My free will skepticism is compatible with a variety of views on consciousness

I was worried for a second that because my view on free will involves making a sharp distinction between the self as a subject that chooses (or experiences the choices its brain makes) and the self as an organism or animal, that I commit myself to a very specific theory of mind. The problem then would be that I would feel compelled to defend that theory of mind not because I thought it was true, but because I need it to be true for my view on free will to make sense. I guess I hoped that it only commits me to aspect dualism, which is a hill I'm happy to die on anyway, because I cannot imagine dispensing with either mental or physical properties.

But now it seems to me that we can obviously distinguish between the self as mental and the self as physical on a variety of views. My free will skepticism is openly available.

Identity theory says that there are mental properties, but these properties reduce to physical ones. So we have the mental self, which is a special subset of the human organism's physical properties (brain properties), and we have the non-mental self, which is the set of the remaining physical properties. No one chooses their brain properties, and so no one chooses their mental properties. But all deeds done are done by brain properties. So all deeds done are traced to factors outside the person's control. You still have good and bad people, it's just that no one is responsible for their goodness or badness.

I'm pretty sure epiphenomenalism immediately entails free will skepticism anyway, so that one doesn't matter. (Identity theory probably does too, but whatever.) Epiphenomenalism says that there is no mental causation. So you don't cause anything; everything that you experience is caused by your brain interacting with your environment. Not only are you not responsible for your actions, but technically you don't have any actions to be responsible for. Your soul is a pure byproduct, a spectator.

I'm pretty sure behaviorism immediately entails free will skepticism too? If consciousness is just behavior, then the self is just behavior, and so there is no self that causes the behavior, and so there is no self to blame. Behaviorism is so easily refuted that it's a moot point anyway.

Functionalism is trickier. Can the self / qualia / subjectivity be analyzed in terms of function? If functionalism implies that philosophical zombies can be conscious, then that's a problem. But why couldn't we say qualia is a function? You certainly have a sharp break between the mind as a function and the material that gives rise to the mind. So there you have the two senses of "I" and "You" that I need for my free will skepticism. But functionalism might immediately lead to free will skepticism anyway because if the self is a function and functions are traced to factors beyond the control of the function, then traceability will apply to the functional self.

Now that I think about it, it's really hard to see how free will can fit on any theory of mind. It certainly doesn't fit on eliminativism.

That seems to leave only substance dualism and monistic idealism as refuges for free will. But again traceability concerns apply, not to mention all the arguments against these views.

I guess free will just really doesn't make sense to me at all.

Recently, getting into action theory, I wondered whether you could defend free will on the basis that if someone does something knowingly wrong, then surely the person who causes this action is morally responsible for it. But two things came to mind: one, I'm highly suspicious of the possibility of akrasia, the weakness of will needed for this kind of deliberate evil, and two, even if akrasia is possible, you could run into traceability problems there. People who have akrasia don't choose to have it, and we can trace their akrasia to their genetics, environment, etc. So even something as solid as the idea of deliberately doing wrong doesn't save free will.

Two senses of "I"

Consider the sentence: "I sweat."

Who is this I that I refer to? Do I choose to sweat? No. I sweat involuntarily. And yet it's perfectly natural to say "I sweat" or "I digested my food" or "I was breathing hard after the run." But I did not do these things because of a choice I made, but because of bodily processes. So we use "I" to refer to something that does not choose. In fact, I can sweat, digest food, and breathe even while unconscious. So we can use "I" to refer to something that is unconscious.

 

Yet we also use "I" to refer to that which consciously experiences and chooses.

 

Our bodies are so strongly associated with us that we use "I" and "You" statements to refer to them. 

 

I don't sweat, my body does. I don't digest food, my body does. I don't breathe, my body does. 

 

Who is this "I" that doesn't do these things? It is the I of self, mind, soul, consciousness, subjectivity, choice, experience. So we have two senses of I, an embodied sense and an unembodied sense. There are three possible options:

 

The essential I is the embodied sense.

 

The essential I is the unembodied sense. 

 

The essential I is a whole made up of both the embodied and unembodied senses.

 

Another option is that there is no essential I, as the self is empty or an illusion or non-existent. But I take that kind of view to be self-evidently false.

 

I go for option 2: the essential I is the unembodied I that experiences and chooses. All embodied "I" statements can be paraphrased as "my body" statements.

 

One reason why I go for this option is because it seems to me that one of the most essential aspects of what it means to be me involves the pain and happiness I experience, especially the pain. Jordan Peterson once said that nothing is more real than pain.

 

My body might facilitate the experience of pain, but my body is never in pain. I am the one who has to be in pain. Whatever that thing is that is in pain, that first-person, subjective, self-aware, singular, unified, thinking, feeling, remembering, choosing, introspecting, metacognizing, experiencing thing, that is the soul, the self, the mind, the person, and that is what I am.

 

We can make distinctions between these terms. Perhaps person refers strictly to the essential property of being a particular subject, while mind refers to both the personhood as well as the non-essential mental properties associated with that particular person, including mental properties like memory and subconsciousness.

