How physicists handle the idea of Free Will?

[sophiecentaur]

I don't agree. You're still accountable. And the other members of your organismal ensemble will make sure of it... in a deterministic matter.

This is true, of course. Society evolves to encourage appropriate behaviour. Social pressures and laws have a strong influence on our behaviour (unless we are particularly deviant). There is a social 'system' that tells us we are 'accountable' (only a word) and that influences the way we are likely to behave. Evolution has made sure of that - but no more, in essence, than it governs the behaviour of other animals on a much simpler level.

But the fact that we feel we have a free choice in our actions need to be no more than, as I have said before, a way of rationalising what we have just done or 'decided' on. The illusion of free choice is, in fact, very necessary or we'd just lie back and let it all happen - in the belief that it isn't worth trying. The fact is that all life forms 'try' (i.e. behave as if they were trying). It is just the fact that we are so complex that we had to evolve a consciousness in order to handle it all - so we are 'aware' of trying.

 

[madness]

But the thing is that "logical supervenience" is a mental construct. It has no physical meaning. This is not a useful concept for the actual physical relationship between consciousness and the brain.

The external world is a mental construct, the self is a mental construct, I can't think of anything at all that isn't a mental construct.

 

[Pythagorean]

Legal systems are based on the assumption that free will does exist and that people, generally, are not operating merely deterministically.

Er... no. That's exactly wrong. It only works because it's a deterministic system: because we can have a causative effect on people's actions. If there was no causation, people would make decisions independent of whether it caused them suffering. But because the causation chain is not broken, having and enforcing law continues to work.

Just like any other organism, we change our behavior in light of new information as long as that information passes a threshold in our emotional significance detectors (probably mostly in the amygdala and basal ganglia).

The basis for mitigation is where it judged that free will has been significantly compromised, perhaps to the extent that it was completely absent – mental illness, intellectual impairment, duress etc. Society considers that responsibility and free will are two inseparable sides of the same coin.

No, society doesn't care about free will, only responsibility. All society is, is a bunch of individual voices that want safety and security for themselves, so they don't like people engaging in risky behavior around them. It's really quite normal (especially in mammalian organisms) to have some kind of system that eliminates cheaters, for instance.

What we call mental illness, intellectual impairments, duress, etc, are all examples of when executive function is not dominating prediction and decision measures in the brain. When executive function is broken, people do not care about participating in social acceptance. For instance, frontal lobes complete wiring until between age 3-5, when toddler's start caring. The next major finalization comes in the early 20's with myelination, which finalizes the circuit dynamics in the frontal lobes. This gives the organism a long sample-time while the circuits are still plastic to figure out, negotiate, and even create new social rules and paradigms.

When we get frontal lobe damage or deterioration of any sort (whether from traumatic injury, disease, or other morphological or development abnormalities) we care less about what society thinks. The most famous case of this is Phineas Gage, but there have been countless examples since. Rather than seeing them as lacking free will, we can see these people as having broken their detector/predictor mechanisms for social instances.

I think it's best to distinguish between free will, which is a supernatural idea that some force acts independent of cause and effect, and will power, which is the ability for an organism to execute it's needs/wants (determined from biology and environment). Willpower definitely exists and it's how we judge responsibility.

If somebody always wants to kill you, they are responsible. But if somebody has a disease where there arm swings around wildly at random times, we don't consider them responsible. This is independent of whether the system is deterministic or not; it's only a matter of which system is dominating interactions in the organism.

 

[madness]

http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~jgreene/GreeneWJH/GreeneCohenPhilTrans-04.pdf

This looks very relevant to the discussion. From the abstract:

"New neuroscience will change the law, not by undermining its current assumptions,
but by transforming people’s moral intuitions about free will and responsibility. This change in moral outlook will result not from the discovery of crucial new facts or clever new arguments, but from a new appreciation of old arguments, bolstered by vivid new illustrations provided by cognitive neuroscience. We foresee, and recommend, a shift away from punishment aimed at retribution in favour of a more progressive, consequentialist approach to the criminal law."

