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You !== Your Brain. This is not the kind of thing that science can "discover" and "more evidence" doesn't change that. Freedom of the will is a concept that als

You !== Your Brain. This is not the kind of thing that science can "discover" and "more evidence" doesn't change that. Freedom of the will is a concept that also is embedded within our cultural gestalt/framework. We may _decide_ that such neuroscientific conditions, as evidenced by fMRI for instance, say that our will is not active in certain circumstances, but deciding that isn't so clear cut. We may not have free will under most conditions, but the onus is on the neuroscientist to demonstrate what those conditions are. That said, most personal agency is a feature of systems much more higher order than the brain. "Luck" is a prime example where we often attribute agency regardless of any physical conditions having taken place. >His experiment showed that the neurons lit up with activity as much as 1.5 seconds before the participant made a conscious decision to press a button. Hume's skeptical argument applies here as well. Correlation doesn't imply causation, etc. And you need at least to prove this much before one can get an identity claim. But again: You !== Your Brain. Even if true, as I said earlier about the cultural gestalt: The idea that one does not have free will entails that one is reducible to one's brain; and this is absurd, on its face. Moreover, natural language itself does not suggest this at all, and in fact suggests the opposite.

lewispollard 14y ago
> The idea that one does not have free will entails that one is reducible to one's brain; and this is absurd, on its face. I'm intrigued. Why is this the case?
- nerdfiles 14y ago
  1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RiztsaCSds http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RiztsaCSds 2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZx93eov5i4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZx93eov5i4 They may add clarity and precision where I have made a gloss. PMS Hacker and most Wittgensteinians come to this conclusion; it is largely the reason why they find any value in Freudian/Gestalt psychology: for the fact that these brands of psychology avoid, as much as they can, reductionist, and this is for the fact that their theories depend on building metanarratives _on top of_ "folk psychology" rather than attempting to undercut folk psychology with some more primitive theory. The whole debate turns on which theories have better "explanatory power" while preserving our intuitive notions of the brain. Wittgenstein criticized Freudians for mistaking "decision" for "discovery"; and this is exactly what "Crypto-Cartesians" do except what is discover is not a psychological law à la Freud, but rather a neurological law. Now, of course, in their own worlds, these laws make sense; there are law like relations between, say, joy and pain; their are laws between synaptic path/subsystems and the behavior of neurons. However, talking about those laws does not give us direct insight into the _organism for which those laws have constituted_. It should be clear that if free will is not possible, then we must wonder why we decided to look inside the brain, rather than the foot, to discover why it is not possible. The problem, like with the Freudians, is that identity claims like You === Your Brain are a matter of decision, not discovery. We might decide and agree such identity claims, but not without doing severe damage to the common language which we use to identify correlations and criteria which support as evidence those claims. What these scientists are trying to do is make their position _compelling_; that is the fundamental problem here since engaging in such "justificatory" activity is a feature of science itself (i.e., peer review). This feature of the structure of scientific practice, by and large, makes it "absurd, on its face." These scientists attempt to pass off as discovery what can, by the nature of science itself, only be suggestion, persuasion, justification. Please also review "[The Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/369939.Philosophical_Foundations_of_Neuroscience http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/369939.Philosophical_Foun...)."

lewispollard 14y ago

> The idea that one does not have free will entails that one is reducible to one's brain; and this is absurd, on its face. I'm intrigued. Why is this the case?

nerdfiles 14y ago
1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RiztsaCSds http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RiztsaCSds 2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZx93eov5i4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZx93eov5i4 They may add clarity and precision where I have made a gloss. PMS Hacker and most Wittgensteinians come to this conclusion; it is largely the reason why they find any value in Freudian/Gestalt psychology: for the fact that these brands of psychology avoid, as much as they can, reductionist, and this is for the fact that their theories depend on building metanarratives _on top of_ "folk psychology" rather than attempting to undercut folk psychology with some more primitive theory. The whole debate turns on which theories have better "explanatory power" while preserving our intuitive notions of the brain. Wittgenstein criticized Freudians for mistaking "decision" for "discovery"; and this is exactly what "Crypto-Cartesians" do except what is discover is not a psychological law à la Freud, but rather a neurological law. Now, of course, in their own worlds, these laws make sense; there are law like relations between, say, joy and pain; their are laws between synaptic path/subsystems and the behavior of neurons. However, talking about those laws does not give us direct insight into the _organism for which those laws have constituted_. It should be clear that if free will is not possible, then we must wonder why we decided to look inside the brain, rather than the foot, to discover why it is not possible. The problem, like with the Freudians, is that identity claims like You === Your Brain are a matter of decision, not discovery. We might decide and agree such identity claims, but not without doing severe damage to the common language which we use to identify correlations and criteria which support as evidence those claims. What these scientists are trying to do is make their position _compelling_; that is the fundamental problem here since engaging in such "justificatory" activity is a feature of science itself (i.e., peer review). This feature of the structure of scientific practice, by and large, makes it "absurd, on its face." These scientists attempt to pass off as discovery what can, by the nature of science itself, only be suggestion, persuasion, justification. Please also review "[The Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/369939.Philosophical_Foundations_of_Neuroscience http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/369939.Philosophical_Foun...)."