Ok, who did they borrow it off? — Punshhh

Dunno. Banks?

I suspect that more often than not, the conclusion of a separate thing is begged at the start and rationalized from there. — noAxioms

It's really only substance dualists who think consciousness is a 'separate thing' and even then it's a conclusion not an assumption, at least ostensibly. Most non-physicalists (that I'm aware of) do not think consciousness is a separate thing anyway (unless you count a non-physical property as a 'thing' which I wouldn't).

There seems to be a necessity of memory and predicting going on. It’s almost impossible to be a predictor without memory, and I cannot think of anything that ‘experiences’ that does not do both things, but I can think of things that monitor internal processes that do so without either. — noAxioms

A zombie or android could do all that. Nothing in there entails consciousness. You may be right (or not) that consciousness requires memory and predicting, but memory and predicting are not sufficient for consciousness.

Consciousness is just what it is like to be in this kind of mechanised modelling relation with a world — apokrisis

Ooooooh no it isn't

So what's the alternative? — Relativist

Attribute regularities to will rather than law, maybe.

Here's how I approach it: some explanation is needed for the constant conjunction of past regularities. I judge that the "inference to best explanation" for this is that there exist laws of nature that necessitate this behavior. Inferring a best explanation is rational - it's a form of abductive reasoning. — Relativist

Check out Goodman's new riddle of induction if you haven't already. It's fun.

"Desires" seem, at least, biologically indispensible. — 180 Proof

How does that fit with your view that desires play no role in causing behaviour? I think you explained it before but I can't remember.

There's lots of trinities. I struggle to reconcile them, maybe they're just different and i shouldn't try.

Substance, form, function
Cardinal, fixed, mutable
Will, intellect, feeling
Father, Son, Holly Ghost
Belly, head, heart
Strawberry, mint, hazelnut
Ready salted, cheese and onion, salt and vinegar
Red, blue, yellow
Labour, Tory, Lib Dem
Thesis, antithesis, synthesis
Voltage, resistance, current
Bowl, cherries, life

I should probably read some Pierce. Might help me out.

Are we free agents or are our choices determined by variables such as genes, environments, nutrients, and experiences? — Truth Seeker

I think both, but I'm not a compatibilist. To my horror, I'm probably going to sound a bit like @apokrisis. We are determined by things we give a shit about, and our giving-a-shits constrain our choices. But within those constraints we are free to arbitrarily choose between alternatives we don't give a shit about.

It would make things easier if only intentional causes were called causes, and the other kind called something else. — Patterner

Maybe, but ordinary usage intervenes.

As a panpsychist I've been been considering whether the distinction between intentional cause and non intentional is sustainable. I think it may be, but the non intentional would be derived from the intentional. The only causes we actually know about are intentional. Other causes are often attributed to laws, which are descriptive and don't need the notion of cause to work, perhaps. Not sure.

I enjoyed your OP. The section on 'Complex Systems' doesn't actually mention causation. What is being caused exactly, and what is causing it?

I've been thinking about causation a bit recently in terms of overdetermination of the physical. Not quite ready to blob out a thread of my own on that yet.

i think it's a theory rather than a definition. Most people who understand how to use the word 'consciousness' do not attribute it to matter in general.

You make a good point that theories or definitions might exclude consciousness from being casually efficacious. It needs some extra work to defend the causal efficacy of consciousness if all it is is the capacity to feel.

Yes, i think that's probably the most accurate way to think about it. Exactly what properties substance/matter/reality/whatever intrinsically has is interesting, and i think consciousness has to be on that list.

Yeah, we can always just make shit up. — Banno

And everyone does. Some made-up stuff works better than others, but it's all made up. There are no givens, apart from perhaps ordinary language.

There is nothing it is like to be conscious per se, unless, perhaps, there is something it is like to be conscious of consciousness. Consciousness is the property of a system whereby there is something it is like to be that system when it undergoes a change.

If the galley, all the people and all the parts, is one consciousness, it doesn't make sense to me that it would not be able to communicate with us. A consciousness that is made up of, among other things, a bunch of pretty competent communicators should be able to communicate at least as well as any of its independent parts. A human communicates far better than any if it's parts can. — Patterner

That's interesting, thanks. I hadn't thought of that that way before. Yes it's a serious objection I think.

