As for my response to you, I think it’s simply “yes”. And also that we lack any sort of clear & universally greed upon definitions for many of the critical terms here.
These were my areas of study, refining through ever more practical levels to cognitive science and then computational linguistics, so I know just enough to know I’m not an expert and true expertise doesn’t really exist yet for truly understanding any of this. (And my comp ling formal education has been made woefully obsolete since the time I began that path). For now, all we can do is chip away at the questions, as this linked article tries to do. Chip by chip.
No these aren’t likely. Consciousness is the human experience, there’s no way we aren’t conscious as that wouldn’t make sense linguistically. As for free will, anyone saying we don’t have it is doing bad science since every person knows they do. Trying to disprove humans having free will is mental masturbation and nothing more.
And entire pillars of philosophy, having stood for millennia, crumbled under that one masterful crushing blow.
This is a statement spoken with an authoritativeness that it doesn't deserve. There has never been a time I can remember that "free will" ever seemed real to me much less something I inherently "know"; it is at best an imprecise phrase for something I don't have a word for. The physical body is going to do what it does, the thing experiencing qualia is just along for the ride.
As for "bad science", free will as it is described seems that it would violate causality. That a macroscale effect can occur spontaneously without a paired action.
Free will is literally a non sensible concept and is plainly just a subjective illusion.
Humans determine their actions (will) where fate (determinism) isn't prescriptive of their course. Humans don't have a monopoly on will, but we do have our own. If you've ever survived, it's because you chose to eat. Eventually, even decisions like these which you may feel are implicit are also subject to be reversed if we want to and will.
Explain this process in the framework of physics and thermodynamics. Specifically, what differentiates this free will process from mere causal process?
A lot of suffering exists in our society due to that belief you have regardless if it's correct or wrong and similar suffering exists in our society from beliefs formed based on knee-jerk feelings or personal biases. I agree that people have free will if we replace the term "free will" with "personal desire." However, that doesn't imply the personal desire could've been different because otherwise the person would be different as well. I've also encountered many people that remarkably don't believe in free will, so the premise you made is false.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18408715/ (full paper can be found on SciHub)
> There has been a long controversy as to whether subjectively 'free' decisions are determined by brain activity ahead of time. We found that the outcome of a decision can be encoded in brain activity of prefrontal and parietal cortex up to 10 s before it enters awareness. This delay presumably reflects the operation of a network of high-level control areas that begin to prepare an upcoming decision long before it enters awareness.
This is unfortunately only a brief for Nature Neuroscience -- from 2008, so take with a grain of salt -- and I haven't been able to find the full paper. I also would hesitate to claim this as "lack of free will" or similar; the conclusion sentence from the brief seems to be most-accurate:
> Thus, a network of high-level control areas can begin to shape an upcoming decision long before it enters awareness.
Free will: the power of acting without the constraint of necessity or fate; the ability to act at one's own discretion.
A known side effect of Parkinson’s drugs is the development of compulsive, (hypo)manic behaviors like gambling and hypersexuality — people who have been very straight laced their entire lives can change drastically. Are you suggesting that we should hold such patients equally accountable for making poor choices, as they are just as free willed as anyone else?
What of people with crippling, general anxiety, of no fault of their own, but simply as a result of genetics or exposure? If they aren’t as productive or let things slip, is that because they simply aren’t trying hard enough? (Even there — if we say one is trying harder, does that not imply an impediment to “act at one's own discretion”?)
Perhaps we should consider banning ADHD medication altogether — given everyone has free will, what practical difference does it make to put a substance into people’s bodies — they can just choose to make good decisions, right?
Of the decisions you regret, and knew that you would before acting, why did you make them? Why haven’t you just made the meta-choice of choosing to choose the right things from here on out? You can see the utility in making such a choice, right? So can you make that choice? Your discretion would likely be to make that choice, so all that’s left is to act on that discretion, which should be no problem because you have free will and you are not constrained by the natural chemical processes occurring in your brain and the physical laws that define them.
7 minutes: The Concept of a Person https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0XdIT_Cn4E
85 minutes: Grammar, Mind and Body - A Personal View https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMQS3klG3N0
Especially relevant if you read that article yesterday "disproving" Chomsky by noting that ChatGPT exists, and wanted to consider what his rebuttal might be.
TL;DR:
My current view is one of consciousness operating on a spectrum, there has to be some degree of definition that we can agree to as a starting point it's just a useful illusion/delusion and evolutionary adaptation for cooperative behavior. The whole thing is a mess. Most likely... we're not specialOne thing I will just throw a bone on is this one:
> what if cooperation is a useful corollary for consciousness/higher level reasoning via internal linguistic structures?
Yes! Interesting! But what is cooperation? Is it mating? Are cats cooperating by mating and then parting ways? Are wolves (yes they are I think) cooperating? Different vocalizations from different animals mean different things and animals understand that. Is there a categorical difference between those patterns and the larger (although I don't know if this applies to the range of sounds) complexity of human language?
Bonus question, how does this factor in to someone who is more well-read than someone else, or maybe knows more languages? If Chomsky or others were to suggest there's no difference and you just hit a threshold by being a human with language, it still seems a little anthropocentric to me. I'm guessing that (and it's probably a taboo subject) there is differences in consciousness between humans as well - i.e. some people are more conscious than other people. It's not binary.
