My problem with Free Will

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I think I agree with this.

Brant,

I don't.

I think it's hoity-toity bullshit designed to sell you on nonsense in the place of common sense.

I won't go into motives because they are as varied as the grains of sand on the beach.

How do you know something basic exists? You start by observing that it exists. All science it based on that. All of it.

Does life exist? Yes. How do we know? Can we prove it? Can we deduce it from some principle? Hell, no.

We observe it. That's how we know it exists.

Does free will exist?

I know what I observe.

I observe people using free will all the time and I even observe some of them laying a pile of bullshit on everyone--using their free will as they deny it exists and try to get you to change your mind (i.e., exercise your own free will).

Does consciousness exist?

Some conscious souls will tell you it doesn't. And you won't see them talking to a rock, either. They will talk to other conscious beings.

Don't you ever get tired of the bullshit?

I do.

Here's a standard I use.

When people start saying things that defy common sense like free will doesn't exist and the like, they are not interested in discussing truth with you. And I treat them accordingly. I don't know what they are interested in, but truth is not it. And that even goes for mystical people who claim free will does not exist because some all-powerful God already played all the cards. All powerful God. All powerful existence. It's the same BS, anyway, if you use it to deny what you observe all around you.

I would go so far as to say this has nothing to do with existence, or God for that matter. It's all about nonsense qua nonsense.

I'm reminded of the biblical saying, if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out. The modern version is if thine eye offend thee, bullshit everybody and say what you see ain't so, Joe. There are always people who will believe anything if it sounds hoity-toity enough. So just make sure it sounds hoity-toity.

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

Well, Michael, I simply stopped reading most of his stuff--too long and frequently arcane, but that goes for the equally long if not arcane replies (not yours). My only point is the lack of political freedom is a bummer for one's range of choices and mere motivation for living. That he keeps pumping out his determinism was too much time for me to continue examining the subject through his lenses.

I should have noted, however, that his conclusion about fee will being not existing for millions because of lack of ability to use it in most areas was absolutely fallacious. That's like saying the shotgun in my closet doesn't exist because it's not being used. And what better example of free will than John Galt refusing to cooperate with Mr. Thompson* & co.?

--Brant

*modeled on Harry Truman

[anthony]

Thinking a moment, I realise I'm wrong about determinism not being able to be practised or implemented.

What was the feudalism of Old England, if not determinist? Or, the subsequent class system of more recent Britain?

You were defined by who your father and his antecedents were, and that was that with no chance to improve your lot.

Then there're the modern progressives. Taken from an article I picked up a week ago, written by Dennis Prager:

"The left regards murderers, rapists, thieves and other violent criminals more as victims than as contemptible.

Violent criminals do what they do because of poverty, racism and inequality, progressives argue.

And these are not the only reasons violent criminal are not to blame. Secular progressive thought also denies free will,

viewing all our behavior as ultimately attributable to genes and environment."

That's a common meme. Discussed often on this forum.

Additionally, I remember that racism has a direct causal link to determinism.

'Social Darwinism' - and so on

[Francisco Ferrer]

Now that we have established that determinism is a fact of reality, we can attack it on the political front. Write your Congressman to repeal all forms of deterministic legislation. Then push for a law that will abolish all mental disorders with a genetic factor.

And speaking of Dennis Prager, what he says on the subject of free will helps put everything in its proper perspective:

If there is no God, the human being has no free will. He is a robot, whose every action is dictated by genes and environment. Only if one posits human creation by a Creator that transcends genes and environment who implanted the ability to transcend genes and environment can humans have free will.

As I've been saying for days, free will requires an act of faith.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I should have noted, however, that his conclusion about fee will being not existing for millions because of lack of ability to use it in most areas was absolutely fallacious. That's like saying the shotgun in my closet doesn't exist because it's not being used. And what better example of free will than John Galt refusing to cooperate with Mr. Thompson* & co.?

Brant,

The sloppy thinking of determinists (not yours) is in blanking out one-half of reality. Everything I am going to say in this post can be applied to society, but I prefer to start with the foundation.

The universe is made up of form and content. Form is big picture stuff and content is details (going all the way down to subparticles). At what point does form become content and vice-versa? To me, that's like asking what point on a circle is the start and what point is the end. When you look without any preconception, you see that the start point is the end point of a circle. It just depends on which way you go around.

Determinists try to pretend that form does not exist on a fundamental level, that it only "emerges" from the smaller fundamental stuff. They blank it out.

A field--like a magnetic field--is a form-making force. Gravity is another. And so on until you get to holons and fundamental things like that. (This is a long discussion.)

Suppose you are an element within a field or form (and you actually are, but I'm going hypothetical right now). You have no choice about that form. You are within it. That is your context. This can be called "determined." However, within the confines of that field or form, including your own form, you have a great deal of randomness at your disposal.

