And also the Simulation Hypothesis generally asks us to believe the simplest compatible story. So once we start going down the solipsistic route, then a Boltzmann brain is the logical outcome. Why would you have to simulate an actual ongoing reality for this poor critter when you could just as easily fake every memory and just have it exist frozen in one split instant of "awareness"?

Remember Musk's particular scenario. We are in a simulation that spontaneously arises from some kind of "boring" computational multiverse substrate. So simulating one frozen moment is infinitely more probable than simulating a whole lifetime of consciousness. — apokrisis

You need enormous probabilistic resources in order to realize a Boltzmann brain. AFAIK, according to mainstream science, our cosmic neighborhood is not dominated by BBs. BBs are still a threat in a wider cosmological modeling context, but if the hypothetic simulators just simulate a random chunk of space of the kind that we find ourselves in, then BBs should not be an issue.

Christianity initially developed as a marginalized and persecuted cult, and that is reflected in the tone of the scriptures, which is alternately grandiose, ingratiating, impatient, angry and despairing.

But by proving it by truth table wouldn't you already be relying on the inference as a valid method, since the truth table is the conjunction of the premises implying in the conclusion? — Nicholas Ferreira

In classical logic implication p->q is a given, so yes, it is a valid method by definition. It is defined as a truth function f(p, q) with a known truth table. Other logics may treat implication differently though.

I see the problem as being not just a difference in scale but one of kind. If you only had to simulate a single mind, then you don't even need a world for it. Essentially you are talking solipsistic idealism. A Boltzmann brain becomes your most plausible physicalist scenario. — apokrisis

Well, yes, you do need a world even for a single mind - assuming you are simulating the mind of a human being, rather than a Boltzmann brain, which starts in an arbitrary state and exists for only a fraction of a second. Solipsism is notoriously unfalsifiable, which means that there isn't a functional difference between the world that only exists in one mind and the "real" world. But if you are only concerned about one mind, then you can maybe bracket off/coarse-grain some of the world that you would otherwise have to simulate. Of course, that is assuming that your simulation allows for coarse-graining.

If you mean traditional logic, aka "laws of thought," there are different ways to axiomatize it. But modus ponens, for example, can simply be proven from the truth table.

Heh, that's a good point. I suppose that if you were only simulating one mind, you could make your simulation domain smaller than if you were, say, simulating the entire population of the earth.

Politically speaking, it is how we prepare our young for thinking that concerns me most. I am convinced the 1958 National Defense Education Act, and replacing education for independent thinking with groupthink and leaving moral training to the church, is what lead to the election of Trump and that same education many years ago, in a different country, resulted in the election of someone Trump seems to be role modeling. — Athena

Ugh... I wouldn't want to make moral training the business of the state - any state. I have been on the receiving end of such "moral training" (enforced state ideology) and I wouldn't wish it on anyone. It's as "groupthink" as it can get. Of course, you will object that good training is not groupthink. But if things always worked out as well as we wish they did, we wouldn't even be having this conversation now. And history shows us that when the state takes moral training into its hands, it's rare that anything good comes out of it, whatever the intentions.


I have read that among the culprits of these megafires are... firefighters. They have been pretty good at putting out small fires over the last half-century or so, which has resulted in the accumulation of combustible material. But really, it's an unfortunate combination of several factors, all working toward the same end.

Yet we know that the reality cannot be at all times accurately modelled with the idea of a clock-work mechanical universe. — ssu

Do we? How?

Anyway, I am not going to argue for or against the laws of nature. If you believe that conscious beings are outside any general order of things, then obviously you will reject the simulation conjecture for that reason alone. So there is nothing to talk about.

Look, if I were to say that not everything is purely mechanical and can be modelled to work as clock-work, would that mean that I'm implying that there are miracles? — ssu

Depends on how one defines miracles. If we assume the popular Humean view of miracles as violations of the laws of nature - which already implies that nature mostly behaves in law-like ("mechanical") fashion - then yes, that is what you are implying.

With the way the algorithm instructs them to do.

Notice the part "which wasn't at all described in the first program to be done". That part you see means that it's not following the instructions, it's not modifying it's code how it was instructed to do. — ssu

I am still trying to understand where (if anywhere) you are leading with these requirements for programs that spring into existence fully formed out of the blue. Are you trying to say that consciousness is a miracle? Many do think so, but why beat around the bush? Just come out and say it and we will be done.

