Great! If we just take the free out of free will the whole problem goes away. Of course this is going to be awfully inconvenient for those folks whose philosophy hangs on the free part.
Shouldn’t we say my computer does exist independently of me, then? When I do not exist, won’t my computer still exist as an object for cognition of others?
Or is the computer as I cognize it a different object than my computer as others cognize it?
-FrL-
‘Free’ as in one’s own, so there’s not a problem. As far as the ‘could have done otherwise’ interpretation, the Problem of Induction saves it from a definitive onslaught by fatalism.
Yes.
That’s similar to the inverted qualia problem, but not directly relevant here.
Hmm. Now you’d like to undermine causality? No problem. Free will is nonsensical in that world too.
But again, you are making a contentious ontological claim: the underlying reality is the only one that is really there. Are you prepared to say that chemistry is not ‘really’ true?
Exactly; he’s trying to handwave away the functioning of the brain and its potential ability to generate a will and sense of self by pretending the entire brain doesn’t exist at all, and then sending us on a snipe-hunt for some amorphous undefineable will particle (defined as something that gives him the conclusion he’s assuming).
It’s one thing to recognize that objects are made of particles. It’s quite another to pretend that those particles are not working together to make objects. Which is exactly what II Gyan II is throwing forth to try and trip us up with.
When he can show me the elemental particle within an car that makes the wheels turn, then I’ll worry about his cognition particle. Remember, I want to see a single, simple, unanalyzable sustance that makes that car move. Because as we all know, the whole is never more than the sum of its parts. :rolleyes:
Perhaps. But they are not trying to figure out the self in the sense of an immaterial object. I scanned some of the abstracts, and (with the exception of Metzinger who, in the Humean tradition, denies the existence of the self) they seem to be offering accounts of the self that are entirely compatible with physicalism. The self qua immaterial object is a proposed solution to various problems in the philosophy of mind, and as a solution has been superceded by much better (and more scientifically informed) explanations. Ergo, into the dustbin of scientific history along with phlogiston, luminiferous ether, and the four bodily humors. Again, the soul is only worth discussing to the extent that you think postulating a soul is needed to explain the phenomena (intentionality, qualia, etc.) it was posited to explain.
Then it appears my computer does exist independently of my own on your account. I think you mean its existence is not independent of the existence of some cognizers. Correct?
It’s directly relevant, because it was compatible with what you had said so far. It might have been that you believed the computer I see is not the same computer as the computer my wife sees when we’re both looking at the “same” computer. So I asked whether this is in fact what you think, and you answered in the negative. There were no problems concerning relevance.
-FrL-
Yes, the underlying reality is the only one that is really there.
Yes. But it is true, pragmatically, just like existence of chairs. Think of it as a jigsaw puzzle: certain pieces of aggregate matter recognized/treated as a pattern and their relationship with other such recognized patterns.
‘Working together’ refers to a pattern. The whole contention here is whether the patternhood exists as some sort of entity out there or not. I don’t think we’ll disagree that a table on a video screen doesn’t exist, it’s a representation brought about by a certain application of electromagnetism. In this case, it may be a matrix of pixels each illuminated in a certain way. There’s no entity of tablehood amongst those pixels. This is just an illustration. The pixels themselves can be dissected and so on.
Yes, that is what I mean. I was never referring to you exclusively or specifically as a personality, but as an instance of a cognizer. I don’t even know whether you own/have a computer.
I did not. I replied, “That’s similar to the inverted qualia problem, but not directly relevant here.”. It may appear the same, or not.
By acknowledging that my computer will continue to exist even when I do not exist because my wife will still be around to underwrite its existence (so to speak), you’ve implied that the computer I see is (not “appears,” is) the same computer my wife sees. No?
I think this is what I’ve got from you so far:
The only things that exist are the fundamental constituents of matter, and agents. Anything else it is usual to say “exists” only does so by courtesy, as a notational convenience. Only agents act–matter does not act. Agents do not have further constituents. Actions are essentially free. Freedom is not analyzeable.
I’m going from memory here, but is that pretty much accurate?
If I’m right about those first two sentences, what I’m interested in finding out from you is the answer to the following question. What is it about the fundamental constituents of matter, and about agents, which makes it impossible to analyze their existence as a mere notational convenience in the same way that it is a mere convenience to say my table exists? What is the distinction between a table and (say) a quark which supports that difference? And the distinction between a table and an agent which supports that difference? (Of course there are clear distinctions, but my question is about those distinctions which support the difference you hold there to be between existence and existence-by-courtesy.)
-Kris
If your wife or any other cognizer has cognitive capacity similar to yours, then the computer notionally still exists for them. For a tapeworm, your “computer” never existed (presumably).
I don’t believe I’ve ever said the latter. I’ve only denied agency to notionally existing things. Quarks, if they really exist, do act, even if mechanically.
