I think your position is ridiculous. Evolution has clearly invested a lot of energy into "free will", "self-awareness", and other qualia that characterize conscious existence. There is evidence of analogous inner mental existence in some other more advanced species on earth - am referring to other species that pass the mirror test. Clearly there is some kind of evolutionary motivation for all of this investment in what you reduce to ""free will" is just a noise that some bipeds like to make with their mouth. Cows make a different noise, cows say "Moo". "
Evolution did not go through all the trouble and to expend all the energy our species expends on creating this sensation within ourselves - whether it is actually real or an elaborate (and evolutionarily costly adaptation) to carefully create this deeply layered and highly convincing illusion of free will within us - for no reason at all. And, if it is an illusion it does not come for free. the energy required in order to maintain and to create this illusion in the first instance must be considerable (think how much neural activity must be consumed just in order to be able to develop the sensation and to make it photo-realistic within ourselves - nothing comes for free). The brain consumes a lot of energy and it did not evolve in us as it did if it did not provide some real benefit - and this also includes "free will". It is NOT free! Even if it does not really exist it takes considerable biochemical energy - energy that is therefore unavailable for other brain activities -- in order to generate the perfect illusion. For you to say that there is no reason at all and that it is just "noise" would make no evolutionary sense and evolution would never have wasted so much energy on something that did not confer an important evolutionary advantage. Now - if you just comeback and re-iterate that you consider it to be noise and you do not show how this hypothesis can square with the high evolutionary cost that this illusion imposes on the species in which it arises you will merely be repeating a position without adding anything to sup[port it. You need to show why the evolutionary cost associated with the expenditure of vital and limited energy in order to maintain and to generate this splendidly rendered and very high fidelity illusion (for if it is an illusion it is a very good one) is justified for the species involved; or you need to provide some convincing physical (not semantic) evidence for why it costs the brain nothing to create this illusion of free will and self-awareness or how this is a necessary by-product of some other vital neural activity. -Chris From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of John Clark Sent: Saturday, August 31, 2013 8:37 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: When will a computer pass the Turing Test? On Fri, Aug 30, 2013 at 3:37 PM, Chris de Morsella <[email protected]> wrote: > do you think I am trying to pretend that I am deterministic within my own self? I think you believe you are not deterministic and also not not deterministic, which is equivalent to saying I think you believe in gibberish. > all my decisions and free will could be the result of a grand illusion Free Will is not an illusion. An illusion is a well defined perfectly respectable subjective phenomenon, but "free will" is not like that at all, "free will" is just a noise that some bipeds like to make with their mouth. Cows make a different noise, cows say "Moo". > Why has evolution invested so much energy in erecting such a perfect rendition of this facsimile of free will that is the common sense experience that we all experience within ourselves? I cannot answer that question because I don't know what the ASCII sequence "free will" means. John K Clark -- 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 [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. 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 [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
