Your approach, the philosophical approach, is vital to us, to our work, for you provide guidance in those areas beyond what we are currently able to know through scientific research. Your work and our work should, at least we hope, work towards each other as we both try to work out an understanding of the mind. I hope that was not too corny... lol Cheers!
“The will is free in the sense that people, very often, do what they will to do. They are free, within limits… of their strength or talent, to do things they will to do. The freedom of will does not mean that the will is free to will as it will, that would be nonsense. And doesn’t mean that the will is uncaused; the will is caused." -- W. V. O. Quine
I find it interesting how Magee seems almost surprised by this rejection of dualism when nearly everyone I know today sees Quine's explanation on the whole as the most common sense option.
"And we all are prepared to recognize that the will is caused when we try to train children in such a way to influence their behavior… All these are cases of causing people to will; but their freedom of the will remains, insofar as their activity is the result of causal chain… one link of which is the willing.” -- W. V. O. Quine
Perhaps you already know this, but helpful pieces to look at are ``Speaking of Objects,'' ``Two Dogmas,'' ``The Problem of Meaning in Linguistics,'' ``Identity, Ostention, and Hypostasis,'' and ``On the Very Idea of a Third Dogma.'' It's probably also helpful to contrast his view with Davidson's, as laid out in ``On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme'' and ``The Myth of the Subjective.''
1) I did not mean to imply that quantum effects are not there but rather that at the scale at which the neuron function, these quantum effects do not affect the neurons information processing. i.e. If the neuron requires 500 atoms to activate neural firing and there are 2000 atoms released to trigger a neural firing, then the numbers released will overwhelm any small quantum effects that might be imparted onto the these 2000 atoms.
3) Now if in the future it can be shown that somewhere in the neural system, there is a process that involves just a single or at least just a very few number of atoms being released or manipulated, there may be a good reason to believe that there can be an influence from quantum effects on a neurons information processing process that has an effect on the outcome of the output.
@watayapupuya translation: "this stuff is, uh, too complicated for me, uh, so i gunna shit on it, and anyone who wants to discuss it". You are a shining light of intelligence and truth.
@lourak well, in the passage you referred to, i don't think it's a question of the assumption that the universe is a closed physical system being necessary to science. rather, it's the case that science does in fact assume that the universe is explainable in terms of a closed physical system. and so, because of science's astonishing (and unique, presumably) successes, we ought to take that assumption seriously. so someone rejecting that assumption would have to provide some (near impossible) ->
5) When the width of a CPUs wires shrink to below a few atoms wide, the effects of quantum mechanics starts to impart random effects into the electrical signal of that wire causing the voltages to become unstable. There is this same scale component in the brain.
4) It does not follow that if an FMRI or MRI makes use of the quantum effect of atoms that a brains information processing will directly affected by quantum effects from the atoms that make up the brain. Why? It is the scale of the systems function components that will determine when and if any quantum effects will be introduced into the systems output. You see this same thing in computer processor chips.
Magee isn't included in my category of 'nearly everyone I know today' which is very different from 'absolutely everyone in existence today and forty years ago'. And saying that most people I know see it as common sense is not a tautology at all. If you're taking 'common sense' to mean 'widely believed' (not my intended meaning) I would actually be saying 'amongst the people I associate with, it is commonly thought that views such as Quine's would be widely held by those I don't.'
@lourak Oh, I was just trying to paraphrase Quine in saying "closed physical syrm", not trying to introduce my own term. I'm not, to be clear, unsympathetic to what you're saying: just trying to clarify why I don't think that it's right to say Quine is begging the question in the passage you mention, whatever about your further arguments (which, as I said, I do think are interesting). Great to have this kind of video on youtube to talk about though, however restrictive the comment feature is.
heyyy thanks for that- I needed to know Quines views for a Philosophy exam, but luckily a question of Conceptual Schemes did not come up :D thanks again anyway
Mystical experiences are aplenty in human history, but they haven't been demonstrated to show more about the world reliably than science. If these experiences gives us this, then we will greatly accept it as a mode of understanding the world. But for now, we should wait and see.
1) I am not very familiar with his views. But it appears to me he claimed free will could a) be accounted for from strict physicalism, without appeal to the mental. b) Do so in a way that does allows for it to be distinguished qualitatively to other processes in physics and neurology without compromising the opinon that we hace the capacity to choose what to do. It will 'keep 'its status' as the capacity 'to do what one wills to do', within a causal framework. ...
