>There's no evidence that consciousness is anything other than a state arising from the physical processes in our bodies
Actually this is backward, "I think therefore I am". There's no reason to believe consciousness is a state arising from a physical process, our experience of consciousness precedes our experience of sensory input and therefore the physical world.
There is more evidence for the reality of consciousness than there is for the physical world, in fact we know for a fact that our understanding of the physical world is aberrational.
edit: evidently alot of empiricists aren't very happy with this comment hahaha
We are able to track down and physically explain (thanks to MRI) the sentation, the objective part of consciousness (Chalmers's 'easy problems of consciousness'). That really exist and we can prove it (or we have an idea about experiments to run to prove it)
I suppose here you're talking about the subjective sentation, the phenomenal experience, the 'hard problem', and you reference the 'cogito' not because you are a dualists, but because you truly think Descartes was right on this point (and this point only, the rest was extremely weak).
I will argue that you're wrong. There is absolutely no evidence to the cogito, at most billions of anecdata from homo sapiens who all have similar brains and reactions!
Some people believe subjective experience do not really exist [0][1]. A simple explanation would be: if we are somehow able to predict, by pure observation of predictable physical reactions, how an organism will act and react, including the fact that he will believe in a subjective experience, then we do not need to think subjective experience really exist. This is merely a tool for our bodies to create a sense of self unique through time, created from our own continuous perceptions, to allow our brains to strategize and avoid dangers.
>We are able to track down and physically explain (thanks to MRI) the sentation, the objective part of consciousness (Chalmers's 'easy problems of consciousness'). That really exist and we can prove it (or we have an idea about experiments to run to prove it)
What we prove is an evidence that is filtered through our sensory faculties and experienced by our minds. Our minds still remain judge, jury and executioner and in this same sense if we are to take seriously the faculties of our minds in assessing the physical world, then we must also take seriously our experience of conciousness which remains even when we are unable to sense the physical world. In this sense our experience of conciousness is more real than our looking at an MRI.
>then we do not need to think subjective experience really exist.
What would follow is that you do not need to think subjective experiences exist for others, but for you to make this assessment you at least must have a subjective experience.
I don't really buy your argument about what's more real. If I was watching TV and a character punched the screen and I got a bloody nose from it, that's pretty real.
Similarly, if my mind experiences my body reaching out to take a drug and then my conciousness fractures, I think that's a sign that the experience is pretty damn real, regardless of whatever fragile concept of "consciousness" is floating in that reality.
If "you" are unable to sense the real world because you're unconscious, that doesn't mean your body isn't cogitating, it just means that the individual parts haven't come together to construct the illusion that is "you". Parts of your nervous system continue to work, though.
That's the beauty of illusionism, isn't it? You really have to think against yourself. If you can explain a person's reaction without 'knowing' his subjective experience, you do not need 'hard' consciousness to explain your reactions either. So you, right now, digesting this sentence and experiencing subjective thoughts, do not really experience those, you just have the illusion you do. Look at my second link.
There are plenty of reasons to believe it's physical. I mean, in some ways I can't believe I'm having to write "there are no ghosts" to a technically minded community.
If consciousness was not physical then where is it? Why would it switch on and off with physical changes to brains? Why would you be able to get altered states of consciousness with chemicals, disease and age? Why would be be able to marry some conscious activity with MRI scans?
There's quite a few bits of evidence to suggest it's physical even if we don't know how it works. There doesn't appear to be any evidence of another... what is a non physical process anyway? Surely there's only two options: the physics we know and the physics we don't know?
Yeah I’m not sure why someone would argue that consciousness isn’t physical. Take a conscious person and knock them hard in the head. Interesting, their consciousness is altered. Take drugs? Check it out, consciousness altered. People who experience head trauma have their personality permanently altered. In the course of life you will likely directly observe the effects of physical injury on a person’s consciousness, just due to how often that kind of stuff happens.
> Yeah I’m not sure why someone would argue that consciousness isn’t physical
Reading the comments, one thing that's been unsaid is whether each person discussing is religious/spiritual or not. My guess is that if you are religious then the idea of there being another layer in the universe goes without saying, and if you are not then it's ridiculous.
