“The possibility of experiencing free will leads to the knowledge of our free will, therefore free will is impossible, because if we can know about something then it must not be possible.”
What if God does know about free will?
Did I wrote that, it seems consistent with what I wrote recently, apparently my English improved since then!
You mean God knows the result of our action in infinite possible situations?
You can’t seriously have meant to imply that if we know about something then it must not exist.
God doesn’t know our actions before they happen. That’s why he isn’t the cause of those actions.
That is the problem my friend, how God could create something that it doesn’t know how it functions!?
That is describing the wetness as a property of the water molecules. And it cannot be reduced to the properties of oxygen and hydrogen atoms by themselves. Heavy water or deuterium oxide is also composed of oxygen and hydrogen atoms, and its properties are quite different from “regular” water. The same old water molecules have different properties based upon their temperature, too.
“Commonly held”, my little “donkey”. “Thinking” is information processing. Animals also “think”, though not necessarily in an abstract manner, but many of them can even learn. Observe the rats in a maze. Computers also exhibit the same property, there are evolving, learning algorithms. Just ponder Watson, the computer, which could beat the smartest, best Jeopardy champions. To answer those questions needed a kind of thinking that we call generalizing, grasping the “meaning” of the questions. If that is not “thinking”, I don’t know what is. Chess programs running on simple PC can beat the living daylight of the world’s chess-champion. You may object that these processes are all “brute-force”, that they “only” emulate the “actual” thinking of humans, but that would be a weak argument. The method of how one reaches a correct answer is not relevant. You may know the answer from the “top of your head”, or you may look it up in a reference book.
They are “problematic” in the actual details, but not conceptually.
I hope that reading what I wrote above will show you that this is incorrect. If you still don’t see it, grab a piece of graphite and a piece of diamond, and “use” them. Can you cut a piece of wood with graphite? Can you write on a piece of paper with a diamond?
That is describing the wetness as a property of the water molecules. And it cannot be reduced to the properties of oxygen and hydrogen atoms by themselves. Heavy water or deuterium oxide is also composed of oxygen and hydrogen atoms, and its properties are quite different from “regular” water. The same old water molecules have different properties based upon their temperature, too.
“Commonly held”, my little “donkey”. “Thinking” is information processing. Animals also “think”, though not necessarily in an abstract manner, but many of them can even learn. Observe the rats in a maze. Observe higher apes, “who” can learn sign language, and can communicate with humans, exhibiting a certain level of consciousness. Computers also exhibit the same property, there are evolving, learning algorithms. Just ponder Watson, the computer, which could beat the smartest, best Jeopardy champions. To answer those questions needed a kind of thinking that we call generalizing, grasping the “meaning” of the questions. If that is not “thinking”, I don’t know what is. Chess programs running on simple PC can beat the living daylight of the world’s chess-champion. You may object that these processes are all “brute-force”, that they “only” emulate the “actual” thinking of humans, but that would be a weak argument. The method of how one reaches a correct answer is not relevant. You may know the answer from the “top of your head”, or you may look it up in a reference book.
They are “problematic” in the actual details, but not conceptually.
I hope that reading what I wrote above will show you that this is incorrect. If you still don’t see it, grab a piece of graphite and a piece of diamond, and “use” them. Can you cut a piece of wood with graphite? Can you write on a piece of paper with a diamond?
It is the same as our “imagination”. In our thoughts we create new, virtual worlds. Some talented people can put those worlds onto paper, and eventually we can read them, internalize them, imagine them. Some people even create elaborate social networks based upon them. Ever heard of the “Baker Street Irregulars”? Or those fans of Star Trek, who created the language of the Klingons? Actual people in the actual world “playing out” the imaginary stories created by the authors.
Except all of this is not getting at the point that I am making. I have not denied that oxygen and hydrogen need a particular arrangement to get water; I have insisted it. The fact that graphite and diamond have different properties is irrelevant; I’m not saying that materialists are committed to identifying the properties of everything with the properties of their constituents, but that the properties can be explained by the properties of constituents. And that is still true whether we refer to diamond or graphite; diamond’s properties can be explained by the properties of carbon (given a certain arrangement) and graphite’s properties can be explained by the properties of carbon (given a certain arrangement). It’s not avoiding reductionism to say that they are both composed of carbon.
You have explained this “theoretical” case several times. But it doesn’t line up with your examples. None of the examples you’ve given - water, heavy water, carbon, uranium, the brain, computers - are cases where “new, emergent properties…cannot be reduced to the lower level,” unless you construe “be reduced to” as “be identified with,” which is, frankly, not what the term means. If that were all the term meant, no one would have ever used the term, because it would be nonsense. To say water and heavy water are different does not refute reductionism, because each of their properties are still accounted for in terms of the properties of their constituents (they do not even have the same constituents, since heavy water is composed of a different isotope of hydrogen). Yet you assure us that there are “zillions” of examples, the brain being just the next frontier.
