This topic has been buzzing around my mind for a while, so I figure it's time to externalize it. "Free will is an illusion" is a meme that I've seen quite a lot on this site especially. I don't think most people who repeat it have thought much about it.
Yeah, materialism (which I hear is popular around here) suggests a mechanistic universe, one without true randomness, defined solely by predictable input and output. That contradicts our intuition about independent free will, which seems unpredictable (or at least not fully predictable) when we experience it. I don't think a fully mechanistic universe is incompatible with free will, though - in fact, I think that any coherent definition of free will must necessarily exist even under a materialist lens. Those of you who are (like me) pop-philosophy dilettantes probably know that this position is called "compatibilism".
Obviously, though, people disagree. I want to know why. If you don't believe that free will exists, under what circumstances do you think it would exist? What do you think would change if it did exist according to your definition?
I have the outlier position of free will absolutist, though I'd readily admit my rationale isn't necessarily the strongest.
tl;dr: Qualia and phenomenal sensation are non-physical phenomenon; thus if we are able to perceive non-physical phenomenon then that must logically entail we can react to non-physical phenomenon which means the machinations of our minds / consciousness aren't necessarily bound to physics or notions of casuality as we understand them.
Why do you say that qualia are necessarily non-physical? I think it's plausible that advances in neuroscience (far into the future, probably) could provide a robust physical description of how we experience sensation.
This is conjecture more than anything and I could be proven wrong, but I don't this is another 'science will figure it out when it gets advanced enough' issue.
You can theorize of a hypothetical being that knows the exact atomic make-up of a red object down to the smallest molecule and exactly how it triggers the color-cones in our eyes but that being would not phenomenally know the experience of redness unless they had observed it for themselves subjectively.
I think the problem here is, where do you cram the non physical portion in? Is there an interaction point with the physical?
Either the being with qualia never interacts meaningfully with the object, in which case conscious beings are just floating spirits pretending they make decisions and free will is irrelevant.
Or Qualia interacts with the physical body in some way that a direct simulation does not, producing a different result, in which case we can design an experiment to test where that interaction begins and the needed components for that.
Agreed. I always felt like assuming science is capable of infinite progression to be pure hubris. There's no guarantee we don't hit an intractable problem in every single field, and I'd be willing to wager real cash money we eventually do.
I disagree with this though, or rather the more general variant that gets passed around. I see absolutely no reason qualia couldn't be, or arise from, purely physical interactions. In the more general example I've seen it's usually phrased as something like "A being that possesses omniscience of the concept of Red, but has not experienced vision of it." Which seems like a either a non-sequetor or misses the point entirely.
In the first interpretation I cant see how you could have a being that has "Knowledge of all possible notions of a concept" without experiencing qualia, because if it had it wouldn't have had "Knowledge of all possible notions." Congrats, you made a god that cant lift stones and gave it a rock.
In the second interpretation im just like "Ok? What now though?" Visual qualia and cognitive qualia aren't the same thing, cool, agreed. Somebody that can see but has no idea of how vision works is also lacking the qualia of seeing within that context, or having thoughts related to it. Locked out of entire possible mind-space. Simply seeing Red is a different qualia than understanding Red, which is yet still a different qualia than doing both or neither. A blind person and an infant are both qualically(?how tf do you adverb qualia?) starved.
Edit: I should probably say I think materialist panpsychism is dope and good. Probably should have lead with that. Sorry.
I agree that any simplified or limited understanding of sensation wouldn't be the same as subjective experience - even fully simulating a human mind wouldn't be sufficient - but I don't think that means experience can't be physical.
Imagine an impossibly complex computer, purely composed of physical and electrical components. Imagine it's capable of self-observation, that it has a basic form of consciousness. We could document every bit of that computer's innards, understand every input and output. We could scrutinize its self-observation. We still wouldn't know what it feels like to "be" that computer. We couldn't access its qualia, even though it would be purely physical.
And yeah, the obvious rejoinder to that is that it wouldn't be experiencing qualia, and wouldn't be actually conscious. To me that feels like solipsism, but I admit that it's impossible to know. This whole thought experiment might be circular, actually. If a purely physical thing can experience qualia, then qualia must be physical, but if qualia aren't physical then a purely physical thing couldn't experience them. That question might be irresolvable.
This is essentially what it comes down to, and why I say my theory is mostly just conjecture; there's simply not enough information at the moment nor is it clear there will ever be.
Like with other things, the emergentist aspect of consciousness might not be fully explained, even with advances in science