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On the self.
- Thread starter Jack Jack
- Start date
The idea that a sharp boundary is valid and useful what I am saying is wrong. (As distinguished from accepting the general idea of a sharp boundary but considering its nature or placement to be artificial).
And I don't think trying to make formal, precise definitions is always helpful. To be honest what is or isn't part of the self is perhaps relatively easy. Try creating a precise definition of murder, for example, or of life. The Universe has a habit of throwing up corner cases.
And I don't think trying to make formal, precise definitions is always helpful. To be honest what is or isn't part of the self is perhaps relatively easy. Try creating a precise definition of murder, for example, or of life. The Universe has a habit of throwing up corner cases.
What part of my definition excludes free will?
It includes the mind, and everything from your current state of food digestion to drug use affects how it works, but that doesn't mean it doesn't work. I honestly don't see what I need to add to that to include "free will" somehow?
Your definition of the self is reductible to physical phenomenon. As all physical phenomenon have a cause found in the laws of physics, your self is not cause of itself and your actions have a cause anterior to your self (the cause of your self).
For the self to be compatible with free will, it would be necessary to not be reductible to a physical phenomenon. Of course, when you do that, chances are good that what you are not calling a self does not exist, as physicalism as a good claim to reality.
You don't need to add stuff, you need to remove some.
For the self to be compatible with free will, it would be necessary to not be reductible to a physical phenomenon. Of course, when you do that, chances are good that what you are not calling a self does not exist, as physicalism as a good claim to reality.
You don't need to add stuff, you need to remove some.
So, were you just not paying attention in the time time travel thread? I thought my views on free will were quite clear.
Anyone who says "Well, you can't really define some things" is a pseudo-intellectual. End of story. Definition is the cornerstone of language and argument. Definitions change oh so rarely and only when new things are discovered. If you can't define murder, check a dictionary or ask a lawyer. My middle school PE teacher was able to define life in the scientific sense pretty damn well, and only learning more about viruses is going change that definition any time soon.
Eh, not really. I feel that the mind, sentience, or consciousness, refer more to implementation than they do to functionality. That is, there are many different machines that would behave exactly like a human would, but only a subset of them could be said to have a "mind", because whether they have one or not does not depend on what they do, but on how they do it.
It's like a program that prints "I calculated that the square root of 9 is 3". Many programs can print that, but only a subset of these programs actually calculate the square root of 9. The others could simply print a pre-made string, or fetch the value in a table. So some of these programs would be telling the truth, and the others would be lying, even though they all do exactly the same thing.
So in order to have, say, sentience, machines would probably need to implement some particular patterns, such as reusing pathways for stimuli and recalling memories, and so on. I don't really know exactly what the criteria should be, but essentially it would have to mirror the internal structure of our brains. In a nutshell, we have many names for aspects of ourselves, consciousness, qualia and whatnot, that correspond to implementation details of our brains - to "have" these things means to have these implementation details, regardless of behavior.
It makes no sense whatsoever for something to originate itself. X cannot cause X no matter what X is. A self that is the cause of itself is complete nonsense. In any case, a thought experiment might show you how the "cause" of yourself is completely irrelevant.
Imagine that instead of being caused physically, your body and brain appeared out of absolutely nowhere. Rigorously identical, but uncaused, so that no anterior event had anything to do with its appearance. I assume that per your criterion that self would have free will... but it is identical to the caused one! Why would two rigorously identical selves differ in their free will?
What I'm trying to say here is that the free will of X cannot depend on how X was created, or on what caused X. It's a given X cannot cause itself, and any entity that is different from X is not X. X either exists, or it doesn't. All nature does is "choose" what entities get to exist and which ones don't.
