Effect of consciousness on evolution

[BUFFALO]

I understand this has been discussed at length before, but what is the proof(or conclusive evidence) that free will doesn't exist, I remember you posted some links to experiments that supported the idea, I als o remember being very unconvinced by them and also finding some experiments that provided evidence against it.

There is no "proof", only evidence and reason. (This is not mathematics).

Essentially, everything that science shows us about our universe points to determinism and a determistic/naturalistic (dysteleological physicalist) worldview precludes classical free will. The only way to hang on to free will is to posit the "ghost in the machine", i.e. a supernatural non-material consciousness that is somehow linked to our physical bodies and able to control them without regard to personal (physical) antecedents.

[Amorphos]

Volchok

Consciousness having an effect or not on evolution is not dependent on free will if that's what you're saying.

It surely is, because then our decisions change evolutionary traits, indeed we could see a major part of evolution as responsive to the fact that there is a consciousness present which requires protection!

There is no reason to think it is non-physical and plenty of reason to think it is.

I refer you back to my Viking thought experiment.

The brain does make decisions! Ffs. No one ever denied that.

Yes but decisions which are not done freely have external origins ~ the brain is merely reacting to sensory input.

A criminal is responsible for his crime in the same way that a lightning strike is responsible for your house catching fire. Erecting a lightning rod can prevent your house from being struck by lightning. Punishing criminals can prevent others from committing that crime. Free will is not necessary for any of this to occur (and wouldn't help anyway).

I seriously doubt if punishments stop crime happening, people just do stuff and generally think of ways of not getting caught, indeed often accept the cost.
We need to imagine that the brain is a device, like a very complex camcorder, everything one thinks is in its processes. Now take away everything one may e.g. fantasise about and replace that with a criminal fantasy. If we don’t have free will then we literally have no choice but to act upon those new signals.

Without free will there is no crime.

_

[BUFFALO]

A criminal is responsible for his crime in the same way that a lightning strike is responsible for your house catching fire. Erecting a lightning rod can prevent your house from being struck by lightning. Punishing criminals can prevent others from committing that crime. Free will is not necessary for any of this to occur (and wouldn't help anyway).

I seriously doubt if punishments stop crime happening, people just do stuff and generally think of ways of not getting caught, indeed often accept the cost.

It is important to understand that punishment should only be used as a deterrent where there is a proven link to deterrence. The death penalty is not an effective deterrent to murder and therefore murderers should not be executed.

We need to imagine that the brain is a device, like a very complex camcorder, everything one thinks is in its processes. Now take away everything one may e.g. fantasise about and replace that with a criminal fantasy. If we don’t have free will then we literally have no choice but to act upon those new signals. Without free will there is no crime.

No. I (and I imagine most of us) have fantasized about all manner of violence and crime. I do not act on those fantasies because other antecedent factors counter the impulse. But if my own personal history (including genetics and life experience; nature and nurture) were different, I might kill someone and none of this need be any different whether of not I have "free will".

[BUFFALO]

*I have a Viking analogy; if I take an axe and plunge it into a conscious living human head, then clasp my hands onto the split skull and open it up exposing the brains innards; would I see anything which resembles the mental experience? Would I literally see colours and if spliced carefully in some manner, would I see the image in our minds eye as if displayed on a monitor?
Perhaps the brain/body really is a machine, yet we have theoretically looked at it in every way and not seen any quale, the experiencer or perciever.

If I take a sledgehammer and smash open the case of the computer I am typing on will I see the spreadsheet I am working on? Will I see the search I am running on Google? Hear the Ornette Coleman jazz I am listening to on youtube? Perhaps a stream of ones and zeros bleeding onto the floor? Where are all those damned computations?

[iambiguous]

And when someone says, "life is too short for that", they usually mean you should choose something else to do instead. But you can only "choose" what the ineluctable matter unfolding has already chosen for you to choose.

Yes, but I am part of matter as well. This is what people fail to understand. Me telling you that you shouldn't do something might be the force that leads you to not do something. Obviously, me telling you that you shouldn't do something was also caused by something else. Furthermore, I had no choice but to tell you that life is too short.

