Where debating everything under the sun is only the beginning

The illusion of control is so complete in humans that people will probably forever think and act as if they have it, even if they truly believe that they don’t.  I must ask you, where does consciousness get the power to redirect molecular action that supersedes what the laws of physics and nature dictate?  Through what process does the brain create this new force that would necessarily be more powerful than all the other known forces of nature?

The Physical Ethics perspective runs something like this: Given the trillions (?) of conscious entities on our planet, there are this many corresponding instantaneous selves, or punishment/reward subjects. While there is no freewill/good/evil element here in an ultimate sense, each of these entities has this illusion given their own tiny awarenesses. So when we talk about creating good/evil machines, well… even we are only good/evil in respect to our pathetic little perspectives — not ultimately.

If free will is an illusion stemming from pathetic little perspectives of tiny individual awarenesses, then by what mechanism did that particular individual awareness, namely Philosopher Eric@Conscious Entities, escape the illusion?

Freedom is an abstract term. To say that I have free will (if that term is even at all meaningful, cf. Locke) does not mean that I am always maximally free, just as to say that I am healthy does not mean I am exactly as healthy right now as I was two months ago. At the most basic level I did not choose where and when I grew up.

What does puzzle me is the claim that we would have an illusion of ultimate free will. I, for one, have never had any such notion.

Thus the rational definition of free will is limited individual willpower. When applied wisely, your will overcomes or circumvents the circumstances, and gets what it wants. When applied foolishly, circumstances overpower free will, sometimes so devastatingly that the free will appears to not exist.

It's obviously invalid to conclude that "at the most basic level" you did not choose anything. Health and sickness both exist, but are contradictory. Can we conclude from this that "at the most basic level" only illness exists? On what logical basis? What is "the most basic level"?

Their conclusions go squarely against every necessary precondition of psychology, are logically flawed, counter-evidential or cherry-picked. Routinely so. Your example only confirms this impression.

The impulses may occur via the brain, but they are very concretely not generated in the brain.

I have no idea what the person you quoted thinks about that, but to me it means there is no (necessary) contradiction between saying "the fact that I watched Ducktales in 1990 caused me to do X" and "my decision caused me to do X."

Quote from: ersi on 2014-06-23, 16:35:07

Their conclusions go squarely against every necessary precondition of psychology, are logically flawed, counter-evidential or cherry-picked. Routinely so. Your example only confirms this impression.

The way you think that science so "routinely" gets it wrong, it's a wonder that we ever made it out of the stone age.  Your true colors (fear of science), are shining through, sir.

Quote from: ersi on 2014-06-23, 16:35:07

The impulses may occur via the brain, but they are very concretely not generated in the brain.

This may be the case for philosophers, but certainly not for the rest of us.

There's no contradiction between those statements as long as you don't analyse the psychology involved.

The causation from the environment to a rational being is indirect. The environment prompts an impulse, but a rational being, different from an irrational animal, may always choose to not follow the impulse. Either follow a different impulse - not necessarily stronger impulse, merely a different one -, or suppress all impulses.

A concrete example of such neuroscientist is Sam Harris. Frenzie earlier also pointed to some neuroscientistic study somewhere which made as little sense as your source.

If you think that thinking for yourself is perfectly the same as being hard-wired to some mad scientist, then you lack common sense. And those neuroscientists who forget the distinction, and also the experimental physicists who think that their laboratory is the same as nature and things merely happen, ignoring that they are setting up the environment and pulling the strings, lack common sense, logic and morality. Common sense is necessary to have a rational discussion about anything.

If the brain tumour is located near a part of the brain that controls speech, or movement or some other vital function, it is common to perform the operation when the patient is awake for a short part of the surgery.  The patient is woken once the surface of the brain is exposed and special electrical stimulation techniques are used to locate the specific part of the brain that controls speech, movement, or vision. This avoids causing damage while removing the tumour.

Nobody thinks it's "perfectly the same".

But this idea that learning more about ourselves is immoral is odd to say the least.

Morality enters the picture when we are faced with the choice: Either learn by observing our own behaviour attentively or by tearing intestines apart. When you say that only the manner of tearing the intestines apart is the right way, and the way of uninterfering observation and careful logical inferences is wrong, you are being fallacious both philosophically and scientifically. And when you persist, you are soon enough proven immoral too.

Quote from: ersi on 2014-06-24, 05:06:52

The causation from the environment to a rational being is indirect. The environment prompts an impulse, but a rational being, different from an irrational animal, may always choose to not follow the impulse. Either follow a different impulse - not necessarily stronger impulse, merely a different one -, or suppress all impulses.

Or in other words, your will ("impulse") is at the very least not free until that point. And if you are "suppress[ing] all impulses[/ideas]" you are submitting to the idea of suppressing all other ideas. Does that mean you are actually choosing anything or does it mean that you are simply being dominated by a stronger idea? Continuing that line of thought, your freedom exists primarily at the point where you decide not to read e.g. The Selfish Gene, The Greatest Show on Earth or Why Evolution is True. Once you've properly read and considered it, whether or not the idea that "Darwinian" evolution is true will dominate the idea that it's not is out of your hands.

If you think that thinking for yourself is perfectly the same as being hard-wired to some mad scientist, then you lack common sense. And those neuroscientists who forget the distinction, and also the experimental physicists who think that their laboratory is the same as nature and things merely happen, ignoring that they are setting up the environment and pulling the strings, lack common sense, logic and morality.

One must pay special attention to those "short-circuits" in order to get closer to understand the nature of conscience and the subsequent problem of Free Will.

I don't believe "short-circuit" is a good choice of words to describe indecisiveness or simple refusal to make a decision because not making a decision is a decision in itself and not a malfunction.

I find it a very difficult subject of analysis.

Ahem...there are, at least, an equal number of mad philosophers if you would like me to count off a dozen or so.  It may be a wee bit of madness that leads great philosophers to try to seek out the answers that they do in the first place.

Scientists can't bring stars, solar system, galaxies and massive black holes into their laboratories, but they know an awful lot of facts about them.  Similarly, scientists can't enter the quantum world, but we know much about how that works as well.  If you believe that observation from afar is meaningless then grab your stone weapons, we have some hunting to do.

In the brain experiment, scientists had to eliminate the thought process that takes place before the brain chooses an action and an electrical impulse is created to carry that out.  To be the experiment that it is, scientists necessarily (by common sense), had to circumvent that process to get the results they were seeking.  The results are very meaningful in themselves, but will become even more so as more experimentation is done and more information is added--science marches relentlessly on.