Why Materialist Free Will Skepticism Is Invalid

[Laird]

Avocados are a category error.

[Laird]

I think I understand what you mean by the hard problem being a category error, malf, but I might be wrong. Here's an attempt at explaining what (I think) you mean, although it's framed using my own perspective on this whole "consciousness problem" thing, so it might not be how you'd put it. Anyhow, it gives you something to say "Yae or nae" to.

There are, no matter how we look at it, at least two existential categories. One of these is experience from a subjective perspective: "the redness of red", etc. Experience in this sense is ineffable. It is not a substance but rather the self's apprehension of substance. It is more of a verb than a noun: it is not so much "experience" as "experiencing".

The other is substantive, and is definitely a noun. Whether we are physicalists, idealists, or something in-between, there has to be something which is substantive in some sense, because even the monistic idealist acknowledges that there is a world beyond his/her immediate perception which is (1) differentiated and thus structured in some sense, and (2) dynamic and thus energetic in some sense, and the combination of (1) and (2) entail some sort of substantiveness, even if only at the level of "energy" (whatever that actually is).

Now, idealists say that this substantiveness is "consciousness", and physicalists say that this substantiveness is "matter". But in both cases, it is of a different existential category to (the ineffability of) subjective experience itself (or, rather, I might say, to subjective experiencing itself). In both cases (idealism and physicalism), there is - presumably - some correlation between the substantiveness and the subjective experienc(e/ing), although they cannot literally be the same thing.

And so, based on all of that, I gather that what you mean by saying that the hard problem is a category error is that it claims that it needs to (but cannot) be explained how this substantiveness - whatever it might be - gives rise to (the ineffability of) subjective experienc(e/ing), and that this is especially difficult on physicalist conceptions of this substantiveness, whereas any metaphysic is going to have this problem: any metaphysic has to accept a duality between (objective; a noun) substantiveness (whether we call that substantiveness "matter" or "mind" or "consciousness") and (the ineffability of) subjective experienc(e/ing) (more of a verb).

OK, but having said all of that (assuming it is even remotely like what you mean   ), I think you still might want to consider that "the physical" has a strong implication of "lack of consciousness", and thus that physicalism has a much harder time explaining how and why substantiveness and experiencing are correlated than does, say idealism, whose substantiveness has a strong implication of consciousness.

Anyhow, I've had a few glasses of wine, so take all of that for what it's worth!

The inability to explain a thing, in language that satisfies everyone, says nothing at all about the nature of the thing itself. This is where the ‘so called’ hard problem falls at the first hurdle. It trades on a category error.

So there's really no problem at all, then. Our conscious, thinking self, with all it's ambitions, joys, disappointments and sorrows just pops out of a lump of meat, just like that. And therefore materialism prevails.

Surely I must be misunderstanding you, Malf ?

Learn how procedural generation works.

How can you possibly claim that myriads of inter-reacting deterministic cause-effect chains can somehow produce the works of Shakespeare and all the other literature of the world? This would require that all this complex specified information was somehow 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 to make logical sense of this claim would be to suppose that our universe is just one of a myriad of other parallel deterministic universes whose elementary particle configuration differs randomly, universe to universe (the so-called multiverse). This notion has fatal problems, however.

Hmm, I do not really see a problem with that. Why shouldn't it be possible, that "myriads of inter-reacting deteministic cause-effect chains" lead to works of Shakespeare? Given certain laws and building stones I assume that a universe can be indefinitely complex. Maybe creativity is exactly that...a myriad of complex deterministic interactions that we cannot comprehend.

Are these the only two options? They seem like the same thing to me?

Regarding free will, yes, I think they are the same. But to be honest, I cannot think of any other notions beside these two that possibly could support the idea of a free will. There surely can be a mix of the two, but something entirely different...?

Hmm, I do not really see a problem with that. Why shouldn't it be possible, that "myriads of inter-reacting deteministic cause-effect chains" lead to works of Shakespeare? Given certain laws and building stones I assume that a universe can be indefinitely complex. Maybe creativity is exactly that...a myriad of complex deterministic interactions that we cannot comprehend.


Regarding free will, yes, I think they are the same. But to be honest, I cannot think of any other notions beside these two that possibly could support the idea of a free will. There surely can be a mix of the two, but something entirely different...?

