Free Will - Does it exist?

[II_Gyan_II]

@begbert2

Stick with “human”. Do humans exist?

Human selves exist, so yes, humans exist.

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.

We’ve been through this many times now. All the matter that constitutes a body truly exists. But the configuration and dynamics of that aggregate of matter as a “body” is what’s a feature of consciousness. The bodyhood is in the cognizer’s mind, not out there.

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.

I have been waiting for you to bring up emergence. That is another explanatory model of reality. In fact, it is quite telling that emergence has been proposed at all. It is a tacit acknowledgement of the line of thought that, hey, things are constituted by more fundamental stuff, but fundamental stuff doesn’t seem to add up to what I see. Hence, what I see must “emerge” from this fundamental stuff. It is essentially a solution by fiat that’s been fashioned to agreeably reconcile the reductionist aspect of science with the naive realism view of conscious experience.

[Frylock]

[QUOTE=begbert2]
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.
[/quote]

How can you not see the difference between:

“All that exist are fundamental constituents of matter”

and

“All that exist are fundamental constituents of matter, and selves”?

Or am I misunderstanding you somehow?

-FrL-

[begbert2]

[QUOTE=Frylock]

How can you not see the difference between:

“All that exist are fundamental constituents of matter”

and

“All that exist are fundamental constituents of matter, and selves”?

Or am I misunderstanding you somehow?

-FrL-

[/QUOTE]
I think you are misunderstanding me. I don’t recall ever explicitly restricting my fundamental particles to “fundamental constituents of matter”; I just mean, ‘fundamental particles’, as in anything that can’t be further subdivided either literally or conceptually. The way I reckon it, if you can’t divide a ‘self’ into its component gears, bells, and whistles, then it too is, by my thinking of the term, a ‘fundamental particle’. Just a “special” one, in that it’s made-up and conceptually incoherent.

So, the meanings of your provided sentences don’t match what I’ve meant. You’re merely dividing the fundamental particles which actually exist from the ones that a complete ridiculous fiction. I do that too, but in a perhaps less clear way; when I’m scoffing, there are usually fictional particles involved in the discussion.

[QUOTE=II Gyan II]
Human selves exist, so yes, humans exist.
[/QUOTE]
Another deliberate misinterpretation. A Human includes his body, especially since we have precisely zero examples of there being any ‘human’ left once the physical body is removed, outside of fairy stories and overactive imaginations.

[QUOTE=II Gyan II]
We’ve been through this many times now. All the matter that constitutes a body truly exists. But the configuration and dynamics of that aggregate of matter as a “body” is what’s a feature of consciousness. The bodyhood is in the cognizer’s mind, not out there.
[/QUOTE]
I claim that this is a demonstrably false statement. The matter that composes your body doesn’t go flying off in all directions if you forget to think about it for a moment.

See, in reality, the “configuration and dynamics of that matter” are independent of your awareness. You’re just talking about the position and velocity of matter here. Matter has position and velocity independent of being defined as a “body”; matter doesn’t actually care how you define it. It goes on sticking to other matter and interacting with it in physically and chemically predicable ways, whether you exist or not.

Get over the issue of human classification of objects. It’s an interesting subject, but has nothing whatsoever to do with how things actually work.

[QUOTE=II Gyan II]
I have been waiting for you to bring up emergence. That is another explanatory model of reality. In fact, it is quite telling that emergence has been proposed at all. It is a tacit acknowledgement of the line of thought that, hey, things are constituted by more fundamental stuff, but fundamental stuff doesn’t seem to add up to what I see. Hence, what I see must “emerge” from this fundamental stuff. It is essentially a solution by fiat that’s been fashioned to agreeably reconcile the reductionist aspect of science with the naive realism view of conscious experience.
[/QUOTE]
Garbage. The forward motion of a car is demonstrably an emergent behavior of the assembly and interaction of its parts. If you dismantle the parts, you can stomp on the loose petal piece all day and neither you nor your pile of car bits is going to go anywhere. Emergent properties are obviously and demonstrably a fundamental part of reality, and any claims to the contrary are automatically talking about a fictional world entirely unrelated to the reality in which us real people exist.

This is just more of your usual spiel: “That goalpost that ‘emergence’, ‘humans’, ‘complex objects’, and everything else that destroys my position are hanging on, it doesn’t exist! No, really! Ignore what reality shows us and listen to meee!” Sorry, you haven’t even provided one speck of reason to believe that your self-contradictory intellectual construct has anything to do with reality, and in fact virtually everything in reality directly contradicts your position. No sale.

