The Holy Desert Raraku! I'm with you!

Our genes are the most powerful determiners of our personality, behavior and life outcomes. They typically account for 50-70% of the variation. — Chisholm

Can you explain. The variation of what? Between what? I agree that DNA plays three biggest role. But I don't know any specifics.

Truth Seeker didn't ask for an argument, and I didn't make one. Truth Seeker asked if wish we never existed, and I said No. Yeah, I elaborated for a few sentences. But, I mean, who gives one-word answers on The Philosophy Forum??

As far as arguments go, I know enough about the topic to know you don't argue or reason your way out of what Truth Seeker is going through. I have the deepest sympathy.

Now that hurt!

My wish is that all the people that wished they never existed would be granted their wish. Just so I could stop hearing about it. — Mikie

Aaaawwww. You poor thing. Ask mommy for a kiss to make it better.

If you have a cure, please let me know. — Truth Seeker

Ah, if I had a cure, I would be a gajillionaire, eh? And, with your decades of suffering, presumably having tried everything imaginable, and me not being at all educated or trained in these matters, I wouldn't dare even suggest anything.

But I can't help but think it means something that you would love to be cured and happy. I imagine many don't feel that way. Is that because you have glimpsed happiness, and want more? Or because you assume it's better than what you've been living with? If the former, then I guess that means there are possibilities.

I wish I could help.

Yes, but I didn't know if there were others on this forum who also wished they never existed. It turns out, there are a few. The main reason given by my fellow vegans for wishing for non-existence is the abundance of suffering on Earth which they find very distressing. We vegans seem to be more sensitive - perhaps that's why we go vegan when more than 99% of humans currently alive are not vegan. — Truth Seeker

That could be. So maybe you're asking because you're trying to find correlations, maybe even causes?

I'll stop beating around the bush. I thought maybe you ask in different places because you don't wish you never existed as much as you wish you didn't wish you never existed, and you're hoping, eventually, someone will say something that clicks with you, and makes you wish it less. IOW, the reason you have not committed suicide is you don't want to be non-existent. You want to be happy, and you're looking for ways to make that happen.

That's an interesting correlation.

Anyway, so you did, indeed, already know that there was someone else on Earth who wished they never existed. Any other particular motivation for asking again here?

I assumed that, having been going through what you've been going through for as long as you've been going through it, you surely knew the answer to that. I wondered if there was a reason beyond that.

IIRC, Hesse wrote in Steppenwolf that the character gained a measure of comfort by deciding on a date to commit suicide, because that gavr him a date his suffering would end. So not as much "I will feel peace" as "I will no longer feel pain."

Serious question. Not at all sarcastic, or intended in any negative way. Why did you make the OP?

Who cares? A series of zeros has no impact upon me. — Tom Storm

Again, Truth Seeker asked a question, and I answered. In all honesty, having an impact upon you hadn't entered my mind.

Indeed. Soon enough, after this extremely brief period of existence, we will all not exist for eternity.

There are some of us who think the world is a wonderful place and others who think it is a place of endless misery or at best indifference. None of us will ever convince people who disagree with us our way of seeing things makes more sense. — T Clark

You are correct. But Truth Seeker asked, and that's my answer.

No. Being a consciousness of human intelligence (more or less) is the most extraordinary thing in the universe. In 13,500,000,000 years, in the universe of indescribable size, there have been an estimated 108,000,000,000 of us, and possibly nothing similar anywhere else. Being able to think and feel as we do is a rare thing, and a joyous thing.

Right or wrong, this is my reasoning:

1. A causally closed system either evolves towards the future deterministically, or it is in some part random. So that's the difference between determinism and indeterminism - indeterminism has some randomness.