All definitions have a scope, and you have to be careful when you cross the boundary of that scope. Dictionary definitions are perfectly fine for casual, everyday usage, but when you start to actually argue about abstract concepts like free will or consciousness, they're pretty much completely useless, if not outright circular. The more high level a concept is, the harder it is to ground. For a single dictionary definition, there might be a thousand different ways to ground it, each being roughly equivalent most of the time, but divergent on corner cases. Thus, the more abstract a concept is, the more likely it is that different people will not understand it the same way. An example could be that the dictionary will tell you what small is, what big is, but it won't tell you where the boundary lies (nor will it tell you the boundary from big to medium, and so on). To discuss free will is to discuss boundaries and corner cases, and that's tricky. Or sentience - I've seen you emit opinions on what sentience is that are not in any way implied by any of its definitions, because you were talking within their grey zones.
A shitload of philosophical debates are solely about definitions and bickering about various ways to ground things. In a sense, that's not very productive, but in another, these people are trying to make sense of what they have in mind when they say these words - they want deep meanings to high level concepts, even though by nature all high level concepts tend to be shallow (they break down upon inspection). That's why I prefer to start discussions by making sure that I know how the other person defines all the concepts that are critical to the debate: I know that if I don't, there will probably be misunderstandings.
This thread immediately made me think of Ray Kurzweil and "The Singularity". Especially in the discussion of separation of "self" from our biological components.
I've always held the opinion that there was much more to the output of our decisions than the movement of neural impulses happening within the brain and our nervous systems. Almost akin to software and hardware. The biological component of "self" was always far less interesting than the data that executes it all.
The Law of Accelerating Returns
Assuming that the software IS just another manifestation of the hardware (self is simply produced by the brain), imagine we are capable of taking an exact replica of the biological data inside the brain (in a storage-able format) and then export that to a medium capable of expression/communication. Be it biological or otherwise, I'm not so sure that "self" would be transferred, even assuming perfect data synchronization (no loss or corruption).
Anyway, the article itself delves into a great deal of futurist stuff. The points of interest for this thread would be the sections after "Downloading the Human Brain".
I've always held the opinion that there was much more to the output of our decisions than the movement of neural impulses happening within the brain and our nervous systems. Almost akin to software and hardware. The biological component of "self" was always far less interesting than the data that executes it all.
The Law of Accelerating Returns
Assuming that the software IS just another manifestation of the hardware (self is simply produced by the brain), imagine we are capable of taking an exact replica of the biological data inside the brain (in a storage-able format) and then export that to a medium capable of expression/communication. Be it biological or otherwise, I'm not so sure that "self" would be transferred, even assuming perfect data synchronization (no loss or corruption).
Anyway, the article itself delves into a great deal of futurist stuff. The points of interest for this thread would be the sections after "Downloading the Human Brain".
In my definition of sentience, I included ways that sentience is commonly characterized in addition to the dictionary definition. If I hadn't, 10 to 1 I would have been asked to anyway, or you would have said my definition was "too broad", but either way my definition was the dictionary definition. As is my definition of free will. You said most people define free will as "I could have done it differently". Well then I can see how they'd be internally inconsistent, because that isn't the definition of free will. Know that I'll always, always use the proper dictionary definition in anything (and sometimes I even double check) and will accept no less, high concept or not. I've never explored a high concept where I had to redefine things.
The dictionary definition of "free will" is not worded as "I could have done it differently", but it strongly suggests it:
1. The ability or discretion to choose; free choice
Okay, good. Now let's check out what "to choose" means:
choose: 1. To select from a number of possible alternatives; decide on and pick out.
select: To take as a choice from among several; pick out.
pick: To select from a group
decide on: to choose someone or something; to make a judgment about some aspect of someone or something.
Ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.......
Do you see the problem? These definitions are circular, so they are of no help to truly define the concept. This means that "choice" is essentially a building block of our understanding. You have no choice but to introspect, or consult works of philosophy that try to ground the concept. But what does "choice" mean in the minds of people? For most people, if only one outcome can happen, then it's not a choice. Thus, "I could have done it differently". Furthermore, if you could not have done something differently, then no alternative is "possible". Alternatives can't happen.
possible: 1. Capable of happening, existing, or being true without contradicting proven facts, laws, or circumstances.
I mean, I could probably browse more, starting with the second definition of "free will", the concepts of freedom, liberty, constraint, and so forth, but it seems like "I could have done it differently" is a really direct and straightforward interpretation.
