I thought my "fruit" answer was doing it!

But, yeah, if I try the way you describe, it does work.

Look, you're right. Ok? If you're happy with your response, I don't want to argue with you about it anymore. — YuZhonglu

Then don't. No need to be a jerk about it.

Ugh. Nothing in the article explains or your responses provide an answer to my question. Sure, if it makes you feel better, you're right. Happy? Congratulations, you've provided an answer. If that satisfies you, so be it.

Does anyone else have anything useful to add? — YuZhonglu

You're rude.

Also, it was published in the Daily Mail. — YuZhonglu

How does that discredit Earl K. Miller, Ph.D., a professor of neuroscience at MIT?

The article doesn't address the question at hand. — YuZhonglu

From the article:
"But in returning to the first task, the brain has to use more energy to focus and get back into the flow.

According to Professor Miller, the small interruption wastes time and increases the chances of making mistakes.

Research carried out at Stanford University has shown that those people who multitask frequently may actually be worse at filtering out distractions.

Proponents of multitasking may question why our brains are so drawn to a habit which has such a negative effect on productivity."

and:
"One idea which may explain the penchant to take on more than we can mentally chew is a result of how our brains evolved.

At some point in the past being able to pick up on any new sight or sound may have helped to spot danger, offering an evolutionary advantage and saving our prehistoric skins.

But this same adaptation could be having the opposite effect today.

‘In today’s modern society where our lives are rarely on the line, the ceaseless onslaught of information has the potential to cripple us,’ wrote Professor Miller.

‘Our brains aren’t equipped to handle the sensory overload.’"

So, it literally does explain why the brain can't multi-task. It may not be specifically talking about two sentences or explain in depth the exact reaction neuron A and neuron B have when trying to process two sentences. But it does address the root of your concern: why can't we mentally multi-task.

If you want a more neuro-sciency response that does tackle neurons A and B specifically, I suggest you actually contact a neuroscientist instead of being dismissive of layperson philosophers here who are just doing their best to give you an honest and researched answer.

Your point about "fruit" was relevant, but since then we've just been arguing in circles. — YuZhonglu

:roll:

I gave you a pretty good explanation about evolution and the brain, plus an article with the view of a neuroscientist backing up my theory. I'm fairly certain I've done my due diligence.

You, on the other hand, just keep asking the same question with odd parameters, and dismissing any attempt to answer it. You clearly have an agenda, which is just so anti-scientific I could laugh.

Any philosopher can do that The goal of science is to provide tools, so we can modify the world around us to our advantage. — YuZhonglu

Welcome to the philosophy forum, dude.

Ummm, no, an explanation really only needs to do #1 on your little list there.

But you're free to ask #2 and #3 as additional questions if you like.

So what's the neurobiological reason for it? — YuZhonglu

Calories.
Also, probably, the structure of the brain.

It occurs to me while I'm writing this, though, that I often do have multiple thoughts going. Like a main thought and a sub-thought. Like, I'm typing this and thinking about what to say to you, but simultaneously, (and I do mean simultaneously) I'm thinking about how my cat laying on my leg is making my foot fall asleep.

I already explained why we can't physically.

And, yes, the world would be different if we could.

Because evolution stopped us from being inefficient with our calories.
Your brain eats up about 20% of your calories as is. Surviving in the wild meant we had to make the brain process in the most efficient way possible. It's hardwired to seek shortcuts. Multitasking uses much more energy than processing one thing at a time.

Also, because thinking multiple things at the same time makes you more prone to error. You're not devoting your entire attention to one thing, and so you might miss something and make a mistake.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4014320/Why-multitasking-BAD-brain-Neuroscientist-warns-wrecks-productivity-causes-mistakes.html

I'm pretty sure summarizing concepts is more efficient.

Additionally, sentences are pretty complex things that contain multitasking event of their own:

"I like oranges" contains all of the following concepts and ideas and probably more:

-I exist
-It is possible to like things
-Oranges exist
-I am capable of liking things.
-I like some of the properties of oranges
-etc.

"I like fruit."

Done.

