Only if you consider 'an evaluation' to be in the exclusive purview of libertarian free will. If the universe is determined, then all this time what we have been calling 'an evaluation' is in fact simply the process of determination taking its course - the petrol is making the car go, and 'evaluations' have never been what you are defining them as - instead, they have always been what I am defining them as.

Are we not in agreement on this?

Sure, you can call it an evaluation, but then that's just another collection of meaningless symbols, like everything else. It's not as if you have actually "evaluated" anything (with the meaning that is meant to be conveyed by that word). You might as well call it a "aksejbks" so you don't equivocate. That is,

aksejbks - Going through the motions of an evaluation.

Edit: This is the whole point about the entire mess being nothing more than an illusion. No matter how deeply you want to say your illusion runs, it's still an illusion. It's very hard for any statements to carry any meaning.

No. It cannot be going through the motions of an evaluation, because that implies that evaluations in the sense you are defining them are possible, and constitute something different than an "aksejbks" - my point is that they aren't and don't. What you right now are doing when you are 'evaluating' the content of this post is an aksejbks.

I do not see how the second statement follows from the first.

The problem here is structural.

Under the determinist assumption, the words have no meaning. This whole conversation is devoid of content. It's simply dominoes falling down one after another. So you can say that my "evaluating" is aksejbks, and you would be right. That is, you would be saying absolutely nothing, and I'm giving you absolutely nothing in return.

Think about what "meaning" is in the context of a Conway life simulation.

I don't think I agree with this. What is the meaning of 'meaning', if that's not an impossible question?

I don't know what that is and I'm too tired to google it. I'll be back in a few hours, can you tell me what definition of meaning you're applying?

That's the point. What value is there assigning meaning to a line of colored dominoes falling over? We can say that a red domino falling over is "happy" and that a blue one is "sad" but it's hard to really make sense of what those words mean. We can even say that the red domino is in a state of "happiness" or is "experiencing happiness" when it is falling over.

But what would we really be saying other than "the red domino is falling over"?

I'm asserting, from a libertarian perspective, that meaning is precisely that which we expect it to mean, and that we cannot even have this conversation in a meaningful way unless you at least assent to the libertarian lexicon (for the determinist lexicon is empty).

In other words, if you redefine the "meaning" of everything so that we're talking using the determinist language, we can't communicate anything useful at all. An "evaluation" can no longer mean what we mean by "evaluation." It's only aksejbks.

I guess I'll google 'Conway life simulation' later (I keep thinking you're offline).

It seems to me that you are arguing that the impression you receive of having LFW implies that were determinism true, what we think of as 'consciousness' would not exist. Am I close?

The question wasn't rhetorical, believe it or not. What is the meaning of 'meaning' in the libertarian lexicon? "What we would expect it to mean" can't suffice, because I don't have a Standard English:Libertarian Free Will dictionary handy.

What has been removed from it?

Apart from 'we can't communicate anything useful at all', this is exactly what I've been saying. I'm confusticated.

What about a Wittgensteinian conception of meaning?

Determinism, if true, doesn't seem to have any implications on any social interaction or behaviour. It may have implications on some philosophical conceptions of "meaning", but Wittgenstein's "meaning is use" view, where the meaning of words arises purely through social interaction, seems pretty much untouched.

Yeah. If determinism is true, my consciousness is just as much consciousness as a rock rolling down a hill, or a tree choosing the direction in which to grow its roots.

I would simply say that "meaning" is the "content" of the words being used. My point is that there is no "content" in a deterministic universe.

Content. Meaning. Anything which asserts that there is something more than a collection of empty symbols.

It sounds like you're agreeing with

If so, then I don't know where the confusion is. You see that you are necessarily redefining words in a deterministic world so that they carry a different meaning than what we *intend* for them to mean when we use them. This redefinition of terms is not limited to just "evaluation" but the entire dictionary. But if I accept this, I don't know if I'm saying anything at all.

Not being an actual philosopher, and I'm not familiar with Wittgenstein. So there's a reasonable chance that what I'm about to say is meaningless with respect to his view.

I agree that determinism will not affect any behaviors. The behaviors are simply what they are. As far as I can tell, determinism affects the content of the behaviors. For example, "1 + 1 = 2" carries arithmetic content. It represents a meaningful relationship between symbols. We can view it is having meaning in an abstract sort of sense (so that "1 + 1 = 2" carries content that is valid regardless of the expression of it, such as I + I = II).

In a deterministic world, we would have to see "1 + 1 = 2" as meaning only "1 + 1 = 2" and not representing anything except for "1 + 1 = 2." In other words, there would be no useful translation to "I + I = II" because there's no actual content in the symbols. Those two statements are as different as "dog" and "c'est la vie!"

Edit: I'm not even sure if "1 + 1 = 2" can be broken down into meaningful components, such as "1", "+", "=" and "2". I think that would be like saying that the word "dog" can be broken into the individual components "d" "o" and "g". They're just symbols strung together in a specific way.