Because they are fundamental, or strictly speaking, considered fundamental. Things are explained in terms of other things, table → surface + legs; legs → molecules; molecules → atoms…etc, but fundamental stuff is the ground beneath our feet. How do we or should we decide to designate stuff as fundamental? At the end of the thought process, it comes down to intuition.
Fair enough. But as I said above, this is a highly contentious ontological claim, and not merely a common-sense usage of the term ‘exists’. Thus, we are not obliged to accept this view in the absence of compelling arguments for it. And, for what it’s worth, I am a pragmatist of sorts, so I don’t think the fact that certain objects are pragmatically constituted is really a problem. It’s like the example of the strike zone in baseball: humans define what a ‘strike zone’ is in a way that serves the interests of the game; but once it is defined, there is an objective fact as to whether a particular pitch is a ball or a strike (not that the ump always calls it right, of course).
No, the whole contention is that you’re trying to play games with terms to stack the deck to assume your conclusion about whether free will is analyzable. This is of course amusing because free will is something we only speak of in terms of these aggregate objects, these “people” and “animals” and so forth, that you’re claiming don’t exist in a meaningful way.
There is no contention here whether the patternhood exists as some sort of entity out there or not, because the patternhood is all it takes. The little quarks are acting together in a manner that maintains an adequete amount of coherent consistency in form and behavior for us to refer to that collection as a unit. It doesn’t have to be perfectly self contained; it can leak quarks, or even huge collections of quarks like shed hairs or skin cells; there can even be some disagreement over the precise way we’re mentally dividing up the quarks for classification, such as I might consider my beard to be part of me while another person might consider it just to be growing on me. There can be all these little problems of classification and it doesn’t matter, so long as there is enough consistency and agreement of definition that we can frigging talk to one another about the things under discussion.
Analogizing an actual table with a picture of a table on a computer screen removes precisely the properties of quarks and whatnot that are important to this discussion - their interaction with one another. Quarks interact, pixels don’t. To try and point to the pixels and say ‘look, they don’t interact, so by analogy quarks don’t either’ is a deceptive and false analogy.
The ways and rules of how we as people recognize, classify, and define objects is an interesting subject, yes. However, there’s really no doubt that it is valid to refer to complicated objects as a individual things, and to discuss the actions that those objects take. So can we get back to that already?
But two quarks acting in concert, based on one anothers actions, are not acting? If not, why not?
And if two quarks acting in concert act, then do two hundred billion quarks, all acting against and with one another in concert, act?
If your answer to the above questions is no, then I would ask you to show me the elemental particle within an car that makes the wheels turn. That is, a single, simple, unanalyzable sustance that makes the car move. Because by your silly thesis that particles don’t act in concert, there must be a different such magic substance causing every different action that occurs. Ergo, it should be pretty common. Please show us some.
Of course, we can talk about these things. I can talk to you about unicorns. That’s not the point.
Interaction is not the point; interaction in concert is. And categorizing activity by an aggregate as patterned or random is a perceptual/cognitive event. You’ve probably seen the domino effect in action, like, say, on a deck of cards. One element acts on another and so on. Typically, the latency between successive transfers is above the perceptual threshold, and so it is explicitly perceived as a domino effect. Imagine it is so fast (maybe because the cards are tightly bound together) that all cards appear to fall simultaneously as far as our perception is considered. It is still a deck i.e. collection of cards; it hasn’t become a super-thick card.
Sure, it’s not a problem. Pragmatically.
Since I also think we punish and reward people for pragmatic reasons, then it all works out dandy. Pragmatically.
So…since the topic under discussion is free will…you’re saying that free will is entirely imaginary then?
What you’re doing is simple. You’re settings up two goalposts at opposite ends of the field: On one you’re hanging the signs “indivisible, black-box particles” and “free will”. On the other you’re hanging “complex objects composed of parts which interact in an alayzable way” and “humans”. And then, when we try and suggest that perhaps the “free will” sign belongs on the “complex objects” goalpost as well, you counter by declaring that the “complex objects” goalpost doesn’t exist, and so therefore we can’t hang “free will” on it.
You’ve done a fairly poor job of convincing anyone that complex objects dont’ exist, but that’s not the real problem with your position - your real problem is that in declaring complex objects not to exist, you’ve undefined “humans”, too. The concept “Humans have free will” is incoherent in your system, because to you, humans don’t exist. And since the concept of free will without an agent to have that free will is incoherent by definition, you’ve literally torn out the foundation of your own argument.
You’ve thrown out the baby with the bathwater in order to be able to turn the washtub over and try to shield your precious ‘libertarian free will’ under it. Unfortunately, that’s not how these things work.
It hasn’t become a single super-thick card, but it has become an aggregate collection of objects acting together to produce a result not possible with a single card. And, if there was something about that aggregate collection of objects that caused it to retain its properties over time, then it would be reasonable to speak of the aggregate as a single object, regardless of what its members are doing.
For example, the US supreme court has been around in one form or another since 1789. This is reasonable to say despite the fact that no single element of the supreme court has been around that long. Similarly, one can say that the US justice system arrests, tries, convicts, and punishes people, despite the fact that no single person, piece of paper, jail cell, paper clip, power tie, nor any other single element of the justice system alone carries out the complicated tasks that the justice system as a whole does.
