Determinism vs. Free Will

[Theftz22]

...really? That's the conclusion? The conclusion is that the mind is not identical to the brain?

...have you not seen the argument before?

Which is just a confusing way of stating:

"The mind is a different concept than the brain"

As I've said previously: Duh! This comes naturally from the fact that we've defined them to be different! You haven't yet shown that minds exist at all. (Which is what we're really interested in) You've just shown that they're NOT identical to something.

No, the conclusion is that the mind itself is not identical to the brain, not that the concepts are not identical. Again, I haven't defined them to be different. I define the mind as the source of consciousness, which would include qualia, intentionality, experience, thoughts, beliefs, etc. Now that does not itself preclude the mind from being identical to the brain! The brain I would define as "an organ of soft nervous tissue contained in the skull of vertebrates". On these two definitions, it may still be the case that my consciousness is identical the soft tissue in the skull of vertebrates, which is the thesis of reductive materialism. So the definition does not beg the question. The question of whether or not the mind exists at all is for me, a non-issue. Do you really deny that you have consciousness? At least I know that I have consciousness. To offer a reduction of the mind to the brain is at least tenable, but eliminative materialism is just patently false.

I can also state that Pink Unicorns are not identical to brains. Does this mean that Pink Unicorns exist?

Of course not. But consciousness, and hence the mind, does exist. The only question will be whether or not the mind is identical to the brain.

That's certainly not true. Materialism just holds that everything which exists is physical. Minds not being identical to brains is perfectly fine as long as minds don't exist.

You're confusing materialism in general with respect to materialism in the philosophy of the mind.

(Alternatively, you can redefine "mind" to mean something entirely physical. And some do. At which point you can say the mind is identical to the brain. But I think that just makes this conversation confusing when words keep changing definitions. "Mind" here means something non-physical.)

My conception of the mind holds that it is not physical but is not identical to the brain, so that's a non-sequitur. I've always defined the mind as the source of consciousness, so whether or not that is physical or non-physical will be a further question. You're using different definitions than I am.

?!

I never mentioned property dualism once...

I had assumed that that's what you were referring to since after all, you are debating me, and the position I hold to about the mind is property dualism. So it would be useless for you to be addressing some other position in your posts towards me.

I'm not trying to prove materialism true here. I'm just refuting a claim by someone else.

To refute the claim that the mind is not identical to the brain would be to show that the mind is identical to the brain, which is just to prove materialism with respect to the mind.

This would only matter if minds (and therefore mental properties) exist. No such thing has been shown.

So in conclusion, your "Modal Argument" just merely shows that the brain and mind are not identical. Great. I'll grant you that. This doesn't need an argument, since it follows naturally from the fact that the concepts were defined to be different. They will not be identical.

This does not show that minds exist. You can go on talking about mental processes and properties all you want. But you haven't shown that minds exist.

See top of post.

 

[Suntan Luigi]

Been pretty busy this week.

BPC:

As far as studies go. You keep insisting over and over again about how incompetent the researchers are and how they can't form a proper study. I've already shown that the kinds of studies you desire are impractical. And I have given reasons why this is so, whereas you have not shown how it is practical to videotape 10,000,000 people 24/7, and to catch every NDE on camera.

Furthermore, one study should be enough to throw doubt on certain explanations if it is reasonably conducted and rigorous enough. And the Lancet study fits this criterion very well. If you think this study is not rigorous or well conducted, that's your opinion. Someone else obviously thought it was rigorous enough to be featured in a prominent scientific journal, and that matter much more than what you think about it.

You are just raising the bar too high. At that height, how am I supposed to find proof?

As far as supernatural things go, I have one question. How do you define "supernatural"? Do you see concepts like the soul and leaving the body as supernatural? This is not how I see them. They are a part of our universe and follow the laws of the universe just like anything else. They are just not very well understood. In this sense I wouldn't classify the soul as something supernatural. I see it as a very reasonable explanation of things like consciousness and NDEs.

You know, here is a good analogy of how I view the soul. Imagine that you are locked in a room with one door. All of a sudden you hear a knocking on the door. You ask who is there but no response is given. The knocking stops shortly after. Later on you think back: what caused this knocking? We could assume it was a person, but there is no way to conclusively verify this (because you are locked in). Maybe you imagined(hallucinated) the whole thing, or maybe you had a memory implanted somehow, or maybe some other explanation that you don't know about. These are all valid explanations. But, be honest, is it such a bad assumption to think that, in this case, what happened was that there really was a person at the door? And later on let's assume that you somehow figure out that the chance that it could have been a false memory or hallucination is very slim (Lancet study). Why not assume that the thing you heard was real and that there was a person at the door?

To me, what you are saying is, "There is no evidence that the knocking at the door was real, therefore we cannot make the assumption that it was real". And in a very strict sense you are right. But why not make that assumption if it makes sense? If evidence does come along that the knocking was in fact not real, then it would be wise to conclude as such. But until such evidence comes up, why not stick with an assumption which explains people and helps us function in our daily lives?

Also, the soul is better then other unverifiable explanations. To use the analogy, that's like suggesting, for example, that the knocking was not caused by a person at the door and instead it was caused by birds flying into the door at just the right intervals. Which assumption makes more sense to you?

As for my other argument, I'd rather let underdogs22 take care of that, I think he understands what I was trying to say.

Altf4:

As I described right below what you quoted, morality doesn't merely apply to humans. But it's different for every species. An ant has a very different set of morals than a vulture does. Ours happens to be complex, but only because we are complex.

Morality as an evolutionary construct is complex in proportion to how evolutionary complex the intelligence of the species is. So a virus hasn't much morality to speak of. It's borderline not even "alive".

To have morality is to have a concept of right and wrong. I don't understand what you mean when you say that animals have a concept of right and wrong. Animals clearly don't have this concept. A bear doesn't think about whether it is right or wrong to take honey from bees.

But maybe this isn't how you define morality? Then there really is no such thing as "right" or "wrong", is there?

"Doing what they have been programmed to do" is a not terribly inaccurate way of describing what I'm calling morality, here. Yes.

This suggests that you could program a computer to have morality? This brings us back to the whole computer versus human thing. No matter how, how, how advanced you make a computer it will never develop sentience or "become self-aware", it will never actually experience anything. "But what about the Turing Test?" Look at the "Chinese Room" thought experiment, which shows that "a program cannot give a computer a "mind" or "understanding", regardless of how intelligently it may make it behave." (Wikipedia)

If machines someday do develop sentience or "become self-aware", you would have to treat those machines just the same as humans, and they would have to have rights, etc. "I, Robot" is a nice movie, but it's just a movie.

