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Can you provide an example of a thought that recursively asking things like "why did you think that thought" or "why did you choose to think that thought" doesn

Can you provide an example of a thought that recursively asking things like "why did you think that thought" or "why did you choose to think that thought" doesn't eventually get to an unconscious cause?

pdonis 4y ago
You are getting things backwards. Consciousness is not some magic dust that gets sprinkled over certain thoughts. Consciousness is part of the process of having thoughts. The fact that we don't have conscious access to all of our thoughts does not mean we cannot consciously choose anything about our thoughts. Similar remarks apply to "free will". "Free will" is not some magic property that some of our mental acts get endowed with. It is part of the process of our thinking and acting. The fact that we don't and can't freely choose everything about that process does not mean we cannot make choices at all.
- sokoloff 4y ago
  Do you believe that thinking is a physical process (that it’s embodied as or is the outcome of chemical/electrical activity)? Do you believe that the initial state of all the particles in your body (including brain) exists? If so, what leads you to conclude that thinking is anything other than an on-going electro-chemical reaction that we’re just observing the outputs of and concluding that we’re controlling it somehow?
  - inimino 4y ago
    > an on-going electro-chemical reaction that we’re just observing the outputs of and concluding that we’re controlling it somehow? Who is the "we" in that sentence, that is not in control?
    - sokoloff 4y ago
      The portion of the chemical reaction that "thinks" of itself as having some kind of consciousness that's somehow non-physical rather than just reactions in a blob of salty tapioca.
      - inimino 4y ago
        But what if it thinks it is the tapioca, and that it gets to choose? Would that not be correct?
        sokoloff 4y ago
        To its own way of thinking, in its own made-up frame of reference, it could appear to be. In the actual, physical universe, it would still not be. Physics and chemistry do not care about our feelings and emotions.
        inimino 4y ago
        OK, so the "we" that is observing the outputs and the "we" that thinks it is in control are both the tapioca. But the tapioca is wrong about being in control, because actually it's just physics and chemistry. Where is all that physics and chemistry happening? In the tapioca. So the tapioca controls the whole show, right? Which is it?
        sokoloff 4y ago
        When an iron bar sitting in salt water rusts, is it controlling the whole show? If it is, then yes, the tapioca is equally in control.
        inimino 4y ago
        It certainly governs the rate flakes of oxide are released into the water and so on--what else could be said to? Of course if you think the rusting bar is conscious, you should probably look at the tapioca a little more closely...
  - naasking 4y ago
    > If so, what leads you to conclude that thinking is anything other than an on-going electro-chemical reaction that we’re just observing the outputs of and concluding that we’re controlling it somehow? These are not mutually inconsistent options, that's your mistake. Thoughts are some kind of (likely deterministic) information process, and thoughts counterfactually determines downstream actions and thoughts, ie. earlier thoughts determine later thoughts. If I choose to lift my arm, I only lifted my arm because I chose to do so. The fact that I was determined to choose to lift my arm doesn't seem relevant to whether the thought caused my arm to lift.
    - vidarh 4y ago
      > The fact that I was determined to choose to lift my arm doesn't seem relevant to whether the thought caused my arm to lift. It is relevant to the moral implications, however. If you agree that the process that led to an action was deterministic, then it's entirely unreasonable to use punishments as vengeance, for example. It may still be morally tolerable to use them for rehabilitative or preventative means, but if you accept that they had no agency in the decisions, then applying more restrictions than the minimum needed to protect society seems to create another victim.
