I think that the “ABSOLUTELY IRRESISTIBLE” and “ABSOLUTELY UNTHINKABLE” language can be a bit misleading here. Yes, someone with the lesion is compelled to smoke, but his experience of this may be experience of spending days deliberating about whether to smoke—even though, all along, he was just running along preprepared rails and the end-result was inevitable.
If we assume determinism, however, we might say this about any decision. If someone makes a decision, it is because his brain was in such a state that it was compelled to make that decision, and any other decision was “UNTHINKABLE”. We don’t normally use language like that, even if we subscribe to such a view of decisions, because “UNTHINKABLE” implies a lot about the experience itself rather than just implying something about the certainty of particular action or compulsion towards it.
I could walk to the nearest bridge to jump off, and tell myself all along that, to someone whose brain was predisposed to jumping off the bridge, not doing it was unthinkable, so any attempt on my part to decide otherwise is meaningless. Acknowledging some kind of fatalism is one thing, but injecting it into the middle of our decision processes seems to me to be asking for trouble.
If we assume determinism, however, we might say this about any decision.
Not really. The lesion is a single aspect that completely determines a decision.
For most decisions, far more of the brain/mind than just one small, otherwise irrelevant, part can have some influence on the outcome.
But the lesion is clearly different, IF it has a 100% correlation.
Acknowledging some kind of fatalism is one thing, but injecting it into the middle of our decision processes seems to me to be asking for trouble.
When making a decision on something where I know my thought-process is irrelevant, why should I not be fatalistic?
There is no decision-making process in the 100%-lesion case, the decision is MADE, it’s right there in the lesion.
EDIT: Here’s something analogous to the 100% lesion: you have a light attached to your head. If it blinks red, it’ll make you feel happy, but it’ll blow up in an hour. It’s not linked to the rest of your brain at all. Should you try and make a decision about whether to have it blink red?
There is no decision-making process in the 100%-lesion case, the decision is MADE, it’s right there in the lesion.
There is no decision-making process anyway, every decision is made, it’s right there in the frontal/temporal/occipital/parietal lobe, right?
Here’s something analogous to the 100% lesion: you have a light attached to your head. If it blinks red, it’ll make you feel happy, but it’ll blow up in an hour. It’s not linked to the rest of your brain at all. Should you try and make a decision about whether to have it blink red?
The red light blinking doesn’t feel as a decision. According to the lesion scenario, the lesion-influenced decisions feel exactly like other decisions. It is an important difference. And I am not sure why you have included both happy feeling and explosion, by the way.
There is no decision-making process anyway, every decision is made, it’s right there in the frontal/temporal/occipital/parietal lobe, right?
If you can point to a specific part of my brain that has no purpose other than to make me have bacon for breakfast on tuesday 24th of august, 2010? And that can’t be over-ruled by any other parts of my brain?
That decision involved more than just one spot in my brain. All the parts of my brain involved do more than one thing.
So, no, the real world isn’t like the lesion example.
The red light blinking doesn’t feel as a decision. According to the lesion scenario, the lesion-influenced decisions feel exactly like other decisions. It is an important difference.
Okay, let’s change it slightly: Instead of the happy feeling, you get a feeling of “I decided to do this” when the light blinks red.
Is that a better analogy for you?
Whether you think about it or not, you end up feeling like you made the decision. Just like in the lesion case.
If you can point to a specific part of my brain that has no purpose other than to make me have bacon for breakfast on tuesday 24th of august, 2010? And that can’t be over-ruled by any other parts of my brain?
I can’t, however it doesn’t imply that the decision about the breakfast is spread across the whole brain. Moreover, why it is so important to have it localised? What if the lesion is in fact only a slightly different concentration of chemicals spread across the whole brain, which I) leads to cancer, II) causes desire for smoking, which is nevertheless substantiated as a global coordinated action of neurons in different parts of the brain?
Instead of the happy feeling, you get a feeling of “I decided to do this” when the light blinks red.