Aggregates can have their own functions and properties that can only be spoken of coherently with regard to the aggregate and not with regard to its individual parts; this is a simple and really, really, really obvious fact of reality, so deal with it. Especially since free will itself is one of those functions and properties that can only be spoken of with regard to aggregates.
I’ve said multiple times that the self exists. Do a search in this thread.
“It” hasn’t become a super-aggregate card, and they are not acting “together”. See below.
The keywords here are “be spoken of”, i.e. by humans. Humans perceive their reality, not receive it. This whole side-debate over objects is whether the naive view of objects is really true, and all your rebuttals always elide over the distinction between properties “of” objects that are really present in underlying reality or rather a feature in the sensorium. I don’t deny that I see chairs and I can sit on one. Nor do I deny that the molecules constituting that chair at any given time don’t possess the property of being comfortable or spring-laden. But that’s not the point. Take a symphony orchestra. It consists of many, many performers. Each interacts with the 1)sheet music in front of them, 2)the conductor in front of them, 3)other players by listening to them to pick up their cue. But there’s no orchestrahood as in some sort of Borg-esque consciousness here. They all remain individual players who must each learn the parts and look at the sheet music and conductor and listen to the other players. As a listener, I may say that the orchestra plays well, and so may any or all players, since they happen to be sentient themselves. But that’s me or another human talking about perceptions. Eliminative materialism takes a similar tack with beliefs.
It is a “really, really, really obvious fact” of naive realism. That doesn’t automatically carry over to underlying reality. If such things are allowed, then the self, ipso facto, exists as well, and so does ‘free will’.
Forget “self”; that’s poorly defined and not what I said anyway. Stick with “human”. Do humans exist? By your rules, no. Do you exist? by your rules, your body doesn’t exist. By your rules, no action you take occurs, because all of your actions involve things larger than a quark, which you claim don’t exist. How do you have free will if you can’t act? Oh, right, you can’t. Oh, look, your position is fundamentally self contradictory.
You’re really into this “have your cake and eat it to” thing, but sorry, no. You want to claim that nothing exists but basic particles, and then say that, since you have a sense of self and some kind of will, and since (you claim) nothing exists but basic particles, that there must be a basic particle that singlehandedly contains that sense of self and will you’ve got. (From there, of course, you hope to demonstrate that that particle’s will is of the libertarian free variety by a complex argumentive strategy of saying so repeatedly and ignoring all opposing arguments.)
The really obvious problem with deriving your little ‘self must be a particle’ claim from your claim of ‘everying is just particles’ is that in REALITY, we have this little thing called ‘emergent properties’, which you are ignoring as hard as you possibly can. If there is nothing but particles, and they don’t work together, then is there a "move the car forward’ particle? Is there a ‘make the computer beep’ particle? Is there a ‘show an image on the television’ particle?
Of course not. However, any argument that you can use to show that there is a “soul particle” will also show that every other action or property in the universe has its own particle as well. Because if you allow emergent properties to exist to account for all the other behaviors of aggregate things, then it becomes a possiblity that yes, maybe self and will are emergent just like everything else, just like they seem to be.
Let me guess, you don’t think there’s a “Borg-esque” orchestrahood. In your universe, there’s an orchestra particle. Some little speck out there, floating somewhere in the viscninity of the tuba players perhaps, that’s belting out the sound that we all just percieve as coming from the orchestra as a whole acting on concert, becase, you know, we humans just have messed-up perceptions that way, and the way we “speak of” things has no relation whatsoever to the actual underlying reality, in which quarks pass by one another with no interaction whatsoever, along with randomly interspersed ‘special’ particles, which each do hugely complicated tasks, acting on objects that don’t actually exist.
:rolleyes:
How the heck do you get from “things bigger than a quark exist” to “I can now assume my conclusions about a self and libertarian free will”? “Ipso-facto”?
Hey, let me se if I can do that too. ‘If things exist, then cake, ipso-facto will rain down from the sky in big squishy piles all the time; also II Gyan II will transform into a large helicopter that sings “Mary Had A Little Lamb” over and over while constantly swimming in the sea.’ So, did it work?
I’m pretty sure he’s never made this claim. His claim is that all that exist are the fundamental constituents of matter, and selves. And I don’t think he thinks selves are made of matter. (Not 100% sure about that last part, though.)
-FrL-
I’m not sure what the difference between that and what I said, except that I’m not allowing for the handwaved special case for ‘selves’/‘soul particles’ in the line you quoted. (I do account for it later, in the ‘orchestra-particle’ description, although again it’s not a special case; I’m allowing for all the different ‘special’ particles, which naturally follow from his apparent position.)
There is a possibility that I don’t understand what his underlying argument is supposed to be; I am not infallible or omnitient, and further I do have a somewhat hard time understanding self-contradictory things. It’s a personal problem.