The subject of intention and action has come up few times, so I thought I’d start a thread.
From my point of view as a cognitive neuroscientist, decision-making (which action to take) is best conceived of as a kind of winner-take-all arm-wrestling competition, in which competing programs (represented as networks of active neurons) of action exert a mutually inhibitory effect on on the other, while each receives excitatory input from various other other networks, each of which in turn are engaged in a kind of subsidiary arm-wrestling match with some networks and a mutually cheer-leading match with others.
The more activation in any one network, the greater the inhibitory effect it has on competing networks, and so the system is, in a technical sense, “chaotic” – two competing programs can be finely balanced at one moment, but once one gets ahead by more than a critical amount, its inhibitory effect on the other increase, reducing its activation and releasing its reciprocal inhibitory control. At this point, activation in the winner rises rapidly towards “execution threshold” – the point at which outflow to the muscles involved in the action are activated.
Of course this is a continuously looping process, and the actions can be as slight as an eye movement, which then brings new input to the decision-making process, or a gross-motor action, which also provide new input, so the decision-making process is constantly informed by new data. However, it is also informed by endogenous processes – processes that trigger activations in networks involved in goal-setting and reward prediction, and established through life-long learning, in which neural firing patterns that result in success become more probable and those that result in failure, or penalty, become less likely.
As the brain’s owner, of course, we call these processes “pondering”, “hesitating”, “deciding”, “exploring”, “testing”, “changing my mind”, “exercising will power”, “considering the long term effects of my actions”, “considering the effect of my actions on someone else”, etc.
Which is exactly what they are. But at a neural level they operate very like evolutionary processes, in which what replicates most successfully (neurally) is most likely to be repeated, and what replicates least successfully is least likely to be repeated. The interesting part is that this “neural Darwinism” takes place prior to actions actually being performed – and often the”winning” program does not actually reach execution threshold, but instead is fed back as input, so that we are able to imagine the results of our actions before we actually execute them, and use that information before actually allowing an action to take place.
That means that we, unlike evolutionary processes, are capable of intentional action. We can simulate the results of potential courses of action, and use those simulated results to inform the decision-making process. This allows us to take shortcuts, and pursue, in actuality, only those courses of action we deem likely to be successful. In contrast, evolution is stuck with trying anything that presents itself as an option, learning by actual, not simulated, errors. It cannot be said, therefore, to exhibit intentional behaviour, and is much slower and less efficient that we are. However, by the same token, it will often explore possibilities that a simulating – intentional – agent would reject, on the grounds that the simulations looked unpromising. As a result, some spectacular solutions are missed.
Which is why evolutionary algorithms are used by intentional designers – us – so that we can, intentionally, use the power of unintentional design to find solutions we ourselves would reject as not sufficiently promising to explore.
I’m going to repeat what I’ve said elsewhere. If the source of variation is capable of generating all the possible nearby variants, it matters not whether it is random, stochastic, sequential or deliberate.
What is required for evolution and evolutionary algorithms to work is a connected functional space. If you can get there from here, a stochastic variation generator will do the trick. If not, then you need a miracle.
So are you saying that at the neural level, there is no process of paring the decision tree? Or that maybe there IS no decision tree at that level, it’s simply a process of some cluster of neurons winning the battle for positive feedback? Or that the decision tree exists somehow within the constellation of influences, in some way?
I admit I find it hard to picture intent as something that emerges from these wrestling matches. It sounds very much like intent is one of the influences that biases the results of these matches. Am I missing this?
The second thing. there is certainly “paring” – I’ll try to be clearer. That’s what I meant by competition between alternative programs – the winner “pares” the loser” at multiple levels, if you like.
Yes, “intent” is a biasing influence, exactly. And the goal itself is itself the result of such wrestling matches (competitions between goals).
I’ll try to elaborate what I’m trying to say a little later….
I emphasized where your question-begging, concept-stealing circular reasoning took place. What is “we” here, except the very same set of things that you described as how the brain works? What is “imagining”, other than the same set of things that came before? What is the final decision except part of the same thing that came before?
Unless “we” are something other than what has gone before (the process you first described), or unless the final steps before action are something other than the same process that occurred up to that point, you are just simply attempting to divert attention from the material, “evolutionary”, brute physical process that produces the sensation of thought and intention and purpose by calling it something else (we, imagination) at the end.
