Eise

To conclude from 'self-preservation' to having a sentient self, is like asking what rains in 'it rains'. Say you find a raw diamond in a field, and put it on a scale, you find it weighs 20 grams. But then somebody reacts, and says you must clean it first, the diamond itself might weigh less, e.g. 18 grams. Does that mean that a diamond has a 'self'? You lay heavily on the spell of our daily language use.

I thought I illustrated just that with my 'story'. So let's extend it a little. This is the road: A-City--------------------------B1----------B2---------B3---------B4----------B5--------------------B-Town The B's are the bridges, all built 70 years ago according the same design. The problem: traffic and the weight of trucks, tractor etc have increased, and the bridges are not built for heavy weights. So to avoid problems two measures are taken: the road is only allowed for vehicles below 5 tons (5000kg), and sensors are built at the bridges that issue an alarm when the weight on the bridges is higher than this 5 tons. One day, the alarm goes of for B1, a while later at B2 etc. However, it is slower than one would expect from normal traffic. So the field engineer, living in B-Town drives to B5 and waits. And yes, after a while a slow moving tractor with a heavy loaded trailer crosses B5, and it is heavier than the 5 tons. The farmer gets a fine. And this happens a few times. On another day the same phenomenon happens: alarms go off from B1 to B2, etc, The field engineer goes to B5 again, he waits and waits, but no heavy vehicles pass the bridge. So he reports back to the monitoring authority that there must be an error in the alarming system. In fact, of course it was a traffic jam caused by a minor accident between B1 and A-City. After a while the car involved in the accident is put aside, and the traffic jam starts to dissolve. But the congestion still slowly moves backwards, about as slow as a tractor. And as the bridges are longer than 5 vehicles, and every vehicle happens to have a weight of one ton, the alarms go off. So what can we conclude: There is a clear physical effect: the alarms go off, the weight on the bridges really is more than 5 tons. There is an illusion of a heavy vehicle moving from B1 to B5. So the congestion of course is real, the illusion is that it is caused by one slow vehicle moving from B1 to B5, where in fact it is caused by traffic moving from B5 to B1. So the illusion is that the alarms are not caused by one thing (a heavy vehicle) that is moving from B1 to B5, but by a process that occurs due to a moving pattern of many vehicles together. Now the naive neurologist is like the field engineer who says that there must be an error in the monitoring system: consciousness does not have physical effects. The error is that he sees consciousness as a thing, something like the 'command room', a soul, or the mind, which he clearly sees, does not exist as a thing: there is no tractor. On the other side, the process is real, and has physical effects. The not so naive neurologist of course sees this. The 'thingy tractor' is an illusion. But consciousness, and its causal powers, are not. As a Buddhist (if you are...) you might recognise the illusion: it is the independent existence of the soul, or self, like the illusionary tractor. I hope I have shown that it is a causal agent (the alarms really go off), but yes, they are different categories: the tractor is a thing, the congestion is a process, built up from a moving pattern of things. Yes, you could see it like that. We are observers that happen to observe other people, not at the neurological level (unless you work as a neurologist) but at the global level of an acting person, acting because of his motivations and (presumed) knowledge. As a remark: I have nothing against neurologists doing their work. I have something against neurologists who think they are justified in making philosophical statements.

I noticed that there is some bug in the forum software. Look at this: You see? I just wrote the posting, but my last visited is May, 7th. I noticed this also in other profiles, so it is not an error just when I am looking at my own profile.

Yeah. And I once lost a posting, because I did not tick that checkbox. I was writing a posting, was interrupted, and only after more than an hour I wrote further. But when I pressed 'Submit Reply' I got the message 'You are not logged on' or something like that. If I remember correctly, when I I logged in again, my later additions were gone... Maybe it was even everything. So I think this would be the best way: use 'Remember me'', and have your browser delete all cookies when you close it. So the combination of Strange's advice, and that of Stringjunkie, is the ideal combination. It has one additional advantage: by having to type in your password once a day, you will remember it in the end. (OK, beecee logs in at least 10 times a day, don't you? ). Real cases I encountered at other fora: users whose email address (with which they opened their forum account) was infiltrated, and they had to open a new one. Then, a few months later, their computer broke, and they got a new one. So they have to login again, but because they always had 'Remember me' activated, they forgot their password, and their password could not be retrieved anymore, because you need your email address for it. So they had to open a new account.

