Proof of nonexistence of free will

A brain that can think with the help of a brain pacemaker is alive; a brain that is so damaged it's genuinely dead can no longer work, even with a pacemaker.

1. Even if we agree that "brain functioning" is necessary for "thought processes" it does not mean it sufficient for such processes.

2. Whatever "brain functioning" is, we cannot assume it is predominantly mechanistic/deterministic in the sense of electrical circuitry. (google Hameroff and Penrose for concepts of quantum functioning in neurones)

3. Determinism is attractive for epistemological reasons because it panders to the human cognitive motivation to "predict and control". But as Capra (et al) have pointed out, such motivation may not be the only arbiter of what constitutes a "satisfactory explanation".

(NB More specifically...the "paradox" is about whether the concept of paradigms(Kuhn) or epistemes(Foucault) is merely just another paradigm or episteme)

joefromchicago wrote:

That's not the paradox.

What, if anything, is the paradox?

With Garner's warning in mind, I find that your thinking-corpse "paradox" is not a paradox. It's a rare instance of question-begging on your part, in that your thought experiment assumes the paradox it alleges to reveal. On the one hand, you assume that the brain in question is dead. On the other hand, you assume the brain can be made to think again"much as, I imagine, a heart can be made to beat again with the help of a pacemaker.

Tbese assumptions are inconsistent under the canonical definition of brain-death, which requires the irreversible loss of all brain fuction. A brain that can think with the help of a brain pacemaker is alive; a brain that is so damaged it's genuinely dead can no longer work, even with a pacemaker.

On the contrary, I don't assume that the brain can be made to think again. That's the whole point of the thought experiment. I'm surprised you missed that.

Thomas wrote:

Tbese assumptions are inconsistent under the canonical definition of brain-death, which requires the irreversible loss of all brain fuction. A brain that can think with the help of a brain pacemaker is alive; a brain that is so damaged it's genuinely dead can no longer work, even with a pacemaker.

Those are merely empirical objections that have little place in a hypothetical situation.

After all, Galvani experimented with a severed frog's leg. It was just as "dead" as a corpse's brain. And yet, to quote Galileo, "epur si muove."

Capra, citing Maturna advocates a "systems theory" approach in which any function like "thinking" has to have "meaning" in terms of "sustainability of the organism". This teleological approach, which at the macro-level amounts to the "Gaia hypothesis", is ridiculed by those mainstream scientists who cannot see beyond prediction and control.

You assert that a brain pacemaker couldn't make a dead brain think again, but assume that it could make a dead brain carry the signals associated with thought in live brain. My answer is that you're not going to find a brain that's dead enough for the former, yet alive enough for the latter.

But your hypothetical situation exerts philosophical thrust only because it could, in principle, be an observable reality. Therefore, the empirical objection that it couldn't be an observable reality, even in principle, constitutes a valid rebuttal. (Assuming the objection is true, of course"and you haven't claimed that it isn't.)

Death is a process, not a sharp line. Moreover, it's inhomogenous: Some parts of an organism die at different times than others, and than the organism itself. For example, if you were hit by a bus today and died, your hair would keep growing for a week after your brain stopped working and your heart stopped beating. When doctors describe this phenomenon to you, they will be perfectly happy to tell you that the cells causing hair growth stay alive even after the body they're in is dead.

In the same manner, Galvani's frog's legs are alive (and hence able to twitch), even though the frog they belonged to was dead, indeed sliced and diced into peaces. That doesn't change the fact that the legs were able to twitch to the extent they're alive, and unable to twitch to the extent that they"not the frog"are dead. Your thought experiment doesn't reveal a paradox. It only constructs the appearance of one by drawing sharp semantical lines onto a continuous real process, and by drawing them in a manner that's ill-adapted to the reality of the process itself.

I said nothing about a "brain pacemaker" -- that's your addition to my hypothetical. I said that the experiment was on a corpse, which I would have supposed was sufficiently dead for most purposes. If you want to argue about "levels of deadness," then come up with your own hypothetical.