For instance, a normal human being has a face. That part is "determined." But every human face is different. That's the randomness part.

If you pour water down a mountain, it will make forms (a field so to speak) of rivers. Grooves in the mountain. Future water will have to follow those forms on the way down. However, within any particular form, water molecules will bounce all over the friggin' place in a totally random manner.

Determinists like to pretend this randomness does not exist because the element cannot separate itself from the form it belongs to.

A human being, for example, cannot mate with another and produce a giraffe. He and she will produce another human. That part is determined. The human species is the form (or field) we belong to. All of us. But the sex, size, potentialities, etc., of the newborn are all random starting at the moment of conception--and even going further into development.

A human free will and consciousness is like a turbocharged interface between form and content. It comes with a predetermined nature, but it can create both forms and fields in outside reality from the top down (forms it itself determines), and it can create emerged forms and fields from the bottom up. It does the first by starting with an idea and vision of what something can be in the future and puts that into action, and it can do the latter by crushing things down to their smaller elements, studying them, then reassembling them in ways not found elsewhere in reality.

Neuroscience is even showing how the mind can shape the very brain it belongs to within this field and element kind of thinking.

At what point does one start and the other end? We are back once more to the start and end of the circle. It depends on which direction you are going.

Human free will (and consciousness) constitutes a causal entity in itself.* A prime mover. And the existence of it comes embedded in the human species, i.e., predetermined.

You don't get a choice about having free will. But you have countless choices about how you use it. You are not a causal agent for your own existence, but you are for the existence of countless other things that spring from your free will that you put into action.

The determinist blanks out all of this and rationalizes what doesn't fit his musings.

It's not either determinism or free will. It's both.

This is why I get a bit grumpy at times. I get tired or watching people weave intellectual pretzels with attitude as they try to justify their blank-out of half of the reality any two-year old already knows about. How does a two-year old know it? He constantly bumps up against what he can't change and chooses to do what he can. He already knows both exist.

It takes a learned determinist to unlearn that and start lading out bullshit in hoity-toity wordgame pretzels.

Michael

* Note for the reader. I said "entity" when the word "faculty" is the correct one according to the way Rand uses these terms. I take a broader view than Rand on this issue. I hold that man is still evolving and most likely does not perceive all there is to fundamental reality. The issue of the total relationship of mind to the rest of reality is still up for grabs in my view, meaning I agree with Rand's view of this relationship within confines, but there is too much evidence I have come across of unexplained things that her view does not explain for me to agree that it is the whole enchilada. In my world, my suspicion is that the human race has a fascinating future in store in terms of fundamental reality. So I sometimes use the word entity to mean a form of existence (like consciousness), not just the individual thing within or embodying that form.

[deanwins]

No god -> no free will? I don't see the relationship.

We are the same as a robot? Like we are the same as water? Yes we share some things in common with robots.

Does the river cause erosion? Or graviy acting on the mountain rain? Or the radiation evaporating the ocean? Or nuclear fusion on the sun? Could they all be causes at the same time, at different abstraction layers?

If free will is the ability to change oneself by thinking, then I would agree. If we could restore reality to a previous state (including a person's knowledge state) and then repeat a decision, I don't see how or why or any reason why the person would nor could do differently. Choosing is determining.

One's ideas are embodied as the relationships between parts of one's brain. Its encoded in sensory and actuator neural signal streams that correspond with real observations/sensations and actions. Our brain can perform induction and deduction to abstract/compress/simplify our observations to improve memory storage efficiency. We can simulate reality and plan and change our worldview and do all sorts of things dynamically... We can make new conclusions about our situation in the world, and reevaluate our actions and character in order to increase one's goal attainment. Is this last process what you want to call free will or volition or consciousness? Do you claim that you are _cause_? You are causing? You are causal. You are determining? You are deterministic.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Does the river cause erosion?

Dean,

On the metaphorical level, maybe you will get what I am talking about.

Does the river cause erosion? Yes.

Does erosion cause the river? Yes.

One cannot exist without the other and there still be a river.

The river and erosion connection is determined. What gets eroded and the shape of the river are random (within obvious limitations). And incidentally, both are constantly changing.

It's not either-or. It's both.

Like Rand says, existence exists. That means all of it, not just the part we like to focus on.

EDIT: Just for the record, my hostility is not directed at you. I disagree with you, but I think you are coming from an idea place, not a mindgame or preaching one.

Michael

[anthony]

Francisco: You may thrash about all you want, you have to live with one of several self-contradictions: that you desire freedom - in order that people are 'free' to live pre-determinedly. Uh? Say what?!

It is only by virtue of being in a mostly free nation that one can have the luxury to espouse such self-indulgent nonsense.

As you have indeed "been saying for days", man's mind is to you no better than a computer programed to play chess.

