Definitions don't require proof. We define intentionality as thinking about something, as opposed to the actual thing.

Try to define exactly what you mean by consciousness in one sentence then. Clear thoughts are usually concise. Just the definition so I can try to have a clue about what you are talking about.

For instance:

Consciousness: The state of being awake and reactive to external stimuli

Or

Consciousness: The concept of self-awareness.

If you have a 3 paragraph long definition for just one word, there is probably a problem with your thoughts on it.

For Searle you need to distinguish this from mere syntax and symbol manipulation. So far "thinking about things" is already separate from the thing itself in a merely syntactical sense. But, intentionality is different still.

Would there be any way to "test" LFW with AI or does this just lead to the whole zombie debate? Uh, might be able to clarify this later but hopefully you can read into it well enough.

For perhaps the 10th time ITT, NO...no way to test.

I don't have to do anything for Searle

I will read up on his stuff directly. I have the basics, but will read the source material. Any good critiques of his work out there?

we're just moss with toes, and you're asking if free will exists?

I'm not analogizing; if lagdonk is a pessimist or ITT accepts the pessimist's thesis, then he rules out any kind of genuine responsibility. The pessimist's thesis is an explicit rejection of genuine responsibility. If in discussing the phenomenology of willing lagdonk equivocated and tried to sneak in some sense of genuine responsibility that was compatible with determinism, then you would be right in criticizing him for being inconsistent (he would then be some variety of compatibilist, not a pessimist). I don't think he did that but that's not for me to say; I just wanted to clearly restate that a pessimist rejects any kind of genuine responsibility.

But my response was primarily directed at something else about your comments. You seem to think determinism rules out a lot of other things in addition to freedom and responsibility, so I posted to find out what your views were.

If it makes just as much sense to say that P's parents proved the theorem, then as you say it makes just as much sense to say that the Big Bang proved the theorem. But the Big Bang also proved Fermat's last theorem, while P did not prove Fermat and P's parents did not prove Fermat. So in what way is it arbitrary to say that P proved the Pythagorean theorem when P is the most proximate cause (ie it would be wrong to say that P, the proximate cause of proving the Pythagorean theorem, is the proximate cause of proving Fermat)?

Or if “P proved the Pythagorean theorem” is the same as “P's parents proved the Pythagorean theorem” then if P's parents were mathematicians and actually proved the Pythagorean theorem, you would not be able to infer that from the sentence “P's parents proved the Pythagorean theorem” because that could equally mean P proved the Pythagorean theorem.

But even if your point stands, then libertarians would be equally unable to say something like “the moon causes the tides” because it's really the Big Bang that caused the tides. Seems like an unnecessary verbal obstacle to me.

I was aiming at something slightly different with “certainly true”. How would you answer the question, “how does P know that the Pythagorean theorem is correct”? I don't know what the right answer is, but if the answer is something like valid deduction from axioms, then I do not see why a person cannot be determined to prove and know that he proved a theorem. Or, I don't see how having the ability to choose adds anything to being able to know that any particular theorem is correct. Presumably, a theorem is correct for certain a priori reasons. If I choose one theorem over another, I haven't altered the a priori reasons that make the theorem correct.

Concerning meaning, I'll punt to any lurking philo people here. As far as I know, the topic of meaning is not usually preoccupied with the metaphysical problem of free will. If you consider something like Tarski's theory of truth or Davidson's theory of meaning, you'll find no criterion of determinism or libertarian freedom. If you shift to phil of mind, you might find dualists who deny free will (epiphenomenalism) or libertarian physicalists. I wouldn't deny that there's a correlation between accepting libertarianism and favoring a certain conception of intentionality (as durka does), but I can't remember any definition of intentionality that has an explicit criterion of free will.

Curious, consider this progression of questions (I don't know if I have a good point here, but indulge me):

1) Do you think that the existence of souls is empirically underdetermined?

2) Do you think that the existence of minds is empirically underdetermined?

3) Do you think that substance dualism is empirically underdetermined?

I might be inclined to answer yes, maybe, no. The reason is there seems to be an a priori problem in (3): the idea that an extended substance can interact with a non-extended substance.

So the analogy would be that the free will problem is like question 3, there is an a priori conceivability problem in addition to any empirical underdetermination problem.

What observable phenomena is there that can fully encapsulate the concept of consciousness from an external viewer's perspective? In particular, how would you "prove" that I'm conscious by purely empirical means?

I think this is a useful thought experiment to consider: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room

It's meaningless. It's just another domino. It's not as if you had the ability to choose what wager you placed. You just placed the wager that you were determined in advance to place. Just like the outcome is whatever outcome that was already determined.

