You'll agree that we DO NOT have a free will?

I can't believe that the biological structure that I seem to own drove me to write this and I had no choice in it.

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

Hi, I am in a discord server dedicated to discussing philosophy. The community is diverse — the point of the chat is be an environment conducive to intellectual growth and enrichment for our members with an emphasis on exchanging ideas in good faith. Anyone who studies Philosophy on an academic level are welcome, autodidacts are welcome. We would love for people here to join and share their ideas, to help in creating a space with even better discussion. I hope I'm not breaking any rules of the group by posting this as this is relevant to Philosophy.

Take a look if it sounds interesting: https://discord.gg/5pc3vBpysZ

What is Discord? It's a chat-based Platform like Skype, Telegram, etc.

https://philomatics.blogspot.com/2022/01/can-machines-become-conscious-like-us.html

https://youtu.be/tDGmTlqpVVQ

Jerry Fodor takes Dennett to be an instrumentalist about all propositional attitudes, does that sound right to you guys?

I’ve read Dennett more so as a realist about them in some cases and an instrumentalist in others. So like, humans have propositional attitudes and thermostats don’t. But if we take the “intentional stance” towards thermometers they have instrumental “attitudes” that help explain their function.

It’s possible i’ve misunderstood Dennett or just not read enough of his higher level work on this yet so wanted some further comments.

- William Jaworski's 'Hylomorphism and mental causation'

- Christopher Shields' 'Hylomorphic mental causation'.

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thanks

I was discussing philosophy of mind with someone earlier (this was in connection to Arthur Schopenhauer, Rationalism vs Empricism etc) and there referred to themselves as a dual aspect idealist. What exactly is this view and model of the mind/consciousness and does it make sense? Where can I read up more on this position? It seems to be a mixture of dual-aspect monism and idealism, but can these two positions actually be synthesised?

‘If the mind is strictly physical, there is no room for free will.’

Why might we think that behaviorism leaves no room for free will? My professor instructed me to argue either that (1) it actually can accommodate free will (and how) or (2) even if it cannot accommodate free will, this is not an important objection to the theory.

Any comments, suggestions, or helpful resources to help me answer this prompt would be incredibly appreciated!

A typical definition of qualia goes something like this:

“Qualia are the way things are, or in other words, the “raw feels” or the “qualitative character of experience”

Dennett, Daniel C. “Quining qualia.” Consciousness in modern science. Oxford University Press, 1988. From :Being and Subjectivity

Dennett denies that qualia exist, an argument that only serious philosophers could proffer. The problem is that seeing is different from hearing which is different from tasting etc. The differences are in the qualia associated with each type of experience. The problem of qualia can not be denied, and the first part of the problem is to explain why there are qualia at all. We consider this question here. The short answer is that we don’t have qualia, we are qualia in the process of experience.

1.Sensations are not something we have-They are something we are.

One off the problems associated with understanding sensory experience is the peculiar language sometimes used in describing the general phenomenon. We sometimes talk talk about “having” sensations as though the experience is some how different or distinguishable from the entity that is having the experience. But sensations are really transient processes, they do not exist independent of these processes. There is nothing to be “had” except for the process.

2. Sensory experience has two aspects or components - qualia and information. Information is what determines the response -if any-of the system that is undergoing the experience. The system does nothing with the qualia, they are simply there. They are of no use for the system, at least not for biological systems. The question is then: Why are there qualia?

3, Neural systems use line labeled information streams to function. The information that is determining the system’s operation is a matter largely of the particular lines, i.e .neural fibers that are active. (This mostly because the input and output are hard wired- you have to hit the required ‘wire” to activate the specific muscles required for the response. The situation on the input side is more complicated but seems to resolve into a similar condition once initial processing is done. We must also allow for the significance of the amplitude of the neural activity as well in some cases however, i.e .amplitude may serve as information.)

4. Qualia do not generate labeled lines, these are the output of the transduction processing that occur at the beginning of the sensory experience. Qualia are not part of the process of recognizing what’s out there. This is determined by internal neural activity. Why then are they part of the phenomenon of sensory experience? Why do they exist at all? The answer we should suspect lies with the original realization that a sensation is a process that a sentient being undergoes and that part of the process is the transduction of exterior influences into useful information. Qualia are transduction processes that exist as part the process of experience (but they are not the output) and thus as part of the system which is having the experience. And because they are transduction processes dependent on the external world, with its many different causal influences, they can be and are different from one another, which is something that gets a little hard to explain once we get inside the nervous system.

This began with a question about consciousness.

If time were in reverse, would we know it?

Played forward, we die believing time moves forward.

Played in reverse, we begin to live (un-die) believing time moves forward, and we continue to believe this until we dissolve in the womb.

Our entire lives, in a universe in which time flows backwards, we would believe that time flows forward.