 

[sophiecentaur]

Rather than seeing them as lacking free will, we can see these people as having broken their detector/predictor mechanisms for social instances.

I think it's best to distinguish between free will, which is a supernatural idea that some force acts independent of cause and effect, and will power, which is the ability for an organism to execute it's needs/wants (determined from biology and environment). Willpower definitely exists and it's how we judge responsibility.

I can't be sure what you mean by that. I don't actually believe in the supernatural (everything is 'natural' in my view) so are you saying that it 'really is' supernatural or that it's the interpretation that people give for certain experiences they have? If you mean the latter then I agree with your point.

 

[Pythagorean]

I'm saying that I think free will is a lot like a soul or a god when it comes to explaining mechanisms (i.e. its not much of an explanation). In science, we expect phenomena to follow rationally from known laws of physics (and it consistently does). Behavior of organisms (even humans) shouldn't violate our rational view, and all our experiments have shown it doesn't; we have a working model of brain function and neuroethology.

There is no need for a supernatural explanation. There's nothing in decision-making that requires explaining free will (though as someone previously said, there is probably plenty of valid interest in studying why we experience the sensation of free will).

 

[Goodison_Lad]

Er... no. That's exactly wrong. It only works because it's a deterministic system: because we can have a causative effect on people's actions

My point wasn’t whether legal systems are effective because they assume free will. They do assume it, and it’s not why they might work. I did actually acknowledge in my last post that their efficacy is based on their potential to have a causal effect on the supposedly deterministic system that is a person.

I must admit to being a bit baffled here. I know of no relevant system within a society that does not make the link between the responsibility of an individual and that individual’s capacity to make free choice – it is almost axiomatic. This assumption may very well be the representation of evolved strategies to minimise danger, but the net result is that people attach blame to wrongdoing because of the belief that alternative courses of action were open to the criminal. There are people who do not buy into this – they conclude that all behaviour is beyond the control of the organism, ‘control’ implying the ability to have done other than what is eventually done. For them, no control exists. Such people would be being true to the deterministic principle.

The burglar receives our disapproval precisely because we assume he didn’t have to enter our houses – he chose to. If we thought he had no real choice available to him, why should we hold him responsible for his behaviour? Only when we allow for mitigating circumstances do we absolve, to a greater or lesser extent, the criminal from his behaviour. Of course, some people won’t allow for any mitigation: the criminal made his bed, he can lie in it. Choice.

I think it's best to distinguish between free will, which is a supernatural idea that some force acts independent of cause and effect, and will power, which is the ability for an organism to execute it's needs/wants (determined from biology and environment). Willpower definitely exists and it's how we judge responsibility.

I don’t see at all how will power justifies the introduction of responsibility. As you describe it, it is a deterministic phenomenon, so the organism can have no real choice but to execute the orders of its will power. The brain of the organism will analyse the information and presumably generate what that brain considers to be the response needed to fulfil the organism’s needs/wants. At no point need this process be elevated above the automatic to explain it. Even if an apparent range of options is available to the executive function of the organism, the one it ‘chooses’ can only be the result of an automatically running programme. There is no choice in will power.

The only way I can see your point is if we mean different things by the word ‘responsibility’. If it is taken to mean that the fox is responsible for the slaughter in the chicken shed because we can attribute the slaughter to the fox’s behaviour, and no more than that, then yes, the fox is responsible. But in the way I mean it (and, I suspect, the way most people use it), responsibility has a moral dimension over and above a simple attribution of effect to cause.

Determinism dictates that the person who wants to kill me, in executing the will power programme, is powerless to do otherwise. Should there be an element of genuine choice as to whether to execute the will power programme, this would have to be non-deterministic i.e. free will.

