Seems like a (grandiose) composition fallacy to me:
— 180 Proof

I think this is really at the center of a lot of disagreement in these types of conversations. Things often are very much unlike the things that make them up. — flannel jesus

I don't currently have the time to respond to you. Work is insane. But I just want to quickly respond to this. Although things are often much unlike the things that make them up, what they are like is always because of the qualities of the things that make them up. The emergence of any macro characteristic is always explained by the properties of what it's made of. How can it be otherwise? Macro things cannot be explained by properties the building blocks do not possess.

Proto-consciousness is not consciousness, as the "proto" should make clear. Still, what does it mean?
— Patterner

That's a good question. I can find no coherent difference. If something experiences anything, however 'proto', it's fully and totally conscious in the phenomenal sense. Differences are always a matter of content, not degree of consciousness. — bert1

Ha! I completely agree. I think this requires a pretty extensive rewrite. I wrote all of this over a fairly long period of time. My views of consciousness changed in ways over that same period of tim, but I didn't change what I had written in the earlier days. Didn't even notice it needed changing, having moved on in my head. Thank you very much.

My views changed as I contemplated the idea of higher consciousness, as it relates to various fantasy/sci-fi beings. Like Star Trek's Organians, Metrons, Q, Prophets of Bajor, etc. Such beings are often said to be of higher consciousness. I wondered what that might mean. Greater intelligence doesn't seem to equal greater consciousness. Nor do more extensive sensory capabilities, abilities to mentally manipulate reality, or an awareness that might be said to encompass a larger area.

I came to think there's no such thing as higher consciousness, and I don't think I have higher consciousness than anything else. I am just conscious of things, capabilities, I possess that other things do not.

Anyway, parts of my OP were written back when I equated consciousness with things like mind and intelligence. Having a different idea in my head, I moved on without changing what I had written. And, truth be told, I probably need to shake off some remnants of that kind of thinking.Again, very sloppy. Again, thank you.

You've set out your view well. What do you want us to talk about? Anything in the OP? — bert1

You're doing great! :grin: Anything that helps me clarify my thinking, or even my writing. I don't know if there are ways to prove or disprove various theories of consciousness. But any theory should at least be internally consistent. Pointing out anywhere that I am not is appreciated.

I don't know much about the terminologies. It seems every term has a dozen sub-categiries. Matter and energy are all the same thing, aren't they? It's all particles. But there are multiple primary particles, right? Photons and electrons are not made of anything else. Protons and neutrons are made of quarks. Aren't neutrinos also primary? Can monism be the answer if we already have those? And I believe there are others.

we know what the meaning is, because we put it there, and it's only to us that there is meaning.
— Patterner

Not only did we 'put it there', but we enabled the worldview which allows us to think that the universe as a whole is devoid of it. — Wayfarer

I meant it's only to us that there is meaning in that specific situation. The meaning in any computer coding ultimately reduces to binary. We arranged the system so that the computer, without the capacity for understanding meaning, would mechanically do things that have meaning for us.

But there is meaning in the universe aside from any we put in it. DNA being the prime example. DNA means strings of amino acids and proteins. It is the basis of all life, and, I believe, the first step toward consciousness.

Thanks! I got Harris' audio. Only listened to the preface so far. Doesn't particularly make her sound like a physicalist. So this'll be my commute for a while

I've been traveling for a few days. Finally back to this..

I don't know if you guys are talking about the same thing I am. Let me try to describe my thinking in more detail.

A house is physical. You can build one. Put it together, brick by brick. You can go back forgetsl by digging up the clay, getting molds and a furnace, and make the bricks from scratch. You can even, in principle, start with particles, sticking then together to form the bricks.

Nobody will ask what the bricks, or clay & molds, or particles, have to do with the house.

Nobody will say that houses only seen to exist where they're are bricks (etc), but the connection isn't obvious, and nobody had given an explanation.


Thoughts are not the same.

You can give a physical description of the squiggles that we call writing in any detail you want.

You can discuss the medium. If they are on a computer screen, you can discuss the materials of the screen, and how electricity does whatever it does to make pixels different colors. If they are written on paper with a pen, you can discuss what paper is made of, what ink is made of, how ink remains in its place on the paper, etc. If they are scrawled on a wet beach, you can discuss the composition of the sand, how water holds the sand together, so it keeps the shape of the scribbles for a time, etc.

You can talk about the length, thickness, and angle of each mark making up the scribble.

You can discuss primary particles, and how their properties allow all of the above.

But you will not, regardless of which approach you take, or if you take them all, be discussing any of the thoughts found in the sentence The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.. Unless they read English, nobody who ever hears/reads your description of the squiggles will ever come to understand those ideas if they don't read English.

But writing is too far removed. You can also describe the brain states, from any angle, in any detail, of anyone thinking the thoughts in the sentence The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog., and, again, you will not be describing any of the thoughts in the sentence. Nobody who doesn't know what a brain is will suspect you're talking about thoughts. Those who know you're talking about a brain mighty day, "Oh! Is that thoughts? How does it do that?" Because there isn't any obvious connection.

