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If that makes you uncomfortable you definitely should not go reading the evidence supporting the notion that conscious free will is an illusion. https://www.mp

by Joeri 3y ago

If that makes you uncomfortable you definitely should not go reading the evidence supporting the notion that conscious free will is an illusion. https://www.mpg.de/research/unconscious-decisions-in-the-brain https://www.mpg.de/research/unconscious-decisions-in-the-bra...

mcguire 3y ago
My impression is that the understanding of that research that comes up with statements like "But when it comes to decisions we tend to assume they are made by our conscious mind. This is questioned by our current findings" is based on dualistic reasoning. The idea that there should not be any neural activity before a conscious decision is straight-up dualism---the intangible soul makes a decision and neural activity follows it to carry out the decision. An alternative way of understanding that result is that the neural activity that precedes the "conscious decision" is the brain's mechanism of coming up with that decision. The "conscious mind" is the result of neural activity, right?
BaculumMeumEst 3y ago
i always thought that the concept of free will didnt bother me. but it turns out i just didn’t understand what it implied. oh dear. if it turns out that true, it’s truly amazing how well we convince ourselves that we’re in control. but if our brain controls our actions and not our consciousness, then what is the purpose of consciousness?
- stevenhuang 3y ago
  Perhaps there is no purpose to consciousness. Perhaps it's a phenomenon that somehow arises independently ex nihilo from sufficiently complex systems, only ever able to observe, unable to act. Weird to think about.
  - Aerbil313 3y ago
    Can conscious experience ever arise from matter? Even if the said matter is neural networks? This seems utterly nonsensical to me.
    - ly3xqhl8g9 3y ago
      We are composed of matter and we are conscious, we take this as being axiomatic. Given we have one certain example, the question is then how does the body do it, and how could we do it in other substrates: how do we go from "just physics" to mind [1]. The short answer is: chemical reactions start a chain reaction of abstraction towards higher and higher forms of collective intelligence. For some reason, perhaps something with the way the Hilbert space vector obeying the Schrödinger equation which we usually call "the universe" is [2], but also given the ridiculous breadth and depth of possible explorations of the biological pathways [3], "chunks" of matter tend to group together, they group and form stars and planets, but they also group and form formaldehydes and acetaldehydes and many more. Given enough tries, across multiple environments, in some lucky hydrothermal vents abiogenesis was probably started [4]. Once we had the first agential "chunk" of matter, a group of matter which has a definition of the boundary between a "self", no matter how tiny [5], and an exterior environment, it was more of a game of waiting (~4 billion years) for this tiny agent to grow into an agent with higher-order thinking, self-referentiality, metacognition, and the likes. Neural networks, as in matrix multiplications, are not conscious because they have no mechanism for deciding what is the environment and what is their own, they are a hammer, sitting there, expecting to be used, not a lacrymaria olor [6], exploring the environment for survival and fun. Could we have neural networks in an agent-like architecture starting to behave more like thermostats, setting goals for themselves? Probably. [1] "From physics to mind - Prof. Michael Levin", https://youtu.be/_QICRPFWDpg?t=85 https://youtu.be/_QICRPFWDpg?t=85 [2] "Sean Carroll: Extracting the universe from the wave function", https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOssfva2IBo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOssfva2IBo [3] "Nick Lane, 'Transformer : The Deep Chemistry of Life and Death'", https://youtu.be/bEFzUx_j7tA?t=279 https://youtu.be/bEFzUx_j7tA?t=279 [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrothermal_vent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrothermal_vent [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physarum_polycephalum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physarum_polycephalum [6] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sq6Y54mxjOg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sq6Y54mxjOg
      - Aerbil313 3y ago
        Please see my reply to your sister comment. Thanks for the links, especially 1 btw.

by Joeri 3y ago

mcguire 3y ago

My impression is that the understanding of that research that comes up with statements like "But when it comes to decisions we tend to assume they are made by our conscious mind. This is questioned by our current findings" is based on dualistic reasoning. The idea that there should not be any neural activity before a conscious decision is straight-up dualism---the intangible soul makes a decision and neural activity follows it to carry out the decision. An alternative way of understanding that result is that the neural activity that precedes the "conscious decision" is the brain's mechanism of coming up with that decision. The "conscious mind" is the result of neural activity, right?

BaculumMeumEst 3y ago

i always thought that the concept of free will didnt bother me. but it turns out i just didn’t understand what it implied. oh dear. if it turns out that true, it’s truly amazing how well we convince ourselves that we’re in control. but if our brain controls our actions and not our consciousness, then what is the purpose of consciousness?

stevenhuang 3y ago
Perhaps there is no purpose to consciousness. Perhaps it's a phenomenon that somehow arises independently ex nihilo from sufficiently complex systems, only ever able to observe, unable to act. Weird to think about.
- Aerbil313 3y ago
  Can conscious experience ever arise from matter? Even if the said matter is neural networks? This seems utterly nonsensical to me.
  - ly3xqhl8g9 3y ago
    We are composed of matter and we are conscious, we take this as being axiomatic. Given we have one certain example, the question is then how does the body do it, and how could we do it in other substrates: how do we go from "just physics" to mind [1]. The short answer is: chemical reactions start a chain reaction of abstraction towards higher and higher forms of collective intelligence. For some reason, perhaps something with the way the Hilbert space vector obeying the Schrödinger equation which we usually call "the universe" is [2], but also given the ridiculous breadth and depth of possible explorations of the biological pathways [3], "chunks" of matter tend to group together, they group and form stars and planets, but they also group and form formaldehydes and acetaldehydes and many more. Given enough tries, across multiple environments, in some lucky hydrothermal vents abiogenesis was probably started [4]. Once we had the first agential "chunk" of matter, a group of matter which has a definition of the boundary between a "self", no matter how tiny [5], and an exterior environment, it was more of a game of waiting (~4 billion years) for this tiny agent to grow into an agent with higher-order thinking, self-referentiality, metacognition, and the likes. Neural networks, as in matrix multiplications, are not conscious because they have no mechanism for deciding what is the environment and what is their own, they are a hammer, sitting there, expecting to be used, not a lacrymaria olor [6], exploring the environment for survival and fun. Could we have neural networks in an agent-like architecture starting to behave more like thermostats, setting goals for themselves? Probably. [1] "From physics to mind - Prof. Michael Levin", https://youtu.be/_QICRPFWDpg?t=85 https://youtu.be/_QICRPFWDpg?t=85 [2] "Sean Carroll: Extracting the universe from the wave function", https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOssfva2IBo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOssfva2IBo [3] "Nick Lane, 'Transformer : The Deep Chemistry of Life and Death'", https://youtu.be/bEFzUx_j7tA?t=279 https://youtu.be/bEFzUx_j7tA?t=279 [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrothermal_vent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrothermal_vent [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physarum_polycephalum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physarum_polycephalum [6] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sq6Y54mxjOg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sq6Y54mxjOg
    - Aerbil313 3y ago
      Please see my reply to your sister comment. Thanks for the links, especially 1 btw.