Calling it the final checkpoint that somehow changes our intentions and purpose from being simply happenstance sensory product manufactured by brute biology doesn’t change the fact that unless you have an extant commodity to arbit biological product we experience as thought, intent and purpose (or, unless those things come from somewhere else), then no matter how many biological final checkpoints you throw in, it’s all the same thing – sensations produced by brute biology. “We” have no control over what such brute biology generates because everything “we” are, think, and finally intend is what that brute biology ultimately generates – at least, under evolutionary materialism.
So, if your biology programs you to bark like a dog and believe as a well-evidenced fact (after careful consideration, imagining, and final checkpoints) that you have proven a logical point, that is what you will do, and that is what you will think, regardless of how you attempt to obfuscate that fact by hiding the biological mechanics that produce those things in semantics like your personal pronoun.
I suggest that before you try to make additional points, you figure out how to make them by only using the term “mechanistic biological processes” wherever you think about using personal pronouns, and then read your comment and see if it makes any sense. Unless there is something going on other than mechanistic biological processes (that produce deterministic, stochastic or chaotic effects), “you” are nothing more than that, so “you” don’t have any final control “over” that.
http://syntheticdaisies.blogspot.com/2012/03/one-commonly-assumed-feature-of-brain.html
I’m tending to agree with WJM here (for the most part). It seems a little odd to talk about how “we” can “simulate the results of potential courses of action, and use those simulated results to inform the decision-making process.” Given that “we” ourselves are generated by the same neurological activity. It’s not like we’re on the outside looking in, or holding the strings to the puppet.
Skinner went down that rabbit hole. I don’t recall what he found, but I came away convinced that such metaphorical language is only useful when used by people who already have a trusting communicative relationship. It doesn’t work in apologetics or adversarial discussions.
“We” can feel fain and “we” can observe ourselves feeling pain. “We: can also “choose” to suppress pain.
What does all that mean? Language is deficient in this realm.
OK, I think I get it. “Thought” is a label we attach to what WJM calls a “mechanistic biological process” (and what else could it be? Neurons are not magical). Take a great many concurrent competitions among neural clusters for primacy at different levels, and what emerges from all this competition is a phenomenon we label “intent”. If this result is the “winning” input to another concurrent set of competitions directing muscular contractions, the result is labeled “action”.
So as I understand this so far, “intent” or “purpose” relates to the underlying process the same way “tides” relate to the action of large bodies of water under shifting gravitational fields. We have individual water molecules, which in aggregate we label “seas”, which experience numerous influences one of which is gravity, resulting in high-level action we call “tides”. But at the lowest level of the water molecules, we have no tides, we have only the competition of such influences as currents, Brownian motion, temperature fluctuations, gravity, and so on.
Right. And then I would add that the result is input into another neurological system (module, … whatever you want to call it) that generates consciousness and the result is labeled “awareness”. That’s where the “we” arises.
Or somthin’ like that.
This is the great self-referential downfall of Darwinistic thought, because if the biological output of an individual system is “believe in crazy, stupid stuff and be convinced it is logical and true”, that is what is going to happen and there’s no “other” commodity to refer to for arbitration or correction.
Nothing quite like guarding the henhouse with hens.
That’s what would happen if there were no other commodities to refer to for arbitration or correction. But of course there are many, in the form of other brains (and their products, like the written word), which can directly influence and shape our thought patterns.
Makes more sense than guarding the henhouse with foxes.
After, people guard people.
Oh, and of course drugs as well fall into that category.
Back before online banking, people used to reconcile their checkbooks by adding up their deposits and withdrawals and comparing the result with the balance reported at the end of the month.
There’s a story of a couple, one of whom put an entry in the checkbook for “TMIB.” Asked by the spouse what TMIB was, the answer was “To Make It Balance.”
This is, of course, an excellent for metaphor for what ID proponents do.
Given gaps in knowledge, one doesn’t assume they will be reconcilable with ordinary checks and deposits. the have to be reconciled with the assistance of an unseen agent who always makes exactly the transaction necessary to account for — let’s say a flagellum.