The real core of a skeptic is denial of consciousness, his own included - a "volitional" one, or not. Too much like "the soul" for any mystic-turned-agnostic, I guess. He sets up 'logic' against reason - and, rather than moving from mysticism to grasping independence of mind and primacy of existence, he falls for another variant of mysticism, the collective authority of others.

The most fervent religionist is more rational than this; a moderate one like Prager, from evidently false mystical metaphysical premises came to a most accurate deduction regarding determinist-progressivism in society.

Rand:

"From primordial mysticism to this, its climax, the attack on man's consciousness and particularly on his conceptual faculty has rested on the unchallenged premise that any knowledge acquired by a *process* of consciousness is necessarily subjective and cannot correspond to the facts of reality, since it is *processed* knowledge."

---

"As Berkely negated existence by claiming that "to be, is to be perceived", so Kant negates consciousness by implying that to be perceived, is not to be."{i.e.From the subjectivist to the skeptic, a false dichotomy.}

---

"...the desire to exempt consciousness from identity. The hallmark of a mystic is the savagely stubborn refusal to accept the fact that consciousness, like any other existent, possesses identity, that it is a faculty of a specific nature, functioning through specific means. While the advance of civilization has been eliminating one area of magic after another, the last stand of the believers in the miraculous consists of their frantic attempts to regard *identity* as the *disqualifying* element of consciousness."

---[AR, Consciousness and Identity]

North Korea- a perfect scenario of citizens who have obligingly self-sacrificed to a collectivist-determinist, totalitarian life and future. So, yes. Determinism exists. Look at your proof, and be happy.

[Francisco Ferrer]

Consciousness is not the same as free will. As I have said already in this thread there are a number of scientific ways to measure consciousness. There has never been any research to successfully identify and quantify a force called "free will," embedded or otherwise. In fact, work by Benjamin Libet has shown that activity in the brain's motor regions can be detected some 300 milliseconds before a person feels that he has decided to move. Thus, there are specific, material forces that produce choices and actions but which precede our consciousness of them, i.e. our "volition."

The Free Willist can insist that there must some force (a "prime mover") floating within our brains, that everyone has it, that it is the source of all morality and art, that we couldn't function without it, etc. But the very same arguments have been advanced over the millennia for the existence of a divinity. God's nature and power, supposedly, are simultaneously independent of the material universe and self-evident through introspection:

His presence is present in my own presence. If I am then He is.

[Francisco Ferrer]

Fransisco: You may thrash about all you want, you have to live with one of several self-contradictions: that you desire freedom - in order that people are 'free' to live pre-determinedly. Uh? Say what?!

It is only by virtue of being in a mostly free nation that one can have the luxury to espouse such self-indulgent nonsense.

If political freedom and free will were the same, then you could abolish bipolar disorder with an act of legislation.

In any case, I don't know of any current law which forbids you from presenting scientific evidence for the existence of free will. So go right ahead. No uniformed agent of the government will stop you.

As you have indeed "been saying for days", man's mind is to you no better than a computer programed to play chess.

You have previously said that reasoning requires free will. Therefore, if you are correct, computers must have free will.

The real core of a skeptic is denial of consciousness, his own included - a "volitional" one, or not. Too much like "the soul" for any mystic-turned-agnostic, I guess. He sets up 'logic' against reason - since, rather than moving from mysticism to grasping independence of mind and primacy of existence, falls for another variant of mysticism, the collective authority of others.

The most fervent religionist is more rational than this; a moderate one like Prager, from evidently false mystical metaphysical premises came to a most accurate deduction regarding determinist-progressivism in society.

You're getting quite good at demolishing positions I've never taken. But there are too many instances of my acknowledgement of the existence of consciousness for the allegation of "denial of consciousness" not to be either an act of dishonesty or of reading incompetence on your part.

Since attention to what has actually been written does not appear to be your strong suit, it shouldn't be too hard for you to find or invent some magical "proof" of free will.

Maybe Prager knows a good argument.

North Korea- a perfect scenario of citizens who have obligingly self-sacrificed to a collectivist-determinist, totalitarian life and future. So, yes. Determinism exists. Look at your proof, and be happy.

I don't have to be any happier about it than I am about exposure to lead causing children to be inattentive, hyperactive and irritable.

[deanwins]

Does the river cause erosion?

Dean,

On the metaphorical level, maybe you will get what I am talking about.

Does the river cause erosion? Yes.

Does erosion cause the river? Yes.

One cannot exist without the other and there still be a river.

The river and erosion connection is determined. What gets eroded and the shape of the river are random (within obvious limitations). And incidentally, both are constantly changing.

It's not either-or. It's both.

Like Rand says, existence exists. That means all of it, not just the part we like to focus on.

