Is free-will an illusion?

Yep. Why oh why would a solipsist get on a message board in the first place, and why would he get pissed when supposedly imaginary people don't agree with him?

Some people...

Hey Frank. You're welcome to speculate too.

I've been trying to get into the political aspect of the issue, but the freedom deniers won't touch it with a ten foot pole... Here's the question:

Do you think it'd be a good idea to live in a country/world which would NOT consider freedom a human right? If free will is an illusion, why should states be bothered with maintaining such an illusion for their citizens, at great cost?

Contrary to what some seem to suggest recognising ppl's lack of classical freedom would free us from the barbaric chacles of justicialism instead of Justice, and retribution instead of proper up bringing and formal education.
Hard determinism educates, reforms, and reintegrates. Moreover, it doesn't have a reason to mess up with the funtional individual's personal judgment.

Understanding or not understanding replaces sin guilt as individual merit and self praising. In sum empowering competence is the modus operandi of any fully developed mature society. There is no fault in that.

You don't even have the courage to reply to a post directly? LOL.

A society of cowards afraid of their own responsibility, scared of its own self, terrorized by their own freedom; that's what you illusionists have in store. You would be dangerous for the human race, if you were serious. But you are just jokers and pretenders.

I certainly would not consider it a good idea to live in a country or world which would NOT consider freedom a human right.

Even if everything, free-will included, were an illusion, I'd want to have the illusion that I am making my choices as free from outside forces as possible.

So, in doubt, you'd rather protect freedom than demean or debase it... Good for you! Others, when in doubt, would rather chip away at freedom. Why? I don't know. I don't really get the point of self-castration.

ultimately, everything is neither real nor illusory. it is only a belief that requires things to be defined as one or the other. if you believe in the ultimate reality of your own consciousness, then you may believe it has free will. if you believe in the ultimate reality of the material universe, then you may believe in determinism. both are only beliefs. but people cling to them because without them, their identity dies. and people are afraid of that.

Let's just cut to the chase.

layman wrote: "Suppose I take a piece of paper and write today's date on it. I then write words which ask for help and explain that I'm stranded on a small island located at x latitude and z longitude. Assume it's true."

Now, why don't you tell me what you mean by "information" with respect to this, other than the message: that is, quite apart from the writing or its intended meaning. (I don't need to distinguish intended meaning from imputed meaning because you said that this message in a bottle need never be found).

Clearly this is writing (to the writer) and has a meaning (to the writer). That only supports my point, that text exists only insofar as someone recognizes it as such. You haven't shown that ink on paper is INTRINSICALLY text or a message or something mysterious that you claim to distinguish from both.

As for explaining to you why the geneticist made a category error in claiming that genes contain information, until you explain what you mean by information in this context, such an attempt is contraindicated.

I will note, simply to clarify my own position, that DNA does not contain "instructions" any more than dynamite contains instructions for the rocks it explodes. DNA is a molecule which is processed by other molecules according to the laws of chemistry (which are a subset of electromagnetic phenomena).

Use of the term information in this context is part of a modern tendency to confuse nonsentient processes with communication, whether in the realm of biochemistry or electronics. It results from the failure to understand the nature of conceptual isomorphism and of the central role of observers in defining such isomorphisms. This failure is a category error because it conflates different logical categories.

I didn't intend anything esoteric, complicated, or specialized by "information;" just the everyday sense of the word.

Let me just say "facts" instead. It is a fact that I'm stranded, for example. That is a fact about the world. It remains unchanged whether I try to communicate that fact to anyone else or not. It is not a "message." My location in the world is also 'information" in this sense, etc.

This was my point about "information" having an existence independent from any "thing." I was also trying to make a second point. See next post.

My other point was that "information" is capable of being transmitted. I understood you to say it couldn't be. You seemed to think that only the medium conveying the information could be "transmitted." I disagree.



I don't really agree with this either, but, as I said, I wasn't trying to address this point at all. I wasn't talking about what is, or is not, "text." That's a point you can quibble about, but definitions, per se, are not of much importance to me.

I'll come back the to "gene" issue later, after we get through this part.

We can stipulate, per your hypothetical, that it's a fact you're stranded. But that isn't intrinsic in your writing. Nor is your writing intrinsically text. It's text by virtue of an arbitrary social convention, and then only insofar as there is someone to perceive it as such. If you wrote it in your own invented alphabet, in your own invented language, it would be text to you, but to someone else it wouldn't necessarily.