That's right, there is nothing objectively wrong with anything. Everything is only subjectively right or wrong. Subjective morality is not equivalent to no morality.

I am. And you are. And when enough people collectively view something as wrong, it becomes law, and we punish the behavior. That's how society works.

By this, you are forced to conclude that if the whole world throught burying excess infants alive was OK, then it would become OK. This is not morality.

That's a rather open ended question. You could write a book trying to answer that. So I don't know if I can do it "precisely". But...

Biologically, we're differentiated from our mammalian brethren by our DNA. There are, however, no hard lines that divide species. It's a sliding gradual scale of difference between us and chimps.

Is there no other difference between us and animals, besides our DNA?

No, Free Will is what's needed to transform what I'm describing as morality into what you're describing as morality. Don't suggest that something is "fake" just because it's not what you subscribe to.

What you are describing as morality is subjective, arbitrary, and ultimately meaningless.

I think it's pretty obvious why just asserting that your views "make sense" is not a convincing argument.

In this case I wasn't trying to convince you, rather I was trying to help you understand why I believe what I believe.

No, it doesn't. I told you: I'm perfectly happy to live in the real world. No imaginary friends for me.

And there is a meaning to life. You have to make it for yourself. I don't know why you'd consider your life meaningless without a celestial dictator demanding that you obey his every command. Are you so naturally helplessly subservient that your life loses meaning without someone to boss you around?

Well I consider life without an afterlife as meaningless, because the final, end result will render everything beforehand to be meaningless. And the reason I try to do what I believe God tells me to do is because I know that He knows better than I do, and He knows what is better for me. I don't question God's judgement.

I think "subjective experience" is pretty self explanatory. I just contend that an "experience" (as a mental event) is contained entirely within the brain.

What do you mean by "contained"?

"Consciousness" is the active part of our thinking. You can contrast this with our unconscious thoughts. I'm sure you've seen the Eye Blindspot? It's a wonderful example about how there is a lot of processing that your brain does unconsciously. I'm not a neurologist, so I'm going to be unable to give you a good account of exactly what sections of the brain are responsible for different things. But consciousness is just what we call it when there is sensory perception and reaction, with in a certain area of the brain.

When you say, "our thinking", "our unconscious thoughts", what is this "our" that you are referring to?

 

[AltF4]

Underdogs:

The statement that the mind is not identical to the brain does not imply that immaterial minds (non-physical) exist. To say that two things are not identical just says that it's possible for them to be different, not that they contingently are.

Again, think of "Earth" and "Third planet from the Sun". They are not identical. But you cannot jump to the conclusion that they contingently (in our universe) are not the same. Because they are. All the statement "The mind and body are not identical" accomplishes is showing that it's conceivable that minds and bodies are separate. It does not show that they actually are different in reality. And I'll gladly grant you that there's nothing inherently contradictory about immaterial minds. Just as there's nothing inherently contradictory about Big Foot. They both could possibly exist, but don't in reality.

(And I don't know how you expect to discover such an important piece of knowledge about the state of the universe through a clever trickery of words. As opposed to, you know, actually testing the idea in the real world)

Suntan Luigi:

I don't mean to try to tell you that my view of morality is the only possibly valid view. You asked me a question, (how do I square my view of Free Will with morality) and I answered you. You don't have to agree with it, but I hope you understand it. To say that something is relative is not to say that it doesn't exist. Right and wrong is like right and left. Just because there is no universal and objective "Left" doesn't mean that "left" loses meaning. It's subjective.

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

Been pretty busy this week.

BPC:

As far as studies go. You keep insisting over and over again about how incompetent the researchers are and how they can't form a proper study. I've already shown that the kinds of studies you desire are impractical. And I have given reasons why this is so, whereas you have not shown how it is practical to videotape 10,000,000 people 24/7, and to catch every NDE on camera.

And again, you miss the point: I don't have to show why it is practical. Practicality does not matter. What matters is rigor and sensibility; specifically: can we reliably get the results we need via this testing. It doesn't matter worth a damn to the study of prehistoric biology that finding fossils is an incredibly expensive, tedious, hit-or-miss process. Sure, it sucks that we have to go through the trouble of finding the fossils, but in the early 1900s it wasn't enough to take the skeletons we had and say, "All right, All we have is this one fossil to go on, therefore Iguanadon has a horn on its snout". That's how errors show up. And in this case, we're talking about more or less a complete lack of professional rigor on a topic where people are bound to be fairly biased, due to the nature of the discussion. If videotaping 10,000,000 people 24/7 is what it takes to establish the truth of the claim, then god dammit that's what it needs.

Let's analogize. Imagine if someone hypothesized that the cause of the big bang was the great green arkleseizure. They brought forth several pieces of evidence that were shaky at best and absolutely awful at worst, then demanded, on the basis of that, that everyone accept the theory. Then when people pointed out that there was a good way to gather evidence, it simply requires some very sophisticated, high-tech telescopes and satellites... Would you accept "but it's too impractical" as an excuse and accept their claims based on the absolutely unrigorous "evidence" they've provided?

Furthermore, one study should be enough to throw doubt on certain explanations if it is reasonably conducted and rigorous enough. And the Lancet study fits this criterion very well. If you think this study is not rigorous or well conducted, that's your opinion. Someone else obviously thought it was rigorous enough to be featured in a prominent scientific journal, and that matter much more than what you think about it.

Yes, and as far as I can tell, all it really provided was evidence that such NDEs are not necessarily caused by Anoxic hallucinations.

You are just raising the bar too high. At that height, how am I supposed to find proof?

The hard way. You actually apply scientific rigor, you do things like ensuring that it wasn't anything else, that your explanation is the only valid one, and the like.

As far as supernatural things go, I have one question. How do you define "supernatural"? Do you see concepts like the soul and leaving the body as supernatural? This is not how I see them. They are a part of our universe and follow the laws of the universe just like anything else. They are just not very well understood. In this sense I wouldn't classify the soul as something supernatural. I see it as a very reasonable explanation of things like consciousness and NDEs.

