I discussed three examples - an animal that likes to mate and has the illusion of free will, an animal that dislikes mating and has the illusion of free will, and an animal that has an irresistible compulsion to mate and a subjective experience of disliking it. But yes, quoting only one of those examples and pretending I didn’t realize that the third exists is one way to dismantle my position.
I did specifically note that the third example is just as likely to mate as the first.
And these are things that affect their external behavior and which often have a detrimental impact on their fitness! So thank you for a fantastic example of how lacking the illusion of free will can impact reproductive fitness and this be acted on by evolution.
If that is your understanding of the argument, you have misundetstood it.
Again, the argument is of the form, if A, then B. B, hence A—in other words, without a necessary connection between a and B (i.e. the illusion of free will and adequate adaptive behavior), just the fallacy of affirming the consequent.
This is nonsense. If both the evolution of fur and feathers is equally feasible, then evolution can’t decide between them. Which occurs is a roll of the die, and it’s just meaningless to say that the animal has fur because it needed to regulate it’s temperature.
Evolution in such a case can yield to any element of the disjunct ‘fur or feathers or down or bony heat collectors or…’, but can’t pick uniquely one of them. That’s just due to random drift.
There’s your misunderstanding. It is not. Feathers are modified scales, so no creature which does not already have scales can even have a chance of evolving feathers. It is possible that a creature would evolve first scales and then feathers, but if the property we lack for reproductive fitness is a way to maintain body heat, that won’t work.
Fur is also related to scales, but to a much more primitive form of them. A synapsid with proto-hair can evolve fur but not feathers. A dinosaur can evolve feathers, but not hair (because it is working woth much more derived feathers).
So do you also agree that evolution can’t distinguish between these examples?
But again, in general, it’s clear that this does not need to be the case. If every of your actions is determined against your will by compulsion, but your actions don’t change in any way, there’s no fitness differential.
Then by all means give the correct version of the argument.
This is completely beside the point. Again, the argument is that since the illusion of fitness leads to adaptive behavior, we ought to have evolved it. There is nothing about evolutionary history in there (for the good reason that nobody, save you perhaps, knows the evolution of subjectivity sufficiently well). Just this: illusion of free will → adaptive behavior. From this, we are told that our need to show adaptive behaviour → illusion of free will. This is simply false if there is anything else that leads to the same adaptive behavior. And there is. And that’s that.
I mean, thanks for the link to a massage therapists’s take on natural selection, but I’m an evolutionary biologist.
I am not, however, Lamarck. Nobody has claimed that “phenotype determines genotype”.
In a proximate sense, of course selection operates on the phenotype. Organisms with beneficial traits are less likely to die and likely to have more offspring. But there must be a complete causal chain between genotype and phenotype for natural selection to operate. The phenotype must be heritable. Evolution is fundamentally a change in allele frequencies in a population - a change in DNA.
Different genotypes that lead to the exact same phenotype cannot be distinguished by natural selection. But all possible genotypes do not exist. You’re just restating the same nonsense that because fur is not necessary to keep you warm, it cannot be an adaptation. Any genotype that is sufficient to generate a benficial trait will be selected over genotypes that don’t. Theoretical genotypes that would generate the same trait but that are not present in the population are irrelevant.
Assuming that a creature with a subjective experience and no illusion that it could control its actions could exist, then sure. But I question the possibility that such a creature could evolve. Your subjective experience influences decisions made by you. If you replace that subjective experience with some other process that makes the same exact decisions, you need to explain how this process works and where it comes from.
Further, imagine a fourth creature! This one has no illusion of free will and no subjective experience. It is indistinguishable in behavior from creatures 1 and 3. However, it is doing less than creature 3. It has no subjective experience. Therefore it is using less energy, and would be selected for over creature 3.
If you posit that creature 3 could exist, you must explain why it would evolve a subjective experience. Since the subjective experience is not used for decisionmaking in this creature, unlike creature 1, there is no reason for the subjective experience to evolve and no mechanism by which it could have done so.
If creature 3 existed, it seems to me that the useless energy expenditure on a subjective experience that does nothing would be heavily selected against until creature 4 evolves.
That’s nice. But it still doesn’t change the fact that evolution does, in fact, act on the phenotype.
Then, of course, the evolutionary argument for the illusion of free will doesn’t work.
Yes, but that’s not sufficient for the argument. This needs that the phenotype, the behavior, uniquely determines the upstream details of it’s generation. It doesn’t!
Obviously not. There are in general multiple genotypes that are sufficient for a beneficial trait, which clearly can’t all be selected.
But this assumes the conclusion of the argument. Sure, if only the genotype that leads to the illusion of free will is present in the population, it will be selected for; but the purpose of the argument is to explain why that genotype is present.
Good!
Again, that just gets a shrug from me: I don’t know either way, and since you don’t provide arguments for your knowledge, can’t really assess them.
