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This article seems to be yet another long-winded attempt to say that human beings have some sort of "soul" or "vital essence" that computers don't, but since th

This article seems to be yet another long-winded attempt to say that human beings have some sort of "soul" or "vital essence" that computers don't, but since those ideas are out of vogue, it uses obfuscated language to make the same point without explicitly saying it. See: > which have allegedly shown that our decisions are not the result of “some mysterious free will”, but the result of “millions of neurons calculating probabilities within a split second” > the quotations are “nothing but” the result of chemical algorithms and “no more than” the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells. How can they then be true? The article is suggesting that human beings cannot say true things about the world or themselves if human intelligence is no more than chemical algorithms and nerve cells, and that proponents of physicalism are therefore contradicting themselves. This is a fairly bizarre argument. The use of "allegedly" with regards to explaining human decisions as a result of neurons further reinforces the claim that therefore, there must be some mysterious free will, a human soul, or here a "social context", to explain human consciousness. The trouble with vitalism or claims of a human soul should be fairly self-evident in the modern age, and claiming that denying it is "scientism" is utter nonsense. They then mix it up by saying that computers are not in the physical world and do not have a body, therefore cannot be generally intelligent like humans. This is obviously false, what is a robot if not a computer with a body? Computers can interact with the world using sensors and actuators, there's no theoretical reason that they could not match or exceed human physical capabilities (they already do in narrow instances).

vidarh 6y ago
It always mystifies me to what extent people insist on trying to hold on to this fantasy of free will, while remaining unable to define free will in a way that does not devolve to "magic" or some attempt to obscure a deterministic description behind smoke and mirrors. At least some of the latter (e.g. a portion of compatibilists etc.) will if pressed admit that their "free will" is an effect or illusion of mind layered on top of determinism, but for a lot of people the very idea that they don't have actual agency seems entirely impossible to accept.
- ggggtez 6y ago
  The offender I hear most often now a days is trying to use Quantum Mechanics to bring free-will back into play. The idea being that if any part of nature is unpredictable, then that could be a mechanism for where free-will might come from. Except that would be like saying your phone is conscious just because it gets bombarded by cosmic waves that sometimes cause bitflips. Just because the machine isn't 100% predictable, doesn't mean that those cosmic waves have any specific goal in mind.
  - ebg13 6y ago
    > The idea being that if any part of nature is unpredictable, then that could be a mechanism for where free-will might come from. Trying to use QM to introduce free will is just another manifestation of the same "mistaking the model for the reality" problem. We have no reason to believe that quantum probability is the end of the road just because we can't see what causes the probabilistic results. For all anyone knows, Einstein was still correct and there is still no god playing dice, just the same old predictable billiard balls at a plane that we can't readily observe.
    - hansvm 6y ago
      Perhaps. There's been some interesting work in showing that any hidden variable theories can't give any better predictions than QM probabilities. It remains to be seen whether their hypotheses are valid, but the inference seems sound.
      - ebg13 6y ago
        That's well and good, but "prediction" is an attribute of a representative model, not of reality. Reality doesn't represent or predict itself; it just occurs. The problem of comparing against "hidden variable theories" in this context is that the variables wouldn't be hidden to reality; they'd only be hidden to us. So can we predict better than QM? Maybe not. Does QM describe the truth behind experience? Probably not, and it isn't meant to.
- 6y ago
cheez 6y ago
There's no trouble, we don't know everything. We default to assuming there is nothing we can't explain, doesn't mean that assumption is truth. Our job is to keep pounding the universe for truths until it gives them up.

vidarh 6y ago

It always mystifies me to what extent people insist on trying to hold on to this fantasy of free will, while remaining unable to define free will in a way that does not devolve to "magic" or some attempt to obscure a deterministic description behind smoke and mirrors. At least some of the latter (e.g. a portion of compatibilists etc.) will if pressed admit that their "free will" is an effect or illusion of mind layered on top of determinism, but for a lot of people the very idea that they don't have actual agency seems entirely impossible to accept.

ggggtez 6y ago
The offender I hear most often now a days is trying to use Quantum Mechanics to bring free-will back into play. The idea being that if any part of nature is unpredictable, then that could be a mechanism for where free-will might come from. Except that would be like saying your phone is conscious just because it gets bombarded by cosmic waves that sometimes cause bitflips. Just because the machine isn't 100% predictable, doesn't mean that those cosmic waves have any specific goal in mind.
- ebg13 6y ago
  > The idea being that if any part of nature is unpredictable, then that could be a mechanism for where free-will might come from. Trying to use QM to introduce free will is just another manifestation of the same "mistaking the model for the reality" problem. We have no reason to believe that quantum probability is the end of the road just because we can't see what causes the probabilistic results. For all anyone knows, Einstein was still correct and there is still no god playing dice, just the same old predictable billiard balls at a plane that we can't readily observe.
  - hansvm 6y ago
    Perhaps. There's been some interesting work in showing that any hidden variable theories can't give any better predictions than QM probabilities. It remains to be seen whether their hypotheses are valid, but the inference seems sound.
    - ebg13 6y ago
      That's well and good, but "prediction" is an attribute of a representative model, not of reality. Reality doesn't represent or predict itself; it just occurs. The problem of comparing against "hidden variable theories" in this context is that the variables wouldn't be hidden to reality; they'd only be hidden to us. So can we predict better than QM? Maybe not. Does QM describe the truth behind experience? Probably not, and it isn't meant to.
6y ago

cheez 6y ago

There's no trouble, we don't know everything. We default to assuming there is nothing we can't explain, doesn't mean that assumption is truth. Our job is to keep pounding the universe for truths until it gives them up.