How can there be free will when when all of our actions are determined by chemicals in our brains?

>le cause and effect

jesus fucking christ, people still talk about this when it blown the fuck out centuries ago

>absolute separation from God

well u had the free will to not make that shitpost OP but u did it anyways

Emergent properties

>blown the fuck out centuries ago
Why so people post like this. Do you need a (you) to finish that half written post? Well here it is. Give example

In what way can our consciousness inflict its will upon the very particles that constitute it? By what mechanism is this done? If it has the ability to affect the positions or velocity of its constituent particles then we would be able to detect it.

Come at me.

>Free will the is ability to hold different courses of action in your head, understand them and apply them.
That's not how most people define free will, and that's not what Harris argues against. I'm astounded people think a shifting of definitions is a cogent argument.

Free will, generally, is the position that your actions ultimately depend on you. It's the main crutch religious dimwits have for their barbaric beliefs. It is false.

>cause and effect

LMAO

also, can you define 'you' for me, thanks!!

Iunno man. I always fall back on the Conan quote on whether or not life/freedom/etc is an illusion or not when it comes to things.

"Let teachers and priests and philosophers brood over questions of reality and illusion. I know this: if life is illusion, then I am no less an illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real to me."

No point arguing a concept which cannot be tested through experimentation, to be honest.

Until the exact process of how every single thought, and by extension, action, is caused strictly and solely by chemicals, is exposed by science, to hold the position that they are is dogmatic, not scientific.

>Until the exact process of how every single thought, and by extension, action, is caused strictly and solely by chemicals, is exposed by science, to hold the position that they are is dogmatic, not scientific.
Since we don't know of any other type of thing I would posit that the burden of proof is on you and while we can't know for certain sure it makes more sense to believe what is far more likely to be true.

I'm not trying to prove anything, rather I'm saying that scientifically, the burden of proof is on those positing "all thoughts are purely the results of deterministic chemicals". To presume this as fact is not scientific, it is materialist dogma, it is philosophical.

>it makes more sense to believe
And, of course, you can *believe* it, but know that such a position is PURELY philosophical, and note remotely scientific. Science is based on description, not faith.

>Free will, generally, is the position that your actions ultimately depend on you.

What do you mean when you say "generally"? Most philosophers are compatibilists and polling shows that most members of the general population impute responsibility to actors who couldn't have done other than they did (ie, they believe moral responsibility exists even where actions are fully determined).

So I would say that "generally", free will is the capacity to be morally responsible.

I happen to think it's nevertheless true that free will doesn't exist, but still.

>emergent properties

spookystirner.gif

>I'm not trying to prove anything, rather I'm saying that scientifically, the burden of proof is on those positing "all thoughts are purely the results of deterministic chemicals".

This isn't about 'burden of proof' and in any case the issue is widely regarded as strongly underdetermined, ie, not empirically accessible, so science in the laboratory sense is only ever a tool here.

The point is that saying otherwise requires positing the existence of a possible alternative mode of causation and thus faces no less a burden.

>The point is that saying otherwise
Nooooo, that's not how the burden of proof works. the burden is on the person making the assertion, not the one saying, "That assertion is not proved."

>requires positing the existence of a possible alternative mode of causation
No, it doesn't require that.

The problem with free will is much deeper than that. The problem is that 'free-will' (in the ontological sense, not the ethical sense as per 'compatibilism') is incoherent. It doesn't even mean anything or describe anything meaningfully different from determinism or at best, probabilism. Saying that 'I cause my actions' is already conceeding cause and effect which ultimately IS determinism.

>Nooooo, that's not how the burden of proof works. the burden is on the person making the assertion, not the one saying, "That assertion is not proved."

Yes, but who's making the assertion when "All actions arise from physical stimulus" is asserted to contradict the proposition "Humans possess non-physical souls"? We aren't approaching this in a vacuum, there is a historical context.

Since we can't even demonstrate the existence of rival candidates for explanation, and since physical processes are ceded almost universally to account for just about everything else, rejecting the idea that physical processes account for human behaviour amounts to positing an undemonstrable possible alternative mechanism.

>No, it doesn't require that.

