Do you believe in free will?

[genkaus]

1a- It is the latter, but not because of the passage of time, but the receipt of input. As long as the consciousness receives inputs it changes and thus changes identity. I define irreducible as unable to be lessened. Secondly can you prove that a person has no consciousness in a coma? I believe that, while they can't express, if they can receive input they would still have a consciousness. For instance, after Joe is in a coma for 20 years for brain damage, he wakes up. He's still Joe, He didn't experience the passage of those 20 years and may act differently, but he still perceives himself as Joe.

To a certain extent, yes it can be proven. The two things you accepted here are that a) consciousness requires reception of input, i.e. perception and b) the process of perception alters consciousness.

Now, the process of perception can be recorded. Which part of the brain brain becomes active when an input is sent, indicates perception in process. We can exhaustively test for perception through different senses and map Joe's brain, but if we see nothing happening there, we can reasonably say that there is no consciousness.

Secondly, suppose Joe wakes up after 20 years and he is the same old Joe. His attitude, behavior, thoughts are all consistent with the old Joe. Which would mean that his consciousness is the same as it was before. Which means, there was no perception in between to alter the consciousness. Which means there was no consciousness in between.

1b- I would say the self is the sum of a lot of things. It's in part who we perceive ourselves consciously to be, out nature, what we know, memories, Time that we've experienced, etc. Take all those away and I still feel there is a sense of agent that is irreducible. That is typically what I'm trying to identify and talk about when discussing self and duality vs. monism. If you would be so kind as to point out exactly how that is inconsistant with my 1a, I will reassess it. AAlso I'm fairly new to emergent properties and such, please explain it in more detail so I could evaluate it.

This is what is inconsistent - you state that the self or the identity is the sum of knowledge, memories, experience, nature, perception and X (X being the other irreducible thing). You also state that the self.identity is irreducible, which means you take away any part of the sum and the self no longer exists - it cannot exist as anything less that the sum. Therefore, your X here would not be the same thing as the agent's self or identity - irrespective of whether there is such a thing as X.

2a- I think I see where we're having a divergence. You define nature to include both your id and conscious will. I should be perhaps more specific and refer to it as our naturalistic instinctual nature. Hopefully that helps clear that up. I agree with your point about axioms and subjectivity.

Ok, but I still fail to see any reason for creating this distinction.

2b- If all brain activity were to cease how would there exist any aspect of consciousness. How would you explain consciousness' dependance on the brain? Is it the electrical activity, the configuration of the synapses? I can fully admit I don't know where the mind would reside, if not in the brain, but I'm working on it.

There wouldn't. I can't yet. Yes, but not that simplistic. And so are all the neurologists.

3b- OK on the grounds that, due to how it functions, it is unobservable to self. I, for instance, know that part of who I am comes from who I am genetically built to be. Part of who I am is who I learned to be. Part of me is what I've experienced, remembered and not. Part of who I am though, is also who I consciously choose to be. Colloquially when I refer to who I am, it's only the part of me I can perceive, which would not include the parts of my sub-conscious I can not see because I'm consciously expressing it. Objectively all parts of the whole would make the sum of the formal "who am I" agent definition.

As you say here, the question of "who I am" is being answered on basis of perception - however, as we established - identity is not based upon perception. It is, as you point out as well, determined objectively and as a sum of all parts. Which is why, while it appeared that you were able to coerce yourself - from your limited subjective point of view - objectively - there was no coercion.