I don’t know that any of this is right, or why it ought to be. All computation can be done, in principle, reversibly, i.e. without energy dispersion, so on the supposition that internal processes are just computation, I see no reason to believe this.
If you feel the need to quote others’ posts out of context like this to try and support your position, does it not give you pause?
No matter how many ways you repeat this fallacy of necessity, it will still be wrong. Anything that is sufficient to generate a beneficial trait will be favored by natural selection over anything that doesn’t.
What was out of context? You’ve repeated this fallacy of necessity a dozen times, over and over again.
You’re trying to claim that the sense of free will couldn’t have evolved because it’s possible that there are other ways to produce the same behavior.
Then you say that an argument that fur is advantageous because (among other things) it helps an organism keep warm and was therefore selected by means of evolution is easily dismissed by pointing out an organism that keeps warm without fur.
That amounts to saying that fur didn’t evolve, either. Or, presumably, any of those other methods; because saying that they evolved because they were advantageous in that fashion would equally easily be dismissed by pointing out an organism that manages the same thing by having fur.
But I am arguing that free will, or the illusion of it, does make a difference in function/behavior. I thought that was quite clear.
Plus which, as has been pointed out by at least one other person in this thread, some characteristics evolve because they’re side effects of something else.
Plus which – if you believe that all human characteristics have evolved, and you acknowledge that at least the illusion of free will exists: then that internal perception has to have evolved. Wouldn’t exist otherwise.
Did serotonin not evolve? Did pain receptors not evolve?
Does the perception of pain or pleasure not affect behavior? You seem to be saying that it doesn’t, because you can imagine a creature in which it doesn’t. Maybe you can. Maybe there even are such creatures. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t also creatures in whom/which it does; or that the serotonin and the pain receptors and the subjective sense of pleasure and pain didn’t evolve.
Nope. That’s not the form at all.
If all A (human mental states) are B (due to evolution), and if a exists (a being the specific mental state of feeling that one has free will), then b (a is due to evolution.)
You can argue about why a has evolved – whether it’s beneficial, in what way it’s beneficial, by what mechanism it is beneficial, whether it’s neutral or even negative instead of beneficial but exists because it’s linked either by accident or essence to some other trait that is beneficial – but none of that means that it hasn’t evolved.
But, in any specific creature, it isn’t equally feasible. Over the actual range of creatures many generations ago, it quite possibly was – which is why we have creatures with fur as well as creatures with feathers. (Possibly there could also have been creatures with some adaptation we’ve never seen, but the dice didn’t roll that way; or the dice did and they once existed, but they were in the wrong environment when a meteor or some other disaster hit and a breeding population didn’t survive.) But in a modern bird or mouse or human, there’s no way all of those are equally feasible.
And again, this can’t possibly be right, because in general, more than one thing will be sufficient, and clearly not more than one thing can be favored. What actually happens is that random chance will eventually lead to certain variants being dominant. But that plainly doesn’t support the argument
@Half_Man_Half_Wit your “necessity” fallacy is literally logically equivalent to:
It is not possible that you rode the bus for the purpose of getting to the store, because you could also have driven a car, which would have got you there equally well.
To allege it’s absurd. Which, in isolation, it is. But the full quote is this:
It’s prefaced on a conditional: if both fur and feathers are on equal footing, evolutionarily speaking, then it is nonsense to claim that an animal has fur because of selection. Selection simply can’t tell the difference, and can’t choose one over the other. The difference simply isn’t visible on the level where selection acts. Certainly, one or the other is going to come to pass, for a given species (or whatever taxonomic levels is appropriate). Both might come about in different species. But for any given species, which one is chosen is not due to selection.
You provide some vague intuitions, most of which are irrelevant to the argument anyway (which, again, doesn’t appeal to evolutionary history, but just to the claimed fitness benefits of the illusion of freedom in a stationary setting—which makes sense, as everything else just heaps on more speculation that throws all pretense at giving a definite argument over board).
No. I claim that an illusion of free will doesn’t provide a unique fitness advantage. That’s a very different claim.
I’m claiming that the argument that an organism needs fur to keep warm is easily dismissed by pointing out one that doesn’t have fur and still keeps warm.
So no, not even close.
And I have given scenarios where it doesn’t.
Which undercuts the argument, of course: because then, we wouldn’t have the illusion of free will because it leads to adaptive behavior.
Well, my point is of course that the simplest explanation for the feeling that we have free will is that we, you know, do. Just as the simplest explanation for the feeling that you do have a headache is that you do, well, have a headache. So I don’t think there’s necessarily an illusion of free will.
That said, of course we might be evolved creatures having an illusion of free will. But that doesn’t mean that we have this illusion because we are evolved creatures. If it is the case that there are multiple internal states leading to the same behaviors (and it is), then that we do have these internal states is not due to our showing these behaviors, and as that’s all selection acts on, is not due to that. Rather, it’s just perhaps some random genetic drift, or whatever else broke the deadlock.
But if there are creatures in which it does and in which it doesn’t, then obviously evolution does not discriminate between these.
