Is free-will an illusion?

Oh yeah sure now you have proven you're great at maths to...The total is bigger the sum of its parts, emergence, n all that jazz....let me tell you something Sir, I can to an extent indulge in top down speculations about the fundamentals of nature where time is not a fundamental feature but never doing it against basic Maths. I dislike inelegant models period. I don't do magic.

It's a very élégant model... The same principle applies all the way through down to the last turtle: physical /chemical level <--> biochemistry/life <--> real-time information management <--> social life <--> consciousness/thoughts/science. Where "<-->" means "gives rise to, through a process of emergence". Each level is more complex than the level below, it builds upon it, and hence instrumentalizes somewhat (from life onward) the level below itself as much as it is produced by it.

What's important is this: there's no reason to believe that all cause-to-effect relationships in the entire universe are always bottom-up. Some can very well be top down and others bottom up. It would in fact be a non-necessary hypothesis, a defect in your grand theory of everything, if the arrows were not both ways <--> but one way -->. Why one way?

More like 380 degrees.

Err 360? :-)

I never took time seriously so for me its irrelevant whether you go top down or bottom up so long you don't state 2+2=5 in any way. I am well aware Jupiter is basically the same stuff the Sun is and yet it doesn't burn because it lacks critical mass to make fusion. That is a good example of feasible tangible "emergence" as you people like to put it, but there is nothing magical in there to state the sum is bigger then its parts. A good model top down bottom up will provide you the same results no matter how you crank up the movie backwards or forwards. Consciousness cannot invent itself to existence should suffice for you to get the point. Either it exists unconscious of it timelessly existing as thing, as substrata, and in that sense we would have to translate the coinage "consciousness" in its basic proto form for something more tangible which is communication between systems, virtual machines, exchange and transformation of packs of information, and drop the almost quasi mystical view of being aware as something special without a full scale of grey in between which leads to the same bottom line result which is no distinct from a realist view or completely give away a logical explanation of reality. After all what is the alternative here Consciousness making up the world in which it invents itself to existence before existing ? Free will would resemble some nonsense like that, that means, forcefully avoid the cranking of mechanics and making decisions up out of no good reason. The fact of the matter is that actions require motives reasons causes and explanations. Not the other way around, having reasons and causes and explanations coming out of thin air willing conscious for no good motive other then being there, like aware of whatever.
Either things are linked to each other and thus they mechanically follow from each other without magic alternative or if there is magic alternative, there is no true cause, justification, motive, logic, pattern, to make sense of what event follows what other event.

Nothing magical here. Structures are always more than just a pile of elemental parts. Is a car or a clock magical? They are structures which can do much more than a pile of auto parts or cogs with no structure. There's nothing magical in the existence of structures, or is there?

Trying to take mechanical examples here, so you can understand them...


What you are talking about here is information, and the various ways in which living organisms manage information. That' s your substrata.

Consciousness is what happens when an information management system
reaches a critical point called reflexivity and becomes able to see itself working, to second guess itself, to see itself manage information in real time and critique or encourage itself.

A system of information self aware or not cannot do otherwise given the parameters Olly just that. There is no way you magically unchain from the sequence of causes that lead to a given will. Seeing it top down or bottom up wont change that.

In my error, I can see it may have some credibility. LOL

You have to add a little ingredient: Hazard, chance.

The thing is, this universal machine of ours, matter-life-thought, it cannot work if the structures are too stiff. There needs to be some "room to play", some wiggle room in the structures, some oil in the machine, or they can't move, change and evolve. Without the errors in transcription that genetic mutations are, there's no evolution possible for instance. Life is based on the principle of trial and error. It IS trial and error. The mistakes, the wiggle room they create is essential for the system to work. Therefore hazard, chance, events without sufficient cause happen. One cause can have several effects, it also depends on chance, for an admitedly small part but it's cumulative. The effects of chance add up over time. Small mutations add up to big changes.

All you need to accept the idea that there is an element of chance in life, radically, essentially, experiencially there is. Down to the atoms, it's part of this world. It cannot be reduced to any law, or predicted. It's the element of chaos that remained once God rested. He had made all the structures of this world and wisely He left some wiggle room in them so they could work: a little bit of chaos.

