Difference between revisions of "User:Woozle/Free Will/fisking"
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(→Chapter 1: The Unconscious Origins of the Will (p.18): metaphor clarification; more questions) |
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Second off, if we ''were'' able to describe that process in all its essential details, wouldn't Harris then turn around and say that because the process is completely describable, and there is no box in the flow-chart which we can label "free will", that therefore free will doesn't exist? His claim is not [[falsifiable]] -- or at least he has not offered any clear test for how it might be falsified. | Second off, if we ''were'' able to describe that process in all its essential details, wouldn't Harris then turn around and say that because the process is completely describable, and there is no box in the flow-chart which we can label "free will", that therefore free will doesn't exist? His claim is not [[falsifiable]] -- or at least he has not offered any clear test for how it might be falsified. | ||
| − | So what if brain scans can detect your decisions before you make them? How does that mean you didn't make them? When I order a pizza, | + | So what if brain scans can detect your decisions before you make them? How does that mean you didn't make them? When I order a pizza, a suitable monitoring of my physiology might have noticed various symptoms of increasing hunger (lowering blood sugar and so forth) long before I actually made the decision about how to respond to those symptoms. Does this mean that I didn't order it after all, that I was somehow predestined to order it, that it somehow could have been predicted in advance exactly what and when I would choose to eat, that I was not in fact the author of my decision to order a pizza? |
| − | Consider the difference between the ''decision to make a decision'' (e.g. "I'm hungry. What are my options?") with the decision itself ("There's a snack machine. I have cash in my pocket. Am I hungry enough to go through the effort of getting up, going over there, and punching some buttons in order to get a tiny bag of potato chips?"). The scanner can detect that we've decided to get up before we even know we've decided it -- but does it know that before we've realized that we're hungry? Maybe it can even detect that we've realized that we're hungry -- but does it know that before we start thinking about it? Does it know when we're about to start thinking about it? | + | Consider the difference between the ''decision to make a decision'' (e.g. "I'm hungry. What are my options?") with the decision itself ("There's a snack machine. I have cash in my pocket. Am I hungry enough to go through the effort of getting up, going over there, and punching some buttons in order to get a tiny bag of potato chips?"). The brain scanner can detect that we've decided to get up before we even know we've decided it -- but does it know that before we've realized that we're hungry? Maybe it can even detect that we've realized that we're hungry -- but does it know that before we start thinking about it? Does it know when we're about to start thinking about it? (What does it mean to say "we know we've decided", anyway? How much advance notice is the scanner able to provide -- enough that we would have time to indicate that we haven't yet made a decision, after the scanner is already aware that we have?) |
How does any of this apparent foreknowledge (by a few seconds) support Harris's contention that we have no control over our own decisions and actions? | How does any of this apparent foreknowledge (by a few seconds) support Harris's contention that we have no control over our own decisions and actions? | ||
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How is that "storm" not the very ''essence'' of free will? | How is that "storm" not the very ''essence'' of free will? | ||
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==Chapter 2: Changing the Subject (p.21)== | ==Chapter 2: Changing the Subject (p.21)== | ||
In this chapter, Harris seems to be switching from the colloquial definition of free will (FW!lay) which seems to be the subject of the introduction and Chapter 1 to more academic discussions of the concept (FW!aca). It's not clear whether he considers both FW!aca and FW!lay to be encompassed by FW!SH, or whether they are even consistent with each other. It ''almost'' seems as if he is dismissing FW!lay as unworkable, and turning next to FW!aca to see if it contains anything more usable -- but he does not actually say this as far as I can see. | In this chapter, Harris seems to be switching from the colloquial definition of free will (FW!lay) which seems to be the subject of the introduction and Chapter 1 to more academic discussions of the concept (FW!aca). It's not clear whether he considers both FW!aca and FW!lay to be encompassed by FW!SH, or whether they are even consistent with each other. It ''almost'' seems as if he is dismissing FW!lay as unworkable, and turning next to FW!aca to see if it contains anything more usable -- but he does not actually say this as far as I can see. | ||