Human Intelligence is an Illusion

[The Grand Nudger]

Then your contention is that if free will were illusory, then free will would be illusory?

[The__Chameleon]

Then your contention is that if free will were illusory, then free will would be illusory?

I suppose I did use it in another context earlier. In that statement I was referring to our sense of proficiency in cognitively/consciously solving problems.

[The Grand Nudger]

We're proficient in that regard regardless of the existence of free will.  That's one of the things that free will was always problematic on.  It's hard to point out what it would be needed to do.  I suppose at one point in time it was easier to maintain the sort of incredulity required to posit free will as a solution to the questions of "how could we do x, otherwise?" but that's no longer the case.  Even if nothing we now know is actually how we do x, otherwise..we at least know ways that x can be done in the absence of free will.

[The__Chameleon]

The experiments mentioned earlier indicate that decisions are made prior to the consciousness being aware of them. The following statement from the computer analogy however still holds true regardless.

If, for the sake of argument,  the computer was right with respect to it possessing free will, then that free agency can neither be sourced by the computers cognitive self, nor it's actual self, since the computer is a machine and therefore bound to it's own mechanical nature and programming.  The only other logical conclusion is that the computer was wrong about possessing the capacity for free will.

[The Grand Nudger]

Being bound to programming (or even more fundamental, to process flow in architecture) doesn't prohibit a machine from directing it's efforts.  

In terms of the thing you're discussing, that's the difference between will and free will.  If we have no free will, our cognitive and conscious faculties are an issue of will.  We have will.  That we don't have a free will does nothing to make that will illusory.

[brewer]

The experiments mentioned earlier indicate that decisions are made prior to the consciousness being aware of them. The following statement from the computer analogy however still holds true regardless.

If, for the sake of argument,  the computer was right with respect to it possessing free will, then that free agency can neither be sourced by the computers cognitive self, nor it's actual self, since the computer is a machine and therefore bound to it's own mechanical nature and programming.  The only other logical conclusion is that the computer was wrong about possessing the capacity for free will.

That's only one interpretation of the experimental data.

[The__Chameleon]

Being bound to programming (or even more fundamental, to process flow in architecture) doesn't prohibit a machine from directing it's efforts.  

In terms of the thing you're discussing, that's the difference between will and free will.  If we have no free will, our cognitive and conscious faculties are an issue of will.  We have will.  That we don't have a free will does nothing to make that will illusory.

I was not arguing that our will is illusory, only that our "free will" is, and that our sense of conscious self-direction is. If there is a nature to our will that can allow it to supersede/overrule (be "free" of) deterministic factors, then that nature must be sourced outside of our mechanical nature and being. Since deterministic factors (variations of the principle of natural selection) dictated how we are "programmed" then our programming is also deterministic and cannot be the source of "free" agency.

If we indeed have the ability to exercise "free" will, and this ability cannot be sourced from "us" (in the physical sense) then is it really "ours"?

Using the word "nature" and "natural" in the Naturalistic context, the following statement should appear self-evident.

If it can be said that the capacity to supersede nature (as in the case of free will) exists then this capacity cannot itself have a natural source.

[The Grand Nudger]

I was not arguing that our will is illusory, only that our "free will" is, and that our sense of conscious self-direction is.

The one doesn't follow from the other.  Our sense of conscious self direction is likely in error in a great many ways, but this in and of itself is incapable of establishing that we lack such an ability altogether.  To define such an ability as somehow "unnatural" or superseding the natural may make the position untenable...but only insomuch as you've defined it as such...rather than demonstrated that it must be so.  Even more mystifying is whatever sense you insist that such an ability must come from "elsewhere".  

Personally, I'm not all that concerned with hard determinism, though I find it difficult to escape....and this is largely down to having so many examples of a systems ability to self direct regardless of the limitations determinism may place on the same. I find the idea of libertarian free will absurd, but since it's unimportant to any ability of ours seeking an explanation the absurdity is contained to the proposition itself rather than the operation of a human (or machine) system.

[Dr H]

Who's "we"?

Our brains.

Good, that would have been my response.

But it does raise a bit of a syntactical issue.  You said, "Experiments suggest that our brains decide what we're going to do it before we're conscious of it."

If we are our brain, then we are making the decision, whether we are immediately conscious of it or not.  So all you are really saying is that one brain process occurs before another brain process.