      - naasking 4y ago
        > If you agree that the process that led to an action was deterministic, then it's entirely unreasonable to use punishments as vengeance, for example. I disagree, punishment could still be justified if it were effective at deterring or altering future behavior, particularly if it were more effective than any other alternative. You can make a straightforward utilitarian calculation for this, for example. In any case, the matter of justice is separate from the question of free will. Once you have free will, you still require further assumptions to argue for punitive or restorative justice.
        vidarh 4y ago
        You say you disagree, but what you describe is not what I meant. My point is exactly to argue that if people could not have acted differently, punishing people for the sake of causing them suffering in retribution rather than for another purpose such as rehabilitation or deterrence is no morally different than enacting the same on someone who had not carried out a crime. > In any case, the matter of justice is separate from the question of free will. Once you have free will, you still require further assumptions to argue for punitive or restorative justice. It is partially separate. I agree that if free will (in the non-compatibilist sense) was possible, it does not automatically justify vengeance. But it's linked in that if free will does not exist, then it is meaningless to assign responsibility in any less abstract sense than we might talk of a piece of code being "responsible" for a crash. Someone might be "responsible" in the sense of being the most proximate cause, but given they could not have chosen differently, inflicting harm on them for the choices they could not have made differently is no morally different than inflicting harm on any other random person who only did the only things they could. To me, then, given I find free will nothing more than an illusion, the near total lack of focus on rehabilitation and minimising harm to prisoners makes our "justice" systems some of the largest organised brutal and immoral criminal enterprises. Most judges have done vastly more immoral harm than anyone they've ever convicted, for example. Of course they could not have chosen differently either, so I don't think punishing them for it would be any better. But changing the system would be (and yes, I do believe that this too is not a free choice, nothing more than cause and effect playing out, giving us an illusion of making decisions we can not make differently)
- vidarh 4y ago
  The notion that we freely choose anything is absurd on the face of it, as it'd mean a process where the outcome neither follows deterministically from the inputs, nor is random, nor any combination of the two. Find me a logically coherent definition of free will that does not reduce it to an illusion, and you could write it up and have a great shot at a nobel prize in physics, maths or both.
  - naasking 4y ago
    > The notion that we freely choose anything is absurd on the face of it, as it'd mean a process where the outcome neither follows deterministically from the inputs, nor is random, nor any combination of the two. You're just imputing a meaning to "free will" which is not how people typically use the term. People don't mean a free choice to be free of antecedent causes, because that would be absurd: you choose to eat when you're hungry, you choose to sleep when you're tired, you choose a job based on what salary you want and work/life balance which are preferences shaped by your experiences, etc. When people say someone made a choice of their own free will, they mean the choice was not coerced, and so that choice was consistent with their values rather than forced to conform to someone else's values. That is, it's an expression of their "will". This is the view on free will known as "Compatibilism", because it's compatible with determinism, and it's basically the view we see in the legal system: if you are mentally competent to make a choice, and you were not coerced, you are held responsible for that choice. And this matches will with how laypeople reason morally: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/274892120_Why_Compatibilist_Intuitions_are_not_Mistaken_A_Reply_to_Feltz_and_Millan https://www.researchgate.net/publication/274892120_Why_Compa...
    - vidarh 4y ago
      This entirely sidesteps the issue, which is that if you employ a compatibilist notion of free will (in other words: a "free" will that is merely an illusion of agency), then you have no actual agency, and so assigning you moral responsibility for the actions taken is fundamentally unjust and in itself wildly immoral: You had no actual control of the choice taken. I'd also strongly content that you're wrong, and that if you actually dig into peoples beliefs about free will deeply enough to ensure they understand what you're suggesting, you will find most people get annoyed, agitated or outright angry at even the notion that they don't imbue outcomes with some magical fairy-dust agency they can't define. Getting people to superficially agree with compatibilism is easy. Getting people to agree with it once you present them with the logical consequences of it, is not. At least it's consistently been my experience with this over decades of having this discussion: The exceedingly rare compatibilists I come across tends to be a small subset of the exceedingly few people who read philosophy papers. EDIT: I'd love to see a survey ask people if they think a purely deterministic process, e.g. a suitable program running on a computer, can ever be said to have free will. If people say "no" to that, they are rejecting a compatibilist definition of free will. You can see the strong emotions that brings up in play if you look at the discussions over AI art right now, with the number of people angrily rejecting not just the current iteration of such tools, but the very notion that AI can ever be more than deterministic automatons, with the implicit belief in that being that humans are not.