EDIT: Just for the record, my hostility is not directed at you. I disagree with you, but I think you are coming from an idea place, not a mindgame or preaching one.

Michael

Michael:

Funny actually our posts crossed and without collusion we both talked about rivers. I agree with this post. Yes its both-at-the-same-time. I'm not disagreeing with anything you say... so I'm not sure what you disagree with me on.

My issue with "free will" is that poeple bundle with it that reality isn't causal. And then they seem to think that one's will being non-causal is desirable?

To me its also kind of like Francisco Ferrer just said on people's view of God, but not quite. People tend to get stuck on having to have fantasies in order to feel purpose:

"I beleive in God. God gives me purpose. How can you have purpose/morality without God?" So what are you saying? God created you for a purpose, well what makes you want to accept his purpose for your life? What is so special about God's will rather than one that you could give to yourself? How is God's will ultimately universally good, but your own necessarily be arbitrary or worthless? If you were God, then what would your will be?

"I believe in eternal life. My actions in this life effecting my afterlife gives me purpose/meaning. How can you have purpose/morality if you think your life will end?" So what are you saying? What purpose are you going to have once you start your afterlife? Why? How does living forever make your life more worthwhile than if you only had 70 years to live?

"I believe that our actions aren't determined by reality's state and physical process of change. My actions being unrestrained by the mechanistic rules of reality's process of change gives me purpose/meaning. How can you have purpose/morality if you actions aren't restrained by reality's physical laws?" So what are you saying? How does contradicting reality's physical laws give your life purpose/meaning? Where does your purpose/meaning come from then? How is that better than if your will was decided deterministically?

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Dean,

Sorry. My wires got crossed.

Since your style is to present a lot of unanswered questions, I erroneously got the notion that you were of the hardcore emergence-of-consciousness-from-brain-evolution persuasion--those people who insist that the mind is nothing more than a byproduct of a solely deterministic process.

I'm not speaking of the fact that consciousness can emerge from brain evolution, but instead that the state of consciousness as a form of existence only comes about that way. It's a subtle difference, but it's important. One is a speculation based on observation (one I share) and the other is a dogmatic proclamation.

For the record, it might be as in the dogma, but I don't think anyone can do more than speculate at the present state of human knowledge. From the volume of unexplainable evidence and personal accounts that keep cropping up, there is good reason to prefer a position that there a lot more to this mind stuff than just a deterministic byproduct of processing animated meat , and we have to keep looking to find out what it is.

Michael

[Peter]

Michael wrote:

. . . I get tired o(f) watching people weave intellectual pretzels with attitude as they try to justify their blank-out of half of the reality any two-year old already knows about. How does a two-year old know it? He constantly bumps up against what he can't change and chooses to do what he can. He already knows both exist . . . . The issue of the total relationship of mind to the rest of reality is still up for grabs in my view, meaning I agree with Rand's view of this relationship within confines, but there is too much evidence I have come across of unexplained things that her view does not explain for me to agree that it is the whole enchilada. In my world, my suspicion is that the human race has a fascinating future in store in terms of fundamental reality.

end quote

I hope Michael doesn’t mind but that is a very good analogy I cobbled together. Thanks Michaels! The “soft determinist” has stopped examining their own mental processes. *You* know who *You* are from an early age. A determinist must reach a sufficient age to become skeptical of themselves. At some point the determinist questions who they are and concludes their very thought processes are being used or pushed by antecedent causality. From their adult, skeptical viewpoint they now imprison their thought processes, or so they claim. A two year old would rebel against that.

[Peter]

Tony wrote:

The real core of a skeptic is denial of consciousness, his own included - a "volitional" one, or not.

end quote

Denial? Exactly, Tony. Ironically, I think a universal trait of most fictional androids or sentient mental beings is that they have volition! I wonder if Dean might agree with me that a “written” program doth not a volitional being make, not even with sufficient processing, storage, etc. Yet a young human is volitional, self aware, and possessive. “Mine” is one of a toddler’s favorite words.

[deanwins]

Michael,

I'm not sure if I'm reading you correclty. Are you claiming that consciousness can be created within our reality throught the process of evolution (unpredictable changes to functional polymers) and natural selection... but you deny that a human could not also design/create such a thing?

My position is that consciousness is not a yes/no all or nothing kind of thing. If consciousness is the alteration of one part of reality's information (relations between its parts) due to sensory (interaction between the part and external parts of reality)... then I would argue that everything in effect in reality has the most primative form of consciousness. But then surely humans have a significantly more complex form of consciousness, that yes has been designed by natural selection. I'd agree that without natural selection to be the initial creator, that there would not be consciousness that has the increadible properties like humans.

Also, I do think that reality's changes are entirely a deterministic process. This does not preclude reality from having rediculously unpredictable events that are effectively non-causal seeming due to its vastness and increadible interactivity between its constiutents. Do you deny that our reality changes via a deterministic process?

