So, they learn things. These experiences become causes. How does this learning create an exception to determinism? — Bylaw

Right? The Hard Problem of Consciousness. Of course, the HP isn't about an exception to determinism. More basic, it's about how the objective physical is accompanied by subjective experience. But if there are two non-physical things going on, I don't know why they couldn't be two aspects of the same thing.

The problem here is you define it as something free, then use the definition to justify that it is free. — Bylaw

The alternative is saying something is a choice, then saying it was the only possible outcome. That means that, although there are more variables, and more kinds of variables, going into the final choice I make than there are going into the final resting place of a boulder rolling down a mountain, it's all the same. Just physical things bouncing into each other, until the only possible resolution is reached. How can we say the boulder chose the spot in which it came to rest when the factors that went into the choice were gravity, density of materials, and the lay of the land? How can we say that I chose what music to listen to just because the factors that went into the choice included things like molecules called dopamine and serotonin, and records of past stimuli stored in arrangements of connections between neurons?

Are there any changes in the mechanics that lead to this awakening and freedom? — Bylaw

Not mechanics. Again, I'm thinking subjective experience and freedom from physical determinism are part of the same packages. It there was any hint of mechanics, Brian Greene would not write this in Until the End of Time:

And within that mathematical description, affirmed by decades of data from particle colliders and powerful telescopes, there is nothing that even hints at the inner experiences those particles somehow generate. How can a collection of mindless, thoughtless, emotionless particles come together and yield inner sensations of color or sound, of elation or wonder, of confusion or surprise? Particles can have mass, electric charge, and a handful of other similar features (nuclear charges, which are more exotic versions of electric charge), but all these qualities seem completely disconnected from anything remotely like subjective experience. How then does a whirl of particles inside a head—which is all that a brain is—create impressions, sensations, and feelings? — Brian Greene

I'm not aware of any other scientist who contradicts him. Nobody is saying the charge of X, combined with the mass of Y, when surrounded by the flow of Z, all in a medium of a certain density causes consciousness. There is just an unspoken acceptance that, it just happens.

What's happening at the ontological level that freedom is now allowed — Bylaw

I don't know how many guesses there are about how this is happening. And I can't imagine a way to test any of them. Including the one I suspect is there cases, which is proto-consciousness. A property of matter. But, unlike things like charge, mass, and spin, it is a mental property, rather than a physical property.

and how do you know this is the case? — Bylaw

I don't. I believe it. I see no logic in the idea that conglomerates of particles that do nothing but bounce around according to the laws of physics have, for no reason, the feeling that they are something other than conglomerates of particles that do nothing but bounce around according to the laws of physics. If there was nothing but the physical and laws of physics, there's no reason that such conglomerates would have subjective experiences of any kind, much less the specific subjective experience that they are also something else.

But we do have this experience. And I believe the experience needs an explanation. I don't believe any number or mixture of physical building blocks can give rise to something that is not physical, so there must be something else.

What motivates the choosing not to listen to Bach or the choosing to listen to Bach? Is it random? Uncaused? — Bylaw

The very notion of listening to Bach can be caused by various things. Maybe I see his name in an article. Maybe I see the word "pass", and it makes me think passacaglia. Maybe I read about Mickey Mantle's 565-foot home run, and it makes me think of Bach's BWV 565. Or, more directly, I hear a snippet of hiss music. Whatever the specifics, specific arrangements of connections between neurons have been stimulated, and the records of certain past stimuli are brought to consciousness.

But choosing to listen or not, and choosing which piece to listen to if I choose to listen at all, are a different matter. They aren't just memories brought to the surfaces, unbidden. I don't choose the same way the arrangement of the pool balls after the break is chosen.

What makes you think there was one? What specifically leads you to the conclusion 'those actions on my part were not chosen, all those when I was younger than X, but I can know/show that at least this one, when I was ten, for exampel, while not being the first was free'? — Bylaw

It seems to me that the mind grows as the brain becomes more complex. Even if we aren't controlled by our memories, we use them when we make choices. I can choose between desserts I've never heard of, or between desserts that I have heard of, or some combination. But if I don't have memories of specific desserts, of even memory of what dessert is, because my brain has not yet become complex enough... We don't have memories back beyond a certain point in time, and weren't doing much in the way of thinking clearly or making choices, because we were not yet capable.

