The defenses of non-illusory human capacity to make choices, as presented in this thread after my last post, seem weak to me.
Uknown, it’s not clear to me that choice is something humans “do” as opposed to have an illusory experience of doing. Like how when we experience our eyes locking on an object, they’re actually making complex saccades in order to construct our visual representation of that object. I think this conversation would be very different if the participants had better grounding in findings from neuroscience. I’ll try to recommend introductory reading -probably try wikipedia and free online textbooks and lectures.
Hirsch, once again, I think a good place to start is the ways demonstrated by neuroscience research that conventional wisdom on human ability to engage in non-illusory choice is often wrong. I don’t see your analogy of the conventional wisdom on non-illusory choice to newtonian physics. It seems to me the place to start is the best science on this topic, not conventional wisdom/popular beliefs.
Bambi, you wrote “I am still what I am and I do what I do (from a local perspective which is all I have detailed information about), which includes making decisions.” Like in pretty much every post here, that seems to me to be asserted, not demonstrated (here I specifically mean the ‘making decisions’ part). If people can be transparent and say this is what they want to believe, but they don’t think the evidence favors their believe that they have a non-illusory capacity to make decisions, I can understand that. I don’t understand the raw assertion divorced from the best evidence on this topic, though.
Doug, I don’t think what you’re writing is what I mean by illusory. Specifically, I think the evidence suggests that from cradle to grave we may not have the capacity to make any actual choices. Whether or not we drop a glass of water, make an overcoming bias post, ‘spontaneously’ break into a merry jig, may all be functions of configuration space (even factoring probability, randomness, etc.). Just like our experience of feeling like we have choices, and make them, may also be functions of configuration space. Neuroscience already demonstrates how rich we are in such cognitive illusions, and how unclear it is to us currently why we experience so many of these illusions. This isn’t to say I think there’s conclusive evidence that choice capacity is illusory. But from what I’ve seen, including reading the arguments here, the evidence favors a hypothesis that all human choice capacity is illusory.
poke, introducing religion here seems to me to be a bit of guilt by association fallacy. It doesn’t seem necessary to the discussion. I think we’re on more useful grounding our discussion in what the best science (including neuroscience) informs us on this topic.
3.
The defenses of non-illusory human capacity to make choices, as presented in this thread after my last post, seem weak to me.
Uknown, it’s not clear to me that choice is something humans “do” as opposed to have an illusory experience of doing. Like how when we experience our eyes locking on an object, they’re actually making complex saccades in order to construct our visual representation of that object. I think this conversation would be very different if the participants had better grounding in findings from neuroscience. I’ll try to recommend introductory reading -probably try wikipedia and free online textbooks and lectures.
Hirsch, once again, I think a good place to start is the ways demonstrated by neuroscience research that conventional wisdom on human ability to engage in non-illusory choice is often wrong. I don’t see your analogy of the conventional wisdom on non-illusory choice to newtonian physics. It seems to me the place to start is the best science on this topic, not conventional wisdom/popular beliefs.
Bambi, you wrote “I am still what I am and I do what I do (from a local perspective which is all I have detailed information about), which includes making decisions.” Like in pretty much every post here, that seems to me to be asserted, not demonstrated (here I specifically mean the ‘making decisions’ part). If people can be transparent and say this is what they want to believe, but they don’t think the evidence favors their believe that they have a non-illusory capacity to make decisions, I can understand that. I don’t understand the raw assertion divorced from the best evidence on this topic, though.
Doug, I don’t think what you’re writing is what I mean by illusory. Specifically, I think the evidence suggests that from cradle to grave we may not have the capacity to make any actual choices. Whether or not we drop a glass of water, make an overcoming bias post, ‘spontaneously’ break into a merry jig, may all be functions of configuration space (even factoring probability, randomness, etc.). Just like our experience of feeling like we have choices, and make them, may also be functions of configuration space. Neuroscience already demonstrates how rich we are in such cognitive illusions, and how unclear it is to us currently why we experience so many of these illusions. This isn’t to say I think there’s conclusive evidence that choice capacity is illusory. But from what I’ve seen, including reading the arguments here, the evidence favors a hypothesis that all human choice capacity is illusory.
poke, introducing religion here seems to me to be a bit of guilt by association fallacy. It doesn’t seem necessary to the discussion. I think we’re on more useful grounding our discussion in what the best science (including neuroscience) informs us on this topic. 3.