Nowhere357

No, I begged no question, that was a synopsis of my opinion, and not an argument for explanation of why the mind exists. The living brain generates or produces a mind. The mind has two qualities or properties that I'm aware of. The passive quality of awareness and the active quality of will. We have direct experience of both of these qualities. That's my take on it.

I agree. Note that how we direct our awareness affects how memories are laid down, and we can direct our awareness by using will. So using will affects the brain.

True enough. The only way to detect will is to be a mind.

Emotions are more properly expressions of feelings. Exercising, using, or applying the will includes the awareness of doing so - a feeling of doing so. A mental effort.

Don't confuse the map for the terrain, please.

I actually sigh. Again, that was a statement of my starting point. It was not an argument, so it begged no question.

I said I have a mind, and that the universe was natural. So the mind is natural. Which part of this do you disagree with?

Only if the universe is predetermined. Is that your position? If not, then the reasons you give to support your position fail, since they require that all behavior is predetermined. And if this is your position, then you've allowed the possibility that our decisions are not predetermined.

This is part of the mind, the passive aspect.

I don't know. We are aware of our brain state, and the brain reacts to this awareness. It's pretty amazing and wonderful.

I don't know. If their central nervous system is advanced enough, then I guess so. And my experience with and knowledge of animals like apes, dolphins and dogs suggest they have some will power. I suspect the ability comes with sentience.

Your point has merit, I know that. It fails to include the fact of subjective awareness. I see no way to prove that anyone else in the world actually has awareness and mind, but given my own direct experience, I think it's a reasonable conclusion.

If a computer achieved awareness and mind, how would we tell?

True enough. So maybe this strange and personal thing called mind serves no purpose. Or maybe it makes decisions and affects the world. Because I make decisions and affect the world, I think the latter is more likely.

Perhaps not. For a fact the world notices if I knock something down. And I can decide to knock something down. So I think my decisions affect the world. I think I'm responsible for my decisions.

That is too condescending. Tell me: what are the repercussions if the vast majority of the population dropped the illusion of free will?

Amaranth

Then I must have mis-read. Pardon me.

And what direction for that awareness is there, other than impulses from the brain - Impulses caused by physics?

Oh? Or perhaps your brain is presented with a "Case Statement", and what feels and seems like a decision is nothing more than "code" being run. One requires only physics, the other requires this still ethereal mind to affect physics in some fashion.

Considering your definition of mind, I obviously disagree with your having a mind (my my, doesn't that look ad hominem in any other discussion...)

Not really. You see, I have merely said that you don't make choices - Your brain is acted upon by physics, and things happen. The universe being pre-determined or not plays no part in this what-so-ever. I am assigning the same level of causality (whilst remember QP) as I would any other physical thing. Quantum does not give humanity free will - It merely adds a layer of randomness to our internal programming.

Why would our physical brains react to an ethereal mind? At what point does conciousness begin affecting physics? This is a very critical point in my opinion.

*grin* And I, of course, would say that I leave making decisions to my brain - My mind is just along for the ride

Most people tend to think that without free will, there is no responsibility for actions. How can you punish a murderer when his only "crime" was existing with a certain set of traits and stimuli? If people know that they cannot be held responsible for their actions, they are less likely to act in moral fashion. For example - My dog doesn't chew on a thing when I'm around, but when I leave for more than an hour, you can expect something to get shredded. If the dog no longer knew I would no longer be able to hold it responsible...

Nowhere357

I'm not sure I understand your question. What directs the awareness? The will! Which arises from impulses from the brain, which are caused by physics.

Your view reduces all mental awareness to illusion, and ignores direct experience. The fact is that we are aware, and this awareness cannot be put under microscope. So like it or not the mind is pretty ethereal. Accepting will requires no additional step. Perhaps the mind is just the abstract interrelation between the known physical forces which exist in the brain. Like the way sound waves interreact to form peaks and troughs, or the way light can interreact to form holographs.

You decide to deny my mind, while my mind says that you make decisions. Interesting.

Whether reality is predertermined does make a difference. If reality is predetermined then there can be no will. Because reality is not predertermined, there is at least the possibility that will can exist. Your argument that brains are predetermined to act in a certain way has failed.

