Information is non-physical. The exact same information can be embedded in completely different physical forms. But information is the sense or meaning that we extract from those physical forms. And information is precisely what has shaped the evolution of human culture and the human mind. So something non-physical is evidently influencing the physical.

Probably there is a superordinate framework that encompasses the apparent mind-matter dualism.

If consciousness does anything at all, it must be because it is free to have done so, otherwise it would not be responsible for what it had done.

As far as AI postulating things, you are talking about a system that is a construct of free will, so the fact that it mimics free will isn't surprising. That's what AI was designed to do.

So arguing against the existence of free will is kind of like arguing for solipsism. If solipsism were true, why would anyone ever argue it? Who would they be arguing with? If free will isn't true then how could we be having a discussion?

LOL!

"This is patently false.

If you believe you have free will, but you don't, you were caused to believe that you have free will.

There is no magic about it."

That is straight up Descartes. He concludes, and I agree, this is the one thing about which you cannot be deceived.

"I figured you’d say that. You still haven’t chosen not to exist in the initial situation - you’ve chosen to take steps to not continue to live from that point onwards.

Technically, you will still ‘exist’ even if you commit suicide - just in a different sense. You exist in the past as a person who was once alive, in relation to who and what you leave behind. But that’s perhaps another discussion."

Well, you can't retroactively make a choice, so if you are saying that all choice moves forward in time, ok. I'm not sure how that is relevant.

As far as "existing in the past" that is definitely not the case. The past exists only as the past of an extant present, so you are equivocating around the definition of existence. If you are saying, I can't make it so that I never existed I'm not really sure how that is germane to the topic of free will?

I'm trying to go with your train of thought as much as possible instead of just offering up a lot of my own thoughts (I can tend to do that sometimes).

Free will certainly equates with free choice, as Possibility started out. Sartre gives the compelling example (I think) of the attempt to compel someone to do something through torture. He notes that, even under the most extreme torture, the victim chooses the point at which he or she will submit.

Free will is the essence of what we are as thinking beings. Cogito ergo sum.

I guess you would commit suicide?

I don't know if it relates but there is lots of evidence of the effects of quantum tunneling in biological systems, including higher animals, helping to govern the migratory navigational capabilities of some birds for example.

I don't understand why I cannot choose consciously to exist in this situation?

Yes, it doesn't explain exactly how that behaviour was happening, but presumably a similar set of brain mechanisms to other behaviours, and aligned with those 'variables' or dimensions describing the external activities.

Flocking behaviour can be simulated pretty easily using the principles of alignment, cohesion, and separation. Since brains do function computationally to some extent at least, Occam's razor suggests to me this is probably the natural mechanism also.

Ultimately, this is really just a question of how you choose to define it.

Cognitive science can demonstrate experimentally that even phenomena like conscious choice can precede our awareness by several seconds. Also, novel phenomena can occur that are within perceptual thresholds, but not actually be perceived unless/until they become associated with already known phenomena.

I favour a very liberal definition of consciousness.

Ethics is the branch of philosophy that deals with human actions. Usually inquiries like this differentiate between hedonism (pleasure), eudaimonism (happiness), and agathism (good).

"It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are of a different opinions, it is because they only know their side of the question."

John Stuart Mill

Sure. And if I may be allowed my final say. The definition of altruism is
"the belief in or practice of disinterested and selfless concern for the well-being of others."
So essentially what you are doing is changing the definition altruism.

But isn't belief itself the ultimate imbuer of value? If a person chooses to believe in something, presumably they commit to the enaction of that belief. So if you are willing to act 'as if' your belief is true, then you have demonstrated an ontological commitment. What is more fundamental than that?

Now if someone is epistemically irresponsible, and allows him or herself to believe whatever without good reasons, then presumably they have some level of awareness of the flimsiness of that belief.

Ok, so lets look at it like this. Normative ethics is what people ought to do, which implies and entails that people have a choice in that action. Now I don't dispute that teleology is a valid strategy. I just think that it misses some of the picture, which is where deontology has the advantage, and that altruistic behaviour is sometimes dictated as a duty by this kind of ethic.

