an exercise of will?
(Emphasis mine)
Only by definition.
E.g. “He decided to watch TV.”.
A completely descriptive account of observation would describe neurophysiological activity chronologically i.e. initially, thought states that correspond to wanting to watch TV, then the neural activity commanding the hand to pick up the remote and power on the TV…etc
There is, seemingly by fiat, a third category of action, inserted between the activity that is thought and the activity that is action. This category is called the ‘will’. Whether there is really a third category, who knows ?? Empirical observation indicates otherwise. This explanation is only illustrative, and not intended(;)) to be a thought-out model, so no nitpicks please.
I would question your premise that the act of considering is an exercise of will. That seems self-referential to me. What is “considering”? Another word for “thinking”, correct? What is thought? It’s electrochemical activity in the brain, correct? To say that the brain “wills” itself to think is nonsensical. If the brain is doing the thinking, what is doing the “willing”? Another brain? No, the brain does not “make itself” think, it simply thinks.
Firstly, Enigma, thanks for starting this as a new thread and not diverting the other one - that shows both consideration and an admirable intellectual curiosity on your part.
Quite so, and it is the word “will” which I would question (and perhaps the other two in the course of such an exploration).
As I have asked in other threads is the ‘will’ a necessary entity in an Ockham-like, parsimonious sense? Does an insect exercise ‘will’, or a calculator, or a dice? My answer to all of these is No, as it would be for the human. To misquote a great mind: Do, or do not. There is no ‘choose’.
My position is that “consideration” outputs a decision, rather like a calculator. Some of the many, many inputs to that calculation may be from senses, from memory, from feedback of the decision an instant before, or even completely random inputs (like the dice). We may never realistically determine those decisions until they are output, but neither can we predict the weather so far in advance, and yet we would still say that the weather was ultimately deterministic (though not necessarily determinable). I say the same of a human mind.
Is the ‘will’ the calculator element, such that for the same inputs you make the same decision every time? That sounds the opposite of ‘will’ to me. Or is it the random element, such that you could choose a literally random number each time? That does not sound like ‘will’ to me either - after all, we don’t say that the dice chooses the face it shows. And if it is not in either element, I see no necessary third one, and neither did Benjamin Libet.
I would perhaps agree that “illusion” is not quite the best word in that sense (though not because of “who it fools” - that is simply the unique string of memories arbitrarily labelled “myself”). I am using the word rather like one might call a rainbow an illusion. It seems to be a vast, colourful arc growing out of the ground. And yet it is merely the effect of white light on water droplets (which are themselves an illusion to some extent, being conglomerates of hydrogen oxide molecules).
Just as a rainbow is an optical illusion, I consider the ‘will’ to be a neuropsychological illusion.
Read The Illusion of Conscious Will by Daniel Wegner. If you’re talking about the conscious will, then indeed it is well-argued to be a mere illusion. It is more akin to a parallel process that tells us “yes, I did that,” so that survival can be made easier; however it is not the cause of our actions. Your “conscious” will is merely a small subset of the activity going on in your brain. You think that your will rules all because it is through it that you live your conscious life, yet that doesn’t mean that you aren’t being fooled, so to speak, by what’s going on.
Anyway, the book is fascinating and compelling. So give it a read if you really want an anwer to your question.
<kick in the shins>
Didn’t see that comin’, didja? Hah? Hah? Ah-hah!
I cannot predict your output any better than I can the weather on Easter Day, but the output “kick my shins” demonstrates that your calculator has not been ‘trained’ to avoid violence. The if-then consequences of certain outputs must be reinforced so that those decisions are not output in future. This is the output of my calculation.
<kicks pravnik back>
The problem with determinism and its adherents is that most of them, while asserting that we are all just dependent variables running around in response to our environmental stimuli, go on to discuss how we (they and their audience?) can use that knowledge to intentionally obtain desirable outcomes, a venture rife with the same lapse in consistency outlined here by EsotericEnigma.
Like solipsism and instantaneous creationism, determinism is an explanation for observed phenomena that cannot be eliminated by any possible discordant observation, and yet it’s a useless and unviable explanation nevertheless.
