The illogical idea proves free will

[Nous]

I offered up that it could be explained as program, but apparently that doesn't count.

It obviously doesn't account for anything to refer to the entering into and fulfilling a 20-year contract as a “program”. You didn't demonstrate that humans are able to correct predict events 20-years in the future that are not within their voluntary control.

You were challenged to show that you have a "program" by which you can correctly predict an occurrence that will happen to you next week and that is not within your or anyone else's voluntary control. You didn't take up the challenge for obvious reasons.

 

[Willamena]

It obviously doesn't account for anything to refer to the entering into and fulfilling a 20-year contract as a “program”. You didn't demonstrate that humans are able to correct predict events 20-years in the future that are not within their voluntary control.

The use of the word "predict" is biased in favour of fate, which a program cannot participate in. Also, no part of a program is "within their voluntary control," so to demonstrate nothing is pretty hard.

That having no free will is represented by that 'humans are able to correctly predict events 20-years in the future that are not within their voluntary control' is your claim, not mine, to demonstrate.

You were challenged to show that you have a "program" by which you can correctly predict an occurrence that will happen to you next week and that is not within your or anyone else's voluntary control. You didn't take up the challenge for obvious reasons.

You should properly be challenging me to show that I am a program that can correctly make a payment happen next week. Open bank account; key in payment amount; key in automatic payment date; click "Okay."
End of line.

 

[Nous]

The use of the word "predict" is biased in favour of fate, which a program cannot participate in. Also, no part of a program is "within their voluntary control," so to demonstrate nothing is pretty hard.

(1) The issue that the entering into and fulfilling a 20-year mortgage contract, by performing a specific action by a specific day each month, elucidates is that, in the absence of voluntarily willing those monthly acts, humans would have to be making correct predictions of what they would be doing each month 20 years in advance, The fact that your unnamed "program" cannot do that merely illustrates the difference between what a volitional human can do and what this unnamed "program" can do. It isn't my fault that your "program" cannot do what volitional humans do every day. It's your fault for trying to suggest that you can account for the facts by merely calling the entering into and fulfilling of a 20-year contract a "program".

That having no free will is represented by that 'humans are able to correctly predict events 20-years in the future that are not within their voluntary control' is your claim, not mine, to demonstrate.

I will be happy to demonstrate that I can will myself to write "Willamena" backwards in my next post on this thread.

You should properly be challenging me to show that I am a program that can correctly make a payment happen next week. Open bank account; key in payment amount; key in automatic payment date; click "Okay."
End of line.

Those are all ordinary voluntary acts. If you could accomplish those acts, all you would be doing is proving that you can voluntarily will your body to perform certain commonplace acts.

The only way to prove that willful acts such as entering into and fulfilling a contract can be accounted for as something other than willful acts is to show that you can make correct predictions of events far into the future that will happen to you, that are beyond your voluntary bodily control. I again challenge you to do so.

 

[Willamena]

(1) The issue that the entering into and fulfilling a 20-year mortgage contract, by performing a specific action by a specific day each month, elucidates is that, in the absence of voluntarily willing those monthly acts, humans would have to be making correct predictions of what they would be doing each month 20 years in advance, The fact that your unnamed "program" cannot do that merely illustrates the difference between what a volitional human can do and what this unnamed "program" can do. It isn't my fault that your "program" cannot do what volitional humans do every day. It's your fault for trying to suggest that you can account for the facts by merely calling the entering into and fulfilling of a 20-year contract a "program".

Once again, a program can make payments at specific times on specific days without the need to resort to calling it a "correct prediction" of the future.

I will be happy to demonstrate that I can will myself to write "Willamena" backwards in my next post on this thread.

A program could do that.

Incorrect grammar note: if you "will yourself," then you've asserted your will to make "will," which is nonsense.

Solely the use of "I" in a sentence demonstrates will. In attempting to make it explicit, it becomes nonsense.

Those are all ordinary voluntary acts. If you could accomplish those acts, all you would be doing is proving that you can voluntarily will your body to perform certain commonplace acts.

The only way to prove that willful acts such as entering into and fulfilling a contract can be accounted for as something other than willful acts is to show that you can make correct predictions of events far into the future that will happen to you, that are beyond your voluntary bodily control. I again challenge you to do so.

That's the point of the philosophical "zombie": there is no apparent difference between the the voluntary act and the programmed one. Stating that an act is voluntary can't prove that there is a mind (an "I") in there. Stating that it's automatic can't prove that there's no mind in there.