Your eyes only focus on a small part of what you are looking at and your brain fills in the rest of the details. I think you can construct an analogy here with your pen and your eyes too.
Consciousness? It sounds like you're confusing consciousness with identity, there is no social component required for consciousness.
> just curious and have my own current thoughts about it.
And where exactly are those thoughts occurring?
I didn’t suggest that it was required. I think?
> And where exactly are those thoughts occurring?
Idk but they sure never give me a choice in which ones I get! They’re also in English. I wonder what humans “thought” before the invention of language? Grunts? Hollers? Is it any different than w old thinking “bark”?
You can examine consciousness without the need for words. This is the issue with this topic, people stay in the structure of language to try to define that which language is born out of, not realizing that you can take a step back and inhabit that very thing itself and observe it directly. It just takes practice.
And why not? I'm still unclear why this couldn't be the case. Maybe what we describe as consciousness developed as an evolutionary adaptation for group coordination and survival? To your earlier point about identity, it seems like you're suggesting identity and consciousness are the same, no?
> You can examine consciousness without the need for words.
I'm not sure what you mean by this. Can you elaborate?
If it is unclear why consciousness is not a social construct, you can experiment with isolation and introspection. Retreats, meditation, psychedelics, anything that involves observing the movements of your mind without getting tangled up into words and semantics.
That's one theory among many. Are these identities static or dynamic in nature?
> If it is unclear why consciousness is not a social construct, you can experiment with isolation and introspection. Retreats, meditation, psychedelics, anything that involves observing the movements of your mind without getting tangled up into words and semantics.
I don't find this compelling because it's really difficult to find a person who wasn't born to another person and lived amongst other people in order to run this experiment.
"Observing" myself thinking of a movie while I meditate seems circular and I don't think you can be an observer and be the observed at the same time.
You're trying to word your way out of words.
It's like you're asking me what's atop a mountain and you keep making conjectures and assumptions about what is or isn't up there. The answer is to just go climb it instead of taking your assumptions for reality.
> I don't think you can be an observer and be the observed at the same time.
I can, because I practice it.
Almost nothing in life is 100% black and white, quite literally everything you study has more and more edge cases the more you study, even math breaks itself if you try and prove it. But we have reliable levels of math that function as we need it. And generally most things are good enough you can use it reliably. Just because something may break doesn't mean it's useless or anything.
Free will is also a spectrum and we all have different levels and different experiences of it. We all have choices we make but we might not be even aware of them. Our body influences our choices and our thinking influences our body. A double edged sword.
I remember reading an inspirational tale based on a real author who had to save himself because of his medical bills. He was completely disabled and would write blog posts with his eyes and eventually became such a good writer he was able to publish books and move to Mexico and get nurses to help care for him etc. This guy who has literally only a brain and functional eyes became some millionaire though sheer determination to save himself. Then you might find some rich well off person kill themselves because they can't find a reason to live. Two extremes. One with everything another with basically nothing, I mean would really want to live with that your whole life? Is the natural thought to reverse that?
And then you have those children raised by animals that can't properly communicate like an adult and what are they? Now I can easily communicate with my cat, he has meows and particular tones for how he is feeling. He'll tell me what type of sickness he has and alert me when something is wrong. He has a wide range of communication and used to stuff toys under the door to get me to play with him more. He is extremely picky when it comes to food and most things in general. He'll throw temper tantrums over not getting the right brand etc. I would say of course he is aware of something's in life but certainly not bright enough to survive on his own very well as he was never taught how, nor do I think he has it in him to start learning now. He gets anxiety attacks too, had to take him to the ER Vet for it before. So I'd sorta had to him with his mental state at one point, it's fine now but I do worry. All creatures and humans have a built in self destruct button so you have to be careful to have good habits to avoid it. It's interesting how the human raised by dogs was not able to communicate well, but if they were domesticated like my cat they would know how to pick up the signs we are looking for. My car has so many different meows and if he thinks one type of meow fails he'll try a different one.
I never even got into the whole thing about how your trillion of cells right now are making their own decisions in your body. I mean what even are you but a million things you'll never see or think about unless you get cancer or something when your cells decide not to die. What are you without their death?
Also could go into how memories are stored outside the brain with worm studies etc, and how fungus solves mazes, how plants communicate by smell and sound, there is a lot of werid stuff the more you look.
Begs the question, what is intelligent behavior? Most of the time I see pretty anthropocentric interpretations of this (which are often well-reasoned) but there has to be some degree of definition that we can agree to as a starting point.
My current view is one of consciousness operating on a spectrum, some animals/creatures/entities are "more aware"[1] than others but then you have to ask whether that just leads to consciousness being a useful phenomenon for interaction with other creatures or if it's something more meaningful. Were humans conscious before the invention of language?
Another aspect of this is if "Chat-GPT" isn't conscious it kind of proves your dog is right? You're saying language/interaction isn't that big of a deal, and so it's based on biology. Not a lot different between a cat and a person if you really take a step back, let alone a chimpanzee and a person. Or maybe we're all not conscious at all in the sense that we mean it. I.e. it's just a useful illusion/delusion and evolutionary adaptation for cooperative behavior.
Then we have to insert free will, determinism, etc.
The whole thing is a mess. Most likely we're not conscious at all, nor do we have free will, as typically described. But we're conscious in that we're perceiving and our body as a whole has some amount of degrees of freedom to operate, but we're not special. Maybe that's scary idk.
[1] Whatever that means