Is free-will an illusion?

This, of course, is a type of logical fallacy of appealing to ignorance. If science hasn't solved everything, then an alternative explanation (i.e., free will) must be true. This is utter nonsense. You didn't accept this type of argument when it came to discussing the science of climate change. Why are you being such a hypocrite now?

If anything the partial supression of an intinct for a limited period of time is based on an override made by another instinct about winning debates in tribal warfare...survival of the group and its cultural concepts and memes is at risk. Pure predictable machine behaviour.

Instincts can be resisted, at least by humans but I think also by the smartest animals. Human beings are not exempt from the survival instinct, and yet we can commit suicide. We have an instinctive sexual appetite and yet people can chose to remain celibate. Etc.

Your position is one of denial of our animality. The idea that humans are devoid of instincts is a popular idea in religious and philosophical circles, but not in scientific ones.

That's not what I am saying. Free will is not an alternative explanation to science, in any way shape or form. As I have argued, science cannot exist without human agency (which is really what I mean by free will*). Science is a mix of empiricism and rationalism = a blend of observation and reason. Therefore it IMPLIES that human reason is valuable, important and effective. If human reason is ****, then it follows that science is ****.

What I meant is that the human machine is NOT AN ORDINARY, BANAL machine. It remains fascinating, mysterious and incredibly surprising. We don;t know how it works, and therefore it is a FALLACY to imply, as Fil does: "you are a machine therefore you have no agency."


* Many people here, including me, have argued that "free will" is a vague or contradictory concept. I prefer "agency", or the French phrase "libre arbitre" which translates as "free choice". That's much clearer: the capacity to chose between certain alternatives.

You don't seem to know what a machine is...nor what a function is....not what a limited number of states are, a power set of operations...nor what causal necessity is...
...moreover you project your subjective desires upon neutral analysis of the subject...what was your choice of words ? aaah "It remains fascinating, mysterious and incredibly surprising"....you confuse complexity with MAGIC.

Why, YOU know what a machine is? Remember that the essential nature of things is ultimately unknowable.

You know that I consider machines (a sort of structure) as more than the sum of their parts. I don't share your reductionist view of machines.

Who said devoid? I said human instincts are quite limited and rejected your example of fear of heights as an example of an instinct. Again, as someone who believes in free will, why would you want to argue that humans are programmed to respond instinctually? Also, how meaningful would the concept of instinct be if one just chooses to ignore it? If the instinct of loggerhead turtles is to move in the direction of the brightest light (the open horizon over the ocean) and they just "decided" to pick a different direction to go, what do you think the chances of survival would be? Again, human instincts are very limited. We seem to have evolved such that we need to learn just about everything that we do. If you know of research that says otherwise I'll be happy to look at it.

There's plenty of research on human ethology that says otherwise. Common sense says otherwise too: why in hell would we have less instincts that other species, with whom we share so much both genetically and physically? That doesn't make any sense.

Besides, "human instincts are very limited" means nothing precise. The way I see it, either we do have instincts or we don't. Or how would you calculate the number of instincts we have, their weight, or importance? Instincts seems hard to quantify.

I agree. Compared to what, and in which ways. All animals have instincts for survival. Beyond that, I'm not so sure.

Because there is a distinction between a pile of parts of a car and the mounted car, I don't go on saying and deduce my car has free will.

Just because current man-made machines cannot do X or Y says nothing about what future man-made machines will be able to do, or about what nature-made machines (living organisms) can do. We are self-aware and we can repair ourselves to a degree. Which man-made machine can do that? None. We don't even know what it would take to emulate these capacities in a machine. "Free-will" aka agency could be similar.

Free will entails many things and variables that can't be duplicated by a machine.

Olivier lets not downgrade our recent state of civilized reasonable ability to trade impressions with different povs and go back to past mud fighting...its unproductive, I am sure you agree. I am just telling you one simple thing I don't believe in magic. I don't believe 2+ 2 = 5. I believe in ratio, order, reason, precision, algorithms, functions, outputs. You believe in the ghost in the machine. Its your own frame, great but don't try to rationalize it. The least you can do is admit your pov is not solely based on reason. That done we won't be debating any more. I am not trying to impose on you. I am just asking for self consistency.

My posts are civil and my take perfectly rational. Hey, i'm the one who says human reason means something, that it's not a negligeable epiphenomenon, remember? Your take on human reason is more ambiguous of late, although in the past you have been more supportive.

Brian hasn't taken position on the importance and usefulness of human reason. I encourage him to do so.

My point all along has been that if the mind is not free, or does not exist, then i don't see why we should give credence to human reason. And if humans cannot really reason in the classic sense of the term, then all humans including scientists are mecanical zombies, and all the knowledge and science in this world, including yours, is but the babble of these mecanical zombies...

A 'funny' analogy of scientists and zombies.

My point is precisely that the meaningless babble of zombies is perfection and harmony because the Universe itself has it. Not WE !

...We own nothing, we are nothing, but memories of the future, dropped in the vacuum of yesterday...
We are Les miserables, blind dogs... with echoes not sound, not music...
...dust wind under the bridge at the midnight of time...ghosts without God !

Is this a joke? Please list the scientifically agreed upon human instincts and the source you use for them.



Of course it's imprecise. But since you know all about them...please...what are they and what is the research base in support?

Robert Port's list of human instincts

Fears born and bred: toward a more inclusive theory of fear acquisition, by
Richie Poulton & Ross G. Menzies

The Psychology of Fear and Stress, by Jeffrey Alan Gray, CUP Archive, 1987 (eg p. 22)

Sounds like magic to me.

There is nothing magical in 3 lines of pseudo poetry written in a foreign language in the time frame of thirty seconds to convey an idea.