You telling me I shouldn't do something when you really have no choice but to is like me doing it when I really have no choice but to.

We are still just dominos with a more sophisticated mechanism propelling and compelling us, aren't we?

Is there anyway at all for us to be more than just ineluctable matter unfolding in time and space?

Without autonomy, isn't whether you are more or less compassionaite like noting whether the tiger is more or less successful at the hunt? It is simply describing what is true but without a point of view that might argue it is false.

What you want is logically impossible. How could you possible be autonomous in the sense that you're independent from matter when you are matter? Unless you want to posit some sort of magical non-substantial substance like the soul.. which is, of course, also an impossibility.

I agree insofar as we are ratcheted right back to be or not to be dualists. And I'll be the first to admit I don't have an answer here. No one has. Mind is the profound mystery when it comes to matter. How does matter become mind? And what does it mean for matter to become mind?

The mistake you make in my opinion is believing -- seemingly beyond all doubt -- that the manner in which you understand these things is the only rational manner in which they can be understood. And, again, I'm not saying you are wrong. I'm just suggesting that I might not be either.

Then we are both stuck.

The frustrating reality being this: that we will both no doubt be long dead and gone before either philosophers or scientists come even close to zeroing in on "the answer". Right now we are still trying to come up with the best way to pose the question.

[BUFFALO]

I think it is better to "un-ask" the question.

[Joe Schmoe]

In reply to the original post:

Homo sapiens no longer evolves primarily through traditional natural selection, like other life. Man is unique in that he now evolves through the mind. We are no longer, as a species, that much subject to reproductive survival of the fittest; most humans, however unfit, can reproduce successfully. Now, culture, which is to say the entire social apparatus, which is the true object and being of Homo sapien, is evolving within a new realm, the realm of mind, of ideas, of the power of thought and inward explication, which is to say beliefs, ideas, memes, education, the entirety of the contents of consciousness and its methods of objectifying and relating to/influencing its world/s. We would do well to respect this new evolutionary mode. There is no need to wallow in atavisms or nostalgia. The physically strong human no longer matters, in terms of this collective being called Homo sapien, of which the individual man or woman is only a tiny and fleeting instantiation. What influences this being Homo sapien is ideas, words, language, art, personality, knowledge, science and philosophy, truth and falsehood. Reproductive fitness is now irrelevant.

I would argue that consciousness evolved. Therefore, a product of evolution. Does it affect evolution? Yes. It is the primary branch that we evolve through. It also subdues natural selection.

[iambiguous]

It’s the ‘free’ choice which is of fundamental importance, otherwise evolution works alone and consciousness makes no difference.

This is pretty much how I see it too. On the other hand, many other "lower" life forms on planet earth are conscious of the world around them. Just as we are. But somehow human consciousness evolved to become conscious of that. Evolved to the point of being able to ponder what that means. And in ways that are far, far, far more sophisticated than any other conscious minds in the animal kingdom.

But how? Why?

Does Volchok already sees us as we see "the machines" in the Terminator movies?

[BUFFALO]

In reply to the original post:

Homo sapiens no longer evolves primarily through traditional natural selection, like other life. Man is unique in that he now evolves through the mind. We are no longer, as a species, that much subject to reproductive survival of the fittest; most humans, however unfit, can reproduce successfully. Now, culture, which is to say the entire social apparatus, which is the true object and being of Homo sapien, is evolving within a new realm, the realm of mind, of ideas, of the power of thought and inward explication, which is to say beliefs, ideas, memes, education, the entirety of the contents of consciousness and its methods of objectifying and relating to/influencing its world/s. We would do well to respect this new evolutionary mode. There is no need to wallow in atavisms or nostalgia. The physically strong human no longer matters, in terms of this collective being called Homo sapien, of which the individual man or woman is only a tiny and fleeting instantiation. What influences this being Homo sapien is ideas, words, language, art, personality, knowledge, science and philosophy, truth and falsehood. Reproductive fitness is now irrelevant.

