Is free-will an illusion?

He is talking about how empathy works and mirror neurons. basically how you can bypass the subjective barrier about others. How can you bypass solipsism.

QM is magic, from your point of view, but it's perfectly natural from my point of view. Therefore, there is no objective delimitation, no obvious red line separating the natural from the magical. If Einstein was time travelling to the 17th century to teach general relativity, people Back then would say he speaks nonsense magical BS.

You guys operate under the fantasy that we already know the laws of nature, all of them, and thus that we can use them laws of nature to differentiate between a "lawful" explanation and a magical one. That is simply not the case. We don't know what the "laws of nature" are, nor even whether there IS such a thing as a "law of nature".

IOW, your "laws of nature" are a good example of magical thinking....

I also responded to you months ago. You're going around in circles.

I don't know what a "will" is. But I do think that for most human beings, including me, the present always trump any hypothetical future. Therefore, immediate gratification trumps long term considerations, in most people.

In short, many chose to "live the present" rather than invest in the future, because the future remains uncertain. The only way I ever stopped some addiction of mine, or infatuation, was when I was totally fed up with its present consequences.

Nothing relevant to the mind-body problem, therefore.

I have told before and I will remind you again that the Standard model for explaining QM is one out of three or four most of which are Deterministic.
Examples ? String Theory M Theory is deterministic as it postulates all possible states exist in parallel Universes. Also David Bohm Quantum theory is deterministic. A guiding wave conducts the particle in a deterministic predictable model that explains the double slit experiment, and the best of it is that these make sense (specially the Bohm approach) while the Standard model doesn't although I have to admit it has proven very robust in terms of predictive power.

You could do worse than listen to John Searle, a philosopher I tend to agree with more often than not. But in this case, his solution is an illusion. Comparing consciousness with liquidity does not provide an explaination, it's only a vague metaphor. Liquid water does not actually write meaningful sentences like John Searle can do...

If we knew the solution to the mind-body problem, we could fully emulate the human mind in a computer, at least theoretically. We're not there yet. Any attempt to deny the existence of a problem is just foolish.

You don't get the point. Try and understand what I say: THERE EXISTS NO OBJECTIVE LAW OF NATURE THAT WE CAN ALL AGREE UPON AND FOREVER.

Your idea that magic thinking neatly falls on one side and rational thinking falls on the other side, with a big obvious demarcating line between the two of them, is FALSE! That idea is PURE FANTASY.

The gravitational force as thought of by Newton was magic too, in a way, since it postulated an action at a distance. And yet it was accepted by science for a couple of centuries.

Therefore, there is no way we can exclude a particular candidate explanation just because it LOOKS "magic" to our intuition. The right criteria is: Can the theory predict / account for what happens, and can it do so better than any rival theory. String theory looks pretty "magical" to me, I mean totally counter-intuitive... So it must be false according to your very top-down, normative, corseted 19th century positivism.

There is nothing magical in electro magnetism nor in the distortion of the fabric of space time that creates the orbits of the planets. None of these is 19 theories...if being a positivist is looking for logical explanations even if not I concede with linear mechanics or linear geometry then I will take it as a badge of honour Oliv. Also remenber, we are not here to waste energy in gang fighting povs, but to try to pull further from one another and try to produce something.

All you Fil do is repeat your anti-magic mantra, without explaining how one decides which theory is magical and which isn't... A Holly Inquisition trial perhaps?

Newton's theory of gravitation was "magic" because it presupposed an action at a distance, without a medium. Sir Isaac himself is on record saying it was magic thinking, and intuitively unsatisfactory. And yet the entire scientific establishment and the rest of the western world accepted that magic thinking for centuries.

So relax with "magic" already. Nobody is gona burn you at the stake for thinking outside of the box. The Holly Inquisition is history.

The biggest genius as he was, Sir Isaac use to read the bible an spoke of the Devil...Today we have a mechanical account of what Sir Isaac called "force of gravity as action at a distance"...today we know the distortion of space is what creates the orbits and the motion of planets...alternatives looking for a graviton also require a mechanical linkage. The only thing you can appeal to is spooky action at a distance like in entanglement. But even this baffling problem has had some creative innovative potential proposed solutions as for example when one considers that two entangled objects don't have to know what each other is doing by communication but by initial conditions...regarding spins one does the opposite of the other not because it "speaks" to it faster then the speed of light but because they share a set of initial conditions that set them in rational synchronized correlation. Such that if I X spin up the correlated entangled object Y spins down in sinc.