Ah, all right. So the soul is a natural phenomenon. Understandable. But this is what I spoke about in my other post:

You're completely forgetting that you neglected to independently verify any of this. You have not proven the soul. If you could even go so far as to claim this, you have proven that there's some sort of medical phenomenon we do not understand. See also: Elan Vital. Of course, the problem is, you haven't established to any real degree that this phenomenon isn't more than just a malfunction in some part of our brains.

Claiming "it's the soul" is like claiming "it's Yahweh" in response to if there's a god or not: you may be right, your explanation might work, but it's also not very useful and not independently verified in any way, shape, or form. And if you're using the word "Soul" as a word to define the cause of the phenomenon; as in, you're calling said medical phenomenon "the soul leaving the body" or something like that... Well...

(And if I may be perfectly honest, using the word "Soul" in connection with said phenomenon seems more than a little bit disingenuous to me. It's like when William Lane Craig claims there is a creator of the universe and refers to it as "God" – Yes, you could call it that, but that's probably going to confuse some people and cause them to conflate it with what they refer to as "God", or in your case "the soul".)

See what I'm getting at here?

 

[Theftz22]

The statement that the mind is not identical to the brain does not imply that immaterial minds (non-physical) exist. To say that two things are not identical just says that it's possible for them to be different, not that they contingently are.

I'm afraid you've gone back to "square-one" of your objections, so to speak. Firstly, I've already questioned you about why you keep arguing against immaterial minds. That's not my position. I've never posited that the mind is immaterial. And again, the existence of the mind is, for me, not even questionable. I've already stated, I'm defining the mind as something like "the consciousness", where that may be taken to include experience, personal identity, intentionality, thoughts, beliefs, etc. The only question will be whether or not you can offer a reduction of those things into being identical to brain states. And remember again, if two things are possibly not the same thing, then they are actually not the same thing. At all. They have different modal properties, and so since by definition if two things are identical then they share all the same properties, these two things cannot be identical. Not in any possible world, not in the actual world.

Again, think of "Earth" and "Third planet from the Sun". They are not identical. But you cannot jump to the conclusion that they contingently (in our universe) are not the same. Because they are. All the statement "The mind and body are not identical" accomplishes is showing that it's conceivable that minds and bodies are separate. It does not show that they actually are different in reality. And I'll gladly grant you that there's nothing inherently contradictory about immaterial minds. Just as there's nothing inherently contradictory about Big Foot. They both could possibly exist, but don't in reality.

I was hoping that we'd settled the Earth and Third Planet from the sun issue already. They are not the same thing, not in the actual, not in any possible world. I already showed this by showing that it's physically possible that they be different. What is true, that we both agreed on, is that the earth contingently, at the current time, has the property of occupying the relative location that is the third away from the sun between all planets. What it is not, is the same thing as the third planet from the sun.

(And I don't know how you expect to discover such an important piece of knowledge about the state of the universe through a clever trickery of words. As opposed to, you know, actually testing the idea in the real world)

Well I'm sorry to hear that your intuitions about how we can discover things were disconfirmed. But I think that the scientific attitude to take would be to follow the facts wherever they go rather than wishing them away.

 

[AltF4]

So I have absolutely no idea what you're arguing, Underdogs. Wasn't the whole point of this argument to show that non-physical minds exist? It's certainly been what I've been arguing against this whole thread. Now you're saying this isn't what the argument is for?

Suntan Luigi (who was the one that originally brought this up) surely meant the argument as such:

Thus qualia exist and thus this makes the existence of the soul necessary.

Other philosophers clearly do intend this as a proof of immaterial minds:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOTn_wRwDE0



And this still does not follow:

A is conceivable
therefore
A is possible

(As the argument is defined here: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/dualism/#ModArg)

 

[Suntan Luigi]

BPC:

From the Dutch study: "With a purely physiological explanation such as cerebral anoxia for the experience, most patients who have been clinically dead should report one." Not just cerebral anoxia, but any known physiological explanation. It's just logical: If NDE's are simply the result of, for example, some process in the brain gone haywire why is there such low correlation?

NDEs can't be hallucinations or false memories. If these are ruled out then what is left? If you say "We don't know" then how can we possibly rule out everything? No matter what explanation you come up with that is subsequently ruled out you could still say "We don't know".

The Dutch study was a 13 year study. Now I certainly wish more people were open to the idea of a soul, but as this is not the case the funding for the kinds of research you want just doesn't exist at this point in time. Therefore if you want more studies like these you will have to wait. But maybe you won't have to wait too long, because as we speak there is in fact a study being conducted which may provide the evidence you desire. It's called the AWARE study. From (http://www.nourfoundation.com/event...an-Consciousness-Project/the-AWARE-study.html):

"The AWARE (AWAreness during REsuscitation) study is the first launched by the Human Consciousness Project and is led by Dr. Sam Parnia, a world-renowned expert on the study of the human mind and consciousness during clinical death, together with Dr Peter Fenwick and Professors Stephen Holgate and Robert Peveler of the University of Southampton. The team will be working in collaboration with more than 25 major medical centers throughout Europe, Canada, and the United States.

During the AWARE study, physicians will use the latest technologies to study the brain and consciousness during cardiac arrest. At the same time, they will also be testing the validity of out of body experiences and claims of being able to see and hear during cardiac arrest through the use of randomly generated hidden images that are not visible unless viewed from specific vantage points above.

The AWARE study will be complemented by the BRAIN-1 (Brain Resuscitation Advancement International Network - 1) study, in which researchers will conduct a variety of physiological tests in cardiac arrest patients, as well as cerebral monitoring techniques that aim to identify methods to improve the medical and psychological care of patients who undergo cardiac arrest. The studies are being funded by the UK Resuscitation Council, the Horizon Research Foundation, and the Nour Foundation in the United States."

What do you think the results of this study will be?


Alt:

I don't mean to try to tell you that my view of morality is the only possibly valid view. You asked me a question, (how do I square my view of Free Will with morality) and I answered you. You don't have to agree with it, but I hope you understand it. To say that something is relative is not to say that it doesn't exist. Right and wrong is like right and left. Just because there is no universal and objective "Left" doesn't mean that "left" loses meaning. It's subjective.

If your think right and wrong is like right and left then you don't need free will.

What I'm saying though is that right and wrong can't be like right and left. Right and left depends on context, sure. But whether or not an action is right or wrong cannot depend on what we think. In the Arabian peninsula around 550 B.C. pretty much everybody thought that it was OK to bury female infants alive, and it was a very common practice.