Given the difficulties in accounting for consciousness, we postulate a non-material agent that has exactly the properties needed to account for consciousness without all the mess and hard work of research.
The key concept here is that lazy and uninformed people can assert that they are just as clever as researchers without all the bother of learning science and accepting that large chunks of knowledge are always out of reach.
So let’s hear it for dualism and design. They make it balance.
this statement is curious on several levels:
1) under the claim that there is nothing to refer to to arbitrate the biological output of an individual system, what would the words “crazy and stupid” and “logical and true” refer to? They would relate to nothing, i.e. they would mean nothing outside of that individual system. Thus, it is completely unclear what “arbitration and correction” could possibly refer to in this context, and the entire statement just lost any discernible meaning whatsoever.
2) the claim that there is nothing to refer to to arbitrate the biological output of an individual system is, of course, false. The biological output of decision making processes is, obviously, arbitrated first and foremost by fitness.
Well, great! You’ve moved intent from being the mechanistic effect of a single biological system (individual) to being the mechanistic effect of a larger group of both biological and non-biological phenomena.
What exactly does that gain us? Does that larger system somehow change the nature of what intent is under Darwinism? From what I can tell, all you’ve done is remove “intent” even further away from any semblance of an independent control & arbitration system if other people and books can directly make us change our thoughts and views.
I think that to a certain extent, we do have the ability to place ourselves “on the outside looking in”. That seems to me to be what “critical thinking” is all about. And I think that training ourselves in critical thinking allows us to do that more effectively.
And so if it is better in evolutionary terms (progeny success) to believe things that are completely untrue (in terms of actual reality), that is the belief that will likely survive and continue propagation, correct? So, what we say and think has nothing to do with “truth”, per se, it only has to do with what effects any particular thoughts, beliefs and intents have on progeny success.
And so you have undermined your position yet again; you hold the beliefs you do and argue the way you do not because they are factual or true or even make any sense; they’re just mutations that may or may not result in more fit progeny distribution. What we say has nothing to do with a deliberate an focused search for true statements about existence and life; it’s all about, really, getting laid and having children.
Talk about annihilating your own argument. I’ll keep that in mind in future discussions with Darwinists; what they are saying hasn’t got anything to do with “the truth”, or “facts’, or “science” per se; those are just a happenstance, evolutionary feature that can only be properly evaluated in terms of how successful the speaker is in producing progeny.
I have six children and 14 grandchildren. Apparently, you’ll need that information to evaluate the merit of my arguments here in terms of evolutionary fitness.
In most cases, I would think that inputs through the physical senses would have some influence over these wrestling matches. And by observation, it would seem clear (to me) that if such inputs strongly supported one side of such a match, this would be generally decisive.
So the “stupid, crazy stuff” isn’t without referent at all, and is quite meaningful. It refers, as far as I can tell, to a pathological process where the winning sides are refuted by sensory inputs, but something is negating the influence of those inputs. And I hypothesize that we have battles going on in our brains, between neural clusters informed by observation and neural clusters informed by trained preference.
If the training is strong enough, it will override observation. If what has been trained-in is stupid and crazy, it may well be impossible to influence these matches in any other direction.
I relate this to Piaget’s description of accommodation (altering our models to fit observation) and assimilation (altering our observations to fit our models). As we age, accommodation becomes much more difficult – too many neural pathways are “set up” and almost impossible to alter. And if the model got “set up” as “stupid and crazy”, we see the same process going on in the brain that killed the sport of boxing – the matches are rigged, and the ref holds the unconscious home-town boy’s arm in the air and declares him the winner.
So? What’s your point? What independent control and arbitration system do you think there is?
Yeah, nothing quite like a schizophrenic mechanistic biological process fooling itself into thinking it is outside of itself and computing independently of its computing mechanism to instill confidence in the conclusions it produces. In this scenario, “critical thinking” is really nothing more than “schitzophrenia”.
This is the same self-referential perspective hiding behind personal pronouns as if “the machine” and “that which oversees the machine” are, or can be, two different things when, under Darwinism, they are not.
What exactly is the problem with just admitting that, under Darwinism, you think, intend, believe, and consider whatever your biological system commands – no more, no less, and if your biological system commands you (itself) to bark like a dog and believe it was the intention to write a novel, and conclude that you’ve invented mustard, that is what you will do and think and believe has occurred?