pdonis 4y ago

You are getting things backwards. Consciousness is not some magic dust that gets sprinkled over certain thoughts. Consciousness is part of the process of having thoughts. The fact that we don't have conscious access to all of our thoughts does not mean we cannot consciously choose anything about our thoughts. Similar remarks apply to "free will". "Free will" is not some magic property that some of our mental acts get endowed with. It is part of the process of our thinking and acting. The fact that we don't and can't freely choose everything about that process does not mean we cannot make choices at all.

sokoloff 4y ago
Do you believe that thinking is a physical process (that it’s embodied as or is the outcome of chemical/electrical activity)? Do you believe that the initial state of all the particles in your body (including brain) exists? If so, what leads you to conclude that thinking is anything other than an on-going electro-chemical reaction that we’re just observing the outputs of and concluding that we’re controlling it somehow?
- inimino 4y ago
  > an on-going electro-chemical reaction that we’re just observing the outputs of and concluding that we’re controlling it somehow? Who is the "we" in that sentence, that is not in control?
  - sokoloff 4y ago
    The portion of the chemical reaction that "thinks" of itself as having some kind of consciousness that's somehow non-physical rather than just reactions in a blob of salty tapioca.
    - inimino 4y ago
      But what if it thinks it is the tapioca, and that it gets to choose? Would that not be correct?
      - sokoloff 4y ago
        To its own way of thinking, in its own made-up frame of reference, it could appear to be. In the actual, physical universe, it would still not be. Physics and chemistry do not care about our feelings and emotions.
        inimino 4y ago
        OK, so the "we" that is observing the outputs and the "we" that thinks it is in control are both the tapioca. But the tapioca is wrong about being in control, because actually it's just physics and chemistry. Where is all that physics and chemistry happening? In the tapioca. So the tapioca controls the whole show, right? Which is it?
        sokoloff 4y ago
        When an iron bar sitting in salt water rusts, is it controlling the whole show? If it is, then yes, the tapioca is equally in control.
        inimino 4y ago
        It certainly governs the rate flakes of oxide are released into the water and so on--what else could be said to? Of course if you think the rusting bar is conscious, you should probably look at the tapioca a little more closely...
- naasking 4y ago
  > If so, what leads you to conclude that thinking is anything other than an on-going electro-chemical reaction that we’re just observing the outputs of and concluding that we’re controlling it somehow? These are not mutually inconsistent options, that's your mistake. Thoughts are some kind of (likely deterministic) information process, and thoughts counterfactually determines downstream actions and thoughts, ie. earlier thoughts determine later thoughts. If I choose to lift my arm, I only lifted my arm because I chose to do so. The fact that I was determined to choose to lift my arm doesn't seem relevant to whether the thought caused my arm to lift.
  - vidarh 4y ago
    > The fact that I was determined to choose to lift my arm doesn't seem relevant to whether the thought caused my arm to lift. It is relevant to the moral implications, however. If you agree that the process that led to an action was deterministic, then it's entirely unreasonable to use punishments as vengeance, for example. It may still be morally tolerable to use them for rehabilitative or preventative means, but if you accept that they had no agency in the decisions, then applying more restrictions than the minimum needed to protect society seems to create another victim.
    - naasking 4y ago
      > If you agree that the process that led to an action was deterministic, then it's entirely unreasonable to use punishments as vengeance, for example. I disagree, punishment could still be justified if it were effective at deterring or altering future behavior, particularly if it were more effective than any other alternative. You can make a straightforward utilitarian calculation for this, for example. In any case, the matter of justice is separate from the question of free will. Once you have free will, you still require further assumptions to argue for punitive or restorative justice.