You, on the other hand, want to remove the capacity to make an altruistic choice altogether, saying that people are incapable of making an altruistic choice. In essence, you set a hard limit on human freedom. Now freedom doesn't hold in degrees. Either you are free, or you are not. So if I am free, I am free to make an altruistic choice.

Well it is a disagreement about what evidence means, which I would say is the same thing. Clearly, there is lots of evidence for altruism. It seems that you don't accept it.

Ultimately this is a question of a fundamental belief. Either you think people can only act in a self-serving manner, or you believe that people have the capacity for true altruism. It's like when Dan Dennett argued there were no good reasons to believe in god...because he couldn't come up with any.

There a plenty of examples of people exhibiting self-sacrificial behaviour and, as I suggested, this class of behaviour even forms an important part of our culture. Prima facie, therefore, it is entirely reasonable to suppose that people ARE capable of altruistic behaviour, and I do believe it to be so. My privileged access to my own inner mental states further confirms this for me.

If you personally are incapable of believing this, well, that's you.

The only reason to outright reject a theory is that it is not coherent, or that it disagrees with established facts. It is an established fact that many people behave in a way that is NOT overtly self-serving. It is also an established fact that these non-self-serving acts often have a high-value in and to our society and form part of our culture. And our culture is the basis of all our knowledge and wisdom. So I would say that both teleology and deontology are safe and sound on solid ground.

Well, you are essentially espousing psychological egoism, which is the belief that human beings are so constructed as to always act in a way which is self-referential, that is, to always maximize personal benefit.

All I can answer to that is that it seems not to be so to me. I routinely put the needs of others ahead of my own. I have seen examples in the world of others who do so. And perceived the lasting value of actions that enact such values. Arguably, they form part of the core and essence of what we call culture.

Ethics, in the sense that it is most often employed, "normative" ethics, is the study what people "ought" to do. What is "right," what is "wrong." Usually camps tend to divide over the notion of actions that are good "in themselves" (deontology) or actions that are good because of the consequences or outcomes of actions (teleology).

It is my belief that the greatest unity is the one which supports the greatest diversity. It is one of my core precepts.

I understand, you have a unique perspective. But there are aspects of reality which are common, and it is our misconceptions about these which need to be brought into line. As George Eliot wrote, “We have all got to exert ourselves a little to keep sane, and call things by the same names as other people call them by.” Or, when the Transcendentalist Margret Fuller proclaimed "I accept the Universe," Carlyle sardonically remarked, "Gad, she had better."

Yes, we are all unique, but we also must acquiesce to agree upon what we have in common, and sometimes that entails "correcting" our own opinions, no?

Well, a prejudice could be accurate or valid in the sense that you prejudge something and it turns out to be correct. In general though, the terms "prejudice" and "bias" are usually applied with a negative connotation, a prejudice that is unhealthy, a bias that is incorrect. I do think it is possible to differentiate and select between erroneous cognitive tendencies and valuable ones.

Agree wholeheartedly with the limitations of scientific theory. Science operates specifically by restricting an inquiry to a specific domain or subset of reality. Ideally those domains all overlap neatly, and the body of scientific theory is cohesive and coherent. In the end, however, it is always an approximation and there is always more to it than meets the eye. What was the best picture of the universe a century ago is almost trivial to what it is today (Our galaxy was thought to be the totality of the universe until 1924). And what we think of as complete today will be revealed to be as limited in coming years. The sheer scale of dark-matter and dark-energy testify to that. Consciousness is a huge piece of the puzzle.

How is a language expression not a real-world phenomenon? The essence of ostensive definition is language binding itself to the real world. If I utter the phrase "Pick up that stone" and you pick it up, how is that not a real-world phenomenon? Does language have energy? Does thought? I would argue that it does, yes.