Can information be communicated? Assuming that two minds exist and that they are able to communicate, whether in real time or with a delay, and as long as the recipient exists, even if the sender has ceased existence in the interval, the trivial and obvious answer is yes.

The point I have been making is that neither ink on paper nor electric pulses in a cable nor radio waves emitted by an antenna nor variations in atmospheric amplitude ("sound waves") are intrinsically informational. The first has no information for the illiterate and isolated savage who isn't even familiar with the concept of writing. Sound waves mean nothing to the deaf. Aliens sending messages (to whomever) might use forms of modulation we wouldn't recognize or would mistake for natural phenomena.

There is no information IN these things. The information exists only in the mind of the perceiver(s).

Now, if you're stipulating the existence of a physical world without the existence of anyone capable of perceiving it, then in the context of your hypothetical, the world nevertheless exists and its existence is a fact, or would be to anyone who became cognizant of it.

If that's your only point, then I agree with you 100%



I agree in one sense, and disagree in another. It's true, the information is not IN any thing (this is the point the biologist was making).

On the other hand, I would completely disagree that "information exists only in the mind of the perceiver(s)." My disagreement is for reasons already stated.

Yeah, I'm a so-called "realist," not a solipsist.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_realism

I wrote: "DNA is a molecule which is processed by other molecules according to the laws of chemistry..."

I'd like to rephrase that:

DNA is a molecule which interacts with other molecules according to the laws of chemistry and (more generally) physics.

"Processed by" implies a processor and something being processed, and also suggests something equivalent to cognition, whereas DNA and other cellular molecules are equal under the laws of chemistry and neither contain nor process information.

Many of the expressions which began as anthropocentric figures of speech, have taken on a monstrous life of their own in the age of "intelligent machines" (itself a malapropism). Under such circumstances I find it useful to apply language more accurately.

To elaborate and clarify: Information is NOT the thing itself. Hence what we call a "gene" is not a molecule, or any other "physical thing." What we call a "gene" is information. As an analogy, a "gene" has been compared to a blueprint, as used in the construction industry. It is a set of instructions/specifications which are "written on" the paper, but which are not the paper itself.

layman: "It's true, the information is not IN any thing (this is the point the biologist was making)."

No, the molecular biologist was claiming that genes contain information. They don't.

layman: "... philosophical realism is the belief that some aspect of ... reality is ontologically independent of our conceptual schemes, perceptions, linguistic practices, beliefs, etc."

Quite true. But reality is not the same as information about reality. Information exists only for minds. Atoms are not information. Chemical processes are not information. This remains true even from the perspective of "philosophical realism".

No, see my post above. Genes don't "contain" information. They ARE information according to the biologist.



So you say. Not every definition of, and/or understanding of, "information" is as narrow as yours is.

layman wrote: "...what we call a "gene" is not a molecule, or any other "physical thing." What we call a "gene" is information. As an analogy, a "gene" has been compared to a blueprint, as used in the construction industry. It is a set of instructions/specifications which are "written on" the paper, but which are not the paper itself."

This is terribly confused. If a gene is not a thing, then where is it? If a gene were a concept, it would exist only in a mind. In fact, a gene is "a segment of DNA (on a specific site on a chromosome) that is responsible for the physical and inheritable characteristics or phenotype of an organism".

http://www.biology-online.org/dictionary/Gene

How can we have a coherent discussion about what geneticists say if you don't even know this?

I wasn't citing a "dictionary definition" of gene (and I haven't even looked at your cite, yet). I was quoting a PARTICULAR biologist (whose name I've forgotten now) who was making a point which he thought was often overlooked (by many biologists, as well as others).



This is exactly what it is NOT, according to the biologist I'm referring to.

I don't see why you're so "confused" about this. The biologist in question is making the very same point you're trying to make, as I understand you.

So far as I can recall, you weren't quoting a geneticist in any comment I saw and replied to, you were simply alluding to and paraphrasing an unnamed one. Given what you wrote about genes, you no doubt misunderstood and are now misrepresenting him. Either that or he's a loon. Why don't you post a verbatim quote by a modern biologist who denies that genes are molecules or things while simultaneously asserting that genes contain information? Be sure to include a hyperlink or at least a full citation to a published work.