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> Things in the realm of anti abortion and pro death penalty break down when you get down to the root of things, which is free will and innocence of the unborn

> Things in the realm of anti abortion and pro death penalty break down when you get down to the root of things, which is free will and innocence of the unborn soul ...no? The essential point of steelmanning is understanding your opponent's perspective, perhaps even finding a better argument for it than they have, even if you disagree with them. It's perfectly possible to do that even if you think their position is nonsense. Sometimes you may even find that your perception of their arguments and ideas is incorrect. > There is literally no evidence for an immaterial soul There's no hard evidence, but there are things that are, let's say, weird. The hard problem of consciousness is one, and the steady trickle of reports of veridical observations from medical staff treating unconscious NDE patients is another. For that matter, NDEs themselves are odd in absentia the supernatural. I don't expect people to grant souls or the supernatural based on those things, but they're certainly observed phenomena that some people interpret as evidence for those things. > there is actually evidence that free will is an illusion If you're referring to Libet's analysis of the Bereitschaftspotential experiments, there has been some acceptance in the past few years that this paper shows he misinterpreted the data: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1210467109 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1210467109 Popular summary of the debate in The Atlantic: https://archive.ph/SHH0p https://archive.ph/SHH0p If you're referring to other evidence, I'd love to know what it is.

feet 4y ago
Consciousness is the experience if processing information, there is no reason to believe its anything more than that There are also other studies besides the Libet ones, more recent ones using things like fMRI and in vivo electrophysiology in awake human patients. If we think about how neurons and their networks function, there isn't a mechanism in the realm of biophysics that allows for nondeterminism. That alone precludes the possibility of what people classically think of as free will. I've had discussions with other neuroscientists about this and they came to the same conclusion. Just because something seems "weird" doesn't actually mean anything and its likely the person's perception of the situation that instills that feeling. Near death experiences are entirely subjective, again its perception and information processing. The brain is great at connecting concepts and generating ideas even while we're unconscious. Its not like we stop processing sensory information when we aren't active. As someone who studies behavioral neuroscience, I would never use an NDE itself as evidence of anything besides the fact that it is a phenomena that happens sometimes There is a decent overview on wikipedia, they do discuss criticisms as well: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_of_free_will https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_of_free_will As a side note, I don't think that paper on pnas concludes what you think it does. They state that a stochastic model could account for the buildup, in reality the stochastic model is simulating the chaotic environment of biochemistry. That environment is still deterministic and we absolutely could predict the entire system if we are able to simulate all of the variables. Neurons are complex, but no matter how you slice it they are still a deterministic system
- NateEag 4y ago
  thanks for the wiki link - interesting reading. > Consciousness is the experience if processing information, there is no reason to believe its anything more than that This reads to me as a baseless assertion. You could be right, but the body of your post hasn't done much to convince me.

feet 4y ago

Consciousness is the experience if processing information, there is no reason to believe its anything more than that There are also other studies besides the Libet ones, more recent ones using things like fMRI and in vivo electrophysiology in awake human patients. If we think about how neurons and their networks function, there isn't a mechanism in the realm of biophysics that allows for nondeterminism. That alone precludes the possibility of what people classically think of as free will. I've had discussions with other neuroscientists about this and they came to the same conclusion. Just because something seems "weird" doesn't actually mean anything and its likely the person's perception of the situation that instills that feeling. Near death experiences are entirely subjective, again its perception and information processing. The brain is great at connecting concepts and generating ideas even while we're unconscious. Its not like we stop processing sensory information when we aren't active. As someone who studies behavioral neuroscience, I would never use an NDE itself as evidence of anything besides the fact that it is a phenomena that happens sometimes There is a decent overview on wikipedia, they do discuss criticisms as well: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_of_free_will https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_of_free_will As a side note, I don't think that paper on pnas concludes what you think it does. They state that a stochastic model could account for the buildup, in reality the stochastic model is simulating the chaotic environment of biochemistry. That environment is still deterministic and we absolutely could predict the entire system if we are able to simulate all of the variables. Neurons are complex, but no matter how you slice it they are still a deterministic system

NateEag 4y ago
thanks for the wiki link - interesting reading. > Consciousness is the experience if processing information, there is no reason to believe its anything more than that This reads to me as a baseless assertion. You could be right, but the body of your post hasn't done much to convince me.