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Free will and determinism
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o_mlly
“Behold, I make all things new.”
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An emerging property is one that science observes but cannot explain its cause. "Life", like "free will", can be described as emergent properties. Both are observed effects for which science has no causal explanation.
This thread is a ridiculous attempt to deny the obvious. A snark reply to a mundane observation is, "He has an outstanding grasp of the obvious!" What does one say to another who clumsily attempts to not only not grasp but rejects the obvious? "So long."
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o_mlly
“Behold, I make all things new.”
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To paraphrase an old joke: A theist asks an atheist for directions. After starting to give directions several times (each one different and more confusing than the former) the atheist stops part way into yet another attempt and finally admits, “You can't get there from here”.
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Merrill
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You are approaching this from an epistemological standpoint, but it goes way beyond that (into ontology).
back up ...
If your claim is that nothing can exist in the mind save what exists in reality (materialist, determinist), then how does something exist in the mind that does not exist in reality? (God)
ChatGPT is a good example: that program is limited to the large data-sets it has available to it. It cannot go beyond those data sets.
If something happens, and the cause is unknown, in a materialist, determinist universe, the cause must be something within that universe. I must find an antecedent cause that is within this universe
I cannot make a decision that something which is directly in front of me does not exist without free-will. I cannot make a decision that something beyond this universe (God) created this universe if my will is shackled in a materialist and determinist way to this universe.
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Fervent
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There is something to propose, because physicalism has to deny mental causation. But it seems readily apparent that mental causation is a reality.
Again, are symbols physical? Because the processing of information is irrelevant to my argument. It's a simple question, are symbols physical?
The only way to justify this statement is by assuming that mental activity is nothing more than a physical process, which is what is at issue between us. But it seems to me wholly unjustifiable, because if it is then the physical must always lead with the mental following behind. But if the starting point is the mental, symbolic content, then the mental portion is what is leading. So unless symbols have some physical characteristic that is capable of triggering the physical response in the brain, it is apparent that the abstract is causally effective. So what is the physical characteristic of symbolic language that triggers the physical response?
Your job, should you wish to accept it, is to tell me how our reasoning becomes involved in justifying our beliefs if the content of our mental states are entirely dependent on prior physical states of our brain? How does chemistry and electricity connect to logical inferences?
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Hans Blaster
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That's not what emergent properties are. Emergent properties are tied to the details of the system they emerge from. Some are better understood than others.
I don't know what you are trying to do with this thread, but I have not denied free will. I just don't know how it arises.
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There is nothing - and I'll repeat that - nothing that I become aware of that doesn't reach whatever part of my brain deals with it that doesn't get there by a physical, electrical or chemical means. Whether you say it out aloud, you write it, you mime it, you tap it out as morse on my hand...I don't care what symbol it is and how you present it, we know the process whereby the brain receives the information.
You say that there's something else that changes physical matter in this process. Tell me where and when we should look for this effect.
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Fervent
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Again, the issue is that the semantic content is causing a reaction in the physical structures. You're not responding to a physical characteristic of the light signals you're receiving, but a mental characteristic in symbolic content. So we see a direct example of mental causation giving rise to physical states, rather than prior physical states moving to mental processes. You deny that reality by somehow twisting the abstract semantic content into a physical event, but there is no physical interaction between you and I that explains such a thing.
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Well, this is going to be easy. Give me some 'semantic content', please.
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As I said, the photons from those pixels hits the cones and rods at the back of my eye and they convert it to an electrical signal which is passed to the visual cortex. From there the processes involving neurology is completely understood. The electrical, physical and chemical actions all operate in sequence.
Where is the matter that is changed by something outside the system?
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Fervent
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Nothing about the photons sequence explains your reaction. It is purely the symbolic content that triggers your response. Unless you think there is some physical characteristic of that light that dictates how the symbol is understood? In what way is a symbol physical?
Symbolic content, not physical characteristics. If I changed any physical characteristic while preserving the symbolic content, the signalling would remain largely unchanged. Your description of the chain of events is missing key details involving the symbols involved and their relation to the electrical signals, as you speak of photons from pixels but if I changed which photons it was in a color change or an arrangement with a different font or size or weight or any physical aspect of those photons without altering the abstract symbolic content the same chain of electric signals would occur.
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You have said that something outside of the known processes changes physical matter. You haven't addressed that in the slightest.
Anything in the universe is symbolic content. Everything I can see represents something. That shape is an apple. This one a cat. This one the moon. When I look at it every single part of the process from seeing it to recognising it to determining any possible actions to actually reacting to it is all known. You can take any part of that sequence and the processes are known.
Where is this something that is outside of the system that we understand down to the molecular level, but about which we are currently unaware that actually changes physical matter?
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Fervent
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Yes, and the obvious omission of the semantic content in your explanation shows exactly what I'm talking about. You gave a description of physical interactions, but in that description there was an obvious missing element.
