From the agential perspective, the sort of action that took place is intelligible in light of the agent's aims, beliefs and reasons. — Pierre-Normand

But if the agent's aims, beliefs and reasons are nothing other than the resolution of an incalculable number of interacting physical events, then it is just physical interactions.

But if the agent's aims, beliefs and reasons are nothing other than the resolution of an incalculable number of interacting physical events, then it is just physical interactions. — Patterner

You can't give the whole credit for you own beliefs, aims and reasons to your physical circumstances since all three of those things are normative. If you find out that it's unreasonable for you to believe something, then you stop believing it. Likewise for your aims. And if someone finds out that a reason why they were doing something was bad, then they stop doing it. Those human rational abilities are fallible so it may happen that one holds unreasonable beliefs or makes unreasonable choices and, sometimes, one's circumstances can excuse those failures. But our physical circumstances never explain why our intentional actions are intelligible or what it is that makes those actions reasonable, when they are. Appealing to principle of evolutionary psychology, for instance, amounts to committing the naturalistic fallacy. And appealing to principles of neuroscience or physics and chemistry for explaining someone's bodily motions just amounts to changing the topic to something else. (See Ruth Garrett Millikan's paper What Is Behavior? A Philosophical Essay on Ethology and Individualism in Psychology, reprinted in White Queen Psychology and Other Essays for Alice).

So, I would claim that the agent's beliefs and reasons are something more than the resolution of an incalculable number of interacting physical events. They may be, in a sense, made up of physical things and physical events (since human beings are made up of those things) but they are made up of such ingredients organized in functional ways. Your physical constituents are organized in such a was as to enable your practical rational abilities to choose actions in light of your good reasons for doing them, and the goodness of those reasons, and their appropriateness to your circumstances, don't reduce to physical laws. Hence, the explanations why those choices were made don't reduce to physical laws either and appeals to your physical circumstances (including brain processes) oftentimes are at best, incomplete and at worst irrelevant.

↪MoK You say "How could we have a single thought, knowing that all that exists is matter and forces?" As if you know of some other way to have a single thought. — flannel jesus

My interpretation of MoK's sentence is that, if what we call thought is the interaction of matter and forces, then it is not different than the freezing of water, the foam that results from mixing vinegar and baking soda, an avalanche, a supernova, the growth of a tree, the path of the planets around the sun, ChatGPT, and literally everything else that ever happens anywhere.

Thanks for your interesting reply. I'm not all that familiar with the various interpretations of and theses about the nature of the quantum realm. Asa I understand it they are all compatible with observed results, which makes me wonder how we might assess their various plausibilities.

The other issue is that they all seem to be attempts to understand the observed behavior of the microworld using concepts derived from our experience of the familiar macroworld, and I see little reason to expect that is an entirely coherent endeavor. That said, I understand that we cannot help pursuing it.

I did take on board your question and I answered it to the best of my knowledge. If you have a better answer, I am happy to read about it. — Truth Seeker

Yes, we are not all-knowing, which is why we are unsure in certain situations. We don't know whether it is better to do something or not. That means we are dealing with options in those situations where we are not sure.

You say "How could we have a single thought, knowing that all that exists is matter and forces?" As if you know of some other way to have a single thought. — flannel jesus

Having a thought requires an entity to experience it, what I call the mind. Putting this point aside, we are returning to my former point: How could we have options in our thoughts knowing that our thoughts are the result of the motion of matter and electromagnetic fields where these motions are deterministic? So we have to either exclude the existence of options, which I highly doubt to be possible, or we have to find a proper answer to this question. To be honest, I don't have an answer to the question and I doubt if anyone has an answer for it either so it is an open question.

That means we are dealing with options in those situations where we are not sure. — MoK

Even when we are sure about the outcomes, we are still dealing with options. For example, let's say that I am walking and I notice dog poo on the pavement. I have thought of three options in this situation:

1. Clean up the dog poo.
2. Avoid stepping on the dog poo but not clean it up.
3. Step on the dog poo.

No one is coercing me to do any of the three things so my choice to do any of them is voluntary. However, my choice is not free from determinants, constraints and consequences.

If I choose option 1, it will cost me some time, effort and a plastic bag (if I have a plastic bag with me). Doing this will prevent someone else from stepping on the dog poo.

If I choose option 2, it will save me some time, effort and a plastic bag but there is still the risk of someone else stepping on the dog poo.

If I choose option 3, it will make my shoe dirty and I will have to either clean up my shoe or throw away my shoes or keep wearing shoes with dog poo on them and spread the dog poo from my shoes to the inside of my home.

Which of the three options I select is determined by my genes, my environments from my conception to the present, my nutrients from my conception to the present and my experiences from my conception to the present.

If I had the genes of a banana tree instead of the human genes I have, I would not be sentient and would not even notice the dog poo, never mind think about my options.

If I was in a life-threatening environment e.g. someone was shooting at me with a machine gun, I simply would not give the dog poo much thought. I would be preoccupied with how I can avoid getting shot by taking cover or running erratically.

If was deprived of nutrients as a zygote, I would not even get to be born. I would have died when I was in the womb.

If I experienced an accident which caused me to go blind, I would not have even noticed the dog poo.

I could go on and on and keep listing more and more scenarios but I don't want to spend any more time explaining how we are never free from determinants, constraints and consequences. Have you understood my point? If you haven't understood it, please let me know and I will try to explain further.

So we have to either exclude the existence of options, which I highly doubt to be possible, or we have to find a proper answer to this question. — MoK

What makes you so sure "options" are ontologically real things, and not just a feature of maps rather than a feature of territories?