Indeed. Choiceless, we come into being. (The creed of the American teenager. "I didn't ask to be born.")

Yes, by definition, the first choice was a free choice. If it's not free, it's not a choice. No more than the boulder chooses which path to take as it rolls down the mountain. But when did that choice takes place? At different ages, under different circumstances, for different people. People learn things, and come to understand things, at different ages.

The conditions from which my consciousness - I - emerged are not the same as the conditions from which your consciousness - you - emerged.

We start as the merging of the genetic material of egg and sperm. There are no choices being made at that point. It's all chemistry. Physical cause and effect.

As we grow, even before we're born, the body/brain develops/makes more connections/becomes more able to process information. And for a while, it's all mechanical. Stimulus and response.

At some point, I don't know the specific conditions, we emerge. Awareness.

Of course, many things about the conditions from which I emerge are the same as the conditions from which you emerge. We wouldn't both be people (I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt) without a lot of common grounds. But there are also many differences. Different genetics. Different people, with different voices and smells, raising us in different ways. Different foods. Different smells coming through our windows as we lay in our cribs. On and on. So, before we awakened, and began choosing, while we were simply reacting to stimuli, we reacted in different ways.

Certainly, all that groundwork plays a big role in our likes and dislikes, and our predispositions. Why do I have an overwhelming preference for Bach over Mozart? An extreme sweet tooth? Why am I heterosexual? Why is blue my favorite color? None of those things are choices.

But I can choose whether or not to listen to music at any given moment. If I choose to, I can choose whether or not to listen to Bach. If I do, I can choose from among his pieces. I did not listen to the Musical Offering on such-and-such a date and time because it was impossible for me to do anything other than exactly that.

I did not marry my wife because the progressions of arrangements of all the constituents of my brain, driven by the laws of physics, did not allow me to end our relationship before marriage.

But when did I make my first free choice? No earthly idea. Maybe something that an observer would have taken for a free choice was not, because I had not yet come to understanding.

Those who have been alive an infinite time would have an infinite series. The rest of us only go back to our first choice.

If you make a choice to control your will in a particular way, then... did you also choose the part of your will that made the choice to control that will? And if you did make that choice, did you choose the will that led to that choice? — flannel jesus

Yes. We make all choices, from the moment we are aware that we have options.

Yes that is what I meant, there is no I (as a separate agent) doing the thinking, we are our thinking. — ChatteringMonkey

Agreed.

And, not to derail, but just for fun. This reminds me of the thirteen seconds of this fun video, beginning at 5:03.
Fight of the Century: Keynes vs. Hayek - Economics Rap Battle Round Two

The existence of doubt together with our ability to decide when we have doubt means that we, whether a mouse in a maze, a human who wants to invest in the market, etc. are not deterministic agents. — MoK

It is an odd thought that all the movements of particles/energy in our brains could cause feelings of doubt about the resolution as they all resolve into the only brain state into which they could possibly resolve.

I don't entirely agree.

↪Patterner If we can explain the workings of the universe if a logical way and logic permits us to acquire some truth about the universe, does that mean that all the processes in the universe are logical or rational? — Harry Hindu

I don't think so. Certain things can and cannot happen in this universe, due to its properties and laws. For example, a human cannot live if it is born with its heart outside its body. At least not without extreme medical intervention, and not before such intervention was possible. I don't see how it is rational for this to happen.

In a deterministic universe would it be safe to say that all processes are rational, — Harry Hindu

No, for the above reason.

and as such we are able to determine causes from observed effects and predict effects from observed causes? — Harry Hindu

Under relatively simple conditions, yes. We can calculate where Pluto will be in a hundred years. But we cannot predict what mutations to human DNA will take place at any point in the future. Or how many children my son will have, or if any will be poets, cure cancer, or be a mass murderer.

