Is free-will an illusion?

@puzzledperson,

Quote:

It is commonly supposed that every statement has a definite truth value, either true or false. But this only applies to coherent statements, not to gibberish. I furthermore think that there is a disturbingly large class of statements that, while not patently gibberish, are nonetheless incoherent upon acute logical scrutiny. Call them specious: they seem to be talking about something coherently, but close examination reveals contradiction and ill-defined vagueness.

I'm with ya there, homey.

But I'm not sure the fundamental axioms of logic (identity, non-contradiction, and the excluded middle you refer to) actually apply to anything "out there."

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@puzzledperson,

puzzledperson wrote:

We don't have to go to subatomic, but it's ok to since those molecular processes you refer to ultimately derive from them.

Molecular or subatomic, those processes are not thought and not reasoning. Any conclusions reached solely as a result of mindless mechanical processes haven't been reached through reason. Note the modifier "solely". Reason is a different category of action than "mindless mechanical" and confusing the two is to commit a category error.

This seems to suggest a mind-body dualism. Is that what you're describing? A non-physical mind? Sorry if you've explained this already elsewhere. I don't read every post.

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@FBM,

Quote:

This seems to suggest a mind-body dualism. Is that what you're describing? A non-physical mind?

PP can speak for himself. But I will note that he didn't say (although he may mean) what you are suggesting he said. He merely said that mechanistic atomic functions and reasoning are in different "categories." He didn't say that "reason" (or the mind) is "non-physical." He specifically asked you to

Quote:

Note the modifier "solely".

Lot of good that did, eh?

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@Olivier5,

Olivier5 wrote:

The way I see it, either reason is part of this universe, or it's not. If it's part of this universe, it follows that it can cause other things in it, since everything in this universe can influence other things. And if reason can influence things, such as direct our actions for instance, then we got some sort of agency, ie free will.

So in effect, the materialists and epiphenomenalists -- those who think that the mind is a side-show, unimportant to the working of the brain and unable to cause anything -- are the ones who think of the mind (or reason, or consciousness, however you want to call it) as a SPECIAL OUT-OF-THIS-WORLD SUBSTANCE, a substance that bizarrely CANNOT have any effect on the rest of the universe... In contrast with this voodoo thinking, realists such as myself adopt a much more rational POV: reason exists in this universe, and is not detached from it; it can cause things to happen, just like everything else can.

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Minds do reasoning because there is Reason in the world, not the other way around.
Minds work in the world not in a vacuum...
Also minds don't pull themselves out of their own bootstraps...
/Thread.

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@Fil Albuquerque,

Fil Albuquerque wrote:

Minds work in the world not in a vacuum...

Exactly, and hence minds can cause things to happen. We don't know HOW it's done but we do know that it's done all the time. To deny that is to deny the most obvious logic and daily experience.

Quote:

minds don't pull themselves out of their own bootstraps...

Meaning?

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@Olivier5,

Quote:

Exactly, and hence minds can cause things to happen.

There is as much evidence of a mind as there is for a soul. Thinking is not evidence of a mind. Thinking is speaking without using your mouth.

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@Briancrc,

Quote:

Thinking is not evidence of a mind.

We've been there already: there is far greater evidence for minds than there is for any other things, like behaviors or scientists, who may possibly be the result of our mind's imagination...

But regardless, my proof works just as well using the word "thinking" instead of the word "mind"... Semantics stink.

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@Olivier5,

Quote:

there is far greater evidence for minds than there is for any other things, like behaviors or scientists, who may possibly be the result of our mind's imagination...

You ARE living in a fantasy world if you believe this. It may be a fun little philosophical game that you play, but it has ZERO value in figuring out how to create a better life. But please, continue with your games of fantasy to your heart's delight.

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@Briancrc,

Quote:

You ARE living in a fantasy world if you believe this. It may be a fun little philosophical game that you play, but it has ZERO value in figuring out how to create a better life.

How do you know for a fact that scientists exist, Brian, if not because YOUR MIND came to this conclusion based on whatever evidence your MIND gathered?

YOU live in lah-lah land if you think you can deny your own mental life... That's the meaning of the Cogito: the mind cannot deny its own existence; reason cannot reason against reason. You can deny anything BUT the existence of your own mind, 'cause who's doing the denying if your mind does not exist?

As for "creating a better life", that would imply a capacity for deliberate action based on a moral judgement. Something which you think is impossible...

Just another contradiction in your lah-lah land thinking... Oh well.

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@Olivier5,

Quote:

How do you know for a fact that scientists exist

If you want to sit around and contemplate whether physical things exist or if your thoughts are evidence of the existence of things you go right ahead. I think it is a colossal waste of time. But maybe that's your scene.

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@Briancrc,

I know that the physical world exists. I believe what my senses tell me, in general.