An MRI does not work by picking up a mental field. It works by causing the spin of the H atoms to line up to a magnetic field where by manipulation of the spin energy state by a radio frequency is jump up to a higher state and then allowed to return causing the atom to giving off a radio frequency that then is picked up and converted to an image. The point being that an MRI does not work by picking up a mental field.
If you study neuro physology you will find that all of the brain functions operate at the chemical level where much of the activity involves large numbers of ions set up in a gradient that at the point of firing pass through a semi permeable membrane followed by a the reseting up of the gradient via ion pumps. The point being, none of the functions of the brain are effected by any quantum mechanical effects. This has been well established.
The description above is not an exhaustive description of the functioning of the brain but rather an example of the size level in which the brain functions. Any quantum mechanical effects that might be injected into the system simply would not be large enough to effect any outcome of any chemical reactions do to the large levels of atoms in the system. It would be like a car going down a road and running over a very small rock, that rock will not change the cars overall path down the road.
@LooksAeterna what do you mean by "soteriological complexities"? I quickly looked up the term "soteriology" and found it to mean the study of the religious doctrines of salvation. I don't understand what you mean here. Please explain how "soteriological complexities" fit into this discussion.
There is still a lot we can't explain with science, but that does not mean that we will never find out via science. We should not jump to conclusions about what science will discover.
I for got to address this par. I think that you are correct in you point about Quine making a mistake in not leaving the door open to the possibility of duality. I agree that it is possible that new research could change things drastically. Is it your view that trying to prove the falsehood of duality to be akin to trying to prove the nonexistence of God, to prove a negative?
3)... if our linguistic varience accounts for different neurophysiological conditions, why assume that a philosophical account of freedom and agency depends on physics rather than culture, or any other scientific domain? It is not clear to me what ontological privilege physicalism guarantees for the 'problem of freedom' that other scientific discourse don't, unless further tacit assumptions are in place, which I am very curious about.
@lourak does it, though? isn't it just consistently applying what he's said a few minutes earlier about the necessity of taking seriously the presuppositions of the natural sciences, given their success (in quite a Kantian spirit, I suppose)?
@LooksAeterna i don't know what the corporate establishment is, what it believes or what Magee has to do with it. Neither I nor my acquaintances are professors in mental philosophy but it seems to me that it's better to try and work towards explaining what we don't yet understand with what we know and can see than bring in as yet unexperienced ontological constructs/hermaphrodites to fill in the gaps or compensate for the misleading nature of language. If there's something I'm missing, tell me.
@lourak and just to reply to the second half of what you're saying: i suppose - in a quite formal way - theism might be difficult to reconcile with scientific inquiry in the sense that it forbids, in advance of experience, the explanation of some things without recourse to a something necessarily beyond experience. but i expect that might depend on your views about our interaction with the theistic parts of the universe. so perhaps there is some interest in what you're saying there.
2) A quantum effect would have to act on 1501 in such a way that would prevent them from achieving intended job; which is statistically, a very unlikely event.
4)... Finally, it is completely obscure how physicalism presents this advantage of intersubjectivity when we have yet to define how subjectivity and selfhood are possible from a physicalist perspective. If what constitutes selfhood is precisely something like freedom, then this assumes the physical 'link to will' be sufficiently maintained. But this is what physicalism is meant to prove if it means to preserve freedom, not its intuitive advantage. This is very confusing to me.
2) But if the will be merely substituted for the appropriate set of neurophysiological conditions under which we experience the 'act of choosing freely' this is not the crucial question for freedom of choice: but to know whether what we experience as an act of free choice is ultimately any different than attributing to God the origination of the Big Bang; that is to say, from 'freedom' qua non-determinism, and a merely metaphysical naivete we can safely dispense with now as mystical vocabulary.
He's just defending a standard compatibilism. That part about the will being free but not free to will was just a rather convoluted, poetic way of stating it.
3) If all that remains of freedom in the physicalist account is a strict framework of causal connections and a description of neurophysiological conditions, then such a notion of agency would be apparently reducible to being the product of a set of conditions in that domain; whilst being qualitatively distinguishable in those terms as corresponding to our experience of agency. But isn't this ultimately a reductionist dream camouflaged? Why physics and not sociology, or generative grammar?
6) I think why we been butting head as it were... lol is because we are coming at the problem from opposite directions. This is to say that you, as the philosopher study what could be where I, coming from a purely science angle, focused on those things that we have evidence for so far. This perspective is drilled into us. I should have made a better attempt at stating this. Of course new things can be discovered that very well could force us, scientist, to change our models of the mind.