Maybe you misunderstand what I mean by 'saying otherwise'. If X does not happen in manner Y, then X happens in some manner Z other than Y. It's true that there is no specific Z that rejecting Y compels you to posit, but holding the position that Y is false necessarily entails holding the position that some Z is true.

How can there be determinism? There is no proof either way.

Why do fedoras love this meme so much?

>post a picture of Sam Harris
>Guaranteed replies

Are you people triggered that easily?

Cause and effect is irrelevant to the issue, dimwit. Remove cause and effect and replace it with stochastic processes and it does nothing to magic free will into existence.

>also, can you define 'you' for me, thanks!!
Sure. Conscious part of the human brain.

>What do you mean when you say "generally"?
Well, the first thing I DON'T mean is philosophers. I mean that most people go through life without pondering the minutia of how existence works and they operate on the assumption that they're in charge because it feels like it. Also, almost all religious people think free will in the sense that i layed it out ("I'm the one making the decisions") is a thing.

> and polling shows that most members of the general population impute responsibility to actors who couldn't have done other than they did
Don't extrapolate from polls on one subject to another subject. And if anything, even if we were to take your stance that those polls are reflective of the issues, the message is the exact obvious - people believe someone who "couldn't have done other than what they did" is responsible because on some base level, they think they could.

Also meant to link

>this delusional flailing catholicuck
Don't worry, we're on our way there (:

All evidence points to everything about consciousness being a product of physical matter and interaction, and we're getting closer and closer to fully mapping it every day.

Let's see how you feel when applying that rigor to religion, you cuck worshipper
You'll never learn anything when called out

>is asserted to contradict the proposition "Humans possess non-physical souls"
There is no counter assumption necessary save ignorance

I fucking hate philosophyfags
I hope you all die, you idiot shitposters
Why did we have to be lumped together with you?
>how can mirrors be real if our eyes aren't real
>duuude do we actually, y'know, have free will and stuff?
>le spooks! XD
Every day. Half the catalog. Fuck. Off.

I'm pretty sure religion is primarily justified by faith. If you want to justify your position that way, feel free.

>I'm pretty sure religion is primarily justified by faith. If you want to justify your position that way, feel free.
You don't get to be selective about where you apply rigor if you want to maintain an air of intellectual honesty.

I do if you're claiming your position is more rigorous than mine. If you aren't, then that's obviously another matter.

HYPOCRITE THAT YOU ARE!!

FOR YOU TRUST THE CHEMICALS IN YOUR BRAIN TO TELL YOU THEY ARE CHEMICALS.

ALL KNOWLEDGE IS ULTIMATELY BASED ON WHICH WE CANNOT PROVE!

WILL YOU FIGHT?

OR WILL YOU PERISH LIKE A DOG!

God I fucking hate this smug pseudo-intellectual prick.

>Don't extrapolate from polls on one subject to another subject.

I'm not, though.
www2.gsu.edu/~phlean/papers/Is_Incompatibilism_Intuitive.pdf

>[a supercomputer predicts that a newborn baby will rob a specific bank at a specific time 20 years in the future]
>Participants were asked to imagine that such a scenario were actual and then asked: “Do you think that, when Jeremy robs the bank, he acts of his own free will?” A significant majority (76%) of participants judged that Jeremy does act of his own free will.

>There is no counter assumption necessary save ignorance

I'm not saying one is necessary, I'm saying one in fact exists and I'm denying the reality of the putative doxastic vacuum you're ascribing to skeptics of physicalism as it applies to 'free will'.

What are you even talking about? You JUST said that you believe bullshit on no evidence.

Are you honestly telling us that consciousness being reducible to physics has no evidence to support it?

>Every day. Half the catalog. Fuck. Off.

Maybe you should go somewhere else? If we're half the catalogue then you're clearly in the minority.

You're literally proving my point. The fact that human behavior is predictable literally does not register on a base level with those polled.

No, I think they're just compatibilists, dog. Point being that it's clearly false to say that "free will" is "generally" [some incompatibilist definition].

> I'm saying one in fact exists
You really don't know how it works, you have no idea. Even if were purely material, subjectivity could be a material thing in ways beyond our comprehension. To say it's "all chemicals" is akin to humour theory, it's a materialist theory that drastically simplifies things to fit prior assumptions.