[Frylock]

[QUOTE=begbert2]
I think you are misunderstanding me. I don’t recall ever explicitly restricting my fundamental particles to “fundamental constituents of matter”; I just mean, ‘fundamental particles’, as in anything that can’t be further subdivided either literally or conceptually.
[/quote]

That’s…

umm…

That’s what “fundamental constituents of matter” means.

I was just trying to allow for the possibility that the thing that turns out nonsubdividable might turn out not to be a particle.

The way I reckon it, if you can’t divide a ‘self’ into its component gears, bells, and whistles, then it too is, by my thinking of the term, a ‘fundamental particle’. Just a “special” one, in that it’s made-up and conceptually incoherent.

That makes sense. “Particle” is generally thought of as denoting a kind of matter, though, and I think (but am not sure) that Gyan means to say that selves are not material entities. This may be what you find conceptually incoherent. But if that’s the case, then you and Gyan ought to be facing the issue of its coherence more directly with each other if you want to get something done here.

-FrL-

[II_Gyan_II]

[QUOTE=begbert2]
The matter that composes your body doesn’t go flying off in all directions if you forget to think about it for a moment.
[/quote]

I never claimed that such things happen.

See, in reality, the “configuration and dynamics of that matter” are independent of your awareness.

We agree. But none of the elementary constituents treat themselves as part of an object. It’s like Conway’s Game of Life or some similar cellular automaton. The matrix of cells when viewed by someone may look like some pattern. Furthermore, the perception of their temporal dynamics may turn out to be some sort of, say, attractor. But each of the cells is only concerned with the behavior of its immediate neighbors. It has no idea and is not concerned with the overall pattern that is a part of. In real-world physics, each constituent in only concerned with the net resultant force imposed upon it.

You may disagree with this take on things, but seem very obtuse in at least grasping it. Sophistry and Illusion disagrees with it, but he/she understands what the concept is. So does Frylock.

Get over the issue of human classification of objects. It’s an interesting subject, but has nothing whatsoever to do with how things actually work.

Unless you’re some sort of special bloke who has direct access to reality, you are no more authoritative on reality than anyone else on this board. Your take on reality, right or wrong, is just that - your take.

[begbert2]

[QUOTE=II Gyan II]
I never claimed that such things happen.
[/QUOTE]
Then human perspective and recognition of objects clearly are irrelevent to the actual existence and operation of such objects, and I’d appreciate it if you stopped trying to obfuscate the discussion by referencing such things.

[QUOTE=II Gyan II]
We agree. But none of the elementary constituents treat themselves as part of an object. It’s like Conway’s Game of Life or some similar cellular automaton. The matrix of cells when viewed by someone may look like some pattern. Furthermore, the perception of their temporal dynamics may turn out to be some sort of, say, attractor. But each of the cells is only concerned with the behavior of its immediate neighbors. It has no idea and is not concerned with the overall pattern that is a part of. In real-world physics, each constituent in only concerned with the net resultant force imposed upon it.
[/QUOTE]
So what? You think this is news to anyone?

In a row of dominos, no domino is aware of or interacts with any other domino besides the ones on either side of it. This does not change the fact that the behavior of knocking over a domino a foot away emerges as a result of the blind interaction of the constituent particles. The fact that your spark plugs don’t know about the rest of your car and that all they do is spark when power is applied, does not change the fact that your spark plugs are an integral part of your car, and are involved in the emergence of the “move the car forward when the gas petal is pressed” behavior.

[QUOTE=II Gyan II]
You may disagree with this take on things, but seem very obtuse in at least grasping it. Sophistry and Illusion disagrees with it, but he/she understands what the concept is. So does Frylock.
[/QUOTE]
Piffle, I understand both how reality works (in a general sense), and how it disagrees with your position. Do you?

[QUOTE=II Gyan II]
Unless you’re some sort of special bloke who has direct access to reality, you are no more authoritative on reality than anyone else on this board. Your take on reality, right or wrong, is just that - your take.
[/QUOTE]
I’m a special bloke who has direct access to your posts in this thread, and who has the brain cells to recognize that by ignoring the obvious truths about reality that you’re trying to ignore, you’re not only implying the existence of human souls, but also car souls, telephone souls, brick souls (to decide not to let their particles slide past those of adjacent bricks) - souls everywhere, patching up the massive holes in causation you get when you tear away the (observable and obviously true) concept of emergent behaviors.