I do not think Quine is ?beg @ 5:04. His arg is not physical bias of sci. His arg is why subatomics are construed physically. His arg is like, ALL ELEMENTS OF WORLD ARE CONSTRUED IN CLOSED PHYSICAL SYS ALL SUBATOMICS ARE ELEMENTS OF WORLD ALL SUBSTOMICS ARE CONSTRUED IN CLOSED PHYSICAL SYS This is valid non?beg arg. Yes, the premises assume physical stance. But nonphysical arg assume nonphysical stance. There is no escaping bias premises; just which way do you fall.
@favouritedress reason for doing so. thus his brand of physicalism, even with its problems, is still attractive. and that's not the same as begging the question. all of that with the caveat above that i may quite wrong in this interpretation, of course.
Accounting for how an immaterial "instrument," namely the mind, interacts and influences a material world has and will always. E problematic for materialism. I mean, the world ceases to exist to someone comatose--notwithstanding the room filled with loved ones and flowers. "The world is will and idea" to quote Schopenhauer. ...
@Drastam bingo! nicely done. unable to solve dualism, Quine and others retreated into objectivity. Wittgenstein and some others retreated into the subjective. some people just aren't comfortable with dynamic tension, I guess. amateurs.
I do not approve of Quine's position on free will. Immanuel Kant is one of my philosophical hero's and I think his Critique of Pure Reason is more on track with what we can know.
"Quine is jumping to a conclusion in denying duality." Sorry if this seems like an ad hominem... but you have been following philosophy for the last few hundred years right?
WTF? Your statement says nothing. If you have a point then make it. Sarcastic remarks are not very helpful. Well at least that one did not do anything useful for you. It was useful to me for it showed me that you think and post emotionally. A very useless characteristic.
Your approach, the philosophical approach, is vital to us, to our work, for you provide guidance in those areas beyond what we are currently able to know through scientific research. Your work and our work should, at least we hope, work towards each other as we both try to work out an understanding of the mind. I hope that was not too corny... lol Cheers!
“The will is free in the sense that people, very often, do what they will to do. They are free, within limits… of their strength or talent, to do things they will to do. The freedom of will does not mean that the will is free to will as it will, that would be nonsense. And doesn’t mean that the will is uncaused; the will is caused." -- W. V. O. Quine
I find it interesting how Magee seems almost surprised by this rejection of dualism when nearly everyone I know today sees Quine's explanation on the whole as the most common sense option.
i think he addresses the main problems of ontological statements in the article "On What There Is".
He also addresses conceptual schemes.
"And we all are prepared to recognize that the will is caused when we try to train children in such a way to influence their behavior… All these are cases of causing people to will; but their freedom of the will remains, insofar as their activity is the result of causal chain… one link of which is the willing.” -- W. V. O. Quine
Perhaps you already know this, but helpful pieces to look at are ``Speaking of Objects,'' ``Two Dogmas,'' ``The Problem of Meaning in Linguistics,'' ``Identity, Ostention, and Hypostasis,'' and ``On the Very Idea of a Third Dogma.'' It's probably also helpful to contrast his view with Davidson's, as laid out in ``On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme'' and ``The Myth of the Subjective.''
1) I did not mean to imply that quantum effects are not there but rather that at the scale at which the neuron function, these quantum effects do not affect the neurons information processing. i.e. If the neuron requires 500 atoms to activate neural firing and there are 2000 atoms released to trigger a neural firing, then the numbers released will overwhelm any small quantum effects that might be imparted onto the these 2000 atoms.
3) Now if in the future it can be shown that somewhere in the neural system, there is a process that involves just a single or at least just a very few number of atoms being released or manipulated, there may be a good reason to believe that there can be an influence from quantum effects on a neurons information processing process that has an effect on the outcome of the output.
@watayapupuya
translation:
"this stuff is, uh, too complicated for me, uh, so i gunna shit on it, and anyone who wants to discuss it".
You are a shining light of intelligence and truth.
magee got butthurt when quine pointed out how flawed dualism is
@lourak well, in the passage you referred to, i don't think it's a question of the assumption that the universe is a closed physical system being necessary to science. rather, it's the case that science does in fact assume that the universe is explainable in terms of a closed physical system. and so, because of science's astonishing (and unique, presumably) successes, we ought to take that assumption seriously. so someone rejecting that assumption would have to provide some (near impossible) ->
5) When the width of a CPUs wires shrink to below a few atoms wide, the effects of quantum mechanics starts to impart random effects into the electrical signal of that wire causing the voltages to become unstable. There is this same scale component in the brain.
