Free will, a Necessary Illusion

Originally posted by Mark Adkins
Conrau K wrote: "And to address your analogy about the clock. A clock does not apply these logical processes."

A computer does not apply logical processes either, as I have pointed out. Neither, for that matter, does an abacus, though one can calculate with one. Conventionally, each embodies an isomorphism conceived of and implemented by the designe n the other thread to my satisfaction, I will place you on my ignore list.

A computer does not apply logical processes either, as I have pointed out. Neither, for that matter, does an abacus, though one can calculate with one.Conventionally, each embodies an isomorphism conceived of and implemented by the designer (who DOES apply logical processes in so doing).

I still do not see why the computer does not apply reason. The designer of this program specifically designed it to just that

A digital (or analogue) computer is automated whereas the logical/mathematical operations performed using an abacus must be carried out manually. Other than that, they are both machines and not qualitatively different with respect to consciousness or reason.

You really need to define reason. Then you need to demonstrate that this definition is incompatible with reason. These assertions have nothing compelling in them.

A digital clock and a software program both take input, and both are designed to implement physical processes isomorphic to logical processes.

Yes.

In this sense, both perform truth valuations of arguments.

Yes.

Any remaining differences are quite superficial (in the current context), and again, for reasons indicated quite clearly in the message to which you responded, neither the software, nor the computer which runs it, nor a digital clock nor a mechanical clock, nor an abacus, nor a waterfall, perform reason.

Non sequitur. The web-application is functionally different to the alarm clock - while circuit-logic is the basis of how they work, the outcome is different. The web-application specifically functions to detect invalid argument. It performs reason.

I might also tentatively suggest that human reasoning is isomorphically expressed through neurons. Like the ciruit-board, reason is achieved through a series of off- and on- gates.

I can write a computer program to take input about the weather conditions, and then state (on screen) "If it rains the road will be wet; it is raining; therefore the road is not wet". I can write a computer program to make any error of fact or logic in its stated assertions. Yet the program is said to be deterministic.

I never said that all programmes must always use correct reasoning. Of course they can be made to compute wrongly; by the same token, however, they can also be made to be always right, unlike a human.

it is not reasoning, but merely mindlessly carrying out physical processes.

That sums up reasoning for me: human and computer.

As you can see, determinism is no guarantee of accuracy in reasoning.

Yet it is; you just illustrated daftly multiple times when the computer program is no longer determined i.e. when the memory erases; when the software breaks. When this happens, the determinism established by the designer no longer exists. So you have actually demonstrated several times when you are wrong i.e. when non-deterministic mechanisms cannot perform reason.

It also does not follow from the existence of free will that someone might mistakenly maintain an argument like p = ~p.

Correct; but because of free will, people often maintain p = ~p. Especially when p relates to an emotional topic, the person cannot ascribe a definite truth value to either, and so they assert both.

You also seem to have little or no ability to imagine the logical consequences ACTUALLY implied by the arguments of others, often ignoring implicit conclusions, then falsely claiming later that they never made them or are contradicting themselves.

The onus is on you to highlight those instances. Whenever I have accused you of faulty argument, I have located several instances which I considered problematic. You were then able to defend yourself, and by natural justice, I accepted the clarification.

From my experiences with you, I have to conclude that you are habitually superficial, erroneous, and I fear, (as-if) deliberately obfuscatory.

If I am being obfuscatory, ask for a clarification. On those instances you have needed further explanation, I have politely obliged. Unfortunately, whenever I have accused you of obfuscation or said "I do not understand this", you have derisively replied, "Of course, you do not understand anything," or have simply ignored me. Those are the strategies of a poor arguer.

P.S. One can perform operations of Boolean logic simply by reference to a table in a printed book. For example, all possible permutations of well-formed strings of Boolean operators having a length of N or less might be contained in the first M volumes of the book. And so on. (One would simply look up the well-formed input string one wished to evaluate.) And so on. Does this mean that the book can reason? No.

What if simple Boolean operations were automated using an isomorphism embodied in a primitive mechanical contraption without the use of electronics of any sort? Could the contraption be said to reason? No.

What if such operations were similarly automated, but using a Rube Goldberg device in which wind-up toys and reservoirs of water provided the motive sources? Would this contraption reason? No.

Yet, idiots like Conrau K insist that a digital computer can reason in carrying out physical actions (involving the laws of electricity, not logic) isomorphic to the same finite sets of Boolean operations. I suppose it's something to do with the fact that, for modern animists like Conrau K, electricity is something mysterious to be fetishized. It reminds me of a Dilbert cartoon I once saw regarding apocalyptic year-2000 theories. (Of course, Conrau K is actually non-sentient.)

