[smcphile]

> “Quantum mechanics disproves determinism and therefore disproves free-will-skepticism” is an asinine argument ...

I agree, it doesn't disprove determinism. If someone argues that it does, they're mistaken.

> The real reason free will doesn’t exist is not to do with determinism, but the fact that you don’t exist. You’re a collection of cells that, regardless of whether they behave deterministically or randomly, are out of your control.

I don't believe the assertions you're making here have been proved either.

I'm not an expert by any means, I've just another layman who's been following the "mind body problem" for a while from the peanut gallery.

I tend to agree with David Chalmers's arguments that there's a "hard problem of consciousness".

I know that other philosophers, such as Daniel Dennett, don't agree that this hard problem exists. I've read some of Dennett's books, but I'm not convinced that he's right on this point. I wasn't convinced by "Consciousness Explained", for example.

So, to sum up, I don't believe anyone really knows yet how mind and consciousness work, it's too early to say.

[ravenide]

The problem I have with relating consciousness to free will is that consciousness seems to me to be about experiencing your thoughts, not controlling or exerting them. Sentience has a subjective quality to it, but it’s not clear it has any power. Imagine a machine that could control your neurons and manipulate your thoughts. I imagine you’d still experience those thoughts as a conscious person, and even experience the feeling of ‘having’ those thoughts, even though the thoughts are being selected for you.

My view is that the universe is a big movie. Consciousness is just a lens through which you get to watch the movie. But the movie script is already written, or being generated by mechanisms out of your control. You just get the immersive experience of the “feeling” of being one of the characters, including the feeling of making each decision—which are being/have been made for you.

[simondw]

On the other hand, the fact that we're talking about subjective experience means that one of these must be true:

1) it doesn't exist, but our brains are thinking and talking about it

2) it exists, but it's overdetermined: it just so happens that your brain starts thinking and talking about it while it also exists

3) it exists as a phenomenon in the physical world, able to affect other physical things

[smcphile]

> Sentience has a subjective quality to it, but it’s not clear it has any power.

As I said, I don’t know. I agree it’s not clear.

The first book I read on the subject, many years ago, was “Body and Mind”, by Keith Campbell. The book outlines various positions taken on the mind problem. I still have the book. Your position appears to be a version of epiphenominalism.

I found the book helpful as a short overview of the subject. For example, in chapter two the book describes the mind-body problem as four propositions that form an inconsistent tetrad. Any three are mutually consistent and can all be true. But any three together imply that the fourth is false.

The four propositions are: (1) The human body is a material thing. (2) The human mind is a spiritual thing. (3) Mind and body interact. (4) Spirit and matter do not interact.

The author describes a “spiritual object” as “one that does not have all the qualities of matter; it lacks at least some of: mass, volume, velocity, solidity”. (Some qualities of matter are allowed, just not all.)

[Emma_Goldman]

I am very suspicious of the ordinary formulation of the 'hard problem of consciousness'.

What is the relevant quality being distinguished between the description or explanation of the physical processes that correlate to certain mental states and behaviours, on the one hand, and the description and explanation of the conscious first-person experience of phenomenal states, on the other? Usually when people distinguish the two in order to suggest that the first is 'easy' and the second 'hard', they beg the question and build their conclusion into their premise.

If you assume from the beginning that the first is subject to the normal canons of empirical investigation as to how the physical world operates, and the second isn't, then of course they will appear as 'easy' and 'hard'. But the obvious physicalist response is that consciousness has evolved as an efficient information-processing device in in the course of evolution and so that it is, really, understandable through the empirical investigation of the empirical world.

Too much is made of the idea of 'objective facts' and 'subjective experience'. It causes so much linguistic confusion.

[smcphile]

> Too much is made of the idea of 'objective facts' and 'subjective experience'. It causes so much linguistic confusion.

I disagree on this point. When we think of matter, in terms of physics or chemistry, we think of matter as having certain qualities, such as mass, volume, velocity, etc. However subjective experience doesn’t seem, at least on the surface, to share those qualities.