I would argue that consciousness evolved. Therefore, a product of evolution. Does it affect evolution? Yes. It is the primary branch that we evolve through. It also subdues natural selection.

Human consciousness and intelligence may put the brakes on selection for certain largely physical traits.

[Joe Schmoe]

You telling me I shouldn't do something when you really have no choice but to is like me doing it when I really have no choice but to.

I don't think Vol is arguing that you have no will, but rather that it isn't free. Given this, you can be influenced by the will of each other. Therefore, him asking something of you, may influence your actions. Just as he could have been influenced out of even proposing his suggestion.

We are still just dominos with a more sophisticated mechanism propelling and compelling us, aren't we?

Dominos don't have desire and will. We do.

Is there anyway at all for us to be more than just ineluctable matter unfolding in time and space?

No, for everything we do is just a logical extension. We are 'condemned'.

[iambiguous]

Blame is not an issue of first nor ultimate cause, but merely of identifying that which was most response-able such as to avoid the final effect or consequence (hence, "responsible").

But blame can easily get all tangled up in intention.

Suppose I am walking down the street. I turn the corner and there is a dog. The dog is startled by me and bolts into the street. As a result, it gets hits by a car and dies.

I am to blame -- I am responsible -- for the dog's death. But I never intended for this to happen.

But suppose I come upon the dog and I don't like it. I deliberately chase it out into the street knowing it might get hit by a car and die. And it does.

Now, in Volchok's world, is this really just six of one and half dozen of another?

After all, intention in a world without free will is just another mechanism to propel matter inevitably along.

Or so it seems to me.

[volchok]

Just a rather clumsy way of suggesting that if you do have autonomy you might reconsider things and change your mind.

You can change your mind and reconsider things. I'm sure you often do. It's just that you can't truly account as to why you do that when you do it and why you don't do it when you don't do it. People changing theirs minds about something or changing their views or opinions is real.

Thanks for the link. I'll check it and get back to you. Well, anyway, if I understand it I will. These relationships become rather bewildering at times.

I think that link is awesome and quite easy to understand. I would never be able to explain it as well as it is written in that page.

[volchok]

It surely is, because then our decisions change evolutionary traits, indeed we could see a major part of evolution as responsive to the fact that there is a consciousness present which requires protection!

It surely isn't. Decisions do not require free will. It's as simple as that.

Without free will there is no crime.

What ? Come on..

[volchok]

You telling me I shouldn't do something when you really have no choice but to is like me doing it when I really have no choice but to.

We are still just dominos with a more sophisticated mechanism propelling and compelling us, aren't we?

Is there anyway at all for us to be more than just ineluctable matter unfolding in time and space?

Does a role of the dice sound like something better ?

[lizbethrose]

Vol, you've said that one's actions--usually 'choices'--follow a causal chain that leads to an inevitable conclusion (in this case, a choice) over which no one has any control and the circumstances of which are unknown. Forgive me, I'm paraphrasing. You say that every link of that chain is the result of factors which lead to that cause--again, outside of anyone's control.

I'm guessing we're back to determinism again.
Every event is caused by previous events. That's determinism in a nutshell. You are just as much a part of the chain of events as what you would call "external forces".

You deny determinism because that seems to only apply, to you, in a quantum world where determinism can be shown. But if "natural laws" are laws, shouldn't those laws apply at every level of 'life'--activity--in the Universe?

I deny determinism?! Since when?
I think determinism is true but I have no way of proving it and ultimately it´s irrelevant if is true or not. The illusions I've been exposing here are illusions regardless of what kind of universe we live in, be it deterministic or random.

I suppose I thought you denied determinism because of some of your earlier posts in that "other" thread. I said I was paraphrasing.

You think determinism is true and that it negates the idea of 'freedom of the will,' and yet you admit you have no way of proving determinism. Okay, if proving something (empirically, scientifically) is needed for belief and you deny other people's belief in some sort of god because god's existence can neither be proven nor disproven--and you accept that it can be neither proven nor disproven--does that make the arguments either for or against the truth of 'free will' equally irrelevant. I seem to be getting caught up in words.