I notice that you never answer my arguments about car souls and the like. So, here’s a challenge: answer the following question. Yes or no answer. You may elaboarte after that or not, but start with a yes or no:

Is the complex behavior of a car the result of the emergent behavior of its parts?
Frylock, I don’t really care whether he things his ‘soul’ particles are material or not. (I mean, is a quark ‘material’? Or even a photon? My l33t physics skillz fail to give me confidence in the answer. ) I’m primarily concerned with whether they’re real, or even might be real. And we’re never going to be able to demonstrate that one way or the other until we break down the shoddy arguments he’s trying to use to shield his position.

[II_Gyan_II]

[QUOTE=begbert2]
Then human perspective and recognition of objects clearly are irrelevent to the actual existence and operation of such objects
[/quote]

‘clearly’ as in from your perspective?

The fact that your spark plugs don’t know about the rest of your car and that all they do is spark when power is applied, does not change the fact that your spark plugs are an integral part of your car, and are involved in the emergence of the “move the car forward when the gas petal is pressed” behavior.

That emergence is a mental assignment, not out there.

car souls, telephone souls, brick souls (to decide not to let their particles slide past those of adjacent bricks)

Cars, telephones..etc aren’t, presumably, sentient, so no car soul posited.

Is the complex behavior of a car the result of the emergent behavior of its parts?

The behavior of a ‘car’ is the result of interplay between its fundamental constituents. Organization of your sensorium is a mental feature, not “emergence”. As in Conway’s game, there’s no emergence, you look at the whole matrix and see a blob. The essence of that blob isn’t out there.

[II_Gyan_II]

@begbert2

So what? You think this is news to anyone?

It’s news to you.

It’s quite another to pretend that those particles are not working together to make objects.

[Sophistry_and_Illusion]

[QUOTE=II Gyan II]
I have been waiting for you to bring up emergence. That is another explanatory model of reality. In fact, it is quite telling that emergence has been proposed at all. It is a tacit acknowledgement of the line of thought that, hey, things are constituted by more fundamental stuff, but fundamental stuff doesn’t seem to add up to what I see. Hence, what I see must “emerge” from this fundamental stuff. It is essentially a solution by fiat that’s been fashioned to agreeably reconcile the reductionist aspect of science with the naive realism view of conscious experience.
[/QUOTE]

I’m sure you don’t intend it this way, but your practice of referring to the theory that complex objects exist as “naive realism” really is an example of poisoning the well. Someone who thinks that complex objects exist, or who thinks that natural kinds exist, is not necessarily a naive realist. The realist recognizes that there are facts that arise due to the existence of complex objects. For example, Boyle’s law is a true law which describes the behavior of gases–but it is a law that is stated in terms of ‘complex’ objects (gases, which are composed of elemental atoms or complex molecules). Nevertheless, I don’t see the percentage in denying that it is literally true.

Ultimately, in questions of philosophy and ontology, we have to ask the plausibility of the competing principles we are employing. Your principle has the advantage of austerity. But the cost of your version of realism is high, in that in consequence of it, most scientific laws are false (or at least not true). I propose that we weigh the ‘cost’ (in plausibilitiy and intuitiveness) of your position against its ‘benefit’ (similarly measured). I also suggest that your position comes out as more ‘costly’ than ‘beneficial’ if we conduct such a cost-benefit analysis. (And I don’t at all mean for this analysis to be understood pragmatically; as I hope is clear, I am using the terms ‘cost’ and ‘benefit’ metaphorically. What I am saying here concerns our intuitions of what is plausible, which is ultimately all we have to go on in such questions.)

[II_Gyan_II]

@Sophistry and Illusion

I’m sure you don’t intend it this way, but your practice of referring to the theory that complex objects exist as “naive realism” really is an example of poisoning the well.

I certainly don’t intend to claim that only naive realism accepts complex objects, just that begbert2’s defense of complex objects: “who has the brain cells to recognize that by ignoring the obvious truths about reality that you’re trying to ignore” alludes to a naive realism view of objects. Emergence, in that context, is a reconciliation by fiat.

But the cost of your version of realism is high, in that in consequence of it, most scientific laws are false (or at least not true).

Scientific laws aren’t false, just limited in scope to a human’s phenomenology. None of the utility of science need be discarded.