I view the objects and phenomena of pretty much all the special sciences (e.g. biology, ecology, psychology, economics, etc.) to be strongly emergent in relation with the the objects and phenomena of the material sciences such as physics or chemistry. Some, like our apokrisis argue (and I would agree) that even within physics, especially when the thermodynamics of non-equilibrium processes is involved, many phenomena are strongly emergent in the sense that they aren't intelligible merely in light of, or deducible from, the laws that govern their smaller components. — Pierre-Normand

Presumably you'd say that the relationships between micro-properties and emergent properties are lawlike. If so are some laws emergent then? Or have all laws always existed, even if they never have a chance at any point in the history of the universe to describe an actual natural event?

No, the galley is not conscious as a unit. — Patterner

I think it may be. There are (at least) two problems the panpsychist must tackle at some point:

1) What are the units supposed to be? (Searle's challenge)
2) Relatedly, how do subjects sum, if at all? (The combination problem)

Both these may be rebutted by the idea that every system whatever, no matter how arbitrarily defined (the galley is a good example), is conscious. It may not be conscious of very much, it may have extremely limited content to its experience, but nevertheless there is some kind of unitary experience. This makes a colossal number of subjects. The galley minus one of its lignin molecules would also be conscious. The galley plus one of the water molecules from the sea a mile away would be a separate conscious entity. Neither would experience much. So to rebut the challenges: (1) the units are whatever you can think of, and (2) they don't sum. Each one is its own unique identity, and you can have 'nests' of subjects, there is no 'pooling' of identity.

This is still vulnerable to @Banno's Blank Stare of Incredulity of course. We sacrifice intuitive appeal on the altar of metaphysical possibility. But who cares? I don't. The universe is weird. Philosophers should be willing to follow the logic, or at least entertain odd possibilities.

irreducible substance — MoK

That seems much more like theory than definition to me. The other things in your list may be definition, depending on who you ask.

I'm not sure what it would mean for an inductive argument to be sound. Strong or weak, yes. Soundness and validity are properties of deductive arguments.

This is almost certainly wrong, but my current formulation as a panpsychist (and if I want to try to make sense of the word 'soul') is this:

A soul is a zone of conscious space that identifies with the body that occupies it.

Or possibly:

A soul is the substance that constitutes a body, conceived of as substance and not body

That is an interesting approach. Not sure I buy into it though as there is evidence enough that one physical event leads to another (physically) and this is quite easily observed. — I like sushi

Indeed. You can still have the intuitive 'physical' causation we ordinarily see all the time, say in machines. It's just it would be reducible to the mental causation happening at the micro-level on a panpsychist metaphysic.

If you push your view to the point you are I feel you are effectively end up arguing for solipsism?

Panpsychism might end up in a kind of cosmopsychism, which is arguably a kind of solipsism, but any theory which does not allow for some kind of plurality of points of view I would have thought has gone wrong somewhere. The evidence for other minds is overwhelming it seems to me. One challenge to a panpsychist cosmopsychism is how to account for plurality and privacy of points of view within the overall unity.

I was considering starting a thread about this. I'm doubtful about whether there is any physical causation. I think it all might be mental. There are problems whichever way we jump.

- The problem of overdetermination - can an event have both physical and mental causes (e.g. the decision to raise one's arm causes the arm to go up, but so does the purely functional brain chemistry - this is suggestive of functionalism as a solution)

- The physical causes the mental but not vice versa - epiphenomenalism

- The problem that decisions seem to be made before conscious awareness of them is prima facie suggestive of epiphenomenalism

- The strong intuition that experiences do, in fact, play a causal role in behaviour. Consider a jealous person murdering their ex's new partner. Non-mental causation does not seem sufficient, the felt emotion strongly seems to play a causal role.

- Mental causation is the only causation we are acquainted with - physical causation is inferred from correlation.

Panpsychism is a possible solution

How well might this satisfy people who think a person's experiences can only be experienced by themselves? — TiredThinker

Not much I suspect. If two people experience the same token quale, they're not two people.

I was taught by Williamson as an undergrad for a year. Don't remember a thing. I'd be much more interested now.

I'd have to do an awful lot of work to properly understand the article in much detail. It's quite meta.