But for the same reason, I also know that I exist, and that I have thoughts, and that I can reason somewhat. Do you know that about yourself, Brian, or do you lose a colossal amount of time pretending you don't?

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@Olivier5,

Text does not objectively exist: imagine a tribesman from a newly discovered tribe which has no written form of communication and which has had no contact with the outside world. Hand him a book and see if he recognizes the ink spots as text. You recognize text as such purely because of cultural conditioning. Conversely, it is also easier for someone who is literate to misidentify something as text which is not text.

When you say a "natural" solution to the "mind-body" problem, you don't really mean natural, you mean recognized by current scientific models. By that measure, most of the phenomena in today's technological world would (a la Arthur C. Clarke) have struck scientists like Newton as supernatural. It's possible for the "natural" to admit of different qualities of phenomena. The ancients used to say that everything was made of four elements or "humors". The greatest scientists of the 19th century could not conceive of the possibility of anything beyond a clockwork universe obeying classical laws of mechanics. The whole endeavor of physics was surely over except for the crossing of t's and the dotting of i's.

It's also possible that what is called the physical world only exists in minds, in which case there is no mind-body problem. Even those who believe in the existence of an "objective physical world" should suspect that we have little or no knowledge of it, given that "the world" is (according to science) a fabrication of a particular combination of biological sensors, nervous systems, and brain processing.

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@FBM,

The comment by "layman" on my behalf said it pretty well.

To put it another way, I don't need to advocate a particular "mind-body " model to make the narrow point at issue. Rather than restate my carefully phrased argument (which you quoted) I'll just refer you back to it.

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@Olivier5,

Its difficult to see why the idea of mental phenomena (which sentient beings directly apprehend) as something qualitatively different from brain matter, should be so difficult for anyone to grasp. Thoughts are not atoms. An image in my mind cannot be reflected in any mirror, nor is any brain activity correlated with it that image. A song in my head cannot be recorded by a microphone. A feeling of happiness has no physical form. Lust may be accompanied by physiological changes but lust is a feeling, not an erection or a vaginal secretion.

One of the p-zombies you're exchanging comments with says that thought is just talking without opening your mouth. That's the sort of odd analogy that one might expect from an AI program that has never experienced thought and can only draw a parallel to something visible and concrete. It cannot even postulate non-verbal thought experiences or modes. Very little thought takes the form of unexpressed verbal language, unless something is wrong with you.

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@Olivier5,

We don't really know how anything is done. Even if we could trace all material activity through a perfect theory of physics back to random quantum events that are (despite their "randomness") somehow constrained to obey general statistical distributions, we couldn't say why those events act as they do or how they (or the system they represent) came to exist. And since everything else is explained by reference back to these mysterious and unexplainable processes and objects, nothing is really explained at all. It's simply a case of deferring the shoulder shrug, and of building a grand and rococo edifice on swampland. The same logical problem remains no matter how far back we go, as long as we depend on a physical model.

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@Briancrc,

Briancrc says this is a colossal waste of time. That's why he is here posting multiple comments on it: he's trying to improve the world and wasting his time is the way to do that. Either that or the quantum universe has conspired, from the moment of the Big Bang (but not before) to put him here, at this moment, wasting his time; since after all he has no choice in anything he does and is simply a meat puppet.

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@puzzledperson,

puzzledperson wrote:

The comment by "layman" on my behalf said it pretty well.

To put it another way, I don't need to advocate a particular "mind-body " model to make the narrow point at issue. Rather than restate my carefully phrased argument (which you quoted) I'll just refer you back to it.

I have layman on Ignore. The post of yours that I quoted and some of your other posts leave me puzzled as to what you posit as mind. Epiphenomenalism? If so, weak or strong? If not, then what? Please don't misunderstand this as a challenge; I'm just trying to figure out where you're coming from, so to speak. You mentioned category error. Which categories are you thinking of? I try to be sensitive to - in the sense of avoiding - reification in my own writing and thinking, except as linguistic convention.

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@FBM,

Re category error: categories of logico-linguistic classification. Since neither molecular nor subatomic processes involve reason (e.g., chemical reactions don't think, they occur mechanistically), any process that relies SOLELY on them can't be called "reason" with any sense or consistency.

Reification is fine as poetic metaphor ("she wore my love on her finger") but not so good as literal description.

In answer to your separate, direct question, I tend to view matter as a creation of mind, rather than vice-versa. But I'll admit to being in an altered, impaired state of mind (generally, and not as the result of substance abuse), as well as conditioned by a lifetime of materialism (explicit and otherwise) so I'm easily confused. I find that ways of thinking can have a momentum or inertia as real as that of any material particle.

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@puzzledperson,

Quote:

[I have been] well as conditioned by a lifetime of materialism (explicit and otherwise)...I tend to view matter as a creation of mind.

Well that's an unexpected combination, PP. What's the connection?

1 Reply

Is free-will an illusion?

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