Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

frogandbanjo t1_jbl6vy3 wrote

>So what’s wrong with this line of thinking which is so drawn to molecules and such? Consider the following question as an analogy: Are apples red? Suppose we all agree that apples have color.

And so on. Uh... rigid designators. Taxonomy. Humans are lazy. Oh my god. Bertrand Russel would take you to school on this example like a boss, perhaps like so: 'Of course we mean to speak within a certain generally-accepted range of experiences - possibly limited to only humans, and even then, not definitive, for what of the colorblind? We refer to a sense impression. The simple phrase "it is red" is the peak of a pyramid of unstated assumptions, agreements, and limitations!'

Honestly. Go ahead and try changing a bunch of those molecules and see what happens to "red" back up at the top of that pyramid. Change the molecules in the human eye. Change the molecules in the human brain. So many ways to disrupt the vaunted "red" that are not on the scale of "red," and you want to use it as an analogy for why focusing on the wrong scale is an error, with an eye towards suggesting that various scales possess magical independence from each other.

Yikes, dude. I sincerely hope you do not cavalierly engage in "independent scale" surgery on yourself with confidence that your various "rednesses" will not be affected. That would be a very bad idea. Don't do it. Some "rednesses" are not as lazy and tolerant as others. "Alive" seems like a pretty broad one at the outset, but you might want to do some research on how many "independent and irrelevant scale" changes can disrupt it quite definitively.

>It is caused by many small parts, but only when taken together all at once. And that’s the same thing as the whole person. So my thoughts and actions are deterministically caused by me. The molecules of which my brain is made are deeply irrelevant to this fact.

So it's caused by many small parts all at once, but the molecules aren't even some of those small parts? They're irrelevant small parts? Even though we can measure changes in them as apparent partial causes of actions and partial consequences of other actions?

You're asserting a mind/body divide here baldly. Where's your argument? Where's your evidence?

>If a molecule were the relevant cause of my action, this would not be true in the same way.

You literally just posited that many small parts can all work in tandem, even though you rejected the possibility that molecules are the relevant small parts. This line, therefore, is something akin to a straw man. That accusation can only be perversely rebutted by the fact that we know molecules are not indivisible, and not always stable. Some molecules can "self reflect" (read: not really, because everything is connected, and subject to physical laws) and become not the molecule they originally were.

Re: undecideability

Instead of nitpicking - because it's exhausting, and I could do it all day - let me try to ask you a broader question:

If you do something that surprises Laplace's demon, how on Earth does it not also surprise you? If it surprises you, then doesn't it seem a little odd to call it "free?" It seems much more like we're just almost-infinitely-dumber demons who possess no real awareness of our own goings-on - only comforting illusions, which is a peculiar booby prize of ignorance. Doesn't the definition of undecideability you quoted make the very question you're trying to answer unanswerable? You retreat to what cannot be known to try to convince us that you know how something works.

17

MonteChristo0321 OP t1_jbl9oki wrote

Molecules are the small parts of a person. Or cells are, or quarks are, etc. I never said that molecules are not the small parts of a person. I just used molecules one example of a type of small part that gives you a terrible sense of the properties of a whole person.

I won't take the time to wade through the rest of the the reading comprehension issues here.

But your last paragraph isn't based on a simple misreading. It's an interesting question whether your own decisions surprise you. In a sense they do. If you know what your decision will be before you make it, then you've actually already made your decision. But you don't make your decision before you make your decision. I don't see that as a problem, but it's interesting.

−10

madcatte t1_jbmp2t6 wrote

Lmao I wasn't going to comment anything even though I was tempted to make the general comment of "it's hard to make a compelling argument on something you are wrong about" in response to your article. But here I find you in the comments telling people that the problems in your reasoning and argument are actually comprehension issues on the side of the reader. That's the single biggest hallmark of a bad author - blaming the reader for just "not getting it". Don't do that.

12

bassinlimbo t1_jbmg9jv wrote

I feel like some aspect of agency is lost here. When do you know you've made it? Our conscious thought is what gives us the sense of free will, but neuroscientists have proven with a few studies that our brain decides before we do. What is free about that?

As any other animal, we came from survivalist routes. I believe our "consciousness" and social abilities have allowed us to reach how far we've come as a species. But I think we can be studied in predictable ways like any other living thing that exists.

5

chicliac t1_jblx1x2 wrote

The point with the molecules it that after acknowledgeing the whole emerges from parts you casually say the parts are irrelevant. And now you're ignoring what the guy said of it.

4

MonteChristo0321 OP t1_jblyamt wrote

Yes, the whole emerges from the parts AND the parts are irrelevant to certain questions.

It's not obvious that would be the case. That's why I wrote a whole paper about it. I want to do a better job of explaining it, but I already put my best effort into the explanations in the paper.

−3

chicliac t1_jbmgd18 wrote

If you're referring to the apples redness analogy, here's my thoughts on it. There's indeed no redness to be found in constituent parts of the apple, but there's still a relevant causal connection between those parts properties and the emergent quality of the whole, the redness. So you can't just disregard that connection because you found no redness at that level, something other than the macro property on the micro level caused the macro property. The parts are demonstrably relevant here. The same is true for the main problem.

I don't think philosophy can just ignore science anymore.

5