Maybe joining people can get a recommendation to participate with 10-20 posts before posting new topics, but are able to post topics that only moderators can see, meaning that if they post a well-composed topic, moderators can unlock it if viewed as properly formatted, otherwise they are free to post new topics after their post-number is over 10-20? — Christoffer

Yeah, but then you wouldn't get the fun of commenting here and complaining.

And I wouldn't get the fun of reading these ridiculous threads :razz:

There are a number of problems with that article but the first is this. Just how are we managing voluntary control over anything if causal determinism is the case? — Terrapin Station

I paused at that line as well. The voluntary part doesn't bother me: you're determined to want to choose certain things over other things. Just because it's determined that these are the choices you would prefer, doesn't mean you don't "really" prefer them (as odd as that sounds).

In a similar vein, you still have control over which choices you make, in the sense that you are still the rational agent making the choices. Determinism is not a mystical force driving your decisions. It's just that the way you were raised, the experiences you had, and your dna and rna and all that lead to the fact that you are the kind of person who will be choosing x instead of y.

For me, the question really becomes (and I think the article doesn't do this justice) what does that mean for ethics? It seems then that the point of anything we do in reaction to bad or good actions should not be to punish or reward that past behavior per se, but to encourage or discourage certain behaviors in the future.

And don't you even think of responding with a smirk, or I'll...

I'll...

Go grab another beer — S

Cheers! :smirk: :smirk: :smirk: :smirk: :smirk:

Alright, alright. Bad arguments. — S

Apparently, that's just your interpretation and can neither be right nor wrong :smirk: :razz:

Me too. I can't disagree and get along? — ZhouBoTong

Disagree, of course! But saying we had no arguments is a bit much! :brow:

I have even found myself agreeing with almost everything you say in every OTHER thread but that one. And I think on that thread there may have even a few points where some middle ground was found, — ZhouBoTong

:blush: :kiss:

I think you're being endlessly charitable by calling it a "slip" and "sloppy."

There's a fine line between legal and illegal and Trump&Co just barrel on through life on that line like a herd of crazed rhinos.

:roll:

Not making an argument; just trying to share an article I thought was interesting.

Quote from another interesting article on the matter:

"We can thus see that the free will wars – disputes about whether or not we should go around denying free will, and what free will really is – are a function of differing definitions. If you’re referring to our capacity for voluntary choice-making that gives us rational control over our behavior, and that makes us responsible, then it would be wrong to deny that. If, on the other hand, you’re referring to a contra-causal capacity that supposedly makes us more responsible than what deterministic voluntary action affords, then it would be wrong not to deny that, at least on the assumption that we want a well-informed public."

and:
"Given indeterminism, things might have turned out otherwise, but breaks in causal regularities in generating options to choose from can’t be credited to the agent. Moreover, we don’t want the agent’s choice among options to involve much randomness, since that would undermine responsibility by sidelining the agent’s character and intentions as primary determinants of the choice. What we can call agent determinism is necessary for control and responsibility. So, if a contra-causal swerve helps to determine a choice, that choice can’t more reflect the agent’s character or motives, so doesn’t make the choice more her doing in any morally significant respect than under determinism, even though she could, and might, have done otherwise. The upshot, it seems to me, is that it’s perfectly ok to tell folks they don’t have free will in this purportedly responsibility-enhancing sense, since there’s no good reason to suppose they do, even if determinism is false.[3] So go for it. But we have to make sure they understand that they can still, and will, be held responsible, since being held responsible is crucial in helping people do the right thing."

http://www.naturalism.org/philosophy/free-will/what-should-we-tell-people-about-free-will

(i am not even saying Hamlet is worse, but surely if obviously true, there should be some evidence/reasoning — ZhouBoTong

Really, zhou? And here I thought we'd been getting along.... :chin:

Feel free. :grin: — unenlightened

It was determined since the big bang that I would do so. :joke: :kiss:

I just told you my theory is based on what appears to be the case, that I can choose freely, not at all on what I wish — unenlightened

It doesn't appear that way at all. But since you can't explain it, I rest my case.

I've never tried it. If you have, perhaps you can tell me, but your question is rhetorical, so of course you cannot, you merely show that you assume there is nothing, and cannot be anything — unenlightened

Until you can explain to me what about the self could be free from determinism, your entire theory is based merely on wishful thinking.

