AIkonoklazt

Let's just go with what you said regarding the physical process. Said physical process isn't going to change simply because of how one conceive it. Okay. We've eliminated information processing from consideration in the question of freewill. That's at least one thing down.

The other user tried to counter my point of color being subjective. Thanks for supporting my point I guess?

It's not even about confirming or refuting what a person sees. It's about what a person sees. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dress Again, let's look at the definition. Is there an element in you that "that feels, perceives, thinks, wills, and especially reasons"? Well, no matter how you conceive a mind, it's going to operate as it does no matter how you conceive it.

Would it hurt you to talk like a normal adult instead of constantly shooting barbs? Without referents, there couldn't be any thoughts since no thoughts are without content. Therefore, without referent there couldn't be any freewill to speak of either. Your mind's operation is basically independent of your conception of it. I don't have to show you a picture of my mind, nor you show me yours. Without a mind, neither of us would be able to make sense of any of these words.

Think about it. If you can't have thoughts about anything at all, where does that leave freewill? Specifically, freewill regarding what? Also, you're conflating the concept of a mind with the reality of one.

I'm talking about what the definition of a mind is. Let's put it this way- A referent is actually a part of the mind. There isn't such a thing such as "yellow" in the world "out there." Color is all in your head. If you need an explanation, see this: https://www.extremetech.com/archive/49028-color-is-subjective

The definition of a mind establishes that it "feels, perceives, thinks, wills, and especially reasons," none of which would be possible without a referent. As I've pointed out before, there aren't any feelings, perceptions, thoughts, nor reasons without referents.

I said a computer doesn't deal with referents. Something that doesn't deal with referents isn't a mind at all (see definition- it "feels, perceives, thinks, wills, and especially reasons")

It's not regarding a mind's prerequisite but what a mind does via its definition. What is a thought without a referent?

How? Explain. Nope. It will settles on unintended adjacency all the same.

I'm using these terms: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/mind https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/referent Referents are what feelings, perceptions, and thoughts actually refer to. You are welcome to dispute this via argumentation.

I was saying that your stance of "physical cause the mental and that's that" is indeed epiphenominalism. I don't get what you said regarding the "baggage" of epiphenominalism, since the position is simply that of "physical causing the mental and that's it." I accept my theoretical nothingburger, and I don't see why you can't also just accept what your position directly entails. Okay, FINALLY something I can definitively talk about. Technological parallels of the mind have always failed and will continue to fail: First hydraulics, then telephones, then electrical fields, and now computers and "neural networks" that aren't remotely "neural." Information processing itself is a evidently a bad analogy of what the brain does: https://aeon.co/essays/your-brain-does-not-process-information-and-it-is-not-a-computer From the point of view of computer science and engineering, machines don't deal with referents at all, and thus the mind isn't a machine and a machine could never be a mind. The following is an illustration of what an algorithm is and how one operates: Machines don't and can't deal with referents while the mind does, which explains perfectly "bad" but expected machine behaviors such as vulnerability of deep "learning" networks to adversarial attacks which place pixels invisible to the naked eye into images to completely scramble identification (e.g. Have a machine label a panda as a gibbon): ...as well as so-called "hallucinations" of LLMs when all they do is similarly find the nearest zone in the mathematical landscape (read carefully to see what went "wrong" in this example): Contrary to what some companies and experts may try to tell people, these categories of "errors" are fundamentally unfixable because according to the programming of the algorithms these are NOT ERRORS; They are the results of how the deep "learning" works. (How "machine learning" isn't actual learning is yet another topic)

I believe there are ultimately multiple things, and not just two, that make up the universe. I don't think dualism cut it; Why call things "non-physical" instead of "non-mental" and have things only in two baskets? My intuition points to pluralism, but of course I can't demonstrate such a thing, much less show what "interactions" are between those things. It's like asking an astrophysicist to come up with as well as demonstrate some kind of metaphysical theory, like "show me why and how white holes are the results of collisions between higher dimensions" (forgot where that theory was from and who proposed it, maybe it was Tegmark); Astrophysicists who cough up theories like those are rightly accused of doing metaphysics because well, they are. I'm not going to theorize. I can't demonstrate any of it even if I do anyhow. It'd be epistemically equivalent to, you know, "demonstrating" exactly "what it is like" for me to experience anything to anyone else. Not possible. @iNow There you go. I can't "lay out pluralism."

I already gave you my answer last time. Now it's my turn to question your reading ability. Meanwhile, I'll just take your refusal to answer as an admission that you are indeed pushing epiphenmonialism. After all, what other designation fits "if not physical processes (that "biochemical" term can be omitted; it's just extra blurb) then there couldn't be anything else" talk that you've been giving? Exactly nothing. @Eise Sorry the rest of you have to bear witness with the tit-for-tat but he and a whole bunch of people weren't too "polite" with me to begin with on some other random forum thread somewhere. When I'm confronted with open disdain I send it back. @Anirudh Dabas someone else asked me and I said I don't know. This self-quote is for reference's sake (as in "I didn't question dodge a question I have zero answer to"): Of course, just because I don't know what X is doesn't mean there couldn't be an X. It'd be a fallacy of paucity in imagination. @Anirudh Dabas I made some comments about this 5 or 6 pages back. Took me some time to find it again:

What do you mean, "our" actions? What is this "our"? It's just a bunch of chemical reactions. Chemical reactions within the human body have an impact on the world around the bodies There aren't any "decisions" unless you're talking about said chemical reactions What do you mean "driven by"? What's driving what? Those are all just chemical reactions Rest of the paragraph just extraneous blub Uh, no, just chemical reactions in the bodies. C'mon, just admit you're pushing epiphenominalism and call it a day. Oh, and by the way, Eise said this earlier: So how about you ask him whether he took that off of a sticker instead? Hawkings really should have stuck to astrophysics. His silly comments about apocalyptic AI really stained his rep.

Without consciousness, there couldn't be free will.

It is the subjective phenomenon experienced from the first person/animal POV. It would be referring to phenomenal consciousness: Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Consciousness” (2021), https://iep.utm.edu/consciou/ I have no idea. I'm not sure what to make of Penrose-esq theories, either. I'm far more interested in what consciousness does or does not entail, rather than theorizing. It may be something unreachable. I would liken it to that old Nova episode illustration where a 2D stick figure is suddenly confronted with a 3D world.

Then what you said regarding chemistry occurring before consciousness wasn't a meaningful statement. What is the relation between chemistry and consciousness then?

Yep, one-way cause. That's what I'm seeing the entire conversation sliding to.

Nope. You mentioned chemistry occurring before consciousness. What kind of a sequence is that, then? Causal or not, pick one.

...then causality is a topic. You said yourself that chemistry "occurs prior to conscious awareness." If that sequence of events isn't causal, then it "wasn't a factor..."

Okay. Let's start over. What are you advocating, and why doesn't causality factor into it?

What is the support for determinism when causality isn't even involved?

You've never given a justification for the exclusion of time symmetry, and since the thread is one where causality is a topic, I'm seeing the refusal as handwaving. Then what in the world is it? I've stated before that's the result of your conceptual scheme- Epiphenomenalism.

you quote, I quote, everyone can quote because it's one big rehash p.s. If you look at the example given to sense 5a of the definition, it's still referring to the patterning of a creative element