Is natural selection a rational process? — Harry Hindu

I don't know. Rational processes have come into being through it. Does that make it a rational process?

The moral principles and facts being stipulated are that:

1. It is morally impermissible to perform an action that is in-itself bad;
2. It is morally impermissible to directly intend something bad—even for the sake of something good;
3. Harming someone is, in-itself, bad. — Bob Ross

I do not agree with your stipulations. Particularly #3. It is not an absolute that harming someone is bad. For example, it is not bad to harm someone in self-defense.

Question: Is an animal's response the result of rationally thinking through a communication or something else? — Athena

In Feeling and Knowing: Making Minds Conscious, Antonio Damasio writes:

Intelligence, in the general perspective of all living organisms, signifies the ability to resolve successfully the problems posed by the struggle for life. — Damasio

and

We know that the most numerous living organisms on earth are unicellular, such as bacteria. Are they intelligent? Indeed they are, remarkably so. Do they have minds? No, they do not, I believe, and neither do they have consciousness. They are autonomous creatures; they clearly have a form of “cognition” relative to their environment, and yet, instead of depending on minds and consciousness, they rely on non-explicit competences—based on molecular and sub-molecular processes—that govern their lives efficiently according to the dictates of homeostasis. — Damasio

It's a long road between that non-explicit competences type of intelligence and human intelligence. Difficult to know when/where rational thinking begins.

Bears certainly have some instinctual intelligence. But they also learn. If a bear is not raised and taught by its mother, it does not do what bears do. I don't know if it would die very young.

Indeed, not along the lines of the op. I just commented on a snippet of side conversation I thought was interesting. I'll stop now. :smile:

What if we did not use words, but communicated with math?
— Athena

How would that work, basically?
— Lionino

Good gravy, I do not know! — Athena

I doubt it's possible. We communicate much more than mathematical ideas. If we tried using math to talk about any of those things, it would no longer be math. It would be numbers, equations, etc., representing things. Just another language. 1 stands for me. 27 stands for eat. 4,534 stands for apple.
1 + 27 + 4,534 = I eat apple.
There's no math in that. Yeah, I just did that in five minutes. But would we find a solution if we spent a thousand years trying? I doubt it. And I assume it's been tried by plenty of mathematicians over the centuries. I can't imagine a way of actually doing math that also means things we want to discuss.

But next time I'm in Castalia, I'll see if they've figured it out.


Is there a way to have tagged inside of the Athena quote?

Late to the party, and I haven't read any responses yet. I'm going to agree that it is not a valid statement. The statement isn't about anything that can be declared true or false. It's truth/falsehood in a vacuum. I understand how it's used, and the paradox it's supposed to embody. But it's meaningless.

Legend has it, that if you say it just like I did, he will appear.
— wonderer1

I was lounging comfortably in my bottle, thank you very much, but I honor the code of my own free will. — Srap Tasmaner

Holy cow! You guys are great! Penn and Teller wouldn't have been able to pull that off more smoothly!

This is a relevant article. — wonderer1

It seems fascinating. Probably moreso for those who know how to play Go. I imagine there are online groups to play, so I really don't have an excuse.

Srap's whole post is excellent.

If intuition is, as it says in the part you quoted, "zipping through the analysis," that's fine. That doesn't make it any kind of mysterious sources of knowledge. And the many times people's intuition leads them to the wrong answer would be explained by the fact that their careful analysis also leads to the wrong answer. As you say, whether the answer comes from intuition or analysis, you'll be correct more often in areas where you have some expertise.

I'm not aware of ever coming up with an answer intuitively. Even areas in which I have some knowledge, I get the answer because I remember some information, or do the multiplication quickly, or whatever. I'm always aware of the analysis.

I'd suggest not being too dismissive of the value of one's own or other's intuitions, or their potential for improvement. That said, I also advise keeping a grain of salt handy. :wink: — wonderer1

I don't know if I'm defining it correctly. It seems as though people sometimes think of intuition like a hunch to play certain numbers in the lottery. The extreme majority of times, everybody loses the lottery.