Originally posted by Mark Adkins
P.S. One can perform operations of Boolean logic simply by reference to a table in a printed book. For example, all possible permutations of well-formed strings of Boolean operators having a length of N or less might be contained in the first M volumes of the book. And so on. (One would simply look up the well-formed input string one wished to evaluat ...[text shortened]... saw regarding apocalyptic year-2000 theories. (Of course, Conrau K is actually non-sentient.)

Give a definition of reason. I have asked three times that you formulate a precise meaning for this word. You have repeatedly ignored this simple request. I started with a provisional, "reason is the simply application of logic to argument" - does this accord with your understanding?

And as I said before, it is not the Boolean operations which give the digital computer reason. (In fact, I never mentioned the digital computer, but the web-application.) It is the functional outcomes of those Boolean operations: the ability to discern an invalid argument.

And as I suggested before, the human brain operates similar to the computer. Neurons stimulate adjacent neurons via electrical discharges, and each dendrite of the neuron can be conceptualised as an open or closed gate (1=stimulated, 0=not stimulated.) So, by your own insistence on the reason of humans, you are the one who fetishises electricity, because it is via electrical discharges that human reason develops in the brain.

bjohnson407 wrote: "What is it about self-hood that necessitates freewill?"

One way to explain why some degree of free will is logically necessary in order for the self to exist, is to consider what constitutes a "self" and then to subtract every element which cannot exist without free will; if there is then nothing left capable of constituting a "self", then the necessity of free will has been demonstrated by such an exercise.

Now, the essence of a "self" is intrinsic to that self: part of the essential definition of "self" is that "self" is not synonymous with "other". But if a self could exist without possessing free will of any kind in any degree whatsoever, then all of its attributes would of necessity be extrinsically determined (that is, not determined by the self but by something outside of that self). If we entirely subtract ideation, reason, conception, belief, and all other such attributes commonly attributed to the self, when considering what now can be said to constitute the self, the only thing left -- arguably -- is an otherwise featureless and utterly passive consciousness.

But this is specious: one cannot walk into the apothecary and purchase a dram bottle of some colorless, odorless, neutral spirit called "consciousness", then add Tincture of Good (or Tincture of Evil), for example, to give it color or odor. This is because the concept of consciousness presupposes some intrinsic content. It cannot merely exist as a blank slate, because in order to possess consciousness, one must be conscious of something. Yet, we have already seen that without free will, everything a self could putatively be conscious of must be provided extrinsically, including all thoughts (including self-reflexive thoughts); so that there can be no such thing as a "self" existing only as "undifferentiated consciousness", because the latter term is an oxymoron.

That leaves exactly nothing intrinsic, and this in turn means no self. Thus, some degree of free will is a logically necessary condition for the existence of a "self".

There are other logical problems invoked by denial of free will. There can clearly be no reason without free will of some sort and to some degree, because reason implies (among other things) the ability to distinguish alternatives and to pick between them according to one's own intrinsic perceptions as to what is self-evident (because all reasoning ultimately relies on such judgments). Whereas, if the premises, arguments, and conclusions one uses are strictly force fed, this is not possible; and note that one could be consistently force fed the most errant nonsense but one would never even be potentially capable of realizing this or of changing one's mind about things, since the conclusion that these (externally supplied) thoughts are true or logically valid is also force fed in such a scenario.

Regarding the concept of "brainwashing" raised by bjohnson407, there is actually no such thing. It's true that someone could become confused by misrepresentations, perhaps fundamentally if they were ill or made to be ill by mistreatment, such as abnormal, acute and chronic stress, sleep deprivation, etc.. (By "misrepresentations" I conceive of something much broader than (though certainly including) verbal lies.) It's also true that behavior can be coerced by threats, etc.. But no matter how subtle or obscure the coercion or the misrepresentations, delusion remains delusion, not knowledge. In dreams and nightmares we sometimes believe erroneous things that turn out to have been illusions: indeed, one's entire environment, including the body that one possesses in dreams, turns out to be an illusion experienced by no one but one's self; the belief, while dreaming, that these illusions were real, can only be described as delusion, not as knowledge. Of course, the phrase "waking up to the truth" can be used figuratively as well as literally. Note that it is also possible for the results of "brainwashing" to be misrepresented also.

This will have to do for the moment, since I find myself mentally fatigued from earlier efforts dealing with the defective oddity calling itself "Conrau K". I did add him to my "ignore" list but found that this does not make his public messages invisible to me. So, I will just have to pay no heed to them. (I have not read his latest round of posts to this thread, nor will I waste time doing so in future, since I might be provoked to waste time refuting them: and though easily defeated in argument, he "wins" to the degree that he can distract and disrupt.)