Consider an ocean wave. Do waves exist? Only as an abstract pattern. Look at a wave, and all we see is water. Yet the wave exists. Look at a mind, and all we see is brain. Yet the mind exists.

The question of the actual mind-brain interface is an interesting one, and I don't know the answer. Where does the wave interact with the water?

I think it's interesting that the brain has properties similar to a holograph. For example, information is not necessarily stored in given locations as in a digital computer. The information appears to exist everywhere in the brain at once. I don't know what that means, I just find it interesting.

The brain can function with very little attention from our minds. I think we have all experienced driving on autopilot, for example (Which works fine until an emergency arises, and then our awareness snaps back and attends to the current situation.) But we can attend to our thoughts - pay attention to our awareness - and direct to some extent the behavior of the brain. For example, if I wish to remember something, I pay attention to it, and the brain lays down a stronger memory.

And choosing to pay attention is an act of will.

fishbulb

You will have to be a little more explicit about what you mean by "A mind is a subjective mental awareness" before I can answer that question.

Godless Wonder

A nice book about the brain I read talks a bit about this subject. The book is "What makes you tick: How the brain works in plain english". In it, the claim is made that most neurobiologists do not believe in free will. They believe that the neurons and cells and the molecules they are made up of behave in accordance with the laws of physics. (Not that we understand those completely, but what kind of unknown law operating at a molecular level would get you "free will?") This does not necessarily mean deterministically, as there could be non-determistic quantum effects, etc. However, adding randomness would only allow one to escape pure determinism, it does not get you "free will". The fact that molecules may bounce around "randomly" does not mean that "you" control them. (and anyway, aren't "you" made of those molecules...? if you control the molecules, it is also true the molecules control you. It's a kind of loop.)

Anyway, I'm not sure that the question "do we have free will" is a sensible question. A prior question must be answered first. "What is free will." if you believe, as I do, that our minds are nothing more than an emergent property of our physical brains, that nothing more is going on than can be explained by molecules bouncing around in our heads (in a very complicated way, granted), and that there is no "magic" of any kind going on, then it is difficult to imagine that "free will" is anything but an illusion. What does it mean for me to "decide" to do something? I can say that I have "free will", but I have sucked all the "magic" out of the concept,.

All this doesn't bother me one whit though. I just behave as if I do in fact have some magic free will, because that is what, because I have no such free will, I cannot help but do. :-)

Amaranth

Mornin', Nowhere - Sleep well?

This "will" of your is becomming more and more like a magical substance - The fact that it is a non-physical thing that can effect the physical is rather...odd.

Awareness isn't the illusion, will is. Awareness is a side-effect of sensory input and "runtime operations" in the brain.

Ethereal...or non-existant? The problem is that, at some point, your "will" has to effect physics without being controlled by it - It has to cause a neuron to fire without being told to by anything but your decision. Light and sound interact through causality and physical laws - What you are presenting is a quite new and unknown force, one that has the power affect the physical world without being of the physical world.

I think the existance of QM automatically discounts a completely predetermined universe. This allows for free will. This mistake you are making is assigning it as a false dilemma - The option that the universe is not determined, but free will does not exist, is completely plausable. Predetermination is actually not an apt descriptor of my stance - I just don't believe in free will. My stance is that the brain reacts to physics like any other known thing, and doesn't possess some mystical force to effect physics.

Look: My computer exists in a non-deterministic universe - Does it have free will? This has been the theme, that the brain is just a complex computer, reacting to complex input.

A wave is aptly described as a specific interaction of kinetic energy and water. While the appearance may be varied, it is no more abstract than calling any old oak tree a tree. A wave is also testable and observable - The mind, as you have defined it, is not. Bad analogy.

I'll trust that mentioning the physics of lunar gravity will sufice for explaining such an interaction?

A lot of stroke victims would disagree, in that a good portion of memory and skill is lost with certain parts of the brain. This suggests localized "storage" of information.

Call ImportanceRate
If Importance > 1 Then
Save
Else
Purge
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Choosing to pay attention is obviously an act of physics acting on well-established mechanics inside the brain.

Amaranth

Milton

Though a bit late, I will give you my answer, as a "theist"--Christian, though fundamentalist, pertaining to yet another breed.