The idea that agency and subjectivity are illusions, has no evidence to support it, no. There is no evidence to support every thought possible can be replicated simply by the right chemical combos.

And I think you're severely overestimating the intelligence of the general population.

It's not clearly false because it does extremely little to delineate people's thoughts on the subject.

They just don't understand how much the brain alters cognition. We're getting there. Much like how religion loses it's foothold to science, we are slowly learning more about what makes our brains really tick. One day we might even get rid of the qualia meme

>Even if were purely material, subjectivity could be a material thing in ways beyond our comprehension.

See? Adopting that position would, again, require that you posit something.

I am making a point here, dog. It's a pretty modest point and you gain nothing by digging your heels in.

>The idea that agency and subjectivity are illusions
Don't move the goalposts, fuckface. Nobody is denying "agency", OR claiming that subjectivity is an illusion. Both are as real as the chemicals that produce them.

But let me get this straight.

You think that the brain being mapped by its functions for over a hundred years is not evidence that physical processes guide its function.

You think that literally being able to tell before the conscious agent itself, what its decision is going to be and when, using extremely inaccurate MRI scans, is not evidence of that.

Do you also not believe evolution on the count of us not having every single generation of every single creature on hand?

>And I think you're severely overestimating the intelligence of the general population.

I think you're conflating "Is intelligent" and "Agrees with me".

>It's not clearly false because it does extremely little to delineate people's thoughts on the subject.

Oh, OK, it's not "clearly false". It's clearly highly dubious and not a claim that should be airily rolled out as though it were a done deal, settled science etc, when there's considerable evidence that the exact opposite is "generally" the case.

No, I waited over half a fucking decade for moot to fuck off so we might even have the possibility of a history board, and I'm not going to let it be run over by you pseudo intellectuals and your inane sophomoric, stupid discussions about spooks and whether or not conciousness is really conciousness or whatever idiotic pothead garbage you feel the need to constantly decorate this place with just because for some godforsaken reason it had to be History AND "the humanities". This is worse than shitposting, it's just thread after thread of broke philosophy grads arguing about literally nothing, on a board where most people are obviously just here for history. You are clearly in the minority, because these threads are made at an unbelievable rate but are slow as fuck and persist for days. I bet if I opened this thread in two days (when it will undoubtedly still be on page one) I'll still get (you) notifications for this post.

>I think you're conflating "Is intelligent" and "Agrees with me".
I don't believe anywhere close to over 10% of any non-scientific population have the slightest clue about how the brain works or even basic neuroscience. I think their positions are based more on subjective feelings than anything else. Shoot me.

So don't make cases based on how words and concepts are "generally" used. Make cases based on how the educated elites use them.

Tho' in this case, most philosophers are also compatibilists, so it probably wouldn't work out too good even then.

(You)

>Tho' in this case, most philosophers are also compatibilists, so it probably wouldn't work out too good even then.

Philosophers are not the ones who have to be convinced about the [generally religiously inspired] idea of free will as I outlined it earlier. Non-religious philosophers, anyway.

Gonna start making philosophy threads tbqh

Constantine, you worthless tripfag, you know your bailing tactics can be documented if you keep making shit up and failing to back up your points thread after thread?

Fool, you mistake the process of an existence for the existence itself!

61 replies in and nobody has even come close to rejecting master harris' thesis

stay unenlightened, plebs, sam harris has rendered millennia of philosophical thought completely useless with the use of rigorous science

The majority position among modern philosophers is compatibilism and Harris is hardly the first person to point out that is not really 'free will' at all.

philpapers.org/surveys/results.pl

Because small reactions are just pieces of a larger whole.

It's like asking how man can get to space when their planet only has some shiny rocks and planet matter.

Who's brain?
Nice try but those are your chemicals. You can literally 'will' much of your chemistry to occur. Obviously it goes without saying that more unconscious chemical reactions occur than conscious ones, but still. It's all you baby

...

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15205881

>And then he argued that the consciousness is too complex to have evolved.

Hey m8s you can now at least mark cognition off the WE CAN'T BE CHEMICALS meme evidence list.

