Three possibilities come to mind:
Is there an evolutionary purpose?
Does it arise as a consequence of our mental activities, a sort of side effect of our thinking?
Is it given a priori (something we have to think in order to think at all)?
EDIT: Thanks for all the responses! Just one thing I saw come up a few times I’d like to address: a lot of people are asking ‘Why assume this?’ The answer is: it’s purely rhetorical! That said, I’m happy with a well thought-out ‘I dispute the premiss’ answer.
How is our experience of decision making different to one where we reach an inevitable outcome based on a complex set of parameters?
Because there are points at which, exactly as seems to be the case, we consciouly choose to follow one particular path in spite of the fact that we could just as easily have chosen another.
I agree that it “seems to be the case” that we consciously choose, but I don’t understand where you found justification to state that there really are such points. How do you dismiss the idea that our conscious choice is not simply an application of the myriad parameters?
Because I experience them, and not just at times, but moment-to-moment, every waking day. And so do you. And so does essentially every single human in existence.
That indicates two possibilities - either it’s a universal illusion, and in both senses of the term - one experienced by everyone and one experienced without exception by each individual, or it’s a real experience.
And I just find the former to be so ridiculously unlikely that the latter can be safely said to be near certainly true.
I don’t. I simply include consciousness, and all it entails - reason, value, self-interest, preference, mood, etc. - among those parameters.
Or, as you acknowledged before, it seems like you experience them. That experience of weighing up all the inputs, applying your mood and whatever else you bring, feels like making a decision freely.
These parameters are all examples of the complex inputs that precede a decision. And each of these inputs could be understood as the inevitable result of a causal chain.
It’s super complex and likely involves technology that we don’t yet possess, but if I could perfectly simulate a brain identical to yours, with the same neural states, and the same concentrations of relevant chemicals in its simulated blood at the moment of the decision, that simulated brain would have to produce the same output as as your meaty one.
Yes.
If I’m to be precise, it seems that I exist on what seems to be a planet in what seems to be a universe. On that seeming planet it seems as if I am surrounded by what seem to be things - some of which seem to be alive and others of which seem not to be. And among the ones that seem to be alive, there are some that seem to share the classification I seem to possess, as a human being.
In my seeming experience as what seems to be accurately desgnated a human being, I seem to experience some things, among them the process of seeming to make choices. And that process of seeming to make choices is a thing that I seemingly perceive the other seeming humans who seem to exist seemingly relate to be a part of their seeming lives as well.
And so on. Since I, as seems to be the case with all other beings that seem to exist, live behind the veil of perception, I cannot know for certain that any part of what I experience represents an objective reality. So every single aspect of my experience of life, most accurately, can only be said to seem to be as I perceive it to be.
I simply don’t believe that to be the case, if for no other reason than that that would appear to make creative reasoning impossible. If reason was merely the manifestation of a rigid causal chain, then all reason would follow the same paths to the same destinations. The fact that human history is, viewed one way, a record of new chains being followed to new destinations, means that there must be some mechanism by which consciousness can and does effectively “switch tracks.” Or even introduce entirely new ones.
Nor do I believe that to be true, since while consciousness appears to be a manifestation of the mechanical workings of the brain, it is not itself merely those mechanical workings - it is a “thing” unto itself. And I believe, quite simply, that the relationship between consciousness and the brain is not unidirectional, but bidirectional - that just as the physical state of a brain can be a proximate cause of a chain of thought, a chain of thought can be a proximate cause of a physical state of a brain.
And in fact, I would say that that’s easily demonstrated by the fact that one can trigger a response - fight or flight for instance - merely by imagining a threat. There’s no need for any physical manifestation of the threat - a wholly conscious, wholly non-physical imagining of it is sufficient. That says to me, rather clearly, that consciousness can serve as a cause - not merely as an effect.
And on a side note, thanks for the responses - this subject particularly fascinates me, but I find intellectually honest debate on it to be vanishingly rare.
You’re welcome. I too find it very interesting, though my expertise in it is below amater level.
I am a little confused about your model of continuous and the brain: you speak of consciousness appearing to be a manifestation of the brain’s processing, but talk about what seems to be a communicative relationship between the two. My understanding is that consciousness is entirely an emergent property of the brain, impossible to distinguish from the squishy mechanics. If yours is significantly different to this, then it is no wonder that our beliefs diverge.
That consciousness is (theoretically) an emergent property of the brain doesn’t make it indistinguishable from the brain. I would say that it’s self-evidently a thing unto itself - while consciousness appears to be (and logically is) a manifestation of brain activity, it is not that brain activity in and of itself. My experience of consciousness undoubtedly manifests via the firing of neurons and release of chemicals, but it is not merely the firing of neurons and release of chemicals - it’s an experience unto itself.
To use a potentially poor analogy, consciousness might be viewed as the fruit of the plant of the brain. While the fruit comes to be solely through the workings of the plant, it still, fully formed, has an existence outside of, and even to some degree independent of, the plant.
Or something like that…
I guess, if we’re looking at trees, I see it more like the shelter provided by the tree. The shelter cannot exist without the tree, it consists entirely of the tree, and when a tree attains certain properties it creates/becomes a shelter almost definitionally.
Note that here I’m making a distinction between a shelter and a sheltered area. The sheltered area is not the shelter; it is an effect of the shelter. I don’t think there’s room for the sheltered area in my consciousness analogy. So don’t think about it too hard?
Anyway, do you believe there is any ingredient to consciousness other than the physically of the brain? For example a “spark”, or a soul, or a connection to something external to the brain?
Even in that scenario, the “conscious choice” happened via some particular arrangement of neurons/chemical messengers/etc. Your argument is a “god of the gaps” argument- science doesn’t know everything about how the brain works, therefore some supernatural process called “free will” is the cause of the stuff science can’t explain yet.
(No knock on you, you’re having a good faith debate :)
Without those obvious pejoratives, that would’ve been a pretty good summation of at least that aspect of my position.
With those obvious pejoratives, it was reduced to an unfortunate expression of bias.
I believe that it’s not simply that science doesn’t yet fully understand how the brain works, but that it’s not even really equipped to deal with consciousness, which while clearly a manifestation of physical processes, is not itself physical.
That and we’re in an era in which “science” (scare quotes because part of the problem IMO is a misunderstanding of what science can do and does) has largely moved to the forefront of the pursuit of understanding, but humanity is still to some significant degree stuck in a quasi-religious mindset, so all too many have merely shifted from a devout faith that their religion provides every answer to everything ever to a devout faith that “science” provides every answer to everything ever.
The problem then comes when they run up against something for which science can’t provide an answer. And the common response then is to blithely insist that that thing must not and cannot exist at all, since the alternative is to face the fact that science potentially cannot provide every answer to everything ever. And that’s generally accompanied by an immediate assignment of whatever it is that’s in question to the other half of their wholly binaristic worldview - if it’s not amenable to science, it must and can only be religion/magic.
Reality, IMO, is vaster than that.
Neither of those are pejoratives, they’re just the words for your positions
https://www.askdifference.com/natural-vs-supernatural/
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_of_the_gaps
Everything you just wrote in your followup reply here continues to fit into those categories as far as i can tell.
That’s unfortunate - you credited me with debating in good faith, yet won’t do the same.
You rather obviously knew that the way you attempted to frame my position was disparaging - if you hadn’t, you wouldn’t have felt the need to add that proviso to the end of your post. What you clearly attempted to do with that was to disparage the position, while asserting that you didn’t mean it personally.
Ah well.
I didn’t do what you said. Did you read the links?