It's probably a waste of time debating across that line.
For me it has very little to do with religiousness but rather calming down some rather frequent panic attacks in the middle of the night. The fact that thinking the wrong thing can erase your consciousness while thinking it, doesn't help from the group that believes thinking the wrong thing erases consciousness.
The difference is people like you mean consciousness = "consciousness as the average human experiences it", whereas others include every single potential conscious experience, including the delibitated one. From your perspective, a knocked out human isn't conscious the same way a corpse is not conscious, because he does not conform to the average human experience.
Meanwhile others think that the knocked out human and the corpse and the average human are all conscious, but they experience their respective consciousnessess aka the consciousness of an average human, knocked out human or corpse. You could say that this is just a disagreement in what the word conscious means.
>Why would be be able to marry some conscious activity with MRI scans?
Does the activity cause the changes on the scan or does the changes in the scan cause the activity? How does neuroplasticity result in physical changes to the brain through, for example, cognitive behavioral therapy? Do the thoughts alter the physical structure or does the structure cause the thoughts even before the structural changes?
Internal feedback loops. Activity from the existing structure further modifies that structure. That activity is that thoughts are. So sure but it's all physical.
Think about it like in the case of computers. The claim we are making is that our thoughts are essentially the same kind of things as the states that arise in a piece of software. And we already know that there exists today computer software which can be asked to modify itself through its own APIs.
Basically the way we view this is that CBT works kind of similarly to using the JVM APIs to modify some pieces of the running Java program to try to fix a bug. In this analogy, Psychiatric medicine would then be more like directly modifying the bits in RAM that represent a certain piece of executable code. They are both physical modifications ultimately, just working at different levels of abstraction.
They are not physical alterations. The software doesn't change the physical structure of the FPGA or CPU it's running on. It is not creating new gates or transistors or how they're physically connected, only utilizing the existing physical connections differently
There are always physical changes happening. External stimuli, and time based internal changes.
> If that's the case, the physical change should precede the changes in thought patterns.
Not precede, are. These aren't separate things.
> There's no chemical emission that can force someone to have an exact thought, dream, or inner dialogue.
How do you know that to be the case? It seems likely to me that an exact set of sufficiently complicated inputs and stimuli could generate an exact thought. Actually doing so would be too complex to figure out, but many physical systems are like that.
The idea that consciousness is physical doesn't mean it's mechanical. Physical world is made of fields with no clear boundaries, while mechanical system are made of isolated deterministic and immutable parts.
> We can invert this and ask, if physicality is not ideal, then how do we come to know it?
Why would we ask that? Not ideal for what? It just is.
> The third option is that physics is unable to interrogate itself.
This is likely true. We are the product of physics and we can only delve so deep. It might be that we cannot see to the most fundamental level(s). That's not a third option though, that's just the state of any scientific investigation at any point of time. However, given all we have learnt so far, what we don't need to do is invent new gods for the levels we cannot see or the things we cannot yet understand. I mean, people will, evidently, but that's all just wishful thinking.
Meanwhile there is slow progress to piece together how the brain works. My opinion is that we will figure it out but the answers about consciousness will be unsatisfactory. Just like right now, given the current understanding of physical processes even taking into account quantum systems having probabilistic outcomes, we have no free will. It's an answer, I find it a compelling one, but most folks don't like that answer.
> Why would we ask that? Not ideal for what? It just is.
I'm pretty sure GP was using "ideal" in the sense of "made up of ideas", as in the philosophical concept of idealism, which is essentially the opposite of materialism: idealism is the position that the real world is that of the mind, and physics and the physical world is an emergent property of our minds, not the other way around.
Not that I think this is a real coherent position worth discussing.
> “the universe is the extension of the self” is precisely the idea we are talking about.