My intuition is, for example, incompatible with bert1's distinction between cognitive empathy and affective empathy. To me (intuitively), cognitive empathy isn't empathy at all. — Dawnstorm

Yes I think you are probably right. Perhaps it would be better to say that empathy has two components, both of which are necessary for empathy to occur. You can't feel another's pain (in some sense) without first recognising that they are in pain.

Vera seemed sane. Not that I think everyone else on here is insane. Vera seemed like she could view a topic both from a distance and close up, perhaps.

That's a shock. I enjoyed her posts.

Also, the issue of empathy has become an important area in psychiatry, in relation to autism. Lack of empathy has become medicalised. However, even in that context there may be blurring of semantics. Some assumptions and assessments may be about the ability, or lack of ability for 'feelings'. This may involve value judgements on the part of those assessing. Nevertheless, on a more analytic level, the research on autism looks at theory of mind, involving the ability to be able to imagine another's perspective, which is the basis of the concept of empathy. — Jack Cummins

In autism the view is that they don’t have what’s called a theory of mind. Many autistic people can feel deeply for the plight of others and may have a highly developed sense of social justice, — Tom Storm

The view that autistic people lack theory of mind any more than anyone else presented with another creature different from themselves, is out of date. Simon Baron-Cohen did a lot of damage with this, and the experiments purported to show this lack of theory of mind have been robustly challenged. See Damian Milton on the 'Double empathy problem' in which he argues that non-autistic people have just as much trouble understanding the autistic perspective as autistic people do understanding NTs.

As a panpsychist, I think there is a similar problem with rocks. It's hard to attribute mind to them because they are very 'other'.

There is a distinction between cognitive empathy and affective empathy. Cognitive empathy is understanding that someone else is feeling something. The more different that other person is, the more difficult it is to notice that they are feeling something. Once you have noticed that other person is suffering (for example) then affective empathy comes in. You 'feel the pain' of the other in some sense, you care and are moved to help to alleviate their suffering. With autistic people, sometimes they fail to notice that an NT is in distress (cognitive) so do not have the opportunity to care (just as NTs frequently fail to notice autistic people are distressed). However, once the distress is recognised, autistic people care just as much as anyone, and will often try to help.

A clever psychopath, by contrast, may have excellent cognitive empathy, but lack affective empathy. But I'm not an expert on psychopathy.

The particulars here, seem to be in decisions made from past experiences. In your example the choice was made by a past decision. — DifferentiatingEgg

Quite possibly, but what decision exactly? Was the decision to like cakes (in the cases of Geraldine and Ursula especially) made by them? Or was it made by their ancestors desire for calories in order to survive? Do we carry on the decisions of our ancestors? Or is that just a weird way to think of it?

But perhaps something occurs that makes you change that decision. Like some Icecream is 400 calories per serving, some are 100 calories per serving. You may decide that from now on you want to try something with less calories. So you update a decision preference. To decide means to kill off other options.

Yes, so your decisions are influenced by education perhaps? So you want to survive, that's instinctive, perhaps a decision made by ancestors and carried on in you. Now in the modern world, this instinct to acquire calories, works against the overall will to live. Once that is learned, by means of acquiring a concept (say, of diabetes), then a choice becomes available when it wasn't available before. One is no longer determined just by the instinct to acquire calories, the overall desire to live can allow one to decide not to consume the calories. Is this later state more free in any sense? It's still determined, but there are more options, and each alternative is, perhaps, possible.

Where as true spontaneous choice in the matter requires us to be free from preformed decisions.

Would such a choice be random/arbitrary, then? I'm open to the idea that that's what free choice is, and that's OK.

So my desire is predicated on the assumption that ecclesiastical cakes and my tastes are predictable and consistent. {I decided to leave that autocorrection just for fun} In other words, desire presumes determinism. — unenlightened

I see what you mean. The OP wasn't intended to be a total refutation of determinism. The idea is that our choices are determined, but the thing that determines them can range from the particular to the universal. I'm wondering if that's interesting and relevant to the free will/determinism debate as it allows for freedom from some determinants but not others. And it's possible to become more free (perhaps) by valuing more universal things than particular things. Are we free to choose our values? Maybe not, but if we are determined, perhaps by our education, to value the general and universal, then perhaps we are more free as a result.