2. Thus any time someone expresses an idea that's supposedly "incompatible with determinism", that's the same thing as saying "this idea requires randomness"

3. When libertarians say free will is incompatible with determinism, I hear "free will requires randomness"

4. I do not believe any coherent concept of free will requires randomness (and that's independent of whether or not I think randomness actually exists), and that's for one simple reason: if something is random, it's uncontrolled. If random stuff is happening in your brain or in your mind or in your agency, you don't control that any more than you control a fully determined brain / mind / agency (and it could be argued that the randomness gives you explicitly less control)

5. Therefore I believe that the libertarian concept of free will is incorrect (and again, that's independent of whether or not I think randomness actually exists). At this point I can either reframe free will to be more coherent according to my understand, or reject it altogether

6. I DID reject it altogether for many years. Perhaps you think that's a more coherent position, and perhaps it is.

7. Some years ago, something flipped, I don't recall what or why, but I came to accept the idea of a compatibilist emergent decision making process. Such a process doesn't rely on randomness (again, regardless of whether randomness actually exists). Through much abstract contemplation, most of which I can't put into words, that ended up with me thinking that some flavour of compatibilism is the right way to think about free will. — flannel jesus

Good explanation of things. I don't disagree with anything significant. But I still don't understand why you say you are a compatibilist if you are agnostic regarding determinism. I also don't see the freedom in your free will, although there doesn't seem to be any commonly accepted definition of free will, so that doesn't really matter.

One analogy is, if you are in a lumberyard, and you build a house, your house is not going to be made out of stone.

Another analogy is, if you use the sword-making methods of Masamune, you won't end up with Excaliber.

The general idea being, a product cannot reflect materials and methods that were not used during its production.

Nothing produced in this universe can reflect natural laws other than the natural laws of this universe. How could it be otherwise? How could an intelligence, produced in and by a reality where 1 + 1 = 2, seeing that principle reflected everywhere, think that 1 + 1 = 3? Not, as you said, in a healthy brain.

Or, from the other direction, does 1 + 1 = 3, and the universe produced intelligences that built mathematical systems around the wrong answer?

The a priori modes by which one cognizes depends on, as the name suggests, how their cognition is pre-structured and not the natural laws which govern those pre-structures: they relate to each other, but aren’t the same. — Bob Ross

I don't know if I'm understanding you, because I see something very different.

As you say, the natural laws govern the pre-structures. If the natural laws are different, the pre-structures are different, so the modes of cognition are different. If the natural laws are not such that 1 + 1 = 2, then they will not lead to pre-structures, then rational principles of logic and cognition, that reflect/suggest/embody/whatever 1 + 1 = 2, and 1 + 1 = 2 will never be determined.


It all depends on the underlying natural laws. A healthy brain will not facilitate thinking powers that contradict the natural laws from which the brain grew, and of which the brain is composed.

my idea of free will is not incompatible with the possibility that the universe is fully deterministic and they everything is causally inevitable. I do not believe I've wavered on that for a moment at any time in this conversation. — flannel jesus

I don't think you've wavered. The problem is that we do not understand what you're saying. As though you are saying, "My idea of circles is not incompatible with the possibility that they are squares." If you are trying to explain how the obvious problem with that is resolved, we are all unable to understand your explanation.

However, I think you explained it in your responses to me on page 1:

I guess part of it is, it's not freedom from, it's freedom to. At any given moment, you have the freedom to do whatever range of things, and which one you actually do isn't just random nonsense, the one you do is determined by your desires and wants and, in general, the decision making machine that you are at that point.

There's no need to be free from causality for that.

And in some moments, you're not free to do a lot of things. If you're currently leg-disabled, you're not free to run, but you're free to do other things. — flannel jesus

Freedom to, not freedom from. I think our ideas of free will are very different. Which is fine. We just can't discuss it the way we are. Kind of like asking which you prefer, chocolate ice cream or The Beatles. It's different conversations.

SEP says:
"Compatibilism is the thesis that free will is compatible with determinism."

if you are a compatibilist, what two (or more) things do you find to be compatible, if determinism is not one of them?

What does it mean to "in reality have a choice between the two" though? — flannel jesus

I always use the avalanche examples. A rock rolling down a mountain side in an avalanche is approaching a tree. It has choices. It might roll to the left of the tree. It might smack right into the tree and stop. And it might roll to the right of the tree. But it doesn't, in reality, have a choice. All of the physical events are going to make it do one particular thing, and they're is no way it can do anything else. If we are watching it, we have no possibility of calculating all of the interactions that are taking place in order to know which way it's going to go before it gets there. We will be surprised when we see what finally happens.

