Joy
Posts: 188
Joined: Sep. 2007
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Alan Fox:
| Quote | | random= not predictable? |
That's what I'm suspecting. In the matter of conscious [free] will, I don't think it's valid.
In Richard's link [above] to the post on ScienceBlog, the author identifies the "real question" as being the identity of the agent. S/he then characterizes the position of the 'no free will' advocates as necessitating an external causal agent. Whereas a free will advocate would presume the agent is internal - the person who decided to move the highlighter across Richard's desk.
Just because a team of sci-spies couldn't predict Richard moving the highlighter across the desk, it doesn't mean his decision or action was 'random'. He moved it because he wanted to move it.
It's not the least bit farfetched that my consciousness is the agent of my thoughts and actions. Sure, those thoughts and actions may be in response to something I see, hear, taste, feel or smell (sensory data about exterior things, which my brain processes and analyzes), but that doesn't mean my responses are deterministically caused by the sensory data. I am under no obligation to think about or act on any incoming sensory data. I could as easily decide to act or not act about something I think up entirely de novo that is not based on processed sensory data from the outside. IOW, I could be writing a sci-fi novel or a letter to my mother or...
I can't figure out why anyone would want to deny the existence of consciousness and/or free will, as these things are self-evident even if science can't quantify them precisely. Maybe someday it will, but that won't make people's decisions more deterministic. That the sun appears in the east every morning, crosses the sky, and sets in the west before a similarly extended period of darkness ensues are self-evident facts. Humans - and scientists - have never attempted to assert that these self-evident facts aren't 'real' or don't actually exist, they've just come up with a number of explanations over the millennia to account for them.
But now, when the scientific project to quantify the nature and mechanisms of consciousness is taking off, we get a whole school of self-designated 'experts' trying to deny the existence of the self-evident phenomenon being investigated! Why?
The author frames it thusly:
| Quote | | Nothing we know about physics or chemistry allows for causes to be internal to a person in the sense that we mean when we say "free will". This makes many people feel that free will can only exist if there is a non-corporeal mind operating outside the constraints of physics." |
It looks to me like it's the nay-sayers (Dennett, et al.) who are convinced that "free will" necessitates an outside consciousness as puppeteer. And they're so frightened of that [erroneous, IMO] conclusion that they're prepared to deny the existence of mind, consciousness and free will altogether. Yet by their own admission they've no minds, consciousness or free will to work with, why should anybody who does have mind, consciousness and will believe them?
Talk about 'Woo'!!!
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