All of our existence and conscience is generated by the brain. There isn't anything more than a "physical phenomenon", and despite your constant attempts to sound intellectual and philosophical, all consciousness eventually can be explained by "physics"
But you're expanding the definition now. You are taking the definition and incorporating the past tense. The definition of free will simply doesn't involve time. "I could have done it differently" isn't a definition of anything, it sounds more like an expression of regret than free will, seeing as regret does deal with what has already come to pass. "I could have done it differently" isn't straightforward at all, it's entirely backwards.
Your definition for choose has select in it, but it also has number, possible, alternatives, from, of. Every definition has words with definitions in it. It's a combination of those words that tells us the definition of what you look up. I know what choose means, and it means exactly what you defined it as. So what's the problem?
I'll try to answer everybody at once.
Free will is the state in which the end of the causality chain of our behaviour (including mental states) is ourselves. There is nothing beyond us that dictate what we do, how we feel, etc. A free person have the freedom to be happy or sad at any given point, no matter the circumstances : they are free. The fact that there exist sad person is evidence that those people are not free.
Either there are rules to our behavior, either there are none.
If there are no rules that dictate our behavior, then our behavior is random.
If our behavior is random, we are not free. End of that branch.
If there are rules then our behaviour observes causality.
If our behaviour is subject to causality, then either that causality is outside of ourselves, either it has some basis in our selves.
If that causality is outside of ourselves, we are not free. End of that branch.
If the causality is inside ourselves, either it stops there or go further. If it goes further, we are not free, if it stops there, we are.
If our selves are reductible to physical phenomenon, then there exist causality beyond ourselves, and those are explored by physics.
Chris is me, if you believe that "All of our existence and conscience is generated by the brain. There isn't anything more than a "physical phenomenon", and despite your constant attempts to sound intellectual and philosophical, all consciousness eventually can be explained by "physics", then we agree. I am just trying to conceptualise what would be the self is that was not the case.
Brain, If my body appeared out of nowhere because I whished it to be so, then I am free because the causality of everything I'll do afterward will stop at the moment I was created, and that was my whish to be created in that fashion. If my body appeared out of nowhere, randomly, then all my future actions can be traced back to the randomness of my birth, I am not free. If I was born "normally" then all my actions can be traced back to the state of the Universe in the Very Beginning, I am not free.
Von Fielder : "I could have done differently" is not the definition of free will, but a necessary consequence of free will. Of course free will does not involve time. But if I was free in the past, then in the past, I could have done differently. If I am free in the present, I could do things differently.
Like continuing to write instead of going catch my bus. But I am not free, so I'm going to go catch my bus. Later. Edit : this is not an argument, it's a joke. A take that me : I'm late.
Free will is the state in which the end of the causality chain of our behaviour (including mental states) is ourselves. There is nothing beyond us that dictate what we do, how we feel, etc. A free person have the freedom to be happy or sad at any given point, no matter the circumstances : they are free. The fact that there exist sad person is evidence that those people are not free.
Either there are rules to our behavior, either there are none.
If there are no rules that dictate our behavior, then our behavior is random.
If our behavior is random, we are not free. End of that branch.
If there are rules then our behaviour observes causality.
If our behaviour is subject to causality, then either that causality is outside of ourselves, either it has some basis in our selves.
If that causality is outside of ourselves, we are not free. End of that branch.
If the causality is inside ourselves, either it stops there or go further. If it goes further, we are not free, if it stops there, we are.
If our selves are reductible to physical phenomenon, then there exist causality beyond ourselves, and those are explored by physics.
Chris is me, if you believe that "All of our existence and conscience is generated by the brain. There isn't anything more than a "physical phenomenon", and despite your constant attempts to sound intellectual and philosophical, all consciousness eventually can be explained by "physics", then we agree. I am just trying to conceptualise what would be the self is that was not the case.
Brain, If my body appeared out of nowhere because I whished it to be so, then I am free because the causality of everything I'll do afterward will stop at the moment I was created, and that was my whish to be created in that fashion. If my body appeared out of nowhere, randomly, then all my future actions can be traced back to the randomness of my birth, I am not free. If I was born "normally" then all my actions can be traced back to the state of the Universe in the Very Beginning, I am not free.
