This is a thread to allow discussions about how those lucky enough to have free will make decisions.
As materialism doesn’t explain squat, this thread is a place for explanations from those that presumably have them.
And if they can’t provide them, well, this will be a short thread.
So do phoodoo, mung, WJM et al care to provide your explanations of how decisions are actually made?
Brains have intricate, multiple feedback loops, both positive feedback loops and negative feedback loops, that allow brains to predict what future effects of sensory receptors to expect and modify their predictions based on what information is actually transmitted to the brain from the sensory receptors. They can also compare the information relayed from exteroceptive receptors and interoceptive receptors in order to minimize discrepancies.
None of these things are true of any other physical objects.
I do not insist that this is sufficient to explain consciousness per se, but they do seem to explain the relation between perception, cognition, and action pretty well!
I’m familiar with the thought-experiment from Chalmers’s The Conscious Mind.
However, I don’t think that Chalmer’s argument works. For one thing, Chalmers depends on a highly technical device (two dimensional semantics) for mapping intensions (the meanings of words) across possible worlds. It has to do that in order to get us think about zombies as conceivable, ergo logically possible.
But this doesn’t tell us what we want to know, which is whether or not brains necessarily generate qualia in the actual world. Just because there is some possible world in which they don’t, doesn’t mean that they don’t do precisely that in the actual world.
Put otherwise, Chalmers would be right if materialism were being presented as a necessary truth. There’s an easy way to see why he might have thought this, too: if materialism is a metaphysical view, and metaphysics is about what is necessarily (and not just contingently) true, then materialism would be a necessary truth.
My objection to Chalmers is really quite fundamental: I do not think that metaphysics is about necessary truths and science is about contingent truths. I think that metaphysics is about weaving together the disparate results of the sciences, in a way that makes sense of what the sciences tell us, together with the phenomenological facts of human agency and experience. In one sense that’s what Aristotle thought metaphysics was (not that he used the word, since it didn’t exist in Greek at the time).
What about very complex physical objects like the earth or the universe?
By definition these things are true of these physical objects. Because they contain brains.
Are they conscious? If not why not?
If you can empirically demonstrate that brains generate qualia you will have proved ID.
That is because qualia is what ID is concerned with whether it realizes it or not.
It’s looking for an empirical test to identify the effects of qualia in physical objects.
Needless to say I don’t see that happening any time soon.
That’s fine and dandy but it’s really is beside the point of the thought experiment as I’m using it.
The point of the experment is that there is nothing empirical to differentiate consciousness from non-consciousness.
On that there can be no real argument as far as I can tell.
peace
But my point is not that God would need to know anything at t1, within time. It’s that God can supposedly know, timelessly, facts about the time bound world. If a timeless God can’t know anything about the world we live in, then He can’t know anything but Herself. Could a God like that create a universe so foreign to it?
No offense, but I’m somehow inclined to think that walto’s objection to the Principle of Alternate Possibilities makes more sense. But then again I don’t know shit about this stuff. Got a lot of reading to do.
Not quite: the zombie argument shows that we can conceive of beings who behaviorially identical to us but who lack consciousness.
If that is right, then the relation between behavior and consciousness is not a necessary relation, and hence (if one follows Kripke on identity) consciousness cannot be identical with any third-person observable bodily, cortical, or neocortical structures and functions.
That does not show that there’s nothing empirical to distinguish between consciousness and non-consciousness.
It might be easier to remove God from the equation all together.
Try this thought experiment
Suppose the citizens of a distinct Klingon 1,000 light years away have a telescope that allows them to observe the inhabitants of earth in great detail.
Now suppose that they like to spend their time watching individual folks on earth AKA the Truman show in daily 30 min episodes.
Since they are observing from a position 1,000 years away the folks they are watching right now are living in the medieval period.
From the Klingonian perspective it makes no sense to ask if Beowulf is free to choose to eat grog or gruel in tomorrow’s episode because he has already made that choice.
What will happen will happen nothing whatsoever can change it
However for Beowulf the choice is a live one because what the Klingonian’s know or don’t know makes no difference.
It’s all about your perspective.
I hope that helps
peace
I will grant that but I will argue that the burden of proof is squarely on those who claim that consciousness is empirically detectable.
Like I said before, do that and you prove ID.
It’s just not going to happen
peace
fifthmonarchyman,
In that though experiment, the observers don’t have foreknowledge. They’re simply observing the past
foreknowledge and observing the past are equivalent for a God outside of time
peace
What premise in the syllogism would you reject?
OMagain,
You aren’t the arbitrator of what anyone can talk about on any thread. You asked a dumb question, which has no meaning, because if one believes in a bag of chemicals ( a far-from-equilbrium autocatalytic system became enclosed within a semi-permeable membrane!) then the bag of chemicals ( a far-from-equilbrium autocatalytic system became enclosed within a semi-permeable membrane) can’t decide what is good or bad, it can’t decide what it “wants” to do, it does what it has to do.
Now, OF COURSE materialists want to hide from the bag of chemicals description. Because they want to MAGICALLY leap frog this description and say, well, nothing prevents the chemicals from thinking!