This leads to the question, is time flowing backwards right now? And another: is it possible to know that this isn't the case?

Consider if the following were true:

All time exists simultaneously.

The present moment is shaped by our consciousness, which remembers the past and cannot see or "remember" the future.

Each present is unique, encoded by it's specific past.

Significantly, we distinguish the present from the past by our memory of the past's future, a knowledge which is hidden from the past.

It's significance makes it relevant, and it's relevance defines the unique sensation of presence.

If we could remember the future, the present (specifically it's sensation) would therefore cease to exist.

Without distinction from the past, the present would lose it's significance, and thus it's relevance, and thus it's unique sensation. We would cease to feel time at all.

And now, a question about entropy.

The second law of thermodynamics:

All organized systems tend toward disorganization.

But could it be simultaneously true that all disorganized systems tend toward self-organization?

If you reverse entropy, time, as we entropics know it, would appear to flow backwards. Knowledge would be mirrored and so too the knowledge that we live in a physical reality defined by the existence and truth of the second law.

My main question follows:

Could it be that we are in a constant state of forgetting the future BECAUSE of self-organizing systems' ("reverse entropy's" affect on consciousness)?

And then the question: Why would this be the case?

We have disciplines like neuroscience but why we still need philosophy of mind? What are some of its functions? Is it really functional? if it is, why?

In a footnote in *Concepts* [1998], p. 72, Fodor says that

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...since lawful relations can presumably hold among properties that are, de facto, uninstantiated, the metaphysical conditions for content can in principle be met entirely counterfactually.

Does this imply that we can have thoughts about DOG without ever having been in close contact with any exemplars of canis familiaris? I get that the causal connections at stake are not necessarily perceptual in the narrow sense (he explicitly says we and Helen Keller have the same concept of DOG), but the reference to counterfactual satisfaction of possession conditions for concepts really throws me off.

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The prevailing view of many scientists in consciousness(eg Penrose, Mark Bishop etc) it that consciousness cannot be expressed computationally, due to things like Godel's incompleteness theorem, Chinese room argument, isomorphism of a rock and other automatons etc. Even if those arguments can be refuted please assume for the sake of argument that consciousness in fact is incomputable. Now a universal Turing machine can generate anything within physical reality(this might rather obscure but David Deutsch argues in favour of it). If that is the case then we can simulate a physical brain on a computer and thus simulate consciousness on a computer. Could someone please resolve this? Does the first premise disprove the second? What's happening here ?

Just asked a friend for more details in case I was misrepresenting Bernardo Kastrup. They said:

"I would say that the difference between Kastrup and Berkeley is that Berkeley is an empiricist and stresses that to exist things have to be percieved as if by an observer, for Bernardo the existence of reality is secured regardless of human-like 2nd person observers because reality knows itself intrinsically (first person) as 'the Will' - this is the same as Schopenhauer's view. So God need not be metacognitive for Kastrup, God might as well be an unconscious force driving the world blindly, like Schopenhauer's 'Will' or Freud's 'libido.'"

Question: what is the term for the idea that all consciousness is actually a single non-local experience?? That is, all qualia only appears divided in space and time, but there is actually one mote of consciousness which uses the illusion of plurality and separation in order to experience itself in diverse forms.

Kind of like John Wheeler’s “one-electron universe,” if you’ve heard of that, but applied to consciousness, or like the assumption of reincarnation but not just applying to consecutive reincarnation in past and future lives across time, but also reincarnation that experiences itself across space and so my “past lives” can include the lives of all beings who exist in the present, at the same time as me, though separated by space.

I call this “universal consciousness,” because it says that all consciousness in the univirse is a single entity, but I’m really curious if there’s another established name for this in philosophy or religious terminology?

I always had some difficulty grasping one widely used definition of consciousness, by Thomas Nagel, in "What is it like to be a bat?", used also by David Chalmers and many others. According to it, there is consciousness in somebody if there is something that feels like to be that somebody. I understand that it refers to the subjective point of view. But this sounds a little vague to me. According to this definition, is consciousness the same thing as the subject of experiences? If that's the case, then it is the same thing as what we call the "I".

Another question is why emphasize that this consciousness is bound by the particular senses of the subject? I understand that he uses the example of the bat because the subjective experience of this animal would be completely different from ours, we could never know how that is. So, is he saying that this uniqueness of each point of view is the defining characteristic of consciousness? If that's the case, then consciousness would be inseparable from the senses and the type of brain.

Another reason I have trouble with this definition is because when I think "how does it feel to be me?", the answer is something like "it feels good, sometimes not so good etc". So how this connects with consciousness? Is it that I have this unique point of view and set of experiences that makes me feel this way about being me, and this uniqueness is the defining characteristic of my consciousness? For me it doesn't make much sense, because then consciousness is dependent on memories and my set of faculties.

What am I getting wrong about this definition?

