Comments by "Digital Nomad" (@digitalnomad9985) on "Do We Have Free Will? | 5 Minute Video" video.
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There is nothing about physics plus matter that predicts or allows for consciousness. The notion that consciousness arises from matter and physics is not a simple error, like 2+2=5, but a category error, like 2+2=blue. The notion that it does is a scientistic superstition, an urban legend.
One can not rule out reductionist intelligence. The Artificial Intelligence field is an attempt to achieve just that, an attempt which has made practical progress, but not with the speed or ease that the pioneers confidently predicted.
Can't there be a rule that a certain level of intelligence is always conscious?
If there were it could not, by definition, be a rule of physics, thus it would contradict materialism.
Since we know that there is something beyond physics, particularly conscience, in other words, ourselves;
there is no rational basis to reject free will.
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Mr. Waters can, of course, brazen it out, "You can't prove 2+2 does not equal blue." I wonder if that sort of thing would have impressed his grade school teacher.?
But as an argument against free will, it won't do. You must prove your sum. Until you have some notion of how consciousness arises from matter and physics, the notion that it does is a mere superstition. And the argument from reductionism to no free will depends on reductionism being true.
My second statement of my argument was not a new argument, as I made clear. I still don't understand what you thought I meant the first time and I suspect that is why I can't make heads or tails of your first response. The only thing that is clear is that the argument you first responded to is not the argument I made. Reading your first response is like listening to one half of a telephone conversation. Perhaps if you want your original response, of which you seem to be proud, to impress, you should summarize, in your own words, the argument to which you thought you were responding.
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John Waters asserts:
"2+2 = blue" is nothing but a straw man.
It was not an argument, it was an explanatory analogy. By taking the same principle out of the realm dominated by pop scientism and wishful thinking, I hope to engender impartial thinking about the principle, which once accepted may be profitably applied to the subject at hand. So much nonsense has been disseminated about this in the general culture that this is necessary.
"If by "consciousness" you mean something other than the interactions of
our brains, then the burden of proof of its existence is on you."
My argument only has force for those who believe that consciousness exists. To those who claim to have an open mind on the matter, my argument has nothing to say. If you mean by "the interactions of our brains" materialism, then you have not answered my objection. If you mean something else, you have not even contradicted my conclusion.
Something cannot be it's own cause.
So far, so good.
In order for my mental processes to be determined by my mental processes.
Whoa, nobody claimed that.
Try, "Our mental processes are our mental processes." There is no a priori reason to attribute their cause to a hypothetical something else. Indeed, unless that something else is also mind or reason, doing so invalidates reason itself. We accept reasoned thought and reject caused thought. We don't put tightly reasoned mathematical theorems on a par with mental notions resulting from a splinter pressing on the brain. The distinction is precisely that the first notion is reasoned, and the second is caused by irrational forces. We ordinarily allow no exception to this principle, yet those who claim that all thought is caused by irrational forces ask us to make the unacceptable exception the rule.
Ah, Occam's razor. The simplest explanation. Except, you have not provided an explanation, simple or complex. You are holding the razor by the blade. You mention burden of proof, as if we were positing some supernatural explanation of a phenomenon. We arrived at the notion of free will, not by speculation or philosophizing, but by freely choosing. Our notions of justice and responsibility are built on it. Every time you make a moral judgement that judgement is predicated upon the notion of both free will and an objective standard of right and wrong by which are choices are to be judged. And except for psychopaths, none of us can go a week without making moral judgements. And a world view which cannot be lived does not have to be taken seriously. The only notions we have asked you to prove are the notions you use as assumptions to disprove free will.
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John Waters says:
"It's just a straw man - a completely analogy if you wish."
Did you mean "completely an analogy" or " a complete analogy"
"a specific type of consciousness"
I never said that. Dawkins tries to explain consciousness as an epiphenomenon of material processes. Set aside proving it for the moment, to even make an epiphenomenal claim plausible you must give a hint as to how the epiphenomenon reduces to the presumed substrate, or at a minimum, how they might both reduce to the same category. Without such, the claim is meaningless, and does not rise to the level of error. Before you call this a revised argument it is the same argument. My original argument. If this is not clear I can amplify it.
