How physicists handle the idea of Free Will?

Q_Goest

That's a valid response and I do feel bad for not being more helpful. My apologies. I would only say that I have also felt that the way many of your responses and those of others here are worded, they truly frown upon this entire branch of academia. Not understanding the topic and still debating your personal views is why the philosophy forum is under general discussion, and the reason for the new rules started the beginning of last year.

If you feel gravity is somehow parallel to consciousness, you should provide references from philosophical journals and provide some background. Explain your argument not just in your own words and from your own perspective, but utilize the background in the subject and show how it fits into your viewpoint.

If you really want to understand more, I'd suggest Chalmer's book "A Conscious Mind". Chalmers is an encyclopedia of sorts and although his personal contributions are limited, the fact is he manages to provide detailed explanations on a very broad number of topics within cognitive science. Within the first 100 pages you'll find considerable discussion on how things like gravity or EM fields are not like consciousness. These are objectively observable phenomena. Dark matter or dark energy and the problems regarding galaxy dynamics similarly are not "hard problems" as the term is defined. Science relies on objective observations. If none are available, we generally relegate claims of phenomena that are not objectively observable by everyone to be crackpottery. Yet we don't consider that to be the case with consciousness. The kinds of claims made by folks not familiar with the issues can become exhausting. If one isn't familiar with the literature and the field of study, those folks should be asking questions, not insisting they have the answers.

Q_Goest

Hi micromass,
Not at all. I'm suggesting that they are not the dolts many here are making them out to be and suggesting they don't have any understanding of the science is an insult. I'm suggesting that to understand the philosophy, then just as physicists, biologists, engineers, etc... have had to study their topic, there is a need to similarly study philosophy in order to comment intelligibly.

Goodison_Lad

I did see and understand the point, and I don't disagree with it entirely. Developments in our understanding of, say, gravity, have been step-by-step, and you could say that a 'hard' problem of gravity (ignoring the little one of unification with QM for the time being!) is why stress-energy should cause curvature of spacetime. But this problem is of the never-ending sort that keeps science moving on. We explain this, this generates more questions, we address them and so on. They are about phenomena in the same category.

But the hard problem of consciousness is to do with a categorically different phenomenon to the easy ones that are currently amenable to scientific investigation. It’s all about category.

I'm not suggesting that the elusiveness of qualia means it can never be successfully addressed. But I am suggesting that the difference between the nature of qualia and the 'easy' problems of consciousness is of an entirely different order to the difference between our understanding of the Einstein Field Equations and our lack of understanding of the underlying cause of them. My guess is that physicists will succeed in this hard problem of gravity (only, of course, for it to be replaced by yet another one for them to tackle. That's life). Giving up is no answer.

The why and how of qualia represents a very major challenge for science, and it’s my opinion that recognising the size of the cliff to be scaled would be a useful first step.

Evo

But to be honest, a degree in philosophy does not make them able to comment knowledgeably on topics of science, engineering etc, unless they also happen to have degrees in these subjects. That is a big problem here in the philosophy forum, people that read a few books on philosophy feel that they can post on topics that they know next to nothing about.

The only thing a philosopher can post about is philosophy, unless they actually hold degrees in the other subject they are posting about. it does state in the rules that the same standards of discussing science also applies in the philosophy forum.

Q_Goest

Hi Evo,
I would certainly agree that some philosophers have degrees limiting them to philosophy. Of course, to get a PhD in philosophy, the study of the natural sciences or other sciences is a large part of that. Chalmers for example has a background in mathematics, but there are a tremendous number of philosphers who have a background in physics and especially, quantum mechanics. I've been very surprised to find just how much good information is available about quantum mechanics that's been written by philosophers.

Again, I apologize for the insinuating remarks earlier.

Pythagorean

You're still insinuating that the problem is with my understanding and mispreresenting my position as "having the answers" (which I never even implied). If that were the case, then you can simply respond to the actual argument I made and counter them. Instead, you rely on arguments from authority, refer to technicalities, and position yourself as the referee (and thus ultimate authority) on both science and philosophy.

This only convinces me that my argument was good and you didn't like the implications of it, so you generated a false sense of controversy.

Exactly opposite of your representation, I actually responded to the typical "science can't explain" with "of course it can't and it's not obliged to, and this problem exists outside of consciousness". I'm not saying I have all the answers.

And I will conclude with agreement: science can't explain everything (that's, in fact, a characteristic of a pseudoscience) but I addendum that science, at least, explains something and that the people that continue to criticize science for not explaining everything aren't able to explain anything. Of course, explain, in this context, very specifically means "can utilize empirically-informed models to predict behavior".

Also, you know my position, it's a fairly common position: it's the physicalist position. Again a misrepresentation, claiming that these are my personal wishes and desires. I also share some views with Lowe.

Lastly, it's unfair to post a reference and expect somebody to read it all. If you have a specific point to make from a reference, quote it, interperet it, and state how its relevant. Otherwise it's just more "oh the answers in there, you're just too ignorant to see it... but don't mind me not being able to state it".

Now let's put these posts in "arguments 101 thread" and get back to discussion... I believe the ball was in your court (unless your just waving your arms for nothing).

Pythagorean

You argument is that there is no gravity. That's really not satisfactory...
I don't see how you can selectively use that argument on gravity and not on consciousness.

They're both products of the same system of perceptions.

I think if you're to take Lowe's view, you can't be selective about it.

Pythagorean

Throughout your post, you keep saying "no, no, it's different" in tautology. You still haven't shown me how. It's about category might have been a start? Perhaps you should dive further into that thought for me.

