Of course.Dywyddr said:They know, do they?
Wow. I wonder why they're still talking about it...
They talk about it in order to maintain the illusion, that they're free to discuss the subject.
Of course.Dywyddr said:They know, do they?
Wow. I wonder why they're still talking about it...
Of course.
They talk about it in order to maintain the illusion, that they're free to discuss the subject.
But we are not philosophical zombies, and it is therefore reasonable to conclude that consciousness evolved because it provided a survival advantage.
Philosophers, and possibly neuroscientists, know that free will is an illusion.
Sure. But how do they know they aren't compelled to argue that?James R said:There are philosophers who argue that free will is not an illusion
Sure. But how do they know they aren't compelled to argue that?
How do you know what you posted, or what I'm posting, is a free choice? Can you prove free will really exists? I think you'll find that there isn't much evidence for it, other than a commonly held belief.
If you knew everything, you would know what's going to happen next, and you would know there is no "random" event, since you would know exactly why any event occurs.
You don't know, in fact you can't know, because you can't know everything about causes and effects.
Since a philosophical zombie acts in exactly the same way as a conscious entity with an actual mind, there's no way natural selection could "choose" between a philosophical zombie and a conscious creature. One will react in exactly the same way as the other to environmental influences.
But what possible survival advantage could a conscious entity have over a philosophical zombie? I can't think of a single one.
There's the rub.James R said:I'd have to start by asking you what, exactly, you mean by "free will". What is needed for the will to be free?
Predicting a quantum event (in your future) isn't the same thing as knowing why it occurred (in your past). It wouldn't be random because prediction wouldn't come into it.What about those quantum events that were mentioned earlier? It could well be you can know everything there is to know about a quantum system and yet still not be able to predict how it will behave when a measurement is made.
I think the Catholics would agree that free will must be intentional, although they didn't note it in their definition.Here's the definition I'm using from this link
http://www.catholicreference.net/index.cfm?id=33656
FREE WILL
The power of the will to determine itself and to act of itself, without compulsion from within or coercion from without. It is the faculty of an intelligent being to act or not act, to act this way or another way, and is therefore essentially different from the operations of irrational beings that merely respond to a stimulus and are conditioned be sensory object.s
All items in this dictionary are from Fr. John Hardon's Modern Catholic Dictionary, © Eternal Life. Used with permission.
The argument in the OP is independent of physicalism.
Even so, the analysis called for an eventual abandonment of the idea that a p-zombie was the equivalent of a conscious entity by virtue of the fact that a conscious entity was indeed selected for with what would be a neurologically expensive extraneous feature if it didn't provide a survival advantage.
So do (man-made super)computers.Consciousness allows the brain to simulate an action without committing to that action...
Random means unpredictable; but you would know the event occurred and why it did, the unpredictability would vanish. IOW you wouldn't have any sense of time, and since you do have a sense of time, you cannot be aware of everything
I can't see how randomness helps make the will free. A random choice is not a willed choice.
Pandaemoni said:Random does not mean entirely unpredictable. If I flip a fair coin, it may come up "heads", it may come up "tails," but it won't come up "zebras".
"Come up heads or tails", is possible because you aren't aware of which side is "up" while the coin is spinning. If you were aware of this, you wouldn't need to "predict" it, in fact, that notion would be meaningless.
Philosophers, and possibly neuroscientists, know that free will is an illusion.
Philosophy tells us that life is a constant stream of events, and all events are connected. So if there is no room left for choice, or freedom to choose, then freedom of choice is what you have when you ignore the philosophical conclusion that you haven't got any.
By ignoring the blindingly obvious--you are compelled by circumstance to choose, which means you have no freedom--you can imagine that the chain of cause and effect has "missing parts", the ones you forget about. . .
Simple really.
We are just along for the ride, but at least we know about it.
It seems that there are quite a few people around who are very willing to jump to the conclusion that free-will is nothing more than an illusion, almost as if it were the preferred state of affairs. I've always found that rather perplexing.