Determinists must accept, er, responsibility for their beliefs. They can’t have their cake and eat it.

 

[Goodison_Lad]

http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~jgreene/GreeneWJH/GreeneCohenPhilTrans-04.pdf

This looks very relevant to the discussion. From the abstract:

"New neuroscience will change the law, not by undermining its current assumptions,
but by transforming people’s moral intuitions about free will and responsibility. This change in moral outlook will result not from the discovery of crucial new facts or clever new arguments, but from a new appreciation of old arguments, bolstered by vivid new illustrations provided by cognitive neuroscience. We foresee, and recommend, a shift away from punishment aimed at retribution in favour of a more progressive, consequentialist approach to the criminal law."

Thanks, good article. It both supports and goes against my argument in parts!

The assignment of responsibility is taken as a pragmatic step, not a moral one - by allowing the law to do this and act accordingly, we get a better society.

Morally, you can't hold the criminal responsible because determinism says he has no free will; pragmatically, you can say you want to hold him responsible because this helps you do things that can affect his future behaviour.

But you don't really believe he is truly, ultimately responsible. Just don't tell him that!

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

Not sure how exactly relevant this link is but I heard this on NPR today

We think we’re thinking our way through life. Well, yes and no. We’re thinking, but our unconscious minds are enormously powerful drivers. We think, but they can decide – often before we’ve even asked the question. For decades, we’ve understood we’re open to “subliminal seduction.” Our unconscious mind can be wooed.

The Subliminal Self
http://audio.wbur.org/storage/2012/04/onpoint_0425_the-subliminal-self.mp3

 

[sophiecentaur]

Determinism dictates that the person who wants to kill me, in executing the will power programme, is powerless to do otherwise. Should there be an element of genuine choice as to whether to execute the will power programme, this would have to be non-deterministic i.e. free will.

Determinists must accept, er, responsibility for their beliefs. They can’t have their cake and eat it.

I'm not sure that follows, strictly. We are observing this 'game' from inside it and could well be interpreting such scenarios in a too - simplistic way. If I want to kill someone but then restrain myself then the outcome could be just as 'determined' as if I did actually kill them. I might feel that I had made a decision but how can I be sure of all the factors that the decision algorithm had used? How can I be sure that I 'made a decision' independently?
'Responsibility' could just be a way for society to impose its influence on us. Our evolution has included what is advantageous to the species as a whole (and, indeed, to other species).

I have concluded that 'god' has been invented (as part of our evolution) in order to get individuals to behave 'better' to other humans. The same could be said about conscience and consciousness. Where that all leaves us is a bit problematical but I must say, it hasn't stopped my enjoyment and appreciation of life. And it certainly is fun to discuss.

 

[Pythagorean]

I don’t see at all how will power justifies the introduction of responsibility. As you describe it, it is a deterministic phenomenon, so the organism can have no real choice but to execute the orders of its will power. The brain of the organism will analyse the information and presumably generate what that brain considers to be the response needed to fulfil the organism’s needs/wants. At no point need this process be elevated above the automatic to explain it. Even if an apparent range of options is available to the executive function of the organism, the one it ‘chooses’ can only be the result of an automatically running programme. There is no choice in will power.

The only way I can see your point is if we mean different things by the word ‘responsibility’. If it is taken to mean that the fox is responsible for the slaughter in the chicken shed because we can attribute the slaughter to the fox’s behaviour, and no more than that, then yes, the fox is responsible. But in the way I mean it (and, I suspect, the way most people use it), responsibility has a moral dimension over and above a simple attribution of effect to cause.

Determinism dictates that the person who wants to kill me, in executing the will power programme, is powerless to do otherwise. Should there be an element of genuine choice as to whether to execute the will power programme, this would have to be non-deterministic i.e. free will.

Determinists must accept, er, responsibility for their beliefs. They can’t have their cake and eat it.

