Posted by:
Human
(
)
Date: March 21, 2015 01:18PM
I must have mis-wrote, which isn't unusual. --I *watched* the L.A. Marathon on an iPad.
I have in me one or two big runs per year, maybe only one these days, and the Fall in Vancouver or Montreal will likely be next. L.A. is a big, bucket list run that I hope to do someday, though.
But I'm gladdened by your invitation. If I'm in SoCal I'll let you know. And the same most definitely goes for you. Let me know if by some chance you're up here on the Tundra.
I agree with you a lot in these discussions, obviously, and learn a lot, too. But on one point we profoundly disagree.
First, to get it out of the way, I think the "conscious autonomous agent" and "free will" are near to or exactly the same thing. Show me a "conscious autonomous agent" who denies having free-will in a practical sense. You have to comb the annals of psychiatry to find these rare beings. The self senses itself to be free and autonomous, even when imprisoned and lacking all choices. (See The Diving Bell And The Butterfly for an illustration.)
But where we profoundly disagree is on this point of what it is we shall assume.
All assumptions are made by *that which does the assuming*, which is itself not an assumption. It is. Science, all of it, to one degree or another is an assumption, in that it must like everything else begin with things taken a priori. The ultimate a priori is the self making the first assumption.
So to your point: no matter how extensive the correlations between the brain and the mind extend, we need never have "any sort of ontological explanation of mind and freewill" to say that mind and freewill exist. The Self stands before *any* explanation of anything, including mind, free will and even itself. The Self stands prior to *any* extensive correlations between anything, including correlations observed between the brain and the mind. If anything *is* the Self is. If it is not, then nothing else is either.
Science can say nothing without a self saying it. So yes, science can say there is no self and there is no free-will, but a self said that freely enough.
Look, I've made it known over the years that I don't think the good Bishop Berkeley has ever been refuted (which is not the same thing as saying that Dr. Johnson's foot didn't hurt when he kicked a stone, as witty a rejoiner as that may have been). This from the beginning of A Treatise Concerning The Principles Of Human Understanding:
"But besides all that endless variety of Ideas or Objects of Knowledge, there is likewise something which knows or perceives them, and exercises divers Operations, as Willing, Imagining, Remembering, etc. about them. This perceiving, active Being is what I call Mind, Spirit, Soul or my Self. By which Words I do not denote any one of my Ideas, but a thing entirely distinct from them, wherein they Exist, or, which is the same thing, whereby they are Perceiv'd, for the Existence of an Idea consists in being Perceiv'd."
In other words, the Self precedes even ideas about itself. The Big Bang, if that is an idea science still believes, does not precede the Self that perceives it.
So, if Science wants to say there is no mind there is no self there is no free-will there is no soul then it will have to do a hell of lot more than say "Libet etc". Right? In other words, to refute something so a priori fundamental as my Self will require a hell of lot more than the fumblings over the nascent ability to map correlations between my behaviours and the position of my brain's neurons etc at any specific moment. No?
Science is very far away from anything concrete in any of this, very very far away. And as I've said elsewhere, science should stop pretending it is learning anything about "mind" & "consciousness" & "self" & "free-will" and simply go about pursuing *brain studies*. There is still plenty to learn about the brain itself as a thing before it makes any leaps into what are non-existing existing things like "self" etc. --"non-existing existing things" is my clumsy way of indicating the nature of mind etc., but I'm all for the possibility of an "expanded understanding of the physical", as quasi-mormon as that could turn out to be ;^/
Okay, I'm rambling and not thinking, as usual. I'm grateful that you countenance my laziness.
Human
(This discussion last week had me go back to the beginning of my fascination into this stuff. I realized just how absolutely bull-shitty this was from Antonio R. Damasio at the beginning of the century:
https://people.brandeis.edu/~teuber/damsio.pdfNothing has changed since that article: the head-line claims about brain/mind are still wildly disconnected from the actual science (which has progressed enormously, of course).
Also, your seeming dismissal of Penrose and Hameroff elsewhere has me re-looking at The Emperor's New Mind.
Okay, enough.
(Bottom line, Henry, the onus is on those who deny the existence of the self/free-will, not on us who live with it everyday.)