Can you explain how an evolutionary process involving natural selection made a high performing animal like hominid an advanced thinking, concept using, human within a very few generations. All I know about evolutionary theory makes me doubt that this was an evolutionary process.
Let me offer an analogue. We know what a stone is- it is made of matter in the real world. We know what a God is- it is a perception in a mind without physical proof of its existence. Between those two extremes there is a possibility that other items exist that are not material per se but rely on interaction between pieces of matter or organisms. One cannot describe ant behaviour or bee behaviour without the concept of nest or hive- not the physical structure, but the inter-relationship. Similarly what is a language- it is not matter, yet it changes the way the world works. What is knowledge, ditto. What is Technology, ditto.
So what is consciousness? Is it matter, or godlike, or is it some sort of relationship?
It is worth pointing out that the eventual undefineds of all science are numinous non-material objects- Time, Space, Velocity, mass, Force, etc.
I’m not quite sure whom you were addressing, but I’m egoistic enough to hope it was me! I don’t know enough about compatibilism to say anything sensible about it. I’ve read the Wikipedia page…and remain uncertain. Some waters are just too deep for a bloke like me.
All I can offer is that there is a third class of “thing” called “information.” It is in how the matter is ordered or arrayed. Information isn’t exactly matter, and it isn’t exactly energy (although it is very closely tied to energy. For instance, it requires energy to transmit information.)
I see “consciousness” as a process of information transfer. Information is being shuffled around between various material sites, whose energy states rise and fall. Some of the information is long-term, such as our memories of our childhood, and some is extremely short-term, such as neuronal interaction establishing brain-wave patterns. The really short term stuff isn’t so much transferring anything useful or meaningful: it’s more like “handshaking” in a computer network.
(If it helps, I’m neither agreeing nor disagreeing, just putting forth the ideas that I think follow from your post.)
Sorry if that wasn’t clear. Yes, I was addressing you. Don’t get hung up on the labels. To me, your posts taken as a whole seem to reflect a compatibilist stance, but maybe not. Maybe it’s a non-libertarian free will stance. Labels aren’t important. On substance, a lot of what you argue is very mainstream and I wanted you to know that.
Million million gracias! Armchair philosophy is fun. One of the best things about this particular debate is that it’s almost impossible for it to hurt anyone!
Sounds similar.
I suspect that if neutral monism is chased down to a basic neutral element, that element will be something like information or inter-relation or inter-reaction- all of this leading to matter and to mind stuff. Nowhere does this admit Free Will.
I like this exchange as I tend to agree with both of you a lot. So, keep doing that and keep defining your views about this, fascinating, subject. If I can add something, I will. Just following this thread is a lot of fun. I’m leaning more toward no free will, for whoever’s counting.
Dang! You say that just as the thread seems to be petering out!
Quick, quick, thread CPR: why do you lean more toward no free will?
And if there isn’t free will…where does civilization come from? I mean…how do we manage to suppress our barbaric, warlike tendencies, and make the thousand little compromises that civilization requires? If our decisions were all “made for us” then how can those decisions be of such incredible complexity as to allow us to build cities, do science, create the internet, and debate philosophy with strangers?
Without some kind of free will…where does all of this complexity come from?
(I’m using “free will” in a loose sense, always. Not the theological kind, but just human volition. The ability to make choices. From choosing between Coke and Pepsi to painful moral choices, such as whether to steal music by copying it from YouTube.)
There is a difference between “rational and constructive choice” and “Free Will”.
The whole universe is based on choice of one kind and another. Even at Quantum level, sub atomic particles are affected by various forces and complexity results. Such complexity happens at every level above that- Homeostasis is a damned clever trick- does it require Free Will? Then there is the pack behaviour of hunting dogs- Free Will? Bees signalling sources of nectar to each other- Free Will? Cooperation in lower apes- Free Will? Tool making and construction in Higher Apes and Early Hominids- Free Will?.
None of the above can rationally be said to have ‘Free Will’ in any way that does not destroy what people want Free Will to mean. All are determined by lower level choices that result in complex decision making at the cognitive level without anything like a Free Will Advocate would want (and I have not ventured in cybernetics and Artificial Intelligence).