And if options ARE ontologically real things, why couldn't they be physical? Maybe a wave function is the physical manifestation of an option.

I talked about a situation when you are not certain, by this I mean you do not the the consequence of your decision.

What makes you so sure "options" are ontologically real things, and not just a feature of maps rather than a feature of territories? — flannel jesus

They are real because I have had doubts in many situations in my life. It could be a feature of maps rather than territories but then we have to deal with the question I raised.

And if options ARE ontologically real things, why couldn't they be physical? — flannel jesus

I cannot see how they could be physical accepting that physical entities are deterministic by deterministic I mean that any state of matter only leads to one unique state later. If we accept that options are real in the physical world then it means that one state of matter may lead to one state or another state later and this is against the very definition of determinism.

Maybe a wave function is the physical manifestation of an option. — flannel jesus

I believe in De Broglie-Bohm's interpretation. No Schrodinger cat paradox, no wave-particle duality, etc.

They are real because I have had doubts in many situations in my life. It could be a feature of maps rather than territories but then we have to deal with the question I raised. — MoK

Neural nets - as in, things like Chat GPT - have doubts. They have ways of representing internal confidence levels about their models about the data they're ingesting.

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yzGDwpRBx6TEcdeA5/a-chess-gpt-linear-emergent-world-representation

Neural nets are implemented physically, on physical hardware.

I don't see where this assumption that doubts can't exist in a mind that's implemented physically comes from. As far as I can tell, the evidence available suggests that that's incorrect, that physical implementations of world-modeling machines can and do have doubts.

Could anyone have made a different choice in the past than the ones they made? — Truth Seeker

Simply, there is no 'if' or 'different'; What actually happened trumps 'could have'.

I talked about a situation when you are not certain, by this I mean you do not know the consequence of your decision. — MoK

We never know all the long-term consequences of our actions. For example, let's say in my previous example, I cleaned up the dog poo from the pavement. I know the immediate consequences of this action but I don't know what effect this action will have on myself and others a week, a month, a year, a decade, a century, a millennia and on and on down the line.

I agree with you. I'm just playing Physicalist's Advocate.

1. Clean up the dog poo.
2. Avoid stepping on the dog poo but not clean it up.
3. Step on the dog poo. — Truth Seeker

4. Step on it and clean it up.

1. Clean up the dog poo.
2. Avoid stepping on the dog poo but not clean it up.
3. Step on the dog poo.
— Truth Seeker
4. Step on it and clean it up. — Patterner

Yes, the fourth option is also possible.

:grin:

Neural nets - as in, things like Chat GPT - have doubts. They have ways of representing internal confidence levels about their models about the data they're ingesting. — flannel jesus

Interesting article. It however does not explain what is the source of doubts.

We never know all the long-term consequences of our actions. — Truth Seeker

Then options are real if you don't know the consequences of your actions.

It however does not explain what is the source of doubts. — MoK

no, it shows instead that doubts are a part of an LLM, and we know that LLMs are implemented physically, on physical machinery, undergoing physical processes. It doesn't "explain the source of doubts" because that's not the point of the article, it just gives a very strong example of physically implemented concept of doubts.

Cool. So doubts are real and this means that options are real as well. We however don't know the source of doubts.

But we do know they can be implemented in a physical world-modelling machine, because we've built physical world-modelling machines that have doubts.

Sure.

We never know all the long-term consequences of our actions.
— Truth Seeker
Then options are real if you don't know the consequences of your actions. — MoK

Knowing or not knowing the consequences of our actions has nothing to do with options being real or not real. We can make voluntary choices. My point is that our choices are never free from determinants (genes, environments, nutrients and experiences), constraints and consequences.

On it's plain wording, it seems impossible to say 'no'.

Doubts are not allowed in a deterministic world. Everything is certain in a deterministic world since by definition determinism refers to a worldview in which each state of matter uniquely defines another state of matter later. So, I ask you this question whether you have ever had a doubt. If yes, then we are dealing with a problem, the problem being how doubt is possible. I don't think that anyone has a clear answer to this. So to me, the mental phenomena are not easy to understand and do not follow the rule of determinism.

Doubts are not allowed in a deterministic world. Everything is certain in a deterministic world since by definition determinism refers to a worldview in which each state of matter uniquely defines another state of matter later. So, I ask you this question whether you have ever had a doubt. If yes, then we are dealing with a problem, the problem being how doubt is possible. I don't think that anyone has a clear answer to this. So to me, the mental phenomena are not easy to understand and do not follow the rule of determinism. — MoK

The statement: "Doubts are not allowed in a deterministic world." is false.

The statement: "Doubts are not allowed in a deterministic world." is false. — Truth Seeker

It is correct given the definition of doubt.

Let me give you an example to help you understand. The selection of lottery numbers is entirely deterministic. I doubt I can predict them with 100% accuracy every time. My inability to predict which lottery numbers will be drawn at each draw has to do with my lack of omniscience and the large number of possibilities.

Let me give you an example to help you understand. The selection of lottery numbers is entirely deterministic. I doubt I can predict them with 100% accuracy every time. My inability to predict which lottery numbers will be drawn at each draw has to do with my lack of omniscience and the large number of possibilities. — Truth Seeker

I am talking about mental state doubt.

I am talking about mental state doubt. — MoK

The mental state of experiencing doubt is not something special that sets it apart from other mental states. We experience many sensory perceptions, thoughts and emotions. They are all produced by our brain activities. Our brain activities are determined by our genes, environments, nutrients and experiences.