I believe that both exist (sorry, this is a bit different), but not in the same [/i]reality[/i]. As a Christian, I am inclined to believe that God created everything that exists, and that nothing that exists did not come to be without Him allowing it or creating it Himself. Also, as most, if not all Christians will claim, God knew from before everything was created, what was going to happen/what we were going to do. Though many will agree with these beliefs, there is a problem when we try to peice these together with the idea of 'free will.' Many think that there is a difference when they say "God allowed", as opposed to "God created it for that purpose". But the only difference is the wording, not the meaning.

There are a few Scriptures that a lot of Christians will forget, when thinking of arguments of good and evil, but I will mention two in particular. They are the words of Isaiah 45:7, where it clearly states "I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these [things]." And the words of the Proverbs 16:4, "The LORD hath made all [things] for himself: yea, even the wicked for the day of evil."

These two outline the very important fact that God created everything to do exactly what it is doing. If I am behaving wickedly, then I was created to do this. It is like a movie script. Everything that is supposed to happen, happens. Nothing that happens, was not supposed to not-happen.

So what does this say about free will?

Free will is an illusion. However, it is very real in our own mind. Eventhough God knows everything, and created us to do exactly what we are doing, to us this is unknown. We do not know what purpose we were created for, nor do we know when anything will happen. So we are supposed to make things happen. Not knowing the future, we are under the illusion that we have the power to create our own future. For example, I can choose not to work for any restaurant that serves meat. Although God created me to 'not work' at any restaurant that serves meat, looking at it from the example of a movie script, in this reality (sub-reality?) I was the one who made the choice.

It is like knocking down a domino peice over a long line of dominoes, placed one slightly behind the other. What do you think will happen? The first one will cause the second one to fall, so will the second one cause the third to fall, this will happen until the last one is knocked down. We can agree that the whole thing was set up from the start. That the purpose of putting the domino peices in that way, was to konck them all out with the knocking down of the first peice. This is the way we all play out our roles. We are put in an order in which we are only doing what that "force" (fate, destiny) is making us do. The force that started at the beginning of the domino line, that is the same force that is pushing every other peice, until the last one is fallen. This is the same for the world. Our ways were ordered from the beginning, and all we will do is fall into it (the order).


I will try to add some more later...gotta go now.

fishbulb

Exactly. The term "free will" has a perfectly comprehensible everyday definition. When the official asks, "do you enter into this agreement of your own free will," we know what is meant. We know, roughly speaking, how to evaluate the degree of freedom someone has in making a choice. Free will, as used by people in everyday parlance, is not a meticulously defined term; it is a rough-and-ready approximation of the degree to which a person is coerced into making certain choices compared to a rough idea of what constitutes a free choice.

When "free will" is discussed in metaphysics, this is not the definition that is used. However, in over two millenia of discussing the issue, I am not sure that anyone has actually come up with a coherent definition of what they do mean by "[metaphysical] free will." Personally, I am not at all convinced that there is a meaningful way to define free will apart from the everyday usage of the term.

Nowhere357

I definitely understand the power of this question. But consider, please:

What kind of unknown law operating at a molecular level would get you "awareness?"

This question is just as compelling. Do we agree that nonetheless, awareness does exist?

Yes, we know that. We don't claim that will exists because it can be proven by the existence of randomness. We claim will exists because we experience it. The randomness factor is used to discredit the claim that our decisions must be predetermined.

Very good and true imo. Cause and effect between mind and brain are not yet understood, but they do seem to feedback to each other.

Which is why we discussed definitions.

I agree with all of this except your implied conclusion that will is illusion. We make decisions all the time. There is nothing illusory about the fact that we can direct our thoughts.

There is no magic free will. There is natural will. Quite normal, and quite mysterious. Nothing magic about it, other than it involves what is currently still an unknown.

It means to apply mental effort to reach a decision. Mental effort is the application of will. Simply put, it is paying mental attention - mentally attending to our thoughts. Not mere passive awareness, but active attention. mental effort.

Amaranth

Interesting. So, since god created and determined all things, how do you reconcile the punishment awaiting the majority of the world? Your god created me to disbelieve - Is he going to punish me for succeeding?