[deanwins]

Tony wrote:

The real core of a skeptic is denial of consciousness, his own included - a "volitional" one, or not.

end quote

Denial? Exactly, Tony. Ironically, I think a universal trait of most fictional androids or sentient mental beings is that they have volition! I wonder if Dean might agree with me that a “written” program doth not a volitional being make, not even with sufficient processing, storage, etc. Yet a young human is volitional, self aware, and possessive. “Mine” is one of a toddler’s favorite words.

Peter,

Given that natural selection programmed us... I'm extremely confident that humans will one day make computer+computer programs that have any and all of the propreties of humans that you might ever challenge to create. After all, natural selection just makes random changes that take an entire generation to test... verses humans use an increadibly awesome reasoning process to build things. I don't think there is anything special about blood and guts that is required to have "volition".

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Dean,

I certainly believe humans can design consciousness. (I'm a fan of Kurzweil and Singularity University.) I think consciousness is a form of existence that is just now being developed and explored--within human understanding at least.

Nobody knows what else might be out there, aliens, other forces, etc., so I cannot opine about those forms of more highly developed consciousness, if they exist. (Or even lesser forms.) I do believe humans get "hints" about something more and this accounts for some of the similar accounts of weird things that people have been reporting since the dawn of recorded history, but my speculation is that we are evolving a new sensory capacity. So the experiences are not constant and uniform across the human species, but merely sporadic and similar. I speculate and that's all. I find that better than calling most of humanity depraved, evaders, corrupt, liars, deluded, weak-minded, etc., which is a different speculation.

As far as "denying" anything goes, the only thing I deny is to shut my mind down with dogma. I'll even go so far as to admit a small possibility that the dogma is true, but not because it is known as fact at the present. If it should turn out to be true--verifiably true, it would be nothing but a guess that worked out that some people hammered in their messages during the time it was not verified.

So does reality change solely by deterministic processes? I have already mentioned where I observe randomness. I think reality changes according to both deterministic processes and randomness because I can observe it, just like I believe forms impose conditions on what is within them and they arise from what is within them. Some of this is determined and some of it is random, especially when we get to life.

Once again, that is speculation, not dogma. It might all be determined, albeit I admit I lean away from this notion. But I won't shut the door. The person who claims randomness is impossible, period, is preaching. In fact, he is the one "denying" and claiming absolute knowledge of things and events he has no way of observing at the present, and brushing aside or rationalizing some of the things he actually does observe.

NOTE: I have trouble with the God of Natural Selection who rules over all Creation. I'm not a fan of thunder and dogs barking in the distance on a dreary night.

I prefer the process of natural selection, which is one among several, including genetic tampering by humans.

Michael

[Peter]

Tony wrote:

The real core of a skeptic is denial of consciousness, his own included - a "volitional" one, or not. Too much like "the soul" for any mystic-turned-agnostic, I guess. He sets up 'logic' against reason - and, rather than moving from mysticism to grasping independence of mind and primacy of existence, he falls for another variant of mysticism, the collective authority of others.

end quote

Or he falls for the collective authority of “made ya do it.” This is moving far a’field but does the concept and condition of Aphasia indicate prior volition, but damage to the “volitional center of the brain” which makes you say the wrong thing? TV’s Doctor Gregory House might know. In one episode he wrote down every word an aphasia victim “misspoke” to figure out what had happened to him.

From Wikipedia:

Aphasia . . . is a disturbance of the comprehension and formulation of language caused by dysfunction in specific brain regions. This class of language disorder ranges from having difficulty remembering words to losing the ability to speak, read, or write. This also affects visual language such as sign language. Aphasia is usually linked to brain damage, most commonly caused by stroke. Brain damage linked to aphasia can also cause further brain diseases, including cancer, epilepsy and Alzheimer's disease.

end quote

It even affects sign language? Let me see if I can place myself into a state of aphasia. Flash mobs are simply Ballywood but the noblest Roman of them all. On, on oh noblest Englishman, you yegg, sputter, irritation.

Enough of that. Now that I have pissed off a bunch of you, how would a determinist explain irritation?

[Peter]

Here is an excellent two letter discussion from “soft determinist” Bill Dwyer and Objectivist (majority portion,) George H. Smith.

From: "William Dwyer" <wswdwyer@comcast.net>

Reply-To: wswdwyer@comcast.net

To: <objectivism@wetheliving.com>

Subject: OWL: The mind is PART OF the body

Date: Thu, 24 Jul 2003 11:22:54 -0700

It is often said that a person is composed of a mind AND a body (as if the two were radically different substances), when in fact the mind is simply a certain activity of the brain as experienced subjectively and is therefore PART OF the body.