4) It does not follow that if an FMRI or MRI makes use of the quantum effect of atoms that a brains information processing will directly affected by quantum effects from the atoms that make up the brain. Why? It is the scale of the systems function components that will determine when and if any quantum effects will be introduced into the systems output. You see this same thing in computer processor chips.
Magee isn't included in my category of 'nearly everyone I know today' which is very different from 'absolutely everyone in existence today and forty years ago'.
And saying that most people I know see it as common sense is not a tautology at all. If you're taking 'common sense' to mean 'widely believed' (not my intended meaning) I would actually be saying 'amongst the people I associate with, it is commonly thought that views such as Quine's would be widely held by those I don't.'
@lourak Oh, I was just trying to paraphrase Quine in saying "closed physical syrm", not trying to introduce my own term. I'm not, to be clear, unsympathetic to what you're saying: just trying to clarify why I don't think that it's right to say Quine is begging the question in the passage you mention, whatever about your further arguments (which, as I said, I do think are interesting). Great to have this kind of video on youtube to talk about though, however restrictive the comment feature is.
heyyy thanks for that-
I needed to know Quines views for a Philosophy exam, but luckily a question of Conceptual Schemes did not come up :D
thanks again anyway
Mystical experiences are aplenty in human history, but they haven't been demonstrated to show more about the world reliably than science. If these experiences gives us this, then we will greatly accept it as a mode of understanding the world. But for now, we should wait and see.
1) I am not very familiar with his views. But it appears to me he claimed free will could
a) be accounted for from strict physicalism, without appeal to the mental.
b) Do so in a way that does allows for it to be distinguished qualitatively to other processes in physics and neurology without compromising the opinon that we hace the capacity to choose what to do. It will 'keep 'its status' as the capacity 'to do what one wills to do', within a causal framework.
...
An MRI does not work by picking up a mental field. It works by causing the spin of the H atoms to line up to a magnetic field where by manipulation of the spin energy state by a radio frequency is jump up to a higher state and then allowed to return causing the atom to giving off a radio frequency that then is picked up and converted to an image. The point being that an MRI does not work by picking up a mental field.
If you study neuro physology you will find that all of the brain functions operate at the chemical level where much of the activity involves large numbers of ions set up in a gradient that at the point of firing pass through a semi permeable membrane followed by a the reseting up of the gradient via ion pumps. The point being, none of the functions of the brain are effected by any quantum mechanical effects. This has been well established.
The description above is not an exhaustive description of the functioning of the brain but rather an example of the size level in which the brain functions. Any quantum mechanical effects that might be injected into the system simply would not be large enough to effect any outcome of any chemical reactions do to the large levels of atoms in the system. It would be like a car going down a road and running over a very small rock, that rock will not change the cars overall path down the road.
@LooksAeterna what do you mean by "soteriological complexities"? I quickly looked up the term "soteriology" and found it to mean the study of the religious doctrines of salvation. I don't understand what you mean here. Please explain how "soteriological complexities" fit into this discussion.
There is still a lot we can't explain with science, but that does not mean that we will never find out via science. We should not jump to conclusions about what science will discover.
I for got to address this par.
I think that you are correct in you point about Quine making a mistake in not leaving the door open to the possibility of duality. I agree that it is possible that new research could change things drastically. Is it your view that trying to prove the falsehood of duality to be akin to trying to prove the nonexistence of God, to prove a negative?
3)... if our linguistic varience accounts for different neurophysiological conditions, why assume that a philosophical account of freedom and agency depends on physics rather than culture, or any other scientific domain? It is not clear to me what ontological privilege physicalism guarantees for the 'problem of freedom' that other scientific discourse don't, unless further tacit assumptions are in place, which I am very curious about.
@lourak does it, though? isn't it just consistently applying what he's said a few minutes earlier about the necessity of taking seriously the presuppositions of the natural sciences, given their success (in quite a Kantian spirit, I suppose)?
@LooksAeterna i don't know what the corporate establishment is, what it believes or what Magee has to do with it.
Neither I nor my acquaintances are professors in mental philosophy but it seems to me that it's better to try and work towards explaining what we don't yet understand with what we know and can see than bring in as yet unexperienced ontological constructs/hermaphrodites to fill in the gaps or compensate for the misleading nature of language. If there's something I'm missing, tell me.
@lourak and just to reply to the second half of what you're saying: i suppose - in a quite formal way - theism might be difficult to reconcile with scientific inquiry in the sense that it forbids, in advance of experience, the explanation of some things without recourse to a something necessarily beyond experience. but i expect that might depend on your views about our interaction with the theistic parts of the universe. so perhaps there is some interest in what you're saying there.
