″ It’s a list of all our desires and preferences, in order of importance, for every situation .”
This is basically an assertion that we actually have a utility function. This is false. There might be a list of pairings between “situations you might be in” and “things you would do,” but it does not correspond to any coherent set of preferences. It corresponds to someone sometimes preferring A to B, and sometimes B to A, without a coherent reason for this.
Asserting that there is such a coherent list would be like asserting that you have a list of probabilities for all statements that are based on a coherent prior and were coherently updated in their current state using Bayesian updating. This is nonsense: there is no such thing as “the actual probability that you really truly assign to the claim that you are about to change your name to Thomas John Walterson and move to Australia.” You never thought of that claim before, and although you think it very unlikely when you think of it, this is not intrinsically numerical in any way. We assign probabilities by making them up, not by discovering something pre-existent.
In exactly the same way, coherent sets of preferences are made up, not discovered.
How often have you had to change your name to Thomas John Walterson and move to Australia? More importantly, If you thereafter had to change your name to Thomas John Pieterson and move to New Zealand, does I make sense to draw up a compel new list of or and cons, or to just alter the preexisting list? I never said the list covers all possible scenarios. I’m talk in about a list of basics which when applied, determine your action. For example, do you like hot or cold weather? Apply to scenario. By applying the basic list, you can resolve even unimagined scenarios. You don’t make up a preference for tea or coffee each time you are offered tea or coffee. The preference is already determined.
In his book, “The illusion of conscious will ” Wegner asks, “Does the fact that thoughts usually proceed actions actually prove that thoughts are the cause of actions? ”. You assume they do.
I don’t know why you think I am assuming this. Regardless of the causes of your opinions, one thing which is not the cause is a coherent set of probabilities. In the same way, regardless of the causes of your actions, one thing which is not the cause is a coherent set of preferences.
This is necessarily true since you are built out of physical things which do not have sets of preferences about the world, and you follow physical laws which do not have sets of preferences about the world. They have something similar to this, e.g. you could metaphorically speak as if gravity has a preference for things being lower down or closer together. But you cannot compare any two arbitrary states of the world and say “Gravity would prefer this state to that one.” Gravity simply has no such preferences. In a similar way, since your actions result from principles which are preference-like but not preferences, your actions are also somewhat preference-like, but they do not express a coherent set of preferences.
All that said, you are close to a truth, which is that since the incoherence of people’s lives bothers them (both in thoughts and in actions), it is good for people to try to make those both more coherent. In general you could make incoherent thoughts and actions more coherent in two different directions, namely “more consistent with themselves but less consistent with the world” and “more consistent with themselves and also more consistent with the world”. The second choice is better.
Does an electron prefer a lower orbital? Is this a physical thing which has a preference about the world? Indirectly it shows that matter prefers to have less energy. You could say the universe prefers entropy. Consciousness is simply awareness of our preferences.
I don’t think you understood the argument. Let’s agree that an electron prefers what it is going to do, over what it is not going to do. But does an electron in China prefer that I write this comment, or a different one?
Obviously, it has no preference at all about that. So even if it has some local preferences, it does not have a coherent preference over all possible things. The same thing is true for human beings, for exactly the same reasons.
You don’t Need a preference for every possible scenario. You only need a basic set that covers every possible scenario. For example, let’s say you don’t like spicy food. You don’t have to try chicken curry, beef curry, mutton curry, fish curry, from every curry shop in every city, in every country in the world, to know you won’t like it. A basic set of preferences can cover all situations.
″ It’s a list of all our desires and preferences, in order of importance, for every situation .”
This is basically an assertion that we actually have a utility function. This is false. There might be a list of pairings between “situations you might be in” and “things you would do,” but it does not correspond to any coherent set of preferences. It corresponds to someone sometimes preferring A to B, and sometimes B to A, without a coherent reason for this.
Asserting that there is such a coherent list would be like asserting that you have a list of probabilities for all statements that are based on a coherent prior and were coherently updated in their current state using Bayesian updating. This is nonsense: there is no such thing as “the actual probability that you really truly assign to the claim that you are about to change your name to Thomas John Walterson and move to Australia.” You never thought of that claim before, and although you think it very unlikely when you think of it, this is not intrinsically numerical in any way. We assign probabilities by making them up, not by discovering something pre-existent.
In exactly the same way, coherent sets of preferences are made up, not discovered.
How often have you had to change your name to Thomas John Walterson and move to Australia? More importantly, If you thereafter had to change your name to Thomas John Pieterson and move to New Zealand, does I make sense to draw up a compel new list of or and cons, or to just alter the preexisting list? I never said the list covers all possible scenarios. I’m talk in about a list of basics which when applied, determine your action. For example, do you like hot or cold weather? Apply to scenario. By applying the basic list, you can resolve even unimagined scenarios. You don’t make up a preference for tea or coffee each time you are offered tea or coffee. The preference is already determined.
You don’t have any such basic list.
So you say. Do you prefer summer to winter? Tea or coffee? Chocolate or vanilla ice cream? What determines those preferences?
I appreciate your opinion. If you could justify your opinion with supporting evidence I would greatly appreciate it.
In his book, “The illusion of conscious will ” Wegner asks, “Does the fact that thoughts usually proceed actions actually prove that thoughts are the cause of actions? ”. You assume they do.
I don’t know why you think I am assuming this. Regardless of the causes of your opinions, one thing which is not the cause is a coherent set of probabilities. In the same way, regardless of the causes of your actions, one thing which is not the cause is a coherent set of preferences.
This is necessarily true since you are built out of physical things which do not have sets of preferences about the world, and you follow physical laws which do not have sets of preferences about the world. They have something similar to this, e.g. you could metaphorically speak as if gravity has a preference for things being lower down or closer together. But you cannot compare any two arbitrary states of the world and say “Gravity would prefer this state to that one.” Gravity simply has no such preferences. In a similar way, since your actions result from principles which are preference-like but not preferences, your actions are also somewhat preference-like, but they do not express a coherent set of preferences.
All that said, you are close to a truth, which is that since the incoherence of people’s lives bothers them (both in thoughts and in actions), it is good for people to try to make those both more coherent. In general you could make incoherent thoughts and actions more coherent in two different directions, namely “more consistent with themselves but less consistent with the world” and “more consistent with themselves and also more consistent with the world”. The second choice is better.
Does an electron prefer a lower orbital? Is this a physical thing which has a preference about the world? Indirectly it shows that matter prefers to have less energy. You could say the universe prefers entropy. Consciousness is simply awareness of our preferences.
I don’t think you understood the argument. Let’s agree that an electron prefers what it is going to do, over what it is not going to do. But does an electron in China prefer that I write this comment, or a different one?
Obviously, it has no preference at all about that. So even if it has some local preferences, it does not have a coherent preference over all possible things. The same thing is true for human beings, for exactly the same reasons.
You don’t Need a preference for every possible scenario. You only need a basic set that covers every possible scenario. For example, let’s say you don’t like spicy food. You don’t have to try chicken curry, beef curry, mutton curry, fish curry, from every curry shop in every city, in every country in the world, to know you won’t like it. A basic set of preferences can cover all situations.