There is an argument that free will doesn’t exist because there is an unbroken chain of causality we are riding on that dates back to the beginning of time. Meaning that every time you fart, scratch your nose, blink, or make lifechanging decisions there is a pre existing reason. These reasons might be anything from the sensory enviornment you were in the past minute, the hormone levels in your bloodstream at the time, hormones you were exposed to as a baby, or how you were parented growing up. No thought you have is really original and is more like a domino affect of neurons firing off in reaction to what you have experienced. What are your thoughts on this?

  • TempermentalAnomaly@lemmy.world
    2·
    3 days ago

    I’m going to stick with the meat of your point. To summarize,

    1. Some materialist views create a black box in which consciousness is a passive activity
      brain -> black box -> mind
    2. CPMs extract consciousness from the black box
    3. Consciousness plays a function role by providing feedback
      brain -> black box -> CPM-> consciousness -> black box -> mind

    But to go further, stimuli -> brain -> black box -> CPM-> consciousness update CPM -> black box -> mind -> response to stimuli

    The CPM as far as I can tell is the following:
    representation of stimuli -> model (of the world with a modeled self) -> consciousness making predictions (of how the world changes if the self acts upon it) -> updating model -> updated prediction -> suspected desired result

    I feel like I’ve mis-represented something of your position with the self. I think you’re saying that the self is the prediction maker. And that free will exists in the making of predictions. But presentation of the CPM places the self in the model. Furthermore, I think you’re saying that consciousness is a process of the brain and I think it’s of the mind. Can you remedy my representation of your position?

    Quickly reading the review, I went to see if they posited role for the mind. I was disappointed to see that they, not only ignored it (unsurprising), but collapsed functions normally attributed to the mind to the brain. Ascribing predictions, fantasies, and hypotheses to the brain or calling it a statistical organ sidesteps the hard problem and collapses it into a physicalist view. They don’t posit a mind-body relationship, they speak about body and never acknowledge the mind. I find this frustrating.