[Sophistry_and_Illusion]

[QUOTE=II Gyan II]
Scientific laws aren’t false, just limited in scope to a human’s phenomenology. None of the utility of science need be discarded.
[/QUOTE]

But doesn’t this mean that this is merely some kind of pragmatic truth, not ‘real’ truth? And if you are claiming that scientific laws are *really * true, then the objects of scientific laws (e.g., complex objects like gases) surely exist in an equally robust and real sense. So are you claiming pragmatic or real/robust truth for scientific laws?

[begbert2]

Damn it, Gyan, you’re pissing me off. You’re doing it on purpose, aren’t you?

[QUOTE=II Gyan II]
‘clearly’ as in from your perspective?
[/QUOTE]
I mean clearly, as in your imagination doesn’t make your car move. DUH.

Like I JUST SAID, perspective has nothing to do with any of this.

[QUOTE=II Gyan II]
That emergence is a mental assignment, not out there.
[/QUOTE]
So what moves the car? Your “mental assignment”?

If not that, then which particle’s doing it? Which particle has the “move the car” property? Let’s test. Yank out the spark plugs - the car doesn’t work. Guess the spark plugs have the particle with the “move the car” property in it! But wait, yank out the pistons, and the car again doesn’t work. I guess, they, and not the spark plugs, have that property. Oh, wait, if you put the pistons back in and yank the plugs again, the pistons don’t seem to have the property either. It looks like the property is nowhere, so clearly, by your “logic”, the car can’t ever move, even with all its parts intact. Except it does, demonstrating that your “logic” is FUBAR.

Of course, in reality, the “move the car” property is emergent from all the parts being in the right places at the right times, doing the right things to their neighboring but otherwise unrelated pieces. Except you’re hell-bent on pretending there’s no such thing as emergent properties, so their MUST be, by your “logic”, some SINGLE particle that’s got the “move the car” property. Except, as we showed with the spark plugs and the pistons, that’s not the case. Which blows your position to shreds.

[QUOTE=II Gyan II]
Cars, telephones..etc aren’t, presumably, sentient, so no car soul posited.
[/QUOTE]
So what moves the car?

[QUOTE=II Gyan II]
The behavior of a ‘car’ is the result of interplay between its fundamental constituents. Organization of your sensorium is a mental feature, not “emergence”. As in Conway’s game, there’s no emergence, you look at the whole matrix and see a blob. The essence of that blob isn’t out there.
[/QUOTE]
Conway’s game of Life is not a good analogue to how reality works, which is probably why you like to fallaciously analogize with it. The “blob” in the game is not composed of a specific set of particles that are hanging together and moving around as a relatively coherent group due to the interaction of their elementary properties; it’s actually just part of the larger behavior of the entire matrix of pixels taken together, the same way that any image on your monitor is just a single part of the emergent behavior of your computer’s various inner workings (none of which alone has the property of making an image appear on the monitor).

Unlike the images generated by Conway’s game, most real things are composed of a specific set of particles that are hanging together and moving around as a relatively coherent group due to the interaction of their elementary properties. Things like this do tend to exhibit emergent properties of their own. So lets talk about where those things get their behavioral properties, and not the false analogy of Conway’s game, shall we?

And again, the fact that “Organization of your sensorium is a mental feature” is another red herring, because your mental features have squat to do with why the things you’re observing in reality are doing the things they’re doing.
Oh, and regarding:

[QUOTE=II Gyan II]
It’s news to you.
[/QUOTE]

If you can’t comprehend the meanings of my statements, that’s your problem. And the next time you feel inclined to tell me what I know, just shut your damned trap.

[II_Gyan_II]

[QUOTE=begbert2]
Unlike the images generated by Conway’s game, most real things are composed of a specific set of particles that are hanging together and moving around as a relatively coherent group due to the interaction of their elementary properties.
[/quote]

Except they are not. At any two different times, the set of particles which make up the object, differ. Depending on the specific environmental conditions, any given particle may be a part of the object or not. Just like in Conway’s game, there may be conditions wherein some pixels remain part of a pattern for a pretty long time. They are still not working “together”. The emergence of the “blob” in such a case is a mental recognition.

Like I JUST SAID, perspective has nothing to do with any of this.

“Clearly” means lack of ambiguity. Unambiguity in what? Observation, in this case, yours. That’s a matter of perspective.

@Sophistry and Illusion

But doesn’t this mean that this is merely some kind of pragmatic truth, not ‘real’ truth?

Yes. As I agreed to the chemistry Q above.

