Exactly. How does it work again?
1.) Get lowest bid proposal from committee insider.
2.) Make slightly lower bid to win contract.
3.) Win contract, and use money from contract to fund committee insider's re-election campaign.
4.) Rinse, repeat.
It's only a valid argument in so much as it is acceptable for police to ask all witnesses in the area to turn away and not watch. After all, you don't want officers thinking about how something will look, regardless of whether or not it is being recorded.
With regard to "the context of the encounter" being an issue when only part of the encounter being recorded, the same holds true when witnesses are present. Witness accounts will vary. Some witnesses will only observe some parts of the encounter. Is the solution for police to have the power to clear out everyone who has a line of sight to the incident?
I'm all for police being able to expect and demand that onlookers maintain a reasonable distance for officer safety, non-interference, etc., but do we really want to live in a place where police can detain a friend or loved one and then tell everyone else in the area to go home or be arrested for being a witness? Until the day when all police officers are issued hats with video cameras, the video is always on when the officer is on-duty, and there is no way for the video to go "missing" or "strangely malfunctioned" I think it is good that we have citizen videographers keeping the powers in check.
Or described differently, Prune will or will not choose to reply to your post. It describes the situation accurately while complete avoiding the question of ability to choose differently from what is observed.
Why is the assumption made that choice = free will? What is a choice but one observed action out of multiple distinct alternatives? When you flip a coin it does not choose to land heads or tails, it just does. The outcome is based on the starting state (which side facing up, height above the ground, relative humidity, etc) and the force applied to a particular place on the coin.
Oh, but a coin is not a conscious being (that we can tell). Okay, how about shining a flashlight into your eyes. Do you have a choice in whether or not you see the light? I'm talking about the action of seeing the light itself, not the choice of whether or not to close your eyes. Ah, but that is a simple sensory perception, which we have very little control over.
Here's one for you: Are you able to choose whether or not you think of a purple dinosaur right now? Did you have control over how your brain would respond to the symbols you just read?
Are you exercising free will in choosing to read this sentence right now? Or is it a foregone conclusion that you would be reading this sentence, based on your brain's physical state at the start of this paragraph combined with your sensory input that more information was available to obtain. Input + Brain State = Brain State change + activation of muscle control neurons to move the eyes to the next words. I predict with 100% confidence that you are reading this sentence right now. If you had some free choice not to be reading this right now, upon what would that be based if not your prior brain state combined with current input?
If your preferences, urges, and predilections are not bound up in the current configuration of your gray matter, are you suggesting they somehow arise from this mysterious quantum indeterminacy? Even if they were, it would still be a probability distribution determining a choice, not an independent action of a free will. Additionally, you would have to find a way to explain how previous physical experience and activity shapes this quantum indeterminacy, since these preferences and urges change over time.
To address your previous post:
It's of less importance than "What's for dinner" insofar as one has not the slightest sense of obligation to behave consistently with their worldview, sure.
My worldview does not keep decisions from being made by me. I don't have an obligation to detail the rationale for each decision down to the atomic level any more than I need to explain oxygenation of hydrocarbons in order to drive my car.
Are you giving an indication by such a question (and a few hundred others each day) that there was a free choice made by someone as to what to make, and you have a free choice as to whether or not you want to join them?
No, I am merely asking what is, not why it is what it is.
The premise is there by implication in most everything we do.
No, it isn't. I can asking if it is raining outside without having to understand what is causing it to rain.
Personally, if I consistently imply something daily, I like to have the integrity to actually agree with my implication, and the basic philosophical coherence to reference what in reality justifies that position.
I'm not implying that a "free choice" has been made, only that a choice has been made; one option has been selected from those available.
"What do you want to have for dinner" isn't the same thing as "What does our conditioning determine we are going to say we want to have for dinner".
Pragmatically, it is, if it is my position that someone's wants and actions are determined by that person's conditioning.
In reality, you are no longer meaningfully able to answer the simplest questions about your behavior--e.g. "Why did you do that?" Any answer you give would be tentative and incomplete, and, likely, simply wrong.
I respectfully disagree. If I answer, "Because I wanted to," my answer is just as correct and complete, regardless of my use of consciousness or a cascade of causal factors as the primary explanation. The answer has as much or as little meaning either way; I don't have to explain what I mean by "I wanted" in order to convey the meaning.
If, in fact, you are claiming you have no free will, you are not a moral agent.
So do you believe that free will is a requirement of "good" and "bad" behavior? I suggest doing some research on altruistic behavior in animals and the concept of reproductive fitness. Or perhaps you believe that insects like wasps and bees, who exhibit eusocial behavior, also have consciousness and free will.
It is entirely possible to explain actions labeled "good" and "bad" without having to involve choice. Ideally (but not in reality), we don't punish the mentally ill for criminal behavior. We say it is because they couldn't choose between right and wrong, but the real reasons are because it won't change the behavior of the mentally ill person, and it won't deter other mentally ill people from similar behavior.