This is my argument: If free will does not exist then morality is completely arbitrary and subjective, and you are forced to conclude that if the whole world thought burying excess infants alive was OK, then it would become OK. Do you agree with this?

Also, please address these:

No matter how, how, how advanced you make a computer it will never develop sentience or "become self-aware", it will never actually experience anything. "But what about the Turing Test?" Look at the "Chinese Room" thought experiment, which shows that "a program cannot give a computer a "mind" or "understanding", regardless of how intelligently it may make it behave." (Wikipedia)

If machines someday do develop sentience or "become self-aware", you would have to treat those machines just the same as humans, and they would have to have rights, etc. "I, Robot" is a nice movie, but it's just a movie.

This shows the difference between computers and humans. Humans experience things and are sentient, whilst computers are not. This shows that the mind is not simply the result of the programming of the brain, but it is in fact an immaterial entity that is capable of making choices in the world.



In addition, when you say, "our thinking", "our unconscious thoughts", what is this "our" that you are referring to?

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

BPC:

From the Dutch study: "With a purely physiological explanation such as cerebral anoxia for the experience, most patients who have been clinically dead should report one." Not just cerebral anoxia, but any known physiological explanation. It's just logical: If NDE's are simply the result of, for example, some process in the brain gone haywire why is there such low correlation?

I don't know, but if I had to guess, I'd say that perhaps it's an uncommonly stimulated area? What is there a low correlation between? People being clinically dead and people experiencing NDEs?

NDEs can't be hallucinations or false memories.

This has not been established in any sensible way.

If these are ruled out then what is left? If you say "We don't know" then how can we possibly rule out everything? No matter what explanation you come up with that is subsequently ruled out you could still say "We don't know".

Hey SuntanLuigi, I want you do me a favor. Find all of the evidence you can that points to NDEs being a product of the soul. Oh look, here's all of it:




...

I'm genuinely confused if you're simply using the word "soul" as a placeholder for whatever the cause of this medical phenomenon is, or you're trying to use it, in its classical definitions, to explain the phenomenon.

If the former: you're being, either intentionally or unintentionally, incredibly confusing! Please, please find a better term than one that already has a clearly different definition; especially one which becomes easily conflated in this debate.

If the latter: you're positing an assumption that has not been granted in any way, shape, or form. You're committing the classic fallacy that creationists use all the time: "If X is wrong, Y must be right!". Just because we've ruled out any other currently known explanation (which we haven't, by the way), does not mean that your explanation, which is completely unproven and unverified, is an accurate one. Even if evolution and abiogenesis were somehow demonstrated to be completely flawed to the core, and nobody could come up with a strong, valid theory to replace it, this would not mean that Creationism of any kind would be validated – it's still a hypothesis with absolutely no proof or independent verification behind it!

But maybe you won't have to wait too long, because as we speak there is in fact a study being conducted which may provide the evidence you desire. It's called the AWARE study. From (http://www.nourfoundation.com/event...an-Consciousness-Project/the-AWARE-study.html):

Seems potentially at least slightly better.

What do you think the results of this study will be?

Inconclusive at best.

No matter how, how, how advanced you make a computer it will never develop sentience or "become self-aware", it will never actually experience anything. "But what about the Turing Test?" Look at the "Chinese Room" thought experiment, which shows that "a program cannot give a computer a "mind" or "understanding", regardless of how intelligently it may make it behave." (Wikipedia)

This argument presupposes that we have free will. This is not a given; it's actually a large part of what is under contention in this debate! As such, it is useless, as it is begging the question.

Furthermore, SuntanLuigi, I'm just going to go out on a limb here... You do not believe that it is possible for inorganic matter to become truly sentient/gain free will, correct?

 

[AltF4]

If your think right and wrong is like right and left then you don't need free will.

That's precisely what I'm saying, yes.

What I'm saying though is that right and wrong can't be like right and left. Right and left depends on context, sure. But whether or not an action is right or wrong cannot depend on what we think. In the Arabian peninsula around 550 B.C. pretty much everybody thought that it was OK to bury female infants alive, and it was a very common practice.

This is my argument: If free will does not exist then morality is completely arbitrary and subjective, and you are forced to conclude that if the whole world thought burying excess infants alive was OK, then it would become OK. Do you agree with this?

I agree with you that burying infants alive is morally wrong. But the Arabian inhabitants who did it didn't think so. In fact, they probably thought that it was the only moral thing to do in order to appease their gods.

Asking me "Is this OK?" is just a disguised way of imposing a test of objective morality. I disagree with the practice strongly, they didn't. What more is there to say?

Also, please address these:

The Chinese Room thought experiment is only an argument against proponents of "Strong AI". (Note that the term Strong AI is used in different places with different meanings. So be careful with it.)

The thought experiment just shows that the computer never "understands" anything. It never chooses anything. It's a series of algorithms. As a computer scientist myself, I am well aware of this. What I'm telling you is that the same applies to the human brain.

In addition, when you say, "our thinking", "our unconscious thoughts", what is this "our" that you are referring to?

Don't be so picky with words. The English language is full of silly artifacts that are hard to get around. You'll often see me say something like "The body wasn't designed for blah in mind". By doing so, I'm not espousing a belief in Intelligent Design. It's just the easiest way of getting that point across.

When I say "My brain", I am not suggesting that I am something other than my brain which just so happens to possess a brain. It's just a convenient turn of phrase.

 

[Dre89]

But Alt disagreeing with an act is different to thinking it's morally wrong.

The former is a matter of preference eg. favourite colour, or in the case of conflicting beliefs eg. theism vs atheism it's a criticism of a belief or action.

Believing something to be morally wrong is not only criticising the action but also in most cases criticising the actor, in that they are objectively wrong. Your explanation doesn't account for the distinction.

 

[AltF4]

Why does something (or someone) have to be objectively wrong in order to criticize it? Every time I criticize anything be it a moral issue or not, it goes without saying that the criticism is my own personal subjective view.

You also seem to be eliminating the possibility of subjective morality by your placement of definition.

 

[Theftz22]

So I have absolutely no idea what you're arguing, Underdogs. Wasn't the whole point of this argument to show that non-physical minds exist? It's certainly been what I've been arguing against this whole thread. Now you're saying this isn't what the argument is for?

I've been very explicit since the beginning that what I'm arguing for is:

The mind is not identical to the brain.

That does not entail that the mind is non-physical.