The bolded sentence is really wordy, and I'm not even sure if that is a sensible rendering of 'meaning.'

For example, the speech "it is raining" will not cause Bella to reach the internal state of awareness that 'it is wet' if it's not actually wet. Or to put it another way, if you took Pavlov's dog, you could say that the 'meaning' of the ringing bell is that the dog will salivate, but only when it actually causes the dog to salivate. Otherwise, it means that the dog will not salivate.

I don't think you can reduce meaning to a cause-and-effect pattern of this type.

I think your oversimplification fails to convey anything of value with respect to the concept of "meaning."

'Saucepan' is a collection of symbols without meaning. It is not a representative of any specific object or class of objects. There is no abstract concept of what a "saucepan" might be (described by how it is used or whatever).

Consciousness is that which I experience when I find myself responding to my environment in a non-automatic way.

It's not that helpful to you because I don't think I have the capacity to fully describe what consciousness actually is. There's not even anything remotely close to a consensus on what it is that constitutes consciousness, so I don't see why it's reasonable at this time to believe there is a sufficient one sentence definition.

Maybe I missed it and you can tell me which post you answered by why do you believe determinism=fatalism?

Because I think that freedom is a necessary condition for not-fatalism.

Call it a causal tracing. The event labeled "proving Fermat's Last Theorem" happens at a specific moment in time. Anything that preceded that event which also had some influence (however indirect) can be said to have contributed to the proof. This goes back to the pooping dog in post #197:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...&postcount=197

Huh? If event Q precedes event R, how does it make sense that R caused Q? This is not a bidirectional implication, and the two statements you gave are not "the same."

This is an interesting point. I honestly don't object to this notion, because there is a sense in which the cosmological mechanics are deterministic. I sort of see this as a long chain of causal reasoning.

Why do we have tides? Because we have a moon.
Why do we have a moon? Because (actually, I don't know why).
Why ( )? ....

And you can trace it all the way back to the beginning using strictly deterministic processes.

But you can't do this with human interactions.

Why did you eat a hot dog? Because I wanted a hot dog.
Why did you want a hot dog? Because I did.

There is a place where *I* enter the causal chain as an independent agent, and it happens in a way that *I* am the closest independent causal element.

First, the "theorem" doesn't carry meaningful content in a deterministic world. What we view as "logic" is not of value in the sense of deciding between "true" and "false". It's just noise. But you're right that the truth of that statement is established independently of anything that happens within the determined system. Nor does it influence the act of writing the proof of it.

I'll draw back on another analogy I've used in another context. If a young child copies the symbols in the proof of Fermat's Last Theorem, does this mean that the child "proved" Fermat's Last Theorem? Does the act of writing symbols constitute the proof, or is a proof something about the cognitive process that leads one to rightly reach the conclusion? I think it's the latter. Therefore, the determined system can "generate a proof" of the theorem, but the process which "generated the proof" doesn't have the capacity of understanding the theorem because there is no content carried in the actions. It's just a bunch of meaningless symbols.

Do you know of any sources that I can read about the link between determinism and fatalism? I could go searching google for "does determinism imply fatalism" and see what people think but if you know of anything interesting off the top of your head that would be cool.

You're missing the point. Because your definition of consciousness is inextricably linked to LFW, if we assume that this is in fact a deterministic universe, then it is really only the case that your definition of consciousness is wrong - not that the thing you experience that leads you to that definition is non-existent.

Sorry, but you've misunderstood. For the purposes of this question we are assuming libertarian free will exists. Is a wager I place on the unknown outcome of a fully deterministic process 'meaningless'? If so, why, and if not, why not?

It may help to consider 'meaning' as being more like something people do than some quality of objects that is observed by people.

No indeed, it will provoke in Bella the belief that Abner has said that it is raining. That is what it will provoke even if it is raining; either Bella will test the claim, or she will accept or reject it based on some other criterion, such as her previous experience of Abner's reliability in correctly identifying rain. The point is that there is nothing innate to the sounds or symbols involved in the communication that can be related to the condition of it being rainy.

Fair enough; I don't think you can elevate it above such.

You have offered 'content' which is essentially a synonym for 'meaning', so I would respectfully say, at least I have tried.

I don't understand. Are you saying that abstract concepts would be inconceivable to us in a determined universe? That in a FDU, it would be impossible for us to define things, and to do so in terms of their function?

The only piece that I've ever read on that topic comes from a compatibilist...and the argument depends on an intuition which I don't share (Dennett "I Could Not Have Done Otherwise...So What?" 1984)

You're right to say that if I don't actually have free will, then my definition of consciousness is wrong (in precisely the same way that my definition of "evaluation" is wrong). But this isn't an issue since whatever I "believe" about consciousness couldn't have been avoided anyway, and it's not even clear if those words carry any actual content anymore.

