On Oct 18, 10:00 am, benjayk <benjamin.jaku...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> Craig Weinberg wrote:
>
> > Here’s a little thought experiment about free will. Let’s say that
> > there exists a technology which will allow us to completely control
> > another person’s neurology. What if two people use this technology to
> > control each other? If one person started before the other, then they
> > could effectively ‘disarm’ the others control over them preemptively,
> > but what if they both began at the exact same time? Would one ‘win’
> > control over the other somehow? Would either of them even be able to
> > try to win? How would they know if they were controlling the other or
> > being controlled to think they are controlling the other?
>
> Complete control over anything is simply impossible. Control is just a
> feeling and not fundamental.

It depends what you mean by complete control. If I choose to hit the
letter m on my keyboard, am I not controlling the keyboard to the
extent that it is controllable?

> The closest one can get to controlling the brain is to make it
> dysfunctional. It's a bit boring, but the most realistic answer is that both
> would fall unconscious, as that is the only result of exerting excessive
> control over a brain.
> It's the same result as if you try to totally control an ecosystem, or an
> economy. It'll destroy the natural order, as control is not a fundamental
> ordering principle.

I generally agree. The thought experiment is to make people consider
the fallacy of exclusively bottom up processing. I don't think that
you could actually control a brain, I'm just saying that if you could,
how do you get around the fact that it violates the assumption that
only neurons can control the brain. If my neurons control a machine
that control another person's neurons, then what happens? How does
either the master or slave know if they are controlling or being
controlled? The point was to show that bottom up exclusivity fails,
and that  we must consider that our ordinary intuition of bi-
directional, high-low processing interdependence may indeed be valid.

>
> It seems like you think of control or will as something fundamental, and I
> don't see any reason to assume that it is.

That's a reasonable objection. If it's not fundamental, what is it
composed of, and why is there an appearance of anything other than
whatever that is?

>Honestly I that we think that we
> have "free", independent will is just the arrogance of our ego that feels it
> has to have a fundamentally special place in the universe.

I used to think that too, but now I see that it's every bit as much of
an egotistical arrogance to De-anthropomorphize ourselves. It's an
inverted, passive aggressive egotism to perpetually look to other
processes above and below our native level of individual cohesion to
give credit or blame, while all the while hiding invisibly behind the
voyeur's curtain. To think that we have no free will is to think that
we cannot think one way or another that we have free will. It's
circular, self-negating reasoning. "I think that I don't really think,
because I think that I can explain that it's not necessary for
thinking to happen at all". Doesn't really make sense if you step out
of the system and observer your thinking, opinionated, controlling
self pronouncing that it controls nothing, thinks for no reason, and
has opinions for...for what again? What is an opinion doing in a
cosmos which has no free will? Literally. What does an opinion do? Why
are you here talking to me? What is making controlling you to do this
more than you yourself? Should I imagine that my neurons care what I
think?

> That is not to say that we are predetermined by a material universe, rather
> control is just a phenomenon arising in consciousness like all other
> phenomena eg feelings and perceptions.

Sure, but that's all that it needs to be. As long as we get the
sensory feedback that we expect from our motives, then we might as
well have free will. It just seems violate parsimony unnecessarily.
Why does it make sense for consciousness to be completely dominated by
the experience of control in a universe where that would be utterly
meaningless? How would such an illusion even work in the sense of how
does a feeling of will get invented in the first place? If you keep
throwing dice long enough they will start hallucinating that they are
an organism with a conscious will? Why? How? It's totally nuts and
explains nothing.

Once we understand that will is sort of a subjective fisheye view
which radiates evanescent waves of influence over the entire band of
micocosmic and macrocosmic phenomena, as well as being influenced by
the same, we can see that free will doesn't have to be completely
explained away nor does it have to be seen as a truly independent
phenomena. It get's kind of meta, because the degree to which free
will feels free is partially contingent upon your feelings about it -
your courage and independence. If you don't want free will, you don't
have to have it. If you do want it, you might not like the
consequences. The universe will support whatever level of mundane
skepticism or profound delusion that you invest in.

Craig

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