I know they're not the same. My point is that they are not mutually exclusive: a system subject to randomness may or may not also be chaotic. You seemed to be suggesting that a chaotic system being indterminate ruled out it also being so due to randomness.
Enough phenomenal proof for you to dismiss it as a brain generated illusion.
Not proof - just logical conclusion from the assumptions stated (which can not be "proven"). If the assumptions are incorrect, fair enough - just suggest why they are incorrect. But if you hold to the assumptions and disagree with the conclusion, show where the line of argument is flawed.
As if the brain would go thru all the trouble of generating an illusion of freewill, along with a contrasting sense of being determined or out of control, for no reason at all.
Why would the generation of freewill be "for no reason at all"?
What if it is merely an aspect of self-awareness? After all, to be self aware but not have a conscious notion of the ability to choose would lead us to consider ourselves mere passengers in a shell.
No, it is jumping to a massive unwarranted conclusion to think that the idea that is an illusion suggests that our brain creates the illusion "for no reason at all".
What for instance would be the survival advantage of running a brain thru of mere game of preconceived and selected options when such would only delay response time? How could an illusion of freewill contribute to our own survival?
It may not in and of itself. But if it is an aspect of consciousness, or at least of self-awareness, then it is part and parcel of the same advantage that that offers. And I do think it that is a necessary aspect of self-awareness, otherwise we would be aware of having no control - which would be a prison-sentence. Possibly to avoid us going insane, but to retain the advantage of self-awareness, it developed this overriding illusion.
But this is neither here nor there, as you are arguing from conclusion, rather than following the logic from the assumptions.
Freewill ISN'T demonstrated "as an illusion." It's demonstrated as a reality, one that cannot even be denied in living our everyday lives.
That it is an illusion follows from the assumptions given. It is demonstrated in the same manner as anyone who claims it is genuine would see it demonstrated.
The "reality" is logically only if you define freewill to already build its applicability, its nature, to that which is perceived. I.e. as soon as you say that freewill is evidenced through our ability to make a choice, or some such, you limit the definition of freewill as only that which it appears to be. And thus holds whether it is illusory or not.
You fail to show how this phenomenal reality is an illusion and how you have managed to see thru the illusion as being "just an illusion." You just sort of assume it for no reason whatsoever.
It's just a matter of following the assumptions through to their conclusion: the assumptions being that the universe is probabilistically deterministic, and that cause and effect hold other than for uncaused but random events.
What other phenomenal contents of consciousness may we hand wave away? Is the conscious experience of the outer world an illusion too?
It's not a matter of "hand wave away". Whether it is an illusion or not, it operates at the conscious level in exactly the same way. This is inescapable. All illusion means is that how it operates at the lower levels is not how it consciously appears. That is all it is. It in no way diminishes how we consciously perceive it, because we can do no different than perceive it as we do.
That's how YOU define freewill.
Sure - and throughout, from the first post onward, I have stated that the key aspect is how one defines freewill. If one defines freewill differently then of course one can come to a different conclusion.
I say freewill is the reciprocal downward causation of the system on the chains even as the chains are influencing the course of the system's behavior. That's what chaos theory is about: systems that are totally determinate and yet unpredictable at the same time. And it's not an unpredictability that arises only out of our ignorance of initial conditions. It is a factual unpredictability and indeterminacy that inheres in the structure of the system itself--in the interaction of component level chains and system level emergent patterns. IOW, the indeterminacy, or more precisely underdeterminacy, is real and not just illusory.
No, this is not the case.
In a deterministic world a chaotic system is inherently predictable IF the measurement is accurate.
The indeterminism in such systems arise from our inability to measure accurately.
This is a very different matter from true indeterminism arising from a deterministic process.
As Lorenz is oft quoted as summarizing:
"Chaos: When the present determines the future, but the approximate present does not approximately determine the future."
What?!! Have you ever drank water from a mirage. No? Then yes, a mirage IS an illusion per se.
ONLY if one defines the mirage as being what it is perceived to be.
If one defines the mirage as akin to "the bending of lightwaves to produce a displaced image..." then it is very real.
As such the mirage is REAL but it is an ILLUSION of water.
It can be both an illusion AND real - depending on what one defines it to be.
If it exists, then it exists precisely AS an illusion and nothing else. Merely appearing to be real doesn't confer upon it some new ontic status as an illusion that is not an illusion.
So the lightwaves aren't real? The pattern of activity is not real? Are the lightwaves an illusion? Is the pattern of activity of those lightwaves themselves an illusion?