Originally posted by Mark Adkins
bjohnson407 wrote: "What is it about self-hood that necessitates freewill?"

One way to explain why some degree of free will is logically necessary in order for the self to exist, is to consider what constitutes a "self" and then to subtract every element which cannot exist without free will; if there is then nothing left capable of constituting ...[text shortened]... wins" to the degree that he can distract and disrupt.)

And to think that you accused me of obfuscation.

Originally posted by Mark Adkins
bjohnson407 wrote: "What is it about self-hood that necessitates freewill?"

One way to explain why some degree of free will is logically necessary in order for the self to exist, is to consider what constitutes a "self" and then to subtract every element which cannot exist without free will; if there is then nothing left capable of constituting wins" to the degree that he can distract and disrupt.)

This will have to do for the moment, since I find myself mentally fatigued from earlier efforts dealing with the defective oddity calling itself "Conrau K". I did add him to my "ignore" list but found that this does not make his public messages invisible to me. So, I will just have to pay no heed to them.

Is this how you behave when someone mounts a theoretical challenge to your belief-system? Interesting... all I have done is try to understand and then refute your arguments. You have been totally uncooperative in engaging in a civilised debate and explaining your arguments straightorwardly .

I also have not personally attacked you, nor has anyone else. Yet you have aggressively name-called me and others on this forum. Here is tally of some of the invectives you have levelled at others:


"It seems to me that your (strictly as-if) reading comprehension level is low"

"Since you seem to be washed out to sea by any form of expression which does not involve a concrete description..."

"This is exactly the sort of childish parroting (mixed with contrarianism) that I have come to expect from the pseudo-sentients."

"Your prattling is merely pseudo-sentient nonsense, like gas-bubbles rising to the surface of a swamp"

"*I* suggest that you are a slanderous and deceitful pseudo-sentient, who seems threatened by the existence of anyone sane and smart enough to perceive the truth and brave enough to speak it"

"I have given numerous instances of this [asserting a logical necessity between X and Y without understanding them]. In fact, some of them are even now staring you in the face (as it were). You have not recognized them as such because (a) I did not explicitly label them as such, and (b) you are a dullard. I will not label them explicitly now. Go and peck in the dirt for your corn, dullard."

(For your own elucidation: You never did tell me what X and Y were, nor did you identity when I asserted the conditional X implies Y, nor did you even attempt to refute it. Apparently I am expected to locate my own faulty arguments and refute them myself - essentially do your side of the argument as well.)

"I think your approach to the issue is primitive, unduly narrow, and dogmatic."

(You never explained why. I was expected to take your word for it.)

"From my experiences with you, I have to conclude that you are habitually superficial, erroneous, and I fear, (as-if) deliberately obfuscatory"

Such hostile and derogatory language marks you as a really poor arguer.

Originally posted by Mark Adkins
bjohnson407 wrote: "What is it about self-hood that necessitates freewill?"

One way to explain why some degree of free will is logically necessary in order for the self to exist, is to consider what constitutes a "self" and then to subtract every element which cannot exist without free will; if there is then nothing left capable of constituting ...[text shortened]... wins" to the degree that he can distract and disrupt.)

This is still not convincing. Self need not be "synonymous with other" in order to be determined "extrinsically." How can I be determined from the outside if I am the same as that outside? If I'm the same as the outside, and also determined by the outside, then I'm self determined and there is no real outside.

What hard determinists have in mind is a "self" that is seperate from the world, is aware of its surroundings, but unable to make truly free decisions. There is little question that such a determined self is very different from a free self. But that doesn't mean that one or the other is not in fact the self that we -- in any case -- are. And it doesn't mean that the determined self is not conscious of his/her being in the world.

also, Even if brainwashing is not real, it is still a reasonable example of what the absense of free will would look like in a being that has consciousness. It is a counterexample to the idea that determinism and consciousness are logically inconsistent. If it is not empirically real, I still see no objection to the idea that it's logically possible.

Originally posted by Conrau K
[b]This will have to do for the moment, since I find myself mentally fatigued from earlier efforts dealing with the defective oddity calling itself "Conrau K". I did add him to my "ignore" list but found that this does not make his public messages invisible to me. So, I will just have to pay no heed to them.

Is this how you behave when som ...[text shortened]... "

Such hostile and derogatory language marks you as a really poor arguer.[/b]

Not only that, but he insists on calling the pharmacist an apothocary! 19th century diction is no substitute for sound reasoning. 😉