How would you be able to notice an epiphenomenon?

That just seems like a silly question. How do you notice the experience of seeing a red apple? You grant that experiences exist right?

Calling something an experience (or epiphenomena) presumes you noticed it. What does it even mean to have an experience (or epiphenomena) and not notice it?

How do you notice the experience of seeing a red apple? — khaled

That's not my question.

I asked: if an epiphenomenon existed out there, how would we know of it? How does one notices an epiphenomenon, if by definition it cannot have any effect on anything?

if an epiphenomenon existed out there, how would we know of it? — Olivier5

Yup. Because it is meaningless to speak of epiphenomena that you do know know of. Just as meaningless as experiences that you don’t notice.

The point is: if our thoughts were epiphenomena, we would have no way of noticing them, by definition of what an epiphenomenon is supposed to be: some stuff that has no effect on anything.

we would have no way of noticing them, by definition of what an epiphenomenon is supposed to be: some stuff that has no effect on anything. — Olivier5

How does that follow? Where is the contradiction in noticing something that has no effect?

Where is the contradiction in noticing something that has no effect? — khaled

If some stuff has not effect on anything, it cannot be sensed, because we could not notice any perturbation in the world that we could trace to that stuff. When you see an apple, the apple is having an effect on you. If the apple did not affect light at all, it would be transparent and you could not see it.

When it comes to investigating the existence of something yes, it must make a difference for us to detect it. But our own thoughts are clearly apparent to us from the outset. They are not something we are trying to find. "Sensing" your own thoughts implies that it is possible to have a thought that is not sensed. That makes no sense.

Your thoughts aren't apparent to me though. Precisely because they make no physical difference. If they did, I would be able to measure them. Yet, I can conceive of you doing all the actions you're doing right now without them. It's the whole point behind solipsism.

Is the way you detect your thoughts the difference they make? What about thoughts that you do not act on? Ones that seemingly make no difference?

If some stuff has not effect on anything, it cannot be sensed — Olivier5

"Hammering a nail whilst distracted caused the pain in my thumb"

"The hammer hitting my soft tissue caused the pain in my thumb"

"Some collection of carbon and iron atoms exerted a pressure on nociception cells which caused the pain in my thumb"

So do you now have three pains because something cannot be sensed without it having an effect. You sensed the event, the object, the physics - three things. But you didn't have three effects.

you didn't have three effects. — Isaac

Indeed, just three narratives of the same effect.

But our own thoughts are clearly apparent to us from the outset — khaled

And therefore they must have some effect on something, if only our self. To be able to consider a thought, i need to be able to perceive it, to hold it in some sort of short-term memory accessible to my consciousness.

I appreciate this discussion!

To be able to consider a thought, i need to be able to perceive it — Olivier5

Give me an example of a thought you don't perceive.

You can perceive a thought by definition.

to hold it in some sort of short-term memory accessible to my consciousness. — Olivier5

I would flip that. You don't hold the thought in memory. The holding in memory (and whatever else the brain does) produces the thought.

And therefore they must have some effect on something — Olivier5

Non sequitor.

Give me an example of a thought you don't perceive. — khaled

Yours.

You can perceive a thought by definition. — khaled

There may be unconscious thoughts, if you believe Freud. But the interesting point is that for a thought to be perceivable, you need some mechanism. It doesn't happen by magic I think. Therefore our conscious thoughts must have an effect on something, a percievable echo, a way to get 'heard' by our conscious self. Therefore they cannot be epiphenomena. Otherwise you would have no way of knowing what you think.

Not necessarily. The causal explanation could include the causality of the mental over the neuronal. The relationship between the mind and the body is a two way street, as always. If we discover how the brain creates this 'virtual mental space' that the mind seems to be, we might also discover that the deliberations and decisions made within that mental space are needed, indispensable for the organism, not optional. Not frivolous, not an epiphenomenon, but something useful: the capacity for an animal to consider multiple variables at once, what they mean for the animal's survival chances, and on this basis decide whether to fight or to flee, whether to mate or not with that other animal, where to go to drink, where to go to feed. A piloting system. — Olivier5

I don't have any argument with any of that, in fact I find it intuitively congenial; but I just don't see how it could ever be definitively empirically demonstrated is all.

It would make no sense for the brain to generate such a virtual mental space, if that space was not the locus for some vitally important mechanisms. — Olivier5

So, it would seem, but some things may be simply fortunate accidents. The other possibility is that there is more going on than we can possibly imagine, that our ways of conceiving and imagining evolution, the mind, consciousness and so on are clunky, inadequate and that our inevitable fate is to "see through a glass, darkly", and most particularly when we seek to practice analysis.

