The problem is far worse than that. It is not that we cannot devise a test for it. It is that we can’t even explain what it is that we’d want to test for. There is no concept there for us to even consider the truth or falsity of.
Go ahead: have the entire conceptual playground of the human imagination. I’ll grant you any state of affairs you wish. No testing is needed to prove any hypothesis. Now: can you explain to me what you mean by free will: what is going on when it is present vs. when it is not? How, even speculatively, can you describe it’s operation?
In the case of remembering a picture, or really anything from one’s own lifetime, there’s virtually always a dry-facts component involved. That’s the part that we describe rationally with language. The memory sometimes also includes an experienced-it component. When it does, we say it’s a more vivid memory and the associated sounds, smells, emotions etc… also come back to us.
I did not know that, or at least not that skills like language and bike riding are considered to be a type of memory. This is good, you have just fought some of my ignorance. So if I understand mainstream science’s definition of memory, that leaves us with short term explicit memory, long term explicit memory, and implicit memory. Explicit memory is what I’m talking about when I say dry-facts memory. The experienced-it type either also falls into the explicit category or else it is something different entirely.
Try thinking of it in right-brain/left-brain terms. The left hemisphere of the brain excels at dry facts, so we can assume that the dry-facts memory is primarily the domain of the left hemisphere. The other kind, the experienced-it type memory, might be nothing more than the right hemisphere’s equivalent, or it might be an entirely separate phenomeon on par with consciousness and free will. Because of its vividness I am inclined to say that it is related to consciousness, maybe even a side effect thereof.
You’re right it’s not different. You can have dry-facts type memory of names, pictures, thoughts, literally anything your senses can perceive or your mind can grasp. I’m saying that’s not the only type of memory we have (besides implicit memory). Have you ever found an object you haven’t seen in many years, and for no reason smelled it, evoking vivid recollections of the past? Or maybe a song from your youth (there have been a couple from my youth that remind me of something, without explicitly knowing what it is). That’s what I mean by experienced-it memory, not just remembering a picture but vividly remembering the appearance and the colors almost to the point of reliving it. The color thing was just an example.
In my life I have lived in many places and, especially when I was in my early teens, I was able to not only remember the places I used to live but what it was like to actually be there. It’s really hard to put into words but there’s a clear distinction. Lately though this ability seems to have faded somewhat, coinciding with my participation on GD…
Or I’ll put it this way, the experienced-it memory is a knowing that some particular event actually happened, aside from the logical “oh well of course it did” taking for granted.
If I understand you correctly, you’re saying experienced-it memory is not only remembering the event, but the emotions felt durig that event. Is that right?
Ok, if we are conscious beings, then we are self-aware but we also have sensory and cognitive abilities. If we are not conscious but only think we are, then all we have are our sensory and cognitive abilities. Thus these two systems are engaged in a misunderstanding of the state of our own consciousness. Through illogical means, our cognition, an entirely mechanical entity (such as a simple computer) arrives at the conclusion that it/we is/are self-aware when in fact it/we is/are not.
No not exactly. Just remembering the event and that the particular emotions existed is nothing more than dry-facts memory. Reexperiencing the emotions of the past event is a conditioned response. Knowing deep inside that you actually had those emotions at that point in time is experienced-it type memory. If I have not effectively made my point yet, it is unlikely I will do so with further explaining.
Interesting because I just finished typing up an explanation that says the exact opposite:
[rhetorical question]Are we self aware beings that realize it, are we self aware beings that do not realize it yet somehow decided to discuss it on these boards, or are we mindless automata?[/rhetorical question]
I don’t know whether to say that going off on that question would drive one crazy :eek: , or that our scientific/philosophical discussion seems to have stumbled on a mind-clearing technique worthy of comparison to tried and true Buddhist-style rhetorical questions.
I have tried over and over again to put into words something for which no suitably defined words exist. There is something here that this language lacks the utility to describe. It’s exactly as if I were to try to describe the color blue or the smell of spearmint. To go back to the Mary cite, it’s like trying to explain the sensation of color to Mary, or if I were Fred trying to describe the diference between red[sub]1[/sub] and red[sub]2[/sub]. This is not to imply that you lack experienced-it memory, but for me to put it to words is just as difficult whether you have it or not.
Is there anybody here reading this thread who understands what I mean by “experienced-it type memory”?
The examples you give about ‘feeling of red’ are necessarily subjective, since we are (confined to) one brain. But, I’m not sure how that relates to any kind of memory.
Coming back to the earlier dialogue:
If I understand your last part correctly, what’s to suggest that the experienced-it memory is actually accurate?
I guess I just don’t understand what it means to fool someone who doesn’t exist. Let me ask the question directly: Is my conciousness an illusion? If so, which consciousness is it fooling?
