40
   

Is free-will an illusion?

 
 
Fil Albuquerque
 
  1  
Reply Wed 21 Oct, 2015 08:05 pm
@layman,
I don't know the weather for the next week its hatder... Laughing
0 Replies
 
Fil Albuquerque
 
  1  
Reply Wed 21 Oct, 2015 08:09 pm
@layman,
layman wrote:

Quote:
this is paramount to understand that Realitty is only the ensemble, the order of all that it is present....no past no future...only existing !!!


Fess up, Fil. Ya done stole that line from Parmenides, dincha?
Thought about it when I was 14...hadn't read Parmenides yet...from there to now I've only been refinning details...
layman
 
  1  
Reply Wed 21 Oct, 2015 08:23 pm
@Fil Albuquerque,
Quote:
Thought about it when I was 14


That's kinda odd. When I was 14, I only thought about (be)coming, eh?
neologist
 
  1  
Reply Wed 21 Oct, 2015 10:42 pm
@layman,
Just exactly which POV are you pulling for?
Forget I said that.
layman
 
  2  
Reply Wed 21 Oct, 2015 11:30 pm
@neologist,
Quote:
Just exactly which POV are you pulling for?


Neo, I'm just counting down the days before SCIENCE absolutely proves there is no free will. It'll be any day now, I figure. As soon as that happens, I'm gunna sue the piss out off all the States who put me in jail for things I wasn't even responsible for, ya know?

I'm gunna get millions, I tellya!
neologist
 
  1  
Reply Wed 21 Oct, 2015 11:48 pm
@layman,
You know better than to quit your day job, right?
0 Replies
 
Olivier5
 
  1  
Reply Thu 22 Oct, 2015 12:17 am
@FBM,
Well, you and I apparently have a different understanding of science. I would be curious to see what theoretical constraints should apply to successful verbal or symbolic representation and communication in order for it to qualify as scientific evidence...

Note that science itself relies on successful symbolic representation and communication to work. Without some sort of rational agency, science cannot exist. Is that anectotal?

Quote:
It appears that you feel more intensely about this than I. You seem to have a preferred outcome to defend. I'm trying to approach it without such a bias.

There's no such thing as an unbiased approach, by definition. Me think you are getting a bit too emotional about this...

Quote:
From here on out, I'm just going to scan the thread from time to time to see if anyone brings some controlled, peer-reviewed experimental data

Fair enough.
0 Replies
 
Olivier5
 
  1  
Reply Thu 22 Oct, 2015 12:43 am
@Briancrc,
Quote:
There are two broad focusses of many of the scientific disciplines. The focusses may be "basic" or "applied." Basic research may seek to identify principles that function relative to some phenomenon; applied research (at least in behavioral science) is geared to solving issues of importance for people by using the principles learned in basic research. My description here is drawing a greater distinction than may actually occur in basic and applied sciences, but I think is a fair contrast.

So what is the behaviorist interpretation of complex verbal communication? Like a scientific article, complete with phrases, graphs and mathematic formulas, can be seen as the result of a human behavior, right? Do you know how to explain such a complex communication behavior using behaviorist models?
Olivier5
 
  1  
Reply Thu 22 Oct, 2015 02:44 am
@layman,
layman wrote:

Quote:
the awareness of a thought always come after the thought, because awareness is a form of perception, always post factum.


in Libet's experiment, ... The announced intention ALWAYS preceded the action.

Yes of course. The point of his and similar experiments is to try and predict the outcome of a decision by scanning the brain, before the subject becomes aware of the decision.

Quote:
Again, subsequent experiments have shown that the so-called "readiness potential" measured by Libet does NOT indicate the time at which a decision is made. It is presumed to indicate that the brain is "paying attention" and prepared to perform on command.

Yes. As always the devil is in the details. Eg how to interpret the MRI or electroencephalogram results; how to generaluse the findings to any real-life situation, etc. I tend to agree that there's a lot of jumping to hasty conclusions in neuroscience, and in these "anti-free-will" experiments in particular.
0 Replies
 
Briancrc
 
  1  
Reply Thu 22 Oct, 2015 03:25 am
@Olivier5,
Quote:
So what is the behaviorist interpretation of complex verbal communication? Do you know how to explain such a complex communication behavior using behaviorist models?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verbal_Behavior#Research_and_theory
Quote:
Skinner has argued that his account of verbal behavior might have a strong evolutionary parallel. In Skinner's essay, Selection by Consequences he argued that operant conditioning was a part of a three-level process involving genetic evolution, cultural evolution and operant conditioning. All three processes, he argued, were examples of parallel processes of selection by consequences. David L. Hull, Rodney E. Langman and Sigrid S. Glenn have developed this parallel in detail. This topic continues to be a focus for behavior analysts. Behaviour analysists have been working on developing ideas based on Verbal Behaviour for fifty years, and despite this, experience difficulty explaining generative verbal behaviour. Note: However, research has shown generative outcomes through stimulus equivalence and tests for response generalization

Quote:
Most importantly, however, the results of this research indicate that behavior analytic procedures can be combined to produce behavior that has often been considered beyond the scope of behavioral principles (Chomsky, 1959). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2779919/


Quote:
Like a scientific article, complete with phrases, graphs and mathematic formulas, can be seen as the result of a human behavior, right?


The text composed for a scientific article is the result of human behavior if that's what you're talking about here.
Olivier5
 
  1  
Reply Thu 22 Oct, 2015 03:41 am
@Briancrc,
Long story short:

Quote:
Behaviour analysists have been working on developing ideas based on Verbal Behaviour for fifty years, and despite this, experience difficulty explaining generative verbal behaviour... the results of this research indicate that behavior analytic procedures can be combined to produce behavior that has often been considered beyond the scope of behavioral principles (Chomsky, 1959).