Ok, well first off... let's just get one thing straight. The law are not neuroscientists, so they're not exactly an authority. Neither is society at large. It's really a complicated subject; it will take several iterations of posts clarifying the language and the ideas.

But yes, that's the difference. You've built a notion of free will into your definition of responsibility. So let's skip that semantic argument.

We still hold the burglar accountable. I don't personally care whether he did it deterministically or not. I don't want to punish people for retribution. I just want dangerous people off the streets so they can't be dangerous. It's not a personal thing, I don't want to see them suffer. They're just dangerous (or costly) so their risky behavior shouldn't take place around me or my family. They can perform risky behavior in a place designed for it (a prison). But we know, statistically, that the burglar probably didn't get a good education or have a stable family life growing up. So we launch programs for prevention. This all relies on the system being deterministic.

To you first paragraph posted, this is exactly what the evidence shows. You give people more information, they make better choices (look at the correlation between crime and education and crime and social class). People will always make the choice they perceive as the best choice as long as their executive functions are working properly. If you have more information (education) and money (resource), then you can more easily carry out the best options.

now IF your executive functions aren't working properly, then we don't hold people accountable. We acknowledge that some part of them is broken, so throwing education and money at the problem won't fix it; that's an important distinction so that we don't waste resources (but then again, humanitarians probably won't let you be picky like this).

Of course, everybody has a different genetic concoction underlying this all, so many different biological responses can come from the same environmental stimulus. The developmental period in the womb is important too. Monozygotic twins aren't EXACTLY the same due to some mutations, but also, importantly, due to different nutritional paradigms in the womb (depending on who's closest to mama's nutrition source).

Also, what Sophie said.

 

[Pythagorean]

Actually, what sophie said is grounded in neuroscience (an internal competition between brain regions). That's one of the well-known jobs of the frontal lobes. They have inhibitory projections to the rest of the brain, acting as a break. The "rest of the brain" has a lot of reptilian parts in it that initiate seeking behavior (basil ganglia) or react emotionally to stimuli (amygdala)

The frontal lobes are compromised when you drink alcohol. As I said before, toddlers make a transition from being disobedient little tyrants to listening better around age 3-5, when their frontal lobes go through a wiring paradigm. Then lastly, the frontal lobes myelinate in the early 20's, when kids stop being teenagers (right about when we let them drink alcohol).

 

[sophiecentaur]

This is what annoys me so much about 'those danged Philosophers'. They are just not in a position to go back to square one (because they are inside the system'. They go back to a point that, somehow, satisfies them as being far enough back - then they build whole edifices on that point and reckon they've actually proved something.

Problem is that some of them are extremely clever and they do deserve some recognition but, in the end, they are basing all of their stuff on the dreaded 'faith' word (even the atheists).

I guess I'm just an old fashioned Utilitarian.

 

[sophiecentaur]

Actually, what sophie said is grounded in neuroscience (an internal competition between brain regions). That's one of the well-known jobs of the frontal lobes. They have inhibitory projections to the rest of the brain, acting as a break. The "rest of the brain" has a lot of reptilian parts in it that initiate seeking behavior (basil ganglia) or react emotionally to stimuli (amygdala)

The frontal lobes are compromised when you drink alcohol. As I said before, toddlers make a transition from being disobedient little tyrants to listening better around age 3-5, when their frontal lobes go through a wiring paradigm. Then lastly, the frontal lobes myelinate in the early 20's, when kids stop being teenagers (right about when we let them drink alcohol).

Perhaps the problem that people have with just accepting their machine-like nature is that we also have evolved with a need to feel that we're something special. It wouldn't be favourable if everyone thought of themselves as being without a 'soul'. For a start, people would feel a lot better about killing other people if the general opinion was that they didn't have souls. But I don't believe we do - so what do I do? I have to use my Intellect instead and go with my emotions (an electro/chemical mix). Never felt like killing anyone despite that. Is that really worse than having a religion?