You're a genius at looking at the finger instead of the stars.

We DON'T KNOW for sure that the distortion of space is what creates the orbits and the motion of planets. We THINK so. And mind you, not so long ago the very idea that space could be anyething else than purely euclidian was believed to be magic thinking... :-) And now it is not...

My point remains: we have no objective, sure-fire way to differentiate "magic thinking" from "non-magic thinking", because we don't know for sure what the laws of nature are, or even whether they exist objectively. "Magic thinking" is NOT an objective category. Rather, it's a subjective opinion.

Argument from ignorance is not an argument. I am not positing X is necessarily true but that X in so far has had logical explanations which you deny. If X is true or not is besides the point. I do game with what we have not with what we can have in the future.
I don't want to be a genius wanting to be a genius is as stupid as stupidity can be. I want to sort problems and understand the world within my own limits and computing capacity.

But let me tell you what I think is the actual cause of the debate.

I think your genotype like the vast majority of mankind has a "magical" gene because evolution favoured it while I am defective and don't have one. Naturally it follows your genotype be it through Religion magic or secular magic story telling will always look at the world as a place of wonder meaning autonomy of Consciousness and the likes...You guys pull hope on the social ecosystem while my genotype group in vast minority is bound to take off the pink glasses time to time in order we all don't get out in a balloon of hot air. We both serve distinct functions in the social ecosystem and your world vision will be forever irreconcilable with mine no matter how much we both try to get to agreement. One cannot ask a dog to fly nor a bird to bark...you are what you are I am what I am and we both wasting energy because our world comprehension is not functionality directed at the same goal, again, in the context of social usefulness.

You're thick.

If you have an objective criteria to spot magic thinking from non-magic thinking, pray tell what it is. Give it to us, you grandiose non-magic mutant!

https://youtu.be/PauL2KXagrg

I think the readers paying attention to the debate need no further enlightening on whom is making arguments from ignorance or whom is thick. You were the one refuting mechanics and speaking of "mind" and "magical will" without accounting for previous world conditioning, no mechanics to be seen no where, not me. Anyway words speak themselves.

Moreover I challenge you to explain what mind is where it comes from and how it interacts with matter one way direction magically with no good reason to abide by exterior conditions.

Okay, so you have no magic bullet criteria to spot magic thinking. I guessed as much...


And I told you I didn't know. That's the essence of the mind-body problem, and it remains a problem. But just because we don't know the answers to these questions does not imply that the mind does not exist. THAT would be argument from ignorance.

That's right...the consequences of one's actions makes it more likely that the person does that something he or she is doing, and despite being able to say that the something being done is bad for him or her in the long run...or saying, "I really want to quit this, but can't seem to find the will." It's a real contradiction in explanation to say that you have agency to act as you please, but can't stop scratching a piece of cardboard despite wanting to.

When the consequences of your actions are unpleasant or unproductive is when you end up saying, "I'm fed up". It always leads back to past consequences.

Obviously.
You don't even have to postulate what are the lawful reasons just that there are lawful reasons ratios, causes. Olivier is arguing from ignorance that lawful reasons might be something else then reason itself....I don't know where to start with him...what possible future lawful reasons don't abide by cause and consequence bottom to top or top to bottom. Ratios are rational throughout the whole function not just half way through. I bet he doesn't have a clue what I am talking about.

I never denied the epiphenomena of mind, that's the first. Second what I deny is that such mind is not the result of mechanical interaction within the substance that composes our brain which is the same that composes our body and the world and that therefore ABIDES by the SAME set of laws whatever those are. Don't need to mention the laws nor to posit how they work. Either you stick with patterns, ratios, cause and consequence as perfect correlation or you argue from magic. Like free willing from "out there" away from matter and away from brain as we know it that is subject fully to world conditioning genetic and environmental.

A negative has no meaning in this case, because it's a done deal.