That’s clearly unsound. There is hardly ever only one possible solution that fits a given evolutionary problem, and if that’s the case, then it’s not evolution that chooses one over the other. It simply can’t.
Which is exactly what I’m saying. Hence, you can’t say evolution leads to fur: it has led to both feathers and fur.
Again, it’s not me that argues for necessity. It’s a precondition for the argument from selection to work, because it doesn’t if there’s no necessity.
Suppose you want to argue that the travel time leads to choosing the bus over the car. But the travel time is the same for both car and bus. Then, it obviously wasn’t the travel time.
The only way that argument could work is if there was a necessary difference in travel time between bus and car. But there’s not.
Again, the form is: A (taking the bus) implies B (traveling takes x minutes). You want the travel time to be x minutes. Hence, you take the bus.
But that is fallacious—affirming the consequent—if travel time being x minutes does not necessitate going by bus, which is the case if taking the car also takes x minutes.
So the travel time can’t be what distinguishes the modes of transportation. You might toss a coin, or throw a dart—but then, it’s the dart that breaks the deadlock.
Right, so my comment was apt. Given that your conclusion here (the part I quoted “it’s just meaningless to say that the animal has fur because it needed to regulate it’s temperature”) is preposterous, doesn’t it give you pause to question the assumptions and reasoning (which you state in full here) that led to it?
Sure, we can postulate a hypothetical species with standing genetic variation that generates two phenotypes: feathered and furred. In this population, there is no relative difference in fitness: both traits allow identical temperature regulation. Natural selection will not operate to distinguish between them.
First, does this strike you as a realistic model of what we usually tend to see in populations? Second, if it did happen, what do you think was the evolutionary history? How do you imagine these two phenotypes arose?
The argument “this other set of internal states could theoretically also exist, so your set of internal states cannot be explained by evolution” relies on evolutionary history in the sense that it posits that both options could have evolved. But due to evolutionary history one set of internal states naturally progresses from the sets of intenral states possessed by animals today as well as our ancestors while the other is extremely contrived.
You may not want to bring evolutionary history into your argument, but that is because considering your argument in the context of things that actually need to evolve makes it fall apart completely.
Suppose you argue that the travel time by bus and car is the same if you start 4.5 billion years ago and wait for humans to evolve and build your destination, while @Riemann is pointing out that since he’s already at the bus stop bus would be faster than car?
That’s what you’re doing by ignoring the context of evolutionary history.
A mouse has fur to keep warm because a mouse’s ancestors couldn’t give him feathers. We get our adaptive behaviror through the illusion of free will because of the starting parameters our monkey ancestors had. The fact that you could imagine an arbitrary creature that makes decisions some other way is irrelevant.
Suppose I want to argue that since I don’t have a car, I took the bus, because it achieved the beneficial outcome of getting me to the store, when it was too far to walk.
ETA: ninjaed by @Babale, who said something similar.
Again, that is entirely beside the point. The argument from selection is that the illusion of free will provides adaptive behavior, hence, it is selected for. But that is only true if nothing else provides the same adaptive behavior. But there are such things. That’s it.
Suppose we were in the situation where we instead had a feeling that we are irresistibly compelled to act in whatever way we do. You’d make the argument that, because this provides an adaptive behavior, we evolved to have this compulsion. There certainly isn’t any realistic case to say that in such a case, you’d rather claim that since it seems so unlikely we’d evolve such a compulsion, our behavior can’t be due to selection. The two cases are exactly symmetrical, yet the argument yield opposite conclusions.
Consequently, the argument just is fallacious.
It relies on an epistemic humility. I actually don’t know that a subjective illusion of freedom could evolve. I can tell myself nice sounding just-so stories, but that just charts the limits of my own imaginations, nothing else. I could also tell myself just-so stories that end with feeling am irresistible compulsion to act in a certain way (how else should I choose in the face of insurmountable insecurities?).
Given what we know, there is no case that an illusion of freedom could, much less should or must, evolve, that can’t be made just as well for a feeling of compulsion. Anything else just assumes more than is warranted.
And that obviously assumes its conclusion: you evolved an illusion of free will because you only could evolve an illusion of free will. If there is no alternative, there are no alternatives to choose between, but the goal of the argument is to explain why one alternative came about.
This is true only if we are discussing the evolution of hypothetical life on a planet where abiogenesis did not occur yet. On our planet, when discussing living things that are part of our tree of life, you simply cannot ignore context like that.
You’re making points that are valid and relevant to the question, “If we meet alien life will it have consciousness the way we do?”. The answer to that, you correctly point out, is that we cannot know if they will have the illusion of consciousness or if they will come up with a different strategy for adaptive behavior. Any more than we can guess at their integument.
But that’s not what we are discussing. We’re discussing life on Earth, and our own subjective experience. We don’t have to assume sphereical species evolving in a vacuum.
The fact that it has seems like pretty good evidence that it could.