For the record, it's not a rhetorical question. I'm dead serious. Biology is determined, experiences are determined, so to claim there is free will you have to show there is something else.

That is the extra claim you make, that I do not. And you keep making it and not justifying it. I'm unsurprised, because I have never heard any justification in many years of such discussion. — unenlightened

From where I'm sitting, you just keep repeating that there IS some undetermined part of the self that makes choices without being at all specific about what that is or whence it comes or how it works or ANYTHING.

When you take away biology, and you take away all the experiences of your life, WHAT is left of you that could make decisions?

Even if the choice has no causal relation to the state of affairs, it marks a resolution for the deciding agent so that the landscape of possibility becomes altered. — Merkwurdichliebe

Right, it's an efficient cause. But that's not enough to claim it itself is uncaused.

Perhaps it's in the possibility that the choice can reconfigure the causal chain, in effect resetting its succession to a new origin. — Merkwurdichliebe

How would that work?

My contention is, again, in that the actual choice of which of two or more alternatives to choose (so as to approach and obtain the want's resolution) will itself not be an immutable link in infinite causal chains/webs. Rather, the act of making the specific choice will stem from the momentary form of the agent as an originating efficient cause, such that its effect is the choice taken. — javra

I will agree that every choice is in itself another cause of a long line of events, so it is the efficient cause in that sense. I do not see how it is the "originating" cause if it itself is also caused.

Stating it differently: there can be no choice (an action or motion) without some form of want (a driving motive where "motive" is understood as "something that determines motion"). The motive--irrespective of what it itself is determined by--determines the process of choice making. — javra

I was going to pull just that aspect out from your dissertation there! :wink:

I agree that is a "want" that pushes us towards certain decisions, in fact, a whole host of them, sometimes contradictory ones pulling us in opposite directions.

The distinction if that want is determined or not is the crux of the matter. I would say that these wants are products of both our experiences and our biology, and that they are fully determined. In fact, if they were not determined, they would not be trustworthy.

Repeat post - my laptop bugged out on me.

This want, whatever it may be, is the a propelling motive for us to make a choice between alternatives—and this propelling motive determines our motion (roughly, our change of being) in actively making a decision; i.e., determines that we engage in the psychological action. Each want (each propelling motive) has some either ready established or else not yet established resolution that is pursued. — javra

So are you saying that this "want" or "motive" is determined or the part of choice that is not fully determined?

Or you could consider the Nietzschean idea that there are so many unknowns that factor into choice, that I have no idea what's going on, but like to think I cause things — Merkwurdichliebe

Sure, that's how we act and think in the day to day. The predetermining factors of all the thousands of decisions we make are indeed so vast that we can't always comprehend them, so we go about our days with the impression that our wills are totally free.

But even if the choice is predicated upon determinate factors, the choice itself is not predetermined — Merkwurdichliebe

And what part of you is untouched by predetermining factors?

No. And you haven't provided any substantive argument for why it would be so. But I have the advantage that people make choices, and I don't need to explain it, merely notice it, whereas you need to explain it away — unenlightened

If you had been paying attention, you'd have noticed that I never said that people don't make choices. They do. But those choices aren't "free" or untethered to determined causes.

You're the one who has to make a case for what part of the self could possibly make an uncaused choice. What part of you is untouched by biology and experience?

If the will is the deciding agent for causality, then that would mean it chooses, and by choosing that implies some degree of freedom — Merkwurdichliebe

Yes, there is freedom in the choice, but that freedom of choice is dependent on being determined. On what basis would you make a choice if not by predetermined data?

And you don't notice that it isn't like that after all. — unenlightened

You haven't provided any substantive argument for why it wouldn't be so.

If freewill does exist, it is always semi-determined by, at minimum, motives—which are not efficient causes — javra

What part is not determined?

You make choices based on a mixture of your personal biology and past experiences. Take away those two things and there's nothing left of "you."

There's nothing "free" about a free will, because it's just random and wouldn't be based on reason or values or experience or knowledge or anything. It would be chaos.

It certainly seems that I can have a reason to do something and yet not do it. — unenlightened

You'd have other reasons that caused your action, though.