When you have a choice of vanilla ice cream or chocolate ice cream, do you really have a choice? Or are all of the interactions between brain structures, particles, electrochemical signals, and whatever else, which we have no possibility of calculating,determining which choice you will make as surely as all the physical interactions on the mountain determine which way the rock will roll?

↪Patterner I guess part of it is, it's not freedom from, it's freedom to. At any given moment, you have the freedom to do whatever range of things, and which one you actually do isn't just random nonsense, the one you do is determined by your desires and wants and, in general, the decision making machine that you are at that point.

There's no need to be free from causality for that. — flannel jesus

That's a great answer. Thank you. It's good to have any understanding of your position. I was thinking of starting a thread like this, and editing the first post with a brief summary of the position of the whoever posted. Easier than digging through a thread's pages, hoping to find the idea someone told us about.

I believe that I, as a decision making machine, am most likely fully and completely implemented by my physical makeup. Furthermore, I also believe that even if I wasn't, it wouldn't really matter, because whatever else I was composed of would still have to be some kind of process-oriented "thing" evolving into the future based on past states and new inputs. Physical or not doesn't really matter. — flannel jesus

I understand what you mean, and wouldn't have any leg to stand on if I wanted to argue. If it's not determined, and also not random, what is it?


The beginning of my hair-brained thinking is this... I believe we have free will. I believe the thing it is free from is physicalism. That is, the physical properties of matter, the laws of physics, and the forces. Physicalism is not responsible for the pyramids; the NYC skyline; language; poetry; the internet; Bach's and Beethoven's music; discussions, in RL or here, about things like free will and consciousness; religion; The Lord of the Rings; on and on and on.

Nothing about our physical sciences explains the existence of any of thisr things. All of them came about because of the meanings our consciousness gives things, and the intentions it has. We wanted things to be a certain way in the future, so we caused that future to come about. We used physicalism to accomplish our intended future, because physicalism is the setting. Those things would never have come to exist without our consciousness, with only the laws of physics and forces acting on particles.

E.g., when I determine that '1 + 1 = 2' it does not seem to be dependent on the underlying natural laws which facilitated my ability to determine it; but, rather, is governed by rational principles of logic and cognition which have nothing to do with those aforesaid natural laws. So long as my brain is healthy enough to facilitate it, my thinking powers will be able to reason in this way. — Bob Ross

Do you think the rational principles of logic and cognition would be the same in a reality that had different underlying natural laws?

Excellent post. Thank you.

I still don't understand where the freedom you believe in is found, or how it can exist. I'll reread. But I like much of what you said. I'll be responding with my own thoughts, some of which are in line with yours a, and shine of which are not.

The title of the thread says you have a problem with libertarian free will. And, in this thread, you said you believe in free will, you directed me to the Compatibility entry of SEP, and compatibility is being discussed everywhere in the thread. Is it really inappropriate to ask what kind of free will you believe in? Afaict, there are many different views on it, and I'm trying to see if I can wrap my head around them.

I don't even think that solves anything personally. Like, so what, grant them spirits and souls - it's still either the case that a particular decision is a deterministic output of the full state of everything (everything including this soul realm), OR it's in some part random.

People think souls get past the determinist/random dichotomy, I definitely don't see it. — flannel jesus

I agree. But I don't understand where freedom is introduced. Or perhaps I don't understand, as it says in the quote of the OP, "in what sense are they free." I am reading the SEP entry on Compatibilism. The first thing I see:

...an agent’s ability to do what she wishes in the absence of impediments that would otherwise stand in her way. — SEP

Is that what you mean? I am, say, free to pick up my coffee mug, assuming nothing prevents me from doing so? Is that free will?

Accordingly, every mind requires a minimum of two thinking elements:
•​A sensor that responds to its environment
•​A doer that acts upon its environment — Ogas and Gaddam

They talk about the amoeba, which has the required elements.

Obviously, these definitions of mind and thinking are as basic as can be. But it's where it all starts.

Can a neuron be said to have a mind, to think, by these definitions?
— Patterner

I don't see why not.