Ok. Assume a computer that you give a program to run. The computer follows first the program, yet later you find it running a totally different program, which wasn't at all described in the first program to be done. — ssu

Yes, that's what evolutionary algorithms do: they modify part of their own code (the other part you may think of as the environment, which is subject to unchanging rules).

Or let's put this another way. Give me an example of a computer that doesn't follow an algorithm, instructions provided by a software or hardware program as said above. — ssu

Why? What would that prove?

As I said, the Computer has to have an algorithm. It cannot do anything without an algorithm and it cannot do something that algorithm doesn't say to do. It's Limited by it's algorithm. — ssu

First of all, most computer programs are algorithms that process data, so it is not just an algorithm that you put in - it is algorithm plus data, and data can bring in potentially unlimited information. Deep learning programs are already pretty impressive, to the point that they can fool some of the people some of the time. Second, what is to stop a computer from creating new algorithms, or indeed from evolving its own algorithms in response to inputs? That sounds suspiciously like what the brain is doing, and indeed that is the direction that some of the more advanced machine learning is taking.

Your argument is: computers just follow predefined rules. But if you are a physicalist, i.e. you believe that the world we live in is regular through and through, with no place for magic and the supernatural, then everything in this world - including you - just follow predefined rules (whether or not those rules were predefined by some sentient being is irrelevant to this discussion, as far as I can see).

Now, whether everything in the world can be computed is still a hotly disputed thesis, but this conundrum cannot be resolved by pointing out that computers just follow rules - the question is much more complex than that.

I know that Pruss is pretty clever, but that argument was singularly bad. He should have just left it where Leibniz did.

In which case, as you can see, given infinite time we'll progress towards a limit -- wherever that happens to be -- but that limit will not be infinite. — Moliere

Although log(x) grows sublinearly, it doesn't have an upper limit ;) But I take your point.

It irks me that people adopted "fake news" just because Trump used that term. — Terrapin Station

Trump hijacked the expression "fake news" without even understanding (or giving a shit about) its meaning - he just calls anything in the media that he doesn't like "fake news." But the term existed long before he got a hold of it, and was often used in connection with just the sort of right-wing conspiracy rags that Trump favors, as well as Russian troll farms that favor Trump. Of course, Trump being Trump, he insists that he coined "fake news." He probably thinks that "enemy of the people" is another of his brilliant rhetorical inventions (despite everyone telling him that it is a Stalinist phrase with a bloody history).

Sounds like he is working out a purely internalist concept of truth. Internalism as such is not an unusual position, although it is more commonly deployed in the context of knowledge and justification.

I'm saying the argument is self-undermining. I'm not making any positive claims.

If simulation, then evidence is simulated. — unenlightened

The idea is that the simulation is a simulation of (a part of) the actual world under representative conditions. So yes, evidence is simulated, but if the simulation is accurate enough, then this simulated evidence is close to the real evidence.

Like, for instance, if I was simulating an engine turbine, I would be putting in the material properties, geometry, physics, and boundary conditions that are characteristic of the real engine that I am interested in.

(I am not endorsing the simulation hypothesis, btw, least of all Musk's OP. Why are we even talking about Musk?)

Read someone who writes well relative to contemporary popular writing norms. — Terrapin Station

I think Russell's lecture notes (which were recommended above) actually aren't a bad choice if you just want to stimulate someone's interest in philosophy. It worked for me, anyway :) Russell was not only a brilliant thinker, but a lovely writer as well, which, unfortunately, is not so common. But of course, entertaining as that little book is, you don't want to use it for a systematic study.

Yeah, part of what I'd like to argue is that this kind of approach to things simply is idealism par excellence, and an insidious one at that, insofar as it couches itself in the language of the ‘physical’, despite being a metaphysical (in the pejorative sense) chimera through and through. It always amazes me that those who hew to this kind of view don’t recognise just how shot-through with theology it is. And I don’t mean this as a cheap-shot (like ‘oh science is just the new religion'), but in a properly philosophical key: it shares with theology its ‘emanative’ logic wherein, to botch Plotinus, everything flows from the One and returns to the One - and where the ‘flow’ is just so much detritus and debris. What you call reductive physicalism mirrors, exactly, ancient theological tropes and, from my perspective, is more or less indistinguishable from them. — StreetlightX

