That's right, the example is nonsense, because it has not been proven that the perfect prediction of an individual's actions which is described by the example, is even possible. — Metaphysician Undercover

Well, surely it's possible just by pure chance. If I asked a hundred people to guess a number between 1-100, I might guess the number they guessed correctly once or twice - that's not impossible by any means. He didn't really clarify how the painter got it right, he just said he got it right.

So the question Art48 is really asking is whether free will is compatible with determinism, and the answer is no it is not. — Metaphysician Undercover

Or alternatively the answer might be yes it is.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2147696-blind-people-repurpose-the-brains-visual-areas-for-language/

People use the same parts of their brain for different things.

That's because brains aren't like clocks, brains are a different sort of thing. Clocks have hundreds of moving pieces where every moving piece has a specific function, and if a piece is out of place or removed, the clock stops working.

Brains, on the other hand, are malleable. The stuff your brain can do now, it couldn't do before. There may be something your brain can do tomorrow that it can't do now. But if you've had a clock for 30 years, it can probably only do the same stuff now that it could always do.

I don't want to pretend to know how brains work, but I know how they don't work: they don't work in such a way that there's only one way to accomplish tasks, and everybody accomplishes those tasks the same way. We know at least that about the brain.

I think that's the problem. If any given thought can be the result of many different arrangements of matter, then how can it be that the arrangement IS the thought? — Patterner

Because you're thinking of thoughts as these concrete singular unambiguous thing, but human thought isn't like that. When I think of an apple, and you think of an apple, we're probably loosely thinking of the same sorts f things, but we're not thinking of them EXACTLY the same. I associate it with different things, different flavours, different contexts, different feelings than you do. Maybe you had your first apple as a toddler but I didn't have one until I was 6. Maybe I associate apples more with cider and you don't really think of cider at all.

All of these differences in thought are reflected in differences in structure.

Human thought is more complex than could be accounted for with the idea that 2 people thinking of the same thing must be having their brains activated in exactly the same way - that's just not it.

Different individuals may have different neural activations for the same thought or proposition. This variability makes it hard to pinpoint a universal brain state corresponding to a specific thought. — Wayfarer

I've never understood this to be a problem. I mean, you can say the same things about ai. ChatGpt 3 has different array matrices activations for "a cat in a hat" than ChatGpt 4 does. If that makes human minds not physical, then does it also make chat gpt not simulatable? Not digitally encodable?

I don't think so. I think it's completely normal that neural networks encode the same (or similar, anyway - it's never really the same) ideas in drastically different ways. I don't find that problematic at all for physicalist ideas of the mind.

In fact I think it would be incredibly surprising if all humans encoded all learned information in exactly the same way. That would be more weird than what we do see.

determinism is more specific than fatalism. Fatalism is the idea that the destination is determined (by some kind of spiritual force, usually), but that how you get there isn't.

So maybe you're fated to die at the age of 27. You could live your life normally and die in an accident. But maybe you find out you're going to die at 27, and you want to avoid fate, so you do everything you can not to be vulnerable to accidents, which pretty much means never leaving your house, never getting a job. So your whole adult life, you never leave, you stay safe, and meanwhile your parents are growing to resent you because you're just mooching off them for free. One day, when you're 27, your pissed off dad decides to kill you himself.

Fatalism actually can involve libertarian freedom in the in-between moments, as long as you arrive at the correct destination. Determinism, on the other hand, doesn't have any spiritual forces deciding some specific end, instead every moment must follow causally from the last - there's no libertarian freedom in the in-between moments.

Anybody want a peanut?