The sensor aspect of thought so defined: the neuron via its dendrites senses in its environment of fellow neurons their axonal firings (axons of other neurons to which the dendrites of the particular neuron are connected via synapses) and responds to its environment of fellow neurons by firing its own axon so as to stimulate other neurons via their own dendrites.

The doer aspect of thought so defined: the neuron's growth of dendrites and axon (which is requisite for neural plasticity) occurs with the, at least apparent, purpose of finding, or else creating, new synaptic connections via which to be stimulated and stimulate - this being a neuron's doing in which the neuron acts upon its environment in novel ways.

To me, it seems to fit the definitions of mind offered just fine. — javra

I have a tough time seeing it your way. I think an autonomous entity has - is - a mind. Archaea, bacteria, and amoeba live on their own. Neurons do not. I think neurons are part of a mind; part of the chain connecting the sensor and doer. In the archaea, being single celled, that chain is made of molecules. We couldn't (at least I couldn't) say any of the molecules are minds. And I think the neurons in a hydra are more complex links in the hydra's chain, rather than each being a mind within the mind of the hydra.

However, Ogas and Gaddam seem to agree with you:

There are sensor neurons and doer neurons, which play the same roles as sensors and doers in molecule minds. Each neuron is composed of molecular thinking elements, including molecular doers (which release neurotransmitters into a synapse, for instance) and molecular sensors (which detect the voltage on the neuron membrane, for instance). Functionally, every neuron is a self-contained molecule mind. — Ogas and Gaddam

The italics are theirs, and the phrase is a link to a quote from The Computational Brain, by Patricia Churchland and Terrence Sejnowski:

Research on the properties of neurons shows that they are much more complex processing devices than previously imagined. For example, dendrites of neurons are themselves highly specialized, and some parts can probably act as independent processing units. — Churchland and Sejnowski

I think my difficulty lies in the fact that I haven't been at any of this for very long. I always took mind and consciousness to be pretty much the same thing. Intellectuality, I see a difference. But my feeling that they are the same still intrudes at times. I'm working on it. :grin:

What is a mind? What does a mind do? This is from Journey of the Mind: How Thinking Emerged from Chaos, by Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam:

A mind is a physical system that converts sensations into action. A mind takes in a set of inputs from its environment and transforms them into a set of environment-impacting outputs that, crucially, influence the welfare of its body. This process of changing inputs into outputs—of changing sensation into useful behavior—is thinking, the defining activity of a mind.

Accordingly, every mind requires a minimum of two thinking elements:
•​A sensor that responds to its environment
•​A doer that acts upon its environment — Ogas and Gaddam

They talk about the amoeba, which has the required elements.

Obviously, these definitions of mind and thinking are as basic as can be. But it's where it all starts.

Can a neuron be said to have a mind, to think, by these definitions?

Or do you say a neuron has a mind because of some other definition?

So Roombas are the mental equals of humans? The only thing separating us is emotion?

How about wording it this way:
A Roomba wouldn't work if it didn't realize it has options.
— Patterner
I'm fine with that.

You didn't answer the question asked "What fundamentally do you do that a Roomba doesn't?" when you imply that a Roomba doesn't realize options. — noAxioms

I did not. I was waiting to see if we were thinking of things the same way.

The difference is I am aware that I have options. The Roomba goes one way or the other at the command of it's programming, never aware of how the decision was made; that a decision was made; or even that there are options. It has no concept of options. It does not think about the choice it made two minutes ago, and wonder it if might have been better to have gone the other way. And it certainly doesn't regret any choice it ever made.

Working memory is the memory of the conscious mind which is temporary. — MoK

Right. I'm thinking this specific thing is less about working memory than what the ability to recognize numbers of randomly arranged objects is called. No?

Strikes that. What do you mean by working memory? I'm thinking someone could glance at, say, a max of 10 randomly arranged items, and immediately know there are 10, without counting. Someone else might only be able to do that with up to 5 items.

Makes sense.

We can indeed perceive a set of distinct objects as falling under the concept of a number without there being the need to engage in a sequential counting procedure. Direct pattern recognition plays a role in our recognising pairs, trios, quadruples, quintuples of objects, etc., just like we recognise numbers of dots on the faces of a die without counting them each time. We perceive them as distinctive Gestalten. — Pierre-Normand

I would think there's a limit to this. We might recognize the number of dots on a die because of the specific arrangements that we've seen so many times. Would we do as well with five or six randomly arranged objects? Or ten or fifteen?