 

"Haecceity" refers to the suchness of something, or the particularity of it. My haecceity is that which differentiates me from things that are not me. So to make sense of my haecceity, we first need to make sense of my essence. What does it mean to be me? It means to be a very particular subject. And so the suchness of one subject (person) is what differentiates the suchness of another subject (person). And so when it comes to persons, the essence and the haecceity are the same, but both answer different questions, with the first answering the question of what it means to be that thing, and the second answering the question of what it is that differentiates this thing from other things.

 

Essence and haecceity usually do not overlap. For example, the essence of my vacuum cleaner probably involves its function (both actual and modal -- a broken vacuum is still a vacuum) and history. Maybe its appearance as well. But there are many other properties associated with my vacuum, like its age, size, location, and so forth. These properties help distinguish it from other objects. Together, these differentiating properties form the haecceity of the vacuum. So a haecceity is a property or bundle of properties that differentiates one object from another.

 

Question: negative space properties. Is differentness between two things a property? It can't be a universal because a particular differentness might lack multiple realizability. But it's not a property, as it's the negative space between two properties. It's a lack of two properties, but shaped by the two properties. So what is differentness exactly?

React: Overthink Podcast Episode 125

I left the following comment on the youtube video of the Overthink Podcast episode 125:

Personhood, self, and subject are not only indispensable, but there is nothing that gets more indispensable than these properties. [The property of personhood, selfhood, or subjectivity.] Not only do we have evidence of the self, but we have the strongest possible evidence: direct access, or Russellian acquaintance. Often when something is obvious we say it's "Right in front of you." The self is that which is necessary for there to be a "right in front of you" in the first place. You cannot possibly get more "right in front of you" than the self; it is the front in front of all fronts. To put it candidly, any theory that requires you to reject the notion of the self (or mind, consciousness, person, subject, or soul – the self-evident aspect common to these terms), not only can you know that that theory is false, but you can know it with certainty.

John Heil's Philosophy of Mind - Chapter 1: Introduction

This book is Philosophy of Mind: A Contemporary Introduction, by John Heil, Fourth Edition, published in 2020. 

The author starts with the familiar puzzle of the tree and the forest. If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear, does the tree make the sound? An obvious answer is: it depends. If by 'sound' we mean something physical—a burst of compressed air waves—then yes. But if by 'sound' we mean something experienced, then the tree cannot generate that unless there is a creature nearby capable of hearing and experiencing things.

That sounds simple enough. But it leads to a problem. If there is a real distinction between physical sound and mental, phenomenal sound, then we now have two distinct categories of things: physical things and mental things. This immediately gives us aspect dualism, the view that first-person properties and third-person properties are distinct and one cannot be reduced to the other. More than that, this bifurcated view of reality (pg 2) threatens to imply substance dualism, the view that there is a real mental substance separate from the physical substances we are familiar with.

The key problem that substance dualism runs into, the problem that has left the view largely unpopular in philosophy today (though not without its defenders), is the problem of mental causation. If mental substances and physical substances are two separate categories of things, then how on earth can my mind interact with my body and cause me to move when I command myself to move? All instances of causation appear to require space and atom-to-atom interactions involving the laws and forces of chemistry and physics. But if my mind is immaterial, then my mind is not beholden to those laws. By what mechanism, then, could my mind possibly interact with my body?

Besides the problem of mental causation, there is just a general "spookiness" or mysteriousness of the mind. It leaves open so many questions. Where is my mind? What is it made of? What grounds or causes or allows my thoughts, feelings, emotions, or experiences?

The author refers to what I call first-person properties 'secondary qualities' and what I call third-person properties 'primary qualities'.

Primary qualities = external, empirical, independent, public, third-person, investigable by science.

Secondary qualities = internal, non-empirical, dependent, private, first-person, not investigable by science.

It might be tempting to say that mental things reduce to the physical—we can locate the mental within the brain; there are only primary qualities. But if that's true then we should be able to learn about what it's like to see the color red or to attend an orchestra (all the sights, sounds, feelings) just by opening up a brain. We can observe all sorts of primary qualities of brains—shape, size, neurological activity—but we cannot see what you see just by testing your brain. My experiences are inaccessible to everyone except me, and there is, currently, nothing science can do about that.

While substance dualism is (allegedly) defeated by the problem of mental causation, reductive physicalism is (allegedly) defeated by the problem that all attempts (thus far) to reduce first-person properties to third-person properties have failed. The first- and third-person property distinction remains strong.