Idealists can take several possible approaches to the issue of how many people/minds exist:
1) Solipsism: only I exist, and everyone else is a figment of my imagination
2) Many minds: only minds ultimately exist, but many distinct minds exist (George Berkeley, John McTaggart)
3) Open individualism: I exist and everyone else exists too, but we are all ultimately the same person, and the idea that we are different people is an illusion (not necessarily an idealist view, but one open to an idealist to adopt; most famous notable proponent is Daniel Kolak; but Kolak in the introduction of his book I Am You extensively quotes the physicists Freeman Dyson and Erwin Schrödinger as expressing the same view)
4) Pan(en)theism: only one mind/person ultimately exists, but we are somehow "sub-minds"/"sub-persons" of that ultimate person. One might call that single ultimate person "God", albeit it is defining the term "God" in a very different way than classical Western theism does. Or, maybe we could call it the "Universe", or borrow Plato's term "the World Soul". (Maybe there is not much difference between (3) and (4), but (4) would view the distinction between different "sub-minds"/"sub-persons" as more "real" than (3) does.)
5) Panpsychism: everything in the universe (even individual atoms) is conscious, and hence has a distinct mind. This in a sense is a variant of (2), but proposes far more minds than Berkeley or McTaggart would ever have admitted. Not all panpsychists are idealists, but you can certainly be an idealist panpsychist
Critics of idealism tend to focus on (1), but in practice (1) has never had any serious proponents. All serious idealists have espoused (2)-(5) (or maybe some other variation I've missed)
As an idealist, my starting position is (2), although I have some sympathy for (4).
> And yes you can derive new “physics” with this idea alone.
I don't know exactly what you mean, but I'm not a fan of that kind of talk.
We have to distinguish between physics the natural science, and the philosophical discipline of the philosophy of physics, which is a sub-discipline of the philosophy of science
The idealism debate fundamentally belongs to metaphysics (although contemporary presentations often focus on it through the lens of philosophy of mind instead), but it has obvious consequences for other philosophical disciplines, including epistemology, philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, and indeed philosophy of physics
But while adopting idealism must lead us to a different philosophy of physics, the actual content of physics the natural science is unchanged. Physics the natural science is ultimately just a bunch of mathematical tools for predicting future observations. Those tools, and how you use them, are exactly the same whether you are a materialist, an idealist, a dualist, or none of the above. The only difference is your answer to the philosophical debates about what those tools ultimately are, or what they ultimately mean.
I'll admit I'm not too prepared to explicitly state what I meant by the line, but I'd personally take a more nuanced approach than "Those tools, and how you use them, are exactly the same whether you are a materialist, an idealist, a dualist, or none of the above".
I'll say that under standard laboratory conditions they should probably be the same most of the time. I hope you'll agree with me that *assuming* there are divergent predictions made by the "mind-first" approaches, they should be studied together with physics. Otherwise physics would become a study of idealized systems, much like insisting on Newtonian maths when the principles of relativity and quantum mechanics were discovered.
> I'll say that under standard laboratory conditions they should probably be the same most of the time. I hope you'll agree with me that assuming there are divergent predictions made by the "mind-first" approaches, they should be studied together with physics.
Can you give me an example of how a "mind-first" approach might give a divergent prediction, as to the outcome of a practically feasible experiment or observation? Maybe some versions of idealism might produce divergent predictions, but I don't believe divergent predictions are necessary to idealism, and many versions of idealism intentionally eschew divergent predictions.
> Otherwise physics would become a study of idealized systems, much like insisting on Newtonian maths when the principles of relativity and quantum mechanics were discovered.
Physics is a system for predicting future observations given past observations. Relativity and QM won because they generated more accurate future predictions than their predecessors.
But what, ultimately, is it that we are observing? Do the theoretical constructs proposed by physics (particles, waves, fields, forces, strings, branes, etc) "really" exist, or are they just abstract conceptual tools for accurate prediction generation? What does "really" even mean in that question? These are all philosophical questions, and idealism is one family of possible answers to (some of those) philosophical questions–but I don't see how that makes any difference to the whole business of generating accurate predictions of future observations–which is all that physics proper actually is, has ever been, or ever will be.
The reason I refrained from giving specifics is that I'm mostly trying to figure out how everything fits together in (my version of) "mind-first" concepts, so I'll try to illustrate with a grossly simplified example only for the purposes of explaining the general idea, but not as a statement of fact, nor it is intended as a serious scientific hypothesis.
