On Apr 2, 11:22 pm, meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote: > On 4/2/2012 7:12 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: > > > > > > > > > > > > > On Apr 2, 5:05 pm, meekerdb<[email protected]> wrote: > > >> But the experiment didn't show there was more or less free will. It > >> didn't even show > >> there was any free will. It just showed that inducing a belief in free > >> will changed > >> performance. > > Performance in what though? Readiness to execute personal will. > > >> It might have also shown that belief in alien abductions changed > >> performance. > > No, they did controls to eliminate that. There may be other beliefs > > that change people's ability to take action as well, but this study > > suggests that this specific idea that we should doubt the existence of > > our own free will has a negative impact on the very thing that is > > being considered. > > >> Either one is perfectly consistent with determinism. > > No, determinism would not allow a mention of a deterministic function > > of the brain to affect the performance of that function, because then > > it wouldn't be deterministic - it would be open to suggestion by > > others and by ourselves. > > There is nothing in determinism that prevents a change in response to > suggestions.
Is there anything in determinism that prevents making suggestions? What is free will other than using your own intention/suggestion to change the behavior of your body and mind? Should we try to pretend that the experiments are running themselves? Making their own suggestions? > > > If I can suggest beliefs to myself that > > causally affect the performance of anything at all, then I am using > > free will to determine their function rather than only being > > determined by them. > > That's just assuming what you want to prove. I'd say you were determined to > suggest that > belief to yourself. What would be the role of such a 'belief'? If I am determined to believe that I am suggesting beliefs to myself, why not cut out that whole useless process and just have the determination directly execute its function, like breathing or digesting food? It's like saying that a computer could maybe benefit by telling itself to 'try harder' to execute a line of code. If a program is equipped for resource optimization, it will prioritize computations in the processor queue but there is no plausible experience of 'effort' or belief which could impact performance in doing that. Why would there be? The only reason is because we are reverse engineering our own experience and universalizing it. > All kinds of systems have feedback loops and they are still > deterministic. Effort is not a feedback loop. A computer can compute more often, or for longer, or devote more resources to a task, but any kind of additional abstraction layer which represents those strategies as participatory experiences would be a redundant waste of resources. Besides, such a disembodied, unexplained experience has no means of grounding to physical reality. Every feedback loop would require another feedback loop to interpret the model presented by the parent interpretation process. If we need to see a representation of an orange tree rather than just unconsciously react to the conditions presented by an orange tree, then why wouldn't a single neuron also need such a representation for its detections? Why wouldn't the organelles of the neuron that interpret that feedback loop with a perceptual illusion also require their own perceptual illusion, and so on. Its a Cartesian-homunculus-regressing notion. I see no reason that such a theatrical production as human experience would materialize ex nihilo when every system, organ, cell, and molecule in the universe is assumed to function without any illusions of participation. What makes these monkeys on Earth so special? If we have internally perceived worlds for any reason at all, then everything should have an equivalent phenomenology for the same reason. If that is the case, and I think that it is, then there is no reason to assume that those phenomenological experiences can be understood or anticipated through the mechanisms they are associated with. We can't feel our own neurological structures, and neurological imaging can't reproduce our feelings, so we should not expect that either presentation can be reduced to the other. Determinism is what you get when you choose to look outside of yourself. Within the psyche, it is you who is doing most of the determination while your neurology carries out your will. Craig -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
