[RaftPeople]

> Panpsychism requires that the universe updates its state by conscious choice, which we already know happens

Can you clarify what we "already know happens"?

Even for humans, it's not clear that "conscious choice" exists and causes changes in state, because we don't know what the mechanism is that can cause a state change other than state at time T-1.

[odyssey7]

Starting from evolution as the cause for the fact that our physical bodies present sensation to our awareness, I have to assume there’s a reason for that to happen.

The obvious answer is that pleasure, pain, ideas, memories, etc. all exist to drive the behaviors that are advantageous in evolution.

It’s possible that there’s a deterministic set of gears in how sensation drives behavior, but the role of experience in driving physical action would be at least one of those components.

So if we take evolution as the cause of life as we understand it, then consciousness is at least a component of physics itself.

[peddamat]

Isn't it assumed that everything is deterministic apart from what is done by the somewhat magical, "free will"?

[digging]

No - quantum uncertainty gives us the assumption that everything is fundamentally random and nothing is deterministic, unless we assume a meta-determinism (or superdeterminism) whereby fundamentally random outcomes are actually predetermined.

How does that relate with the experience of decision making? That's a complete unknown. But the simplest explanation is that free will is simple, once we define it as "the experience of making a decision" instead of the traditional, nonsensical definition of "the act of making a decision that is fundamentally independent from prior events". Usually free will is framed as "choice vs slavery", which is a useless definition because choices can't be made in a vacuum.

In other words, of course we have free will: We feel like we have free will, and free will is simply the feeling of having free will. Conscious decisions (if those even exist!) are physical processes just like everything else in the universe.

[peddamat]

It's very confusing how a relativity works in a non-deterministic world. Brian Greene's illustration of how relativity "slices the loaf" in the Fabric of the Cosmos (https://youtu.be/8Y-JmocB84Y?t=1334) makes it very difficult for me to understand how things work if reality is indeed non-deterministic.

Unless reality is more like Everything Everywhere All At Once, i.e., the Everett many loafs model.

[JohnAaronNelson]

I’m reading the book “determined” right now. It’s pretty good and sums up all the arguments very nicely.

And of course we don’t have free will. We have experience, which fools us into thinking we are in control.

[digging]

> And of course we don’t have free will. We have experience, which fools us into thinking we are in control.

Not sure if you're disagreeing with me, or if you didn't grasp my comment. The quote above is meaningless without defining what free will is and how it can possibly mean anything other than "the experience of decision making".

Decision-making is something that a fully deterministic, non-conscious machine can do. (A motion detector performs decision making based on light input.) Decision-making does not require consciousness. Consciousness is what grants us the ability to experience and reflect on our decision making. It is fair to call that phenomenon "free will."

Defining "free will" as "the ability to make a decision not influenced by our state and inputs (including sensation, memory, etc.)" makes no sense. Decisions are fundamentally dependent on state and inputs*. Any definition of "free will" which ignores that is useless.

[mensetmanusman]

Would need an explanation of why the universe is destined to result in an illusion.

[mistermann]

Indirect Realism as a consequence of evolution + lack of distribution of this knowledge (causing it to be phenomenologically experienced as Direct Realism) as a consequence of culture.

[mensetmanusman]

The world would look a lot different if everything was random. Ever seen noise on a TV?

[digging]

Quantum properties are randomly determined from a set of possible outcomes. (e.g if you measure "up vs down" you will never get "left", but it's physically impossible to know if it will be "up" or "down" until measurement.)

They also happen in context, not in a vacuum. Whether or not I make another cup of coffee might come down to fundamentally random quantum events, but that doesn't mean there's any chance I get up and brew a cup of steamy elephant piss because I don't have any on hand.

[interstice]

If by assumed you mean hotly debated, yes

[BurningFrog]

Not since we were forced to accept quantum physics.