8 ms·

> Not eating and getting low blood sugar can much more simply answer the question of "Do I have free will, or am I a subject of my internal chemical reactions".

> Not eating and getting low blood sugar can much more simply answer the question of "Do I have free will, or am I a subject of my internal chemical reactions". You cannot control what you feel, but you can control your actions.

xpe 3y ago
> You cannot control what you feel, but you can control your actions. I'll respond in a way that I hope is clear and relatively objective. This will take the form of an "if-then" claim nested within another "if-then" claim. IF a person (1) accepts philosophical materialism, but (2) remains agnostic as to quantum effects at macro scale THEN then the following response follows logically: It depends what you mean by "you". If you (a) mean that "you" consists of the body, including the brain; and (b) you recognize there is a physiological difference between _non-volitional_ and _volitional_ choices; then (c) yes, loosely speaking, "you" can control your volitional actions. If you think carefully, you will recognize the above assumptions also mean: - a person's surrounding context plays an essential role in shaping the kinds of actions that are available. - there are no causes other than material ones (such as a soul) You may notice I didn't use the phrase "free will" above. That is very much intentional. Even if you are a philosopher, that word is nearly impossible to use in a way with a definition that a group of people can agree on. See also: "Volition and Action in the Human Brain: Processes, Pathologies, and Reasons" by Itzhak Fried, Patrick Haggard, ... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5678016/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5678016/
- empath-nirvana 3y ago
  I think there's two conceptions of free will, one is as you described -- a body being able to act in and of itself without any influence of an external force (beyond sensation, physical constraints, etc). That sort of punts on the question of physical determinism, where it doesn't matter if it was possible for you to have done anything other than what you did. You could be a pure clock work automaton making deterministic responses to external stimuli and still have that sort of "free will", but I don't think that would be satisfying to a lot of people. The second kind of free will, I think would be the ability to have a free choice -- that there is some immaterial entity which can act in somehow a non-deterministic way to choose its behavior, that the course of your entire life wasn't set at the big bang -- that not only can you act independently, but that your choices _matter_ and will result in a future that was not predetermined. I think that is what a lot of people would think of as free will, and it's difficult to define or logically support IMO.
  - xpe 3y ago
    I can appreciate a lot of the sentiments above, but I don't think the comment's "two conceptions" really 'decomplects' (a Hickeyism) the key ideas. If anything, it smooshes a lot of them together: different definitions of free will, meaning, origin stories, the divine, flavors of determinism, and more.
- dr_dshiv 3y ago
  Note that non-material causes can be just as deterministic (if not more so) as matter. Logic and math are physical but not material, for instance.
  - dragonwriter 3y ago
    > Logic and math are physical but not material, for instance. Logic and math are neither physical, nor material, nor causal.
    - xpe 3y ago
      I think some might be slightly troubled by hearing that logic is not causal. But I agree. One can _test_ a set of statements to see if they are valid logical deductions from another set of statements. Even if true, this does not mean that the deducible statements are _caused_. In some cases, that statement from above (the deduced one) might be 'realized' (noticed by people) before its premises are! We might even be able to logically prove it is true without the other set of statements! Why? There are multiple logical paths (not always mapping to reality) that _could_ prove a particular statement.
    - Retric 3y ago
      When living things or machines do math they are doing a physical thing. The abstract concept of mathematics doesn’t need to exist for that to happen.
    - dr_dshiv 3y ago
      They are physical causes but they are abstracted from matter. The underlying cause originates from the math/logic, not the material instantiation. Physicalism is often conflated with materialism, but the world is physically constituted by more than matter! A lot of this world is obviously caused by the inherent formal influence of math and logic. There are ongoing mysteries in this, to be sure, but these forms are beyond matter. I’m speaking from the Pythagorean-Platonic-Tegmark school of thought. I’m trying to address the typical atheist layperson scientist who hasn’t thought through immaterial reality (rejecting it as supernatural, thinking it involves ghosts or spirits or something). I know there are reasonable counter positions to argue why math isn’t real, but I don’t subscribe.
pixl97 3y ago
Can you? I'm a type 1 diabetic, I have a continuous monitor that tells me what my glucose level is. This monitors actual interstitial fluid level and not blood sugar, this means there can be a pretty large delay between what's measured just under the skin versus what my blood stream is experiencing. If a rapid drop occurs there can be a lead time that I'm unaware of it, but others are because I'll behave in a 'cranky' or 'sharp' tone. I'm not aware this is occurring when it does. A little sugar and a few minutes and I'm back to regular me again. You are in far less control of your actions then you believe. Internal self awareness is a poor mirror of reality.
- xpe 3y ago
  Well said. > You are in far less control of your actions then you believe. No. But I say this in a way that might surprise you? I view 'free will', as most people understand it, as an illusion. I recognize that I, at best, have a tiny fraction of control. If I consider "me" to be a locus of control w.r.t. volitional action, then I will grant that "me" has causal impact. But what causally impacted "me" at time t? A combination of "me" at time t-1 and my environment. (I'm a materialist who is agnostic w.r.t. determinism.) So, what does this really mean? "I" (right now) can only have volitional control only if one ignores the precursors. It is a mindbending realization to many, but it is the best theory I've found that fits reality. There are lots of us around. We might disagree on how we define 'free will'; we may or may not 'deny free will'. But there is a huge commonality among most rational materialists who accept modern science: we do not conceptualize free will in ways that match 'mainstream' notions of it.
  - fidrelity 3y ago
    I consider free will fundamentally an illusion but at the abstraction level of 'me' (also a faulty abstraction) it does make sense to use these concepts sometimes. But it's important not to confuse the map with the territory.
  - thegrimmest 3y ago
    I agree that free will functionally doesn't exist. However for the purposes of social organization I see no better alternative than to treat each person as an agent and hold them fully accountable for their actions, regardless of upstream "causal" impacts. If you're starving/high/whatever and you violate someone else's fundamental rights, the reasons/excuses you give as to why your control was compromised seem irrelevant. Actions and outcomes count, not intentions.
neongodzilla 3y ago
You have clearly never met someone having a hypoglycemic event. It can absolutely change their personality, as significantly as a head injury.
- jaggederest 3y ago
  The sound of breaking dishes in the kitchen, a trail of damaged but unopened candy wrappers, sitting on the floor next to the cabinets with their doors ripped off, with the sugar bowl half-spilled, thankfully recovering with some sugar under their tongue and no major bodily injury. Terrifying.
- AnthonBerg 3y ago
  Hyperglycemia does too. (High blood sugar.) It’s known as diabetic rage. A number of things are happening there. Part of it is brain inflammation – experienced as suffering – and brain inflammation is directly behavior-modifying, causing aggression. And indeed that’s what happens with traumatic brain injuries. The same mechanism is behind the aggression sometimes displayed by cocaine users. Cocaine tamps down brain inflammation short-term, increases it long-term. And indeed, people with traumatic brain injuries and central nervous system inflammation tend to have more problems with cocaine abuse.
chiefalchemist 3y ago
In theory that sounds great. Unfortunately the idea that humans are highly rational is over rated. We are first and foremost, for better or worse, emotional beings. Your fame of mind (i.e., feelings) plays a role in decision making, which drives action. In short, beliefs (to which emotions are connected) drive behavior.
richardw 3y ago
I assume you have no bad habits? Can you instantly get back to sleep? You never snap at anyone? Diet is 100% what you want it to be? Exercise on time daily? Read HN only as much as you know it benefits you? Marine you’re the 0.0001% who has all this down but most don’t. I’m sure there are many other examples of how most people barely control our minds and actions.
cja 3y ago
ADHD...
watwut 3y ago
Uncontrolled aggression is one of common symptoms of low blood sugar. If you are not diabetic it should not just happen, your body should deal with situation. But it does happen to diabetics and they have to watch out for that.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

