Yes I understood that. I think my comment is a relevant thing to keep in mind when thinking about that question.
Like, we can only perceive our introspective world through the lens of abstract models of that world that our brains build. So we should be thinking: What do those models look like?
There’s a thing that Dan Dennett calls (I think) “sophisticated naive physics”, where you take “intuitive physics” as an object of study, determine its ontology, rules, etc. We understand that the ontology and relationships and affordances of “intuitive physics” may be quite different from anything in actual physics, but we can still study it. By the same token, I’m proposing that the question of “why do people have the intuitions they have about free will” should be studied through a lens of “sophisticated naive introspection”, i.e. determine the ontology and relationships and affordances of the abstract model space that we use when we introspect, while accepting that those things may be quite different from anything actually happening in the brain. Whereas your OP seems to take a different perspective, namely that introspection provides an accurate view of a subset of the things in the brain.
By the same token, I’m proposing that the question of “why do people have the intuitions they have about free will” should be studied through a lens of “sophisticated naive introspection”, determine its ontology, rules, etc., while accepting that the things we find there may be quite different from anything actually happening in the brain. Whereas your OP seems to take a different perspective, namely that introspection provides an accurate view of a subset of the things in the brain.
I do like your framing of “sophisticated naive introspection,” and I think it makes sense as an object of study. That seems like a nice generalization of the program of study that Eliezer is calling for in his post.
However, it seems to me that your distinction between an “abstract model of the world that our brains build” vs. an “accurate view,” or the idea that there’s a categorical difference between introspection and what we might call “actual psychology,” seems wrong to me.
Everything we use to study the brain, including naive introspection, is an abstract model of the world. Psychology refines, and sometimes directly contradicts the findings of naive introspection; the same is true of the relationship between naive and scientific physics. However, in both cases, intuition and reality line up pretty nicely, at least for some subset of situations. For that limited set of use-cases, the difference between naive and scientific approaches to the discipline isn’t worth worrying about in practical terms.
One of the unstated assumptions of my argument here is that the abstract psychological model afforded by naive introspection is, in this case, adequate to at least make some headway on this problem. It wouldn’t be nearly adequate to resolve it—I haven’t even really scratched the surface. But that wasn’t my goal here. I just wanted to give the best quick account I could of why “free will” and “determinism” seem to make psychological sense, based on my own intuitions and thoughts and given a short investment of time.
Yes I understood that. I think my comment is a relevant thing to keep in mind when thinking about that question.
Like, we can only perceive our introspective world through the lens of abstract models of that world that our brains build. So we should be thinking: What do those models look like?
There’s a thing that Dan Dennett calls (I think) “sophisticated naive physics”, where you take “intuitive physics” as an object of study, determine its ontology, rules, etc. We understand that the ontology and relationships and affordances of “intuitive physics” may be quite different from anything in actual physics, but we can still study it. By the same token, I’m proposing that the question of “why do people have the intuitions they have about free will” should be studied through a lens of “sophisticated naive introspection”, i.e. determine the ontology and relationships and affordances of the abstract model space that we use when we introspect, while accepting that those things may be quite different from anything actually happening in the brain. Whereas your OP seems to take a different perspective, namely that introspection provides an accurate view of a subset of the things in the brain.
I do like your framing of “sophisticated naive introspection,” and I think it makes sense as an object of study. That seems like a nice generalization of the program of study that Eliezer is calling for in his post.
However, it seems to me that your distinction between an “abstract model of the world that our brains build” vs. an “accurate view,” or the idea that there’s a categorical difference between introspection and what we might call “actual psychology,” seems wrong to me.
Everything we use to study the brain, including naive introspection, is an abstract model of the world. Psychology refines, and sometimes directly contradicts the findings of naive introspection; the same is true of the relationship between naive and scientific physics. However, in both cases, intuition and reality line up pretty nicely, at least for some subset of situations. For that limited set of use-cases, the difference between naive and scientific approaches to the discipline isn’t worth worrying about in practical terms.
One of the unstated assumptions of my argument here is that the abstract psychological model afforded by naive introspection is, in this case, adequate to at least make some headway on this problem. It wouldn’t be nearly adequate to resolve it—I haven’t even really scratched the surface. But that wasn’t my goal here. I just wanted to give the best quick account I could of why “free will” and “determinism” seem to make psychological sense, based on my own intuitions and thoughts and given a short investment of time.
Fair enough :)