(2020-11-15, 04:06 PM)Paul C. Anagnostopoulos Wrote: As I have said countless times, you may provide an explanation in any terms you like. If I don't understand a term, I will say so. If you're going to stick with this excuse in spite of my saying that I am not limiting the explanation, then you're just stonewalling.
~~ Paul
Hmmmmm...I don't think anyone is deliberately stonewalling, rather it isn't clear to us what you want. Repeating myself but hey this conversation has been replicated at least 4 times [between here and Skeptiko] with no one reaching agreement so
->You had given the example of explaining how a computer works, but that doesn't make sense as a proper level of explanation because a computer is assembled from known, and at least stochastically repeatable for quantum computers, cause-effect relations. Free will is the making of new cause-effect relations, with the conscious agent selecting the effects for incoming causes.
You had mentioned following a recipe or using some game of chance, but to actually apply any of that to a real life decision is to just decide which of the many if not infinite ways of placing the decision in the hands of some "algorithm" which may or may not randomized elements. The result then is really just the aftermath of the decision [to pass off that original decision in question to whatever result comes out].
The question of a conscious agent selecting one among myriad possibilities [or more specifically the effect of some incoming cause that evokes a decision to be made] would be more akin to superposition than any of those process types.
'Historically, we may regard materialism as a system of dogma set up to combat orthodox dogma...Accordingly we find that, as ancient orthodoxies disintegrate, materialism more and more gives way to scepticism.'
- Bertrand Russell
(This post was last modified: 2020-11-15, 06:56 PM by Sciborg_S_Patel.)
- Bertrand Russell