The wager can have meaning to you, but the deterministic process results in no meaning. If I flip a coin, whether it comes of heads or tails is meaningless in itself. However, if you attach a meaning to it, then the event carries meaning to you insofar as you have decided that it has meaning.

Meaning as a classification of behaviors? I guess so... but that seems odd to me.

If Abner says "it is raining" it causes Bella to believe that "Abner said 'it is raining'." It seems that this happens completely devoid of any concept of "wet." So maybe I'm not really understanding what you mean.

I'll go back to Conway's Life simulation (because to me that stands as a nice prototypical deterministic universe). Is it possible for a collection of dots to "conceive" of an abstract concept? Do those dots have the ability to "define" something in some sort of way that is actually meaningful? I have a hard time trying to understand what that would mean.

I think I found something that addresses this called "Fatalism, Incompatibilism, and the Power to Do Otherwise" but I almost need a philosophy degree to read it.

(1C) Where H is a true proposition specifying the intrinsic state of the world at some time in the remote past, and L is a true proposition specifying what the laws of nature are, the conjunction H and L entails that I do A today. (Causal determinism)
(2C) Necessarily, if the conjunction of H and L is true and entails that I do A today, then I shall do A today.
(3C) I am, today, unable to affect whether the conjunction of H and L is true (One cannot affect a combination of facts about the past and facts about what the laws of nature are)
Therefore:
(4C) I am (today) unable to avoid doing A today (No power to do otherwise)

This is an argument from determinism to hard determinism. Then it goes on about the principle of closure and other things that I don't understand at all. But I understand the basic argument here. Somewhat!

OK.

I don't understand how the coinflip 'results in no meaning'. Tails I lose, heads I win. These are different meanings and the fact that they stem from a free-willed decision to set terms to a wager does not change the fact that the freely-willed outcome is never realised if the coin is not flipped.
I don't think so, if I understand what you're getting at with 'classification of behaviours'. I mean that 'meaning' for me is generally better thought of as a verb than a noun. Does that help?

The concept of wetness is known to both parties, and would have to be for meaning concerning wetness to be communicated between them.

You're going to have to pin down what it is you're saying when you say a thing 'has meaning' or 'has no meaning'. 'Content' really is just a synonym.

That's just a basic and pretty standard way to formalize what I've been calling the deterministic thesis. So, it's just a formalization of "laws of nature" combined with "initial states of the world" lead to a determined outcome whereby the agent has no power to affect the course of events. You can carry on if you want and I can explain things.

So just because decision making is a rather complicated thing happening in our brains that we cant currently test adequately, it is suddenly untestable a priori?
Again, I dont see how the theories on determinism are different qualitatively from other theories, ie durka can say that very thing about any theory.

Please explain a bit more how this local underdeterminedness works exactly, how it is different from global underderminedness and why this applies to free will but not science, cause I dont understand.

The last sentence is the distinction. I suggest you look it up...should only take a few mintues of reading.

So the 'local' part of this didnt help at all. Im supposing that what you meant was the distinction between holist and constrastive, then claiming that a particular contrastive argument, namely that it is permanently underdetermined by all possible evidence, applies to the free will/determinism argument.
I think I understand the argument, but I disagree with it.

I can accept that one can say that I am unable to combat the argument of my own free will or determinedness (with arguments similar to that of solipsims), but for other people in the outside world (once accepted) it is quite a different matter.
Are we currently unable to observe a human's decision procedure adequately, absolutely. Will we NEVER be able to observe a human's decision procedure adequately, I dont think so.

What I mean is that when you flip the coin, the two outcomes "heads is up" and "tails is up" can only result in "heads is up" and "tails is up." That the free-willed person wants to respond to that does not depend on anything inherent about the coin itself.

I don't see your point unless you're looking at cause-and-effect instead of determinism. It sounds like you're saying that the coin being flipped is causing a response by the freely-willed person, and therefore is part of a deterministic process. But this doesn't use determinism as it is used in this thread.

Not really. If I say that people "mean" something in some sort of action or behavior, it translates in my head to "intend." But "intention" is an expression of free will, so it's still not making sense to me what you're saying.

I hold meaning as an abstract concept in the same way that I think of numbers being an abstract concept. I can have four apples. I can have four toothpicks. There is an abstract relationship between the two collections of objects. That abstract relationship is what gives "four" its meaning.

In the absence of that abstract relationship, it is possible to have a collection of four apples and four toothpicks, but there is no meaning to "four" on its own. That word is tied to the apples and tied to the toothpicks and it's not the same notion of "four" each time since each usage is tied to a specific example and not to an abstract concept.