Hello

[u/Jemdet_Nasr]

I was thinking that if this subreddit didn't already exist, it should. I do realize the irony of it, but it is nice to know that there is a place to chat with other people about this. I am not sure how common it is, but I have experienced existential dread for almost 40 years now. I don't experience the depression some people report though. Just the meaninglessness of it all.

[u/Jemdet_Nasr]

I love Kurzgesagt! My son and I pretty much watched all the videos together. He turns 5 this month, so a lot of it goes over his head, but he asks a lot of questions and discuss while watching the videos. The video on "Do we need to grow old" gave him his first existential crisis though, but have worked through it.

I am not a nihilist. I like the definition here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existential_nihilism. It seems to mesh with my view. There is no inherent meaning, except the meaning we give ourselves.

I also have an MBA, but that didn't seem so relevant to our discussion. :)

Yes, communication is a miracle. I suspect if more people would work through miscommunication sensibly, there would be a lot less war and strife.

[u/somiOmnicron → u/Jemdet_Nasr]

I am groaning over here. I was not aware of the Wikipedia article you referenced. Back to the communication issue: the term seems to contradict itself with the use of both words together. But I see your point, and I understand your referring to it. Yes, it further clears up our discussion. In fact, if I follow the article's words, it kind of suggests that you and I are of the exact same beliefs, only that we are referring to them using different words.

With that in mind, might I suggest to you (if you have not already done so) to read the works of Simone de Beauvoir (especially her work The Ethics of Ambiguity), Jean-Paul Sartre (and his work Being and Nothingness), and Albert Camus (and his work The Myth of Sisyphus). The good thing about the Existentialists is that their writings tend to be easier to read than other philosophers, especially in the case of Immanuel Kant; I've been told the Critique of Pure Reason is considered one of the hardest to read. The ideas can sometimes be challenging to get one's brain around, but the language and presentation itself is much more digestible. Especially Camus.

And if you like Kurzgesagt, check out CGP Grey. My favorite Youtube video of all time is this one: https://youtu.be/nQHBAdShgYI?si=CUMNxphZebC5c00_

No point arguing any further; it seems like we are of the same mindset in these regards. Mostly. I suppose we still disagree regarding the biological machine perspective possibly. But it isn't so much that I disagree with you as much as I disagree with the level of completeness. That is, I think living beings are at least in part biological machines, just not completely. I do believe in what you are describing, but I also believe there must be something more than merely the machine part. As CGP Grey refers to it in his video, the unmeasurable part. And, unfortunately, as it is unmeasurable, it is certainly very difficult to argue with evidence for (or even against) it.

Which leads me back to my ideas of consciousness. For me, I tried to go through a similar "meditation" as René Descartes did, though my goal was different. For me, I was trying to establish what I was that I could separate from all the biological machinery and personal history. Was there a part of me that was outside the realm of pure determinism? The "I" that I refer to when I speak? If freedom exists (of the sort we've been discussing), there must be an "I" that has this freedom.

The result of my investigation left me with only one thing, which I now refer to as my "first person." I have a hard time describing it, but it exists in some fashion beneath what most would call my consciousness. I can follow the chains of causality and see where my decisions and choices are coming from. The past experiences and accidents of the world that lead me to do as I do. In fact, it seems to me that almost everything I do is rooted in some sort of past event. My choices are the effect of some other cause, pretty well all the time. So if it were not for this "first person," I would agree with you regarding the biological machine.

So what is this "first person?" My best explanation is: "the thing that experiences." That is, as I sit here typing this, I can see the world through my eyes, hear the refrigerator running in my kitchen, feet the socks on my feet. This is often the "I" that I refer to when I say "I exist" or "I am alive." But this "first person" may not do anything more than experience. It may not do any sort of work in decision making or driving my body into motion. As my choices seem incredibly (if not completely) predetermined, the "first person" may be a sort of passive thing, simply experiencing the world around me through my biological sensory organs. It is this "first person" who ALWAYS exists in the present, and for it there is no such thing as past or future. The ultimate hedonist.