Suntan Luigi (who was the one that originally brought this up) surely meant the argument as such:

Actually I had brought up that argument well before Suntan did, even before he was in the DH. I think the first time it came up was between RV and I in the social thread, and then it recurred several times before Suntan brought it up again to my knowledge.

Other philosophers clearly do intend this as a proof of immaterial minds:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOTn_wRwDE0

Well I just respectfully disagree with those philosophers. That the mind is not identical to the brain does not entail that the mind is non-physical.

And this still does not follow:

A is conceivable
therefore
A is possible

(As the argument is defined here: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/dualism/#ModArg)

I've always said that the conceivability to possibility thesis was too big of an issue for me to tackle here. Maybe someday in a new thread. If you want some light () reading on the topic see Chalmers defense of the conceivability to possibility thesis:

http://consc.net/papers/conceivability.html

 

[Suntan Luigi]

BPC:

I don't know, but if I had to guess, I'd say that perhaps it's an uncommonly stimulated area? What is there a low correlation between? People being clinically dead and people experiencing NDEs?

Most patients who had been clinically dead should report an NDE.

This has not been established in any sensible way.

Read: "People who have had NDEs say their NDEs were totally different than their dreams. For example, upon awakening, a dreamer usually knows the dream was not "real," whereas upon returning to normal consciousness, NDErs usually say the NDE was more real than normal reality. Similarly, people who have experienced both an NDE and hallucination say the two experiences are quite different. Again, in retrospect, a hallucination is known to have been "unreal" whereas an NDE usually is perceived to have been "hyperreal.""

"Hallucinations are usually illogical, fleeting, bizarre, and/or distorted, whereas the vast majority of NDEs are logical, orderly, clear, and comprehensible. People tend to forget their hallucinations, whereas most NDEs remain vivid for decades. Furthermore, NDEs often lead to profound and permanent transformations in personality, attitudes, beliefs and values, something that is never seen following hallucinations. People looking back on hallucinations typically recognize them as unreal, as fantasies, whereas, people often describe their NDEs as “more real than real.” Further, people who have experienced both hallucinations and an NDE describe them as being quite different."

(From http://iands.org/home.html)

And again, because of their nature these can't be implanted memories. I already showed you how a memory is implanted. Saying that these are implanted memories is just about as plausible as me suggesting to you, "Remember Vietnam?", and then you having vivid and detailed recollections of seeing your friends being blown to bits and fighting the Viet Cong.

These explanations are simply grasping at straws.

Hey SuntanLuigi, I want you do me a favor. Find all of the evidence you can that points to NDEs being a product of the soul. Oh look, here's all of it:

There is ample evidence for NDEs being the product of the soul. The fact that you choose not to accept it is your own choice. I presented my evidence already and you brushed it aside:

-Veridical NDEs ("NDEs in which people reportedly out-of-body have observed events or gathered information that was verified by others upon the experiencer’s return to a conscious state")
-A well-conducted study that suggests the presence of the soul
-Other studies that support the existence of a soul
-Other reasons why explaining NDEs purely in physiological terms is inadequate

Here's the thing. You have set the bar too high to a point where you are simply grasping at straws in a rather futile attempt to explain this phenomenon in purely material terms. You are clearly only willing to accept incredibility impractical levels of research as an affirmative answer. The studies you suggest are not practical, and researchers know this. If that is your standard, than that's your choice.

I'm genuinely confused if you're simply using the word "soul" as a placeholder for whatever the cause of this medical phenomenon is, or you're trying to use it, in its classical definitions, to explain the phenomenon.

If the former: you're being, either intentionally or unintentionally, incredibly confusing! Please, please find a better term than one that already has a clearly different definition; especially one which becomes easily conflated in this debate.

If the latter: you're positing an assumption that has not been granted in any way, shape, or form. You're committing the classic fallacy that creationists use all the time: "If X is wrong, Y must be right!". Just because we've ruled out any other currently known explanation (which we haven't, by the way), does not mean that your explanation, which is completely unproven and unverified, is an accurate one. Even if evolution and abiogenesis were somehow demonstrated to be completely flawed to the core, and nobody could come up with a strong, valid theory to replace it, this would not mean that Creationism of any kind would be validated – it's still a hypothesis with absolutely no proof or independent verification behind it!

When I say soul, this is what I mean in general:

-Consciousness can exist independently of the functions of the brain.
-There are ways of gathering information other than our basic physiological senses.
-There is more to a human than our physical reality.

Seems potentially at least slightly better. Inconclusive at best.

OK, I'll let you know the results when they come. What if the results come back significant? What would that mean to you?

This argument presupposes that we have free will. This is not a given; it's actually a large part of what is under contention in this debate! As such, it is useless, as it is begging the question.

What this thought experiment mainly shows is that although you can build as sophisticated a computer as you want, it will never become sentient, self-aware, etc. Or at the very least there will be no way to determine that it is actually sentient. Even if a computer could pass the Turing Test with 99.99999% accuracy, it would be no more human than a toaster.

Look at Sonny from the movie "I, robot". Would you describe him as sentient?

Furthermore, SuntanLuigi, I'm just going to go out on a limb here... You do not believe that it is possible for inorganic matter to become truly sentient/gain free will, correct?

Sentience is something that is given to us. It is not something that we can manufacture. Heck, we barely even understand what it is.

Personally I find the idea of "robots taking over the world" or something like that to be very silly. It's much more likely that people will start thinking like computers, rather than computers thinking like people.

Alt:

I agree with you that burying infants alive is morally wrong. But the Arabian inhabitants who did it didn't think so. In fact, they probably thought that it was the only moral thing to do in order to appease their gods.

Asking me "Is this OK?" is just a disguised way of imposing a test of objective morality. I disagree with the practice strongly, they didn't. What more is there to say?

I'm not asking whether you agree with the practice or not. I'm pointing out that if morality is purely subjective than if everyone thought burying babies was OK then it would become OK. There is no way around this.

Also, I have a question, please answer. If a person being tried for murder were to say, "Your honor, I did not choose to shoot that person because science, etc. shows that I have no free will to make my own choices", would he be correct?

The Chinese Room thought experiment is only an argument against proponents of "Strong AI". (Note that the term Strong AI is used in different places with different meanings. So be careful with it.)

The thought experiment just shows that the computer never "understands" anything. It never chooses anything. It's a series of algorithms. As a computer scientist myself, I am well aware of this. What I'm telling you is that the same applies to the human brain.