Since mental activity is brain activity, and brain activity is a physical process, it follows that mental activity is a physical process. Whereas not all physical activity is mental, all mental activity is nevertheless physical, because it is performed by the brain, which is a physical organ.

Indeed, people will often say, "Use your head!" or "Use your brain!" when they could just as well have said, "Use your mind!" In short, mental activity simply IS brain activity, experienced from an internal, rather than an external perspective.

Perhaps an analogy will help. Because of its appearance in both the morning and evening skies at different times of the year, the Greeks thought the planet Venus was two separate objects, which they named Hesperus and Phosphorus. Eventually, it was discovered that Hesperus ("the morning star") and Phosphorus ("the evening star") were the same celestial body seen at different times and from different perspectives.

Just as "the morning star" (visible in the eastern sky before sunrise) and "the evening star" (visible in the western sky at sunset) are not two different planets, but the same planet identified from two different perspectives, so the mind (identified introspectively) and the brain (identified extrospectively) are not two different organs, but the same organ identified from two different perspectives.

Moreover, just as one can refer to Venus in the morning sky, as "the morning star," while recognizing that it is the same planet that's visible in the evening sky, so one can refer to (a certain part of) the active brain as "the mind," while recognizing that it is the same organ that's visible to the surgeon when he does a craniotomy.

Another analogy which may be helpful is the atmospheric discharge of electricity, which we see as lightening. Thunder was not recognized as lightening, until scientists discovered that it simply _is_ the atmospheric discharge as reflected by the generation of sound waves, which travel slower than light. Today, lightening and thunder are recognized as the same electrical phenomenon identified by different means or from different perspectives.

It is true that one cannot know, simply by looking at a certain part of the active brain (externally), that it is the organ that performs mental activity, just as one cannot know by engaging in mental activity that a certain part of the active brain is the organ performing it. Further study is needed to make the connection, just as further study was needed to make the connection between the morning star and the evening star, or between lightening and thunder. But once having made that connection, it is folly to deny it on the grounds that the brain's activity _appears_ different from a subjective perspective than it does from an objective one.

-- Bill

From: "George H. Smith" <smikro@earthlink.net>

Reply-To: "George H. Smith" <smikro@earthlink.net>

To: <objectivism@wetheliving.com>

Subject: OWL: Fw: The mind is PART OF the body

Date: Sat, 26 Jul 2003 16:53:12 -0500

On 7/24/03, Bill Dwyer wrote:

"It is often said that a person is composed of a mind AND a body (as if the two were radically different substances), when in fact the mind is simply a certain activity of the brain as experienced subjectively and is therefore PART OF the body."

I see no problem in saying that a person "is composed of a mind AND a body," if by "body" we understand his physical characteristics exclusively. We needn't treat consciousness as a substance ("mind-stuff") in order to recognize that it has characteristics and powers that cannot be fully explained by referring to physical brain states alone.

What does it mean to say that mind (or consciousness) "is simply a certain activity of the brain as experienced subjectively"? This suggests that the ability to "experience" something is a characteristic of physical matter when viewed from a certain perspective. But this *presupposes* the ability to attain this perspective in the first place, an ability that requires a state of consciousness before any experience is even possible.

Strictly speaking, we do not normally "experience" brain activity. Rather, it is because brain activity causes a state of consciousness that we are able to experience things via sensations, perceptions, and thoughts. When I perceive a Mockingbird, I am not experiencing "a certain activity of the brain"; rather I am perceiving a Mockingbird. Of course, this experience depends on a physiological process. This process makes my perception of the Mockingbird possible; but the physiological process, the brain activity, is not itself the *object* of my perception.

When I render an epistemological judgment, such as "X is true," my judgment (which is a type of experience) is not a report on my brain activities, nor is it merely those brain activities as "experienced subjectively" (whatever such a statement is supposed to mean). The *meaning* of "X is true" cannot be reduced to physical brain activities, which do not have "meaning" and to which concepts like "true" and "false" do not, and cannot, apply.

Bill wrote:

"Since mental activity is brain activity, and brain activity is a physical process, it follows that mental activity is a physical process. Whereas not all physical activity is mental, all mental activity is nevertheless physical, because it is performed by the brain, which is a physical organ."

To say that mental activity is brain activity is not obviously true, if by this we mean that consciousness is "nothing but" brain activity. This reductionist thesis requires proof and may not be used as a postulate in order to avoid the traditional problems of mind-body interaction.

Even if we do admit that "mental activity is brain activity," in the sense that consciousness is causally dependent on brain activity, it does not follow that mental activity is NOTHING BUT a physical process. This is a flagrant non sequitur.

To repeat: When I say "X is true," I am not referring to a physical process of any kind, for physical processes can be neither "true" nor "false." I am not experiencing, or reporting on, my brain activities from a subjective point of view. Indeed, I have no idea what brain activities may be occurring when I render epistemological judgments of this sort, but I am able to understand a proposition, as well as assess its truth or falsehood, without a scintilla of such knowledge.

