[mikhailfranco]

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.

[aiProgMach]

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.

--

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.

[mikhailfranco]

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.

[aiProgMach]

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.

[mikhailfranco]

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.

[aiProgMach]

> 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.

[mikhailfranco]

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 :)

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/compatibilism/

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.

[mikhailfranco]

Right on cue, here is a podcast interview with Michael Shermer (Skeptic Magazine):

Dan Dennett Looks Back on his Career

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tm6nDmpnmEU

[aiProgMach]

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?

[jemmyw]

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?

[aiProgMach]

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.

[mikhailfranco]

Dan Dennett is a professional philosopher. He is Professor of Philosophy at Tufts University, and has written several books, including Consciousness Explained.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Dennett

[mikhailfranco]

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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Harris

[aiProgMach]

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.