 

[Pythagorean]

I think you are going with the bigger set, in which religion is contained: imagination. That's really our saving grace. I fairly certain no other animals believe in gods or perform arts.

I don't know why people think others would kill without a soul. I would ask them then if a deer had a soul and a bear did not.

 

[sophiecentaur]

I think you are going with the bigger set, in which religion is contained: imagination. That's really our saving grace. I fairly certain no other animals believe in gods or perform arts.

I don't know why people think others would kill without a soul. I would ask them then if a deer had a soul and a bear did not.

A dog's god is often its owner (individual with total authority and completely unpredictable). But, in that case, the god is real and actually comes up with its dinner every day. haha

It's easy for people to anthropomorphise when thinking about other animals. ("I swear he understands every word I say" etc.) That is probably another desirable feature to evolve with - it just spills over from human-human to human-other animal relationships.

 

[madness]

Determinism dictates that the person who wants to kill me, in executing the will power programme, is powerless to do otherwise. Should there be an element of genuine choice as to whether to execute the will power programme, this would have to be non-deterministic i.e. free will.

Determinists must accept, er, responsibility for their beliefs. They can’t have their cake and eat it.

As I said before, I don't think there is any real contradiction between determinism and freewill. In saying that someone is "powerless to do otherwise", you are making the mistake of involving some extra decision-making agent. If you choose to do something, then do you also have to choose what to choose, and choose what to choose what to choose? It doesn't make sense to look at it this way, since you make your decisions freely, but there is no supernatural self or agent who makes these decisions. Your decisions are both determined and free because your self is a part of the natural world and not something separate from it.

Edit: I think this post is probably confusing, but I'm not sure how to word it more clearly...

 

[Goodison_Lad]

I'm not sure that follows, strictly. We are observing this 'game' from inside it and could well be interpreting such scenarios in a too - simplistic way. If I want to kill someone but then restrain myself then the outcome could be just as 'determined' as if I did actually kill them. I might feel that I had made a decision but how can I be sure of all the factors that the decision algorithm had used? How can I be sure that I 'made a decision' independently?
'Responsibility' could just be a way for society to impose its influence on us. Our evolution has included what is advantageous to the species as a whole (and, indeed, to other species).

Yes, I agree with all this. Determinism dictates that you didn’t make an independent decision, despite what you may think. The algorithm is hidden from conscious view. Taking this further, responsibility would be a societal invention that had practical uses but would not be founded scientifically.

Ok, well first off... let's just get one thing straight. The law are not neuroscientists, so they're not exactly an authority. Neither is society at large. It's really a complicated subject; it will take several iterations of posts clarifying the language and the ideas.

I’ll agree that lawyers and society at large aren’t experts, but neither am I sure that neuroscientists are the experts in this philosophical debate.

Yes, it’s probably a good idea to get some things straight, so here’s what I'm trying to argue:

1) what the deterministic view necessarily implies;
2) that people who adopt the deterministic view than fail to apply it to the nth degree are being inconsistent.

Here’s what I’m not trying to argue:

3) that the deterministic view must be false;
4) that the deterministic view must be true.

I introduced the legal argument to highlight the contradiction that appears to be present in the minds of most people’s who say they subscribe to determinism – since human behaviour is no more free of physical law than the sun rising, the belief that we can, in any way and by any mechanism, alter our behaviour from what it is pre-determined to be is contradictory and not rational.

Determinism dictates that I couldn’t do other than commit the crime at the time I did. Determinism also dictates that most other people’s thoughts will form along the lines of condemnation. Inevitably, determinism will result in them believing that I am responsible, and just as inevitably, determinism will dictate what actions they take. These actions may include the formulation of a legal code which itself includes the concept of responsibility and choice. Their actions may, deterministically, alter my brain in such a way that I don’t repeat the offence. No choice at any point in the chain. It’s irrelevant whether we feel we have a choice (more deterministic neuro-stuff again). And it’s also irrelevant how we rationalise it – we have no choice in the matter.