Moreover, even if I had extensive knowledge of the brain activities that occur when I understand a proposition and assess its justification, this knowledge would not help one bit in my epistemological endeavors.

My conscious experiences and the brain activities on which those experiences causally depend are NOT the same thing. We cannot simply say that mental activities are physical brain activities which are somehow experienced from a "subjective" point of view -- for this leaves unanswered the crucial question, How can a purely physical activity "experience" anything in the first place?

Ayn Rand and other Aristotelian philosophers have correctly pointed out that the state of consciousness is an irreducible primary from an epistemological point of view. Moreover, conscious states are intentional; to be conscious is to be conscious of *something.* And this "something" is an object of perception, cognition, etc. -- not our physical brain activities. When I say "I see a Mockingbird" or "X is true," I am NOT describing my experience of neuronal firings in my brain, of which I may be totally unaware, and which, even if I were aware of them, would be irrelevant to the *meaning* of my experiences.

Bill wrote:

"Perhaps an analogy will help...Just as "the morning star" (visible in the eastern sky before sunrise) and "the evening star" (visible in the western sky at sunset) are not two different planets, but the same planet identified from two different perspectives, so the mind (identified introspectively) and the brain (identified extrospectively) are not two different organs, but the same organ identified from two different perspectives."

This analogy assumes far too much, for we must ask: How is it possible for anything to have "two different perspectives" in the first place? Certainly we don't attribute this ability to the planet Venus. We don't say that the planet Venus can view itself from "two different perspectives," because we don't attribute consciousness to a physical planet. We say that humans can (and have) viewed Venus from two different perspectives because we know that humans have a rational faculty and are able to interpret a phenomenon in different ways. But it doesn't explain *anything* to say that consciousness is simply brain activity viewed introspectively -- for how is this even possible in the first place, if we are dealing with a purely physical process? Where is the "it" that has this introspective ability?

If you answer that the "it" is the physical brain, then this merely reaffirms what few would deny, namely, that physical brain activities cause a state of consciousness. But this "mind" may have emergent properties and abilities that make it much different than the physical causes on which it depends. The cause of X is NOT the same thing as X; if it were, the cause and its effect would be indistinguishable.

Ghs

[anthony]

Fransisco: You may thrash about all you want, you have to live with one of several self-contradictions: that you desire freedom - in order that people are 'free' to live pre-determinedly. Uh? Say what?!

It is only by virtue of being in a mostly free nation that one can have the luxury to espouse such self-indulgent nonsense.

If political freedom and free will were the same, then you could abolish bipolar disorder with an act of legislation.

In any case, I don't know of any current law which forbids you from presenting scientific evidence for the existence of free will. So go right ahead. No uniformed agent of the government will stop you.

As you have indeed "been saying for days", man's mind is to you no better than a computer programed to play chess.

You have previously said that reasoning requires free will. Therefore, if you are correct, computers must have free will.

The real core of a skeptic is denial of consciousness, his own included - a "volitional" one, or not. Too much like "the soul" for any mystic-turned-agnostic, I guess. He sets up 'logic' against reason - since, rather than moving from mysticism to grasping independence of mind and primacy of existence, falls for another variant of mysticism, the collective authority of others.

The most fervent religionist is more rational than this; a moderate one like Prager, from evidently false mystical metaphysical premises came to a most accurate deduction regarding determinist-progressivism in society.

You're getting quite good at demolishing positions I've never taken. But there are too many instances of my acknowledgement of the existence of consciousness for the allegation of "denial of consciousness" not to be either an act of dishonesty or of reading incompetence on your part.

Since attention to what has actually been written does not appear to be your strong suit, it shouldn't be too hard for you to find or invent some magical "proof" of free will.

Maybe Prager knows a good argument.

North Korea- a perfect scenario of citizens who have obligingly self-sacrificed to a collectivist-determinist, totalitarian life and future. So, yes. Determinism exists. Look at your proof, and be happy.

I don't have to be any happier about it than I am about exposure to lead causing children to be inattentive, hyperactive and irritable.

Quite right: why am I arguing past you and "demolishing positions [you've] never taken"?

Tell you why, I am attempting to argue logically AND conceptually while you -proof in point of skepticism- have adhered to logic- at times, fallacious logic- all through. I look for the causes (e.g.skepticism)and consequences(individual self-sacrifice, political collectivism) of a particular concept. The one concept I've seen from you is 'determinism'(as much an anti-concept) which I think should be judged on its consequences in reality, not as a floating abstraction.

Here's another fallacy, a definitional one: "...if you are correct [on reason] then computers must have free will".

No, that is not 'reason' which in O'ism denotes conceptualization. But it explains your error in the identity of reason. Logic is a method of reason, not another name of it.