I am not bothered by distasteful associations (egad! Theology!) I believe that we should judge ideas on their own merit. Besides, in all likelihood, theological ideas get their inspiration from some of the same intuitions about nature that give rise to materialistic ideas. And those intuitions are realist at their core. I am convinced that, whatever ideology we outwardly proclaim, whatever stuff we say the world is made of and however it is parceled out, inwardly we all believe that much of the world is indifferent to our thoughts and desires. We have some leeway in how we choose to conceptualize it, but there are strong constraints on those conceptualizations that are not up to us to choose. And that is the only ontology that matters. We can quibble about whether chairs or wave-functions "really exist," but that's just semantics. What matters is that there is this recalcitrant something that we all have to acknowledge, on pain of undermining all our empirical knowledge.

Where I believe both the faithful and at times the materialists, especially philosophically less sophisticated scientists, sin again reason is in jumping to strong metaphysical commitments without proper warrant. But in resisting unwarranted metaphysical commitments we can only go so far in the opposite direction. We can allow for a plurality of conceptualizations, but we have to acknowledge that these conceptualizations are all subject to the same constraints. They are different maps of the same territory, and therefore they cannot be truly independent. Then the question legitimately arises: what is the nature of their interdependence?

Reductionism proposes a hierarchical structure of asymmetric dependence - by way of nomological reduction or supervenience (at the very least) - with the TOE at the top. This idea does have some empirical corroboration, but perhaps not enough. Above all, this should be treated as, at best, a provisional conclusion, not as an a priori metaphysical assumption, as often appears to be the case. Moreover, physicalist reductionism edges into the ethical territory when it deprecates non-fundamental conceptualizations, like for example the mind, as less than real, superfluous, causally inert - all the more reason for caution and skepticism.

As for (traditional Christian) theology and supernaturalism in general, it simply doesn't trust matter to behave (as @schopenhauer1 puts it) on its own. The First Cause, the Prime Mover - which you analogize with the TOE - has to be some anthropomorphic agent, which, unlike matter, is not entirely open to empirical examination.

I think there's a misunderstanding here: I'm not against 'big picture claims' (Gould is wonderful, as is Darwin!), and I invoked Weinberg and Dawkins not as avatars of 'big picture thinking' but because the specific ways in which they theorize the 'big picture' are severely misguided. Each, in their own way, attempts to assign full explanatory power (in physics and biology respectively) to a privileged ontological stratum so that certain parts of reality are simply reduced to epiphenomena that have no material agency.

That's the point: I'm not at all trying to furnish a 'non-reductionism physicalism' - whatever that might mean - but rather, give full 'ontological rights', if we can speak that way, to all of what is often simply dismissed as medial. The equation of the material with the medial isn't meant to reduce the medial to the material. Quite the opposite: it is meant to expand our understanding of what counts as material. — StreetlightX

What I would call reductive physicalism envisions a unique (but so far only hypothetical) Theory of Everything, usually identified with fundamental physics, that fixes everything in existence. All other theories and explanations, from chemistry to psychology, at best supervene on and approximate this TOE. The TOE thus has a unique status. Its ontology is the only true ontology, and its causality is the only true causality - everything else being illusory and epiphenomenal. With some variations, this is a pretty popular view among physical scientists (especially physicists, natch) and scientifically-minded laymen.

Those who reject this view, but still adhere to a broadly empiricist epistemology, which moreover does not privilege mental phenomena in its explanatory scheme, often stake their position as non-reductive physicalism. But there are different ways that one can oppose the thoroughgoing reductionism that I just outlined. One can reject the premise of a single TOE and propose instead a patchwork of theories that operate in different regimes, scales and domains. (Clearly, these theories cannot be entirely independent of each other, but presumably their interrelationship does not amount to a straightforward top-down reduction.) One can take an issue with epiphenomenalism (and here too there are different options). You seem to be rejecting the primacy of some fundamental physical ontology and instead insisting on a multiplicity of coequal ontologies.

I am sympathetic to this view, but I might be coming to it from a somewhat different direction, one that deemphasizes ontology in favor of epistemology. To my mind, ontology is theory-dependent.Theory comes first, and whatever entities it operates with, that is its ontology.

