Free will re-redux

Why wasn't it my brain cells? Why can't determinism and randomness give rise to the feeling of fondness?

~~ Paul

Can you explain how it does ?

I think that there's a lot of truth to that too nbtruthman, but I was just coming at it from a non psi perspective. If we factor in research from there there's a lot of stuff that suggests what might be a kind of classical free will, with respect to one's environment as well. 

But, coming at it from a position equal to Paul's, compatibilism is a solid choice, with room for potential discoveries saying that we might actually have more free will than we originally thought or less.

Just for the record, the Hard Problem of consciousness doesn't itself have much to do with psi, esp or the afterlife. It is just a formulation that shows the untenability of materialist neuroscience from philosophy and logic. Evidence from psi, esp , the afterlife and other psychical phenomena are very compatible with the implications of the Hard Problem, however, in that if Mind is not material these paranormal phenomena become possible as opposed to being impossible under materialist neuroscience. For that matter, free will is impossible under materialist neuroscience, since materialism assumes strict determinism at least on the macro level.

The free will issue hinges on this because the will (or agency or intentionality) and therefore also free will are also essential attributes or components of consciousness, and as such are probably unknowable in terms of human analytical thinking - that is, there will probably never be an answer to the question of how (free) will can be neither deterministic or random, or some combination of the two. But in my opinion the reality of the conscious will and apparent free will are just as self-evident as the existence of consciousness itself - we directly experience them and like the other attributes of consciousness they are in an entirely different existential realm than matter and energy.

I don't find free will to be self-evident at all. I do not directly experience making a free decision. Heck, I don't even experience making simple decisions that we might agree are deterministic. The underlying operation of the brain/whatever-else are entirely opaque.

~~ Paul

Can you explain how it does ?

No, but we've been through this before. You cannot explain how it arises from any substrate, materialistic or otherwise. I'm sure we agree that a non-materialist paradigm doesn't get any sort of free pass either. It's all promissory.

Heck, as I so eloquently belabor, you can't even explain how a libertarian free decision is made.

~~ Paul

Just for the record, the Hard Problem of consciousness doesn't itself have much to do with psi, esp or the afterlife. It is just a formulation that shows the untenability of materialist neuroscience from philosophy and logic. Evidence from psi, esp , the afterlife and other psychical phenomena are very compatible with the implications of the Hard Problem, however, in that if Mind is not material these paranormal phenomena become possible as opposed to being impossible under materialist neuroscience. For that matter, free will is impossible under materialist neuroscience, since materialism assumes strict determinism at least on the macro level.

I'm not sure why the Hard Problem is restricted to a materialist neuroscience.

~~ Paul

I have always wondered about artistic, literary, musical etc. creativity and free will. It seems to me that such creativity can’t be either deterministic or random. It’s in that gray area, in the same mysterious category as free will, where true free will is neither deterministic or random. The common factor is that the essential ingredient of both free will and artistic creativity is consciousness, which is totally mysterious (the “Hard Problem”), and evidently in an entirely different and higher category of existence than determinism and randomness.

An example. We know the works of Shakespeare are the product of conscious intelligence involving creativity and a very great number of individual intelligent choices, and certainly are not the result of a random process. Materialism would seem to hold that their origin then must be the only other option, deterministic causal chains. But how can it possibly be claimed that myriads of inter-reacting deterministic cause-effect chains can somehow have produced the works of Shakespeare (and all the other literature of the world)? This would require that all this unique highly complex specified information was somehow magically predetermined - creatively incorporated in the fabric of space-time and matter and energy at the time of the Big Bang.

Of course this just pushes the free will and creativity problem back into some sort of transcendental stage. The only way for the materialist determinists to make sense of this would be to suppose that our universe is just one of an inconceivably large number of other parallel deterministic universes whose elementary particle configuration differs randomly, universe to universe (the so-called multiverse). This multiverse notion has fatal problems, however.

We know for certain that such literary creativity exists (since we can directly observe and enjoy its products) and that it is neither the result of a random process or of a deterministic causal chain, but is the product of conscious intelligence. Free will appears to be very similar in that we experience it and therefore it exists in our consciousness (in fact it is an integral aspect of consciousness), but it isn’t either deterministic or random. Like creativity in the arts, free will exists and is in the same unknown gray area somewhere between deterministic and random that is occupied by consciousness.

We know for certain that such literary creativity exists (since we can directly observe and enjoy its products) and that it is neither the result of a random process or of a deterministic causal chain, but is the product of conscious intelligence. Free will appears to be very similar in that we experience it and therefore it exists in our consciousness (in fact it is an integral aspect of consciousness), but it isn’t either deterministic or random. Like creativity in the arts, free will exists and is in the same unknown gray area somewhere between deterministic and random that is occupied by consciousness.

I'm not sure why you are so convinced that creativity just can't be the result of determinism and randomness. Can you explain what it is about creativity that disallows this?

~~ Paul

No, but we've been through this before. You cannot explain how it arises from any substrate, materialistic or otherwise. I'm sure we agree that a non-materialist paradigm doesn't get any sort of free pass either. It's all promissory.

Heck, as I so eloquently belabor, you can't even explain how a libertarian free decision is made.

~~ Paul

The complexities of trying argue this (point) philosophically, make it a waste of time and effort. Better to look for some evidence of thoughts (decision making or not) existing when we know that the brain (which your world view asserts is always responsible for such), couldn't be functioning. That's all we have to do. 

I've seen hundreds of reliable reports of this. When you look in the direction of those reports (and feel a bit queasy) how is it 
that you fail to see them for what they are ? Is it because they make you queasy ?

I'm not sure why you are so convinced that creativity just can't be the result of determinism and randomness. Can you explain what it is about creativity that disallows this?

~~ Paul

We know from observation and experience that large amounts of new, unique complex specified information (for instance the works of Shakespeare) is only the product of conscious creative intelligence. Something new, highly organized and intricately complex came into the world. Please explain how a mixture of purely deterministic and random processes can do this - essentially something from nothing. The only example of this touted in science is Darwinism, but that is in the field of biology and anyway is totally bankrupt.

Friends,

I'm still waiting for that elusive explanation of how I make a libertarian free decision.

Glad you chose to visit the forum again Paul!

But I thought we were waiting for you to explain how non-free decisions are made.