Might it not be the case that my legs kick for some independent, strictly neurological reason, which then causes me to dream about kicking, in the same way that a full bladder causes me to dream about urination? — J

I suspect not, for two reasons.

1) Most people don't kick in their sleep, yet they kick in their dreams. So the sleeping kick can't be the cause of the dreaming kick in most instances. We don't usually punch, walk, or drive in our sleep either, yet we do those things in our dreams.

2) I've occasionally kicked in my sleep. I remember waking up in some pain because I kicked the wall, while dreaming about kicking something. My sleep kick could not have caused my dream kick, because kicking the wall woke me up instantly. It's the order of events. I did not sleep kick the wall, remain asleep and dream kick, then wake up.

But, unlike the Roomba, I realize I have options.
— Patterner
A Roomba wouldn't work if it didn't realize options. — noAxioms

How about wording it this way:
A Roomba wouldn't work if it didn't realize it has options.


I'm afraid you've lost me, regarding the puppet.

It seems to me you are talking about the Hard Problem of Consciousness. Photons hit retina; signals go to the brain; pattern recognition shows that there are two possible paths; stored information of past encounters with similar patterns are triggered; on and on and on. But, unlike the Roomba, I realize I have options.

I could certainly have misunderstood what you are saying.

In what way are you free, if only in a trivial way? I would think a decision making machine just crunches numbers. Or, rather, the neurological impulses, which all came about due to previous impulses, all guided by upbringing, physiology, interactions with others, etc., interact with one another until a final arrangement (in regards to the books, although that becomes part of the next group of impulses that interact when future choices are made) is reached. Just as the arrangement of everything at the bottom of a mountain after an avalanche is the ends result of many interactions. (And that arrangement becomes imput for future events, such as erosion and the presence of animals.) I don't understand what freedom exists.

↪Patterner I am a decision making machine. I'm free, perhaps in a trivial way, to do (or try to do) the things I want to. The things I, as a decision making machine, decide to. — flannel jesus

In the Book vs. Water scenario, which action is a thing you want and are free to do, and which is the result of the machinery? I don't suspect you mean book is one and water is the other. Perhaps you are free to choose to get a book, but the machinery decides which book you will pick? Or the other way around?

You should definitely read the Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy article on compatibilism. No doubt my concept of compatibilism is not universal among compatibilists. — flannel jesus

Yes, I've started that. Thank you.

Cool. Can you tell me what kind of free will you have (pardon the pun) in mind? I understand (more or less?) the determinism and randomness, but not the free will.

↪T Clark I'm a compatibilist, — flannel jesus

(From another thread.). I had never heard the term compatibilism before coming to this site, and can't say that I have much of a handle on it. You say these things;

The reasoning in the linked article is why I believe libertarian free will doesn't make sense — flannel jesus

I'm actually inclined to think it's basically tautologically true that, for any given evolution of a closed system from one state into another state, either that evolution is deterministic or it involves some randomness. — flannel jesus

Is it random?
— Patterner

In my view, yeah, that's really the alternative to determinism. If we have a system evolving over time, it seems to me that any given change in that evolution must either be determined or be at least in part random. — flannel jesus

It doesn't sounds like you think there is free will, which, from what I'm reading, is a part of compatibilism.

Or is it that you think there is free will, but not libertarian free will?

Humans do what they do, make the choices they do, according to both these views because of factors outside of the agent’s control, e.g., upbringing, physiology, and interactions with others. On both views, if time were rolled back any amount and allowed to play forward again, the exact same events would occur.

If this is true, isn't everything outside of the agent's control? If we have all the thoughts we think, and do all the things we do, because of all those things, what is in our control? And what is the nature of that control?

The reasoning in the linked article is why I believe libertarian free will doesn't make sense - even if we live in an indeterministic world. — flannel jesus

If the choice of book or water, or even which book, is not determined, and it's is not the result of free will (whatever that is), then how does the one happen instead of the other? Is it random?