When we hold a sane person "responsible" for his or her behavior, we are assuming the person could have chosen otherwise, and so we punish that person to deter repetition of the behavior in both that person and others. Whether the person actually could have chosen otherwise is irrelevant because the goal of the punishment is the same. This is why the "I had a bad childhood" defense isn't particularly helpful to society. If you allow it, you are basically saying anyone who has a bad childhood won't be punished for criminal behavior, so you lose the deterrent effect. If you refuse to convict someone who is using this defense, then how do you address this person's recidivism?
Your argument about a hypothetical rebuttal consisting of killing me and claiming that the person was predetermined to do so is specious at best. Any society where this type of behavior was generally accepted would not last, which is why it remains hypothetical. You can use math and population genetics to see why this is true, and also to understand why we still have a small population of sociopaths that we will likely never completely eliminate (akin to recessive genes).
While I understand the supposed ethical stalemate your hypothetical situation presents, it is pragmatically useless. "What if you were forced to kill one member of your family or all of them would be killed? Which person would you choose?" "What if you could go back in time and kill Hitler when he was applying to art school? Would you do it?" If one uses the "What if?" game to determine his or her ethical coherence, I think there are more important issues to investigate than determining the ultimate causality of one's actions.
tl;dr: Not believing in free will doesn't make one incapable of making choices consistent with one's worldview, absolve one of personal responsibility, or inherently predict or require the breakdown of moral society.
The implications of not having Free Will would be so psychologically and morally broad...
No they wouldn't. Not having Free Will changes nothing. You would still get up in the morning, get dressed, go to work, etc. You still punish criminals and celebrate altruism, both in an effort to encourage good behavior towards you and those you care about.
Do you really think that a million years of social evolution into a setup that is more or less sustainable for the species is going to be changed because of an idea about where our decisions come from? That reminds me of the argument theists sometimes use about the existence of God, "If there is no God, then why shouldn't I steal, rape and murder?" as if it is only the presence of God keeping them from going sociopathic.
We all have basic needs that we would work to fulfill. "Free will", "God" and even philosophy may be useful constructs to satisfy our need to understand and assign meaning to the world around us (our curiosity being of our evolutionary strengths), but the question of "free will" will always be of less importance than "What's for dinner?"
That is the point. Only the observable universe exists.
Citation needed. It might appear that only the observable universe exists, but that may not be the case, unless you want to get into semantics regarding "exists". I would be hesitant to say with 100% certainty that there is only one universe. How would that be possible for anyone to know? What's to prevent other, separate universes from existing, both ones with and ones without conscious observers within them?
No observers would mean no universe because there wouldn't be a thing in it to perceive of itself. This means either our current universe is conscious, or our current universe is an illusion. And I don't think both these theories can be right.
While you might think both these theories can't be right, there are millions of Hindus who think exactly the opposite, in the concept of "maya".
So if it's an illusion, then consciousness is not real, when you look into the mirror thats not real, and nothing you observe or experience can ever be said to be with 100% certainty the real universe. Because in the universe typically you are going to see yourself as the most real thing in it, and if your consciousness is fake or illusion, then how would you jump to conclude that all these particles and other stuff you observe is anything more than information at best?
One can take another tack and look at Buddhism, which doesn't necessarily consider the everyday experience as illusion, only that what you consider "real" is not the only permanent reality. More accurately, the illusion is that you (your consciousness) and the universe are distinct entities. It's like each drop of seawater proclaiming, "There's the ocean, and then there is me."
I think its obvious here that the brain is more complex than our understanding. What I think is startling are the assumptions scientists and other folk have made already.
I would say that it is consciousness, and not the brain, that would appear to be more complex than our understanding. Why do we make the assumption that consciousness can be understood? What does it mean to "understand" consciousness?
When we understand other concepts, we are able to describe or convey their meanings in terms of other concepts that are already understood. You have to understand "circle" and "move" before you can understand the concept of "wheel"; you have to understand particle, wave, and spin before you can relate to quantum mechanics.
So why do we assume that we can explain, relate, or understand consciousness? Neuroscientists have made great progress in identifying the neural correlates of consciousness. Psychoactive drugs and trans-cranial stimulation can be used to alter the conscious experience by affecting known areas of the brain. However, knowing how the brain produces consciousness doesn't get us any closer to explaining what consciousness is than knowing the wavelength of blue light and how the retina works explains the qualia of the color blue.
tl;dr: Consciousness may not have an explanation. Perhaps it just is what it is.
But can you have a universe without consciousness? No. So you answered the question.
Really? And how would one confirm or deny the existence of a "universe without consciousness" without observing it? If one can conceive of multiple universes existing, why couldn't one or more of those universes exist where there is no consciousness? "Ahh," you say, "it requires a consciousness to conceive of these multiple universes." However, even if you can't conceive of multiple universes, that doesn't mean they don't exist (and possibly without consciousness). Citation: Tree falling in forest.
In any formula, constants (especially those obtained from handbooks) are to be treated as variables.