Interesting topic. Drive-by quote from the Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy (or one of the books maybe the second):

Ruler of the Universe: "How can I tell that the past isn't a fiction designed to account for the discrepancy between my immediate physical sensations, and my state of mind?"

Yeah I guess so.

Yes there is arbitrariness in the things we choose to count. Very interesting. I'll get back to your earlier posts as well asap.

I'll respond to this quickly and then get back to earlier replies (sorry to everyone for the delays).

Yes, I think I agree with you. I was speaking very loosely and I'll come up with a different formulation to express the gradation I was thinking of.

I'm interested in non-vague concepts, that is, concepts that do not admit of degrees, and do not admit of borderline cases. It seems you think that the line between free will and unfree will is sharp (or perhaps the line between will and non-will is sharp), and also the line between alive and dead is sharp, perhaps? Other possible concepts that are perhaps not-vague are consciousness, space, and less-than-7.

The vast majority of concepts are vague - they admit of borderline cases. Famous ones are heap/pile and baldness. Others could include human, chair, lawnmower, male, female, liquidity, planet, wall, food, kidney, brain, and pretty much any concept you care to think of.

Oh, and welcome to the Philosophy Forum :)

You can change the order they go into the shop if you like. Could any of them have done otherwise than they did?

Part of the point of the OP is to look at the level of abstraction to see if it has any relevance to the free will/determinism debate. Is somebody who likes cakes in general any more free than someone who likes a particular cake only? The generalising person has more options, no?

Is the educated person, who perceives causal societal structures in the world and can more effectively strategise and make choices based on this invisible underlying structure, any more free than someone who doesn't see any of that and only perceives what is happening in their immediate concrete particularised environment? That may be a different kind of question than the one posed in the OP, I'm not sure.

I think "will" consists of just two parameters:

Direction and magnitude.

"Will" is a vector. "Freedom" is not a parameter of a vector.

In your model I see various wills and a variable range of options. Omni Otto steers the vector to a direction according to Otto's desire (by the way, avoiding the worst case in the long run can also a be desire). I think, freedom, in this context, is a metaphor for the range available, and this range doesn't lie in the vector per se; a vector is not a range but an "arrow", so to speak. — Quk

I think I'm pretty much happy with that. Makes sense to me.

Still, Otto's "decision device" is not really free; his desires are caused by something or occur at random. In either case -- causal or random -- it's not Otto's "will" that generates Otto's desire. — Quk

It seems to me that particular desires just are will-vectors, no?

And it occurs to me that desire in general is perhaps a restlessness of the will. Will is such that it tends to pick an object, at random if there is no pre-existing particular desires that already condition it in a relevant way.

Perhaps the freedom of the will is the portion of will that is not committed to an end, not desiring something.

An individual has free will perhaps is a couple of senses: (1) they have uncommitted will 'spare' perhaps (2) there are things that s/he is free from. I passed a copy of 50 Shades of Grey today in a bookshop, and I was free not to buy it, as it has no hold on me, I don't have a will-vector committed to obtaining it. In the scenario, Geraldine is free from having to buy an Iced Finger and one of the Eccles cakes. Not caring, and indifference (which have negative connotations) might describe a kind of psychological freedom in relation to the objects one is indifferent to.

"Will" is neither free nor unfree; "will" is just a force. Can a gravitational force be free? Can a magnetic force be free? No, it can only be forceful. It's something else that can influence a force. The force itself cannot influence itself. — Quk

That's interesting. I'm not sure. What about an unmagnetised bit of iron? There's no overall force - the forces of the crystals average to zero over the whole thing (or something like that - please correct me). That might be analogous to the person who desires/wills many things simultaneously to an equal degree, and therefore is unable to choose any of them (except at random) - the vectors cancel.

I would say there are gradations of will; to be precise: Gradations of the will's direction and the will's magnitude. If we talk about the gradation of options, then it's about options, not about will. — Quk

Yes that sounds reasonable and more precise than my original wording.

If Pete chooses not to buy a cake, he's not Particular Pete any more, he's Absolute Pete.
— bert1

So Pete does not determine his choice, but is determined by it? — unenlightened

Maybe yes. Pete's choice might change his nature perhaps.