A Sense of Free Will: the consciousness quagmire (Introduction)

by dhw, Monday, September 21, 2015, 19:40 (3137 days ago) @ romansh

ROMANSH: Again word games on your part dhw. I have never claimed I am not aware. Just that the awareness/consciousness is historical - after the fact. -I am aware of what I am writing, I consciously think BEFORE and while I write, and even sometimes consciously search for words and rethink. I follow the same conscious thinking procedure with conditions and options BEFORE I make a decision. Which of us is the odd man out?-Dhw: Yes, our actions are totally the result of cause and effect (a valid argument against free will), but the notion that my identity is mine alone, regardless of all influences, and therefore gives me the ability to make my own conscious choices within given constraints...etc.
ROMANSH: I don't have a clue what you mean when you say yours alone. I have not claimed that you are someone else...-Perhaps the fact that you and Bruce Hood think of the self as an illusion is the source of your strange inability to understand what I mean when I say “my identity is mine alone.” Did you miss “regardless of all influences”? See below re Hood's lecture.
 
ROMANSH: Now if you can hold two diametrically opposed views as true, then you are a 'better' man than I. In my world view one or both of those views has to be false. [...] I am speaking to your ability to make conscious choices and not being able to make conscious choices. This I would describe as silly.-It only sounds silly if you continue to leave out the different premises on which the different conclusions are based. See also below for my response to your “poppycock” re definitions.-Dhw: Everything is dependent on the universe, which is why your definition is skewed.
ROMANSH: You arbitrarily draw boundaries around certain objects and claim they have consciousness (note your version of consciousness and not mine) and hey presto we have free will. This too is skewed.-This is a total misrepresentation of my argument. During these exchanges, I have not drawn arbitrary boundaries round any objects (I wrote that I don't even draw a line around myself) and have limited my discussion of consciousness to humans. It was you who brought up machines, and I pointed out that if humans have free will, free will exists. There is no hey presto. Having consciousness does not invalidate the cause-and-effect argument. I remain at a loss as to why you reject its role in the process of making choices.-Dhw: Consciousness doesn't “do” anything - it is the awareness without which we cannot make our choices. 
ROMANSH: Not so vague ... you are too busy to read the self illusion. -http://www.agnosticweb.com/index.php?id=14883
http://richannel.org/christmas-lectures/2011/meet-your-brain#/christmas-lectures-2011-b...-I am fully aware that we are largely formed by our environment and heredity, we need other people, and our sense of an emergent self does not mean we have a single coherent “self” etc. I pointed out earlier that my identity is a mass of actuals and potentials. The fact that my fluid self may not be what it seems applies to the whole of reality. None of us can know the objective truth. But an illusion is not necessarily a delusion, and my self is still me and as real to me as anything I know. That is why, despite the validity of the cause and effect argument against free will, I can also argue that my identity is mine alone regardless of all influences, and so my “self” has the ability to take conscious decisions.-Dhw: The definition defines what we mean by free will, which put in its simplest form is the ability to make choices. The discussion then concerns whether or not we have that ability. Your definition tells us that we do not have it, because nothing is independent of the universe. In my view the definition should be neutral.-ROMANSH: My definition simply points to the nature of how choices are made.-No it doesn't. It tells us that free will is only possible if choices are independent of the universe.-ROMANSH: Definitions should be neutral - poppycock. They should describe as accurately as possible, what we mean. We don't need to give some under dog a fighting chance. -Great! Compatibilist definition of free will: freedom to act without coercion from other people, social conventions or institutions. So when I choose a chocolate ice cream in preference to a vanilla ice cream (example taken from Bruce Hood), I prove that I have free will because nobody else and no institution forced me to make the choice. This is fun:-Atheist definition of God: a non-existent being dreamed up by the human imagination. -Theist definition of God: The eternal, living being that created the universe and life.
All we have to do is choose a definition that describes “as accurately as possible what we mean”, and that proves our case. -Dhw: “Again”? This is the first time you have acknowledged that there might be other criteria. Could this be progress? 
ROMANSH: I am sure I have agreed we can define free will, into and out of existence before.-Yes, we have. Now please tell me what criteria other than cause and effect you are prepared to accept in discussing whether we do or do not have free will.