While I'd like to think that yes, materialism does entail more mature, more elaborate theorizing than the various idealisms which it arrays itself against, I think you're vastly understating the influence and pervasiveness of the latter. If one accepts materialism in the sense outlined here, people like Richard Dawkins and Steven Weinberg become nothing other than arch-Idealists; searches for reductive 'theories of everything', where all the universe follows from a small handful of first principles, turn out to be idealist desiderata par excellence. — StreetlightX

I am not really seeing the opposition that you are setting up here. I can understand you pitting reductionist physicalism against non-reductionist physicalism, but that's a different debate. What does this have to do with the question of matter?

You were talking about "the principle of the irreducibility of the medium," but what your examples suggested was that all you wanted was for your reductive explanations to incorporate more of the underlying messy details. Which is fine; as I said, this is the trajectory that sciences take anyway as they explore their domains in-depth. But there is also a place for big-picture, high-concept theorizing of the likes of Dawkins and Gould - and Darwin for that matter.

It is a key feature of our world that regularities emerge at multiple levels of detail. The picture does not dissolve into noise as we step back and take it in at a larger scale; instead, new patterns come into focus as we scale up or down. This is why we have multiple sciences, all of them more-or-less viable as empirical models. And even within one science, such as evolutionary biology, we can grasp general outlines of a theory, even if they are not exceptionless and do not afford a very precise fit. How else could Darwin have made his great discovery without the benefit of genetics and molecular biology and evo-devo, if the patterns that he noticed were not there to be seen with a naked eye?

For that matter, how could we ever have any "special sciences," anything other than what we call "fundamental physics" if we could not idealize the medium, neglect and smooth out messy details - and still end up with an acceptably accurate model? How could there be evolutionary biology if we could not (mostly) ignore the medium of chemistry and physics? How could we have so much success with the Big Bang theory if we could not ignore the medium of stars and pretty much everything else and idealize it as a perfect fluid?

Besides, what is medium at one level is the nuts and bolts at another, more fine-grained level. You acknowledge this yourself when you pick examples from different sciences that look at the world at different levels of detail. So where exactly is that medium that you are talking about? What is it?

That aside, it leads very nicely into Whitehead's dictum that 'the abstract does not explain, but must itself be explained'. — StreetlightX

Of course it does. (Scientific) explanation is nothing other than abstracting a general rule/regularity/model out of concrete material instances. All explanations are abstractions - including those that you hold up as examples of the triumph of materialism. Rather than these fleshier theories being a case of us getting wise to the materiality of the world, they are simply the result of more mature, more elaborate theorizing, which, while still being abstract (as all theories are, by definition), can afford to incorporate more detail.

As for the question of whether these abstract forms are immanent or transcendent, whether matter possesses its own powers or is animated from without, I am not even convinced that this is something worth asking. In any case, this rarefied metaphysical debate gains no purchase in empirical sciences.

Reading your examples, I thought of another from the same stock: Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel, where he points to material factors, such as climate and biogeography, in order to explain large-scale trends in the development of civilization in different parts of the world

However, I think that the contrast you are drawing is rather between more and less abstract levels of explanation. Abstraction removes detail, and detail is where your "materiality" is. The more abstract an explanation, the more immaterial it seems, as it were, its ontology consisting of made-up concepts like "genes" and "networks," instead of familiar, immediately perceptible "stuff."

You seem to be articulating the principle of locality, which says that all interaction is mediated by local, i.e. immediate contact, and Einstein's relativity further puts a speed limit on such interactions. But I am not sure what this has to do with matter specifically.

I'm fairly sure you're talking about his "on the hypothesis that animals are automata" essay, and it's comparing it to a steam whistle having no effect on its machinery. — JupiterJess

I looked that up, and no, I was thinking of something else. Not Huxley then. Too bad, it was a lovely passage, but I can no longer locate it.

As for epiphenomenalism, I think it's a misguided idea.

Identity theorists say that consciousness is identical to certain mental states. But for sake of argument, I can image a physically identical world lacking that identity. It's called all the other theories of consciousness. — Marchesk

One problem with that line of argument is that we can easily imagine states of affairs that are nomologically and even logically impossible. Being able to imagine something doesn't really tell us much.