All the behaviour we see around us in the physical world is only doing what it is doing because of how it feels. — bert1

That seems a bit like it fails the Occam's Razor sniff test to me. The only behaviour that truly needs "feelings" in order to explain, that I can see, is people who talk about feeling feelings. (well, and some animal behaviours, but animal consciousness or proto-consciousness seems pretty agreeable to everyone). Everything else seems more simply explained by physics, whose operators don't seem to have any reference to feelings. That compounds with the fact that the thing we frequently refer to as 'feelings' themself seem emergent - someone on antidepressents feels different feelings than when they're not, so feelings seem to be a high-level phenomenon to humans, "emerging" from the chemical interactions in our brains.

Like I said before, I don't think poorly of pansychism in general, there may indeed be "something it's like" to be an atom, but I'm certainly skeptical that that "something it's like" involves anything recognizable as "feelings".

Or maybe I'm interpreting your use of that word too literally. Who knows?

the thing that stops me from being a pansychist is, if consciousness is fundamental, then that means (by my reckoning) everything is conscious. Atoms, amoebas, blood cells, chairs, maybe even things like societies. But if everything is conscious.... there's still only one thing in the world that writes the words "I'm conscious", and that's human beings. Atoms and amoebas and blood cells and chairs don't write those words.

Our consciousness is at the very least especially unique, because it is causal. I think it's causal. It would be very weird of my body to write "I'm conscious" if my consciousness wasn't part of the causal chain. But consciousness doesn't seem to be causing anything else to communicate about consciousness, only humans. So even if pansychism is true, SOMETHING specifically about humans and human brains is emerging (not strongly, in my opinion, though it's hard to justify) that makes our consciousness more tangible, somehow, then the consciousness of everything else around us.

And if it's fundamentally more tangible in us, maybe it's also true that it's emerging in us to begin with, and not some kind of fundamental feature of reality at all.

These are the intuitions keeping me off pansychism

If questioning God has got you in a twist, consider this:

If God doesn't exist, then every joy you've ever experienced, everything beautiful you've ever seen or imagined, every parent's love for their child, everything good in the world was there without God too. Every time a person died to stand up for another person, every time a person gave some of what they had to someone who needed it - all these things happened in a world without a god.

The only thing you lose without a god is the childish hope for justice in the after life - everything else good is still here. YOU can still be good. Good isn't about obedience to your unseen maker, it's about your relationship to your brothers and sisters in humanity.

okay well panpsychism still requires some emergence to get to human consciousness - the type of information processing and thoughts that are typical of human beings. You haven't removed emergence from the equation, you've just kind of given a shortcut to the genesis of raw consciousness and then allowed the emergence of the rest of the stuff we associate with human consciousness to still come from a brain. I'm not a panpsychist but I am extremely open to it - I don't think it's a bad idea at all.

I don't really take elimitavism as a serious contender, personally. But even if I did, I feel like there's still some emergence in there - I'm sure elimitavists would disagree, but I don't see a way around it.

I don't know if it's been clear up to now, when I say "emergence" I don't mean the strong variety.

I'd want to know why someone thinks consciousness emerges from brain activity. The usual answer is that changes in brain activity result in changes in experience. It's also hard to make sense of the claim. If consciousness just is brain activity it seems odd to say it emerges from that brain activity. If it isn't brain activity, what exactly is it and how does it connect with the brain activity? — bert1

Can you articulate the alternative to emergence here?

It's not reasonable to say "I think consciousness emerges from brain activity but I don't know how"?

do you not see yourself repeating propaganda you've been told? Do you consider the possibility that there's any irony in you posting that?

Not only this, but US intelligence was actively assisting their efforts and US assets were actively hitting targets in Yemen, flying recon, etc., a level of support Israel has not received in any of its wars.

This is not generally reflected in public understanding, — Count Timothy von Icarus

Absolutely.

I did not understand that scenario at all. The field is black, but yesterday it was painted white? I... don't understand

Edit. I understand. You're saying, in a very hard to follow way in my opinion, that the previous day it was painted as if the person painting it knew exactly the path this guy would take - he predicted it perfectly so the guy would only see black.