Ironically, some of the most well-educated people can have the biggest blind spots. Subject-matter experts can become siloed in their specialties and lose touch with the need to stay relevant with and to the rest of humanity.

In principle, I'd agree that our prejudices, both conscious and pre-conscious, should be rooted out, but many cognitive biases are very deep-seated indeed. I do think that the first step towards managing such biases is understanding them.

I think Terrapin was making a joke to the effect that a lot of dialog on this forum seems like it is between an autistic person and a normal one. I'm new to the forum too, so I'm not sure where (s)he fits in that humorous equation.... :)

That sounds more like a definition of Rationalism....

If you are asking whether much of our cognitive processing is "pre-formatted" then the answer is most certainly yes. Presumably the goal of things like mindfulness, or philosophy, or even education in general, is to lead us down the path of managing our own prejudices, even the pre-conscious ones.

I'm not sure I can comment on our autistic/normal debate example. I would hope my own respect for the inherent value of truth would protect me from any normative prejudices in this case.

Very different cultures attach very different values to certain ideas or concepts. Death in many eastern cultures is viewed quite differently from those in the west, for example. Experiments have been conducted in which exposing subjects to 'cultural icons' like pictures of architecture, etc, can skew their answers to questions aligned with such indicator values from those of their native culture to those of the "imprinted culture." As I recall, it did not require very extensive imprinting either.

So, yes, I'd say we are driven by some rather complex 'visceral' ideas. I think of culture as the gateway to collective conciousness.

I guess we can ask, is the meaning of "philosophy" the same now as it has always been?

As our knowledge of external reality has exploded, the nature of knowing itself may have changed. Hobbes' observations in Leviathan may have been "psychologistic," but are merely the tip of the iceberg of the types of knowledge made possible by the disciplines of psychology and cognitive science.

As such, if I had to define philosophy in a pan-cultural way I would describe philosophy as the attempt to unify or relate all other discrete realms of knowledge. Per my initial comment, I'd be prepared to agree that this is a kind of methodology.

I wouldn't necessarily, just noting that was essentially Mach's principle.

In a more abstract sense, however, things always exist in contexts, and contexts continually change and evolve. It is possible that pencil in Japan could be picked up by someone flying to New York, and end up in a glass in your cupboard. A forced example, to be sure. In the real world, contexts evolve and hitherto unrelated things are discovered to be related. Quantum entanglement. Synchronicity. Physics is constantly striving towards unifying disparate realms of forces.

So you think that everything interacts with everything else.

That would be Mach's Principle. It's a compelling view.

Things enjoy discrete identity within specific spatio-temporal contexts and scales. Radically change the context of evaluation and the parameters of thinghood also change. A thing, like a piston, becomes part of a process (reciprocating dynamism of energy-delivery) when the context shifts from building an engine to driving a car.

Is the question about the existence of God, or the nature of God?

If you ask, are there things which are Real which I am not able to imagine, the answer would have to be yes. Trivially, the history of science illustrates this (paradigm shifts). So if you base your 'negative affirmation' (God does not exist) on your own inability to conceptualize God, well, that is a personal limitation. I saw a video where Dan Dennet made exactly such an argument.

If, on the other hand, we were asking, what might be the nature of a God that really exists, that is a much more interesting discussion. I would say that atheism is...unnecessary.

I think characterizing aRealIdealist as "someone who is not at my level" qualifies as an ad hominem. It is entirely a personal attack. If an argument is sophomoric then the correct thing to do would be to analyse or refute it, not use it as a roundabout way of injecting an ad hominem comment.

Except what was requested was more of a 'position statement,' what philosophy means to me. So it didn't warrant refutation. I found it a perfectly cogent idea.

Characterizing someone's post as constituting "entry-level content" is indeed an ad-hominen attack. It was the first thing you said.

I think viewing philosophy as a kind of meta-science is one excellent perspective. More so because it incorporates some form of praxis in that experimentalism. For me, philosophy also entails a conscious (systematic) effort to rise above the limitations/biases of egocentric perception - a species of metaphysical doubt.