Yes, because this 'cog in the machine' is itself neurological activity. But your metaphor is a bit meager. As I said some postings above, it is not a 'one step' emergence, in contrast with the backwards moving congestion in traffic jams. Just to extend the traffic jam example a little. Assume a road has a few old bridges, and because the bridges are old, they are monitored for the weight of the traffic. Now you can imagine what happens when there is much traffic: first there is a maximum weight on the last bridge, then on the one before the last etc. So if all the weight readings are monitored centrally, the operator seems to see something is moving backwards on the road. Now he sends a field engineer to investigate, but being an ex-neurologist, he looks at the cars only, and reports back that nothing is moving backwards. So what we have: a real physical phenomenon (unusual heavy weight moving backwards), that is not visible looking at only individual cars. So physical effects due to emergent phenomena can go together very well. Now imagine that we have not one abstraction level (from individual cars to congestions of cars), but many more (10? 100?) in the brain. Then of course everybody gets lost. So a 'cog in the machine'? Principally, yes, practically endless more subtle. And as soon as we are on the level where we can talk about reasons, decisions, and actions, we can simply define what free will is: decisions according my reasons, actions according my decisions.

That is not quite what I am saying. The way you write it leaves the door open to 'magic'. The 'antecedents' are physical, and 'vlaham!', the result is 'magical consciousness'. Consciousness is completely implemented in the brain, like software on a computer. Close again... This other 'space' is just a higher description level of what the brain does. Yes, but the ethical reasons are just another 'drive' (from the biological view, not the moral view of course) that is implemented in your brain. It is a question of 'which drive wins': the lust for meat, or your ethical concerns.

Just to add. Where I agree that Hossenfelder is wrong, the way this article argues why is really even worse: Bold by me.

So as soon you have a purpose, your actions to reach that purpose are not free anymore? I would say that if your are not too strongly attached to your purposes, so strong that it overrules all other purposes (OCD?), you have free will.

Not to mention the motivation of something else. Where do think free will resides on the bell curve? Do you even know your self what you are asking? "Where does 'free will' reside on the 'free-not free' Bell curve?" The only consistent, but meaningless, answer would be: "It resides at the free will end.' Try again. Or let it be... (speaking words of wisdom...).

Which bell curve?

I would explain it in the following way. Mass has 2 obvious properties: resistance against acceleration, and gravity. Both are proportional to the mass of the object (the feather and the hammer in this case): Resistance against acceleration is described by Newton's law: F = mhammer * a Gravity is expressed by F = G Mmoon * mhammer / distance2. So now rewrite number one as. a = F / mhammer. So you know what a = (G Mmoon * mhammer / distance2 ) / mhammer = G Mmoon / distance2 . As you see, the mass of the hammer plays no role anymore. Of course with the feather it is the same. So both have the same acceleration. For the curvature of the moon, it is also just the same for the feather and the hammer. Of course they both have their individual mass, and with that a very tiny gravity field. But it is negligible with the gravity of the moon.

I think the answer is in my previous posting. So yes, it is part of the clockwork, but it is the whole process of evaluating what to do next that is part of the clockwork. But even in the clockwork, you can see which actions are based on free will, namely those that are according your motivations, and those that are not, namely those that are according the motivations of somebody else, against your own motivations.

Well, I think this argument supposes that free will implies the impossibility of predictability. Something I pertinently do not agree with. QM only can disturb free will, in the sense that it introduces a random element in what I do. If there is a random element between what I want and what I do, then it reduces my capability to act according to my motivations, and so I am less free: sometimes I could do things I factually do not want, just from thin air (= HUP) Pre-ordained or not has nothing to do with it. The question if somebody acted from free will lies only in the relationship between his motivations and his actions. So also here you mixup free will with predictability. For the sake of argument let's take QM out: then we have a clockwork universe, and a clockwork brain. Then it is sure that if we would replay the universe, exactly the same would happen, so I would also choose for exactly the same action, simply because the environment is exactly the same, and my brain is exactly the same. So you would want the same and act the same, because what you want, and so your choices are free. I think it is important to see that choices, even in a strictly determined universe, are real. Say, you must catch a train that leaves in 20 minutes. If you walk, you will be late; a taxi would take 5 minutes but is expensive; a bus would take 10 minutes, and every 10 minutes a bus is coming. So walking is not really an option, because if you would walk, you would not catch your train. If you would take the taxi, you would have to pay $20. And if you would take the bus, you have to take the risk that you miss your train. These are the informations you have: modal sentences that are true, but do not describe what factually happens (yet). These are called contra-factual sentences, and they can be true or false, independently of they describe events that really happen in the universe, and also independent of the question if the universe is determined or not. (But the universe better be determined, otherwise you could not even be sure of your information about your choices...) Again a reason why we need a determined universe in order to be free. Now, of course your brain is determined also, so what your choice will be is determined too. But it is determined according the options you see, so you are really choosing. Yes, your choice is fixed, but not without your evaluating the real, available options. So your decision for one of the options (e.g. you take the taxi) determines your action (calling a taxi). That I would definitely call free will.