I also agree that the brain doesn't understand anything, and that brains are not sentient. It is a lump of flesh, an organ. But it is clear that a human understands things, and that humans are sentient. The soul is what is needed to transform a mass of cells and organs into what we know as a human.

What this thought experiment mainly shows is that although you can build as sophisticated a computer as you want, it will never become sentient, self-aware, etc. Or at the very least there will be no way to determine that it is actually sentient. Even if a computer could pass the Turing Test with 99.99999% accuracy, it would be no more human than a toaster. Thus, the statement, "The Turing Test shows that there is no significant difference between us and computers" is false. There is clearly a significant difference between us and machines, and this is the reason why morals and rights are applicable to people (and even animals) and not computers.

Would you describe Sonny from the movie "I, robot" as sentient?

Don't be so picky with words. The English language is full of silly artifacts that are hard to get around. You'll often see me say something like "The body wasn't designed for blah in mind". By doing so, I'm not espousing a belief in Intelligent Design. It's just the easiest way of getting that point across.

When I say "My brain", I am not suggesting that I am something other than my brain which just so happens to possess a brain. It's just a convenient turn of phrase.

Normally I am not picky with words. But in this case, I am trying to make a point. Why do you think "My brain/my body" is such a convenient turn of phrase? We use such terms almost daily. I want you to define the "My" in "My brain", if you can.

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

I don't have time for the rest of the post, so I'll just respond to that last bit... We already have gone from non-sentient to sentient life. Abiogenesis and Evolution. It's extremely well-documented.

 

[Suntan Luigi]

I don't have time for the rest of the post, so I'll just respond to that last bit... We already have gone from non-sentient to sentient life. Abiogenesis and Evolution. It's extremely well-documented.

Lol! I'm going to make that thread soon. Just wait. Your claim here is a false assumption.

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

Lol! I'm going to make that thread soon. Just wait. Your claim here is a false assumption.

It's basically the entire field of prehistoric biology, telling you that your premise is full of ****.

And please, please tell me that you doubt it mainly because of such a logical argument. Would absolutely make my day.

 

[Dre89]

Suntan- I understand that when it comes to things like NDEs, some sceptics overplay the argument from ignorance card, until it gets to the point that their mentality simply disallows the possiblity of anything like that happening.

However, Alt and BPC are justified in demanding above average, and maybe an impractical standard of research when it comes to NDEs because NDEs are supernatural.

Science concludes probable facts. The reason why only the standard amount of research or inquiry is required for something like evolution theory or abiogenesis is because those are relatively probable, because they don't defy the laws of physics.

Any miracle or supernatural phenomena is by definition the most improbable explanation of an event, because by definition it defies the laws of physics. This is why the research backing NDEs has to be of a much higher standard than that backing evolution theory or abiogenesis.

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

And, to add to that, Evolution did have a ridiculously high barrier of entry. The amount of evidence backing it is, quite frankly, beyond ridiculous. Abiogenesis, AFAICT, had it a little easier (albeit not much), because it directly linked on to what we already know about the earth and evolution.

 

[Suntan Luigi]

Dre

Well like I said before, it really depends on what you define "supernatural" as. I don't see the soul as defying the laws of physics in any way. Rather it is something we have yet to understand.

BPC

Umm, what if I said no, and that your premise is the one that is full of ****? I will show it to you in the thread.

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

BPC

Umm, what if I said no, and that your premise is the one that is full of ****? I will show it to you in the thread.

Well how about this: you either show me that my premise is wrong based on my assumptions taken from the leading scientific research, or we assume that the leading scientific research on the topic is correct until you make a thread "proving" that it isn't.

 

[Suntan Luigi]

Well how about this: you either show me that my premise is wrong based on my assumptions taken from the leading scientific research, or we assume that the leading scientific research on the topic is correct until you make a thread "proving" that it isn't.

Look, I don't want to start a whole new thread just yet with regards to that topic. But as far as machines gaining sentience goes, you should find some other evidence to support that claim in the meantime. Simply going off assumptions based on this research isn't going to cut it for me.

 

[blazedaces]

Look, I don't want to start a whole new thread just yet with regards to that topic. But as far as machines gaining sentience goes, you should find some other evidence to support that claim in the meantime. Simply going off assumptions based on this research isn't going to cut it for me.

I thought you were talking about evolution? In which case the burden of proof is on you to "prove" it wrong.

And I was hoping you would, it would be quite entertaining to me at least...

-blazed

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

Look, I don't want to start a whole new thread just yet with regards to that topic. But as far as machines gaining sentience goes, you should find some other evidence to support that claim in the meantime. Simply going off assumptions based on this research isn't going to cut it for me.

All right, you know what? Even if we ignore abiogenesis...
Which of the following do you feel have free will:
-Self-aware Mammals
-Non-self-aware mammals
-Birds
-Trees
-Grass
-Bacteria
-Lizards

 

[BOB SAGET!]

The burden of proof is on whoever is making the claim....

Explain how the concept of souls don't violate the laws of physics....that fact is, science tells us life is a chemical reaction.....and consciousness is lost when life ends...but we don't know for sure...

 

[Dre89]

The burden of proof is on whoever is making the claim....

Explain how the concept of souls don't violate the laws of physics....that fact is, science tells us life is a chemical reaction.....and consciousness is lost when life ends...but we don't know for sure...

The soul doesn't violate the laws of physics, it's simply an addition to them. That's like saying God existing violates the laws of physics. The soul doesn't violate the laws of physics if it doesn't make humans do things they aren't normally physically capable of.

NDEs, however, do violate the laws of physics, because it's being suggested that the soul is allowing a human to do something that it isn't normally physically capable of.

 

[Aesir]

Look, I don't want to start a whole new thread just yet with regards to that topic. But as far as machines gaining sentience goes, you should find some other evidence to support that claim in the meantime. Simply going off assumptions based on this research isn't going to cut it for me.

Considering how underdeveloped AI is I don't think that's a question we have a firm grasp on as it's all theoretical. I don't mean to cut in here, but it's pretty silly to demand something like this when it's sill science fiction.

Also Irobot was an aweful movie.

 

[AltF4]

I would contest the assertion that AI is underdeveloped. Just think of the multitude of intellectual tasks that computers are better than humans at. Like I mentioned in the social thread, AI suffers from a moving goalpost.

Consider the famous Arthur C Clark quote:

I've been very explicit since the beginning that what I'm arguing for is:

The mind is not identical to the brain.

That does not entail that the mind is non-physical.