And yes, "the text composed for a scientific article is the result of human behavior". That's exactly my point. The consequence is that behaviorism should be requested to account for its own emergence as a "useful" or "true" theory. In fact, any theory of the human mind MUST (in order to be internally coherent) account for itself, for how it could have emerged in a human brain and still be a "true" or at least "useful" theory.

And that's a very high standard, which behaviorism and hard-core materialism have failed to pass so far...
Fil Albuquerque
 
  1  
Reply Thu 22 Oct, 2015 04:00 am
@layman,
Heraclitos reminds me of the natural idiocy of Lawerence M Krauss...lost cases have no remedy...
I suppose just like you some street wiser like Krauss would retort Einstein concept of spacetime was a steal to Parmenides poem...
Its not my fault there is very little novelty to speak about since the Greeks...most scientists which bottom line are for the most part uneducated barbarians are just not aware of it...
0 Replies
 
Briancrc
 
  2  
Reply Thu 22 Oct, 2015 04:31 am
@Olivier5,
Quote:
And that's a very high standard, which behaviorism and hard-core materialism have failed to pass so far...

Well, the scientific community and the data are in disagreement with your statement
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/journals/309/
Olivier5
 
  1  
Reply Thu 22 Oct, 2015 04:37 am
@Briancrc,
In fact, your own sources, in your own post, indicated that behaviorism has so far been unable to account for complex verbal communication... Therefore it cannot account for itself. QED
Briancrc
 
  2  
Reply Thu 22 Oct, 2015 09:57 am
@Olivier5,
The source I cited did not say that (read again), and a criticism noted on a Wikipedia page is not a scholarly account of the contributions to the field. The National Academies of Sciences and the U.S. Surgeon General have issued position statements in support of the scientific accounts of behavior analysis based on the quality of the decades of research.

Regardless, discrepancies in science, or arguments about what the data say are not evidence in favor of nonphysical constructs. You have no evidence that people can transcend their bodies and the laws of nature; just your belief that it happens based on how you have been taught to think about the issue.
Olivier5
 
  -1  
Reply Thu 22 Oct, 2015 10:27 am
@Briancrc,
Briancrc wrote:

The source I cited did not say that (read again), and a criticism noted on a Wikipedia page is not a scholarly account of the contributions to the field. The National Academies of Sciences and the U.S. Surgeon General have issued position statements in support of the scientific accounts of behavior analysis based on the quality of the decades of research.

I never said their research was bad, just that this research cannot account for itself, for its own existence, since it can't explain complex verbal communication, and since any scientific article is a form of complex verbal communication...

Quote:
Regardless, discrepancies in science, or arguments about what the data say are not evidence in favor of nonphysical constructs. You have no evidence that people can transcend their bodies and the laws of nature; just your belief that it happens based on how you have been taught to think about the issue.

You mistook me for a god believer? I'm scientific in outlook, through and through and I don't believe in gods or anything supernatural. But science does not equal determinism or materialism; it's just an approach that combines observations and reason to make sense of the world. And i think you can't explain much without accepting the glaringly obvious fact that minds do exist and that they have agency.

In fact, science is a direct result of the humanist belief in the primacy of reason over superstition. Without a belief in reason (and hence without a belief in minds and in agency) there can be no science...
0 Replies
 
Olivier5
 
  1  
Reply Thu 22 Oct, 2015 02:37 pm
@Olivier5,
Quote:
In real life, as in labs, complex instructions are given and correctly understood and followed all the time. .... This is SCIENTIFIC, replicable and reliable evidence that symbolic language can motivate ('cause') actions/behaviors. This fact needs to be accounted for, just as much as any experiment by Libet. (I'll come back to them)


So let's talk about neuroscience a bit:

Quote:
Relevant findings include the pioneering study by Benjamin Libet and its subsequent redesigns; these studies were able to detect activity related to a decision to move, and the activity appears to begin briefly before people become conscious of it.[4] Other studies try to predict activity before overt action occurs.[5] Taken together, these various findings show that at least some actions - like moving a finger - are initiated unconsciously at first, and enter consciousness afterward. [6]

In many senses the field remains highly controversial and there is no consensus among researchers about the significance of findings, their meaning, or what conclusions may be drawn. It has been suggested that consciousness mostly serves to cancel certain actions initiated by the unconscious,[7] so its role in decision making is experimentally investigated. Some thinkers, like Daniel Dennett or Alfred Mele, say it is important to explain that "free will" means many different things; among these versions of free will some are dualistic, some not. But a variety of conceptions of "free will" that matter to people are compatible with the evidence from neuroscience.[8][9][10][11]


https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_of_free_will
Fil Albuquerque
 
  2  
Reply Thu 22 Oct, 2015 03:11 pm
@Olivier5,
Daniel Dennet is a compatiblist soft determinist that says that you cannot do otherwise but that whatever you do is still a choice...
...as I see it is word salad from a cunning old fox.
Still quite different from your "Frenchy" bullshit...because ya know you don't get mechanics...
On a better note I am glad you actually have start doing a tid bit of research instead of talking crap while avoid tackling the core of the matter.
Lets see how far you go from there.
FBM
 
  1  
Reply Thu 22 Oct, 2015 07:17 pm
@Olivier5,
Pointing to a lack of consensus is a far cry from presenting experimental data. We already knew it was controversial.
Olivier5
 
  1  
Reply Thu 22 Oct, 2015 11:22 pm
@Fil Albuquerque,
Compatibilist determinists are the only ones who can account for our daily experience. The others, like you, are just superstitious dunces...

Is fear of modern science a Portuguese trait?
 

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