The question of 'free will' has been debated for centuries and it always seems to boil down to belief. Belief is belief and it's going to vary from person to person--it cannot be proven.

So let's take this (your hobbyhorse) away from a discussion of "free will" and try to answer the OP's question. Has the development of consciousness affected evolution? Quetz is interested in human brain development; so it seems to me, he's more interested in that than he is in the concept of 'free will.' He may correct me if I've misunderstood.

Quetz, if you look at the entire Animal Kingdom, I think consciousness caused a tremendous upsurge in evolution--but I'll have to get back to my reasons for saying that tomorrow. Too many ideas; too little time, tonight.

[Only_Humean]

The last cause? I still don't follow, I'm afraid.

Let's use everyone's favorite example. A set of dominoes. You push domino A and it hits domino B which hits domino C and so forth. Did domino B cause C to fall? Yes. Was there anything that domino B could have done to not make domino C fall? No. Was domino B´s momentum self-caused ? No. Was it caused by domino A ? Yes. Is domino A self-caused? No.

So which is the ultimate cause, in your terminology - A or B? Given they've been falling since the beginning of time, I'm curious where you are proposing the 'responsibility' barrier that you mentioned earlier - the one that people assume.

Right, manage your emotions whatever way you want to BUT, this is an important issue when creating policy and passing laws.

That's just the problem, isn't it? What works for you might not be so effective as a policy.

The word "blame" isn't a description of a metaphysical force or power, it's just a relation. You're not conjuring anything up with a word.

See the analogy I made at the beginning of this post.

We seem to be talking past each other here.

Intentions are another subject entirely, and largely irrelevant to consequentialist ethics.

If free will is an illusion intentions are all that matters when it comes to criminal justice.

That's why you can have a perfectly functioning system of justice without free will. When we imprison people , do we imprison them because they really are bad or because of their intentions? Because of their intentions.

Practically? We imprison them because we can prove that they committed criminal acts. For some crimes, the intention to commit that crime is important (or it becomes reclassified as another crime). For others, intention is irrelevant. But we don't imprison many people just for intending to commit a crime, and generally for less time than if they'd successfully committed the crime.

You said (or at least implied) that publically torturing and executing them would be amoral. I'm saying if the net deterrent effect is positive, it's moral. By consequentialist theory.

I should have said immoral, not amoral. And no, it wouldn't be moral given that publicly torturing and executing people also minimizes well being. Deterring behavior is not the end all/be all of maximizing well being. I'm also not a consequentalist. Nor is Harris, who's moral theory I subscribe to.

Harris certainly considers himself to be a consequentialist: actions are judged based on their consequences to well-being. A quick Google givesthe following quote: "It is true that many people believe that "there are non-consequentialist ways of approaching morality," but I think that they are wrong."
See also an explanation here.

Unless he's renounced his ways, of course. He admits that he'll ignore his precepts if he doesn't like what they tell him

But they don't deserve to!

Dude, we've been over that. No one deserves anything, good or bad, right? So, the default position, according to that statement is that we don't have responsibilities to one another. What I'm saying is that these responsibilities that we have created are what is required to make the world the sort of place we want it to be. That is obviously why we do it. Not because someone somehow inherently deserves something.

That's the key: we've created them. Just like we've created blame.

If no-one deserves respect or fairness, and we have no reward in the afterlife, what reason is there to act morally rather than fill one's pockets at others' expense? Why should one care about the rest of the world? Desert, responsibility, blame, these are all concepts that are woven in morality. If you want to do away with them, it's fine, but at least take care to pick them out of your moral assumptions and beliefs - otherwise you're inadvertently applying concepts you know to be false to your propositions of how we should treat each other.

[volchok]

You think determinism is true and that it negates the idea of 'freedom of the will,'

No, I don't think determinism negates free will. Free will negates itself.
You cannot have free will in a random universe. Can you wrap your mind around that for once? I don't know how many times I have to repeat this: The whole determinism vs ramdomness debate is irrelevant in the discussion of free will.