I think this is where your argument falls apart. The method is absolutely essential. I will borrow one of Edward Feser’s thought experiments: I heat up a bowl of alphabet soup and set it outside on a windy day. I then vocalize the question “How was your day?” and the wind happens to blow a few characters in the alphabet soup into the arrangement “G-O-O-D.” But the soup clearly cannot be said to be “thinking,” even though its output appears informational to us.
The problem is that your argument has essentially become science of the gaps. As I’ve claimed (supported by all of your examples - water, uranium, etc.), a materialistic theory of mind still has to be explained by its constituents, even if the resultant properties are not the same as (ie. identified with) the properties of the constituent. Water could not be water if hydrogen and oxygen had the same electronegativities; the properties of the constituents are indispensable to the essence of water, even if water has its own emergent properties. This means there very well could be limits to what can emerge from a physical system in principle (ie. conceptually).
I hope it’s clear why this is not relevant to the criticism I made. Reductionism does not mean that everything composed of carbon is the same; pointing out that diamond and graphite have different qualities does not show that materialism avoids reductionism.
Are they the same as our imagination? I consciously experience what I imagine. I know that it is imagined, generally, but it is an experience which is represented to me. On what basis do you know that the computer produces a virtual world akin to our imagination? That would require that the virtual world is represented to the computer in some way at least analogous to the way that my imagination is represented to me.
I want to stress that this is not what is at issue. Our interaction with the virtual worlds created by a computer is still dependent on a). our attribution of meaning to the indeterminate images and other sensations produced by the computer, and b). our conscious experience of those things.
I don’t think this evades my main thrust in this topic. “Whatever happens in our dreams [and, ostensibly, our imaginations] is just the random firings of the neurons, and the firings themselves are subject to the laws of physics, but the dreams they represent have nothing to do with physical reality.” This is the point I have been making. It doesn’t matter if conceptually laws of physics seem to get violated, because when the firings of neurons are subject to the laws of physics and are what produce the concepts (even if the concepts are somehow “above” or “supervening upon” the brain), then it is still the firings of neurons which lead to subsequent firings of neurons (ie. it is not the conceptual content associated with the firings of neurons that leads to subsequent firings of neurons). And this is precisely why materialism and free will are compatible; the conceptual content (your imagination, the “virtual world” that can circumvent the laws of physics) is not what effects physical changes, and so is not what determines efferent neural activity.
In other words your use of “reductionism” is different. The “certain arrangement” is not part of the atoms, which are the building blocks of the molecules. And the atoms are not the final “frontier” either. The atoms are composed of protons, electrons and neutrons, which all have certain properties, and the properties of the different atoms cannot be reduced to the properties of the “sub-atomic particles”. Not to mention that according to the latest theories, the sub-atomic particles are also “composed” of even smaller parts, namely quarks.
This thought experiment is very bad, but then again Feser is not the sharpest knife on the block. Try to ask the same question again, and see what happens. If the “breeze” will select the letters: “Buddy, just asked me, can’t you remember?” – then you would have to concede that there is something very strange going on. But the Turing test does not stop here. It states that: “if during a sufficiently long conversation you cannot decide whether the other partner is a human of not, then one must assume that he/she/it can think”. Of course this is just an example of the “duck principle”, or using Forrest Gump’s observation: “stupid as stupid does”. Someone, or something “thinks” if it looks like “thinking”.
What definition of “thinking” do you use? Do the higher apes “think”, when they exhibit a behavior, which is as “conscious” as a small child’s behavior? Actually their intelligence is higher than that of a new-born human. The apes can learn, they can recall their memories, they can conduct a conversation (in sign language). Of course they do not have a “rational soul” (whatever that might be). Watson is better than humans at playing Jeopardy. Chess programs can beat humans. There are medical diagnostic programs, which are better than doctors. As of now there is no “ghost in the machine”, that is true. But the whole computer science is barely a few dozen years old.
For the last hundreds and thousands of years, the events that were once attributed to God have been steadily shrinking. Right now it seems that the final frontier that is not supposed to be answered by a physicalist approach is the brain / mind dichotomy. All the rest has gone the way of the “luminiferous ether”. We have an excellent track record and therefore a justified expectation that this particular problem will be solved.
I already explained that in a cellular structure there is no separate hardware / software.
But the sense of “reductionism” that I’m using makes sense, while yours (a property can’t be reduced if it is not shared with the constituents) does not. Do you really think that when people - scientists - calls themselves reductionists, they are stating that they believe that all things made of carbon are the same? Of course not - they are stating that they believe that the properties of diamond and graphite, which are both made of carbon, can be explained by the structure of carbon. Yes, diamond and graphite have different properties because of their structural differences, but they can only have the properties they have because of the properties of carbon.