Perhaps you are “in the matrix”; perhaps I am not here, the SDMB does not exist, and the earth is no more than an artificial construct of your neurons as stimulated by wires in the lab of the evil Dr. Xmiglu in the 13th dimension of Upper Thuiqos where you’ve actually spent your entire life in a tube of liquid — but while you can’t know otherwise, it remains a useless possibility. Living your life with the assumption that everything your sensory input is telling you is an illusion isn’t even a very practical adaptation to life in Xmiglu’s lab.
Perhaps God created the entire universe in its current form exactly 3 seconds ago, complete with everything from fossil records to dead sea scrolls to the memories you think you have, just to see how you and I handle our first batch of ethical and moral decisions —but while you can’t know otherwise, basing your life on the assumption that everything you think you know is just a stage set which should have no bearing on how you actually live your life doesn’t really give you an alternative base for making life decisions.
Perhaps the “experience” of making decisions and reaching conclusions and choosing things is no more than an illusion that glows within a web of mechanical neurons that fire in accordance with their wiring and programming — but for the third time, while you can’t amass any evidence against it, it’s a rather unhelpful and impractical way of viewing matters, insofar as if it’s true you can’t conclude that it is true, you can’t decide to believe that it is true, and if it should simply happen (for deterministic reasons) that you begin behaving as if it were true there is no means of assessing whether or not the results of that behavior are desirable, but from the conventional framework of our illusions about free will and assessments of desirability and so forth there would not appear to be any conceivable desirable outcomes or advantages to engaging in such a behavior.
Besides, I consider determinism to be an illusion. Alan Watts was right. You see cause and effect mostly by conceptually dividing processes that aren’t divided before you divide them with your analytical mind, and then you say the preceding part of the process “caused” the part that follows, like a cat coming into the living room: the head enters first and is followed by the tail, but the head is not the cause of the tail.
There’s only been one event, ever. We refer to it as the Big Bang, and it began occurring roughly 12-15 billion years ago and had no prior cause. It’s still happening and every object and event (including you) is just an artificially, conceptually isolated subpart of it.
That might be a problem with its adherents, not a problem of determinism. How does it matter if the explanation is useless or unsatisfying? All that matters is if it’s true or not.
What’s illusion, and what’s reality? At best, you can talk about replacing one set of stream of qualias with another. What are these ‘practical adaptations’ you speak of? Are you carrying over concepts from the child simulacrum to the parent? It seems that way, I don’t see how they apply, and certainly don’t know how we’d know if they apply.
I wonder how he determined that :dubious:
On a more serious note, see below
Apart from the fact that this can’t (?doesn’t seem to be?) be truly verfiable or falsifiable, I agree with this. However, determinism isn’t proved false by this. Think of the universe as structured, forget about what the exact structure is, a meaningless query. Cause-effect are just notions that recognize the existence of order or logic or whatever you want to call it. Where’s the free will?
I actually agree with everything you said there, AH. Volition is a useful fiction, especially since we cannot hope to amass all the inputs which go into each calculated output: again, one might draw equivalence to the capriciousness of the weather and “live our lives” assuming that we’ll never control it, or perhaps even understand it, at such a basic level.
However, I’d disagree about calling determinism useless, even if I would agree that it is just as “illusory” as the will (or indeed any other concept): I feel that such a ‘brain configuration’ (if I may use so vulgar and oversimple a term) gives me a far better understanding of my place in the universe and how “I” come to exist at all. Indeed, I draw great hope from escaping the existential angst of great philosophers of the past: Fuck it, I’m just a fantastic, beautiful computer - I’ve won the existence lottery!
And with regards to solipsism and simulated reality and the like, we must still keep in mind Ockham’s Razor: I consider entities other than myself to be necessary in order to explain my existence, and those Matrix machines must still be based on physical reality somewhere along the line. But I do not consider the ‘will’ to be necessary in order to explain anything: determinism is clearly more parsimonious in that sense.
If I may ask, is there anything I’ve said which you believe to be false? If you believe in the ‘will’, is it in the calculative part or the random part of the output? As Aeschines asked in those other threads, what is the difference between a deterministic universe and a non-deterministic one in terms of the life of such an advanced organism?
