Free will Argument against Divine Providence

[bennyboy]

I think you should accept my given definitions because they are, in fact, the given definitions, i.e. indicative of what most people mean by the word when they use it. And this happens to be one of the few cases where appeal to popularity is not a logical fallacy.

I guess I'm not done after all, though I still don't have much hope of us arriving at anything more useful than brain exerecise.

Most of the people who use the word "mind" might readily agree that it seems the mind is somewhere to be found in brain function; I'm not sure even that's true-- the confirmed monists you see everywhere aren't as ubiquitous as you think. However, when people refer to "my mind," they are distinguishing their mental experience from that brain function. All the words we use to talk about subjective experience are like that: when someone says they're in love, they may recognize the importance of hormones, but what they're talking about is their world view, and how their feelings are affecting it. The words are used, and used ONLY, to describe their subjective narrative; and for the most part, explaining the mechanism behind their feelings will add little to that narrative.

I do accept that certain words are intrinsically dualistic or idealistic - words such as "soul" or "spirit". What I do not accept is that "mind", "sentience" or "will" are some of those words. I do not accept it because when I look at their 'correct' definitions, I find them to be equally applicable in monist, dualist or idealist contexts.

I do not accept that the meanings you take as 'correct' are correct, and the quotes do nothing to mediate that fact. There is data processing all over the place; some computers have rudimentary "awareness" in that they can identify patterns in their environment and interact to them in useful ways. On a bigger scale, you could say that the whole universe, and every subsystem in it, is processing information, and the output (at least in a deterministic model) is the state at t+1.

But we don't talk about any other system as thinking, or feeling, or being sentient. That's because, however we juggle words around to pretend otherwise, we recognize that mind is more than just processing data.

Let me ask you this: if a computer simulation can take in visual and auditory input, process it, and output behavior to a cyborg body so that it passes the Turing test, would you believe that it was actually experiencing the universe?

I also do not think that a disagreement in definitions should be an end of the debate especially when one definition is more inclusive than the other. For example, if we disagree on "free" where you consider it to mean "free from determinism" and I consider it to mean "free from certain constraints which may or may not be determinism", then the next logical step is to discuss which constraints make sense and whether or not determinism is one of them. Similarly, if you consider "will" to mean "non-physical attribute of the mind that makes decisions" and I consider it to be "attribute of the mind that makes decisions", the next step would be to discuss if "will" would have to be necessarily non-physical or physical.

Okay, let's get super-inclusive, because that makes words better, right? Let's define "will" as the possibility that a collection of wave functions ("A") might do something, and let's define "freedom" as the absence of any other collection of wave functions ("B") that prevent A from doing it.

Now, we don't have to goof around with a bunch of arbitrary shorthand for properties that we can't independently verify even exist. Love: can't put it next to a ruler. Beauty: we know in our heart of hearts that it exists only in the brain, but can't even define it precisely. Free will: can't touch this.