Let's assume a particular universe where only minds really exist (and more than one mind). Let's further assume that the imagination of the mind can shape the physical world, and in a way that the "local" reality is more strongly influenced by the minds in the vicinity.
Let's say A and B are in an isolated room. They are into alternative medicine and strongly believe A can cure B of a disease. Because there only two minds involved, and they both believed it, B is apparently miraculously cured of the disease.
Now, let's change the setting slightly. This time, in addition to A and B, there are also C, D, and E, who are researchers trying to validate A's claims of miraculous healing. C, D, E are scientists who don't believe in such woowoo and are determined to expose A's frauds. A performs the same acts on B. This time, it does not work, because CDE did not believe in it.
---
Now, back to reality. Given how modern science operates and general disbelief that mind can influence reality, you can see that it is not hard to tweak some variants of these "mind-first" approaches to fit the vast majority of modern scientific observations (i.e. there's no magic healing). But the theories can produce divergent predictions (i.e. magic healing can work if you have enough "faith") under conditions where modern science is unwilling to collect evidence.
And I personally think there should be some way to tweak such theories in a way that first and foremost respects the observations and conclusions made by modern science, but also in a way consistent with a large portion of the religious and mystical traditions. (Did you know why Jesus requested people to have faith as a condition for performing healing? Now you have a theory to explain that. [disclaimer: I'm not remotely close to being a Christian])
I understand that some philosophers may feel content arguing whether we've made up all this and it's all in our imaginations (but not claim any predictions beyond accepted modern science), but it seems (to me at least) to defeat the whole purpose of the exercise if we're positing the universe is just a thought of our minds, and not even consider the possibility that we can imagine something other than what we are imagining right now.
Yes it sounds like quackery and the grossly simplified theories has holes in them, but that's why no self respecting person dares seriously bring up these topics (or let you fully into what they're actually trying to steer the topic towards)...
A lot of people connect idealism with psychic powers, and some even view that as counterargument against idealism. The basic idea seems to be this: (1) I have full control over the contents of my own mind, but very limited control over external reality; (2) but, if idealism is true, then external reality is part of my own mind, so I have full control over it too; (3) therefore, psychic/miraculous powers exist; (4) but, (3) is clearly false, therefore idealism must be false. People who want to believe in the psychic/paranormal/miraculous/etc stop the argument at (3), people who don't and are looking to use this as an anti-idealist argument go on to (4).
But, I think (1) is false. We actually have far less control over the contents of our own minds than many of us think we do. Anyone who has ever struggled with mental illness or addiction knows this fact very well. But, even for people who are thankfully unaffected by either: how much of our choices are truly "free", and how much are they predetermined by our genetics and by social/cultural influences? We don't know for sure, but probably a lot more than many people assume. And if (1) is false, the whole argument falls apart.
A lot of what you are saying seems to be rather adjacent to this line of argument. I don't agree that idealism makes the psychic/miraculous "more likely". I agree they are possible under idealism – but they are possible under materialism too. It may so happen that the laws of this universe, insofar as we know them, don't permit psychic powers or miracles – but, that's a consequence of what those laws happen to be, not of materialism in itself, and materialism could be just as true even with very different laws of physics which did permit psychic powers and miracles and magic and so forth.
Furthermore, the known laws of physics actually do permit all those things, with unimaginably low (but non-zero) probability – quantum tunnelling, quantum fluctuations, thermal fluctuations, etc, permit just about anything imaginable to happen (or at least appear to happen, in a way which nobody could distinguish from them actually happening), with unimaginably small yet still non-zero (and non-infinitesimal) probability. But, in a spatiotemporally infinite universe, any event with non-zero probability (however remote) will almost surely eventually happen, somewhere and somewhen, even an infinite number of times; indeed, in a spatially infinite universe, every non-zero probability event is almost surely happening somewhere right now, even an infinite number of times simultaneously – including your scenario. And people call idealism crazy–is materialism really any better? At least idealists can say "we have no reason to believe the universe actually exists beyond its observable limits", thereby avoiding the threat of a spatially infinite universe in which every possible event almost surely is happening somewhere right now – that way of avoiding the threat comes naturally to (some versions of) idealism, it is much more arbitrary for a materialist.