Von Fielder : "I could have done differently" is not the definition of free will, but a necessary consequence of free will. Of course free will does not involve time. But if I was free in the past, then in the past, I could have done differently. If I am free in the present, I could do things differently.
Like continuing to write instead of going catch my bus. But I am not free, so I'm going to go catch my bus. Later. Edit : this is not an argument, it's a joke. A take that me : I'm late.
Poor argument. I've missed quite a few busses in my lifetime.
Hence why I emphasised that the philosophical zombie is supposed to be physically from a human. A machine like you describe might act the same, but put them in a scanner and you'll be able to tell the difference.
The analogy to software is more appropriate. Can the brain act in a human manner while lacking consciousness and sentience? If consciousness and sentience are solely the result of actions of the brain, then no, since even if the outward actions are humanlike, a sufficiently detailed brain scan reveals the differences.
Actually, an event can cause itself if time is circular. Circular time isn't observed in our Universe but it "makes sense".
As for how X could even happen or exist in the first place, how about the following:
X and Y can both be either long-lasting objects or brief events, it works either way.
If X exists, it causes Y to not exist.
If X exists, X causes itself to exist.
If X does not exist, Y causes X to exist.
The only non-paradoxical solution is for X to exist. What caused it to exist? Y? But Y doesn't exist!
And this isn't necessarily just words. You could probably put physical calculations on this, most likely using things like moving and colliding balls.
Rules by ourselves? Rules by others?
Not having a set of rules mandated by others doesn't make my behavior random. Right now, for example, I'm hitting a very specific set of keys on my keyboard in a particular order, yet I'm not bound by any rules while doing so. I could hit any set that I want to. I just choose to hit the ones that produce English words that I happen to be thinking. No rules by me or anyone mandates I don't type words with no meaning fdsufila, safuleakf dsioenrnke ,s eiuwthlkdsf erohnoiaser.
Edit: I guess I'm bound by the Smogon rules when making a post, but nothing stops me from breaking them in a post as long as I'm willing to deal with the consequences. I could easily add a cat image to my post, or say that all of the admins are huge cunts, or any variety of rule breaks if I wanted to. I choose not to, though.
If I'm speaking of my free will regarding a past action, I will use the past, what other tense could I possibly use? In the present, this gives: "it is possible that I do any of the options I am evaluating". If the universe's laws are deterministic, then only one of these options can happen, and the others are not possible.
Most people have (and have always had) a conception of free will which is inconsistent, without realizing it, because they rarely ever think far enough and cling to other inconsistent concepts like souls. Since the dictionary definition of a word is supposed to mirror common understanding, I really have no idea why you expect it to be any different.
It is conceivable that you exist, and it is conceivable that you don't exist. If you exist, then you can't cause yourself to exist, because you already do. If you don't exist, then you can't cause yourself to exist, because you don't exist. Your argument essentially boils down to somehow having a say in whether you exist or not, in a situation where your existence is clearly not logically necessary.
Look, all causal chains trace back to randomness. All of them. Even if you suppose that the universe has always existed, as long as it could conceivably have been different, randomness is implicated in picking one infinite sequence among others. Even if all possible universes exist, it's not logically necessary for them to, so randomness is implicated in deciding whether all possible universes exist, or only a finite number does.
Oh, okay, my bad. I was talking about philosophical zombies in a wider sense. Otherwise, I fully agree with you.
As far as I can tell, circular time is obfuscated speak for global cycles in the application of rules to data. In other words, this is "circular time". In this case, it's a bit clearer to say that the event is "periodic", like the oscillation of a pendulum, than to say that it causes itself.
Nonetheless, under circular time, it is true that an event can cause itself to be repeated. But it remains that in order to do so, it has to exist in the first place. It did not cause the oscillator to exist instead of another.