This has been addressed as the 'pragmatic' rejection of 'free will' as a pseudo-problem.

Show how this follows from not having free will, please. The domino is not even a straw man, so I call bull. You are attaching more meaning to free will than it needs to have.

Free will: Being able to act without or despite external or previous causes.

Previous causes include EVERYTHING that led up to you being who you are today, including your previous thoughts, that class you took your freshman year, your genetic makeup, what you had for breakfast 3 days ago, etc. etc. etc.

Unless you mean something different than what I am supposing you mean when you say free will. (?)

Gravity is an idea that can be shown empirically. Drop something. It is pretty convincing. This is a concept that can be determined as either true or false. Either stuff falls or it doesn't.

Free will doesn't have such a demonstration. Neither does determinism. Determinists can try to show examples of determinism applying to people until they are blue in the face, and Durka is still going to be able to say "nuh uh, people are different than that." Durka could try to show examples of people making decisions without prior cause, but it isn't going to be at all convincing to me.

Determinism doesn't rule out consciousness...but I think that it may rule out intentionality.

All science is globally underdetermined but there's something special about free will being locally underdetermined. I think that we can falsify a great number of empirical theories...but that's not the case w/ free will.

You mean intentionality in the "aboutness" sense, correct?

I can try to argue against this, but want to make sure that I am not just arguing against something you aren't intending to posit.

It's the sense that Searle discusses: "aboutness" yes. Basically, if determinism is true I think that we're all computers (and computers can't think)...according to Searle, at least. (Dennett would like to have a word with that )

I think we're going to disagree on what consciousness is, and not free will. It is really hard to pin down what one means by consciousness. It's usually characterized by an awareness or responsiveness to stimuli. But that definition allows one to say that plants are conscious because they can turn themselves towards the sun, or release certain chemicals in response to bugs or whatever.

But even if we try to keep it to the animal world (by explicitly making this somewhat arbitrary distinction), we still have difficulties trying to figure out what we mean. Does a beetle have consciousness? What about a dog? What is the thing that distinguishes consciousness from whatever it is that the beetle is doing? (And does the dog have consciousness?)

So as far as consciousness goes, there's something about meaningful cognition that seems important. There's something about an awareness of the surroundings in a way that is more than that of a "passive experiencer" of stimuli and something more than an "auto-responder" to stimuli. But I don't really know how to characterize this outside of some sort of free-response mechanism. I view myself as being conscious because I have the capacity to take information in, reflect on it, and draw a meaningful conclusion based on the information plus whatever other cognitive processes went on. But if the conclusion I reach is forced on me by the big bang, I don't really know whether there were any meaningful cognitive processes at all.

This may or may not conform to whatever the current state of knowledge regarding "consciousness" is (but I believe that the current state is still extremely nebulous, so I can't be that far out of line).

Consciousness of oneself as a discrete entity with desires, ability to imperfectly predict the future, and (maybe?) language should be sufficient to explain intentionality.

If you mean that intentionality cannot exist without free will, I am not sure how that would be so. If that is what you are saying, then you are positing a proof of the existence of free will.

Self awareness suffices here as a good description of consciousness.

In the second part you are describing perception.

No, cuz that would beg the question that intentionality exists!

Sorry. I didn't think that intentionality was at issue. I thought about an apple today, not a particular one, just an apple in general. Therefore, intentionality exists.

No question begged by fake Durka.

But isn't the whole point of undertermination that all observable phenomena are equally compatible with both accounts? So clearly the phenomenon you are labelling 'consciousness' would still exist, it simply wouldn't meet the criteria you apply for consciousness, being that 'consciousness' is for you somehow inextricably tied to LFW.

You can accept the existence of deterministic processes, right? Assuming LFW, is a wager that I place on the unknown outcome of a deterministic process 'meaningless'? And if not, why not?

Well then this is a problem, because your understanding of 'meaning' differs radically from mine. I don't consider 'meaning' to have any validity except with respect to the drives that result in its attachment and the responses that attachment provokes in others. As in, Abner observes that it is wet, and produces the speech act It is raining. Receipt of this speech by Bella provokes in her the internal state of awareness that it is wet. The sounds or symbols we use to produce 'It is raining' do not have any innate meaning or 'content', and this holds true whether LFW exists or not. The process of attachment and provocation likewise holds true whether LFW exists or not.

The above is simplified and intends only to demonstrate that the 'loss of meaning' you impute to a deterministic worldview does not necessarily follow.

Can you explain what is different about the word 'saucepan' in a deterministic universe as compared to a LFW universe?

That doesn't demonstrate that intentionality exists...heck, intentionality may be locally underdetermined too: what constitutes evidence or proof that it exists?

Let's take a step back and see where this all came from.

Does the initial question make sense using "self-awareness" instead of consciousness? It reads as something completely different to me.

So I really think we're talking about consciousness and not self-awareness.

I don't think these are disjoint concepts. I view consciousness as the broad category, and perception would be one of many ways in which consciousness can be interpreted and understood. That is, perception is a vital aspect of our understanding of consciousness.