I also agree that the notions of free will and qualia are two different things. My best example of how qualia relates to consciousness is based on my dreams. I dream in images which I say are very close to uninhibited/unreprocessed consciousness. Very often these images are of people who speak to me. I do not hear words, yet I still get meanings. The wordless meanings conveyed to me in dreams are what I would call qualia.
My waking thinking is in words and each of the words has meaning. The words label the meanings which are qualia. Free will is associated with my waking consciousness. However, I do not appear to have even the illusion of free will in my dreams except once in a lucid dream. But that's another story. In waking consciousness I at least seem to sometimes have a degree of free will. My lack of free will can be exemplified by driving on a familiar route where habit is in control. Often I intend to deviate from the usual route but habit prevents me from doing so and I pass right by the turn off. But I can break the habit by being very conscious and focused on deviating from my usual course. I take that to be an exercise of free will. In addition I take such action to be an exercise of downward or top-down causation whereas the lack of free will or habit is upward or down-up causation. Here is something Bruno might appreciate. Often when I smoke weed and then drive home, I am lost. That is, the road that I usually drive on is totally unfamiliar to me, and I feel like I am lost. So the internal map that I usually follow is part of habit and the weed breaks down the habit. That in my opinion is why weed is so creative. It allows us to think outside the usual constraints and at the same time suggests to us just how constrained we usually. Yet even when so constrained, when we are faced with more or less equal alternatives or choices, we can exercise our free will by thinking about each alternative and then making a more or less rational choice. But habit and especially addiction can inhibit free choice and free will. Richard, On Thu, Sep 5, 2013 at 10:30 AM, chris peck <chris_peck...@hotmail.com>wrote: > Hi Chris > > > *>> I also do not “KNOW” whether or not I really do have “free will”. > But if I do not have “free will” evolution has seen fit to evolve a very > expensive – in evolutionary terms – illusion of “free will... To argue that > “free will”, “self-awareness” etc. are just noise, of no real value or > consequence goes against evolution. Evolution doesn’t work like that. > Unless it can be clearly shown that these qualia are inevitable by-products > of some other evolutionarily vital brain function”* > > > You haven't really addressed the ideas raised in my post. I'm not > arguing that the illusion of free will has no consequence I'm arguing that > there is no illusion of free will. And if there is no illusion of free will > then there is no reason to drum up some evolutionary story to justify it. > > > Since you talk about qualia I take it that you have something other than > the concept of free will in mind. Its an important distinction because the > concept, however incoherent, clearly does exist. But being an idea has a > history describable by semiotics or memetics, which ever floats your boat. > > > But as for a qualitative feel of 'freeness' that goes hand in hand with > the decisions I make; these qualia are conspicuous by their absence. For > sure, when I make day to day decisions I don't feel under external duress, > but that feeling is understandable because I am not under external > duress. I am also aware that there were alternatives available to me other > than the one I in fact choose, and in a sense there were, but when asked > to explain my choice the lexicon of determinism comes to the fore. I talk > about the reasons and causes of my choice. I choose salad over steak > because I am worried about being fat. I am worried about being fat because > culture places value upon being slim. Eating steak will make me fat because > my metabolism is slow. My metabolism is slow because of the genetic hand > I was dealt. Nature and nurture, neither of which I have control over, > conspire to drive my decisions. > > > Others on this list have been arguing that we are complex systems that > nevertheless lack the ability to home in on the neural mechanics of our own > decision making and therefore are unable to witness the choices being > determined. Thus we don't have a feeling of being determined. I disagree > with them. Our choices feel determined, rather than free, in precisely the > way a determinist would recognise. > > > In other words, there is no illusion of freewill to explain and in fact when > people talk about their behavior they use language which reflects the > determinist's perspective. > > > All the best > > > ------------------------------ > From: cdemorse...@yahoo.com > To: everything-list@googlegroups.com > Subject: RE: When will a computer pass the Turing Test? > Date: Wed, 4 Sep 2013 17:36:17 -0700 > > > > > > *From:* everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto: > everything-list@googlegroups.com] *On Behalf Of *meekerdb > *Sent:* Wednesday, September 04, 2013 4:41 PM > *To:* everything-list@googlegroups.com > *Subject:* Re: When will a computer pass the Turing Test? > > > > On 9/4/2013 2:55 PM, Chris de Morsella wrote: > > Our brain's are supplying us with our reality and two people immersed in > the same environment will often come away with different descriptions of > that environment and will experience different realities when immersed in > that environmental stream of sense data. Even though the raw sense stream > is the same in both cases; the inner mental experience that is "lived" can > be very different indeed. > > > But the interesting point is that we can, given enough data, agree on an > intersubjective reality. Whether we feel threatened by a big black guy on > a lonely street is subjective. But whether said figure actually is a big > black guy we can find out. The latter is part of reality, because that's > how "reality" is defined - intersubjective agreement. But feeling > threatened is a subjective reaction. > > Yes, I agree that to some extent we can carefully reconstruct a shared > perceptive experience and in a process of conscious re-examination and > comparison of each subjects perceptive experience remove the layers of > subjective coloration we have overlaid over it – but this is assuming our > brain did not suppress the perception entirely, but rather characterized it > in some subjective manner. > > The person who failed to “see” the man in the gorilla suit walking across > their field of view – perhaps because they were mentally focused on a near > field complex visual task – will never get to “see” that perception, in > fact they will never even know that they missed seeing it in their mind’s > eye – for clearly at some level the brain sees the man in the gorilla suit > walking across the field – unless they are shown a video of their field of > view or are otherwise convinced that they somehow failed to see the > outrageous image of a man in a gorilla suit walking across their field of > view. > > > > -Chris > > > Brent > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. 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