Posted: Mar 21, 2010 11:35 pm
I´d be interested in Audley laying out an epistemological approach to figuring out what is "real". It´s a term that´s been thrown around without proper definition. Crucially it can be subjected to the very same objections Audley has brought up about other concepts like "evil", "good", etc. Following AS reasoning "real" doesn´t refer to something "real" either. It´s a short path to solipsism.
On the subject of free will, a lot of muddled thinking exists. IMHO it does exist, simply because decisions of organisms are unpredictable and principally so. Yes, we can show in the lab that humans make decision before they become aware of them. Yet, they make these decisions. There are some things worth noting here:
a) Violations of the Bell inequality point towards a non-deterministic universe. This means that there are truly unpredictable events in nature (though the probabilities with which they occur can be predicted).
b) Neural networks in living organisms are built on thermodynamics, and thus are stochastic systems. It is easy to make them less reliable by reducing the concentrations of neurotransmitters.
c) Unpredictability is a survival-ading strategy. For a very simple case, let´s consider a mouse chased by a cat. I could turn left, it could turn right. If there was a deterministic mechanism for the mouses movement, cats would have evolved an optimal response - evolution can pick up effects that are very small and near indetectable. The optimal strategy for the mouse is to turn either way with a 50% probability. That way the cat has only a 50% of making the right choice. Because it is so easy to make neural networks unreliable and a certain amount of unreliability is beneficial it´d be highly unlikely not to have free will in this sense.
d) Orgasms feel good. The reason they do is because it increases the rate of replication of a gene making orgasms feel good, if the carrier has more sex than a carrier of an alternative. If the carrier does not make choices, then there´s no reason for orgasms to feel good. And while I tend to consider non-adaptionist options, the number of things that feel good (orgasms, love, a good nights sleep) is an argument against them being neutral.
On the subject of free will, a lot of muddled thinking exists. IMHO it does exist, simply because decisions of organisms are unpredictable and principally so. Yes, we can show in the lab that humans make decision before they become aware of them. Yet, they make these decisions. There are some things worth noting here:
a) Violations of the Bell inequality point towards a non-deterministic universe. This means that there are truly unpredictable events in nature (though the probabilities with which they occur can be predicted).
b) Neural networks in living organisms are built on thermodynamics, and thus are stochastic systems. It is easy to make them less reliable by reducing the concentrations of neurotransmitters.
c) Unpredictability is a survival-ading strategy. For a very simple case, let´s consider a mouse chased by a cat. I could turn left, it could turn right. If there was a deterministic mechanism for the mouses movement, cats would have evolved an optimal response - evolution can pick up effects that are very small and near indetectable. The optimal strategy for the mouse is to turn either way with a 50% probability. That way the cat has only a 50% of making the right choice. Because it is so easy to make neural networks unreliable and a certain amount of unreliability is beneficial it´d be highly unlikely not to have free will in this sense.
d) Orgasms feel good. The reason they do is because it increases the rate of replication of a gene making orgasms feel good, if the carrier has more sex than a carrier of an alternative. If the carrier does not make choices, then there´s no reason for orgasms to feel good. And while I tend to consider non-adaptionist options, the number of things that feel good (orgasms, love, a good nights sleep) is an argument against them being neutral.