Greatest show and film of all time

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Free will would be a conscious experience, yes.
Free will would involve making decisions, yes.
However, the fact that we have a conscious experience and make decisions is absolutely not evidence of free will.

https://tegram.me/o3hatzB969EyZDg8

The author lays out two lines of thought when discussing their Scenario Two:

> Second, if I have propinquity towards the victim or am sympathetic to their cause, I would abandon listening to the artist altogether. In that case, one can argue that we cannot separate art from the artist.

The first is that purchasing an offender's art directly contributes to their material well-being, and the second is that interacting with an offender's art is a way of excusing their actions, and is thus a problem for their targets.

But I also think that many people operate under a third line of reasoning, and that is that art produced by people who have committed serious offenses is objectively bad art; in other words, one judges the quality of the art by the reputation of the artist.

I first encountered this in a discussion of the paintings of Adolf Hitler. I quickly found myself in the minority, due to my perception that while his work didn't reach the levels of The Old Masters or anything, the man had considerably more talent than I, and I appreciated his work on that level. Nearly all of the other people present concluded that the work was utter garbage. Similarly, I've heard people say that Bill Cosby was not a good stand-up comedian or actor, but that he's somehow tricked or bullied people into having a long career in the entertainment industry. This strikes me as a dubious argument, but I've learned the futility of contesting it.

I think this idea that good art also requires good moral standing, while it may be a raging logical fallacy, is common enough (at least in the United States) that its absence was somewhat conspicuous for me.

It gives me joy to consider his mummified body in a glass case for people to look at. So, from a utilitarian perspective, of the greatest happiness of the greatest number, we would have to compare and count the feelings of people whose opinions are more like yours, and people whose opinions are more like mine, and also factor in the other consequences of the creation of his mummy and display of it, to determine if it fits or does not fit with utilitarianism. It is far from obvious that a proper analysis of all of that would turn out as you predict.

> "Conscious experience exists."

The appearance of it certainly does. What remains an open question is the nature of consciousness and what, if any, casual power it has. Many theories feel that consciousness doesn't drive anything but it a by-product of neural activity (ex. illusionism, identity theory, etc).

You absolutely are making a (big) assumption if you want to treat consciousness as the driver behind decisions rather than the brain. (And need to address some serious questions such as how can an emergent property push around neurons such that "decisions" turn into physical actions.)

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> "the properties of the little parts of the brain are not anything like the properties of the whole person."

I don't understand how this addresses my point. I'll try to be direct - when we change the "little parts" you change the behaviour of the whole person. So the "little parts" are crucial to the discussion and cannot be hand-waved away.

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> "Free will involves conscious decisions."

I disagree and I explained why. Conscious decisions (which I called deliberations) are not "free" if the elements are constrained. I don't think you addressed that.

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> "Anything else would be like failing to find the conscious experience"

Conscious experiences arises from the sum of the "little parts" of the brain and when you change the "little parts" you change the conscious experience. So you can't just ignore the "little parts" and say they are irrelevant when they give rise to and shape the conscious experience.

bang bang "I'm a philosopher btw"

Yes, I think that would fit with act utilitarianism. It seems the best act for the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people.

Yes. The whole thing is silly. At the first attempted mugging:

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>MUGGER. Here's the thing: there is, clearly, more utility in me keeping my finger than in you keeping your measly ten pounds. So there would be more utility in the world if you gave me the money than if you didn't.

A better response than what was given is:

"No, I am giving the money to stop a child from starving, so cut off your finger you stupid bastard."

This is a particularly naive take given the scope of Aurelius' life and the lives of other Stoics (who were variably affected by their "privilege"). Yes, Aurelius was privileged in terms of his social status, but he was weathered by misfortune in his relationships and health. He was given power, but used it well for the benefit of those affected by his power--not just himself. In this case, not his philosophy but the results of his philosophy in application justify his rule and place him among the "five good emperors".

The point of Aurelius' privilege is his perspective towards it, which is that his circumstances are transient and both fortune and misfortune come and go throughout time. He knew, as you do, that he did not earn his privilege and therefore could not claim it as his victory. For this reason--not the privilege itself--Aurelius is of note.

Simply looking at the highs of these Stoics' lives and using them to cast doubt on the validity of their philosophy as a whole is a very partial understanding of their lives and work and does them a disservice.

That is more empiricism…moving into modern of modern philosophy, the claim that cannot be verified but have some rational backup can also be a possible of the knowledge. You cannot verify everything… (skepticism).