2) A quantum effect would have to act on 1501 in such a way that would prevent them from achieving intended job; which is statistically, a very unlikely event.
4)... Finally, it is completely obscure how physicalism presents this advantage of intersubjectivity when we have yet to define how subjectivity and selfhood are possible from a physicalist perspective. If what constitutes selfhood is precisely something like freedom, then this assumes the physical 'link to will' be sufficiently maintained. But this is what physicalism is meant to prove if it means to preserve freedom, not its intuitive advantage. This is very confusing to me.
2) But if the will be merely substituted for the appropriate set of neurophysiological conditions under which we experience the 'act of choosing freely' this is not the crucial question for freedom of choice: but to know whether what we experience as an act of free choice is ultimately any different than attributing to God the origination of the Big Bang; that is to say, from 'freedom' qua non-determinism, and a merely metaphysical naivete we can safely dispense with now as mystical vocabulary.
He's just defending a standard compatibilism. That part about the will being free but not free to will was just a rather convoluted, poetic way of stating it.
Ha, he's got that great front man personality doesn't he?
3) If all that remains of freedom in the physicalist account is a strict framework of causal connections and a description of neurophysiological conditions, then such a notion of agency would be apparently reducible to being the product of a set of conditions in that domain; whilst being qualitatively distinguishable in those terms as corresponding to our experience of agency. But isn't this ultimately a reductionist dream camouflaged? Why physics and not sociology, or generative grammar?
6) I think why we been butting head as it were... lol is because we are coming at the problem from opposite directions. This is to say that you, as the philosopher study what could be where I, coming from a purely science angle, focused on those things that we have evidence for so far. This perspective is drilled into us. I should have made a better attempt at stating this. Of course new things can be discovered that very well could force us, scientist, to change our models of the mind.
I do not think Quine is ?beg @ 5:04. His arg is not physical bias of sci. His arg is why subatomics are construed physically. His arg is like,
ALL ELEMENTS OF WORLD ARE CONSTRUED IN CLOSED PHYSICAL SYS
ALL SUBATOMICS ARE ELEMENTS OF WORLD
ALL SUBSTOMICS ARE CONSTRUED IN CLOSED PHYSICAL SYS
This is valid non?beg arg.
Yes, the premises assume physical stance. But nonphysical arg assume nonphysical stance. There is no escaping bias premises; just which way do you fall.
LOL listen to 6.03, he seems to say 'the willy is free' hehe
His view of the freedom of the will seems very similar to that of Jonathan Edwards.
Quine is a rock star. End. of. story.
My emotions tell me that materialism is incorrect. I don't know how Idealists respond to materialism, but I truly hope that they respond with fervor.
@favouritedress reason for doing so. thus his brand of physicalism, even with its problems, is still attractive. and that's not the same as begging the question. all of that with the caveat above that i may quite wrong in this interpretation, of course.
Intersubjectivity FTW!!!
Accounting for how an immaterial "instrument," namely the mind, interacts and influences a material world has and will always. E problematic for materialism. I mean, the world ceases to exist to someone comatose--notwithstanding the room filled with loved ones and flowers. "The world is will and idea" to quote Schopenhauer. ...
@Drastam
bingo! nicely done.
unable to solve dualism, Quine and others retreated into objectivity. Wittgenstein and some others retreated into the subjective.
some people just aren't comfortable with dynamic tension, I guess. amateurs.
I do not approve of Quine's position on free will. Immanuel Kant is one of my philosophical hero's and I think his Critique of Pure Reason is more on track with what we can know.
Quine's view has been punctured...he wasn't untouched insofar as being a materialist
"Quine is jumping to a conclusion in denying duality."
Sorry if this seems like an ad hominem... but you have been following philosophy for the last few hundred years right?
quines annoyin me with his " uhh, urms "lool
could someone explain his views on competing conceptual schemes?
thanks :D
There is no such thing as a mental field.
@LooksAeterna No i did not.
magee should have pressed him on physicalism in the mind and how his view differs from idealism. too much attention was paid to dualism.
@DrDeist What else could common sense be?
Hume wins but because of Quine.
LOLOLOLOLOL
ROFL
He certainly burned a few Austrians.
WTF? Your statement says nothing. If you have a point then make it. Sarcastic remarks are not very helpful. Well at least that one did not do anything useful for you. It was useful to me for it showed me that you think and post emotionally. A very useless characteristic.
Ridiculous.
He certainly burned a few Austrians.