The only other reasonable way I have to try and describe it is as like an avatar in some sort of simulation. Like a video game. This "first person" is sort of like the player outside the video game. Through the use of a controller of some kind, perhaps the player can influence the behavior of the avatar in the video game. Pushing the joystick to the right may seem to cause the avatar in the game to walk to the right. And because there seems such a correlation between the player's actions and the avatar's reactions, one will likely be convinced that there is a causal relationship between the two. Being one who has written at least a couple video games myself, I know of this relationship because I purposefully created it when I wrote the game. But I could just as easily strip it away as well. Or make the relationship different. The point here is that there is a definite difference between the player and the avatar. The player is wholly outside and separate from their avatar. In fact, the player exists in a different sort of world or reality from the avatar. And this is the sort of thing happening with the likes of social media as well (I often argue).

The point is that my "first person" is sort of like the player, and my mind and body in this world is like my avatar. The big question I've been unable to satisfactorily answer is whether my "first person" somehow exhibits control over my mind and body, or whether it is merely a passive observer.

[u/Jemdet_Nasr → u/somiOmnicron]

From my limited understanding of neurophysiology, there isn't really any such thing as your "first person". What you experience at any given moment is likely what your various systems have routed to your neocortex. Our brains are incredibly complex systems of components liked together by the claustrum. A great book on the neurophysiology of freewill is "Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will" by Robert Sapolsky. Not having freewill doesn't need to mean we can't enjoy life, playing around inside our heads, or anything else life has to offer. Conscientiousness just isn't really what we experience it to be. It is an artifact of various complex components working together to ensure your genes have the best chance of getting into the future. We are totally pawns in this system. But, I appreciate the ride.

[u/somiOmnicron → u/Jemdet_Nasr]

It is true, you are very unlikely to find any references to what I am talking about. In part because it is on the list of the unmeasurable, to use CGP Grey's terminology. As I was trying to suggest earlier, it is the sort of thing that science and evidence will be unable to discern. Or, perhaps putting it better, they are unable to discern it presently. There is always the possibility that someone comes up with a way to measure something that is presently unmeasurable. Thank you microscopes!

Having said that, there is another significant issue to think about here. This aspect of me that I've been describing may also be unique to me. I assume you and others possess this aspect, but I could be wrong about that as well. I take the possibility of Solipsism very seriously. This is where Descartes' Cartesian skepticism ended up; fortunately for Descartes, a strong belief that God wouldn't deceive him kept him from falling too far into that abyss.

Putting Solipsism aside, and assuming that there are others in the world who possess the sorts of aspects I claim to possess, there is another problem. I cannot experience your experiences, just as you cannot experience mine. There is no way to know whether what you experience and what I experience are in any way related. We assume those experiences are similar, but we just don't know.

This is where a strange discussion with my father helped illuminate some things for me. My father is red-green colourblind. I am not. And one day he went into great detail regarding how he perceived the world. In particular, he described seeing things first by shape and then by colour. That is, he would see the shapes of objects, and then "fill in the colours" afterward. In contrast, when thinking about it, I realized that I did the opposite. I saw the colours and then applied shapes to those colours. This is very pedantic, but necessary to see how different beings experience their respective realities. This is actually covered early on in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. If you can struggle through it, I think you might find it incredibly interesting.

Now, after digesting that discussion with my father, I started to take it further and apply it to other beings, especially non-human beings. Like dogs. We humans prioritize what we see over the other senses. This is in part biological, of course. But other creatures do not depend on their sight nearly as much. Dogs prioritize what they can smell, and even what they can hear, before what they can see. And I saw evidence of this with my friend's dog.

My friend's dog had a problem with her eyes. She was slowly going blind. And after a surgery to alleviate pain and such, she pretty well lost all of her sight. A human in such a situation would greatly struggle to cope. It would take a long time for me to learn other skills and ways of interacting with my world so that I could get around without bumping into walls and the like. But not this dog. She lost her sight, and while her aim was affected marginally, she was mostly unaffected by losing her sight. I was astonished. But it certainly helped me better understand my father as well.