Take the Bohmian interpretation of QM as an example – every last detail of the universe at this instant is an inevitable consequence of the early conditions. That includes what you and I are going to think and write next. And next. If not, where and how did determinism break down?
Most people on this thread indicate that they don’t believe in any non-deterministic agency that could alter the course of events as they unfold. So in the absence of such an agency, which seems to be the majority view, absolutely everything – and I mean everything – is unavoidably as it is. And always will be. That’s all.

Clearly, semantics are not incidental here - they seem to be crucial. As noted, my concept of responsibility necessarily includes a component of free will, and I believe this is the generally accepted use of the word. This is exactly why nobody attributes responsibility to a dog that chews the sofa, nor to a person who chews the sofa under extreme duress. We recognise that they had no choice. But implicit in our speech and behaviour is the belief that somebody who does do something of which we disapprove can be blamed because they could have acted differently. Of course, determinism says quite the opposite.

Note that I am not saying that either free will or responsibility actually exists. I am saying that free will and responsibility come as a package. And I’d bet good money that the overwhelming majority of people, scientists included, operate according to this notion in everyday life. If people profess to adhere to the deterministic world view then the only consistent thing to do is to abandon the notion of responsibility (as I have used it) along with free will. That the laws of physics lead us to hold the burglar to account doesn’t make belief in this accountability any more real than belief in the free will these same laws of physics tell us is illusory. I very much doubt that scientists have freed themselves from this, no matter what they do in their day jobs.

So I accept everything you say about how the brain works – you’re providing information about what goes on under the hood. Since it is assumed that neuroscience is ultimately grounded in physics and therefore subject to determinism to exactly the same degree, I asked myself whether neuroscience could offer any mechanism that would allow for anything that is unfolding in the human world to be any different than what it actually is? And, of course, the answer is no.

As I said before, I don't think there is any real contradiction between determinism and freewill. In saying that someone is "powerless to do otherwise", you are making the mistake of involving some extra decision-making agent. If you choose to do something, then do you also have to choose what to choose, and choose what to choose what to choose?

I’m not arguing for a supernatural agent, just that I think the concepts of pure determinism and free will are mutually exclusive. Since the word ‘choice’ implies (to me at least) freedom of selection between different courses of action, I think the idea that an organism has choice is incompatible with determinism. It might both look and feel that it has choice, but it has none at all.

Sorry to all for the long post - I'm a slow typer, and the posts kept on coming!

 

[Pythagorean]

I think that's a rather selective definition of responsibility. We may have a situation where two people worked together to make decisions for an event that failed catastrophically. Then we want to look for which of them is responsible for it by analyzing how they contributed to the plan and what parts of the plan failed.

None of this requires talking about free will. We just want to know which organism is partaking in risky behavior. Was it an honest mistake? Was the organism interested in safety, or was the organism interested in fame and glory and being negligent. None of these questions require free will. We, as a society, are just gentler on honest mistakes than we are on intended misconduct. Somebody who intentionally attacks you IS different than somebody who accidentally drops something on your toe, even if they are both operating deterministically. You want to put the person with intention in prison because they will always fix their mistakes such that they won't get caught in the future, whereas the good-intentioned will fix their behavior such that they perform more congruently with societies minimal demands (safety of property and person).

(of course, people can change too, but it's actually quite a small chance a violent criminal will rehabilitate, so it's more risk-taking to forgive ill-intentioned people even when they say they'll be good next time; other non-violent "criminals" like drug-users almost certainly shouldn't be in prison, imo, they should be in rehab.)

 

[Pythagorean]

In any case, I agree that how you define responsibility, free will and responsibility are a package deal.

 

[sophiecentaur]

In any case, I agree that how you define responsibility, free will and responsibility are a package deal.