So is there anywhere we disagree on the issue? I will gladly grant that the mind is not identical to the brain. As this only entails that it's possible for them to be (contingently) different. Not that they are. (Which you seem to agree with)

 

[AltF4]

BPC:Also, I have a question, please answer. If a person being tried for murder were to say, "Your honor, I did not choose to shoot that person because science, etc. shows that I have no free will to make my own choices", would he be correct?

Of course not. The legal system doesn't care about these kinds of silly debates. It operates under the running assumption that we have free will, whether or not it's true.

Would you describe Sonny from the movie "I, robot" as sentient?

What you're trying to do here is apply a binary phrase (sentient / not sentient) to a reality which is not binary. There are shades of gray to intelligence, it's not an all-or-nothing thing. And seeing as how Sonny is a fictional character, I can't speak to its intelligence level.

Normally I am not picky with words. But in this case, I am trying to make a point. Why do you think "My brain/my body" is such a convenient turn of phrase? We use such terms almost daily. I want you to define the "My" in "My brain", if you can.

You're suggesting that because our language has evolved in a particular direction that the euphemisms found in it must be strictly accurate?! Don't be absurd.

We make anthropomorphic statements about almost everything. Weather events, cars, computers, everything. This is not evidence of a spirit world in which all everyday objects possess a mind. This is just evidence of humans being stupid.

I'm not going to entertain silly questions about semantics as if they mattered.

 

[Dre89]

So do you guys think robots will eventually be able to imitate sentience/attain sentience to the point where humans will be morally obliged to acknlowledge their feelings and desires? When I say morally obliged, I mean that just as it is wrong to kill a human, we are also obliged to not destroy a robot, or not do anything to a robot that we would not do to a fellow human.

And I hated Irobot. The moral of the story was that robots have feelings too, which they don't, and isn't even a relevant issue in the real world. The only people who would like that movie are the ones who think post Fresh Prince Will Smith is cool, or just enjoy any movie that's had millions of dollars put into it.

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

If our morality was based purely on intellect/sentience, then yes. But it isn't.

 

[Aesir]

I would contest the assertion that AI is underdeveloped. Just think of the multitude of intellectual tasks that computers are better than humans at. Like I mentioned in the social thread, AI suffers from a moving goalpost.

Consider the famous Arthur C Clark quote:


This is what happens to AI. We define intelligence as something magical. So once we understand how it happens, it ceases to become magic. Ceases to be intelligence.

I can think of no better example than the Chinese Room thought experiment, which hilariously comes to the wrong conclusion. In the experiment, intelligence (or "understanding") is implicitly defined as something magical. The man is said to "never understand Chinese" in his translating of the language.

But then what on Earth does it mean to "understand" a language if not possessing the ability to translate one into another. (Or whatever language processing task you wish) If you refuse to allow a system of dumb parts to "understand" something, then your definition of intelligence necessarily is magic.




So is there anywhere we disagree on the issue? I will gladly grant that the mind is not identical to the brain. As this only entails that it's possible for them to be (contingently) different. Not that they are. (Which you seem to agree with)

The movie Irobot was reference so unless there's a huge push by the world governments and the private sector toward AI I don't see that happening any time soon. Just like I don't see the human race being space explorer's any time soon.

So do you guys think robots will eventually be able to imitate sentience/attain sentience to the point where humans will be morally obliged to acknlowledge their feelings and desires? When I say morally obliged, I mean that just as it is wrong to kill a human, we are also obliged to not destroy a robot, or not do anything to a robot that we would not do to a fellow human.

And I hated Irobot. The moral of the story was that robots have feelings too, which they don't, and isn't even a relevant issue in the real world. The only people who would like that movie are the ones who think post Fresh Prince Will Smith is cool, or just enjoy any movie that's had millions of dollars put into it.

Well it was an interesting question, but if AI developed enough to where they could have feelings don't you think they should be warranted those same rights? I thought the movie was more of a "lets have will smith be an action here, oh here's an interesting moral argument to go with it" The goal of the movie was to show will smith shoot ****.

Interested what your thoughts on district 9 were, since it had a very clear and relevant issue.

 

[Dre89]

I don't know what district 9 is.

Saying 'well if robots started having feelings, shouldn't they have the same rights?' is dodging the bullet because the question for the person who denies free will is whether robots will ever be able to have those sorts of feelings.

The question isn't really a problem for fwers because they believe humans have true sentience and conscience, whereas AI will never possesses this, but rather just complex stimulus-response programming that imitates sentience and consciousness.

The determinist believes there is no real distinction between the human's and the robot's functionality, except for the level of complexity, which is why I ask the question.

 

[AltF4]

I would recognize the rights of a sufficiently advanced machine. One of my old AI professors used to (only half jokingly) refer to people that wouldn't as "Carbon Chauvinists".

 

[Dre89]

So then how do you define the point at which AI has a consciousness capable of feeling pleasure and pain?

That seems completely arbitrary.

The problem is that attaining a certain level of complexity is not what gives something consciousness.

Animals of varying mental complexity all have consciousness and can all feel pleasure and pain.

There are probably robots that exist today that more complex than some of these animals yet we don't think these robots have consciousness. The fact their complexity has surpassed that of certain animals with consciousness, yet we don't think they have consciousness, shows that complexity will not give robots consciousness. Yet compelxity is the only thing we can really develop on robots.

 

[Bob Jane T-Mart]

So, I was reading/watching on the subject, and I found that there are two arguments for determinism that I hadn't found before.

In logic there is an axiom called the law of identity. This effectively is the law that a thing is itself and that anything with he exact same properties is the same for all intents and purposes. Now imagine you have two universes that are identical to begin with. You fly away in spaceship and comeback 10 years later to check on both universes. If the law of identity holds both universes would appear exactly the same as they had exactly the same properties to begin with and consequently were the same, meaning that anything within those universes would not have free will. If either universe were different in any way when you check back on them, it would void the law of identity, therefore free will logically cannot exist.

There is also the law of excluded middle, which states that with any proposition, it is either true or its negation is, there is no leeway in between. This means that if I make any statement about the future in the present, it is either true or false in the present. This means that any statement about the future is already right or wrong. Therefore the universe is deterministic. I could say that a soccer game will start tomorrow. If I'm wrong that means that there will not be a game tomorrow. If I'm right there will be a game tomorrow. I must be either wrong or right in the present for the law of excluded middle to hold. So one of the two options is predetermined to occur.