Thank you!

https://link.medium.com/vb4fVvXYFfb

https://link.medium.com/vb4fVvXYFfb

Would the mind being distinct and not identical to brain states directly result in the possibility of mind existing independently of the brain making emotional states and certain assumed brain states i.e schizophrenia , psychosis etc to have non materialistic causes ?

You often know what topic you will continue thinking about and you know why you go off topic when something related to another topic emerges in your thinking about the original topic. You’re constantly deciding what you want to think about when non-mental things aren’t distracting you or holding your focus. You know things that you want to and/or have to get done during your day, and you decide when to think about those things. People often like to analyze their daily experiences when it comes to things that brought about certain emotions/etc.. You don’t need to confirm your own existence to know that you exist. Knowing something doesn’t always require thinking. Babies know that they don’t like being alone and they don’t need to think to know that. “Wanting” and “desires” are based on our own conclusions/experiences. Experience plays a major role in why we have any slightest hint of understanding of why we “want”/“desire” something even when we were babies.

The brain produces thoughts based directly on our experiences/desires/likes/feelings/emotions and on what we experience with our senses. Those thoughts are our unique perspective of how we percieve and interpret reality. What is a mental norm for one may not be another’s mental norm. We understand our thoughts better than anyone else can, we know what we are trying to express/do even without having to rehearse it. The brain produces thoughts without us knowing why we can will it to do so, much like we can move our limbs without us knowing why we can will it to do so. Willing includes intentional reaction and we sometimes confuse intentional reaction with unintentional reaction. An example of an unintentional reaction is when a doctor uses that little hammer to hit a certain part of your knee/leg when you’re seated and it makes your leg kick up. One’s feelings is up to oneself, one can be sensitive and become tougher because one realizes that one’s expectations weren’t realistic. Trust often plays a major role in one’s expectations and feelings, which has everything to do with experience. Feelings are heavily based on likes and dislikes as well. These shape preferences that are unique to every individual. Most of those preferences are known by one without one having to calculate what one’s preferences are.

One’s intentions are based on experience, likes, and dislikes. One’s original creations are based on choices made from learning from experience. Experience happens whether one has free will or doesn’t have free will. How we manipulate our interactions/interference with reality and/or the external world is based on our abilities. Our ability of movement without having to calculate anything but, at the same time, not being involuntary (for example: babies), is based on a combination of impulses and will. Our ability to make our brains produce the precise chemical combination which produces thoughts that we intentionally tried to think up is based on a combination of impulse, want, and will. Our unwanted thoughts are sometimes our automatic reactions involving an automatic wanting of our own interpretation, understanding, and imagined imagery of what is being painted by an external source. Our ability to constantly manipulate, without pause if wanted, what we think/imagine is based on will and present experience, past experience, and anticipation/expectation of future experience. One’s “sense of self” is evident because, for the most part, one’s control of one’s body, decisions, thoughts/mental activity, conclusions, and perspective have not been involuntary (within the laws of physics and without coercion).

How do you explain when your leg is shaking while you’re sitting at a classroom desk and you didn’t even realize that your leg was shaking until a little while after it started shaking? This isn’t intuitive and you didn’t try to make your leg shake.

What

This is a short blogpost that I wrote about mental imagery and how my friend, a salesman, accidentally "sold me" on something by using words that evokes pictures.

Motivation

I happen to be the type of person that pays attention to my mental imagery from time to time, so I decided to journal about what happened the day after. After refactoring my journal over a few weeks, the blogpost was completed.

Words are Worth 1,000 Pictures: http://adamkulidjian.com/words-are-1000-pictures

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I'd love to hear other people's feedback on it:

• Is it boring? Interesting? Is there terminology that I could be using that is more relevant?

Thomas Nagel has become one of the most influential philosophers in the last century and he has made a great contribution to philosophy of mind. His ‘what it is like to be a bat’ argument is considered by many to be a successful and deadly blow to physicalism and that it shows that physicalism is false.

However, Daniel Dennett has argued against it. Dennett denies Nagel's claim that the bat's consciousness is inaccessible, contending that any "interesting or theoretically important" features of a bat's consciousness would be amenable to third-person observation. For instance, it is clear that bats cannot detect objects more than a few meters away because echolocation has a limited range. He holds that any similar aspects of its experiences could be gleaned by further scientific experiments. This criticism can be found in his book “Consciousness Explained (1991).” Is this a good response to Nagel’s argument though? Does it actually demonstrate Nagel is mistaken? Thanks.

Hi,

So I study philosophy, focus on the philosophy of mind (artificial consciousness) and A.I. Ethics. And I really love watching movies that touches any of these subjects. They sometimes also give me sudden ideas which I might include in assignments and such.

If you know of any movies that revolves around the concept of the philosophical zombie, would you please share the name of that movie in the comments? Thank you :)