Interesting you bring probability up. Nobody knows where these probabilities come from -- we know how to calculate it and make predictions for sure, but we don't know where they fundamentally come from.
That said, even though you say materialism permits pretty much anything, the probabilities are supposed to be radically different. Materialism predicts that "Jesus" is practically impossible, and some versions of idealism suggests it is a dime a dozen. It seems reality is probably somewhere in between.
My personal theory is that the universe pretends as if it is materialistic by fudging with probabilities. (and also with limits of computations in the sense that if you can't practically solve a computation problem the answer may not actually exist in the same sense as observable limits you mentioned)
> Materialism predicts that "Jesus" is practically impossible,
That's not a prediction of materialism itself, that's a prediction of materialism combined with natural science as we know it. In some parallel universe (a popular speculation among contemporary physicists), for all we know, the laws of physics might have been sufficiently different to make "Jesus" "practically possible". Such a universe would have rather different laws of physics to those we observe here, but if materialism is right about the nature of this universe, it would be just as right about the nature of that one too.
And, I'm not sure if "Jesus is practically impossible" is even a prediction of natural science as we know it. I mean, of course, the odds of "Jesus" happening here-and-now by science alone are hyper-astronomically low–something I doubt any Christian would deny; but just make the universe/multiverse big enough, and the odds that "Jesus" happens sometime, some place, even right now, becomes arbitrarily close to 1. "Jesus" is happening "right now" some light years away (within a googolplex or so). If many worlds is true, there are many branches of the wave function in which "Jesus" really happened, about 2000 years ago, in the ancient Roman province of Judea, even if we have to say they are vastly outnumbered by those in which it didn't but people falsely believed it did. Given materialism, and certain assumptions about parallel universes, the central claims of Christianity actually are true, somewhere, even if not here. And, that's not true of Christianity, but of every other religion too. It isn't "impossible", given those assumptions it is almost certainly true; and it isn't clear what work "practically" is doing. Claims about what happened 2000 years ago aren't "practically" anything, and what difference does it make whether it really happened in this universe or in another one?
> and some versions of idealism suggests it is a dime a dozen.
Whether "Jesus" is impossible (just "practically" or even absolutely), or "a dime a dozen"–isn't in my view anything to do with materialism or idealism in itself. There are idealisms in which "Jesus" is impossible, and there are materialisms in which "Jesus" happens, even an infinite number of times, even an infinite number of times right now (and every other moment too).
That said, most idealisms don't really have anything to say about this issue either way.
My intuition is that the "evidence" (i.e. traditional ancient texts describing "magic") do not seem to permit relying on purely materialistic mechanisms, and most seem to require some kind of mind-fu to work.
I think otherwise I broadly agree with your observations.
> My intuition is that the "evidence" (i.e. traditional ancient texts describing "magic") do not seem to permit relying on purely materialistic mechanisms,
Contemporary debates about materialism-vs-dualism-vs-idealism originate in 17th and 18th century Europe. I wouldn't assume that ancient texts had any particular opinion on that debate, because they pre-existed that trichotomy.
It is true there are some ancient views which are seen as forerunners of modern materialism – the Cārvāka school in ancient India, the ancient Greek atomists. However, it may be a mistake to simply identify their views with modern materialism, since they arose in a very different context. In any event, many of these ancient and mediaeval religious/magical/etc texts ignored (or were ignorant of) those proto-materialist positions rather than condemning them, so I'm not sure why we should take those texts as taking any particular stance on them. For example, there is no evidence that the authors of the Christian Gospels were aware of the works of Leucippus, Democritus, Epicurus and Lucretius, so why should we interpret the Christian Gospels as contradicting them. I do know that some later Jewish and Christian sources did attack the Greek atomist tradition, but most of those attacks was focused on their (effective) atheism and positions on moral issues, rather than their "materialism" per se.
> and most seem to require some kind of mind-fu to work.