The reason they keep looking for an “out”, and use personal pronouns and other semantics to steal the concept of an independent agency and hide it from themselves, is because they know this view trashes every argument they can make, because they have no posited independent means of arbiting/evaluating their own arguments, data, conclusions, or intentions, much less anyone else’s. It reduces all arguments to nothing more than monkeys flinging feces at each other.
I like the idea of constant, looping battles at many different levels within the brain, and with such things as thought, consciousness, intent, and action being labels we attach to patterns of outcomes, because subjectively this is what the process seems like to us. No absolute control and arbitration going on anywhere.
To paraphrase Ecclesiastes, “The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but if that’s the way you bet, you will cometh out well ahead.”
Libertarian free will. Without it, we can’t separate ourselves from the machine in order to arbit/control/evaluate it.
And you know better than this how, exactly? How does your brain research tell YOU the brain works? Where do YOU think purpose and intent come from? Garden fairies?
You’re as quick to mock what you don’t understand, as you are slow to answer a single question about what you propose instead.
Correct, they are not.
Nothing. However, “I” and “my biological system” are one and the same thing. Therefore, it makes no sense to speak of my biological system commanding me to do anything.
I think of “I” as rather like an avatar generated by the brain; a useful illusion that evolved along with complex human societies to represent *me* in interactions with others. Although it can report, it cannot control.
On the other hand … I could be way wrong on that.
It’s much easier to point out that science can’t explain everything than to propose an alternative that isn’t ludicrous.
My own position is very simple. We will understand consciousness when we can make it (presumably in silicon). whether this will actually happen is still up in the air.
In the mean time, we have ordinary researchers struggling to find what brain behaviors correlate with what reported experiences.
It’s much easier to remain ignorant of research and philosophize from the couch.
I’m not mocking anything. That’s the logical consequence of the view that the self is nothing more than what biology happens to produce.
The mind is what the brain does. Yes, that’s a conclusion drawn from a century or more of investigation.
Like the assumption that crimes are not committed by malicious ghosts who enjoy framing people, the assumption that there is no ghost in the machine is not provable. It is simple the best available inference.
After a few centuries of chasing ghosts out of phenomena, science doesn’t have much patience with the issue.
But I will suggest that rather than assuming (falsely) that we know what “matter” is and what its capabilities and limitations are, we might consider that matter is a bit tougher and more mysterious than its billiard ball caricature. You seem to sneer at materialism as if you fully understand what matter is and what it can and cannot do.
I suggest you expand your horizons a bit and consider that there is no merit in inventing invisible friends to explain phenomena. There is not particular merit in thinking you have contributed anything to human knowledge simply by pointing out that we don’t know everything.
Actual reality? Truth per se? In relation to what? What do you call *truth per se*, and how do you identify it? I know you think that there is some transcendental something out there that is different from what I call reality (the stuff that I experience and can verify against the experiences of other independent observers), that sometimes you have called *actual reality*. However, your *actual reality* / *truth per se* is useless and irrelevant unless it has consequential effects on what I call reality. But, as soon it has effects on what I call reality, it would no longer be separate and transcendental, but is simply a part of what I call reality. And in the place that I call reality, a lot of the stuff that I experience is useful in predicting future experiences. That’s the stuff that I call true. Relying on those “true” experiences is a fitness-relevant trait.
Sure I argue the way I do because my arguments are factual and true and make sense. The one does not exclude the other. Like I just laid out, the one is inextricably related to the other. Most beliefs that don’t make sense and are untrue lead to a reduction in fitness. Not all, but obviously most.
Note the little qualifier *first and foremost* in front of *fitness* in my statement. So no, for me, it’s not all about getting laid and having children. It seems, however, that for the overwhelmingly vast majority of biological organisms (including a lot of humans), it is. And getting some statements about existence and life right is a prerequisite for that, not, as you absurdly seem to think, an opposite of it.
And what on earth do you mean by *deliberate search for true statements* that somehow distinguishes it from the search I am using to find true statements?
You seem to be getting very agitated. I can hardly parse what you are trying to construe here. “Science” is an evolutionary feature? Of what? How does this relate to anything I said?