John Creighto

I know this is slightly off topic but this quote keeps comming up in this thread:

I read about the following in the big bang theory (TV Show) discussion:

"Loop quantum gravity (LQG), also known as loop gravity and quantum geometry, is a proposed quantum hypothesis of spacetime which attempts to reconcile the theories of quantum mechanics and general relativity.
Loop quantum gravity postulates that space can be viewed as an extremely fine fabric or network "woven" of finite quantised loops of excited gravitational fields called spin networks. When viewed over time, these spin networks are referred to as "spin foam" (which should not be confused with quantum foam). The theory of LQG is considered a major quantum gravity contender, along with string theory, but has the perceived advantage of consistently incorporating general relativity without requiring the use of "higher dimensions"."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loop_quantum_gravity

and I think this theory would address these issues, but I do not know what the status of this theory is (in terms of being accepted on the same level as more classical theories in modern physics).

As for the main point of contention in the recent part of this thread, I do think that it is perfectly reasonable to compare the hard problem of consciousness to the question of, "Why does mass curve space time?". However, I can suggest one difference. In the case of qualia, we have reason to believe that there is something which our theories aren't able to explain though laws of nature.

However, when it comes to why does mass curve space. Why can't some laws be fundamental and not need further explanation? Aristotle would refer to this as the concept of a first cause but this does not imply a God. Aristotle thought that there should be some principles which existed at the beginning of the universe. He called these principles, "Unperishable Principles" and he discusses this in his book Metaphysics:
http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/a/aristotle/metaphysics/

Pythagorean

I don't know that it makes them fundamental, or whether there's a need or not, but it always appears that the nature of things (gravity, EM, consciousness, existence) don't have an explanation. But we learn a lot about how to model and control systems of particles involving them when trying to find one.

Goodison_Lad

I'm sorry, but I'll have to risk repeating myself: as I said in earlier posts, qualia is different because it is pure experience itself - it is entirely subjective.

It seems to me that no EEG, MRI scan, blood test or any other tool currently at the disposal of neuroscientists is likely to get us any nearer to the understanding the nature of conscious experience. Things that contribute to consciousness – sure. They’ll tell us, I’ve no reason to doubt, about all sorts of systems that combine to produce the content of which we are aware, but not the actual conscious experience itself. Of course, the usual caveat applies: that may change one day.

This is why I think it represents a great challenge for scientists who want to understand it in terms of brain systems.

So I’m afraid I can’t really give you any clearer reason for conscious experience being fundamentally different to objectively investigable phenomena than this.

Qualia is certainly merits investigation, but who knows whether it will ever yield to explanation? If it doesn’t, and has to be deemed as fundamental, then it would effectively be a self-contained fundamental property.

I think it’s this that would make it unlike the stress-energy/curvature relationship: if that turns out to be fundamental because it has no underlying explanation, the stress-energy/curvature relationship doesn’t stand alone – it ‘explains’ a higher-level phenomenon, even though it itself has no explanation.

I’m glad I’m not working on either!

Pythagorean

I agree with, and have stated in some way, everything you've said here. None of it seems to touch on my argument that the nature of gravity has the same explanatory gap as consciousness. The two phenomena are themselves different (action at a distance vs. subjective experience). But both phenomena can only be characterized, not "explained".

We ask "why" and the only answers we ever really get are "how".

John Creighto

May, ask for you in another thread to distinguish between what you mean by "why" vs "how". I suspect this is a big topic in and of itself.

Pythagorean

How is the mechanism for how something works.

It's a lot harder to explain what "why" is because it doesn't have a stable definition. It can be used for "how" or it can be used to assay motivation for humans/animals. The final and third way it's applied, I think, is a misattribution of human motivation to the universe: "why is there entropy?? Why anything at all". Some people will be satisfied with a how answer; others will bring up the hard problem.

Ferris_bg

The difference between the hard problem of consciousness and the other hard problems for science is in the way the questions "why" have arisen. If we have only our cognitive type of experience, we wouldn't ask questions like "how it feels", but we would still ask questions like "why is there gravity, cognition etc". Having the subjective experience of how it feels however totally changes the picture. You are certain about the existence of something, which you can't study objectively.

pftest

Yes i think thats right. And because physically there are no such things as a "base level" and a "higher level", the whole supervenience relationship is always a conceptual one. Even in the case of a rock that supervenes on its molecules. Physically speaking, the only relationships that exist in a rock are the forces between the particles. Psychologically, a human mind can imagine the rock to exist at several different levels (the whole rock > its molecules > their atoms > their particles). Those latter psychological relationships are what we call supervenience. So my conclusion is that supervenience is to physicalism like what god is to atheism. I wanted to address this because i was under the impression that people generally believe supervenience to be a physicalist view on consciousness, whereas i think it is the exact opposite.

pftest

There do exist questions that get "why-answers", for example: why did person X kill person Y (Y insulted him). Or why does person Z drink non-sparkling water (it tastes better). Basically any action that involves consciousness includes a "why-answer".

So "why-answers" do exist just as much as "how-answers". If we have an explanatory gap, we can insert either one. Or both, I think we can see in human beings that both types of answers can be at work at the same time.

And i should note that when science gives a "how-answer" it is agnostic on the presence of a "why-answer", it doesnt state such an answer is absent. A formula may describe how someone moves his legs while walking, but at the same time the person may be walking that way to avoid kneepain. So science may search for a "how-answer" for gravity, and even when it finds one it wont say anything about the involvement of a conscious state (as is the case in human brains). This is true for the most basic physical laws out there.