You said it is incoherent. I do not see where you argued that. Yes, it tells you a tiny little bit: that there is not a substance 'wetness' that miraculously is interacting with water molecules, and that makes them wet. OK, I know this would be a silly view. And as I said, but what you seem to miss, 'emergence' is not much of an explanation. So I agree with you on that point. But it means that the person who says something like that is excluding a class of explanations, namely that it needs some new ontological entity to explain wetness. With simple explanations, i,.e. the emergent property is only one abstraction level higher than the the components of what a system is buildup, it is easy to see, as my example of congestions in traffic jams that move backwards, where the cars themselves move forwards. Consciousness is a much more difficult case, with many levels between the smallest building blocks that we at least can understand, neurons, and the level we understand ourselves and others. So there you are right, emergence is not much of an explanation. But it is not totally meaningless to say. Yes, it tells you that the person who says this, thinks that we need no additional ontological entities or substance, and that an explanation in terms of neurons, should be possible. That means of course that, unless you believe in a soul or something, you also believe that consciousness is an emergent property of this huge neural system, called the brain. But that only means that some scientific explanation should be possible. But it is not the explanation itself.

Incoherent? Explain, I see nothing incoherent in it. It is the beginning of an answer. Somebody who declares that consciousness is emergent, is in fact saying he does not believe that we must use some independent ontological entity or substance to explain consciousness. What the word 'emergent' means is clear: that a system has properties that its parts do not have. So he declares that the brain processes somehow are the basis of consciousness, no soul or 'thinking substance' ('res cogitans' according to Descartes). But as long as one cannot explain the emergent properties from the workings of the system, I agree, it is not (yet) an explanation.

Yes and no. When we make a rational reconstruction of what we mean with 'free will' in daily and judicial use, we discover that it is something else as the neurologists mean, and this use does not contradict determinism. The daily and judicial use of 'free will' is not touched by this neurological 'discovery' at all. And no, I do not want to stop the discussion, so I do not earn a negative rep point for that. Ah, you do not have to believe it. There are 2 ways to see this: Many people think that we are determined, and therefore we have no free will. Compatibilism however shows that they can go together. So just for the sake of the argument we can assume that we are determined, and then show that in the way we use 'free will' in daily life is not touched by determinism at all. The stronger form of compatibilism: without sufficient determinism, free will would be impossible, i.e. we need determinism to be free. If one sees free will as 'being able to do what you want' then it would be impossible if there is not a more or less causal relationship between 'what we want' and 'what we do'. How would this be possible if e.g. my actions have nothing to do with my preferences, motivations, feelings, beliefs, knowledge etc. E.g. the more random the relationship between my will and my actions is, the less I can do what I want. And the latter is of course the reason why QM does not help in 'giving' us free will. Random events only disturb the relation between my will and my actions. That is the reason that I sometimes use the phrase 'sufficient determism'. I think the confusion lies in the idea that free will implies unpredictability. But that is simply wrong. Of course you can keep your motivations secret, but somebody who knows you well, might still be able to predict what you will do. And as was mentioned in another thread, there are experiments that show that under very special circumstances neurologists can predict what you will choose. Neurological networks have quite a big tolerance against local disfunctioning. And further there are estimates that even in the synapses quantum effects are averaged out, so we can treat the neurological system as a classical system, in which determinism holds.

Yes, the concept of 'free will' is a bit fuzzy. Therefore philosophers have given different concepts of it different names, to make them more precise. I think this is one of the tasks of philosophers to reconstruct the meaning of concepts, as they are used in daily life, science, or any subculture. Often, even if the words are the same ('free will') the concepts behind them are not. The concept of free will that you and I deny is libertarian free will: the idea that for a will to be free it cannot be caused by previous conditions. However, this is not the kind of free will we use in daily life: in daily life we use the idea that free will means, simply formulated, that we can do what we want. In judicial terms, for a defendant to be 'guilt-capable', he must have done his crime as a free acting person, which means that a few conditions should apply: the defendant can reflect his reasons for acting the defendant had the knowledge what the consequences of his crime would be, or at least he should have known the defendant was not coerced to his actions by somebody else the defendant had other options than the action he in fact did None of these conflicts with the fact that we are a determined system. Therefore a defendant cannot defend himself by saying he has no libertarian free will. Compatibilist free will, the kind of free will I am defending here, is enough, and that is what we normally really have. It is so to speak a condition to be treated as a full and responsible member of our society.