We don't think a computer that is acting according to it's programming is having thoughts, even though we know it's programming haw meaning. But we know what the meaning is, because we put it there, and it's only to us that there is meaning.

No. I'm suggesting that they might be about the same things, under two different descriptions. — Banno

I like the idea, but don't see how it can be. Can you explain? I suspect you have been doing that, but, if so, I haven't caught on. I am but an egg.

Make sure you use real maple syrup. — Metaphysician Undercover

Damned right!!!

The trouble is that the topic is waffle, and specifically it is waffle because it tries to mix two different types of language games - the physical and the intentional. — Banno

You're saying the intentional is not physical.

Sorry. I don't understand.

Well, no. How the system interacts with the data is physical. What we have is two differing physical descriptions of the same physicality. — Banno

How is the the idea of the quick brown fox jumping over the lazy dog a physical description of the squiggles "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog"?

1. Painted using a matte house paint with the least possible gloss, on stretched canvas, 3.5 meters tall and 7.8 meters wide, in the Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid.

2. An anti-war statement displaying the terror and suffering of people and animals.
Two very different ways of talking about the very same thing.

Do we need to reduce one to the other? — Banno

I do not believe it's possible. But if someone says #2 can be described entirely in terms of #1, then that is what they are saying, and I would like to hear how it works.

This does not rule out that the reaction of a mind to the environment is just that - an energetic reaction which can be described entirely in physical terms. — Banno

The Taj Mahal cannot be described entirely in physical terms. Its coming into existence over a span of 22 years cannot be accounted for without love, pride, art, and various other things that are not arrangements of matter/energy. The idea of it existing in the future, knowing it would take a very long time, knowing that tools, people, and material would have to be gathered from far and wide, knowing that many different construction techniques would need to be used and combined... None of that happens without meaning and intentions that do not exist in purely physical explanations.

I think this is a mistake. The idea that consciousness is not causal. It seems to me that it would be a very strange for the world to be full of people writing about consciousness, writing about qualia and the ineffable experience of consciousness, if consciousness were not casual. — flannel jesus

Indeed. If consciousness isn't causal, what causes us to write about consciousness?

I question the interpretation Libet's study. It seems odd to say that the task, flexing the wrist, was well-defined; they talked about moving the wrist; and the subjects sat thinking about moving the wrist. Consciously thinking and talking about it, and consciously debating when to do it. But when it happened, it wasn't a conscious decision? Seems very suspicious.

I'd be more convinced if the brain made a decision with no involvement from consciousness. Like if they're all watching for the wrist to move, but the ankle moves instead. Or the hand picked up a pencil and started writing.

I read this long ago in a book called WHY GOD WON'T GO AWAY - Brain Science and the Biology of Belief. It discusses the posterior superior parietal lobe:

The primary job of the [posterior superior parietal lobe] is to orient the individual in physical space - it keeps track of which end is up, helps us judge angles and distances, and allows us to negotiate safely the dangerous physical landscape around us. To perform this crucial function, it must first generate a clear, consistent cognition of the physical limits of the self. In simple terms, it must draw a sharp distinction between the individual and everything else, to sort out the you from the infinite not-you that makes up the rest of the universe.

It may seem strange that the brain requires a specialized mechanism to keep tabs on this you/not-you dichotomy; from the vantage point of normal consciousness, the distinction seems ridiculously clear. But that's only because the [posterior superior parietal lobe] does its job so seamlessly and so well. In fact, people who suffer injuries to the orientation area have great difficulty maneuvering in physical space. When they approach their beds, for example, their brains are so baffled by the constantly shifting calculus of angles, depths, and distances that the simple task of lying down becomes an impossible challenge. Without the orientation area's help in keeping track of the body's shifting coordinates, they cannot locate themselves in space mentally or physically, so they miss the bed entirely and fall to the floor; or they manage to get their body onto the mattress, but when they try to recline they can only huddle awkwardly against the wall.

And they found that this area of the brain is inactive at the times when Franciscan nuns and Tibetan Buddhists feel the most intimately connected with their respective godheads, which is during prayer and meditation, respectively. They theorized:

What would happen if the [posterior superior parietal lobe] had no information upon which to work? we wondered. Would it continue to search for the limits of the self? With no information flowing in from the senses, the [posterior superior parietal lobe] wouldn't be able to find any boundaries. What would the brain make of that? Would the orientation area interpret its failure to find the borderline between the self and the outside world to mean that such a distinction doesn't exist? In that case, the brain would have no choice but to perceive that the self is endless and intimately interwoven with everyone and everything the mind senses. And this perception would feel utterly and unquestionably real.

I started to write "Yes" but then I asked myself, "Well, why exactly?" What's so exceptional about such a claim that puts it outside anything we can reason about? Is the experience itself seen as so esoteric as to defy description, and perhaps credulity? This may be a Western bias. — J

We can barely have a reasonable discussions about the kind of consciousness we all live with every day. How much more difficult to discuss kinds of consciousness we have only heard about from the writings of a tiny percentage of people, who claim it cannot be described?

You are thinking the thought. There can be no doubt about that.

The accuracy of the thought may be doubted, of course.

I think I'm watching my laptop drink a milkshake. Well, I certainly am thinking that. But it's not accurate.

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.