I can’t speak for SentientMeat, but in terms of The Illusion of Conscious Will free will vs. determinism don’t even enter into it. It’s a red herring. Whether John Q.‘s behavior is the product of his conscious will or the product of different brain processes he is unaware of does not have any link with whether his actions are determined or free. The idea of the conscious will is saying that this particular brain process—the one that produces John Q’s conscious identity—is the cause of his behavior instead of other brain processes of which he has no knowledge. Free will vs. determinism does not hinge on what part of the brain is causing a person to act; hence free will vs. determinism is outside the universe of the question about the will as the author of our actions. I’m tellin’ 'ya, it’s a great book.
On a personal note, I don’t see the appeal of free will. Determinism means that you’re affected by past events. To have your behavior, or some component of your behavior be not affected by past events, then that aspect of your behavior is essentially the product of a coin toss. Where is the dignity in that?
Because I could grasp SentientMeat’s meaning more clearly than any of the others, I’ll reply to his arguments here.
First, the question of the will’s necessity in an Ockham-like sense. My answer is that a “will”, or the ability to make a decision instead of only responding reflexively to stimulus, is a powerful evolutionary advantage that I think fits easily into this argument. There is a REASON for the will, and I think it is one of the most powerful tools of evolution. I also challenge the illusion of the will as violating Ockham’s razor, itself. Why would such a complex system be in place only to fool the mind into believing (belief which is also an act of will, but that’s a different point) that it exists, when in fact it truly doesn’t. What’s the point of it? Why wouldn’t the causal mind that you’re suggesting simply be content to never consider itself and therefore never even question whether the will exists at all? If will does NOT exist, why do we believe it does, and how can you explain how Ockham’s razor is not violated by that belief.
I am not arguing that people excercise their will and ignore external stimulus. I’m saying only that the will is combined with circumstance and external stimulus to determine “what we do.” A will includes the power to resist being caused to do something, and the power to resist causality is demonstrated in humans by the fact that two people under the same circumstances will not necessarily act in the same manner. The reason for this is a difference of will, and the strength of will determines a person’s ability to resist reflexive action.
Also, remember that dice rolls are NOT random. Calculators are limited by their ability to include all of the circumstances of whatever event they calculate. A die roll can be predicted perfectly by a perfect calculator.
I followed your Benjamin Libet link, and read the summary of the experiments he did. On that very page it also lists the ways that the results of his experiments could be challenged, including the impossibility of judging simultaneity. I also don’t believe that the results of this experiment, even if the above problem was elimated, indicate that will does not exist. People simply chose before they recorded the choice on the clock. The results are not astonishing at all, since people were asked to make a decision and record the point that they made the decision, in that order. First one, then the other. There is a necessary lapse between the two.
Finally, since the will can be demonstrated to violate both entirely random and entirely calculating elements, the third element IS necessary after all. Substitute “will” for “process which governs our actions” if you want, and you still are left with the task of defining a process which is neither entirely calculating or entirely random.
i would take it farther, and perhaps eliminate your misgivings, by saying we have no choice but to use knowledge to obtain desirable outcomes, provided we have a definition of desire that fits with determinism, which, as i consider the opposite unlikely, i leave as an exercise to the reader.
what would you consider a “useful” explanation? what does “useful” even mean in this context?
Enigma, I’m still a little unsure of precisely what definition of ‘will’ you are progressing under. My own is “the experience of choice”. I am not saying that the experience of choice does not exist - clearly we make decisions every day, often after agonising deliberations where our choice flips one way then another.
I am explaining the ‘will’, the decision, in terms of calculator-like elements (perhaps based on some random variables) and asking whjether more entities need be proposed. Just as I explain the rainbow or the weather without recourse to ‘purpose’ or ‘deliberate action’, I consider that the same causes of the chimp’s actions, or the insect’s, or computer’s, are all that are necessary (albeit via a far more complex mechanism involving far more causes) to explain the ‘will’.
I am not supposing an entirely calculating or entirely random explanation: those strawmen certainly are knocked down easily. I am proposing that each instance of the thing you call the ‘will’ incorporates both elements, but no more. What more do you propose?
What’s the point of the rainbow, or the weather? They are things which emerge from complex arrangements of simpler elements: that’s the way it is.
If God does not exist, why do some believe He does? I consider both the will and God to be unnecessary explanatory entities. The human computer unfortunately has great capacity for outputting decisions which have no relation to reality.
I’m saying almost the same thing: that our computation has circumstance and stimulus as inputs, but many more besides (eg. those from memory) - just as silicone-based neural networks “learn”. How is your ‘will’ different from ‘computation’?