Modern Human behaviour is merely a social and cultural construct on top of deterministic decision making in the rest of the universe. Certainly Human beings are exquisite decision making machines, naturally occurring without design, brought about by evolution (I hope we all agree with that!). Being an exquisite decision maker does not required free will- just model making where internal models represent the real world adequately.
I feel that before anyone claims that Free Will is causative, they should carefully explain how Free Will differs from such complex decision makers that we understand- computers. Modern military fighter aircraft are built to be unfliable by humans as instability improves their maneuverability, and consequently a computer is making millions of decisions based on an internal model, despaerately trying to keep the plane flying. No consciousness or free will is necessary.
If people feel that free will is somehow more than complex and accurate decision making in the real world, then they need to define how the otherwise deterministic world is changed (as it must be super-natural as we know with certainty that the physical world is either determined or random) and where this supernatural force is exerted and what it actually is.
The parsimonious explanation is that consciousness and the feeling of Free Will are part of a clever trick discovered by an ages old evolutionary process that makes animals and humans exquisite decision makers.
I wonder what you gain by defining free will so “loosely”. If you mean volition, why not just say volition? “Free will” is laden with theological and morality baggage that volition isn’t. The whole debate has been confused by all the switcherooness in terminology.
You’ve stated that you think certain people don’t possess free will (young children, the intoxicated, the mentally ill). Are you saying these people have the inability to make choices? These groups possess consciousness and awareness. You ask a kid if they want chicken nuggets versus pizza, and they’ll make a choice. They do things under their own volition ,the same as adults. So which is it? Is free will simply making choices, or is it something else?
I have a feeling you will tell me that children, the intoxicated, the mentally ill still have free will–it’s just partial free will. And you will say so sincerely, without seemingly understand why this is so contradictory. But to me it feels like an attempt to limit the argument so that it is impossible for you to ever be wrong.
An individual either has free will or they don’t. “Free” precludes constraint, for the word to make a lick of sense. But an individual CAN have limited volition, just as a paralyzed patient has limited mobility or a blind person has limited sight. So the terms we use matter here.
I get much the same impression from reading your posts, monstro: that you’re off to define “free will” in a way that can obviously be disproven, never mind that no one who believes in it defines it that way.
The problem is that people who are proposing Free Will (either compatibilist or Libertarian) in this thread have offered no description of what it is. They just say they believe in it.
Please, would a non-determinist describe to me how “Free Will” differs from having a sense that we are somehow separate from and in control of our biodies in social space.
What are the key features of Free Will. What does the concept add to a determinist description of the world.
Where does the complexity of the eagle eyeball come from?
Complexity arises from simplicity.
You said it yourself: billions of simple tiny steps. Well, in this respect there is no essential difference between the eagle eye and the hardware of your brain. You accept the explanation about eagles because there’s no ego at stake. But applying the very same reasoning for your own personal brain threatens to knock you off some perceived pedestal, so you immediately apply a double standard. You start asking the exact same question that creationists ask about eyeballs. If it’s so complex, then how did it happen?
But the same question has the same answer. The complex hardware of the human brain came from a billion and more simple steps over the eons. Once the hardware got advanced enough, it could finally be “repurposed” for civilization.
To believe that something complex couldn’t arise from an apparently simple origin is a fundamental misunderstanding of what complexity is.
Well, that’s simply incorrect; you can say you don’t like a particular description, but you can’t say it hasn’t been given.
I repeat myself – in large part, by repeating you – as follows:
Ahem.
“I define ‘free will’ as the quality by which a volitional entity – who can be persuaded by appeal to a decision-making calculus within an internal moral structure – makes a choice he can be held ACCOUNTABLE for, since he can then give an explanation that refers to his internal store of previous experience rather than external coercion, as someone who can reason and be reasoned with.”
You can dislike that description, but you can’t say it’s not being offered.
Depends on the “determinist description” at issue; if it’s one where a volitional entity can be persuaded by an appeal to a decision-making calculus within an internal moral structure – making a choice he can be held ACCOUNTABLE for, giving explanations that refer to his internal store of previous experience instead of external coercion, as someone who can reason and be reasoned with – then, as I’ve said, it strikes me as a distinction without a difference.
Incorrect. I say that such persons have impaired volition, and have less ability to make decisions. I don’t believe that such persons are perfectly robotic or insectlike, only that they lack some degree of choosing power which the rest of us have. I do not claim that they have no ability to make choices.