You're not disagreeing with anything I've said.
Conscious experience ≠ free will, but free will is a conscious experience.
Making decisions ≠ free will, but free will involves making decisions.

Conscious experience ≠ Free will
Making decisions ≠ Free will

I'm not assuming; I know for certain that some special property emerges when you consider the brain as a whole. Conscious experience exists. It can't be coherently doubted.
But nothing you see when examining a dopamine receptor would tell you that.
So it follows that the properties of the little parts of the brain are not anything like the properties of the whole person.
Free will involves conscious decisions. That means it's a whole person level phenomenon. It's not just useful to think of it at this level. It's the only coherent way to think about it. Anything else would be like failing to find the conscious experience in a dopamine receptor.

"I will give you the ten pounds. In one hundred years' time, assuming we are both still living." Bentham plugs his ears and walks away.

A thoroughly enjoyable and amusing read, thanks for posting!

I don't follow your reasoning.

Dopamine receptors alone don't produce a decision. But make changes to them and it will impact the decisions/behaviour of the person. (ex. chronic overstimulation leads to needing to chase bigger "highs" to get the same level of response.)

The VPMC alone doesn't produce a decision. But remove it/damage it/restrict it's interaction with other parts of the brain and it will impact the decisions/behaviour of the person. (Ex. leads to less emotionally driven decision making, difficulty developing and maintaining friendships/relationships.)

Oxytocin levels alone don't produce a decision. But increase or reduces them and it will impact the decisions/behaviour of the person. (Ex. higher levels lead to more trusting, less aggressive to in-group people (family, friends) but less pro-social to strangers.)

Yes, of course no single element in the brain produces a decision on it's own. But each (that is active for a given decision) does influence, to varying degrees, the ultimate decision. It is the sum of those elements that is ultimately responsible for the decision. And the sum of those elements is usually called the brain.

I agree that it might not be useful or appropriate to talk about the level of VPMC activation when talking about me choosing between soup or salad for lunch, but that doesn't mean you can handwave away the mechanical elements of the brain and assume some special property emerges when you consider the brain as a whole.

(Also, are you implying strong emergence or weak emergence?)

I think it's perfectly reasonable to abstain from forming a belief, but I think there's plenty of situations in which it's reasonable to form beliefs even in absence of proof.

This is the case in many ordinary situations. Suppose I meet a couple and they tell me they're married. They wear wedding rings and act like a couple. I can't prove that they're married, but I have a substantial amount of evidence suggesting it's the case and no counter evidence. There are plenty of scenarios I could concoct which could be unprovable, such as that they're foreign spies or visiting aliens with a sham marriage as part of their cover story.

I don't encounter these scenarios and abstain from drawing conclusions on the basis of their unprovability: I construct beliefs on the basis of a preponderance of evidence. Colloquially, I might even say "I know they're married", even if I can't prove true belief.

I think a major difference between math and everyday epistemology is that the vast majority of math I encounter is provable, while the vast majority of everyday "knowledge" is premised on things that are not.

Why doesn't Bentham simply shoot the mugger?

So it's okay if we contradict ourselves? We shouldn't strive to have coherent paradigms?

> It’s just not intuitive to start from a position of a potentially infinite number of identical copies.

You did say this after all.

I don't think monkeys in captivity has an over 50% mortality rate

Yes I do know the hundreds claim is false, I do also know however that Elon musk company can no longer acquire more monkeys from the source they did and the company sited "ethical" reasons

Thanks for the reply.

The little mechanical parts that make up a human body are not relevant for answering certain questions (like about free will). But I don't mean they're irrelevant in every way.

What I'm saying is that the WHOLE brain (and peripheral nervous system) taken together is the relevant source of decisions. What do chronically overstimulated dopamine receptors produce on their own? Nothing resembling a choice. The choice comes from the irreducible self-referencing loops of interactions between the dopamine receptors and the other mechanical bits of the brain. No particular bit can generate human behavior; only all of the bits and the interactions between them taken together can do that. But taken together as one system, rather than as segmented bits of matter, that's usually called a person.

Questions of realism or moral hazard aside, Bentham can donate his $10 to charity and do far more good than he would by preventing some degenerate deontologist from cutting off his finger. If Bentham is a committed utilitarian who believes in taking actions at every turn to maximize utility and has not given that money away already, it's because he ascribes significant moral value to keeping it.