The thought experiment is not challenging the Turing test, which has its own problems (ie. that humans can fail it, that thinking need not be verbally expressed).
I am not really committed to a non-material explanation of consciousness - although a material explanation seems problematic to me (see response to next quote block). I would regard abstract thought as the paradigm for non-reducible, immaterial thinking, ie. the abstract function F + F = 2F cannot in principle be determined by any physical process, owing to the fact that physical processes (like the outputs of a calculator or computer) are indeterminate and only “mean” anything because we assign meaning to them (for example, when Watson produces a response in English, it is physically just a set of symbols that only mean anything relative to a conscious language interpreter).
Actaully, modern science has historically defined itself by the the stipulation that qualitative, phenomenal properties like color and taste are mind-dependent (ie. Locke’s “secondary properties”); they are just the way that our mind represents light of certain wavelengths and certain tastants and odorants that latch onto specific receptors on our tongues and nasal pathways. So the mind is not just the next frontier to conquer; its explanation actually requires an explanation of all of the things that modern science attributed to it (back when the front runners of modern science were Cartesian dualists) to explain. One can say that red light is defined as electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength of around 700 nanometers, but once you want to explain the mind, that is insufficient; one has to explain the phenomenon of seeing red, which is itself neither electromagnetic radiation of 700 nanometers nor a particular sequence of neural firings. To say that the experience “emerges” in a way we don’t understand is just question begging, not “justified expectation.”
But the idea that the virtual world is actually a world that has another law of physics - or that what we imagine has another set of laws of physics - requires that the software is separate. Your argument oddly requires a reification of these virtual worlds - in the name of irreducible emergence - but then a denial that what has emerged is really different from the “hardware.”
If Feser is not “the sharpest knife,” then, judging by this paragraph, he is clearly not the dullest either.
He does know how we function, he just know what we will do.
This leads to determinism hence free will turns into a delusion.
This is the kind of “reductionism” what materialists propose. In the materialist view there is no need to introduce some nebulous “soul” of “animating principle”, because the emergent property of “life” can be “reduced” to the matter AND the structure of the matter. But that is NOT what you proposed in your OP. You explicitly asserted that our “free will” cannot be explained on materialistic grounds, because the materialistic concept of the mind can ultimately be reduced to physical processes and therefore it is either deterministic or random. As such you expressed the kind of reductionism which NOW you categorized as senseless.
Yes, of course! When it comes to explaining the function of more complex structures it is necessary to keep in mind the properties of the underlying matter, too. This is simply trivial. By the way that observation that water is only “wet” because we perceive it to be wet, is really dumb. The property is objectively there, whether we are there to perceive it or not. Combine hydrogen and chlorine atoms and the resulting hydrogen chloride is not only “acidic” in our perception. Chemistry does not discard physics, it builds on it. Biology does not discard physics and chemistry, it builds upon physics and chemistry. But biology has its own properties, which cannot be FULLY reduced to the lower levels, but those lower levels are still necessary.
What a huge misunderstanding.
That is not what it means! I said: “If it looks like thinking…” not “It must looks like thinking…”. If there is no objective sign that the other entity “thinks” (and it does not have to be verbal), then we have no grounds to make a decision either way. On the other hand, if it “looks like” (or sounds like) thinking then the only rational conclusion is that it IS thinking, be it a very sophisticated computer, or a higher ape, or a hypothetical space alien. It is true that some people might miss the Turing test (infants would miss it) but then the test is not supposed be the one and only method to detect thinking. It only says that IF someone or something DOES pass the test, then it is irrational to assume that it does not think. But it does not say: “If you cannot pass the test, you cannot be considered to be able to think”.Why do you equate knowledge with causality?
If Feser is not “the sharpest knife,” then, judging by this paragraph, he is clearly not the dullest either.
Concluding that if someone or something “looks like” they are thinking, then they ARE thinking, by the “duck principle,” Turing Test or by Forrest Gump’s definition is simply showing resistance to looking deeper into what thinking really is. Making such a conclusion is tantamount to judging by appearances. Many wrongheaded notions, for example, about the sun rising, spontaneous generation, much of what has been determined to have been faulty science and the attribution of the wonders of nature to the workings of immanent gods - all of which have been forefront in the musings of “bright” atheist thinkers to discredit believers - can be traced back to this principle. Ironically, here we have an atheist proposing that it be used to fill the gap between what we know about thinking or consciousness and what it is.
The tables have been turned!This I have discuss it in a long thread. The argument is very simple: Creation is made of things (that move based on laws of nature) and beings (who decide but God knows their decisions). This means that given creation at specific moment, creation state can be known in later time from God point of view. This means that creation evolves deterministically from God point of view hence it is deterministic in its nature.Why do you equate knowledge with causality?