That "acknowledgment of the existence of consciousness" is pretty weak and unconvincing, if one ignores the evidence of one's senses and its wilful consequent, formation of concepts - to nevertheless still arrive at determinism as the definitive factor of man's nature.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Peter,

George really knows how to nail an argument.

Even better, he uses the academic jargon to do it when he needs to.

I'm not there, yet.

Michael

[deanwins]

Michael,

I can't say that I'm absolutely certain that our reality is fully deterministic. To me since I can explain my experience/observation/life with a vast unpredictable causal system, I then have no need for adding in non-causal events. To me, its just like the belief in God: one could imagine that we are living in a matrix like sub-reality that some God created... but without evidence why would we need to? But no matter whether there are non-causal events, I don't think it matters one way or another ethically or morally or whatever.

For there to be non-causal events, to me it just seems like nonsensical chaos. What would limit where or when the non-causal events would happen?

Re: natural selection: One way that natural selection has been "accelerated" is by sexual organisms using observation and in human's case reason to select sexual partners (rather than just attempting to reproduce with whatever you bump into). This has allowed beneficial new designs to be identified and spread through a species faster than ever before. So in that way, human's design has most surely significantly been improved since we split from apes by females many times selecting the richest most successful man (who is probably pretty smart) as their partner. And now, yes, we are developing understanding and technology to alter our own DNA using our intellect & science.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Dean,

Maybe you didn't read my argument about human faces?

You asked where noncausal events happen. They happen within the confines of forms and fields. A limit is not a cause.

Water, for example, runs downstream. But within the stream and going down, a molecule of water will go all over the place at random. I especially see a big problem with predictions and determining causes here, unless you want to claim the molecule itself is a causal agent. And that opens another can of worms.

Hell, quantum physics has random features, although some argue it doesn't. But I won't talk too much about that because I don't understand it well enough. I do understand enough to know that very learned scientists disagree with each other over this.

Michael

[anthony]

It becomes clearer (I think) once the false alternative of: all that-or-all this, is gotten out of the way. Take all the knowable influences on your life (and assume many more perhaps never to be known ones): genetic, nurtural, cultural etc etc - and you're left with the sense, OK, now what? (So what?)

What can I DO with them? Do I need to? Of what use are they? Which are necessary, which contingent? Which 'man-made', which metaphysically given? Which do I value and wish to keep? Which are valueless, which value-neutral? And so on. Mostly, what do I choose to define "me"?

It is critical to bring in, that as well as "a being of volitional consciousness", man is also of hierarchical consciousness--in his value system as well as his concept-formation. With free will a presupposed 'given' he can move ahead, not blithely dismissing or negating all the background factors in his development - but relegating them in an order of chosen importance and reality-hierarchy.

That's one more fault in hard determinism I think, the notion - for an individual - that "all facts are equal".

[Peter]

Tony wrote:

It is critical to bring in, that as well as "a being of volitional consciousness", man is also of hierarchical consciousness--in his value system as well as his concept-formation. With free will a presupposed 'given' he can move ahead, not blithely dismissing or negating all the background factors in his development - but relegating them in an order of chosen importance and reality-hierarchy. That's one more fault in hard determinism I think, the notion - for an individual - that "all facts are equal".

end quote

Pitted against DNA imperatives, cultural imperatives, and even what was learned from nurturing, volition trumps them all. Let me replay the script from Star Trek, Tony.

Welcome to my quarters Commander Troy. I never thought I would need the services of the Enterprise’s empath and counselor.

Well, here I am Peter. What’s bothering you?

Ensign Neil Goodell asked the question, “Does a tree falling in the forest make a sound if there is no living entity there to hear it?” “No,” he answered. “A falling tree generates atmospheric compression waves, but it requires a sensing mind to turn that energy into sound.”

Commander Troy, I have always assumed a falling tree makes a sound even when a human was not there to hear it.

No, Peter. I think Neil is correct. And please call me Deanna. In a similar fashion, if a light bulb flickers out and there is no human there to see it happen, photons cease to emit, but “light” would not be observed to cease unless a sensing mind was there to note it.

Uh, Deanna, if a sensing mind ceases to exist, its electrical brain patterns cease to exist. Its electrical field ceases to exist. Does a human or more specifically an empath like yourself need to be there to “feel” the death of a human?

If you fell asleep, Peter, and were near to me, I would notice your loss of consciousness. And when someone close to me dies I first feel their loss of consciousness then when there energy dissipates we Betazoids feel the loss of something we call the volitional apex. If someone dies alone in a non violent death, the person’s volitional apex only experiences euphoria and sleepiness. And that is a blessing.

Thank you Deanna. That helps me a lot.

Peter, might we have some tea? Earl Grey. Two sugars . . .