That's confusing, I don't really see what you mean :(
I view most of physics to be an attempt to compress observation data along the time axis. That is, if one can closely relate the future state of some (any) place in the universe to the past state of a (possibly larger) location, then all we need to describe both past and future is the past (and maybe a bunch of random numbers). A corollary of this is that the "optimal" theory to explain the universe is to determine the point in the past that had minimal entropy, and to use that point as an uncaused "anchor" from which the whole future can be inferred from a simple set of rules. That anchor could be something like the big bang, but not necessarily.
Let's put it this way: the human mind has a tendency to seek explanations that make it so that everything has a cause. In science, this translates to trying to paint our universe as the only way it could possibly have worked. But this is clearly misguided - a world with different laws of physics is perfectly conceivable, and a world with the same laws of physics but different states is also perfectly conceivable. The "choice" of a particular set of laws and a particular initial state (or class of possible initial states) is necessarily random, hence uncaused. And if it is not random, it was done using some "law-choosing process", but there are many possible law-choosing processes, so the same reasoning applies.
I would say that X is uncaused when finding it a cause requires making up Y such that Y is as complex or more complex than X. That means that it is more economical to consider X as uncaused.
The laws of physics, combined with the exact configuration of your body and brain, however, do "mandate" you to type what you typed, and if they don't, that's because randomness is involved at some stage in the process. That is what he meant.
On the whole, definitions seems relative. I can say that a dog is a cat and consider myself correct, but the rest of the English-speaking world would roll their eyes and continue to refer to my cat as a dog, because it was biologically a dog. I can shout English words to a person who does not understand a word of English and none of them would possess any meaning unless I directly indicated the objects that I was referring to and my listener made the connection.
Now, as far as the concept of "self" goes, most of the world regards "I" as being grammatically a pronoun which refers to the speaker. I can refer to myself in the third person--"driblim70 works at a supermarket"--but others would find this ridiculous and/or cute if I was Elmo. Essentially, "I" is a useful word referring to me and to whoever else is currently using it. Now, in the non-grammatical, non-alphabet sense of "I," it doesn't really matter what it means. I, for instance, can refer to myself privately as "we" if I like, and in the long run it doesn't really matter, as long as no one considers me/us to have an existentialist crisis/warped sense of self/selves. I'm still just one human being, looking at it from the outside. Actually, considering myself to have more than one sentience can be useful to forgiving grudges/correcting sheer stupidity; I can condemn part of me for doing something cruel and learn...from myself, in that manner, or at least identify problems with myself.
This is useful, for instance, for a job interview. In order to be considered a valuable factor of production, I have to make my skills seem scarce and useful, that my would-be employer would consider me worth hiring. To me myself and I, my skills with communication and imagination might seem abundant; they're always there for me when I need them. To others, however, they would be worth having, and knowing that I might figure out how to outwardly display them better, to hopefully get hired.
In the end it doesn't matter whether I call myself "I" or "drifblim70"--neither completely and "closedly" (see, that isn't a real word) summarizes my existence, and I for one am fine with that. I'm sure there are others who would agree, and that also leaves room for me to discover more about myself and improve myself, really.
Now, as far as the concept of "self" goes, most of the world regards "I" as being grammatically a pronoun which refers to the speaker. I can refer to myself in the third person--"driblim70 works at a supermarket"--but others would find this ridiculous and/or cute if I was Elmo. Essentially, "I" is a useful word referring to me and to whoever else is currently using it. Now, in the non-grammatical, non-alphabet sense of "I," it doesn't really matter what it means. I, for instance, can refer to myself privately as "we" if I like, and in the long run it doesn't really matter, as long as no one considers me/us to have an existentialist crisis/warped sense of self/selves. I'm still just one human being, looking at it from the outside. Actually, considering myself to have more than one sentience can be useful to forgiving grudges/correcting sheer stupidity; I can condemn part of me for doing something cruel and learn...from myself, in that manner, or at least identify problems with myself.
This is useful, for instance, for a job interview. In order to be considered a valuable factor of production, I have to make my skills seem scarce and useful, that my would-be employer would consider me worth hiring. To me myself and I, my skills with communication and imagination might seem abundant; they're always there for me when I need them. To others, however, they would be worth having, and knowing that I might figure out how to outwardly display them better, to hopefully get hired.