I understand your pov but sorry I don't believe in chance...chance is about lack of control in dealing with extreme complexity in predictions, chance is what scientists use when they don't know what they are talking about, chance is magic talk. True random chance can't exist without turning the logic unfolding of the world in magic causation, in pure chaos...either there is a fine mechanic atomic clocking at work or there is mickey mouse at work. This is not the kind of thing you can get a middle term. Moreover chance does not offer free will to the agent either. Chance makes you not will but wills in your place. Free willing curiously enough both requires you to get free from cause n effect while simultaneously invokes back the agent to cause the action with the same mechanics it tries to get rid off...its inconsistent. No good explanation comes out of an inconsistent theory.

...oh and before you come with the classic interpretation of the quantum physics problem the Copenhagen interpretation and bring chance and indeterminism along, let me remind you most physicists admit the model must be incomplete as it makes no sense whatsoever...something is missing in that puzzle ! I for one am outspoken enough to boldly say I don't buy it period.

...yes on this regard my world view is not fashionable right now, but that is a good thing. I like autonomy of thought. Without it I am just one more parrot.

Well, i suppose Qehog is a very independent thinker then. He thinks the moon his artificial, that NASA never went there, and that number Pi is a massonic conspiracy...

How are you doing with Pi by the way? You okay there or do you think the math is "incomplete" because it makes no sense to you?

Yes Pi is annoying but undeniable. I just hope the bastard has an end no matter how big.

Not everything in this world may fit our preconcieved opinion of how it should be...

Agreed. But in the end of the day before you go to bed you have to decide upon a world view and stick with a gut filling...I rather not abandon Logic. The point is some of us take this seriously, be it irrational numbers not being convertible to natural numbers, be it PI being endlessly irrational or having a distant final pattern yet to be discovered, be it infinity and its paradoxes...again some of us do care while others just fly by n don't really give it to much thought.
One thing you can be sure about me, I wont hide the dust under the carpet to manipulate a philosophical debate. I admit all of these are troublesome problems requiring great effort and attention if we ever will be able to solve them. Bottom line you have your world view that believes these things are compatible while I am forcefully on the other side of the fence...I honestly can't see any possible reconciliation no mater how hard I try.

Relying on one's guts, assuming you mean intuition, can also mean to close oneself inside a prison of naïve preconceptions, insultate oneself from the surprises and wonders of this world, deny the facts when they don't agree with us.

Logical conclusion.

I prefer "reflexive" to "self aware". Self awareness is just one of the consequences of reflexivity, which is something structural. It has to be built in the hardware. Clever software alone won't make it happen, however large the computing power available.

Imagine two computer chips wired together in such a way that each chip, while able to do it's own computations, can "see" what the other is computing, in real time and all time. Something like what these two are up to:



Or something like this:



What that could end up doing is build a computing "space" that looks like this:



Reflexive.

Even if so that god damned system is still chemically reacting all the way to environment conditions and its own parameters...honestly Oliv how can it do otherwise ? I don't really can see how...maybe I am dumber then dumb. I just can picture the workings of a "free" system no matter how much I try...
Nonetheless I do want to make clear I do accept the trivial common sense usage of free or constrained in everyday life. Its useful.

It depends what you want it to be free from. The mind cannot be free from itself. Eg if you have a very strong reason to believe in say God or determinism, freeing yourself from such a belief is almost impossible, because your belief is constitutive of your mental identity. It is part of who you are. Part of your mental structure.

But the mind can be somewhat free from the brain, in the sense that it can drive it. It can write on the brain like you write on a keyboard. It's not a one way arrow. It's like this: Brain <--> Mind. In other words, the mind can be a cause, it can analyse a problem and chose a course of action and make it happen. In that sense the mind is free, because it can make choices and impose them on the body. Mind over matter.

Let's not even go into the practical consequences of our respective philosophies. You'd loose big time. Your ideas are suitable for a dictatorship. You think human beings are no better than rocks, and therefore they can be crushed without moral issue, whereas in my system any living being is superior to rocks, and sentient beings superior to non-sentient ones. My system is compatible with a respect for human life; yours isn't.