The sad thing about philosophy is that as your answers become clearer, the questions become less mysterious and awe-inspiring. It’s easy to assume that an imposing question must have an impressive answer, but sometimes the truth is just simple and unimpressive and we miss this because we didn’t evolve for this kind of abstract reasoning.
I used to find the discussion of free will interesting before I learned it was just people talking past each other. Same with “light is both a wave and a particle” until I understood that it just meant that sometimes the wave model is a good approximation and other times the particle model is. Debates about morality can be interesting, but much less so if you are a utilitarian or non-realist.
I used to find the discussion of free will interesting before I learned it was just people talking past each other
Semantic differences almost always happen, but are rarely the only problem.
There are certainly different definitions of free will, but even so problems, remain:-
There is still an open question as to whether compatibilist free will is the only kind anyone ever needed or believed in, and as to whether libertarian free will is possible at all.
The topic is interesting, but no discussion about it is interesting. These are not contradictory.
The open question about strong determinism vs libertarian free will is interesting, and there is a yet-unexplained contradiction between my felt experience (and others reported experiences) and my fundamental physical model of the universe. The fact that nobody has any alternative model or evidence (or even ideas about what evidence is possible) that helps with this interesting question makes the discussion uninteresting.
Not new that I could tell—it is a refreshing clarity for strict determinism—free will is an illusion, and “possible” is in the map, not the territory. “Deciding” is how a brain feels as it executes it’s algorithm and takes the predetermined (but not previously known) path.
He does not resolve the conflict that it feels SOOO real as it happens.
The sad thing about philosophy is that as your answers become clearer, the questions become less mysterious and awe-inspiring. It’s easy to assume that an imposing question must have an impressive answer, but sometimes the truth is just simple and unimpressive and we miss this because we didn’t evolve for this kind of abstract reasoning.
Examples?
I used to find the discussion of free will interesting before I learned it was just people talking past each other. Same with “light is both a wave and a particle” until I understood that it just meant that sometimes the wave model is a good approximation and other times the particle model is. Debates about morality can be interesting, but much less so if you are a utilitarian or non-realist.
Semantic differences almost always happen, but are rarely the only problem.
There are certainly different definitions of free will, but even so problems, remain:-
There is still an open question as to whether compatibilist free will is the only kind anyone ever needed or believed in, and as to whether libertarian free will is possible at all.
The topic is interesting, but no discussion about it is interesting. These are not contradictory.
The open question about strong determinism vs libertarian free will is interesting, and there is a yet-unexplained contradiction between my felt experience (and others reported experiences) and my fundamental physical model of the universe. The fact that nobody has any alternative model or evidence (or even ideas about what evidence is possible) that helps with this interesting question makes the discussion uninteresting.
So Yudkowsky’s theory isn’t new?
Not new that I could tell—it is a refreshing clarity for strict determinism—free will is an illusion, and “possible” is in the map, not the territory. “Deciding” is how a brain feels as it executes it’s algorithm and takes the predetermined (but not previously known) path.
He does not resolve the conflict that it feels SOOO real as it happens.
That’s an odd thing to say since the feeling of free will is about the only thing be addresses.