A simple example to demonstrate the nature of complex specified information. Start with a standard deck of 52 playing cards. You examine it and find that it is perfectly ordered by suit and rank. But you are told by a reductionist materialist nonbeliever in consciousness and true free will that it has come to that ordered arrangement by pure chance and the deterministic falling of the cards due to the forces imparted on them by random forces following physical laws.

Most people wouldn't believe that just based on common sense and intuition, not having to laboriously calculate the astronomical odds against chance.

But let's do a rough calculation anyway. One arrangement of cards is just as likely as another and it turns out there are 8 x 10^^67 possible arrangements. That is the complexity part - the number of possible arrangements is huge and there is no physical law that forces the cards into any particular arrangement, certainly not the perfectly ordered arrangement. The observed perfect ordering of the card deck is the specification, defined as an independently given pattern. This specification is subjective, not a product of nature but instead it is a product of mind. Nothing in nature specifies the perfectly ordered arrangement, unless the materialist can show how the laws of physics specify the perfectly ordered card arrangement (which he can't).

The works of Shakespeare can be defined as being a large amount of complex specified information where the degree of complexity is even (incalculably) greater than that of the observed arrangement of the deck of cards. Which as explained can only come about through the action of creative mind, not the deterministic workings of the physical world following the laws of physics.

Hmm, I do not really see a problem with that. Why shouldn't it be possible, that "myriads of inter-reacting deteministic cause-effect chains" lead to works of Shakespeare? Given certain laws and building stones I assume that a universe can be indefinitely complex. Maybe creativity is exactly that...a myriad of complex deterministic interactions that we cannot comprehend.

Regarding free will, yes, I think they are the same. But to be honest, I cannot think of any other notions beside these two that possibly could support the idea of a free will. There surely can be a mix of the two, but something entirely different...?

Well I don't think either of those two (randomness or determinism) are real explanations of causation. They're just descriptions where we assign an expectation. For randomness we assign more than one outcome some set of probabilities that add up to 100%, and for determinism we just assign a single outcome an expectation of 100%.

But why some cause leads to some effect is just left as a mystery. Obviously the idea of "probabilistic laws" is an odd one, but there are also issues with the idea of deterministic laws -> Do Physical Laws Make Things Happen?

If, with so many scientists today, we construe laws as rules, we can put the matter this way: much more than rule-following is required of anything able to follow rules; conversely, no set of rules can by themselves explain the presence or functioning of that which is capable of following them.

It is, in other words, impossible to imagine matter that does not have some character of its own. To begin with, it must exist. But if it exists, it must do so in some particular manner, according to its own way of being. Even if we were to say, absurdly, that its only character is to obey external laws, this "law of obedience" itself could not be just another one of the external laws being obeyed. Something will be "going on" that could not be understood as obedience to law, and this something would be an essential expression of what matter was. To apprehend the world we would need to understand this expressive character in its own right, and we could never gain such an understanding solely through a consideration of external laws.

So we can hardly find coherence in the rather dualistic notion that physical laws reside, ghost-like, in some detached, abstract realm from which they impinge upon matter. But if, contrary to our initial assumption, we take laws to be in one way or another bound up with the world's substance — if we take them to be at least in part an expression of this substance — then the difficulty in the conventional view of law becomes even more intense. Surely it makes no sense to say that the world's material phenomena are the result — the wholly explained result — of matter obeying laws which it is itself busy expressing. In whatever manner we prefer to understand the material expression of the laws, this expression cannot be a matter of obedience to the laws being expressed! If whatever is there as the substance of the world at least in part determines the laws, then the laws cannot be said to determine what is there.

A simple example to demonstrate the nature of complex specified information. Start with a standard deck of 52 playing cards. You examine it and find that it is perfectly ordered by suit and rank. But you are told by a reductionist materialist nonbeliever in consciousness and true free will that it has come to that ordered arrangement by pure chance and the deterministic falling of the cards due to the forces imparted on them by random forces following physical laws.

Most people wouldn't believe that just based on common sense and intuition, not having to laboriously calculate the astronomical odds against chance.

I sometimes suspect this is why pseudo-skepticism seems to have had a deep antagonism with quantum-biological theories of mind.

If the materialist explanation requires all predictable action/decision sequences to stem from quantum randomness, most people would just think it far more likely that a transcendent mind was utilizing the brain as its vehicle.