xpe 3y ago

> You cannot control what you feel, but you can control your actions. I'll respond in a way that I hope is clear and relatively objective. This will take the form of an "if-then" claim nested within another "if-then" claim. IF a person (1) accepts philosophical materialism, but (2) remains agnostic as to quantum effects at macro scale THEN then the following response follows logically: It depends what you mean by "you". If you (a) mean that "you" consists of the body, including the brain; and (b) you recognize there is a physiological difference between _non-volitional_ and _volitional_ choices; then (c) yes, loosely speaking, "you" can control your volitional actions. If you think carefully, you will recognize the above assumptions also mean: - a person's surrounding context plays an essential role in shaping the kinds of actions that are available. - there are no causes other than material ones (such as a soul) You may notice I didn't use the phrase "free will" above. That is very much intentional. Even if you are a philosopher, that word is nearly impossible to use in a way with a definition that a group of people can agree on. See also: "Volition and Action in the Human Brain: Processes, Pathologies, and Reasons" by Itzhak Fried, Patrick Haggard, ... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5678016/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5678016/

empath-nirvana 3y ago
I think there's two conceptions of free will, one is as you described -- a body being able to act in and of itself without any influence of an external force (beyond sensation, physical constraints, etc). That sort of punts on the question of physical determinism, where it doesn't matter if it was possible for you to have done anything other than what you did. You could be a pure clock work automaton making deterministic responses to external stimuli and still have that sort of "free will", but I don't think that would be satisfying to a lot of people. The second kind of free will, I think would be the ability to have a free choice -- that there is some immaterial entity which can act in somehow a non-deterministic way to choose its behavior, that the course of your entire life wasn't set at the big bang -- that not only can you act independently, but that your choices _matter_ and will result in a future that was not predetermined. I think that is what a lot of people would think of as free will, and it's difficult to define or logically support IMO.
- xpe 3y ago
  I can appreciate a lot of the sentiments above, but I don't think the comment's "two conceptions" really 'decomplects' (a Hickeyism) the key ideas. If anything, it smooshes a lot of them together: different definitions of free will, meaning, origin stories, the divine, flavors of determinism, and more.
dr_dshiv 3y ago
Note that non-material causes can be just as deterministic (if not more so) as matter. Logic and math are physical but not material, for instance.
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  > Logic and math are physical but not material, for instance. Logic and math are neither physical, nor material, nor causal.
  - xpe 3y ago
    I think some might be slightly troubled by hearing that logic is not causal. But I agree. One can _test_ a set of statements to see if they are valid logical deductions from another set of statements. Even if true, this does not mean that the deducible statements are _caused_. In some cases, that statement from above (the deduced one) might be 'realized' (noticed by people) before its premises are! We might even be able to logically prove it is true without the other set of statements! Why? There are multiple logical paths (not always mapping to reality) that _could_ prove a particular statement.
  - Retric 3y ago
    When living things or machines do math they are doing a physical thing. The abstract concept of mathematics doesn’t need to exist for that to happen.
  - dr_dshiv 3y ago
    They are physical causes but they are abstracted from matter. The underlying cause originates from the math/logic, not the material instantiation. Physicalism is often conflated with materialism, but the world is physically constituted by more than matter! A lot of this world is obviously caused by the inherent formal influence of math and logic. There are ongoing mysteries in this, to be sure, but these forms are beyond matter. I’m speaking from the Pythagorean-Platonic-Tegmark school of thought. I’m trying to address the typical atheist layperson scientist who hasn’t thought through immaterial reality (rejecting it as supernatural, thinking it involves ghosts or spirits or something). I know there are reasonable counter positions to argue why math isn’t real, but I don’t subscribe.