I think it was T. H. Huxley (though I cannot find the quote), while critiquing vitalism, compared it to the belief that there is some essential "traininess" in a steam locomotive, which comes in addition to all of its manifest physical features - its gleaming steel body, the steam, the whistle... He also mockingly compared it to "aquosity" - a hypothetical property or mechanism that is responsible for the essence of water, quite apart from its chemical composition.

However, I think that "phenomenal consciousness" or "qualia" is a harder nut to crack than vitalism. Again, I am not agreeing with Chalmers et al., I just don't think that it is as obvious, as you say. There is something odd about consciousness that calls for a careful conceptual analysis.

The reason it's a fair analogy is that we're saying that:

(a) The physical make-up of x is exactly the same
and yet
(b) The properties of physical stuff x are different — Terrapin Station

I was wrong, and your (a) is right. But your (b) is not quite right: Chalmers (following Kripke) stipulates that zombies are identical to humans in all physical respects. But since slipperiness is a physical property, just as being made up of water molecules is, your analogy does not work either. It would be hard to come up with an analogy of the zombie argument for something like ice, because after you take away everything that is physical about it, it seems that nothing is left over. Chalmers wants you to believe that it is at least conceivable that phenomenal consciousness is an optional extra to all the physical stuff. I don't buy his argument, but I think it's not so obvious that you can just shrug it off.

We could say, "It's conceivable that everything is identical re the ice, temperature, etc. yet the ice wouldn't be slippery." P-zombies are "conceivable" in the same way as that. — Terrapin Station

I don't think that's a fair analogy. Perhaps Chalmers would suggest this as a better analogy: It is conceivable that something looks and feels exactly like slippery ice, and yet it is not ice. (Which, of course, is easily conceivable and even plausible.) But I am not sure that this is a fair analogy either.

Many companies would just love to hire manic people at first, if they would stay that way with that positive upbeat. But usually it leads to burn out. — ssu

I had a colleague who was a manic-depressive. He did seem to feel great in his manic phase, but as far as job performance, it's hard to say whether it was better or worse. True, he worked like a demon, but he had a harder time concentrating on a single task and seeing it to completion. He would start things and quickly became bored and wanted to move on to something new. He even found some side jobs (and once tried to get me to join some startup with him), but that didn't last either.

The genius of humans is their ability to work together. — macrosoft

It's not even some unique genius of humans. Dogs don't actually eat dogs (not as a rule), nor do bats nor bees nor any number of social animals. In fact, even solitary hunters, who you might think would be most prone to violence, generally avoid conflict with their conspecifics, because even when advantage is on their side, it's usually just not worth spending energy and risking an injury.

Does my wager- which concludes only that one should study philosophy of religion, not believe in God- really have infinite live options? — Empedocles

I understand your argument as being premised on the general principle that one should take seriously any claim that attaches high stakes to your future conduct. But this general principle is unworkable, because if we were to follow it consistently, we would be doing nothing other than investigate every conceivable claim of that sort - and we would still fail at this task, because there are just too many such claims. So you cannot base your argument on just that principle; you need something else.

Life is happening - and at some point it will end - and at the very very end of the day it will either end with a black hole (something natural) or something super- natural. In Pascal terms - the coin is spinning - not calling heads or tails is not an option. — Rank Amateur

Yes, that is exactly the faulty argument that I have been addressing in this thread.

Trying to guess what evolution would favor based on a naive first guess is a losing proposition, especially for something as complex as psychology. Evolutionary solutions are not obvious even for much simpler problems; this is why evolutionary algorithms are used to solve problems that can't be solved with our usual analytical methods.

If you are interested, a lot of research, both theoretical, computational and experimental, has been done in the field of the evolution of morality, and specifically altruism and cooperation. There are popular-level books and articles that cover these topics.

Pascal claims that you have everything to gain if God is and nothing to lose if God is not. So it is clear that he considers a very specific God: one whose favor can be gained by being a good Catholic, and one very specific alternative: one in which nothing interesting happens after you die.

not quite correct - better said God ( of the Catholic religion) is, or is not. This is an undeniable true premise - it in-compasses every possibility. — Rank Amateur

That would be quite a useless and unnecessary premise, since it is a trivial tautology. And my point was exactly that Pascal was not considering every possibility. If he was, his argument could not get off the ground - for reasons that I just explained.

Pascal begins that pansee by reminding the reader that he already provided arguments for (Catholic) God earlier, and the argument that follows is aimed at those who view those earlier arguments favorably, but still have some doubts, or just don't take the implications seriously enough.