The question of 'free will' has been debated for centuries and it always seems to boil down to belief. Belief is belief and it's going to vary from person to person--it cannot be proven.

That's a semantics game.
It's a stupid philosophical little trick that forces you to be a relativist.
I got news for you, everything boils down to belief. Everything. It's just that some beliefs are based on evidence and reason and logic while others are based on faith.

[volchok]

So which is the ultimate cause, in your terminology - A or B? Given they've been falling since the beginning of time, I'm curious where you are proposing the 'responsibility' barrier that you mentioned earlier - the one that people assume.

Neither. I thought that was obvious.

That's just the problem, isn't it? What works for you might not be so effective as a policy.

Perhaps. I certainly don't think that's the case.

Practically? We imprison them because we can prove that they committed criminal acts. For some crimes, the intention to commit that crime is important (or it becomes reclassified as another crime). For others, intention is irrelevant. But we don't imprison many people just for intending to commit a crime, and generally for less time than if they'd successfully committed the crime.

Lol ! Intention is never irrelevant. If you put two murderess on trial and one of them did it because he simply wanted to while the other did it because someone drugged him, do you think they're gonna be judged the same way?


Regarding Harris, he's not really a consequentalist.
Take the following thought experiment, there's 5 people dying in a hospital. Each one of them needs an organ transplant. In the waiting room there's a healthy person who's going in for surgery. In this situation, wouldn't a consequentalist argue that it would be moral to remove 5 organs from the guy who was in surgery and give them to the 5 guys dying? After all there's a net gain of 4 lives. That, is, I think, pure consequentalism. Unless I am wrong about what consequentalism means. Please correct if I'm wrong.

Anyway, I don't think that's moral and neither does Harris. You have to look at the big picture. Do we really want to live in a society where you can go into surgery and all of sudden people are removing your internal organs? Woudn't that ultimately cause much more harm to society ? Of course it would.

That's the key: we've created them. Just like we've created blame.

Sure, we've also created gods and science fiction. But some of our creations map onto reality and others don't.
Just because you throw away the concept of blame, it doesn't mean that you have to forget about causality.
If person A rapes person B, it really was person A who raped person B and as such, the rapist needs to be dealt with and at no point do you have to pretend like the rapist really is the conscious author of their thoughts and actions.

If no-one deserves respect or fairness, and we have no reward in the afterlife, what reason is there to act morally rather than fill one's pockets at others' expense? Why should one care about the rest of the world?

I'm sorry but that is a really stupid fucking question.
First of all, let´s say that all of a sudden you realize that free will is an illusion ( I think you realized that a long time ago but whatever), would you start to behave differently? Would that realization make you an asshole? Would you stop caring about others? Do you really think so? Think about that for a moment.
Secondly what's moral about acting in a certain way in hopes of getting a reward after you're dead? Like, seriously? And yet theists claim that atheists have no morals, right..

[BUFFALO]

One of the things Sam Harris points out is that, even if you posit the "ghost-in-the-machine" immaterial spirit or "soul", how can this "ghost" interact with your physical body without reference to a chain of causal links? Even if consciousness exists in the some ethereal realm of noumena, it still has to have antecedents of some sort. This just transfers all the typical causes (personal attitudes, preferences, etc.) into this otherworldy realm; it cannot dispense with them. So even if there is an immortal soul, there is still a problem, as it is difficult to envision how it could have free will (in the classic sense) either.

[iambiguous]

You telling me I shouldn't do something when you really have no choice but to is like me doing it when I really have no choice but to.

I don't think Vol is arguing that you have no will, but rather that it isn't free. Given this, you can be influenced by the will of each other. Therefore, him asking something of you, may influence your actions. Just as he could have been influenced out of even proposing his suggestion.

I don't see how my will that isn't free isn't just a domino falling onto your will that isn't free. We then "influence" each other as we might say the tides are "influenced" by the moon.