Actually, this is a very important element of research into explaining volition. I am strongly drawn in this respect towards an idea espoused by Chris Frith, Professor of Neurocognition at UC London. He suggests that we enter different “modes” based largely on what our situation or environment appears to require, such as “social”, “heroic” and so on. When the situation does not require any particular “mode”, such as idly sitting at your desk or lying in bed, the “default mode” might be to bubble away with fairly random thoughts and ideas until the brain latches onto one of those bubbles, for whatever reason, and brings to bear the full arsenal of consciousness to explore it. He further points out that a fair amount of this “bubbling” might be necessary in preventing us from reacting solely to our environment, citing patients suffering from environmental dependancy syndrome who eg. upon being shown around somebody’s house, see the bed and immediately undress, climb in and go to sleep. Thus, ‘volition’ is clearly neuropsychological in essence.
As are humans.
No, I think you misunderstand the results: the brain activity undeniably occurs before the first one - Dennet suggested the timing might not be precise to the nearest microsecond, say, but it is certainly accurate enough to demonstrate beyond doubt the activity long before the ‘choice’.
The point was that their brain started choosing for them long before they were conscious of it. Is an unconscious act your ‘will’? Kicking or eye movement in your sleep, beating your heart, gagging on a tube or jumping at a fright? These are surely not ‘wilful’ acts - they are the definition of involuntary ones.
If I cannot use it (intentionally), how can it be useful?
How’s the old saying go, I had once chose to believe in determinism, but lately I’ve felt compelled to recognize free will?
If one can answer why consciousness arises out of certain arrangements of matter, and not others (reductionist materialist dogma), you might be one step closer, w.r.t. your question.
Because we need to remember things. As far as we are concerned, our past experiences do not exist, except for whatever memories we have stored. We need to remember the past, or we would be incapable of learning. Otherwise, each experience would be entirely new, and we would have to start from scratch each time in order to know how to react. As Sentient Meat put it, the self is "simply the unique string of memories arbitrarily labelled ‘myself’”. Why do we remember events as a ‘self’ that used its ‘will’ as opposed to a complex series of sensory inputs and an equally complex algorithm of brain activity and resulting response? I suspect because it’s more efficient the former way. A gestalt is easier to reference than an extremely complicated pattern of stimuli and response. Just like it’s easier to say I saw a picture of George W. Bush on the front page of the paper, even though what I really saw was a pattern of many, many tiny dots. It’s actually less complex, not more. We break down reality into recognizable chunks that are considerably more simple than the sum of their component parts. In other words, an illusion.
I’m finding your question a little hard to parse. Does “it” refer to the fiction of volition? People use fictions every day. Or volition itself? If you are calling an act of ‘calculation’ an instance of volition, then of course you can use it, as can all kinds of other calculating entities.
…as you accrued new memories, encoded under protocols called language and logic: the decision is output periodically, based on the the information and inputs at the time. And, like the butterfly’s wings and the weather next Easter, who knows what tiny, seemingly irrelevant piece of information might ultimately affect the answer you end up giving?
I consider myself a reductionist materialist (while preferring the term ‘physicalist’ and admitting that in many important instances the ‘reduction’ has not been falsifiably tested yet - that is the challenge of this millennium), so I could give my stab at an answer: because consciousness, whatever it is, requires senses and memory. A enormous amount more besides (like, say, chemical emotion), granted, but these appear to me to be vital elements. Certain arrangements of matter can only be described as comprising senses or memory by stretching the terms past breaking point, IMO.
But why does any qualia arise in the first place?
Of course, isn’t this answering based on the conclusion that consciousness is limited to X criteria?
Well, I think we’re wandering from the path a little here, but “why” can be a tricky word in science. Why does the weather happen? We might explain the weather in terms of simpler elements, but is this really saying why “weather” happens at all? Weather is just what we call that phenomenon. Qualia is what we call other phenomenon.
There are all kinds of assumptions my answer was based on - I can merely defend my reasons for making them. I seem to remember that you are a pansychic, in which case you might consider senses and memory to be unnecessary to consciousness, perhaps granting it to a plant, rock or atom, say. Like I said, I’m happy to discuss it and I find panpsychism an interesting proposition, but perhaps it would stray of the OP here.