"Mind-fu" is not incompatible with materialism. Maybe, on some distant planet, there is a humanoid species who communicate telepathically via radio waves. Maybe, they even exhibit some form of psychokinetic powers, through a biological ability to manipulate magnetism or (anti-)gravity or some undiscovered physical force. Even if that isn't permitted by physics as we know it, maybe there is some physics we don't know that does permit it. Even if that isn't permitted by the physics of this universe (known or unknown), maybe there is some parallel universe with different physics that does permit it. If the materialists are right and this universe is indeed "material", why wouldn't that other universe equally be so?
1, solipsism, has the advantage that there is a solid argument to be made for it - I only have direct access to my own mind. That is why I am calling it coherent.
The other flavors don't have this advantage at all. It is impossible to trust my senses to arrive at the conclusion that other minds exist without first trusting them that they are correlated with features of a non-mind physical world. So, you can't use sense-based observations to claim that the world is made up of many minds.
Even in something like Hinduism, which could be called a form of idealism at a large stretch, the physical world exists as a shared mirage that our minds are made to experience, maya, but the true world is still a single thing, Brahman. And their claim is that this can be directly experienced by you through self reflection - so if we call it idealism, it's still a form of solipsism ultimately, albeit more interesting than I would normally give this credit for.
> 1, solipsism, has the advantage that there is a solid argument to be made for it - I only have direct access to my own mind. That is why I am calling it coherent.
In saying that, you are assuming certain standards for judging whether an argument is "solid". How do you justify those standards? Many would answer that they are axiomatic. But, if our standards for judging arguments are ultimately axiomatic, why can't the existence of other minds be axiomatic too?
By Münchhausen's trilemma, all arguments are ultimately reducible either to circularity, infinite regress, or dogma. Choose your poison, but I think dogma is least the poisonous of the three. I suppose that's another one of my axioms.
Of course, argument by axiom is sometimes very non-convincing – it can be used to defend any position whatsoever. However, most would agree that there is a big difference between defending as an axiom "1+1=2", versus papal infallibility, or the uncreatedness of the Quran, or whatever. The question is, is the axiom "other minds exist" more like the former kind of axiom or more like the latter? Surely, more like the former.
> The other flavors don't have this advantage at all. It is impossible to trust my senses to arrive at the conclusion that other minds exist without first trusting them that they are correlated with features of a non-mind physical world. So, you can't use sense-based observations to claim that the world is made up of many minds.
You can't use sense-based observations to make metaphysical claims–and materialism is just as much a metaphysical claim as idealism or dualism are. There is no possible experiment or observation that could distinguish materialism from idealism, and any possible sense data is equally explainable under other theory.
> And their claim is that this can be directly experienced by you through self reflection - so if we call it idealism, it's still a form of solipsism ultimately, albeit more interesting than I would normally give this credit for.
That Hindu position is arguably closer to my options (3) (open individualism) or (4) (pan(en)theism) than to classical solipsism (my option 1).
In classical solipsism, my mind is truly real, but yours isn't. In the Upanishads, both our minds are equally real (as Brahman), and equally unreal (as maya and karma); in their equal reality they are identical to each other, in their equal unreality they are distinct
Thank you. It's really mind boggling how many people miss _this_ especially in scientism echo chambers. My knowledge about myself (consciousness, free will...), is infinitely more reliable than any of "Scientific" input no matter what is the "impact factor" of the publishing medium, so really no amount of "science" can be enough to disprove those very basic principles that everything else is built upon them.
I think individual self-knowledge is often flawed. There are many strange, damaged, malfunctioning, drunk, medicated, hallucinating, meditating, dreaming and variously other disturbed minds, which have objectively flawed impressions of themselves and their surroundings.
Their doctors, or even a casual observer, will have much more concrete objective knowledge of their state of mind than the subjects themselves.
What you're saying does not contradict what I'm saying. The thing you're describing works on a much higher level than what I was describing, for example in this case the doctor needs to fulfill at least the following requirements (from his own point of view):
1- He's independent agent who's watching and describing another independent agent in a real objective world
2- He acknowledge that there is cause/effect in principal (that's why they can deduce that there are flaws in the patient mind just based on external behaviour)
3- The doctor is trusting that he's not himself hallucinating, and that he's indeed see'ing real things and he's not just a programmed robot doing some random job.
and so on.