And when it comes to the wager, he only considers two live possibilities: an afterlife as envisioned in Catholic teachings, or no afterlife at all.

I'm not sure if that makes as much sense written out as it does in my head, let me know if I should clarify any of it. — Empedocles

No, I think it's fine. High stakes serve as a lever, and infinitely high stakes, as Pascal argued, should overwhelm any doubt you might have when considering further action. However, in Pascal's mind there were only two live possibilities: God of the Catholic religion (or at least something like it) - or atheism. But is this so?

Forget about religion for a moment and consider a more general proposition:

P: At some future time T one of two things will happen: either you will be rewarded with inconceivably great rewards R or punished with inconceivably great punishments U. Which it will be depends on whether you choose a particular course C (undertaking some actions and/or assuming some mental attitudes).

You say that because of the stakes being so high, you ought to take P very seriously indeed. But because of its general form, P amounts not to one proposition, but to an infinitely large family of propositions, which can be obtained by varying C (we could also vary T, R and U, but for the purposes of practical decision-making that won't make much of a difference, provided that T is sufficiently far in the future). So what are you to do? How would you go around studying all of those propositions?

What's worse (or better, depending on how you look at it) is that for any possible course C you could consider its opposite, i.e. not undertaking any of those commitments implied by C - and that will constitute another possible course C'. If you are neutral to both of these mutually exclusive alternatives (and why wouldn't you be?), then they exactly cancel each other out, leaving you at a standstill.

So you see, there is no a priori argument for doing something, e.g. investigating religious teachings, based only on possible consequences. You still need to evaluate the relative merits of the available options and narrow your choice to a few live options - or else you will be confronted by countless mutually exclusive and mutually countering possibilities.

Why do you think that subjective opinions are wrong or misguided? And what do you mean by subjective/objective, anyway?

I would say that a statement is objective if its truth does not depend on who is making the statement. That, of course, implies that subjective statements can be true - it's just that that their truth condition includes the speaker.

I can, of course, conceive of a GCB that is all powerful and created numbers and so we need not worry about the impotence of a GCB. — lupac

Speaking of impotence... Using a parallel argument we conclude that god created masturbation and masturbation cannot exist outside of God. So indeed, we need not worry about the impotence of a GCB!

Through the brain, the mind can influence the body, for the body is controlled by the brain. I thought this was generally accepted, but without a connection to the brain(stem), the human body cannot function. — Tzeentch

The human body cannot function without the liver either, but that doesn't mean that every process in the body is controlled and directed by the liver. But never mind, I don't think your point hinges on this position being 100% accurate.

The reason the placebo-effect is so interesting is because it shows the mind's ability to influence unconscious processes in the body. — Tzeentch

OK, so I asked what relevance the phenomenon of the placebo effect might have for the philosophy of mind, and you just presented us with an example where the placebo effect has implications for a theory of mind that you support. To summarize, the theory says that the mind controls or influences bodily processes. But there are actually two minds: conscious and unconscious, and each of them has its own domain of influence. It might seem that there is little if any crossover between the two, but the placebo effect shows that the conscious mind has at least some degree of influence over the unconscious mind. The idea is that the placebo effect occurs when the conscious mind influences the unconscious mind, which in turn influences some processes over which the conscious mind normally does not have a direct influence.

This is a good answer; I agree: within the parameters of your theory, the placebo effect is relevant and potentially significant. I'll just note that the theory of conscious vs. unconscious mind should not be taken as the received view among experts (I don't think there even is one such view), but rather sounds like a folk theory of mind. Also, the interpretation of how the placebo effect works (i.e. the conscious mind works through the unconscious mind) is not obvious even if the main premises of the theory are taken for granted. But, to repeat, if all of these premises are accepted, then your point is valid: the evidence of the placebo effect makes a difference.

You seem skeptical, but personally I believe the influence of the mind, with practice, can become very significant. — Tzeentch

I am rather more skeptical of the whole conscious/unconscious mind theory, but I don't claim much expertise on this subject.

If you mean that the fact that our mind has some control over our body has implications for eliminative materialism, then the placebo effect would not seem like the best example. A far more obvious and uncontroversial example would be a volitional action, such as moving your hand, etc.

Of course, I would expect that eliminative materialists would already have a response to something as obvious as that.