That we have a conscious desire and will is just an inherent attribute of a domino that has evolved well beyond the consciousness of the tiger; but we are still just "mechanisms" propelled and compelled along by the laws of matter.

Or, as you say, "condemned". Condemned to, among other things, harbor the illusion that we autonomously choose any of this.

[BUFFALO]

You telling me I shouldn't do something when you really have no choice but to is like me doing it when I really have no choice but to.

I don't think Vol is arguing that you have no will, but rather that it isn't free. Given this, you can be influenced by the will of each other. Therefore, him asking something of you, may influence your actions. Just as he could have been influenced out of even proposing his suggestion.

I don't see how my will that isn't free isn't just a domino falling onto your will that isn't free. We then "influence" each other as we might say the tides are "influenced" by the moon.
That we have a conscious desire and will is just an inherent attribute of a domino that has evolved well beyond the consciousness of the tiger; but we are still just "mechanisms" propelled and compelled along by the laws of matter.
Or, as you say, "condemned". Condemned to, among other things, harbor the illusion that we autonomously choose any of this.

You got it!

[iambiguous]

Just a rather clumsy way of suggesting that if you do have autonomy you might reconsider things and change your mind.

You can change your mind and reconsider things. I'm sure you often do. It's just that you can't truly account as to why you do that when you do it and why you don't do it when you don't do it. People changing theirs minds about something or changing their views or opinions is real.

We can easily imagine someone setting up dominoes and then changing her mind about the final design. But most of us think she did this "of her own free will". I merely suggest this freedom is rooted in and constrained by dasein.

But you seem to suggest that what unfolds inside her head when she changes her mind is just another set of dominoes. There is no point in which a truly autonomous self could have freely gone in another direction instead.

What you are saying is, from my point of view, like watching a movie. The characters on the screen change their minds. But they do so only because they are scripted to. And we can watch the movie over and over and over and over again and the characters always change their minds. And the movie is real each time we watch it.

But, for you and I down here off the screen changing our minds, the scriptwriter and the director are...nature?

[iambiguous]

Without free will there is no crime.

What ? Come on..

There is a crime, sure. But that is just to say John fought the law and the law won.

But when most of us think of this we think of a John who, of his own volition, chose to break the law.

While others, of their own volition, might conclude the law is immoral, and thus deserves to be broken.

But all this really is is the inevitable unfolding of matter obeying the only real laws that count---the laws of nature.

[volchok]

But you seem to suggest that what unfolds inside her head when she changes her mind is just another set of dominoes. There is no point in which a truly autonomous self could have freely gone in another direction instead.

Exactly. But now, instead of saying that her changing her mind is just a set of dominoes, let's say that she had a change of heart due to a random event. Does this grant you free will?

What you are saying is, from my point of view, like watching a movie. The characters on the screen change their minds. But they do so only because they are scripted to. And we can watch the movie over and over and over and over again and the characters always change their minds. And the movie is real each time we watch it.

But, for you and I down here off the screen changing our minds, the scriptwriter and the director are...nature?

If determinism is true then your life is like a big script and you're playing a role, however, if you did not play your role trough chapter 7, then chapter 8 would have not happened. Or in other words your actions have a very real impact in your future. It's just that you couldn't have done anything besides what you did.

If determinism is false and randomness is true, then instead of a script, I guess you could say that you have loose pages.

Free will is an impossibility in both situations. So is, responsibility and authorship.

[iambiguous]

You telling me I shouldn't do something when you really have no choice but to is like me doing it when I really have no choice but to.

We are still just dominos with a more sophisticated mechanism propelling and compelling us, aren't we?

Is there anyway at all for us to be more than just ineluctable matter unfolding in time and space?

Does a role of the dice sound like something better ?

It's just that before the mind of man there was no matter in nature able to react either favorably or disfavorably to how the dice fall.

Mindless matter unfolding mechanically is easy to imagine. It's all around us. But try to imagine matter without any minds around to imagine it. The tree falling in the forest has been plaguing folks for centuries now for a reason. Until we try to put the reasons into words we all can agree on.