Can the existence of subjective experience be explained using only the qualities currently associated with matter, as understood in today’s physics? It doesn’t seem so.

So it seems to me that the fact that subjective experience exists is a hint that our current models are incomplete and need revising.

How exactly do they need revising? No idea whatsoever.

[raxxorrax]

I agree that the qualifier of hard and easy is arbitrary, but think there are at least as much premises build into qualifiers like free or will for that matter.

If the original comment suggests that the self is an abstraction, my will is always going to interact with other abstractions as well. To the qualifier free is only applicable on that layer.

> But the obvious physicalist response is that consciousness has evolved as an efficient information-processing device

Pretty lazy from physicists really. Maybe they cannot help themselves indeed.

But why an information-processing device and not a free actor? Why so minimal in the conclusion?

> subjective experience

Agreed if subjective facts may just be inexplicable facts.

[smcphile]

> But the obvious physicalist response is that consciousness has evolved as an efficient information-processing device in in the course of evolution and so that it is, really, understandable through the empirical investigation of the empirical world.

What I don’t understand here is how consciousness can both 1) have survival value and thus be passed on through evolution and 2) be an epiphenomenon that has no influence whatsoever on the physical world.

I suppose both statements could be true, but only if a very non-intuitive definition of consciousness is used, and that seems to me to be also begging the question.

Update: fixed a typo

[Emma_Goldman]

I don't know if that is a helpful way of constructing the issue; it certainly isn't a neutral one. If you are a physicalist (which I'm not) consciousness is not an epiphenomenon with no influence on the physical world, but a component of the physical world which takes part in and influences the physical world.

All I am arguing this that the normal formulation of the hard problem of consciousness begs the question. It is obviously the case that a converse statement could beg the question in the opposite direction. I am myself agnostic on the question of consciousness because we have so little knowledge of the issue. A lot of philosophy in this area is interesting, and fun to think about, but more often than not it is speculative and linguistic in character.

[smcphile]

> I don't know if that is a helpful way of constructing the issue; it certainly isn't a neutral one.

Reading what I wrote again, I agree that it could have been expressed better. Sorry about that.

> If you are a physicalist (which I'm not) consciousness is not an epiphenomenon with no influence on the physical world, but a component of the physical world which takes part in and influences the physical world.

Ok. If I try to look at it from the physicalist's point of view, I have trouble understanding how the subjective side of consciousness is explained. It seems to me to be just ignored or waved away.

Why couldn't the functions of consciousness in influencing the world exist without subjectively experienced consciousness? What evolutionary value does this subjectively experienced consciousness have (as seen from a physicalist point of view)?

> All I am arguing this that the normal formulation of the hard problem of consciousness begs the question.

You're not necessarily wrong, it depends on what exactly is meant by begging the question.

What you wrote was:

> What is the relevant quality being distinguished between the description or explanation of the physical processes that correlate to certain mental states and behaviours, on the one hand, and the description and explanation of the conscious first-person experience of phenomenal states, on the other? <

Intuitively it seems to me that there is a difference of quality, even if I'm incapable of describing exactly what that difference is. I can't even imagine how one would go about explaining the difference in quality to the satisfaction of everyone.

This doesn't bother me too much though, because, put perhaps too briefly, philosophy is not science and logical arguments are not mathematical logic.

However, I can also see how someone could see not answering your question as begging the question.

> I am myself agnostic on the question of consciousness because we have so little knowledge of the issue. A lot of philosophy in this area is interesting, and fun to think about, but more often than not it is speculative and linguistic in character.

My way of thinking is perhaps not so different.

I think of philosophy as being constrained by science, in that you don't want philosophy to contradict well established scientific facts, but as being otherwise freer than science to explore how the world might work. I also think of philosophy as having a role in dealing with questions that are largely outside the domain of science (beauty, ethics, etc.), but which can still sometimes be informed by science.