It’s kind of amusing that philosophical and theological discussions always tend toward flame wars.
Discussions of verifiable statements — statements that have operational content — sometimes generate heat, but then everyone goes back to the lab and look for something that Hindus and Muslims can all agree on.
That’s really the metric by which ideas can be evaluated: whether they can be resolved in a way that is not disputed by people of different politics and different faith.
Ah. So you evaluate the conclusions arrived at by the “machine” (by which I assume you mean your biological self) against what you want the conclusions to be. “True” and “real” are whatever you want them to be.
The problem I see people struggling with in terms of “I” vs “the biological machine” boils down to not taking into account (or perhaps not understanding) that humans learn the concept of “I” and “we” and are not born with such notions. Babies, like most other organisms in the world, have no concept of themselves; they merely react to states such as a state of “discomfort” (though they clearly don’t have any clear concept of even that). Their behavior (and thus their “will”) is a product of switching – if state “A” (hungry), goto mode A (squirm, audible, cry etc and get object A; if state “B” (not hungry), goto mode B (sleep, burble, coo) and get object A; if object A (change in state), rerun program. Pretty much that simple. It’s not until said baby begins to recognize other objects, including ones that appear to repeatedly change states and that appear to influence the states experience does said baby/child begin to develop a concept of “self” vs “others” vs “world” and so on. Those then are defined concepts of convenience for making sense of what we perceive. There’s nothing that indicates that the “self” is some actual thing outside the biological functioning then. The biological functioning gives us the recognition of states and the recognition of the changes therein; it is through experiencing the world as well as expanding the biological functioning during development that placeholders such as “I” and “self” are set in order to make better models of how the world operates so that our biological machinery can make better predictions for state change control. No magic is needed.
Of course it is unclear what is doing the wanting, and how it is doing it, if it is not your biological self.
No we are not on the outside looking in. But that’s not what I’m saying. I just slipped (intentionally, but perhaps unintentionally misleadingly) from one way of thinking about it all to another – from the objective to the subjective view.
From the the view of someone outside the system (the neuroscientist for instance) what we see is a kind of seething system of systems, from time to time resulting in physical action which in turn generates new input.
From the point of view of the brain-owner, we report the process something like “I’m a bit chilly, is the fire going out? [glances at fire] Hmm, is it worthing putting on another log? [glances at watch] Probably not…in any case I want to finish writing this post….”
Meanwhile, the very generation (via more motor programs) of the words I am thinking of serves to generate the “I” that is the intending and acting agent.
Robin,
I didn’t claim that humans are born with free will, or even that everyone has free will. I’m pointing out that without it (or its ontological equivalent), epistemology is doomed to self-referential equivalence and ideology descends into madness.
The irony is: all of us must act, and think, and intend, and consider, and debate, make laws, and hold people responsible for their actions as if libertarian free will exists anyway, yet some go through these convoluted semantics that attempt to deny it … the very act of denying that one has free will destroys any argument that might support such a claim, because their argument has been reduced to nothing more, essentially, than flinging feces around.
Their words and thoughts are just what biology happens to make them think, believe, and say – nothing more, nothing less. The same as fundamental christians and muslims, new-agers, and people in straight-jackets. Who knows, had you eaten a pepperoni pizza 5 years ago, today you might believe and say something utterly different via a biological butterfly effect.
If your argument boils down in essece to: “this is just what my biology happens to make me say and believe at this time,” I might as well go debate a bonobo.
I’m pointing out that without it (or its ontological equivalent), epistemology is doomed to self-referential equivalence and ideology descends into madness.
No, no, you can’t just brush off “ontological equivalent” as if it’s a minor detail.
If libertarian free will is a useful illusion, so be it. But its ontological status is at issue and subject to objective evaluation.
Well, no, it is nothing like schizophrenia. Actually it is almost the opposite of schizophrenia. Schizophrenia can in some ways be viewed as what happens when the I-generation process goes wrong.
The I-generation is not “fooling” anyone. It is the generation of a successful and viable model – an application of a general agency model to the special case of the agency doing the modeling. It’s very cool.
They are two levels of the same thing. Models at different levels from different viewpoints – the objective view of the neuroscientist and the subjective view of the self-modeler.