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As you can see I was talking about very basic level, it's the level that allow you to build another more complex level of information, and which any other information is necessarily less reliable than it. Because trusting that I'm independent agent who exists in an objective world along another independent agents is a necessary Premise to accept any external information provided by those other agents, and any information provided by those agents that contradicts this basic experience it also destroys any reliability in the objectivity and correctness of their existence for me and any input provided by them. Hence, any "scientific" paper that contradicts my direct experience about myself (e.g Free will) is necessarily less reliable than said experience no matter what is the impact factor of the journal.
Most of what you you say is credible. But it comes down to a personal choice about the balance of probabilities for where objective knowledge really resides.
I do not trust myself, as one flawed, idiosyncratic and individual brain.
I am more likely to trust the established objective view of other consciousnesses. The scientific method is (should be) a collective network of communicating, iterating, self-correcting consciousnesses, which operates according to robust rules and procedures established (evolved) by previous generations of collaborating consciousnesses. Of course, it is also flawed, but over long periods of time, it usually gets better answers than the intuition of individuals.
If I think I can drive, but I am drunk, and a good friend tells me I'm drunk and I should not drive, then I should believe them, not me.
If I think I have some medical symptoms, I tell a doctor. However, an individual doctor can be corrupted by mis-education, ignorance, their own psychological issues, or their own financial gains for various treatments. So I ask multiple doctors, but they may have a consistent bias. But if I don't trust any rational explanation of my symptoms, then yet another doctor may diagnose shape-shifting hypochondria or paranoia against doctors. Who to believe? It's not obvious, but it's not obviously me over all others.
Still, even in your case if you slowly strip down the layers of your analysis, you will notice that it necessarily boils down to few things that you know directly and you can't build a proof for them because any other proof will be build on them being correct.
Look, there are things that you know are correct and you can't make a proof for them (even the "I think therefore I am" is a circular reasoning, the real info is in "I" itself), and in your case you believe a lot of things about yourself and world you live in before you can really start to depend on the higher order conclusions that allow you to trust your friend or your doctors.
It takes a 3rd party, someone outside the situation, and possibly some time after the fact, to decide what most approximates objective truth.
I don't trust myself here and now, I could be drunk or deluded, or vain, or biased, or self-obsessed (most people seem to be that way).
I don't trust my doctors, they could be under-educated, or self-interested to overtreat me, or publish more papers on anti-doctor paranoia, and self-obsessed (most people are that way).
I only trust some averaged, collective, rational, longer-term, reflective, investigative, independent, reviewed, challenged, criticized and doubted process to get closer to truth.
> I only trust some averaged, collective, rational, longer-term, reflective, investigative, independent, reviewed, challenged, criticized and doubted process to get closer to truth.
We're probably repeating ourselves, but this averaged process still has the same bottleneck which is your direct experience and your trust that your experience is true and contradictions are impossible indeed etc... You'll never run from this bottleneck no matter how you put this process.
I'm not debating wether we should trust the scientific process, I'm just saying to reach this stage there are lot of premises that should be established and thus the scientific process can't dispute them otherwise it will be killing it's own credibility at the same time.
Again, if I was delusional about my direct experience, then who can say then 1 + 1 really equal 2? No one can know.
With regard to Free Will, there is a little intellectual dodge called the Compatibilist solution (popularized by Dennett), which says you really feel like you have free will, but you do not. Also see Sam Harris and Robert Sapolsky on the topic (but note Dennett strongly disagrees with Harris, he has no choice, it could not be otherwise :)
The feeling of Free Will is bootstrapped from making decisions in a complex world. The subconscious makes most decisions automatically, based on left-brain exploitation of the current situation for survival. The timescales are too short for slow consideration to have an evolutionary advantage. Any imprinting of this instant behavior is made by stress hormones, which enhance memory retention for unusual or extreme situations.
However, the right brain is tasked with fitting actions into a wider context of long-term survival. It can run what-if scenarios, imagine different courses of action, and different outcomes. Its view of an action is always in the belief that something could be different next time, so something could be different last time - I could have done something else. But this is false, the left-brain was in control, and the right brain just provides post hoc rationalizations for those forced actions.