I can’t, however it doesn’t imply that the decision about the breakfast is spread across the whole brain. Moreover, why it is so important to have it localised?
It’s not particularly. Replace “part” with “aspect”; I hadn’t actually thought about the option you propose.
What if the lesion is in fact only a slightly different concentration of chemicals spread across the whole brain, which I) leads to cancer, II) causes desire for smoking, which is nevertheless substantiated as a global coordinated action of neurons in different parts of the brain?
Now we’re getting back to the “correlates with smoking” scenario; not the 100% scenario. If it just causes desire for smoking, some people with it won’t smoke. At which point it is a decision.
If this desire is irresistible, then you no more have a choice not to smoke than you have a choice not to sleep.
Do you have the option of not sleeping for the next year? (while still being alive)
Imagine you lived in a lesion world where most of the smokers described their decision to start smoking as “free”. Still, there was a 100% correlation between smoking and cancer. Do you find it impossible?
It’s also entirely possible in the lightbulb world. In the lightbulb world I suspect you’d agree it isn’t a free decision, but it’s entirely possible that the people of that world might claim that it was.
Still, your original description of the scenario was
you have a light attached to your head. If it blinks red, it’ll make you feel happy, but it’ll blow up in an hour. It’s not linked to the rest of your brain at all.
Now you have changed the “happy” feeling into a “decided” feeling. So the bulb has to be connected somehow to the brain to stimulate the feeling. I am not sure what “rest” refers to here.
But in general, if somebody said they decided freely, I take it as given. I don’t know any better criterion how to judge whether the decision was free, whatever it means.
I meant: it’s not connected to your brain at all except when making you happy/making you believe you decided.
ie. it’s not taking any input from the brain at any point. Much like the lesion.
But in general, if somebody said they decided freely, I take it as given. I don’t know any better criterion how to judge whether the decision was free, whatever it means.
In the specific case of the bulb-world, would you consider their decisions free, if they did?
If the bulb-apparatus physically took no input from the brain, if it was attached to the brain artificially (as opposed from being a native part of human body, or growing spontaneously—so that it couldn’t be considered a part of the brain), if its action was direct enough (e.g. implanting the decision by some sequence of electric impulses in course of seconds, as opposed to altering the brain only in a slight, but predictable manner, which modification would develop into the final decision after years of thought going inside the brain) and if the decision made by the bulb could be disentangled from other processes in the brain, then I certainly would not call the decision free. If only some of the above conditions were satisfied, then it would be hard to decide whether to use the word free or not.
I suspect we have unknowingly changed the topic into investigation of the meaning of “free”.
I think that the “ABSOLUTELY IRRESISTIBLE” and “ABSOLUTELY UNTHINKABLE” language can be a bit misleading here. Yes, someone with the lesion is compelled to smoke, but his experience of this may be experience of spending days deliberating about whether to smoke—even though, all along, he was just running along preprepared rails and the end-result was inevitable.
If we assume determinism, however, we might say this about any decision. If someone makes a decision, it is because his brain was in such a state that it was compelled to make that decision, and any other decision was “UNTHINKABLE”. We don’t normally use language like that, even if we subscribe to such a view of decisions, because “UNTHINKABLE” implies a lot about the experience itself rather than just implying something about the certainty of particular action or compulsion towards it.
I could walk to the nearest bridge to jump off, and tell myself all along that, to someone whose brain was predisposed to jumping off the bridge, not doing it was unthinkable, so any attempt on my part to decide otherwise is meaningless. Acknowledging some kind of fatalism is one thing, but injecting it into the middle of our decision processes seems to me to be asking for trouble.
Not really. The lesion is a single aspect that completely determines a decision.
For most decisions, far more of the brain/mind than just one small, otherwise irrelevant, part can have some influence on the outcome.
But the lesion is clearly different, IF it has a 100% correlation.
When making a decision on something where I know my thought-process is irrelevant, why should I not be fatalistic? There is no decision-making process in the 100%-lesion case, the decision is MADE, it’s right there in the lesion.