Other times, when thinking things through thoroughly, intuitive knowledge is seen to be false. Maybe a science experiment.
"What do you think will happen when x, y, and z?"
"Intuitively, I think it will ____."
Wrong often enough. Our intuition doesn't suggest time works the way Einstein tells us it does.

Sometimes it's unprovable. Like someone's intuitive knowledge of whatever deity they believe in.

Intuition has lead people into terrible romantic relationships now times than we can count. "My intuition tells me he's a great guy."

And, of course, sometimes intuition is correct. You said "achieving recognition that one of my current intuitions is faulty has been something which had enabled me to improve the reliability of my intuitions over the long run." I'm thinking you mean something like recognizing a flaw in critical thinking?

Thank you! I'm just not feeling Chandler's book.

That Lyons book is expensive! :lol: And probably way beyond me. I need a good intro to Semiotics. Hopefully, Daniel Chandler is good.

That's extremely interesting! I can't read it, bit I read about it here:
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2024/06/10/science/african-elephants-name-like-calls-intl-scli-scn

Elephants are possibly capable of abstract thought?? I wonder if other animals are capable of any other aspects of thinking we associate only with ourselves. Maybe it isn't these specific capabilities that make human thought and language stand out, but, rather, that we have the combination of all of these aspects.

Or, even crazier, maybe there are species that have capabilities we lack. But, lacking some critical combination, they can't tell us about what they're thinking, and we can't notice their unique quality.

Well I'll get to your post later. Yard work today. But I don't think there's any possibility that any other animal has any language that approaches human language. Because they can't think in the kinds of ways we do. If they were talking, we'd be able to learn each others' languages, and have conversations. We would have been doing this since the time we and any species capable of it found ourselves in the same place. Our cultures and societies would be much different if we had been been coexisting with animals that could communicate like us for the last several thousand years, if not hundreds of thousands.

There are many people who have put great effort into communicating with various other species. Apes and dolphins are big ones. The octopus is supposed to be an intelligent animal, also. But we cannot have a conversation with any of them. They just don't have the ability.

Also, I suspect they'd wipe us out if they could think in those ways.

I believe Deacon would agree:

...language is not merely a mode of communication, it is also the outward expression of an unusual mode of thought—symbolic representation. Without symbolization the entire virtual world that I have described is out of reach: inconceivable. My extravagant claim to know what other species cannot know rests on evidence that symbolic thought does not come innately built in, but develops by internalizing the symbolic process that underlies language. So species that have not acquired the ability to communicate symbolically cannot have acquired the ability to think this way either. — Terrence Deacon

Only humans have language — Joshs

I just started reading The Symbolic Species, by Terrence Deacon. Literally only the Preface so far. In it, he tells us about giving a talk about the brain to his son's elementary school.

I was talking about brains and how they work, and how human brains are different, and how this difference is reflected in our unique and complex mode of communication: language. But when I explained that only humans communicate with language, I struck a dissonant chord.

“But don’t other animals have their own languages?” one child asked.

This gave me the opportunity to outline some of the ways that language is special: how speech is far more rapid and precise than any other communication behavior, how the underlying rules for constructing sentences are so complicated and curious that it’s hard to explain how they could ever be learned, and how no other form of animal communication has the logical structure and open-ended possibilities that all languages have. But this wasn’t enough to satisfy a mind raised on Walt Disney animal stories.

“Do animals just have SIMPLE languages?” my questioner continued.

“No, apparently not,” I explained. “Although other animals communicate with one another, at least within the same species, this communication resembles language only in a very superficial way—for example, using sounds—but none that I know of has the equivalents of such things as words, much less nouns, verbs, and sentences. Not even simple ones.” — Deacon

I guess the rest of the book extensively expands on this.

↪Patterner If you want to learn about the language and thought patterns when a certain kind of determinist talks about choices, this might interest you.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/causation-counterfactual/ — flannel jesus

Thank you. It's confusing me right out of the gate, but I'll see what I can do.

