Help, I'm being attacked by a straw man!

Trent took time today to respond to my previous post. Somehow, though, I feel like a whole bunch of straw men suddenly entered the fray because it feels like he is debating against things I neither said, nor believe.

I will take the time to reply nonetheless. First of all, I think Trent misunderstood the tone of the previous post. It was one of slight exasperation. I find it mildly amusing that such a brilliant individual can work so hard to make something which is so simple seem so complex.

It is not. We each exercise and experience free will a thousand times a day. I am doing it right now as I choose which words to use as I type, as well as make choices in where I will make corrections and edits. I am exercising free will.

It seems to require some remarkably convoluted logic to take something which is so apparently simple and obvious and try to obfuscate it with a bunch of references to other topics which have nothing to do with the personal experience of free will at all.

I feel it would be inappropriate to get into a lengthy lecture about reality tunnels and quantum psychology at this point and I am willing to grant that, for the purposes of this discussion, we live in a shared reality that we try to understand via a set of shared experiences. (Of course, this too is flawed, as many people experience reality in remarkably distinct ways; based on culture, language, imprinting, biology, and simply their personal experiences.)

Fortunately, we nearly all have the shared experience of free-will, so this would seem to prove the matter and require no further discussion.

Let us see what Trent has to say on the topic.

>>I suppose I share your wonder that I'm responding to this.

I hope I have made clear by now that I don't think it is much of a topic worth 'debating'. We all experience free-will, therefore we all have it. Reality assimilation is wholly based on experience as sensory data filters through our individual neurolinguistic grid. I experience free-will, therefore I have free will. I think therefore I am. It truly is that simple. Why make it more complicated than that?

>>“If people freak at evolution, etc., how much more will they freak if scientists and philosophers tell them they are nothing more than sophisticated meat machines, and is that conclusion now clearly warranted or is it premature?” -- Michael Silberstein.The above quote certainly seems very applicable to the discussion, is it not?

I suppose, but I'm not freaked out by what Silberstein says because it is not in accordance with my experience. Therefore, he himself appears to be self-deluded; which, to be frank, I find a bit sad.

>>You say: "The problem with Dawkins and, perhaps the problem you suffer from here as well Trent, is that you assume that the limits of human knowledge and experience is that which has been measured in a laboratory or expressed in a mathematical equation." Perhaps your problem is you assume it is more?

Of course I assume something 'more' but I would hardly consider it a problem. My consciousness is not a 'solved' scientific problem to be formulated. It is an experience I have within the context of my being. The 'something more' is what science cannot measure or know anything about. The quality of consciousness described as qualia (see link) is what science has little to say about. Measuring gross external effects, such as reflexive responses or chemical and electrical signaling, says nothing about the internal experience itself.

>>Tell me more of your experience and common sense relating to the electrical and chemical state of your brain that indicate you choose, or had an experience based on other than the (extremely chaotic) physics of your mind and sensory input.

I honestly can't fathom this question. Look, I just made a choice to write that statement. I made a choice which words to use and I continue to cogitate on how I will respond to these rather strange sounding questions. There is nothing related to 'extremely chaotic physics' of the human mind which causes me to choose one word over another. It is an internal process of my own self-reflective consciousness. Just because that process happens to take place inside of a brain is rather beside the point.

>> I fully understand that in the ‘ordinary’ sense, people can choose.

Aha, now we get to the crux of the problem!! The 'ordinary' sense is the only sense that matters!! It is the sense of human experience! Free-will in the 'ordinary sense' is a granted, a given, and easily demonstrable and reproducible a billion times a day amongst billions of human beings.

Why make it any more complicated than that?

>>I think the scientific discussion is whether those choices can be predicted or controlled with any certainty.

Last I checked we are having no great success 'predicting' chaotic systems. To believe that all human consciousness is reducible and, therefore wholly predictable, is an amazing assertion and we lack any evidence that would suggest this would be the case.

>>This does seem to have ramifications in legal and personal freedom terms.

Again, you seem to be moving away from the 'ordinary sense' of the term. In the 'ordinary sense' (meaning the way we experience free will in reality) we each have free-will choices to make and, our ability to do so, is reflected in our legal system.

Likewise, let us say we have a robot who's behavior is completely pre-programmed by the creator. Let us say the author of this robot even programs it to have 'free-will' by randomly making choices. Now, let us say this robot goes out and kills a human being as one of its random 'free will' choices. Where does legal liability lie?

I would assume that first and foremost the robot would be destroyed or, at least have its power shut off, and the programmer who designed it with such lax controls would quite likely be charged with anything ranging from manslaughter to criminal liability for his product.

At the end of the day, it is the free-will choice of the human being, not the robot, that counts in our society.

>>The Clockwork Orange fictionalizes possible ramifications. Imagine the possible abuses if one could simply add some carefully crafted drug to the local water supply and have 50% of the population “choose” to fly themselves to Iraq and shoot all those horrible people that blew up the world trade center?

Well, this kind of abuse happens all of the time. That is why free-will is so important. People can give up their free will! They can give it up to a priest, a pope, an Imam, cult leader, or a dictator.