That's why I pointed out that your argument amounts to nothing more than stating.

 

[Nous]

Once again, a program can make payments at specific times on specific days without the need to resort to calling it a "correct prediction" of the future.

That's because a program does not make correct predictions of its future acts that it wasn't programmed to perform.

You do not know of any “program” that decided to do something that it wasn't programmed to do by a volitional person, do you?

Who programmed you to write the sentences in your post? Where is your program? Machine structure programming is detectable. Show us your program.

Name a program that correctly predicted it's future actions that it had never performed before, and that it was not programmed to perform.

(We've already discussed this issue, anemalliW. I don't know why it takes you so long to grasp the simplest points.)

Incorrect grammar note: if you "will yourself," then you've asserted your will to make "will," which is nonsense.

So you can't "will yourself" to write a grammatically correct sentence? Who willed it?

That's the point of the philosophical "zombie": there is no apparent difference between the the voluntary act and the programmed one.

I don't know what "philosophical 'zombie'" you are referring to. Chalmers' "zombie argument" is about experience, not will.

You don't know of any zombie that correctly predicts it future actions that it has never done before and that it was not programmed to perform, do you?

 

[Willamena]

That's because a program does not make correct predictions of its future acts that it wasn't programmed to perform.

You do not know of any “program” that decided to do something that it wasn't programmed to do by a volitional person, do you?

Deciding to do something and then doing it isn't properly described as correctly predicting the future, whether you're a program or not.

Programs can be developed to make their own decisions.

http://cds.nyu.edu/human-decision-making-machine-learning-processes/

Who programmed you to write the sentences in your post? Where is your program? Machine structure programming is detectable. Show us your program.

I am not a machine, that you could peek at my operating system. However, my operating system has stored the information from a life-time on a memory core of living tissue. Some of it has been routinely dumped, some dumped ad hoc, some written and rewitten over, but it's been a good life overall. I've been programmed by circumstance: every thought, every feeling, every bias I've had, every new idea I've encountered, and every decison I've made have contributed to my present configuration.

Name a program that correctly predicted it's future actions that it had never performed before, and that it was not programmed to perform.

Predicting future actions you've never performed before isn't something anyone does.

So you can't "will yourself" to write a grammatically correct sentence? Who willed it?

I can't "will myself" to write; however, if I do write it's by my will. Will isn't something we do, it's us doing something.

Us doing something looks a lot like automatons doing something.

I don't know what "philosophical 'zombie'" you are referring to. Chalmers' "zombie argument" is about experience, not will.

You don't know of any zombie that correctly predicts it future actions that it has never done before and that it was not programmed to perform, do you?

The zombie argument is about minds, hence will, and is relevant to arguments about mental events. Where the person inside, the "I," is absent, mental events are absent.

Zombies don't predict--they have no concept of the future. They do however make promises, make payments, and go about their daily lives living moment to moment.

 

[Nous]

Deciding to do something and then doing it isn't properly described as correctly predicting the future

Explain what happened here:

I will be happy to demonstrate that I can will myself to write "Willamena" backwards in my next post on this thread.

We've already discussed this issue, anemalliW.

?

 

[Nous]

Predicting future actions you've never performed before isn't something anyone does.

I can assure you that post #123 is the first time in my life I have ever said that in the future I would write "Willamena" backwards.

And I can assure you that post #125 was the first time I have ever written "anemalliW."

Your claim that "predicting future actions you've never performed before isn't something anyone does" is directly contradicted by the facts. Right?

Perhaps you just need to figure out what is going on here.

 

[Nous]

I can't "will myself" to write

So, if I asked you, “Is Justin Trudeau or David Cameron the Prime Minister of Canada?,” you would not be able to will yourself to choose (or willfully choose) the correct answer to that question. Is that correct?

 

[Willamena]

Explain what happened here:





?

You said that you would do something, and then you did it. The outcome was quite deliberately brought about.

The outcome of a prediction, though, is uncertain.

 

[Willamena]

I can assure you that post #123 is the first time in my life I have ever said that in the future I would write "Willamena" backwards.

And I can assure you that post #125 was the first time I have ever written "anemalliW."

Your claim that "predicting future actions you've never performed before isn't something anyone does" is directly contradicted by the facts. Right?

Perhaps you just need to figure out what is going on here.

What is going on here, as I've been saying for pages, is not well served by the description "correctly predicted."

