Please tell me we have free will

[cladking]

5 hours ago, zapatos said:

The first item that came up in my Google search.

https://psychology.uiowa.edu/sites/psychology.uiowa.edu/files/groups/wasserman/files/apaBaboonAbs.pdf

And the second...

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/many-animals-can-think-abstractly/

"Vonk presented the apes with a touch-screen computer and got them to tap an image of an animal—for instance, a snake—on the screen. Then she showed each ape two side-by-side animal pictures: one from the same category as the animal in the original image and one from another—for example, images of a different reptile and a bird. When they correctly matched animal pairs, they received a treat such as nuts or dried fruit."

What these animals are doing isn't abstraction.   There's no evidence (other than observations such as these) that any animal has words which mean "thought", "belief", abstraction, taxonomies, or reductionistic words.   An animal can certainly see similarities between different types of things without the ability to form abstraction.  A cat that comes when it's can of food is opened is responding to the various clues it's about to be fed and not to the concept that can opener makes food or allows it to be fed.  It simply knows it means food as surely as a frog that senses but can't see a fly nearby knows that it's about to snack.   Animals are conscious but don't know abstraction.  

The ape doesn't have taxonomic words.   It can't tell a reptile from a mammal but many animals are going to know what is a threat and what is not.  Most small mammals and birds are well acquainted with the shape of raptors and will sound an alarm when one is nearby.  But, again, few animal know a warm blooded animal from a cold blooded one unless it's important to them or from experience.   

A dog understands pointing but not because it understands abstraction but because it knows the act represents identifying an object at a distance.  Just as a bee points at a food source in a dance that represents the magnitude, distance, and direction of the food.  We, humans, are bound up in abstraction but there's no evidence this applies to animals.   

And before someone talks about love etc, yes, animals have emotions but just like human emotions they arise from the brain and are not abstractions,.  We experience them as abstractions because this is the way our brains work now days.   

6 hours ago, dimreepr said:

I get it, you'd rather be a slug; me too for most of my life. It can be hard to be a human, all those thoughts flying around and nothing to connect them; other than guilt (was I being stupid to trust) and vengeance (I can only be happy, when I get them back).

While a slug just eats, shits and avoids salt.

You are assuming a slug lacks free will and consciousness.  I believe this assumption is obviously false.   Just because it doesn't "think" doesn't mean it isn't alive and have its own "concerns" and choices.   

[Strange]

11 minutes ago, cladking said:

 It can't tell a reptile from a mammal but many animals are going to know what is a threat and what is not.

Yet more incoherent claims. So it can't tell a reptile from a mammal, but it can tell a threat from a non-threat. Can it tell feathers from fur, or only Rocky Road from Vanilla?

12 minutes ago, cladking said:

You are assuming a slug lacks free will and consciousness.  I believe this assumption is obviously false. 

Your beliefs are irrelevant. No one cares what you believe (you have explained how profoundly idiotic your beliefs are lots of times). 

[Alex Caledin]

Life is Nature's favorite game, physics used to organize it.

 

(awwww sorry seems a wrong thread to post it)

Edited April 14, 2020 by Alex Caledin

[Sekhon Notary Public]

It depends on your definition of free will. A fully-determined world would seem to negate the possibility of free will, but I don't believe that is the case. We are influenced by our environment and genetics, yes, but I believe that we still have some form of choice in a deterministic reality -- it's just not up to us which choices are made.