The photons are the same, whether or not they are perceived at all. Without a perceiver who has subjective experiences, there is no red.

Did you know the eye has evolved independently about 50 times on earth? Crazy. — frank

I had only heard of human and octopus, and thought that was amazing!!

My observation is that people's intuition is wrong as often as right. It often seems to be someone's "feeling."

Other times the answer someone's intuition gives them is the answer they get when they consider it and explain reasoning behind it. And a lot of people have some pretty faulty reasoning. I assume a lot of people here will be happy to say mine is faulty. :grin: Perhaps others think I generally do ok. Mainly, we will say someone's intuition is wrong when it leads them to an answer we disagree with.

I guarantee my intuition leads me astray at times.

In short, I don't consider intuition to be very useful. But I don't know what @wonderer1 has in mind.

:rofl: :rofl: I don't know why. Someone explain to me why my phone types "booty" when I swype "not"! I don't think I've ever intentionally typed "booty" other than when I have to explain this. I usually catch it, but was in a rush that time.

I don't know enough about intuition to know how to respond. How does the "deep learning" about non-determinism take place?

Not sure what you mean. Why would our deep learning/intuition telling us determinism is not correct be evidence that determinism is correct? Or is that booty what you're saying?

I'm not trying to compare them. And no, they are not opposites. I'm just noticing that both are about our identity and thinking, but one is a commonly known idea, and the other, despite having been written about for millennia, is not. Why is that?

Or am I wrong in thinking that, if asked about determinism, most people would say they have not heard of it, and would need it explained?

I also suspect that, once determinism had been explained to them, most would not say it reflects how they feel their thinking works/is accomplished.

This is all just seat of my pants thinking. I couldn't guess how much I have wrong. — Patterner

Well, not having had an inkling of this whole line of thought until a couple days ago, plus not having ever read a word about such things, I'm going to ask for some slack. — Patterner

I've never posted this kind of thing before. — Patterner

So yeah. I live in bliss. :grin:

Still, I think it's an interesting thought. Stop random people in the street and ask them about consciousness. Even if they haven't thought about it in depth, or tried to understand aspects of it that are often discussed here, it's unlikely they'll say they haven't heard of the topic. I suspect many will express the thoughts that consciousness is self-evident, and it is a more important part of their identity than things like their height and eye color.

Ask random people about determinism, and I think a much higher percentage will say they never heard of it. But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe most will be able to discuss it in some depth, and a good percentage will say that they feel it is, indeed, how all their thoughts and actions come about.

It's not a need for a word for thinking in the Determinist sense. It's the fact that there isn't one. Because the idea is not something that has been a part of humanity all along. Which makes sense. Because we don't feel determinism. I mean, everybody who grows uo without ever hearing anything about these ideas is going to take for granted that, faced with different options, although they chose one, they could have chosen another. It doesn't feel as though the choice we make is the only one we possibly could have made.

It's an intellectual idea. One people came to think of after seeing it's how everything we observe and study with our science works, and wondering if it's how our thinking works, too. The idea wasn't originated by someone who felt that's how it works, and started trying to tell everyone.

At least that's the way it seems to me. Even now, having heard this idea for some time, I can intellectually understand it, but I can't feel it.

Well, not having had an inkling of this whole line of thought until a couple days ago, plus not having ever read a word about such things, I'm going to ask for some slack. :grin: Certainly, I'm not claiming any great revelations. I just think humanity, as a whole, has always taken the default position that we have free will, and thought is not simply brain states. I think we would have words specifically for that idea if any significant number of people thought it in the language's younger days.

↪Patterner what does thinking without consciousness have to do with anything? Did someone suggest that in this thread? — flannel jesus

No. Just another example.

It seems to me that to some degree "intuition" is a word we use for speaking about thinking without consciousness. — wonderer1

It may be that the word applies at times. But I'm not sure that's the intent of the word, though. The definitions I'm finding are about knowing without conscious reasoning. Does that fit the bill? I'm not sure. I've never posted this kind of thing before.