How, why? “Well, Feedback! Emergence! Nature! Autocatalytic systems! Who the fucks knows, we sure don’t, but we still are sure nothing prevents it! That’s why I am an idiotic materialist, because I can think, but it doesn’t mean I HAVE to think. I can just say, see??”
They can do so using ten paragraphs about schools of thought, and magic elixirs, but its still a bag full of chemicals and always will be if you are a materialist. If it pains your ears to hear it, and if you want to call it a strawman caricature, get used to it poor dear materialists.
You can’t change what materialism means. Cry all you want.
Then what DOES show that there is something empirically different between the two, for crying out loud?
keiths:
dazz:
I’m not seeing a conflict between timeless knowledge and libertarian free will. That’s what I was trying to explain above. The conflict occurs only if it’s true at t1 that you will make a certain choice at t2.
If you see a conflict, it might be because you are equating “timelessly true” with “true at all times”. I think those are different.
I think a timeless God can know things about the world. But as far as I can see, timeless knowledge does not clash with libertarian free will in the way that foreknowledge would.
To reject the PAP is to reject libertarian free will. You and I are asking a different question: If we ignore the incoherence of libertarian free will, assuming instead that LFW is coherent and possible, does LFW clash with God’s timeless knowledge of your choices?
I think the answer is no, as explained above, but you seem to disagree.
keiths:
fifth:
Because a) you use the word “revelation” as a substitute for thinking — a “get out of jail free” card, and b) communication is not the only way we get information about the physical world, obviously.
There are multiple other answers, and I just supplied one: “communication”. But again, we get information about the physical world in other ways, including by sensing it. If you’re in water up to your knees in Baton Rouge, you don’t need anyone to tell you that. You can sense it yourself.
keiths:
fifth:
You told us before that it is the soul that does the deciding. Now you seem to have backtracked, and are saying that there is a division of labor between the soul and the body/brain, with the body/brain being responsible for the representation and manipulation of information. If so, which parts of the job are done by the immaterial soul? Be specific.
keiths:
fifth:
Your reasoning is faulty. The immaterial soul is immaterial, obviously, and the body isn’t, which means they are different. They might be coupled, but they are different. If the soul does the deciding, as you claim, then how does it get the body to do its bidding?
petrushka:
You’re indulging your tendency to dismiss things that you don’t understand. That’s a mistake, and it’s the same one IDers make when they dismiss evolution based on their misunderstandings of it.
Take determinism, for example. Along with Alan, you’ve been expressing confused ideas about it throughout the thread. That doesn’t mean that it’s incoherent. It just means that you guys don’t understand it and have trouble reasoning about it.
keiths:
CharlieM:
That doesn’t explain how it is done. Sensory information is physical. How does it get “transduced” into an immaterial form, in which it can be combined with “the correct immaterial concepts”? How can information exist at all in immaterial form?
keiths:
CharlieM:
How does it retain that information in order to think about it, if not in some representational form?
keiths:
Having made the decision, it is already willing. That doesn’t explain how the immaterial will exerts an influence on physical reality, causing your body to do something it would not have otherwise done, had you not made that decision.
How does that work? How does the immaterial soul alter physical reality?
KN,
I disagree. I think the solution is to recognize that the intentional stance and the physical stance are just different descriptions of the same underlying physical reality, and that reasons are a particular kind of cause that is easily represented and understood in terms of the intentional stance.
That might be unacceptable to libertarians, but they’re screwed anyway.
fmm,
That’s great. Any more about what brains don’t do can go on the other thread, as this one is about how you do what you claim brains don’t do. I.E. Make decisions.
For starters I would say that terms like yesterday are nonsensical when describing a timeless God.
peace
I would disagree with all the strength I can muster. Communication is the only way to acquire knowledge period as we have discussed ad nauseam in other threads.
You might think you can get information about the physical world by other means but you have no way to know if that information is real or imaginary with out communication
If you disagree I would ask how you know this?
(this is a rhetorical question as it has already been conclusively demonstrated and you have agreed that you don’t)
peace
I never once mentioned the soul I’m speaking about the mind. And as I said the mind is an irreducibly complex thing in which the brain is a vital component. There is no division of labor the brain is intricately involved in every decision the mind makes.
Again the mind does the deciding not the soul (whatever that is) and the mind is irreducibly connected to the brain in this universe AFAIK.
peace
what empirical evidence could you possibly offer for this claim?
peace
You are going to have to do some better policing of your comrades if you want that to happen, They keep bringing the subject up 😉
peace
What do these words mean: “irreducibly complex” “irreducibly connected”?
Keep reading:
They simply mean that you can’t remove one component with out the entire thing ceasing to function. Every part is necessary to accomplish the task
peace
I will but it’s off to work
stay tuned and I’ll get back to you
peace
I’ll take my thoughts about brains etc. into the other thread and let the immaterialists have their fun here. Good luck explaining how immaterial souls can be responsive to reasons without being responsive to causes!
The fact that all the parts of something are required for that thing to operate doesnakt make either the combination or the complexity ‘irreducible.’ Maybe my washing machine needs every part. So?