In the end it doesn't matter whether I call myself "I" or "drifblim70"--neither completely and "closedly" (see, that isn't a real word) summarizes my existence, and I for one am fine with that. I'm sure there are others who would agree, and that also leaves room for me to discover more about myself and improve myself, really.
What if my future self has the power to travel back in time to make my present self exist, creating a stable time loop ?
I fully agree with this. I'll restate again that I don't believe free will exist, I don't think that individuality* exist. I just want to give them a chance. Because both are incompatible with any physicalist interpretation of the world.
*Individuality is the state where two physically identical beings are somehow different.
Rules that govern the behaviour of the Universe I assume, AKA the "laws of physics".
Presumably difference in location and surroundings "doesn't count" for this purpose.
Well, It does. However, it would cause different stimuli and therefore change the homeostasis state, creating slight physical differences. Over the course of years, these differences add up, creating two physically very different persons. Also, presumably, they don't eat exactly identical food. And they don't keep an identical bacterian flora for long...
So in theory two clones (twins) are individual if they are different, in practice, they physically change independantly very rapidly, so it's impossible to demonstrate experimentally. Plus, there are ethical issues here : you can't keep a set of twins in two identical prisons, plus a set of twin in different prison to see how much more different the first set becomes from one another compared to the second set... And you would have to do that with a sufficiently large "sample".
On what is control :
However, it's the state of the rock (and the surroundings) who decide where it's a good idea to throw it. So in practice, the rock has control over your brain. =P. Can two things have control over one another? I don't think that is inconsistent with your definition. However, it does undermine it's usefullness.
On responsibility
Assuming the drugs were forced on you, is it the guy who did the murder or the guy who is responsible for it who should be charged?
What if the drug came from a tumor or a treatable illness. Once you are "cured" do you still need to go to prison? Death penalty ?
No, a word is what it is. Don't try to circumvent an entire language by being "philosophical".
firstly, your concept is pretty silly. I thought that was clear from the outset. Secondly, "up its own ass" is a term in the "anglophone philosophy", not a bash at all.
Absolutely not. When you say "I am typing", it refers to your body, not your 'self', because your 'self' is not typing- your bloody hand is.
So at the point where that body is no longer a vessel for a mind it becomes a zombie and is not an I. Basically what I was getting at that they are connected and there isn't a way around it.
That does make sense, because any sentient form that says "I" means the same damn thing. What did I say?
Incorrect analogy. You are comparing anatomy to anatomy to justify anatomy to metaphysical baloney.
So you're pleading the case that there are supernatural forces involved?
Until consciousness manifestation is understood, your rhetoric is useless.
Then you think incorrectly. You are literally trying to plead a case where supernatural powers exist parallel and independently of a brain and body but then saying that's where they reside? How about instead of some metaphysics you give us some observation besides saying that you don't know therefore it must be something inexplicable but not beyond definition.
pretty insistent on an idea about an organ you clearly know little about (and admit to it too!)
incorrect (ie. Apatite) and not all at once.
You're putting an age cap on this, now? I didn't realize your definition was so finite for such an infinite idea.
You are effectively trying to define and indefinite idea (as per your own definitions of its properties or lack thereof) in an inappropriate way.
Edit: I love what brain said- it's more implementation than functionality. Brings to mind a computer program which is effectively an primitive thought method. Also, I apologize for not reading this entire thread, just replying to your reply to me. I cannot bear to get through 2 pages of people debating metaphysics with neither training or a critical thinking ability, I would end up having a post that was more like a textbook.
Hey, I think you should study alchemy; let's give it a shot, sounds really possible and logical. Also, in FMA people can switch bodies and it's the same in Yu-Gi-Oh GX! Seriously, I am sure your on to something: three reliable sources of unquestionable scientific achievements proved that there is a self and that this self is transferable, measurable, etc.
More seriously, your ''philosophy'' doesn't make much sense: you cannot apply science to a metaphysical concept.
More seriously, your ''philosophy'' doesn't make much sense: you cannot apply science to a metaphysical concept.