Because those chemicals are just passing on electrical impulses.
This doesnt prove anything apart from there beeing no definition of free will.

OP here

still waiting for someone to properly refute one of the greatest minds in the last two decades

Harris is a literal meme merchant

All of human knowledge is composed of memes. It's only the most slow-witted of minds that think calling something a meme is even an insult.

This. The no-free-will cap will alway suferentiate between the self and the physical as if the electrochemical processes are a separate being limiting the self and not one and the same.

Canp•
Differentiate•
Sorry. I have become inebriated

The no-free-will camp, just the opposite, posits that because there is no difference, there is no more reason to talk about human free will than computer free will, or rock free will, or mushroom free will.

Free will is incomprehensible without the physical substrate. The no-free-will camp usually speaks as if free will requires independence from measurable variables. In a practical sense I see no difference between our day to day lives and the illusion of free will they seem to propose.

Not at all.

If your brain starts sprouting tumours tomorrow and you die of brain cancer in a year was that because you freely chose for that to happen in your brain?

No. But tumors are not behavior.

Brain tumours affect your behaviour. You could develop a brain tumour tomorrow that causes you to become completely irrational violent.

You're also missing the point. If the conscious 'you' has no control over your brain producing brain tumours why do you think it has control over the functions that cause behaviour to happen? There is a fair body of work that suggests decisions are made before the conscious 'you' even becomes aware of them, even something as simple as lifting your hand.

Neurons and blood are not "behavior" either.

But they cause it.

I don't think free will requires control over neurotransmitters. Does free will requires control over every aspect of reality?

So, basically, what you're getting at is that mental illness, and anything else derivative of neuron activity or blood function is part of this free will we're talking about.

To make any sense as a useful concept, yes. We have concepts of consent and sound mind that fill the niche compatibilists try to fill with free will.

I'm saying there is normal and abnormal function. Free will exists inside normal function.

does qualia have anything to do with this debate?

Do you have any coherent definition of a normal function?

Do you consider subconscious and unconscious processes part of this "will"?

Not really. Doesn't exist though.

To be clear. My point of view is that there is no significant diferencie between free will and an ilusion of it. And taken that many benefits come from believing in free will, we should accept it.

Well, the difference is that the illusion can be dispelled with knowledge. And personally, I don't find the lack of free will to be any source of anxiety. There is simply no other way to possibly exist, and I prefer non-existence over existence any day senpai.

I'd define normal as function facilitating interaction with the environment.

Only conscious. In the Inconscious the only wilful modification would be in its contents. So... no? I haven't thought about this, actually.

But what can be the done, when the shitposting is too malevolent and mods are a bunch of lazy cunts?

Schizophrenic people interact with the environment. I get what you're trying to say but I don't see a meaningful distinction there. A person can be perfectly sound of mind and not interact, too. See: meditation.

>Only conscious. In the Inconscious the only wilful modification would be in its contents. So... no? I haven't thought about this, actually.
What, then, of the experiments that basically prove that what "consciousness" is, is just delayed awareness of processes that happen without any input or knowledge from the conscious part.

Like the experiment where they predicted what people are going to decide before before they're aware of it themselves.

>I prefer non-existence over existence any day senpai
schopenhauerian slip there

determinists claim there is an important difference. So I think it's relevant for this debate.

Not In any positive way. For example: I assume you and I would approach a burning chimney in the same way. Using it for heat but not getting too close. A schizophrenic might hear a voice telling hip to jump into the fire.

About those kinds of experiments: I can assure you those conclusions came from analyzing brain activity. I propose that all brain activity is "oneself". Determinists seem to puck and choose what activity is one's property an which is not.

>Not In any positive way.
Schizophrenics can be functional, mate. Mere delusion does not rob them of interaction with the real world.

>About those kinds of experiments: I can
assure you those conclusions came from analyzing brain activity. I propose that all brain activity is "oneself". Determinists seem to puck and choose what activity is one's property an which is not.
I don't get it. You just said unconscious and subconscious processes don't count in your equation of free will.

because thats describing how it works not what you can do with it

maybe how a system functions on different scales varies

prove that there a casual events.

checkmate Sam Harris. your move.