See, when you use terms like ‘revelation’ or ‘irreducible’ you suggest–maybe to yourself, but often incorrectly–that something special, maybe something marvelous is happening. You are often simply seduced by fancy-sounding words, I think.
Calling the Redundancy Department of Redundancy…
So in other words your answer is, “I don’t know.” Anyone else want to take a stab at my question?
Robin,
Why should anyone believe that there are materialist properties that can make decisions?
You (and KN) want to skip the hard part about how the hell, and instead just suggest nature can.
Congratulations, you guys have just solved one of the hardest problems in thinking, how can we get consciousness. Your solution? Just say its not a problem!
Why didn’t anyone think of that earlier??
Let’s look at the definitions you keep eliding one more time:
Your definition of “decide” is “to choose between one possibility or another”. I provided a dictionary definition of “choose”:
a) pick out or select (someone or something) as being the best or most appropriate of two or more alternatives.
b) decide on a course of action, typically after rejecting alternatives.
Nothing in those definitions requires consciousness. This is exactly what I mean when I asked for definitions that do not beg the question. You are adding requirements that assume your conclusion.
It’s clear that a physical system consisting of computer hardware and software can both select among alternatives and decide upon a particular course of action among alternatives.
Does this also apply to a river? Water simply flows from a position of higher potential energy to one of lower potential energy. There is no explicit consideration of alternatives as is the case with software.
An interesting question is if the combination of terrain and water could be said to choose a river’s path. Again, I don’t think such a system can be reasonably said to decide on a course of action, but the result of water being in a particular terrain could arguably be viewed as selecting the most appropriate path for a river. The path can even change over time as erosion and other events take place.
This ambiguity does not, of course, change the fact that software systems are able to perform the behaviors of deciding and choosing per the definitions we’ve been using.
By the definition of “decide” that you posted: “to choose between one possibility or another”, brains definitely make decisions. You’re trying to sneak some additional requirements in implicitly. If you don’t like your definition, modify it. Just don’t do so in a way that builds in your assumptions.
That does not follow.
It helps, of course, when you sneak in cognitive terms like ‘consideration’ when talking about what software ‘does.’
Is Phoodoo still dodging ?
You’re right. That’s just an example of wishful thinking on the part of IDists.
Patrick,
Gee Patrick, I am coming to find out you don’t know how a computer works.
You seem to think that just because a computer appears to us from our perspective that a computer is “making a choice”, that this means it actually is. Guess what, its not!
Instead what it does is react to parameters Given to it. If this, then that. If that then this. Nothing more. The computer is told, in computer language, what it MUST do. It doesn’t have a choice, for pete’s sake.
phoodoo,
Fwiw, It’s generally easier to predict what you’ll post at this site than to predict the actions of my computer. Are you sure you’re actually deciding and not ‘reacting to parameters given to you’? How can you be sure?
So how is a human’s decision making any different? Getting your answer to that question is the purpose of this thread.
walto,
Volleyball party!
You said we were leaving God out of it.
I would have predicted you would say something odd to prove Walto wrong.
fifth and phoodoo are falling prey to the fallacy of composition. They cannot grok that a system capable of making complex decisions can be built out of components that do not decide at all.
Transistors and neurons don’t decide, but certain configurations of them can.
Even Neil — a computer guy who should know better — falls prey to this fallacy. In one of his AI threads, he asserted that intelligence requires homeostasis, and that homeostasis can’t be implemented using logic gates.
While logic gates aren’t homeostatic mechanisms, they can certainly be used to implement one.
I take their insistence on talking about complex systems built of physical things to be a complete abandonment of any pretense that they can explain how decisions are actually (in phoodoo world) made.
They can sure tell you how decisions are not made, but it seems we’ve hit on a blind spot as far as their own positions go.
They simply can’t stop talking about a position they think is false! It’s almost like that one time they sat down and thought about their own position and realized the gaping void at the heart of it. Then, having had quite enough of that, they decided to concentrate on letting everybody else know they are doing it wrong.
So, fmm, phoodoo, in this thead computer programs can’t decide. And neither can brains made of chemicals. But apparently minds can.
How are decisions made in phoodoo world?
I’m not interested in the failings of materialism regarding that question. There is already a thread for that. I’m interested in your own thoughts on your own position.
Tell you what. If you cannot or will not describe how decisions are made in phoodoo world why don’t you describe the events that led up to you taking that position? As presumably you have based it on something or other? Or have I got the wrong end of the stick! I literally don’t know. So enlighten me.
How are decisions made in phoodoo world?
phoodoo,
I already know how computers work. I even know several ‘computer language’.
What I don’t know is how decisions work in phoodoo world.
What I do know is that your contemptuous dismissal of certain explanations can only be legitimate if you have a better explanation for said decision making processes.
phoodoo, how are decisions made in your world?
OMagain to the theists:
Yes, this! Honest answers would be quite revealing.
Yes, they are!
I always strive to create considerate software.
Another clue that Mung doesn’t work for Microsoft.
LoL. Last Sunday I tried to download an app from Microsoft. They can’t even get that to work right. Sheesh.