      - vidarh 4y ago
        You say you disagree, but what you describe is not what I meant. My point is exactly to argue that if people could not have acted differently, punishing people for the sake of causing them suffering in retribution rather than for another purpose such as rehabilitation or deterrence is no morally different than enacting the same on someone who had not carried out a crime. > In any case, the matter of justice is separate from the question of free will. Once you have free will, you still require further assumptions to argue for punitive or restorative justice. It is partially separate. I agree that if free will (in the non-compatibilist sense) was possible, it does not automatically justify vengeance. But it's linked in that if free will does not exist, then it is meaningless to assign responsibility in any less abstract sense than we might talk of a piece of code being "responsible" for a crash. Someone might be "responsible" in the sense of being the most proximate cause, but given they could not have chosen differently, inflicting harm on them for the choices they could not have made differently is no morally different than inflicting harm on any other random person who only did the only things they could. To me, then, given I find free will nothing more than an illusion, the near total lack of focus on rehabilitation and minimising harm to prisoners makes our "justice" systems some of the largest organised brutal and immoral criminal enterprises. Most judges have done vastly more immoral harm than anyone they've ever convicted, for example. Of course they could not have chosen differently either, so I don't think punishing them for it would be any better. But changing the system would be (and yes, I do believe that this too is not a free choice, nothing more than cause and effect playing out, giving us an illusion of making decisions we can not make differently)
vidarh 4y ago
The notion that we freely choose anything is absurd on the face of it, as it'd mean a process where the outcome neither follows deterministically from the inputs, nor is random, nor any combination of the two. Find me a logically coherent definition of free will that does not reduce it to an illusion, and you could write it up and have a great shot at a nobel prize in physics, maths or both.
- naasking 4y ago
  > The notion that we freely choose anything is absurd on the face of it, as it'd mean a process where the outcome neither follows deterministically from the inputs, nor is random, nor any combination of the two. You're just imputing a meaning to "free will" which is not how people typically use the term. People don't mean a free choice to be free of antecedent causes, because that would be absurd: you choose to eat when you're hungry, you choose to sleep when you're tired, you choose a job based on what salary you want and work/life balance which are preferences shaped by your experiences, etc. When people say someone made a choice of their own free will, they mean the choice was not coerced, and so that choice was consistent with their values rather than forced to conform to someone else's values. That is, it's an expression of their "will". This is the view on free will known as "Compatibilism", because it's compatible with determinism, and it's basically the view we see in the legal system: if you are mentally competent to make a choice, and you were not coerced, you are held responsible for that choice. And this matches will with how laypeople reason morally: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/274892120_Why_Compatibilist_Intuitions_are_not_Mistaken_A_Reply_to_Feltz_and_Millan https://www.researchgate.net/publication/274892120_Why_Compa...
  - vidarh 4y ago
    This entirely sidesteps the issue, which is that if you employ a compatibilist notion of free will (in other words: a "free" will that is merely an illusion of agency), then you have no actual agency, and so assigning you moral responsibility for the actions taken is fundamentally unjust and in itself wildly immoral: You had no actual control of the choice taken. I'd also strongly content that you're wrong, and that if you actually dig into peoples beliefs about free will deeply enough to ensure they understand what you're suggesting, you will find most people get annoyed, agitated or outright angry at even the notion that they don't imbue outcomes with some magical fairy-dust agency they can't define. Getting people to superficially agree with compatibilism is easy. Getting people to agree with it once you present them with the logical consequences of it, is not. At least it's consistently been my experience with this over decades of having this discussion: The exceedingly rare compatibilists I come across tends to be a small subset of the exceedingly few people who read philosophy papers. EDIT: I'd love to see a survey ask people if they think a purely deterministic process, e.g. a suitable program running on a computer, can ever be said to have free will. If people say "no" to that, they are rejecting a compatibilist definition of free will. You can see the strong emotions that brings up in play if you look at the discussions over AI art right now, with the number of people angrily rejecting not just the current iteration of such tools, but the very notion that AI can ever be more than deterministic automatons, with the implicit belief in that being that humans are not.