Or is the illusory nature of mirages ONLY applicable when interpreted by our consciousness, and we perceive something (e.g. the water) that is not actually there?
Since consciousness is always consciousness of something real, otherwise it'd be mere hallucination, then yes, "as perceived by consciousness" equates to the reality of an actual state. You experience all reality as perceived by consciousness itself. Does that mean reality is a mirage? I hope not..
Then you accept that magicians really are pulling rabbits out of thin air? That is how the consciousness perceives it, after all.
Why would you say that when I specifically denied it having freewill?
Because your denial and your subsequent arguments don't match, in so far as I have defined the definition of freewill that I consider to be illusory. As said, if you define freewill differently then (a) you are taking my arguments out of context; (b) you will probably/possibly come to a different conclusion.
No, we are not reduced to such a black and white either/or scenario. Freewill can certainly be to more or lesser degrees determined from the bottom up, while at the same time opened up to multiple possibilities arising out of more or lesser degrees of indetermination from the top down. (see below quote). Take the case of the driver of a horse-drawn carriage. There is not total determination of the horse's movements like robots, but neither is there totally indetermination as in letting the horses go whenever they want. There is an iterative and loose reigning on the horse's bits that guides the horse movements according to the will of the driver. Same with freewill--a middle ground of determinative chains interacting with determinative effects of system-level attractors resulting in an overall underdeterminacy of the course of the system.
None of the quote counters anything I have said, given that it allows for exactly the state of intederminacy that is advocated, albeit specifically random in origin. I have never advocated strict determinism throughout any of this discussion, but have always allowed for such indeterminism.
This is captured within the output adhering to a probability function: the direction of a horse is not entirely random but governed by a probability function, with that function determined by the infinite inputs.
The underdetermination is not illusory. The system really cannot in principle be reduced to the behavior of its units. This is due to the emergence of new constraining factors and properties that did not exist at the component level and that operate from outside of those causal chains.
It is not illusory in the regard that it appears to act according to its appearance... but that again just builds "appearance" into the definition. It seems you are misunderstanding, throughout, what is meant by "illusory".
An illusion is not a perception of anything. That is why it is called an illusion. The illusion exists AS an illusion, but not as anything real in itself.
Eh? An illusion exists whenever we perceive something to be dfferent than how it actually does, due to the way our brain operates (rather than through misunderstanding etc). I have never said it is real in itself. What you are looking at exists; what you perceive is an interpretation of that thing and differs to the reality of that thing.
E.g. A magician performs illusions: we perceive things to disappear, because the reality of what is happening is hidden from us.
Chaotic indeterminacy is not equivalent to randomness.
No, in an otherwise deterministic universe (i.e. not including randomness) it's due to inability to accurately measure.
The indeterminacy is itself determinative of the system to the point of constraining its evolution in a typical and replicable way. A purely random process has no such directionality. It will not repeat the same behaviors over and over again.
But it will do according to its probability function. That is why a die does not turn into an elephant, but instead rolls onto a side to reveal a 1-6, with a probability function that (usually) gives each face an equal chance of occurring.
Anyone who argues for the existence of anything does so from the starting point of it being an appearance--an appearance of something real otherwise it wouldn't be an appearance but only a hallucination. The burden falls on you to show how consciousness generates an illusion in the case of freewill while not generating illusion in its other perceptions (ie. of our environment, of our own chemical changes in our brains, of pain, or tiredness, of hunger, of thirst, etc.)
It's shown from taking the assumptions and following them through logically. That you don't see it seems to be the definition of freewill you work from (or possibly what you consider to be illusion) - despite saying initially that one's conclusion depends on definition of freewill that one is working with.
If you start with a different definition, don't then argue that what I say is flawed when it might not be applicable to your own definition.
Every y is caused by x iow. I'm not disagreeing with that. But that doesn't mean every x causes y. x could also cause z as well. This goes back to the necessary but not sufficient argument of indeterminism. IOW, in the brain a certain event may always be caused by a preceding event, yet that preceding event might also cause different events as well.
And this is merely probabilistic determinism (i.e. x could cause y, z, a, b, c or any other outcome and do so in accordance with its probability function).
Yet this type of indeterminism does not allow for the freewill that my argument suggests is nothing but an illusion.
Attractors are a product of the system as a whole but not of the system at the component level. That's why they have an emergent quality.They exert a top down influence that lessens the determination of the causal chains at the component level.
Indeed, but they are also
initially caused by the bottom up process, even if only until the first feedback occurs and becomes the dominant influence on the overall system.