 

[Willamena]

So, if I asked you, “Is Justin Trudeau or David Cameron the Prime Minister of Canada?,” you would not be able to will yourself to choose (or willfully choose) the correct answer to that question. Is that correct?

No, I would just select the answer without added steps.

In doing so, my will would be done.

 

[Nous]

You said that you would do something, and then you did it. The outcome was quite deliberately brought about.

The outcome of a prediction, though, is uncertain.

So you agree that I didn't correctly predict the future occurrence of an event that was beyond my volitional control? I deliberately willed myself to type and post the non-word "anemalliW" exactly as I said the day before beforehand that I would.

Do we disagree on something relating to free will?

 

[Willamena]

So you agree that I didn't correctly predict the future occurrence of an event that was beyond my volitional control? I deliberately willed myself to type and post the non-word "anemalliW" exactly as I said the day before beforehand that I would.

I deliberately willed myself to type and post the non-word "anemalliW" exactly as I said the day before beforehand that I would.

Do we disagree on something relating to free will?

Your typing "anemalliW" of your own volition was not the fulfillment of a prediction, but a promise. If your statement means that, then I agree.

I think we disagree on a lot of things relating to free will. Will, to me, isn't an action that I can "do." Rather, my doing an action, any action, is a demonstration of my will.

 

[Nous]

I think we disagree on a lot of things relating to free will. Will, to me, isn't an action that I can "do." Rather, my doing an action, any action, is a demonstration of my will.

With that last sentence it seems you are trying to make a distinction without a difference.

I deliberately willed myself to type and post the non-word "anemalliW" exactly as I said the day before beforehand that I would. There is no other way to account to that series of events. Is there?

 

[Willamena]

With that last sentence it seems you are trying to make a distinction without a difference.

I deliberately willed myself to type and post the non-word "anemalliW" exactly as I said the day before beforehand that I would. There is no other way to account to that series of events. Is there?

The other way to account for the event is with less of a series.

 

[Nous]

The other way to account for the event is with less of a series.

I have no idea what that is supposed to mean. If you believe you can account for the facts--for which you said an "outcome was quite deliberately brought about"--as anything other me deliberately willing myself to type the particular non-word that I said I would type, let's hear it. Your cryptic one-liners are not explanations of the facts.

 

[Willamena]

I have no idea what that is supposed to mean. If you believe you can account for the facts--for which you said an "outcome was quite deliberately brought about"--as anything other me deliberately willing myself to type the particular non-word that I said I would type, let's hear it. Your cryptic one-liners are not explanations of the facts.

I merely meant that you could remove the superfluous step of "willing yourself," and say the same thing. You deliberately typed the particular word backwards.

 

[Nous]

I merely meant that you could remove the superfluous step of "willing yourself," and say the same thing. You deliberately typed the particular word backwards.

Again, what distinction are you trying to make? How does one deliberately say that one is going to type a word backwards in one's next post, then deliberately type that word backwards in the next post, without engaging in a series of willful acts?

To say that one deliberately did something is to say that one willfully did it. Right? It means that one willed one's act.

(It actually took a modicum of concentration and attention to correctly write “Willamena” backwards. Looking at “Willamena,” it's difficult for me to readily pronounce the backward-written word. One has to consciously identify and type each letter when reading the letters right-to-left. There's nothing automatic or natural about it. Try writing “Alexandra” or “Napoleon” backwards.)

 

[Willamena]

Again, what distinction are you trying to make? How does one deliberately say that one is going to type a word backwards in one's next post, then deliberately type that word backwards in the next post, without engaging in a series of willful acts?

One doesn't.

However, one doesn't have to will oneself to engage in these acts.

The distinction is that "will" isn't an activity, it's not a step in the process. To add it is to add something superfluous.

To say that one deliberately did something is to say that one willfully did it. Right? It means that one willed one's act.

To say that one "willed something" is not the same as to say that they willfully "did something." The former invokes the supernatural and images of mental powers, but the latter is normal vernacular.

"Will" isn't something we do, it's just us doing something. Writing backwards can be that something, but "will" cannot. It's not an activity.

(It actually took a modicum of concentration and attention to correctly write “Willamena” backwards. Looking at “Willamena,” it's difficult for me to readily pronounce the backward-written word. One has to consciously identify and type each letter when reading the letters right-to-left. There's nothing automatic or natural about it. Try writing “Alexandra” or “Napoleon” backwards.)

It took mental concentration to write, yes.