Could that work anyway? First neutrons are already built up of quarks. Secondly, I understood that the greater part of the mass of protons and neutrons is caused by the binding energy of the quarks, i.e. by the gluons. And gluons have the advantage that they are bosons, so they can all be at the same place. And if quarks would combine to mesons, they would become bosonic too. (Great that we are here in speculations... Ups! I have no math here...) Finding the library will not be difficult. But to get out, that might be a problem. And btw, now you mention Interstellar and a library: I realise only now that the 'library' in Interstellar might be derived from Jorge Luis Borges' library of Babel:

No, it is not. I fully accept the science (even a bit more: I assume for the ease of the argument that we are completely determined). The question is if the concept of free will as we use it daily, where we can distinguish between free and coerced actions, has anything to do with libertarian free will (which I agree with iNow, does not exist). Science cannot answer that question. Definitely not. Yep, but you introduced it... Still, many people say this: we are not in control of our behaviour because it is all (physically) determined.But that is a wrong assessment of what 'control' means. 'Control' means that a system strives for a certain output that is 'desired'. You are partially right with your critique on my thermostat example: so I extend it with the heater in the room. The system of heater and thermostat works so that it keeps the temperature in the room between certain limits. So in a true sense, heater and thermostat control the temperature in the room. Secondly: life is nothing but control. Organisms try to control their environment, by changing it, or by moving to another environment where circumstances are better than the present environment. But as in the heater/thermostat example, that does not mean that those systems are not working in a determined way. Same with us: we are incredible complicated 'control-systems'. But the fact that all the processes together on which this control is based are determined does not change the fact that these 'bags of water and proteins' have certain control. It is not a huge difference: what I argue for is that you implicitly seem to say that everything that has a cause cannot be in control, so I just moved the cause of the movement of the frog's leg 'one cause earlier'. I used your thought pattern (something cannot be in control when it is causally related to previous events) to show that it simply does not work: that a system is causally determined does not imply that control is impossible.

No, that does not work: in the example you cited, it is the lightning that creates a small current in the frog's leg, which on its turn causes (via a few other steps) that the leg moves. What you give is an example of causation, not control; just the way you analyzed my working of the thermostat.

Yep. Use italics or bold if you want, and see if this has the effect you want... Universal functions? What are they supposed to be? Does that even mean something? If so, explain in more detail.

I have a question here, maybe the answer is useful for Conjurer too. First, what I think I understand a little: the transition of electron degenerate matter to neutrons. Electrons and protons can combine to form neutrons. But what happens when a neutronstar is too heavy and becomes a black hole? Before the event horizon is bigger than the collapsing star, to what do neutrons combine? Wouldn't there be a transition phase before the complete collapse? What is happening in this transmission phase? Going from penta-quarks to 'septa-quarks' to 'nova-quarks' (nine-quarks) etc? And what I also do not understand: how were Oppenheimer & Co able to calculate (estimate) their limit, without a full understanding of the strong force (already in the thirties)? And obviously because I do not understand it: why can the strong force be repulsive?

OK, if you deny my examples of 'control': can you give an example of something being in control of something?

I Am Always Very Suspicious When I See That People Write Certain Words With Capitals. It is very often a sign that these people think some concepts are sacrilegious, like Universe, Laws of Nature, Religion, Science, ... Whatever. Why are you doing it? There are no 'governing laws'. There are regularities in nature, and the descriptions of these regularities are what we call 'laws of nature'. If laws of nature would govern what happens in the universe, the question arise how they do it. Some meta-laws of nature? That possibly need meta-meta-laws to understand how the meta-laws govern the laws of nature? No, the laws of nature are our understanding of nature. Full stop. You are entering Dangerous Terrain...

If you mean that I acknowledge that drug addiction impairs free will, I agree. However I think we differ in how we use this example. You (correct me if I am wrong) seem to use it to show that we are determined by 'low-level' chemical processes, and this dependency on chemical processes shows that we are not free. I on the other hand on one side agree that the basis of all our mental process lie in our brain processes, but on the other side state that this has nothing to do with the question if we are free or not. Our free will depends on the capability to anticipate possible futures dependent on the actions I could do next. If this capability is impaired, we are less free, and drugs can induce that. So I agree that libertarian free will does not exist, but on other grounds than you do. Simply said, I deny libertarian free will mainly on two grounds: that I assume that our brain processes are 'sufficiently determined', and that the concept of free will I am proposing needs determinism. Without determinism free will would be impossible. No, not of subcomponents. 'Validly'? No, no way. Those blockers and agents do not try to force their reasons upon me, they have no intentions. They just change our behaviour, unwillingly. They only show that our mental events have a physico-chemical basis. It is like denying that computers make calculations because in fact they just behave according physical laws. Many, maybe most of my inclinations are beyond my control. It is true, I am determined by my genes, accidental biological occurrences, upbringing, culture in which I grew up etc etc. But the question of my will being free refers to the capability to being able to act according to my inclinations, and is not obstructed in that by others. And just a silly question: does a thermostat control the temperature in a room? If not, can I then just do away with it? Does the fact that a thermostat is pretty simple device that can easily be understood, resp built, defy its function to control temperature? Does 'control' mean 'absolute control', even over itself? What does it mean, when the police reports that the accident was due to the driver losing control of his car?