And if you don't mind multiple words being used, Here is some recent casual discussion of thinking without consciousness. — wonderer1

We can definitely discuss the idea with our language. My point is that we don't have words for things that weren't part of the, shall we say, collective consciousness. Like I've heard there's are many words for "snow" in the Inuit language. Knowing about the different types of snow was extremely important to them. So the language has words for each. Closer to the equator, it wasn't as important. Certainly not a matter of life and death on a daily basis. So, while the people noticed the differences, only major categories got specific words. Snow, slush, ice... The variations only get adjectives. Things like powdery snow and packing snow.

Since determined thinking and thinking without consciousness were not a big part of the collective consciousness, we don't find specific words for them in the language.

This is all just seat of my pants thinking. I couldn't guess how much I have wrong.

I'm not remotely knowledgeable enough to debate it. I'm just thinking we don't have words for the competing ideas being discussed. We have a word for thinking. We don't have one for thinking with consciousness, and one for thinking without consciousness. We don't have one for thinking independent of the physical events of the brain, and one for thinking that is the physical events of the brain. The ideas of thinking without consciousness and thinking being nothing but the physical events of our brains are not parts of our culture, or our language. Is this because our culture and language grew in a people who, rare individuals aside, never considered these concepts? The things we have words for are the things the people assumed were true without even saying.

In not remotely. I just thought FO didn't understand what fj was saying, and tried to get them on the same page.

Yes. I agree with you entirely. I argued the same position in another thread not long ago. The problem, I believe, is that languages were developed by beings who believed as you and I do. If, for many thousands of years, anyone had any inkling of determinism, or thought we did not have free will, they probably didn't have many serious conversations about it with many people. So we're stuck trying to discuss things with language that can't easily express the ideas. I was saying choices don't have meaning, and aren't "actual" choices.

But how does the phrase “make sense TO ME” make sense in a deterministic world? How do “you” make sense to you, if there is only a causal chain - where do “you” fit in there any differently than a heart beat? And the word “choice” becomes a metaphor for simply two relay racers passing the baton of cause and effect. — Fire Ologist

I think I understand what you're saying. I don't think you understand what he's saying.

Heart beat was a good thing to mention. In a deterministic world, a certain group of physical events takes place, and we call the overall activity a heart beating. Another certain group of physical events takes place, and we call the overall activity thinking. If Determinism is correct, there is no "me" aside from the physical processes. The "me" is the physical events.

Intended by whom? — flannel jesus

Beats me. By whatever non-determined consciousness is behind them. Different people who believe this type of thing might have different ideas. Some might say a universal consciousness. Some might say God. Some might say other things. I'm just saying the consciousness literally telling determinists what to do in the context of this thread - that is, the consciousness that made the op - would (presumably) be as determined as the rest of us. Just another part of the gigantic web of physical events that are all of our thoughts.

Worded that way sounds like a consciousness telling us what to think.
— Patterner

But the context is that we do have a consciousness literally telling determinists what to do, here in the thread. So comparing THAT - a real thinking entity actually telling people what to do - to determinism "telling people what to do", just doesn't make all that much sense to me. — flannel jesus

But, in that context, the "consciousness literally telling determinists what to do" is, itself, determined. So it's still a consistent theory. I was trying to say some non-determined consciousness arranged/arranges everything so that the webs of physical events that are our thoughts are exactly as they are by design. The exact thoughts we have were intended.

Determinism isn't whispering suggestions on what or how to think in anyone's ear. — flannel jesus

Right. Worded that way sounds like a consciousness telling us what to think. I would say determinism means the web of physical events is our thoughts. But that doesn't mean some thinking entity is causing the physical events to play out the way they do in order to create those thoughts.

↪Fire Ologist Yes but determinism isn't telling us "don't think" if we're already thinking - determinisms the one telling us think! Or rather, "we" are defined by determinism, and "we" are defined as "things that think" — flannel jesus

Determinism tells us exactly what to think, and exactly when to think it. Yes?