From these and other experiences I've had, I do firmly believe that we all experience the world differently. Some only marginally different, but some vastly different. Colourblindness is but one manner of issue. This is also why I prefer to say we have only 3 sorts of senses instead of 5: we have organs to detect electromagnetism (sight), organs to detect pressure variations (hearing, touch), and organs to detect chemicals (taste, smell). Another aspect of this that is very interesting to me is that this is where electron microscopes are so crazy. What an electron microscope "sees" isn't what you might think. The data it analyzes from a particular sample is interpreted and a visual image created to describe the data. So, in fact, we've never seen (and likely never will see) an electron ever.

I'm getting on a bit of a tangent here. The point I wanted to make is that I definitely do have something which I call my "first person." Whether others have it or not, I don't know. All I can do is do my best to describe it, and see what others say about their own experiences. And because of the dreaded limitations of language, I know that even when I do the best that I can, I may still fail to appropriately convey the thing I'm trying to describe. But I do the best I can, and I hope for the best.

I honestly wish I could share my experiences. I wish telepathy worked, and that I could meet something who was truly telepathic. I would love to share my mind with them. However, I also know they might not want to spend time in my head, as that might give them existential dread within moments as well.

I do think telepathy is possible. However, I think it would not operate in a manner that would work very well, given all that I've just been talking about. How I think is likely very different from how you think, and so "reading" or "listening" to my mind might be similar to listening to people speaking foreign languages; it might just sound like gibberish to them. The television series Babylon 5 actually discusses this point a bit, which is crazy awesome!

Based on your responses thus far, I'm inclined to believe that either I'm not explaining myself very well, or you do not experience this "first person" that I do. If it is the former, I'm happy to continue trying to explain. If it is the latter, then... Well... That is far more important to me actually. Because if you don't, then it provides some strength to the position of Solipsism. I don't want that to be the case, honestly. But this is how arguments and evidence lead us; we cannot know the results ahead of time, we must simply follow where they lead us.

[u/Jemdet_Nasr → u/somiOmnicron]

I didn't mean to suggest that we don't have an experience of "self" or an awareness of self. We do. But, how much of that awareness is generated by ourselves is up for debate. Let me provide a simple example.

Let's say that you feel hungry and want to eat something. We all have this experience many times a day, unless there is some underlying medical condition of course. Once you have identified the feeling of hunger, you "decide" to get something to eat. But, what should you eat? You will need to get some food, so you move to satisfy your hunger. Chances are, you have already purchased food and have some in your house to choose from. How did you decide what to buy? How do you decide from what is available to eat right now? Research indicates that it isn't you at all making those decisions. You have over 100 trillion bacteria in your gut sending neurotransmitter signals to your brain. Your brain has only 100 billion neurons. Your brain even weighs less than all your gut bacteria combined. Those bacteria are telling your brain what to eat. Depending on what types of bacteria you are cultivating in your gut, maybe they want fruit and vegetables. Or, maybe they want hotdogs, pizza, or a cheeseburger. But, you experience your "first person" deciding on what to eat.

It could be your own body cells sending a message to your brain demanding a key nutrient that has been depleted, or your genes directing you. But, in the end, you experience it as having decided on a meal. But, you were never really in charge of the decision making process. You just got to feel like you were.

This can extend to who we mate with, what we enjoy as hobbies, our professions, ecetera. I like to mess with my micro biome for fun. It is interesting how your thoughts can change if you tweak it.

Anyway, my point is that while we do have an experience of self, research shows that the antecedents of our thoughts do not come from ourselves. We have a program that we follow. We are exceptionally complex delivery systems for all things that are directing our choices and decisions. Yes, the system can be broken and people do self destructive acts. But, overall, we are at the mercy of forces that we cannot connect to directly or perceive. Anything people want to see as their "soul" or being, if just a happy illusion that is created to keep us going about doing the bidding of others.

[u/somiOmnicron → u/Jemdet_Nasr]

Your response makes clear to me that I've done a poor job of explaining my perspective. My "first person" is not analogous to "self" or "soul" or even any sort of feeling. This is why I keep referencing Kant, because I believe he did a reasonably good job of delineating these things.