Yes; it's definitely a package..
I see it this way: responsibility is the influence of the group on the individual. It is a normalising influence which may not immediately appeal to the individual. We have 'free will' in as far as we are not totally aware of all the influences on us (looking from inside the game) and, when we come to a decision, it is based (to a varying extent) on what we perceive as our 'responsibility' which is, in fact, an urge to a particular preferred action, which we learned from society.

 

[pftest]

Hi pftest,

Logical supervenience is a concept like the terms "intrinsic" versus "extrinsic", and like those terms, it attempts to pick out a relationship between properties. In this case, logical supervenience tries to pick out properties that relate. So the argument is, "Do mental states logically supervene on physical states?"

For the record, logical supervenience is nicely defined here:

Let's then ask the question as Chalmers did, do mental states logically supervene on physical states? Could we for example, imagine a Turing machine that could consistently pass a Turing test that does not support mental states? That is, is it possible that such a machine could only have physical states? Note that mental and physical states here are defined as Jaegwon Kim defines them.

Clearly, a Turing machine produces responces based on algorithmic manipulations of symbols. Those algorithms can be described mathematically and are deterministic. So for each physical state through which a Turing machine passes, there is a physical reason for why it passes through that state. There is no need to appeal to mental states in this case in order to explain why that Turing machine produced the set of responces it did in order to pass the Turing test. Such a machine therefore does not need to have mental states in order to produce the behavior, it only requires the physical states. If we accept this, we can say those mental states to not logically supervene on the physical states since we clearly have no reason to suggest that subjective experiences (which can't be objectively measured) should supervene on those physical states, though we still might claim that those mental states naturally supervene on the physical states.

In fact, we can't know if there are ANY mental states that supervene on physical states if the mental states have no influence over the physical states. That problem is known as the Knowledge Paradox as described for example by Rosenburg and Shoemaker.

I think we have talked about supervenience before, but i don't remember the outcome. My impression of supervenience is that a supervenience relationship is always conceptual. So when someone says that your mind supervenes on your brain, it actually translates to "some other mind conceptualises that your mind supervenes on your brain". So a supervenience relationship doesn't describe any kind of physical activity and this means that supervenience isn't a physicalist view of the mind body problem.

 

[pftest]

The external world is a mental construct, the self is a mental construct, I can't think of anything at all that isn't a mental construct.

Idealists think that is true yes, but physicalists think that physical things exist independently of minds.

 

[sophiecentaur]

Idealists think that is true yes, but physicalists think that physical things exist independently of minds.

So idealists say that the constructs of the mind are, somehow 'greater' than the physical processes that are, in fact, going on in the brain? That implies that they believe a part of us is outside the physical Universe. Apart from the fact that it could make one feel good to think that way, there is no evidence for this, is there?

 

[pftest]

So idealists say that the constructs of the mind are, somehow 'greater' than the physical processes that are, in fact, going on in the brain? That implies that they believe a part of us is outside the physical Universe. Apart from the fact that it could make one feel good to think that way, there is no evidence for this, is there?

Idealism is the idea that everything is mental. Like physicalism (which holds that everything is physical), it is a metaphysical position and no evidence exists to tell us that either of those positions is right or wrong.

 

[sophiecentaur]

Yeah, well, when I drop a hammer on my foot, the result isn't just 'mental'.

 

[pftest]

Yeah, well, when I drop a hammer on my foot, the result isn't just 'mental'.

How do you know about your foot, or the hammer? How do we know about anything physical? The entire bunch of sciences, including physics, depends on empiricism, which means "to experience", aka consciousness. So mind really is the starting point of all our knowledge. From the consistency of your observations you may start believing that a physical world actually exists out there, but this is an assumption, not a fact. Of course the idealist view is also an assumption.

 

[Maui]

How physicists handle the idea of Free Will?


Is this somehow supposed to be different or more significant than the questions:

How metallurgists handle the idea of Free Will?
How masseurs handle the idea of Free Will?
How miners handle the idea of Free Will?