EDIT: Here’s something analogous to the 100% lesion: you have a light attached to your head. If it blinks red, it’ll make you feel happy, but it’ll blow up in an hour. It’s not linked to the rest of your brain at all. Should you try and make a decision about whether to have it blink red?
There is no decision-making process anyway, every decision is made, it’s right there in the frontal/temporal/occipital/parietal lobe, right?
The red light blinking doesn’t feel as a decision. According to the lesion scenario, the lesion-influenced decisions feel exactly like other decisions. It is an important difference. And I am not sure why you have included both happy feeling and explosion, by the way.
If you can point to a specific part of my brain that has no purpose other than to make me have bacon for breakfast on tuesday 24th of august, 2010? And that can’t be over-ruled by any other parts of my brain?
That decision involved more than just one spot in my brain. All the parts of my brain involved do more than one thing.
So, no, the real world isn’t like the lesion example.
Okay, let’s change it slightly: Instead of the happy feeling, you get a feeling of “I decided to do this” when the light blinks red.
Is that a better analogy for you? Whether you think about it or not, you end up feeling like you made the decision. Just like in the lesion case.
I can’t, however it doesn’t imply that the decision about the breakfast is spread across the whole brain. Moreover, why it is so important to have it localised? What if the lesion is in fact only a slightly different concentration of chemicals spread across the whole brain, which I) leads to cancer, II) causes desire for smoking, which is nevertheless substantiated as a global coordinated action of neurons in different parts of the brain?
It is indeed a better example.
It’s not particularly. Replace “part” with “aspect”; I hadn’t actually thought about the option you propose.
Now we’re getting back to the “correlates with smoking” scenario; not the 100% scenario. If it just causes desire for smoking, some people with it won’t smoke. At which point it is a decision.
If this desire is irresistible, then you no more have a choice not to smoke than you have a choice not to sleep.
Do you have the option of not sleeping for the next year? (while still being alive)
No, I don’t. However, feeling of irresistible temptation is not the same thing as 100% incidence within respective population. (There are people who claim they don’t sleep.)
Imagine you lived in a lesion world where most of the smokers described their decision to start smoking as “free”. Still, there was a 100% correlation between smoking and cancer. Do you find it impossible?
No, it’s entirely possible.
It’s also entirely possible in the lightbulb world. In the lightbulb world I suspect you’d agree it isn’t a free decision, but it’s entirely possible that the people of that world might claim that it was.
What is the lightbulb world?
The world I described, with the red, blinking, exploding, light; that makes you think you chose to have it blink.
For a second there I thought I’d somehow confused the conversations, but no, you are the one I’ve been discussing that with.
I’m sorry for being stupid.
Still, your original description of the scenario was
Now you have changed the “happy” feeling into a “decided” feeling. So the bulb has to be connected somehow to the brain to stimulate the feeling. I am not sure what “rest” refers to here.
But in general, if somebody said they decided freely, I take it as given. I don’t know any better criterion how to judge whether the decision was free, whatever it means.
It’s my mistake.
I meant: it’s not connected to your brain at all except when making you happy/making you believe you decided.
ie. it’s not taking any input from the brain at any point. Much like the lesion.
In the specific case of the bulb-world, would you consider their decisions free, if they did?
If the bulb-apparatus physically took no input from the brain, if it was attached to the brain artificially (as opposed from being a native part of human body, or growing spontaneously—so that it couldn’t be considered a part of the brain), if its action was direct enough (e.g. implanting the decision by some sequence of electric impulses in course of seconds, as opposed to altering the brain only in a slight, but predictable manner, which modification would develop into the final decision after years of thought going inside the brain) and if the decision made by the bulb could be disentangled from other processes in the brain, then I certainly would not call the decision free. If only some of the above conditions were satisfied, then it would be hard to decide whether to use the word free or not.
I suspect we have unknowingly changed the topic into investigation of the meaning of “free”.