I don't really see what this has to do with free will at all tbh. The scenario tells me nothing about it the guy had free will or not. Knowing how other people answer this question doesn't really tell me much about what they think of free will either.

Why is Israel such a lightening rod for criticism? — Count Timothy von Icarus

There are a few reasons situations like this happen.

1. Like I said, awareness. People are generally more aware of some conflicts than others, and more knowledgeable about them.

2. Western support. It may be perceived that Israel is doing all their nastiness with support and resources from Western countries, in ways that the other countries are not. The average American may think (whether right or wrong), my country is more involved in this conflict, which means my voice matters more than it would in some conflict my country is a lot less involved in

3. Responsiveness to reason. Israel may actually be seen as a country that is more fundamentally reasonable than other countries. In other words, if you said "hey, what you're doing is evil and you have to stop" to the Israeli government and also to the Saudi government, which one do you think is more likely to listen? Some countries, there's no point criticizing them much, because they're evil, they know they're evil, everyone knows they're evil. Other countries, especially more Western-seeming countries, provide space for the idea that if you criticise them hard enough, there may be enough sway within their society to stop the evil.

The last reason is why I criticise leftists more than conservatives. Conservatives are pretty much hopeless, criticism wouldn't do much good. People on the left can do better

Truly a brain-dead take.

People are quick to call out Israeli assaults yet when Saudi does something similar there appears to be less of an outcry. — I like sushi

I don't think the whataboutism is particularly helpful. People don't know everything happening in every conflict in the world. If Israel did something terrible, and someone says "that's terrible", you saying "but what about when Saudi Arabia did it!?" isn't helpful at all. Either what they're doing is terrible, it's terrible regardless of what Saudi Arabia does. If it's not terrible, it's not terrible regardless of what Saudi Arabia does.

If people aren't also criticizing Saudi Arabia for the same thing, they probably don't know about Saudi Arabia or the context in which they're doing the same thing.

this is such a silly myth. Guess what, Biden isn't popular, you're right! People didn't come out to vote Biden in, they came out to vote Trump out!

It's surprising to you that Biden is popular, fair enough. Is it also surprising to you that people really, really dislike trump?

they've actually convinced everyone but you

yeah, seems weird that he'd "wow" at that. Presidents have power through words alone. They sign papers with things written on them. They sometimes write their own words. They say lots of words. Everything important a president does, he does with words.

It stands to reason he could also pose the most danger through his words

Charles Manson is in prison for words.

I don't see what big outcome in philosophy hinges on a deterministic universe. — Manuel

I agree, I think we, as in human beings, are mechanistic even if quantum physics is random. Maybe I just have a different idea of what "mechanistic" means.

So, the type of mechanism Newton disproved isn't exactly what we think about today. It was a view very much based on billiard balls crashing into each other, etc., which turned out to have issues. — Count Timothy von Icarus

The universe is not billiard balls - I fully agree. My idea of "mechanistic" is much broader than that.

no problem about the "vast" thing.

In any case, I still don't see any consensus among the relevant experts that "we aren't mechanistic", quantum physics notwithstanding. If it was proven, it seems like huge portions of academic science and philosophy have missed the memo.

And even the deep truths about quantum physics are debated. Quantum physics is probabilistic, yes, but the function that determines those probabilities is deterministic (the Schrödinger equation). The exact nature of how quantum physics works under the hood is still a hot topic, and the second most popular interpretation is a kind of meta-determinism - many worlds. Is a deterministic view of quantum mechanics "mechanistic"?

I just don't think it's justifiable to say this idea is "proven" yet. Newton wrote about his educated opinion in the late 1600s - many of his ideas have stood the test of time but this one doesn't seem to have made a dent.

Yes, people gain power through words. Complaining about trump's words is a worthwhile complaint. Words are what allow Presidents to do things.

which reality is that? What have I fabricated? Did this woman really not say these things?