Notable quotes:

• Pg 3: "The idea that these qualities reside in your brain, so natural at first, appears, on further reflection, unpromising. But now, if qualities of your experiences are not found in your brain, where are they? The traditional answer, and the answer that we seem driven to accept, is that they are located in your mind. And this implies, quite straightforwardly, that your mind is somehow distinct from your brain.
• Pg 3-4: "In any case, you will have your work cut out for you. The best minds in philosophy—and many of the best outside philosophy, as well—have turned their attention to these issues, and there remains a notable lack of anything resembling a definitive, uncontested view of the mind's place in the universe. Do not conclude from this that it would be a waste of time for you to delve into the philosophy of mind. On the contrary, you can enjoy the advantage of hindsight. You can learn from the successes and failures of others. Even if you cannot resolve every puzzle, you might at least come to learn something important about your own picture of the universe and your place in it. If you are honest, you will be obliged to admit that this picture is happy and unsatisfying in many respects. This, I submit, represents an important stage for each of us in coming to terms with ourselves and our standing in the order of things."
• Pg 5: "Scientific practice presupposes observers and observations. In the end, however, the sciences are silent about the intrinsic nature of both. . . . Our best hope for a unified picture, a picture that includes the universe as described by the sciences and includes, as well, observers and their observations, lies in pursuing metaphysics, and, in particular, serious ontology. . . . You can, of course, turn your back on the metaphysical issues. This, however, is easier said than done. Often those who most loudly proclaim their independence from philosophical influences in fact embrace unacknowledged metaphysical assumptions. In considering the nature of the mind, the question is not whether you are going to engage in metaphysical thinking, but whether you are going to do so honestly and self-consciously."
• Pg 6: "Am I just conceding the point: philosophers agree only on questions, not on answers? Not at all. Progress in philosophy, like progress in any domain, can be measured in two ways. You can focus on some definite goal—the finish line—and ask yourself whether you are approaching that goal, drawing closer to the finish line. But you can also ask yourself how far you have come from your starting point. And, on this count, philosophy can be said to move forward. In any case, we have little choice. Philosophical questions about the mind will not go away."
• Pg 6: "Philosophy of mind, I contend, is applied metaphysics, but metaphysics, like philosophy generally, is itself continuous with science. In engaging in metaphysics, you do not compete with, but complement, the sciences. You could think of metaphysics as concerned with the fundamental categories of being. Sorting out these categories is not a matter of engaging in empirical research, but the categories themselves are shaped in part by such research, and the nature of entities falling under the categories is only discoverable empirically, only in the kind of systematic intercourse with the universe characteristic of the sciences."

Argument against immortality

1) Consciousness is highly expensive in terms of energy and order.

2) By the second law of thermodynamics, the probability of something expensive in terms of energy and order ceasing to be approaches 1 over (long distances of) time.

3) Therefore, the probability of consciousness ceasing to be approaches 1 over (long distances of) time.

Alcibiades and Socrates on the soul

Plato Complete Works, Benjamin Jowett, Alcibiades I, 50/3045 - 52/3045

"Socrates: And does not a man use the whole body?

Alcibiades: Certainly.

Socrates: And that which uses is different from that which is used?

Alcibiades: True.

Socrates: Then a man is not the same as his own body?

Alcibiades: That is the inference.

Socrates: What is he, then?

Alcibiades: I cannot say.

Socrates: Nay, you can say that he is the user of the body.

Alcibiades: Yes.

Socrates: And the user of the body is the soul?

Alcibiades: Yes, the soul.

Socrates: And the soul rules?

Alcibiades: Yes.

Socrates: Let me make an assertion which will, I think, be universally admitted.

Alcibiades: What is it?

Socrates: That man is one of three things.

Alcibiades: What are they?

Socrates: Soul, body, or both together forming a whole.

Alcibiades: Certainly.

Socrates: But did we not say that the actual ruling principle of the body is man?

Alcibiades: Yes, we did.

Socrates: And does the body rule over itself?

Alcibiades: Certainly not.

Socrates: It is subject, as we were saying?

Alcibiades: Yes.

Socrates: Then that is not the principle which we are seeking?

Alcibiades: It would seem not.

Socrates: But may we say that the union of the two rules over the body, and consequently that this is man?

Alcibiades: Very likely.

Socrates: The most unlikely of all things; for if one of the members is subject, the two united cannot possibly rule.

[WRM Lamb translation (130c): "The unlikeliest thing in the world: for if one of the two does not share in the rule, it is quite inconceivable that the combination of the two can be ruling."]

Alcibiades: True.

Socrates: But since neither the body, nor the union of the two, is man, either man has no real existence, or the soul is man?

Alcibiades: Just so.

Socrates: Is anything more required to prove that the soul is man?

Alcibiades: Certainly not; the proof is, I think, quite sufficient.

Socrates: And if the proof, although not perfect, be sufficient, we shall be satisfied;—more precise proof will be supplied when we have discovered that which we were led to omit, from a fear that the enquiry would be too much protracted.

Alcibiades: What was that?

Socrates: What I meant, when I said absolute existence must first be considered; but now, instead of absolute existence, we have been considering the nature of individual existence, and this may, perhaps, be sufficient; for surely there is nothing which may be called more properly ourselves than the soul?

Alcibiades: There is nothing.

Socrates: Then we may truly conceive that you and I are conversing with one another, soul to soul?

Alcibiades: Very true."

Notable quotes: William James

"There is but one indefectibly certain truth . . . that the present phenomenon of consciousness exists." ("Will to Believe", 1896)