If so, why should physicists be more concerned than the above? Why is free will more related to physics than to agriculture or irrigation?

 

[Maui]

Yeah, well, when I drop a hammer on my foot, the result isn't just 'mental'.

If i can hear your scream, i'd agree with you. Otherwise, it'd be subjective/non-existent as far as i am concerned.

 

[sophiecentaur]

Yes, I was being very trivial there.
Problem with that view is that you and everyone else would need to be just figments of my imagination. That would have to imply that I know more than you and all the others (who are all my dream buddies). It would mean that I taught myself Maths and Physics from scratch... ?
Perhaps, if I were a 'philosopher' my ego could cope with that.

 

[pftest]

Yes, I was being very trivial there.
Problem with that view is that you and everyone else would need to be just figments of my imagination. That would have to imply that I know more than you and all the others (who are all my dream buddies). It would mean that I taught myself Maths and Physics from scratch... ?
Perhaps, if I were a 'philosopher' my ego could cope with that.

That would be solipsism (only your mind exists). Solipsism is a form of idealism, but idealism doesn't have to be solipsism, it doesn't specifify how many minds or who they are.

 

[Goodison_Lad]

How physicists handle the idea of Free Will?


Is this somehow supposed to be different or more significant than the questions:

How metallurgists handle the idea of Free Will?
How masseurs handle the idea of Free Will?
How miners handle the idea of Free Will?


If so, why should physicists be more concerned than the above? Why is free will more related to physics than to agriculture or irrigation?

You left out brick layers. We brick layers have a very comprehensive theory purporting to explain the universe, if anybody's interested.

 

[sophiecentaur]

That would be solipsism (only your mind exists). Solipsism is a form of idealism, but idealism doesn't have to be solipsism, it doesn't specifify how many minds or who they are.

That implies 'souls' that can communicate with each other. Difficult.
If I had to, I'd rather be a solipsist. But all that stuff fits in so well with the explanation of it all being generated by our minds and that is a relatively simple idea.

 

[madness]

Idealists think that is true yes, but physicalists think that physical things exist independently of minds.

I think I would have to define myself as an idealist in the Kantian sense. We can only know the external world through our senses, and therefore the external world is an unobservable hypothesis. This doesn't mean that the physical world doesn't exist independently of our minds though. It just means that we can never know the external world directly (and that we can't be sure it exists).

The fact that we deal with an internal representation of the external world rather than the world itself is widely accepted in Neuroscience. For example: http://philosophyandpsychology.com/?p=1013 .

"Here we can see the intellectual foundations for modern neuroscience’s claim that the objects we experience are illusionary constructions generated from the brain making hypotheses and guesses about how the world is based on ambiguous sensory input. The key idea here is construction. An internal mental construction implies a disconnection from the objects themselves. When grasping a coffee mug, my vision is not directed towards the cup itself, but rather, towards an internal construction the brain generates. According to Kantian neuroscience, the mug I experience is not real; it is a simulation. Neuroscience is thus an intellectual descendant of Kantian anti-realism. Indeed, 20th century positivism collapsed into representational phenomenalism despite its claim to be “anti-metaphysical” and modern neuroscience has subsequently followed suit with little critical discussion."

 

[madness]

So idealists say that the constructs of the mind are, somehow 'greater' than the physical processes that are, in fact, going on in the brain? That implies that they believe a part of us is outside the physical Universe. Apart from the fact that it could make one feel good to think that way, there is no evidence for this, is there?'.

It's more that materialists believe in an unobservable external world which exists outside of anything we can ever directly experience. This is what there is no evidence for. There is plenty of evidence for the existence of mental processes and conscious experience, in fact this comprises everything we ever know as individuals. What you describe in this quote is dualism, which accepts the existence of separate physical and mental entities.

Yeah, well, when I drop a hammer on my foot, the result isn't just 'mental'.

Why not?