The lengths I go to are "reading the words of his employees and people who worked with him". Oh, and also listening to his own words - I go to that length too.

he left, but not by choice. That's like saying a child wasn't misbehaving because his parents eventually dragged him out. In fact, it's exactly like that.

As an aside, it truly is amazing the lengths you'll go to to lick this guy's boots. Literally nothing at all could make you think he did something wrong. He said he could kill a man in broad daylight and not lose any fans - you seem exactly the type that he's talking about.

I didn't say "vast", you inexplicably decided to add that. When I Google the question, it's notable that even when I find articles arguing against materialism or physicalism, they do it from the perspective of an underdog, here to fight against the hegemony.

Unfortunately it doesn't look like there's any unambiguous polls about this, only people writing about their impression of the state of science. And NOBODY but you is saying that the state of science is that physicalism was disproven by Newton.

There is, however, a neat poll of modern philosophers, and physicalism/materialism is pretty dang popular there. Perhaps they didn't get the memo?

It just doesn't seem "proven" to me. "Prove" is an extremely strong word. If it were proven, I'd expect some kind of plurality of agreement at least among relevant experts - that's not what we see.

and yet as far as I can tell, today the majority of physicists, neuro scientists and cognitive scientists don't share his conviction (even the ones who share his belief would be unlikely to call it PROVEN).

I'm fully ready to believe it was his own interpretation of his own work. He was a very superstitious person who lived a long time ago. "Proof" is much too strong a word for what this is.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/jenna-ellis-testimony-georgia-trump_n_6552c083e4b0c9f246615c86

Trump Was ‘Not Going To Leave’ The White House, Lawyer Testifies In Georgia Case

Jenna Ellis told investigators a senior White House aide insisted to her that Trump was just going to “stay in power” despite losing the 2020 election.

“‘We are just going to stay in power,’” she recounted him telling her. “And I said to him, ‘Well, it doesn’t quite work that way, you realize?’ and he said, ‘We don’t care.’”

And Sidney Powell, who also has pleaded guilty, told prosecutors Trump relied on her counsel against the advice of those in the White House, saying he did so “because we were the only ones willing to support his effort to sustain the White House.”

“I mean, everybody else was telling him to pack up and go,” Powell said in her testimony.

I don't even think it's fair to say it's "shot through with error" just because it's failed to provide a clear answer to a very, very hard problem. If no other paradigm has answered the question either, you can't really fault one paradigm specifically - that seems unfair, and awfully like a double standard.

Seems less like a proof and more like an opinion to me. I think you're over-playing the hand there.

as intriguing as this claim is, it's not very Googleable. "Newton proved we aren't mechanistic" doesn't bring up any relevant results.

that's why I like what I call "middle emergence"

What does "in control of your thoughts" mean? Controlling them how?

metaphysical statements are not propositions — 180 Proof

Could you talk a bit about why you think that?

I wasn’t fully in control of my thoughts — Skalidris

This is probably borderline off topic but, do you really feel like you're "in control of your thoughts" when you're not drunk?

I think you might be. I don't think they've published a paper just to propose a tautology (though worse ideas have been published)

I might be wrong but the way I understand it is: "the functional information of a system will increase over time when the environment around the system is favorable for that to happen". — Skalidris

That phrasing borders on tautological. "X will tend to happen in a system when the environment around that system is favourable for X". Replace x with literally just about anything and that sentence structure holds. Right?

mainly concern myself with theology and the philosophy of religion being influenced primarily by Kierkegaard, Bonhoeffer, Russian religious thought (Nikolai Berdyaev, Alexander Men, Vladimir Lossky), and the Greek Fathers (I also enjoy Buber's "philosophy of dialogue" as well and the work of Giovanni Pico who used Jewish mystical work to develop an argument for Christianity). — Dermot Griffin

Fascinating. Could you give a short "blurb", 3 sentences or so, of the most important ideas in this sphere of thought to you? Concepts, normative rules you've derived, etc - whatever you think is most central and most important to you.