I don’t know, when I was researching the topic some time ago there were plenty of things that described free will. For a choice to be free it must, in some way, be uncaused. This isn’t to say that external events aren’t necessary, they simply are not sufficient to explain a choice.
I think the question is unfair. It is as if you asked me to explain the operation of an electron, then claimed victory when its role in the atom was never elucidated. The will is the qua real or conceptually real entity that we use to describe or explain choices that are not sufficiently determined. Whether this is because our epistemology is so weak that we have no predictive power over such complex beings, whether our science is so weak that etc, or whether determinism is false—I cannot say. Since science only deals with causality, though, we can only expect it to address the question when it can determine choices as if a person had made them; at that time we will have a distinction without any difference. At this time, the distinction seems describable. Perhaps it is, in fact, a “mere” problem of insufficient predictive powers—that description is no more or less acceptable than any other, IMO.
Illusion seems to be a very subjective term. What is illusion and does it only affect consciousnesses?
To me its a false or illogical understanding of a process. Illusion does not require consciousness because any classical mechanism can be fooled. A computer can be programmed with enough complex algorithms and heuristics so as to emulate consciousness. At that level the computer, if asked to evaluate its status, will respond that it is consciousness when it is not, for it follows deterministic patterns. That is an illusion for the computer, which is not conscious.
The specific quale (“feeling”) of the color red must by definition be a property of consciousness. Experienced-it memory is the memory of having experienced the quale, therefore it too must be related to consciousness somehow.
The same thing that’s to suggest that any other kind of memory is actually accurate. When you remember seeing something red, and you remember specifically what red looks like, and you turn around and look at it in the moment, you experience the same quale in the present as you remember having experienced in the past.
You have a point, and it is easy to see why that makes sense from a purely logical point of view. A person will say he/she is conscious, maybe even acknowledge that it is his/her brain (= biological computer) that produces that statement, and there is no way to prove that the person is actually conscious and not just cleverly emulating consciousness.
But that person is right there making the statement, fully aware of his/her own consciousness! From that POV, it is impossible to believe that the strictly physicalist answer is the whole truth. The logic manages to be both true and ridiculous at the same time.
In other words, I cannot prove that I am conscious, and you cannot prove that I am not conscious. What is plainly obvious to me is completely unprovable and illogical to you. Therefore my consciousness is effectively trapped, unable to demonstrate its existence to you despite the fact that we are both fully capable of communicating fluently in the English language.
But is it a conscious thing thats making the statement? Thats the whole conundrum with illusion. If you’re truly immersed in illusion, then the cognition (you are the cognition) is falsely self-aware. Theres really no reason to believe that one is self-aware just to justify existence.
Lets say there are two people sitting across the table from each other. They are each analyzing the other to determine whether the other is a conscious entity. They both realize that the other is a biological machine which is set to analyze the person across from them. Now each is thinking, theres a machine across from me thats analyzing me analyzing him analzying me… etc. But what is it they are looking for, or have they found it (or the lack thereof) and are simply unable to comprehend? Regardless, the answer is nothing, for there is no consciousness there. Earlier I believe Gyan9 asked what it was that we were self-aware of. The answer, I think, is nothing. We aren’t self-aware.
An interesting and highly stimulating bit of logic, to say the least. But allow me to introduce Occam’s razor here:
1.) Cognition is exclusively a function of the brain which, becuase of the brain’s wiring, manages to program itself in the process of formation (i.e. growing up) to simulate consciousness, and therefore succeeds in doing so, and falsely convincing itself that it is indeed conscious, complete with qualia and the illusion of free will;
2.) Each person has a soul which is outside of space-time but imparts its consciousness and free will to the brain via quantum entanglement.
Which is simpler?
They will find nothing in each other. They will only find it in themselves, because there is no test to detect or measure consciousness.
I disagree. Imagine, in 1999, you feel “red” in a certain way. In 2001, you had some bizzare head accident or surgery such that the color red “feels” like a new alien color not belonging to the usual human color palette. Call it Alcolor. The thing is, Alcolor is NOT an additional color. The neural circuits/processes that produced the red perception, those same circuits now output Alcolor. Now the question is, when you regain consciousness from the botched surgery, will you notice “red” missing? I say, you won’t. Because, what your brain stores as memory is just certain categorical contextualized elements. When you recall the memory, the brain reconstructs the “picture” using the cues in stored memory with the same neural circuitry with which you perceive daily life or dreams. So, let’s say you’re remembering a red car you owned. You picture the car, but it will be colored with Alcolor. Would you have a cognitive dissonance here? How? Your brain can’t see “red” now. There is no memory reconstruction possible where you can compare and constrast the current “red” with the past-experienced red. ALL your memories of red, starting with your visual recollections(when you first “learnt” red.)
What you’re claiming here is that the brain would still “feel the difference”, right? This would be a more concrete neurophysiological analogue to what Daniel Schacter calls the sin of bias in memory.
