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> I challenge you to define “free will” in a way which is simultaneously testable, and also something humans have and other animals lack every animal, except h

> I challenge you to define “free will” in a way which is simultaneously testable, and also something humans have and other animals lack every animal, except humans, lack the neurological structures to process the concept of "free will" which is entirely a human construct. If they had free will, they would fight for it or at least some of them would. One could argue that we still don't know the human brain, so how can we exclude that animals haven't what it takes to understand free will? But it's the same thing of saying that God exists because we can't disprove it. And if we assume that cows understand it, why exclude other animals, like fish, or some plant or fungi? We assume they don't have it because they never showed to care about it. Cattle can be incredibly aggressive too. it is proven that regardless of age and environmental conditions, some individuals remain more aggressive than others. Aggression in cattle can arise from both genetic and environmental factors. Aggression between cows is worse than that between bulls. Bulls with horns will bunt (push or strike with the horns) in which can cause more damage overall interesting read from Dennet https://lafavephilosophy.x10host.com/dennett_anim_csness.html https://lafavephilosophy.x10host.com/dennett_anim_csness.htm...

lucianbr 6y ago
How is it possible to know that animals have or do not have "the required neurological structures to process the concept of free will", without a definition of free will?
- africanboy 6y ago
  because if you scan the brain of a cow with an MRI and start talking about free will to it, nothing lights up. they respond to food, loud noises, other physical stimuli, but not to philosophy. Also, if you open the gates of a farm, cows don't run. Quoting Dennet Let us return to our vultures. Consider the hypothesis that for all I could ever know, rotting chicken carcass smells to a turkey vulture exactly the way roast turkey smells to me. Can science shed any light, pro or con, on this hypothesis? Yes, it can almost effortlessly refute it: since how roast turkey tastes to me is composed (and exhausted) by the huge set of reactive dispositions, memory effects, and so on, and so forth, that are detectable in principle in my brain and behavior, and since many of these are utterly beyond the machinery of any vulture's brain, it is flat impossible that anything could smell to a vulture the way roast turkey smells to me. but let's suppose cows have some sort of free will concept. if they can't explain it to us, how will we ever understand it? (because it's impossible they have the same free will concept we have) and if we project our roast turkey smell (free will) concept to cows, how can we be sure that it's what they need or want, if they can't even communicate a yes/no to us? All our philosophical concepts are based on millennia of history that's been transmitted to future generations that built new concepts on the old ones They are not "natural" if you take a child to a remote location and abandon him/her there they wouldn't even know about death or illness, let alone laws or rules or free will. Because nobody thaught them. We are basically still stuck in a Solaris situation. but the question still stands, so I propose another one: how do we know that dogs want to live in our homes? modern neuroscience can explain a lot of things that philosophy still consider questions.
ben_w 6y ago
> If they had free will, they would fight for it or at least some of them would. What would that look like? Running away? Because that behaviour pops up in news often enough. Conversely, there’s learned helplessness — discovered by animal research and yet also demonstrated in humans. Do humans demonstrating this lack free will? > One could argue that we still don't know the human brain, so how can we exclude that animals haven't what it takes to understand free will? I’m not asking if animals understand free will, but if they have it — humans don’t seem to understand it even though we can talk about it (judging by the difficulty of nailing down a definition) so I would actually be very surprised if it turned out any non-human animal understood it. I don’t understand the point you’re trying to make about bovine aggression?
- deleted 6y ago
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- africanboy 6y ago
  > What would that look like? Running away? Because that behaviour pops up in news often enough. Exactly. As I've said if they can't explain to us what they are doing and why, it is completely useless to try to frame or define it. it would simply be what we think it is, but not the real thing > Conversely, there’s learned helplessness — discovered by animal research and yet also demonstrated in humans. Do humans demonstrating this lack free will? difference being humans can explain why they ran and we can rationalize post facto and learn from each other children don't run if they see a gun do they lack free will, chose to not move, or lack the ability (and the knowledge) to process that information? free will probably does not even exists as consciousness, they are poor terms to describe what we already don't have a solid explanation for but since we are able to process context, something cows are not capable of, I understood that OP meant the most common meaning of free will: acting in a non predetermined way (however bad or inexact as a definition it is) cows don't because we have selected them in centuries and only kept the most docile, so it is expected that they won't run or act in expectedly, we literally engineered them to be what they are, we can rake it for granted, the same way we can be sure that a car with an empty tank won't start asking for a satisfying definition of free will in this context completely misses the point yes they could still have free will in the sense that they chose to walk or eat orm ove their tail, of course but in that sense a plant chose to grow towards the light or not? I actually believe free will does not exists and everything is pre-determined. We are born and have to die, don't get to chose our parents, how we look, where we are born, our gender etc. etc. We can however micromanage the time in between being born and dying, as every other living creature in the World, but we have far more sophisticated micro managing tools we also have vastly superior tools in general, we are the only animal on the planet that can control fire and have an opposable thumb thus we are the only animal on the planet that could evolve to the level we have reached which also gave us the ability to entertain ourselves with intellectual riddles such as free will > I'm not asking if animals understand free will, but if they have it as I've said I don't believe free will exists, but a cow lack the machinery to process the concept of free will, which also involves guilt, morality, responsibility and deliberation AKA being able to determine the consequences of different courses of actions. If cows have it, it's not like ours, it must be something far simpler. the point about aggression is that cows still have their own personalities, but that doesn't qualify as freedom of choice many people see cows behaving differently and assume they chose to act that way, but it's not like that. it's simply the result of some random combination of DNA and environment

lucianbr 6y ago

How is it possible to know that animals have or do not have "the required neurological structures to process the concept of free will", without a definition of free will?