[Sophistry_and_Illusion]

[QUOTE=II Gyan II]

@Sophistry and Illusion

But doesn’t this mean that this is merely some kind of pragmatic truth, not ‘real’ truth?

Yes. As I agreed to the chemistry Q above.
[/QUOTE]

Then this takes us back to my argument in post #329–the cost of your position is high, in terms of violation of our intuitions, because it means that scientific laws aren’t ‘really’ true, but only held to be true for human purposes.

[II_Gyan_II]

[QUOTE=Sophistry and Illusion]
the cost of your position is high, in terms of violation of our intuitions, because it means that scientific laws aren’t ‘really’ true, but only held to be true for human purposes.
[/QUOTE]

The same’s true of the ‘free will and self as illusions’ argument.

[Sophistry_and_Illusion]

[QUOTE=II Gyan II]
The same’s true of the ‘free will and self as illusions’ argument.
[/QUOTE]

Well, I personally may be a no-good, low-down Red-propaganda-distributing pragmatist, but I’m sure you can see how many would regard your concession that scientific laws are only ‘true’ as opposed to *true * as a reductio of your position.

ETA–And even I am not a pragmatist about elements, molecules, and causal interactions among the same.

[II_Gyan_II]

[QUOTE=Sophistry and Illusion]
I’m sure you can see how many would regard your concession that scientific laws are only ‘true’ as opposed to true as a reductio of your position.
[/QUOTE]

How so?

[Sophistry_and_Illusion]

[QUOTE=II Gyan II]
How so?
[/QUOTE]

Well, as I said before, intuitively, Boyle’s law and other scientific laws are true, not ‘true.’ Ultimately, as you say, we must appeal to intuition, and I think that your position is costly in terms of our intuitions.

[begbert2]

[QUOTE=II Gyan II]
Except they are not. At any two different times, the set of particles which make up the object, differ. Depending on the specific environmental conditions, any given particle may be a part of the object or not. Just like in Conway’s game, there may be conditions wherein some pixels remain part of a pattern for a pretty long time. They are still not working “together”. The emergence of the “blob” in such a case is a mental recognition.
[/quote]
You’re not seriously equating the time it takes to rotate particles out of real objects, which, particularly in static objects like tables and bricks, may keep most of their original particles for hundreds of years, with things like the “entities” in the game of life, which, if a three-pixel-wide ‘entity’ moves three pixels to the right, no longer has any of the same particles it had a second ago, are you? Because that’s simply ridiculous. There could be no worse an analogy for the manner in which particles “work together”* to form larger objects.

But I notice you’re dodging the larger critical flaw in your position again. So what moves the car?. You claim it doesn’t have a soul because it “[is]n’t, presumably, sentient”. But, your entire argument for why we should entertain for one moment the idea of a special magic ‘soul’ thing is that you’re claiming that all other methods for any kind of complex behavior to occur simply don’t exist. That’s not just the behaivor of apparent sentience, but also car movement, your computer responding to keypresses, light-bulbs’ glowing; all of it. Your proposed model simply doesn’t allow for any of that to occur.

This is what we call throwing out the baby with the bathwater; in trying to force us to accept souls, you’ve had to throw out so much stuff that you’re obviously not talking about the world we observe around us, even if we allow your obfuscating arguments about perception and whatnot. You’ve created a world where there are souls sitting in piles of sand; nothing we see in the world can possibly work, including the mechanisms that we clearly use to interact with each other like this message board; so by your position we must all be imagining everything, including the existence of other souls, since even if they exist, we could not actually be contacting them.

Congratulations, you’ve invented solipsism. Was that your goal?

If not, then what moves the car?

[begbert2]

Whups, I forgot to follow up on the * in my above post.

When I say that particles are “working together”, I do not mean and have never meant that the particles are intelligently colluding with one another and taking stock of both their individual capabilities and the larger ‘goal’ and arranging themselves and adjusting their behavior to work towards that larger ‘goal’.

I of course merely mean that the particles are that they’re “working”, as in, each particle is doing whatever they happen to be doing, and they’re “together”, due to their proximity and in most applicable cases their individual behavioral properties make them sort of stick to the other particles in question. “Working” + "together’ = “working together”.

Thus, no communal intentions or awareness on the part of the individual particles is meant to be expressed or implied by my usage of the term in this context.

This is admittedly a somewhat nonstandard definition of the term; though not too hard a one to figure out, I thought, especially in the context of the posts I’ve been using it in. Regardless, this will hopefully lay to rest any problems caused by confusion over my use of the term.