Occam’s Razor actually guides to remove all unnecessary variables. So 1 would be the choice. Besides, the toss-up is only between equally valid theories. Entanglement hasn’t yet been implicated empirically in consciousness.
There are many many definitions I agree. However, the vast majority play bait-and-switch, using a concept of freedom from coercion in a choice. But of course, such a definition could apply just as easily to a thermostat as a human being, and so isn’t what people WANT to be defined at all.
That falls to prong two: if the outcome of a choice is not in some way determined by SOMETHING then it cannot be a choice, and is merely a rnadom occurance.
Mixing randomness and determinism also dosn’t get us there.
Ah, but I gave you all of speculative reality to play with. It is EASY to explain the operation of an electron once you have such freedom from proof and even from having to stay within the confines of natural laws. There are too MANY ways to explain it.
The will is the qua real entity that we use to describe a motivated (animated) choice. If the will is to play any role, IT must determine the outcome of the choice. But how can a will be free from ITSELF? How can a determination to do something be free from its own determination? THOSE are the questions raised when someone suggests that there is such a CONCEPT as “free will” (in the strong sense)
As far as I can tell, the only active function of the concept of “free will” is to protect other agents from responsibility: shield god from responsibility for his creation, shield people from the responisiblity of their actions on the character of a person who subsequently does bad things. Far from being an aid to moral responsibility, “free will” is used as if it were it’s biggest enemy. And yet the concept seems to have no meaning to it. Nothing is being described. It is as if I logically proved something deductively (i.e. I proved that god exists) and someone came up and said “ah, but you are wrong. For I have a proof called X which not only proevs the opposite, but refutes your proof” And yet, when being called to explain what he means, the person simply kepe repeating the NAME of the purported counter-proof: it’s X.
But we are not here talking science, we are talking philosophy. There is no need to worry about even the actual world here: all we are examining is the existence of a functioning CONCEPT. What is the concept of free will? What role is it playing when I have it, and what am I missing when I don’t?
An illusion is something that creates expectations that cannot be met by the thing which causes it.
But I wasn’t disputing that. I can fool a thermostat with a lighter. How do I fool a thermostat into thinking it is a thermostat? How do I fool a thermostat into thinking it is thinking? This was your suggestion: that consciousness is an illusion. So I ask: who is it fooling?
I don’t know that this is possible completely, but then again, I don’t know that I would say it wasn’t conscious, either.
If by “random” you mean “unable to be accurately predicted” then maybe, sure. The will is unable to be predicted because it is, in some way, uncaused.
Huh? Why would it be? If it was free from itself it would have no identity and so couldn’t be anything. Just because I’ll never roll a thirteen in craps doesn’t meant the dice don’t have a range of values. They are not free from themselves. Nothing can be, if it can have identity.
It is the seat for conscious identity and motive. It is used to explain what we cannot predict either by nature or by limitations. Even if we could predict it, the will would still likely serve a purpose as a conceptual shorthand for a physical being’s mental processes. In any event, the will is the agent in question. If I choose to apply reason to a situation, it is because I chose it. If I choose to suggest that logic does not obtain in discussion of uncaused entities, then it is me who did it and no one else, even if other people presented me with information (I still had to listen). We consider this process valid except in such cases where my will was circumvented by drugs, brainwashing, and so on, where it cannot reasonably be said that I determined my actions, but that they were determined for me—however I determine my actions.
I’m using the first two on the list, that illusion is an erroneous mental representation- meaning its something people falsely belief. You say that illusion has to be caused by something, but I find it to be a misrepresentation of a current situation.
If you can fool a thermostat with a lighter (i.e. create an illusion for the thermostat) why can’t the same thing happen to a human. Comparing thermostats and humans isn’t very productive when you’re talking about thinking or consciousness. A simple thermostat doesn’t even necessarily need a circuit, and a more complex one only has certain functions. No matter how much you coax it with a lighter it won’t be able to tell you what 2 divided by 1 is.
Ignoring that, a simple answer to you question would be: The only thing there is to fool- your nonconscious cognition.
You raise a good point, but according to my theory there is no way in the world any brain injury will ever replace red with “alcolor” because red and “alcolor” are (in this context) qualia which are a property of consciousness, and consciousness (again, according to my theory) exists outside the space-time continuum. Thus it cannot be injured in an accident.
Your line of reasoning here does not prove my theory wrong, but neither would such a real-world example. If you’re right, then the accident victim would never catch on that something is different, and if I’m right then the accident victim would never experience “alcolor” in the first place.
Or, alternatively, if somehow there was a way to generate the sensation of alcolor, then if I’m right after a while the victim would suddenly realize - something’s changed. Now the question is how to test this theory by inducing alcolor in a person (obviously beyond our capabilities here on this MB but just for theoretical purposes what the hey) perhaps if a person’s red-sensitive cone cells were somehow shifted into the infrared…