So, approximately, Free Will is the story the right brain tells itself after the left-brain already made the decision.
For more on the split brain aspect of this, see McGilchrist, The Master and His Emissary and The Matter With Things.
Dennett... I don't think that guy can be called a real philosopher, but at least he's not just random "Journalist" like Sam harris is :)
Again, my direct experience of free will is much stronger than any of the half ass explanations these guys have to offer (and they're obviously much more flawed, you can clearly notice the ideological motives they have in relation to these topics).
My problem with this "explanation" (you feel that you have free will but you don't, it's just a story) is that it just pushes the issue one step further, I mean just think about it, who feels this exactly? They're assuming there is another "agent" within me that have the consciousness and it's being told stories and it accepts them, and this agent can understand that and it feel it can decide another choices, so it can decide? so it means it have some type of free will or the ability to understand different choices? even if in reality it can't execute them? (similar to paralyzed people?).
Anyway, if we want to open the can of worms of telling other people you're just delusional, then maybe the real world doesn't exist? and maybe logic is not real? and scientific method is not scientific? When I was much younger, I used to imagine that I live in a huge magical theater and that everything is being rendered for me, so maybe after all I'm the only real person in existence?
I've never heard a credible explanation of free will or what someone means by that. Can you offer a description of what free will means, within known science?
I think it through several layers. At a personality layer most of the time you make decisions that are consistent with your personality. But occasionally you do something out of character.
At a lower level, a mind logic level, your mind / brain makes decisions based on weights. Should I have a coffee now - do I want one, do I enjoy it, am I trying to avoid caffeine because I felt a bit fuzzy yesterday etc. The bigger the decision the more weights go into it, but if you re-ran the same mind with the same weights then it makes the same decision every time, and if it didn't then er why? So where is the freedom there? To make a free choice at this level is to make a choice inconsistent with the experience + inputs of the mind.
Then at the lowest level, the brain is processes in the physical universe. Quantum probabilistic effects, as I understand it, don't have much effect on outcomes. And where they do, it's not like your brain controls that, it just happens. We have a physical state, time goes forward and we have a new state. And that's all there is, no concept of will, free or otherwise.
And you know, I think it's perfectly fine to feel like you have free will and not consider it often. Live your life as if you do. It's only if you focus on it that you can be like "ah, probably not then" but does it matter?
Sorry, but your position is consistent with the mainstream scientism:
"I have no explanation for X based on materialistic point of view, so either it doesn't exist or let's reduce the phenomena to fit our taste".
My point was, even if we don't know what is the deep explanation of the phenomena, my own experience is infinitely more credible than any other "scientific" stories I might hear, because to deny my own experience opens the door to deny other things including logic and everything I know and my own senses.
Also note that free will does not in any way assume that our decisions or actions are without cause, after all from religious point of view, everything in existence is caused ultimately by God. Even one can argue, that saying that free will is not based on causes, actually means free will is impossible, because that mean our will is based on true randomness which doesn't sound "free" much.
Dan Dennett is a professional philosopher. He is Professor of Philosophy at Tufts University, and has written several books, including Consciousness Explained.
Sam Harris is not a random scare-quoted "journalist".
He is a writer and podcaster, who has a B.A. in philosophy from Stanford, a Ph.D. in neuroscience from UCLA, and long experience with both meditation and psychedelics, which makes him rather well qualified to comment on the topics of free will and consciousness. Even if you disagree with him.
No, it doesn't, in my very humble opinion. I know Sam harris (and Dennett) and I'm aware of his Ph.D in neuroscience, and when I put a quotation, I meant he's not really a topic expert on this or anything else based the depth of the content he provide as it makes him more like a Journalist with clear agenda, I wasn't talking about his academic credentials. I wonder why he's so hyped in certain circles though.
Actually this is backward, "I think therefore I am". There's no reason to believe consciousness is a state arising from a physical process, our experience of consciousness precedes our experience of sensory input and therefore the physical world.
There is more evidence for the reality of consciousness than there is for the physical world, in fact we know for a fact that our understanding of the physical world is aberrational.
edit: evidently alot of empiricists aren't very happy with this comment hahaha