africanboy 6y ago
because if you scan the brain of a cow with an MRI and start talking about free will to it, nothing lights up. they respond to food, loud noises, other physical stimuli, but not to philosophy. Also, if you open the gates of a farm, cows don't run. Quoting Dennet Let us return to our vultures. Consider the hypothesis that for all I could ever know, rotting chicken carcass smells to a turkey vulture exactly the way roast turkey smells to me. Can science shed any light, pro or con, on this hypothesis? Yes, it can almost effortlessly refute it: since how roast turkey tastes to me is composed (and exhausted) by the huge set of reactive dispositions, memory effects, and so on, and so forth, that are detectable in principle in my brain and behavior, and since many of these are utterly beyond the machinery of any vulture's brain, it is flat impossible that anything could smell to a vulture the way roast turkey smells to me. but let's suppose cows have some sort of free will concept. if they can't explain it to us, how will we ever understand it? (because it's impossible they have the same free will concept we have) and if we project our roast turkey smell (free will) concept to cows, how can we be sure that it's what they need or want, if they can't even communicate a yes/no to us? All our philosophical concepts are based on millennia of history that's been transmitted to future generations that built new concepts on the old ones They are not "natural" if you take a child to a remote location and abandon him/her there they wouldn't even know about death or illness, let alone laws or rules or free will. Because nobody thaught them. We are basically still stuck in a Solaris situation. but the question still stands, so I propose another one: how do we know that dogs want to live in our homes? modern neuroscience can explain a lot of things that philosophy still consider questions.

ben_w 6y ago

> If they had free will, they would fight for it or at least some of them would. What would that look like? Running away? Because that behaviour pops up in news often enough. Conversely, there’s learned helplessness — discovered by animal research and yet also demonstrated in humans. Do humans demonstrating this lack free will? > One could argue that we still don't know the human brain, so how can we exclude that animals haven't what it takes to understand free will? I’m not asking if animals understand free will, but if they have it — humans don’t seem to understand it even though we can talk about it (judging by the difficulty of nailing down a definition) so I would actually be very surprised if it turned out any non-human animal understood it. I don’t understand the point you’re trying to make about bovine aggression?

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
africanboy 6y ago
> What would that look like? Running away? Because that behaviour pops up in news often enough. Exactly. As I've said if they can't explain to us what they are doing and why, it is completely useless to try to frame or define it. it would simply be what we think it is, but not the real thing > Conversely, there’s learned helplessness — discovered by animal research and yet also demonstrated in humans. Do humans demonstrating this lack free will? difference being humans can explain why they ran and we can rationalize post facto and learn from each other children don't run if they see a gun do they lack free will, chose to not move, or lack the ability (and the knowledge) to process that information? free will probably does not even exists as consciousness, they are poor terms to describe what we already don't have a solid explanation for but since we are able to process context, something cows are not capable of, I understood that OP meant the most common meaning of free will: acting in a non predetermined way (however bad or inexact as a definition it is) cows don't because we have selected them in centuries and only kept the most docile, so it is expected that they won't run or act in expectedly, we literally engineered them to be what they are, we can rake it for granted, the same way we can be sure that a car with an empty tank won't start asking for a satisfying definition of free will in this context completely misses the point yes they could still have free will in the sense that they chose to walk or eat orm ove their tail, of course but in that sense a plant chose to grow towards the light or not? I actually believe free will does not exists and everything is pre-determined. We are born and have to die, don't get to chose our parents, how we look, where we are born, our gender etc. etc. We can however micromanage the time in between being born and dying, as every other living creature in the World, but we have far more sophisticated micro managing tools we also have vastly superior tools in general, we are the only animal on the planet that can control fire and have an opposable thumb thus we are the only animal on the planet that could evolve to the level we have reached which also gave us the ability to entertain ourselves with intellectual riddles such as free will > I'm not asking if animals understand free will, but if they have it as I've said I don't believe free will exists, but a cow lack the machinery to process the concept of free will, which also involves guilt, morality, responsibility and deliberation AKA being able to determine the consequences of different courses of actions. If cows have it, it's not like ours, it must be something far simpler. the point about aggression is that cows still have their own personalities, but that doesn't qualify as freedom of choice many people see cows behaving differently and assume they chose to act that way, but it's not like that. it's simply the result of some random combination of DNA and environment