Dunatis Posted:

The lack of free will comes from the materialist “Everything about a person is material” that there is no spirit or soul behind the body. Then if we know the current state of everything as well as it’s momentum/how it works, we can predict the next state. Quantum physics isn’t advanced enough yet to determine with 100% accuracy the location of an electron yet, but if that is where the unpredictability of free will comes in, then everything made of electrons would have it. Personally I think we’ll figure it out eventually and that the human body is simply too complex to predict 100% either.

Quantum mechanics says that it’s fundamentally impossible to know everything at once – you can determine the location of an electron (or other particle) to arbitrary precision, or determine its momentum to arbitrary position, but the more you know about one the less you know about the other. It’s not about how good the measuring device is, its inherent to making measurements of a quantum system. So the “know everything, determine the next state” step would be impossible if that’s true, but I don’t see that as giving us free will – if our only way to “beat” determinism is for quantum events to be unpredictable then we’d just be slaves to the random outcomes of quantum events. My decisions hinging on a roll of the quantum dice is no different in free will terms than if they’re determined by events that are predictable in advance.

When I’m feeling optimistic, I’d justify free will in a physical universe by the fact that our will, that which determines how we act (our memories, our beliefs, our experiences) must have physical representation in the states of the brain. Our will is a physical thing, and has the most direct effect on our actions. Yes, we respond to external events, but everything about us that is important and makes us the individuals we are is a part of the universe, interacting with those external events. Our behaviour might be determined by chemistry, but that chemistry is me, in every sense that matters.

What do we mean by free will; that we act the way we want to. That ‘want’ is a part of our brain’s state, and at least to some degree it determines our actions.

Dunatis Posted:

The self works much in the same way. If there is no soul or immaterial spirit which remains unchanging behind the scenes, then the self would have to be material. At the same time however if would have to remain unchanging enough to be worth defining as a self yet every aspect of a personality can be changed with enough damage to certain parts of the brain.

I think the patterns in the brain, barring brain damage, are persistent enough to hang a sense of self on them. I’d agree that profound damage to the brain will destroy parts of that self, but that doesn’t mean they never existed. If my brain got cooked somehow and it erased all the structure of my brain, somehow magically returning it to the ‘default’ state of a newborn, then I’d say I’m dead. But until that happens, it’s permanent enough for me to think that “me” is a coherent idea.

Dunatis Posted:

The only thing that can be said to always be shared is the history which can be forgotten or altered in memory. Can you claim to be the same person you were 20 years ago? 10? 5? Where is the line drawn? If no real line CAN be drawn then the line and distinction is entirely arbitrary and a self refers only to a location in space/time at any instant. It’s very useful when trying to speak or refer to distinct physical entities but has no metaphysical truth to it.

I wasn’t alive 20 years ago (nearly, but not quite), and I’ve certainly changed since 10 years ago, but there’s a continuous line of minute changes from me in the past to me now. I’m not identical to my past self, but I don’t think we can sensibly deny being the same person on a moment to moment basis, and being the same person across a longer span is an extension of the same idea. The key is similarity – those persisting brain patterns again I guess. If there were a sudden discontinuity, where a mbumive part of my personality changed in a single event, then I think you could make the case that somehow I’d become a different person, but again… there’s enough permanence there, I think, to posit a single “me” across time, barring accidents.

Dunatis Posted:

If there is no self, then what would a consciousness perceive? At best a single moment in space/time where multiple senses collide inside a living creature. This would have no effect on the creature and would not be limited to any one “individual” either which would go against the standard meaning of a consciousness which is what I don’t really believe in.

Given how we define individuals and that our bodies are comprised of so many other living things right down to individual cells, it doesn’t even always make sense to bumume that life is occurring on the scale of humans and animals. We could be as planets to the bacteria in our bodies and our planets and systems could be the atoms of a larger being. Just as we cannot live without our living constituents, the planet cannot be said to be alive without the life on it, nor can an organ be alive without life in the cells.

As I see it, my conscious self perceives an integrated form of the rushing sensory data – we have separate structure of the brain for processing vision from hearing, and even within vision specialisations for things like identifying what objects are or focusing on things we’ve seen before, but I’m not consciously aware of all that happening; I just get the executive summary of what’s going on. Likewise I’m not consciously aware of every detail of the output from the brain – I decide to type words and my fingers tap away without me really thinking about where the keys are. I want to pick something up, the details of muscle control and feedback from the fingertips are handled without my input. I want to go somewhere, I don’t have to think about walking.

How consciousness arises from the brain is a little mysterious, but I see its role being a single centre that combines all the little subsystems into an integrated whole and gives the whole thing some direction. It doesn’t pay attention to everything, but it’s at the focal point of it all in some respects. Although it’s hard to be sure it’s not epiphenomenal – just aware of goings on without having any real say in things. That would make our conscious mind a slave to our unconscious workings… not entirely untrue now I think about it. It could be that it’s just advantageous to remember condensed statements like “I did this because I chose to” rather than all the ins and outs of the lower level systems of the brain processing all kinds of who knows what and producing an action.

So it may or may not be important, but it’s still noticeably there. That’s what I meant about waking up in the morning – the second we wake up we’re subject to a stream of conscious awareness.

**** this turned into a long post. I would edit it down to some sort of sensible size, but I really need to go to bed. Have fun reading I guess.