What is wrong with identifying your “biological system” with yourself? Or rather, what is wrong with defining yourself as a certain domain of decision-making within that biological system? (for example, I do not define myself as the decision-maker in my heart, nor as the decision maker that occasionally utters weird things while I am asleep, but I do define myself as the decision-maker that is writing this post).
It’s not that I “believe” it is my intention to write this post, but may be mistaken, but that I saying that I intend to write this post is a straightforward model of the process by which this post is written – it is being written by a biological organism that refers to itself as “I”.
Nobody is “looking for an out”. No “out” is required. All that is required is that we do not multiply entities unnecessarily. Why posit a “a biological system” and an “I” or “you” when both refer to the same thing? The concept is not “stolen” – it is simply restoring a monistic view of something that is traditionally dualist – accepting that “I” and “this biological organism” are not two separate things, but two views of the same thing.
I know that you have another model – that of a kind of psychosphere, but I don’t see it make as good predictions as the model I am adopting, and it seems to posit an entity without an actual role.
Elizabeth,
Once again, you miss the entire point of my posts. But, that’s okay, because I accept that you – and others here – don’t have libertarian free will like I do. You – and some others – can only perceive, process and respond however your particular biological mechanisms dictate, which usually has nothing to do with what I meant, even if it is an interpretation that can marginally be extrapolated from a machine-like processing of the words based on largely hard-wired associations and predispositions.
Yes, and that’s why I would suggest that consciousness is limited to reporting and is not responsible in any way for agency. As soon as we speak of “consciously controlling” something, we slip into dualism.
Well, that may not be entirely my fault.
I’d forgotten you thought that. I think it’s bullshit. To be specific: unfounded and incoherent.
I find this quite extraordinarily presumptive. Ah well.
I don’t think “consciousness” is “responsible” for anything. I think (see my conching post) that being conscious is something people – agents – do. I don’t think “consciousness” is an agent.
But I see nothing wrong with modelling entities (biological entities) as agents. It makes a lot of sense. It’s only dualist if you think of the agents as inhabiting the biological entities, rather than being the entities themselves.
What an unnecessarily roundabout way of saying “I’m right, you are all wrong, and you are all too stupid to see it.”
MOST people, upon discovering that not one person in their audience can figure out what the hell they’re saying, would consider that maybe, just maybe, THEY are not being clear. But I guess those few lucky enough to have free will and smart enough not to wonder where it comes from in their brain, can comfortably figure everyone else is at fault for being, well, whatever it takes.
And here, I think, we get another essential insight into how ID works, what the mental processes are that support it.
I didn’t say that at all. Perhaps you think I’m being sarcastic or kidding about this – I”m not. I largely take those at their word when they say they do not have libertarian free will. My worldview doesn’t demand that everyone have free will. I can hardly expect self-described biological machines (which I call “NPCs”) to respond and interact as if they have the same free will capacity as I do.
It really doesn’t have anything to do with intelligence. I imagine most people engaged in this chat are more intelligent than I. It just has to do with having free will and being able to freely examine conceptual connections and sequences without being caused/constrained by biology to see them a particular way as manifested by their particular biology.
Nobody said anything like this. You have completely misunderstood the entire discussion.
But in that case, you must explain, in full experimental detail, exactly how their brains differ from yours. Because everything about you, from your personality to your memories to your faith to your free will to your purposes, all derive from the operation of your brain.
This is both simpleminded and contemptuous. YOU are a biological machine. We are trying to discuss how that machine operates at all levels, and how the operation of that machine SEEMS, subjectively, to the person the operation of the machine implements or realizes. Whether you wish to miss the point or not. We are all human.
I agree, we’re not talking about intelligence here. We are talking about the mechanics of the brain, and the sorts of phenomena that arise from the low-level mechanisms of neural interaction. And almost surely, this same set of mechanics and emergent phenomena is equally true of flies and flatworms.
These concepts derive from processes occurring in your brain. Your brain is a biological object. ALL thought, all ideas, all intents, all sensations, are biological. Are you saying thoughts arise by magic? By what magical mechanism, and how would you test it? Or are you arguing that your thoughts do not originate in your brain? Or do you argue that free will is somehow NOT a mental construct, arising from the biological action of neurons?
