jakelafort

Ivy, i prefer the following line ..just love when psychologists pretend to be scientists.

Robert, it is true that if we shift the focus of criminal law away from punishing the evil sinners our approach changes. And it is largely irrelevant whether we have free will. The two major concerns would be protecting the public from dangerous people and avoiding recidivism. The shift in sentiment will accompany the no free will perspective but…[Read more]

Unseen i enjoyed the Heather Berlin vid. I doubt many in her field credit free will.

TJ, i appreciate your free will take.

On the other hand free will is more than another religious construct. It is not like the soul, virgin birth, original sin or other imbecilic religious constructs. We all have a sense of self, of autonomy, of agency that seems to be innate. We want praise or feel proud when we accomplish difficult goals and…[Read more]

Free will. Neither external conditions nor innate nature are free. Strict determinism forecloses any degree of free will. If Unseen and Davis were always going to do the free will dance then the issue is settled. If this is not the case then it may be because of human limitation in understanding the universe but from my perspective determinism is…[Read more]

Thanks for that vid, Unseen. I was tempted to get his book. Not any longer. He comes across to me as a sophist. He said…free will is a biological phenomenon, not a physical one. Our parts don’t have free will. We do. Stop right there Mr. Dennet. Which aspect of biology produces this phenomenon? What is your proof? Why should we make it…[Read more]

Davis, that is a fair statement.

Simon, those last few sentences do not make sense to me.

Unseen, gotta disagree with your take in relation to what would happen if the consensus changes with respect to free will. You said…We just go on acting as we have. To say we could do otherwise kind of implies the problem has been solved. It hasn’t.

First, it seems highly improbable based on religiosity and marriage to cherished beliefs that t…[Read more]

Davis, i cant argue your point.

Free will is the foundation of western jurisprudence. If the consensus ever changes so that free will is seen as illusory and strict determinism as reality then everything is turned on its head. How does law incorporate this most fundamental change in human perspective? Strict liability for heretofore criminal…[Read more]

Davis, thanks for the explanation/clarification. It is certainly not fair of me to judge Dennet without reading him.
To this point i am on Sam’s side. The issue of free will is as much a scientific as philosophical question. I for one am not confident we have a handle on determinism or even a tiny percentage of the workings of the universe. It is…[Read more]

In fact Dennet’s position is simply aesthetic (again i am making the assumption that Simon gave a good summary of Dennet’s thinking on free will) and one can assert with as much justification that as complexity increases and options increase that the degree of free will is less than that of Robert’s paramecium. All of the contemplation and…[Read more]

Thanks for that link Reg. I read it. If it is a fair representation of Dennet’s book then Dennet has accomplished nothing. That conception of the computer with greater capability in playing chess having greater options and therefore a greater degree of free will is fiction. If its path is determined in the same way that the less sophisticated…[Read more]

Reg, what is your position on free will in general and Dennet’s position in particular?

Unseen, yes we have a strong sense we know how others feel, even other mammals. BTW not all humans have that strong theory of mind or empathy. Some autistics are mostly lacking in that capability. And now i am reminded of a book i read by Oliver Sacks entitled The Man who Mistook his Keys for his Wife. Lots of interesting case studies of aberrant…[Read more]

Unseen i refer you to the oft-cited allegory of the cave and the short novel by Twain (title forgotten by me) in which the lives of bacteria and the limits of their observation are a metaphor for our limited purview. We are just not capable of saying much. If you read a lot of cosmology it seems like alice in wonderland. What can we posit with…[Read more]

A salad of absurd is reduced to a word.

We humans have not even gotten close to understanding our own biology. I think without AI the universe is a bridge too far. But it is fun to speculate and ponder.

Robert you may be correct. Perhaps our way of conceiving newtonian and quantum as separate is artificial. Water and ice. And it is also true that discoveries beg more questions than are answered.

Davis, I am guilty of failing to explain myself. From my perspective free will is impossible for anything biological. I don’t think i need to…[Read more]

Unseen, if we are conscious then why do you suppose artificial intelligence lacks that capability. And mightn’t it be a tremendous advantage to be free of the biology of our evolution which continues to have the residue of the biology of nonsentient life.

As to the likelihood of utilizing alternate physics i doubt it also but it may be possible.