= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Morendil comments on Diseased thinking: dissolving questions about disease - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (343)
I used the word choice, but 'free will' do as well.
Was your response to my question biologically determined or was it a matter of conscious choice?
Whether there is going to be another response to this comment of mine or not, would it have been completely determined biologically or would it be a matter of conscious choice by some?
If all human actions are determined biologically the 'choice' is only an apparent one, like a tossed up coin having a 'choice' of turning up heads or tails. Whether someone is a determinist or not should itself have been determined biologically including all discussions of this nature!
The correct answer to this is "both" (and it is a false dichotomy). My consciousness is a property of a certain collection of matter which can be most compactly described by reference to the regularities we call "biology". Choosing to answer (or not to answer) is the result of a decision procedure arising out of the matter residing (to a rough approximation) in my braincase.
The difference between me and a coin is that a coin is a largely homogenous lump of metal and does not contain anything like a "choice mechanism", whereas among the regularities we call "biology" we find some patterns that reliably allow organisms (and even machines) to steer the future toward preferred directions, and which we call "choosing" or "deciding".