I do not practice an “all or nothing” approach to this issue. I believe that volition is a little like strength: some people have a lot of it, and other people have less. There is a broad, smooth spectrum of capability.
I’m a softy compatibilist, with an underlying deterministic streak 
Yeah its been chewed up and spit out, much like my earlier fave…
" coherent electromagnetic quantum wave structures" (alright I made that up out of all my reading, Im getting there ha)
Decisions, DECISIONS, too much to read, and NOW:D its the weekend.
Please do not misquote me or put words in my mouth. What I said was:
“Of course every person is open to persuasion by environmental effects - that is what brains are for. That does not give them Free Will, but part of the calculus of decision making is an internal (non-libertarian) moral structure.”
As I have said before you are working with poorly defined terms and do not understand the question. Please answer the following questions:
1/ Are you making a Compatibilist or Libertarian claim to “Free Will”?
2/ Do you see “Free Will” as the Cause of anything in the world?
3/ What is the difference between being Accountable and Responsible for an act?
4/ What is the difference between a Choice and a Decision?
5/ Is “Free Will” an object or a metaphor- is it a Particular or a Universal in philosophical terms?
If you cannot answer the above, then I will once again cease responding to you because of your persistent and possibly wilful fuzzy thinking.
All Compatibilists are Determinists.
When looking at Free Will from an operational point of view (“Is this person legally culpable?” "Is this person constitutionally (medically or morally) impaired?) we need to be clear whether we are using a Libertarian stance or a Compatibilist one.
A Libertarian avers that there is a soul (or analogue) that is finally responsible for human acts. This makes the decision essentially this becomes a religious one- a matter of faith- as there is no factual proof of the existence of this entity, only its assumption through shared belief and faith. So a Libertarian argument for Responsibility or Competence is based on the installation of a responsible soul at a certain time either genealogically (when do animals become ensouled) or developmentally (when does a baby become finally the possessor of a responsible soul?)
A Compatibilist is merely making a moral judgement- trying to answer the question "When is it “Right”, “Just”, “Socially Acceptable” to define certain behaviours by certain persons as if (AS IF!!!) they were responsible for them. It is a matter of value, not of fact.
I would never.
I prefaced it with a brisk-but-informative “I repeat myself – in large part, by repeating you – as follows:” – because, y’know, I wanted to (a) spell out right at the start that I’ll be repeating myself – and wanted to then (b) emphasize that it only largely came from you. It’s a fine line, but I hit it.
The bit about people being all-caps ACCOUNTABLE, f’rinstance? That was from you; I dunno why you put it all in caps, but I’m shrugging and going with it. The bit where you specified that being ACCOUNTABLE involves people being able to explain their actions? Likewise. You offered up a clunky phrase about the calculus of decision making; you added that it’s an internal moral structure; I found each part unobjectionable while building my own sentence around 'em.
As I have said before, you offer derogatory opinions, and I point out when you’re factually incorrect. The latter is a long list and growing longer.
Here, let me skip ahead to note what your latest post throws into sharp relief:
Dangit, man, you already said your piece – and this is me quoting you: “I will not be responding directly or otherwise to any of your past or future postings on this thread as it is a waste of my valuable time.”
And what do you turn around and do? Respond to my post on this thread.
::shakes head sadly::
You couldn’t even scrape together a statement about your own behavior without once again going the ‘demonstrably incorrect’ route in short order. I was happy with that statement of yours; I hoped it’d be true; it wasn’t.
Looooong list. Keeps growing longer.
The problem is, I’m now enthusiastically accepting your all-new all-different if/then offer of “then I will once again cease responding to you”, so I won’t be using this post to answer all of 'em; I mean, there’s a chance that latest statement of yours is accurate, and, if so, I’ll gladly take that deal.
But I’ll note that you maybe missed one of 'em already, which will maybe give you a hint as to the rest:
Like I’d said upthread, I’m not especially interested in cause – or in capital-C Cause, for that matter; if you tell me A is always followed by B, and I consult my memories before maybe performing a few experiments to see whether it’s true, I’m not big on speculating as to why it happens; I merely note that it happens.
(I don’t know why you’re capitalizing the ‘C’ in Cause. I merely know that you’re doing it.)
I accept your offer.