pixl97 3y ago

Can you? I'm a type 1 diabetic, I have a continuous monitor that tells me what my glucose level is. This monitors actual interstitial fluid level and not blood sugar, this means there can be a pretty large delay between what's measured just under the skin versus what my blood stream is experiencing. If a rapid drop occurs there can be a lead time that I'm unaware of it, but others are because I'll behave in a 'cranky' or 'sharp' tone. I'm not aware this is occurring when it does. A little sugar and a few minutes and I'm back to regular me again. You are in far less control of your actions then you believe. Internal self awareness is a poor mirror of reality.

xpe 3y ago
Well said. > You are in far less control of your actions then you believe. No. But I say this in a way that might surprise you? I view 'free will', as most people understand it, as an illusion. I recognize that I, at best, have a tiny fraction of control. If I consider "me" to be a locus of control w.r.t. volitional action, then I will grant that "me" has causal impact. But what causally impacted "me" at time t? A combination of "me" at time t-1 and my environment. (I'm a materialist who is agnostic w.r.t. determinism.) So, what does this really mean? "I" (right now) can only have volitional control only if one ignores the precursors. It is a mindbending realization to many, but it is the best theory I've found that fits reality. There are lots of us around. We might disagree on how we define 'free will'; we may or may not 'deny free will'. But there is a huge commonality among most rational materialists who accept modern science: we do not conceptualize free will in ways that match 'mainstream' notions of it.
- fidrelity 3y ago
  I consider free will fundamentally an illusion but at the abstraction level of 'me' (also a faulty abstraction) it does make sense to use these concepts sometimes. But it's important not to confuse the map with the territory.
- thegrimmest 3y ago
  I agree that free will functionally doesn't exist. However for the purposes of social organization I see no better alternative than to treat each person as an agent and hold them fully accountable for their actions, regardless of upstream "causal" impacts. If you're starving/high/whatever and you violate someone else's fundamental rights, the reasons/excuses you give as to why your control was compromised seem irrelevant. Actions and outcomes count, not intentions.

neongodzilla 3y ago

You have clearly never met someone having a hypoglycemic event. It can absolutely change their personality, as significantly as a head injury.

jaggederest 3y ago
The sound of breaking dishes in the kitchen, a trail of damaged but unopened candy wrappers, sitting on the floor next to the cabinets with their doors ripped off, with the sugar bowl half-spilled, thankfully recovering with some sugar under their tongue and no major bodily injury. Terrifying.
AnthonBerg 3y ago
Hyperglycemia does too. (High blood sugar.) It’s known as diabetic rage. A number of things are happening there. Part of it is brain inflammation – experienced as suffering – and brain inflammation is directly behavior-modifying, causing aggression. And indeed that’s what happens with traumatic brain injuries. The same mechanism is behind the aggression sometimes displayed by cocaine users. Cocaine tamps down brain inflammation short-term, increases it long-term. And indeed, people with traumatic brain injuries and central nervous system inflammation tend to have more problems with cocaine abuse.

chiefalchemist 3y ago

In theory that sounds great. Unfortunately the idea that humans are highly rational is over rated. We are first and foremost, for better or worse, emotional beings. Your fame of mind (i.e., feelings) plays a role in decision making, which drives action. In short, beliefs (to which emotions are connected) drive behavior.

richardw 3y ago

I assume you have no bad habits? Can you instantly get back to sleep? You never snap at anyone? Diet is 100% what you want it to be? Exercise on time daily? Read HN only as much as you know it benefits you? Marine you’re the 0.0001% who has all this down but most don’t. I’m sure there are many other examples of how most people barely control our minds and actions.

cja 3y ago

ADHD...

watwut 3y ago

Uncontrolled aggression is one of common symptoms of low blood sugar. If you are not diabetic it should not just happen, your body should deal with situation. But it does happen to diabetics and they have to watch out for that.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]