(Thoughts)..." have not always existed (since not even I have always existed) therefore they must have causes (that must actually be external), which makes your claim completely false. "
I should have said "There is no a priori reason to attribute their cause to a specific something else". In other words your attribution of a thoughts cause to itself, or to another thought, is not the only alternative to attributing them to material causes. Many world views other than materialism have an internally consistent attributions for these causes. The one you attacked is held by no one. I can tell you what I, for example, believe about the matter if you like. But one does not need a specific example to know that the alternative you proposed is not the only alternative. That is obvious.
"The reason why we accept "reasoned thought and reject caused thought". is that it is consistent to some degree. A working calculator is consistent, therefore it is trusted. One that has shows incorrect results half the time is not."
Indeed the distinction may well be inductive, that is, we may have arrived at it by experience. That does not invalidate the distinction.
Occam's razor is "Entities are not to be multiplied needlessly. The simplest explanation is probably the best one." Google is our friend.
"My actions are weighted according to what is beneficial and to the understanding that other people are not so different from me or from each other. "?
Your are staking a claim to act on good morals, not stating a basis for morality. In order to reason to moral conclusions, you must start with moral premises. Logically, there is no way to reason from premises in the indicative mood to conclusions in the imperative mood. There is no way to get from an "is" to an "ought".
"'the notions you use as assumptions to disprove free will.'
Those assumptions have been the ones assumed in the video (because that was what I was commenting about and disproving)."
The video did not assume the truth of naturalism.
The point of my last paragraph was that your invocation of "burden of proof" was an unfortunate one because the position you are arguing against is the common sense or default one, despite a great deal of propaganda and cultural conditioning to the contrary.
About "baseless". Logic demands premises to reach conclusions. Premises are baseless. One can nevertheless use logic to reject premises, or combinations of premises, or invalid deductions, which are inconsistent, for example: You say "you cannot show how free will fits into materialism, therefore free will does not exist." Then you say "I cannot show how consciousness fits into materialism, but it fits anyway."
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replying to +John Waters:
Invoking "burden of proof" in an academic discussion or debate, where there are no immediate consequences of the outcome independent of that outcome, is to simply beg to be allowed to assume that which should be proven. "The house wins all ties," but who died and made you the house? You can, and probably will, continue to insist that I shoulder the "burden of proof", but unless you give me a logical reason why I should spot you ties, I will continue to ignore it.
You said
"Internally consistent, as the assertion that "I can fly, therefore I can fly" is internally consistent yet completely unsubstantiated..."
As? What is the similarity? I was not claiming that internal consistency proves a notion, I was noting that there were alternatives to your straw man carefully chosen for inconsistency, namely thoughts causing themselves.
"You can either claim that occam's razor only applies to explanations, and therefore my principle is not occam's razor OR you can say that the principle I used is not occam's razor."
2 posts prior you said:
"I need only to accept the most likely explanation based on the facts and the implications of those facts."
YOU stated your principle as applying to explanations.
I said,
"In order to reason to moral conclusions, you must start with moral premises."
You said,
"Not really." Yes, really. That premises in the indicative mood do not lead to conclusions in the imperative mood is a principle of formal logic "Logic is our friend."
"I just need a mutually shared goal with other people in a community."
Self interest, even enlightened self interest, is not morality. Morality begins where self interest ends. Morality is sacrificing your interest for the good of another who objectively (on moral premises) has a better claim.
"Your claim simply demonstrates that your morals are baseless."
My claim is that morality requires a base. Your assumptions lead to the conclusion that ALL MORALS are baseless. If what I call my moral notions are simply the manipulation of "selfish genes", then they can no more logically command my loyalty than any other genetic trait, like the color of my eyes.
" ' "I cannot show how consciousness fits into materialism, but it fits anyway." '
On a side note: it does not fit at all."
"Side note"? Good grief! If you mean that consciousness does not fit into materialism, you are CONCEDING THE MAIN POINT OF MY MAIN ARGUMENT! If you stipulate that consciousness does not fit into materialism, do you hold that consciousness does not exist, or concede that materialism is false?
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