 

[Dre89]

That first argument seems really cool, but those two planets aren't technically the same.

They may have all the same properties, but one exists in one space/dimension, and the other exists in another. They are two different entities, and that entails a distinction of some sort, otherwise they'd just be one entity. So if there is change, the LoI isn't violated.

My understanding of the LoI is that it's used to distinguish between things like the mind and body, or Earth and the third planet from the sun. The LoI is applied to a singular entity, not an entity and its replica.

The second one is basically just reflects the nature of propositions and time, not the will. It's perhaps only a problem if you believe in an omniscient God who knows the truth of propositions in advance, hence the famous 'free will and foreknowledge' problem.

 

[Bob Jane T-Mart]

That first argument seems really cool, but those two planets aren't technically the same.

They may have all the same properties, but one exists in one space/dimension, and the other exists in another. They are two different entities, and that entails a distinction of some sort, otherwise they'd just be one entity. So if there is change, the LoI isn't violated.

My understanding of the LoI is that it's used to distinguish between things like the mind and body, or Earth and the third planet from the sun. The LoI is applied to a singular entity, not an entity and its replica.

Well... I'd imagine it to be like you have one universe, and another. And one of them can be represented by A. 2A is still has A in it, and A is the same as A, so you could consider them identical, and therefore for all intents and purposes the same object. They don't exist in different places/time because they exist in a void and such concepts are meaningless.

The second one is basically just reflects the nature of propositions and time, not the will. It's perhaps only a problem if you believe in an omniscient God who knows the truth of propositions in advance, hence the famous 'free will and foreknowledge' problem.

But, the knowledge of these propositions in advance isn't necessary. It's the notion that they're either right or wrong at the time they are made.

 

[Dre89]

Are you saying A is encompassed in 2A?

As long as they are distinct entities, the law doesn't apply.

As for the second one, that doesn't mean much because a free action could be what decides the answer. It's not as if the question being asked at that point commits the universe to an answer that is determined to occur.

 

[Theftz22]

In logic there is an axiom called the law of identity. This effectively is the law that a thing is itself and that anything with he exact same properties is the same for all intents and purposes. Now imagine you have two universes that are identical to begin with. You fly away in spaceship and comeback 10 years later to check on both universes. If the law of identity holds both universes would appear exactly the same as they had exactly the same properties to begin with and consequently were the same, meaning that anything within those universes would not have free will. If either universe were different in any way when you check back on them, it would void the law of identity, therefore free will logically cannot exist.

You can't have things being identical just "to begin with". If two possible worlds are "identical" at one point in time, then later are not identical, it turns out that at the beginning the possible worlds had different future tense propositions holding as true or false, and thus were not really identical but only seemed to be so. Either way, in two identical possible worlds with free agents, the free agents are identical in both world A and B, thus they both have the same counterfactuals of freedom in both worlds. Therefore, free agents in both worlds would freely choose to do identical actions, thus the identity relationship is maintained yet free will still exists.

There is also the law of excluded middle, which states that with any proposition, it is either true or its negation is, there is no leeway in between. This means that if I make any statement about the future in the present, it is either true or false in the present. This means that any statement about the future is already right or wrong. Therefore the universe is deterministic. I could say that a soccer game will start tomorrow. If I'm wrong that means that there will not be a game tomorrow. If I'm right there will be a game tomorrow. I must be either wrong or right in the present for the law of excluded middle to hold. So one of the two options is predetermined to occur.

One way of dealing with this objection is to say that there are future tense propositions. The idea would be that there are future tense statements, but they don't express true propositions and thus lack any truth value, because the future is radically indeterminate in that way. But that seems untenable to me. There really are future tense true or false propositions. 5 minutes ago the future tense proposition (p)

(p) In 5 minutes, I will be typing on my keyboard.

was really true. I think the real resolution is simply to say that there's no contradiction in affirming that there are future tense propositions about what free agents will freely do. Like (p2)

(p2) In 5 minutes, I will freely move my mouse.

That's simply to say that just because there are future tense true propositions does not mean they are predetermined. Why can't there be future tense propositions about what I will freely do?

 

[Bob Jane T-Mart]

Are you saying A is encompassed in 2A?

Oh yes. But you still can have A.

As long as they are distinct entities, the law doesn't apply.

You sure?

As for the second one, that doesn't mean much because a free action could be what decides the answer. It's not as if the question being asked at that point commits the universe to an answer that is determined to occur.

But how can such an action be free if the outcome of that action is predetermined? The proposition is either true or false in the present. If it's true in the present, that means whatever the proposition is, it must be fulfilled. If it's false, it cannot be fulfilled. So your free-action that causes this has a predetermined outcome. That doesn't sound free to me.

You can't have things being identical just "to begin with". If two possible worlds are "identical" at one point in time, then later are not identical, it turns out that at the beginning the possible worlds had different future tense propositions holding as true or false, and thus were not really identical but only seemed to be so. Either way, in two identical possible worlds with free agents, the free agents are identical in both world A and B, thus they both have the same counterfactuals of freedom in both worlds. Therefore, free agents in both worlds would freely choose to do identical actions, thus the identity relationship is maintained yet free will still exists.

This seems to be a very deterministic view of the way free will works. It thought that free will means that free agents can do different things with exactly the same input. If both universes do exactly the same thing because they had exactly the same inputs, wouldn't that support a deterministic world view. What if we did this thought experiment with an infinite number of identical universes. Surely if there is free will, at least one will end up differing from another. If everything is "freely" choosing to follow a deterministic path and never veering from it, how free is free will?

One way of dealing with this objection is to say that there are future tense propositions. The idea would be that there are future tense statements, but they don't express true propositions and thus lack any truth value, because the future is radically indeterminate in that way. But that seems untenable to me. There really are future tense true or false propositions. 5 minutes ago the future tense proposition (p)

(p) In 5 minutes, I will be typing on my keyboard.

was really true. I think the real resolution is simply to say that there's no contradiction in affirming that there are future tense propositions about what free agents will freely do. Like (p2)

(p2) In 5 minutes, I will freely move my mouse.

That's simply to say that just because there are future tense true propositions does not mean they are predetermined. Why can't there be future tense propositions about what I will freely do?

Again how can free will exist if the outcome is already determined? The statement was either true or not when it was made. That means that what ever the truth of the statement, something had to happen to preserve that truth value. Where is the room for free agents if that something must occur?