That is why each of us should protect our free will with such care. It is our most powerful gift and to give it up to another is either a great sacrifice or a terrible crime depending on the situation.

>>"When you dream, experiencing a detailed world so dazzling that it outshines the greatest reality you have ever felt in the physical realm, and when you have conversations and complex interactions with other people in these dreams, who is creating this dramatic landscape? Are you talking to yourself? And, if so, which self?"Come now. This is easy. The mind is a chaotic playground of electrical and chemical signals. REM sleep seems necessary for our brains -- studies that indicate without REM sleep, mental degeneration and death will follow (If you really wish, I'll find you the exact references so you can read about it yourself?) Now, it’s relatively easy to verify that there is brain activity within the limbic system and other areas of the brain active during consciousness… obviously, the brain is doing something during that time.

We are not talking about the same thing. Let me use this analogy. Let us say I give you a radio that is playing the most beautiful Mozart symphony. You analyze the radio and you learn how to modulate the signal in numerous ways. You can study the circuitry inside and out until you know every aspect of it in absurd detail. You can turn the music on, off, make it louder, make its signal fade away, or even introduce artifacts.

However, let me assure you, at no time whatsoever will you ever find Mozart.

Knowing how electrical signals travel through the human brain is the same as saying you understand the wiring of a radio. It does not, however, have anything to say about the inherent meaning in the signal.

My consciousness, waking, dreaming, or otherwise, is a deeply personal experience and no matter how much you might measure the electrical signals that flow through my neural network you will never be able to say anything about the quality of my internal experience.

My dreams are deep and profound to me. The experience of them is not 'explained' by chaotic electrical signals firing. That is irrelevant information and yields no particular elucidation on the internal experience itself.

And this, my friend, is the point. The quality of my internal experience, that of my consciousness and thoughts, is what we are discussing here.

You seem to be working from a base assumption that human consciousness is an epiphenomena of matter. This has hardly been proven. You also seem to be working from the assumption that human consciousness is wholly reducible and even deterministic based on some unknown mathematics.

This is hardly a given either.

>>Since I believe awareness and consciousness is an artifact of these processes, "common sense" would dictate that you could and would experience this storm of chemical and electrical activity, and further, that it could be similar, and at the same time, very differently from conscious reality.

Hmmm..this is strange. Dreams are 'accompanied by' this form of chemical and electrical activity. They are not 'artifacts' nor or they 'explicative'. You seem to be dismissing the intensity, value, and meaning of consciousness itself.

I don't dismiss my dreams as random and chaotic firings of electrical signals (as if that was to even mean anything). I embrace my dreams because they are deep, profound, and filled with great significance. I enjoy my dreaming life greatly and I believe it is filled with great personal import. Just because my brain exhibits certain properties while I am in this state is neither here nor there. The fact that my brain is in a particular wave state provides absolutely no explanatory value for the deeply intense and personal experience I have during this phase of 'sleep'.

I won't get into the details, certainly not on an online forum, but I am quite a fan of 'reprogramming the human biocomputer'. I have done any number of experiments with the ranges of my own personal states of consciousness and I feel more than qualified to contemplate my personal being.

>>In any case, you stated your displeasure that scientists might suggest that free will is an illusion, that we are trapped by the chaotic physical processes of our mind rather than being some metaphysical spirit floating thru the ether.

My stated displeasure is with people who fail to admit that they have a free-will and act in accordance with that fact. Scientists can, will, and do, study biological systems all of the time. I believe, in fact, that I need a mind and body to experience consciousness within the material world. I just don't believe that reading an EEG is going to tell you what I'm thinking.

>>Further, they compound that sin by actually performing experiments that may or may not deny their hypothesis. Then they actually publish their results. Which part of this do you feel should be stopped, given that you just stated.

They can do that morning, noon, and night, because they are not studying what I am talking about. At what point is any study going to revoke the *fact* that I experience free-will in the myriad of choices I make on a daily basis?

>> "I believe that having a society where free-thought reign’s supreme is of paramount importance." Did you mean to add ".., but only when it agrees with my own notions" to the end of that? ;-)

No, not at all. How can any scientific experiment take away my free will? They would have to take away my free will under duress.

This nation was founded upon Freemason principles of Freedom of speech, Freedom of Religion, and liberty. These are all *free-will* principles. We have fought and died to earn these freedoms. I do not believe we should create a culture of victim hood or applaud those who give up their free will to a cult-leader or religious fanatic.

These are value judgments of the highest order. We should each of us not only embrace our free-will but also recognize how important it is that we fight for it. We can lose our free-will. It can happen, and the threats and assaults on our freedoms continue to be waged even today.

>>Where are your proposals for experiments to deny their findings (If they exist, I would certainly be interested?

Oh, sure, thanks for an easy one. Pick a number between one and a million. Even if you refuse to pick a number, you have still made a free-will choice.

Gee, that was easy.

Trent, you seem to be going a long way to make a very simple thing complicated. Perhaps you should read 'Quantum Psychology' or some other good books on philosophy.