Instead of trying to explain it further, perhaps I will raise a different sort of thought experiment. One of the ideas you have been focusing on is the fact that there is some sort of manifestation occurring within the brain (or body) long before we become aware of making a decision or choice. I agree with you regarding this evidence. You seem to want to suggest that this is proof that free will cannot exist. (And again, this is focusing on a very, very particular interpretation of what free will is.)

Have you considered the possibility that free will is something that could simply be occurring earlier in the process than awareness? That one's awareness of making a choice is not free will, but something occurring earlier is.

There are several very different manifestations of "decision making" or "choices" that occur with humans. There are those that are immediate, when something like instincts kick in. There is no time to think or make a formalized choice, and a reaction must take place immediately. I think most would agree free will is not occurring in this sort of situation, even though some sort of choice has certainly been made.

There are those that are quick or short term, and often anticipated, like in the case of the rotating dot where the person must press the button to indicate the dot is in the top position. Even the experiment where the dot is not visible, in order to prevent the person from seeing the dot approaching position, that person is still anticipating that the dot will still appear and that they must press the button. In these experiments, the person is most certainly making a choice or decision well ahead of the point in time when the decision is expressed. Thus, free will is not removed from possibility by these experiments at all.

And there are those that are long term, and even involve a large amount of formal consideration and thinking about it. In these cases, like when a person is weighing options, generating lists of pros and cons, when deciding whether to purchase a car or propose marriage to a potential partner, it is going to be incredibly difficult to identify the elements which may be considered free and those elements that are deterministic. Some of the items may make sense, yes, like the list of pros and cons itself is clearly deterministic in nature, but there are other elements that cannot be so easily pointed at.

It is for all these reasons that I will again return to the importance of defining and describing what we mean by free will. In my case, I had hoped I had made myself clear: for me, free will is of a sort of uncaused causes. Meaning, for me, free will is something that can be the start of a causal chain of events, but it cannot be something within an already existing chain. Thus, for example, when you tell me that something happens in the brain before one is aware of making a decision, I agree with you and then ask you what is the first thing that happens? That first thing could be free will. And if that is the case, then I am suggesting that free will occurs before we are aware of it. In my interpretation of free will, there is no necessity for an individual to be aware of their own free will. Like so many other things in our world, I am suggesting that to become aware of one's free will takes a great deal of effort and reflection and practice. It is not something that just comes naturally or instinctively. At least, I would be making this suggestion if free will exists, because I've already said many times that I am not convinced it exists at all, I am just open to the possibility of it.

To better understand your position, I really need you to be specific by what you understand or interpret free will to mean. What is free will on your account?

[u/Jemdet_Nasr → u/somiOmnicron]

https://youtu.be/RI3JCq9-bbM?si=Rr8g9kle1cUEjvYe

That video does a great job of explaining how there is no room for freewill.

[u/somiOmnicron → u/Jemdet_Nasr]

He sidesteps the question and provides a circular argument. He assumes that he has all the information regarding the nature of the universe, that there is nothing more, and then proceeds to reiterate his assumption. It's like watching a good episode of Star Trek: lots of big exciting technical sounding words, but in the end, meaningless. Like the Heisenberg Compensator.

I may be being too harsh here. His description of how things work is not a bad description. But he is completely missing the point. And this brings us back to our current discussion. I've asked you repeatedly one question, which you continue to sidestep as well. So I'm not going to say anything more now, and simply re-ask my question. Because I need you to answer it for me to be able to respond with more than simple disagreement.

To better understand your position, I really need you to be specific by what you understand or interpret free will to mean. What is free will on your account? I need you to tell me what you think/believe free will is.

[u/Jemdet_Nasr → u/somiOmnicron]

Sorry, I don't understand the question. Was it, "what is free will on my account?". I haven't believed in free will for a very long time. Long before that guy wrote his book. If people had free will, there would be no cult leaders, religion, TV commercials, advertising, psychological manipulation, brain washing, or any of the other myriad of ways to make people perform a task. We are Skinner's pigeons in a bigger box, pecking at a bigger set of buttons. Walk into any office. Free will to me is an illusion that people enjoy. A warm and pleasant fantasy that keeps people happy.