The next question would be, how does this dualism manifest. Does it cause irregular patterns, such as distribution biases in QM. — simeonz

You're misunderstanding; I'm not positing dualism.

you appear to suggest that our freedom stems from the conventional possible fluctuations in the chemical processes in our brain due to QM uncertainty. — simeonz

No, I'm not suggesting that at all. All I have to say about indeterminsim is that it would seem to be necessary to allow for the possibility of freedom. If every single event were predetermined by antecedent events, then we could never have done otherwise than we have done, and freedom would be an illusion. That's all I'm saying.

I meant that the deity is considered free (even if trivially), without it itself having uncertainty. If the deity can be free and certain, why shouldn't people be credited with freedom in the same way. In fact, if someone is a theist, they should consider the freedom of the deity granted to them as part of being. If the deity is free, then the creation is on the whole a choice, then everything in it is the manifestation of a choice, and carries this choice in their embodiment. In any case, you propose that determinism is a matter of perspective, which appears to me to equate non-determinism and lack of knowledge. — simeonz

I don't have any argument with the idea that freedom may be "from eternity" as you suggest. But I don't think it's possible to go very far, analytically speaking, with that thought, which is fine; I don't think it is possible to go very far in thinking about freedom at all, just as is the case with truth. I think freedom and truth and beauty and goodness are not anaylyzable; so the right language to use in speaking about them is the ambiguous language of poetry.

And no, I'm not suggesting that we only appear to be free due to our lack of knowledge, as Spinoza did.

There may be unconscious thoughts, if you believe Freud. But the interesting point is that for a thought to be perceivable, you need some mechanism. It doesn't happen by magic I think. Therefore our conscious thoughts must have an effect on something, a percievable echo, a way to get 'heard' by our conscious self. Therefore they cannot be epiphenomena. Otherwise you would have no way of knowing what you think. — Olivier5

:up: I agree. The idea that something we are aware of, such as being conscious, could be an epiphenomenon is a contradiction in terms. Our being aware of it means that it cannot be an epiphenonemon, which is defined as a phenomenon having no effect, because it has the effect of making us aware of it.

I don't have any argument with any of that, in fact I find it intuitively congenial; but I just don't see how it could ever be definitively empirically demonstrated is all. — Janus

Among the real neuroscientists, I find Damasio very inspiring.
https://www.ted.com/talks/antonio_damasio_the_quest_to_understand_consciousness/transcript?language=en#t-9208

The other possibility is that there is more going on than we can possibly imagine, that our ways of conceiving and imagining evolution, the mind, consciousness and so on are clunky, inadequate and that our inevitable fate is to "see through a glass, darkly", and most particularly when we seek to practice analysis. — Janus

We see ourselves dimly, I agree. It may be that introspection did not provide much of a Darwinian advantage to our ancestors.

The idea that something we are aware of, such as being conscious, could be an epiphenomenon is a contradiction in terms. Our being aware of it means that it cannot be an epiphenonemon, which is defined as a phenomenon having no effect, because it has the effect of making us aware of it. — Janus

Qualia, for example, is not a pure epiphenomenon, but a mixture. You cannot explain the color "yellow" to a color blind person, but you can say that it is a bright color.

I don't have any idea how a phenomenon could be part epiphenomenal. If a colour blind person cannot see yellow, then they can have no experience of yellow, which would mean it is not a phenomenon for them at all, and nor would it be an epiphenomenon.

In the broadest sense, Free Will is the ability to do whatever you want, uncontrolled.
Limits to Free Will are facts and any choices we have are between predetermined options. I would fly across the universe to see the other side, but I realize I must have:
1. air
2. water
3. food
4. shelter
5. exercise
6. time
7. love.
Just as a science will only work because of predictability, earth is where I dwell. I try to imagine the other side, but I seem limited by the synthesis of what I already know.
However, there is hope for Free Will. The plain proof of Free Will is the feeling of choices made, and thoughts had, which no one could foresee. This alone does not prove Free Will, but determinism cannot be complete without complete predictability.

Today’s scientific arts are far from perfect predictors, especially when forecasting the roots of thought. Pure Determinism is theory. Compatibilism describes what I actually experience. Many of my thoughts correlate with my desire, and often there is no other information regarding the roots of those thoughts to consider.

The bottom line is that you may have a small amount of free will in a mostly deterministic world.

The plain proof of Free Will is the feeling of choices made, ... — Ash Abadear

That is the only sentence to be said on this subject.

The feeling of having wanted something is the only criterion. It does not depend on det or indet.