To an extent, though it is the words that are the symbols not the objects themselves. But representations of physical objects are not themselves physical objects, and in giving a purely physical description of the process involved it is clear that something is missing from your description by way of its mental characteristics. If we do not begin with an assumption of identity, which depends on an assumption of physicalism, then it seems to me that there is no justification for saying symbols are physical objects.
It's the missing element in your sequence, the glaring omission in your chain of events.
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It hasn't been omitted. I've been explaining to you that it's part of the process. Do you really think that the process as to how we recognise objects hasn't been examined to the nth degree? Here's what you are arguing.
B: There's no free will.
F: Yes there is. And I can prove it. What's that on the wall?
B: Do you mean the cat?
F: Hah! Free will exists!
How in the world does recognising a symbol, whether it's an actual cat, you saying the word 'cat', you writing the word 'cat', you posting a drawing or a picture of a cat relate to free will in any case?
I'm a very long way from being a neurologist. But you don't poke around looking at free will for a few years without having to study it in some detail. There is nowhere in the neurological processes whereby something from outside the system acts on the system to change 'physical matter'. Nowhere at all. And this frankly nonsensical claim that symbols aren't physical objects doesn't even relate to the problem of free will in the first place.
I've run with this because, quite honestly, I wanted to see how you could possibly manage to extricate yourself from the hole you have dug. But you just keep digging.
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Fervent
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It's clearly absent from your description of physical interactions.
It's tangential, but more because your case against free will depends on a prior commitment to some flavor of physicalism. The efficacy of semantic content on physical processes raises questions about physicalism, as there is no basis to say that symbols are physical without assuming physicalism in the first place.
Though, you never addressed my main argument against the belief that there is no free will, which is that if that were the case then we could not arrive at the belief that there is no free will through reasoning processes. Instead, our belief in free will or no free will would depend entirely upon prior brain states and the chains of reasoning involved would be irrelevant to the conclusion that we supposedly reached through it.
As soon as you adopt materialism any chance of free will disappears. It's a foregone conclusion, not one that is reached based on an examination of the evidence. But the dependence of our rational faculties on freedom to choose between arguments based purely on their semantic content means if something contradicts it what needs to go is the assumption that undermines our reasoning capabilities not the belief in free will.
Uh huh...you believe that symbols are physical, but somehow I'm the one in a hole.
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'As I said, the photons from those pixels hits the cones and rods at the back of my eye and they convert it to an electrical signal which is passed to the visual cortex.'
It's not absent. It's part of the process.
You could have used something other than a physical object to try to show that it's not part of the physical process. Like 'happiness'. But exactly the same thing happens. Those photons still head off to the back of my eye and electrical charges (and likewise chemical and physical changes) take place and the word is understood for what it means. This is a well known process. There isn't anything outside of it that impacts on that process.
You can keep those goalposts exactly where they've always been. I've been constantly asking you what it is that's outside of the known processes that impacts on it in some way to change physical matter. Your words. Changes physical matter. And you haven't even made an attempt. Because it now turns out that what you have been doing is tangential to the question anyway.
I don't want anything 'tangential'. You've made a statement. You need to back it up.
Even a non physical thing like 'happiness' still has to be made available to me. How are you going to do it without there being a physical transfer of information? Say the word? Sound waves vibrating my ear drum. Type it out or draw a picture or show the actual object? Photons hitting my eye. Wave a dead cat under my nose? Molecules impacting my olfactory sensors.
And in any case, this is apparently 'tangential'. So on that basis we'll skip it. And you can go back to telling me what it is outside of the process that somehow, somewhere, changes physical matter. Apparently we can't detect what it is, but I want to know where we look for the effects it causes. Because, as you know all too well, all effects have a cause.
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Fervent
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Nope, there's clearly something missing in your description since none of that explains the information transfer. Unless there is some physical characteristic of the photons from those pixels you think explains the electrical signal? Otherwise there's an obvious explanatory gap.
And what is it about the photons that causes the electrical signals? What's the physical property?
I've made no shift of goalposts, as we are still talking about symbols leading to electrical signals. So again, what's the physical characteristic that explains it?
And I have, by repeatedly pointing out that there's no natural reason to treat a symbol as something physical. The only way to imagine it's physical is if we assume identity. But if there is an identity then the physical changes must be explainable without reference to the mental characteristics and purely in terms of physical characteristics, which symbols are not.
Physical transfer of information? What physical characteristic contains that information?
Yes, because you've offered no address of my principal objection and instead have focused on superficial elements. Which you seem only to stand on assertions, rather than providing any sort of defense for your position that doesn't simply assume the matter.
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Proteins in the rods and cones absorb the photon and create a membrane potential. So the photons bouncing off your cat cause an electrical charge in the photoreceptor cells. And the process is off and running. There, your post wasn't a complete waste of time. You now know how information gets from your cat to the visual cortex. But hey, this is tangential.
Which you have admitted is tangential to answering the question. So let's get back to it.
What is it outside of the process that we already know that somehow, somewhere, changes physical matter. Apparently we can't detect what it is, but I want to know where we look for the effects it causes.
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