Is free-will an illusion?

Now wouldn't the concept of "subjectivity" imply the existence of "subjects", ie persons, ie selves? Ergo, it's another dubious concept for you, and another word that you cannot use without contradicting yourself.

For a guy who values logic and math, you seem to have no respect for establishing a proper axiomatique. But it's also that can't pull it off. It's impossible to account for our daily experience without the concept of "persons" or "selves".

No Olly no... Admitting an integrated experience and using the coinage subjective in that specific sense says nothing about believing in subjects as first order reality.
Your argument boils down to stating that virtual machines cant exist if they are not hardware...guess what they can be software and therefore 2 order reality.
When I say I don't believe in subjects I am not obviously referring to the experience of being a subject with a brain...I am referring that I cannot pinpoint whether such brain is of first order reality or 2 order reality like a virtual machine is...keep up lad !

You obviously didn't check the link for the science festival debate I posted a couple of posts ago or you would by now be embarassed and shut up.
Not suprised.

You should read actual philosophers rather than rely of pulp youtube vids for your education. Your understanding of the conplexity of these matters would gain from a more serious and less superficial engagement.


You could start with Spinoza's Ethics, as it's a determinist world view AND the reasonning is based on an explicit set of axioms or premises, from which other stuff get derived as in a mathematical proof. So it's also interesting methodologically speaking, over and beyond the content. Your way of thinking is not coherent enough, not structured enough in my view. Spinoza can help you there.

Hahaha ! Spinoza is one of my fav Philosophers fool.
You are a funny guy, you the one who misses the point every reader by now got and then you accuse sophisticated thinking of not being elaborate and structured enough...

...ya know what, nod n smile ! Later cowboy !

And why is the question of the brain as a material vs virtual machine important? It's a machine that supports or generates the mind, and all what matters is HOW it does so. This matters in order to cure psychological ailments, for instance. The virtual vs material question is as irrelevant as the "brain in a vat" problem. It's purely speculative.

I disagree with him mightilly but unlike you, he can put forth a logically coherent argument. But i suspect you never read him. You must have seen some trashy vid by some anglosaxon casuist, and that was enough to convince you.

Because when you say "brain" you don't have a freaking clue on what you are talking about until you get to first order reality if its even the case you ever (we) get there...its not news. For all that we know we might be living in a freaking simulated reality and there is no way to tell. One thing is certain, the I is an emergent effect of integrated experience. This is science, neurology speaking not handwavium trash talk. Did you know that if you split the left side of the brain from the right there will be two "I's" popping up ? Normally the left becomes dominant over the right one...

More, you are an arrogant ignoramus when you dismiss leading scientists, philosophers, physicists, neurologists, etc, because they r in youtube...it goes great lengths to show how old school dinosaur you are.

I don't dismiss scientists or philosophers. I dismiss your posting of videos without saying anything about what they say, and often without understanding what they say... Eg I am listening to your latest vid now, and there's nothing in there that implies that consciousness or the self does not exist or is an illusion or anything like that. What they say is: "we don't understand consciousness". Is it what you gathered from it? Probably not...

Pay attention. The I is an emergent property out of integrated ezperience in any area right or left side of the neo cortex Its not situated in any specific point in the brain. More then one can emerge. Cousciousness through specific integrated pattern experiencing generates I's not the other way around. THIS IS FREAKING VERY OLD NEWS.

That's pretty obvious. Of course the "I" emerges from consciousness. And of course more than one "person" actually emerges, in fact it happens all the time, in all of us. It's the committee mind. You have something a little less banal to say?

Its not hard to get what follows the so called I Descartes elevated to the centre of existence is an emergent phenomena coming out from a bag of tricks on the brain. A step further the material brain itself is not guaranteed as not being yet another emergent phenomena given the example of virtual machines...we now have a very hard time making the classic division from hardware n software...hence why classic materialism is gone out of the door in recent years.

You reply just shows how deeply dumb you are... Hahaha.
You can't figure what emergent entails do ya ?

Old boring and sterile thinking again.

1) Classic materialism has been gone for a loooong time, since the demise of positivism in the end 19th-early 20th century. Keep it up.

2) The fact that something (object A) emerges from something else (object B), does not mean that object A is less important than object B, or somewhat disminished.

Life as a phenomenum emerges from inanimated matter. And yet life is much more interesting and complex and fascinating than inanimated matter. Only a positivist -- a reductionist, a narrow-minded materialist, see point 1 above -- would think like you do, that physics are more important than biology because the latter emerged from the former... Modern scientists see it the other way round: what's more complex is always more interesting than what's more simple, and the emerging stuff cannot be reduced to the stuff it emerged from. It has a life of its own, rules of its own, goals of its own.

A rat wants to live, although none of the atoms that it's temporarilly made of care about living. You can't understand the rat by studying its atoms, not anymore than you can understand Shakespeare by studying how paper and ink are manufactured.

Likewise, the fact that the mind emerges from the brain says nothing about the mind being an illusion, or being unimportant. In fact, our brain consumes something like one fifth of our energy intake, while it only represent 2% of our total weight. It supposedly does so, so that it can make the mind work... Thereofore our mind is important enough, biologically, that we allocate a totally disproportionate share of our resources to it.

You're an idiot.

Sure and chemistry commands physics and cars drive us to work. Seriously my point is made, later Olly busy busy here !

So here we have a very nice debate on the matter that is easy to grasp and brings to the table all the bells and whistles of the problem as we understand it today !

When you run away like this, it's usually because you lost the argument.

It's not about "command", it's about building upon, using the lower level as building blocks for something radically more complex, radically NEW. A new structure.

Ever heard "the whole is more than the sum of its parts"? Do you know how old that piece of wisdom is? Hint: It was first said long before youtube.

Man you are completely and utterly pathetic...
You have been asked all the questions regarding Free Will in its modern context and provided Zilch for answer.
You never explained your pov, never said what kind of free will you believe in never fitted yourself in any schemata that categorizes the currents of thought on the matter. You have assumed yourself as a dualist because you can't even understand mechanics and communication at its basics, this in a time in which almost no one is a dualist be it in science or philosophy etc...I barely can start scratching the numerous forms of stupidity sprung from your mouth. Nothing, there is nothing tangible or intelligible that can be discussed with you seriously. As expected you are a water balloon with a bad temper.

Bad temper, hu?

You cannot understand a 23 century old saying by Aristotle. Why would you think you can understand my philosophy of the mind? It ALL about the whole being more than the sum of its parts. Eg yes consciousness must be the confluence of various semi autonomous streams of thought -- or thinking machines or "brain tricks" or whatever ELEMENTS you want to postulate to the mind. And yet, the whole of a mind is more than the sum of its part. It has new structural features and abilities as compared to the elementary "brain tricks" it's composed of. Just like say a car is more than just a pile of spare parts.