If I posit a hypothetical about a talking dog, then, for the purposes of the hypothetical, one must assume there is at least one instance of a talking dog.

If you want to argue that it's possible to have a live brain inside of a dead corpse, then you should have no problem in concluding that the experiment I outlined in my hypothetical would lead to a sentient corpse. That wouldn't be the conclusion that I would draw, but then I just get to come up with the question, I don't get to come up with your answer.

You must have a rather different definition of "dead" if you think that a severed frog leg is "alive" for some purposes and "dead" for others. I doubt that anyone seriously thinks the electric current administered by Galvani revivified the frog's leg.

I doubt that anyone seriously thinks the electric current administered by Galvani revivified the frog's leg.

I'm sorry I misunderstood your hypothetical. But your correction does not affect my objection that the premise of your hypothetical is wrong. If "sufficiently dead for most purposes" implies "brain-dead""as for legal and medical purposes it does" you are wrong in assuming that an electrical device of any kind could induce the electrical signals associated with thought in a live brain.

How about a hypothetical starring a triangular pentagon? Can I rebut that by pointing out that a polygon can have three angles, even five angles, but not both? Or say the hypothetical is about mutually consensual rape? Can I rebut that by pointing out that rape is, by definition, not mutually consensual? If your answer is "no", how is my rebuttal invalid? If your answer is "yes", how are those hypotheticals different from ours?

You're assuming a person who is legally dead (implying, by definition, an irreversible loss of all brain function). Yet also assume that you could reverse biophysical brain function with some external device. Your hypothetical has exactly the same logical merits as the triangular-pentagon and consensual-rape hypotheticals.

I'm not sure "sentient" is the right word, as the brain may not get any sensory input from its dead body. But if brain-internal stimuli like thoughts and migraines count to you as sentiments, then yes"I have no philosophical problem with a sentient corpse. It's no more philosophically difficult to me than a corpse that needs shaving after a week in the grave.

That's not what I'm thinking. I'm thinking that a frog's legs can be alive even if the frog itself is dead. The frog and its legs are different entities, with different times of death. This point gets even more forceful if you count tumors as body parts. There are people who've been dead for decades"but their tumors keep surviving, even growing, in some jar on some shelf in some university's cellar. There is nothing unorthodox about live parts within dead bodies. Just find a physiologist and ask!

I doubt that a leg lives for a significant amount of time after it is severed from a body, and I don't know if Galvani experimented on freshly severed limbs or if he waited until they got good and ripe.

The examples you raise are incoherent on a definitional level.

After all, the hypothetical is designed to determine how far a person will go in equating the neurological impulses that are associated with thoughts and the thoughts themselves.

Your example is definitionally incoherent in the same way. "For most purposes" including medicine and law, "dead" is defined as "brain-dead", which is defined as irreversible loss of brain function. "Brain function" is defined as the signals you see in EEGs. These are also the signals your electrical device induces in the brain of your hypothetical. On a definitional level then, your hypothetical temporarily reverses an irreversable loss of brain function, which is definitionally inconsistent.

My answer to this question is that I will not go as far as assuming biophysical impossibilities.

You didn't ask for my opinion about the electrical device that decides when to make which of the dead brain's neurons emit which signals. But when did that ever stop me? In order to function, this device would have to include some very precise software representation of a healthy brain's hardware and its signals. Ignoring what happens with the brain itself, it is my conviction that thought would be occuring in your electrical device. Does that clarify anything you care to see clarified?

Again, my hypothetical doesn't say anything about brain function.

There's no reversal of brain function here, just as there was no reversal of "leg function" in Galvani's experiment.

Wait a minute. The thought is occurring inside the electrical device? Are you sure that's what you meant to say?

Claiming that something "isn't possible" is the usual way that people get out of addressing difficult hypotheticals, so I understand your desire to get out of addressing this one.