That’s all well and good I guess, but I didn’t say anything about free will. i didn’t address the concept of free will at all – I merely commented on the supposed difficulty of dealing with the concept of a biological machine as some “other thing” when we also have a concept of said biological machine as “self” and that both concepts a conveniences for constructing frameworks about the states experienced. Quite frankly, whether there’s such a thing as “free will” is of value to me.
I don’t fully agree with your assessment above. I don’t see any particular action or behavior or law or whatever as indicative of a reliance on free will in and of itself. In fact, I’m good with acting in accordance with proscribed laws even if I’m completely devoid of will. If I’ve been programmed to screw up and find myself in violation of said laws, so what? What’s the differences in any practical detectable sense between that and being completely autonomous?
But then, I tend to think of things in terms of reactions to states anyway and concepts like “free will” have little meaning in such models.
Maybe in some assumed model, but in more refined models – that is, models that rely upon more predictably accurate calculations based upon accumulated evidence gathered by the biological machines – there’s a difference between programming, stimuli influence, and defined decision matrices. While you may insist that such concepts are but “thoughts [that] biology happens to make [certain people] think, believe, and say – nothing more, nothing less”, I’m still inclined to go with that model over yours since that model shows a distinct accuracy in predictability.
Sure, except that then your model is in essence ignoring that that there’s a difference between “car”, “iPhone”, “shovel”, “rock”, “bonobo”, “rain”, “gravity”, and “other humans”.
That’s the thing about models – they can be as simple or as complex as the holder wishes, but if they are simple, they inherently leave out details that affect other concepts. By insisting that there’s no difference between a bonobo and human without free will implies that your model doesn’t incorporate the fact that humans can converse in a common language (however preprogrammed it might be) that bonobos- with but small limited exception sans speech – don’t share. Have fun with that chat though.
Oops. Correction:
WJM said: “But, that’s okay, because I accept that you – and others here – don’t have libertarian free will like I do.”
First, what is the difference between “libertarian free will” and just plain old free will?
Which humans have free will (libertarian or otherwise) and which ones don’t, and exactly how can it be determined/tested?
Do any other living things have free will?
And why do you avoid answering many of the questions that you are asked?
WJM:
Within your world view, by what means do some come to possess free will, and others not?
Is the faculty of free will chosen? Or is it determined?
Eddy Nahmias, an associate professor in the Philosophy Department and the Neuroscience Institute at Georgia State University, argues that a deterministic/materialistic explanation of brain function does not exclude Free Will. The entire piece is worth reading, but this is perhaps the most relevant part:
Is Neuroscience the Death of Free Will?
NY Times, November 13, 2011
…This conception of free will represents a longstanding and dominant view in philosophy, though it is typically ignored by scientists who conclude that free will is an illusion. It also turns out that most non-philosophers have intuitions about free and responsible action that track this conception of free will. Researchers in the new field of experimental philosophy study what “the folk” think about philosophical issues and why. For instance, my collaborators and I have found that most people think that free will and responsibility are compatible with determinism, the thesis that all events are part of a law-like chain of events such that earlier events necessitate later events. That is, most people judge that you can have free will and be responsible for your actions even if all of your decisions and actions are entirely caused by earlier events in accord with natural laws.
Our studies suggest that people sometimes misunderstand determinism to mean that we are somehow cut out of this causal chain leading to our actions. People are threatened by a possibility I call “bypassing” — the idea that our actions are caused in ways that bypass our conscious deliberations and decisions. So, if people mistakenly take causal determinism to mean that everything that happens is inevitable no matter what you think or try to do, then they conclude that we have no free will. Or if determinism is presented in a way that suggests all our decisions are just chemical reactions, they take that to mean that our conscious thinking is bypassed in such a way that we lack free will.
Even if neuroscience and psychology were in a position to establish the truth of determinism — a job better left for physics — this would not establish bypassing. As long as people understand that discoveries about how our brains work do not mean that what we think or try to do makes no difference to what happens, then their belief in free will is preserved. What matters to people is that we have the capacities for conscious deliberation and self-control that I’ve suggested we identify with free will…
I suspect that Liz has forgotten what college freshman drunk midnight BS sessions were all about, and WJM may never have known. But here we have a wonderful example. Brings back memories, for sure.