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Perplexed comments on Less Wrong Rationality and Mainstream Philosophy - Less Wrong
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Comments (328)
I'm highly skeptical. I suspect that you may have failed to distinguish between sensory empiricism, which is a large standard movement, and the kind of thinking embodied in How An Algorithm Feels From the Inside which I've never seen anywhere else outside of Gary Drescher (and rumors that it's in Dennett books I haven't read).
Simple litmus test: What is the Quinean position on free will?
"It's nonsense!" = what I think standard "naturalistic" philosophy says
"If the brain uses the following specific AI-ish algorithms without conscious awareness of it, the corresponding mental ontology would appear from the inside to generate the following intuitions and apparent impossibilities about 'free will'..." = Less Wrong / Yudkowskian
A partial answer here:
I have always been too shy to ask, but would anyone be willing to tell me how wrong I am about my musings regarding free will here? I haven't read the LW sequence on free will yet, as it states "aspiring reductionists should try to solve it on their own." I tried, any feedback?
I don't think it's very good. (On the other hand, I have seen a great deal worse on free will.) There seem to be some outright errors or at least imprecisions, eg.:
To keep on topic, are you familiar with quining and all the ways of self-referencing?
I am vaguely aware of it. As far as I know a Quine can be seen as an artifact of a given language rather than a complete and consistent self-reference. Every Quine is missing some of its own definition, e.g. "when preceded by" or "print" need external interpreters to work as intended. No closed system can contain a perfect model of itself and is consequently unable to predict its actions, therefore no libertarian free will can exist.
What is outright wrong or imprecise about it?
The main point I tried to make is that a definition of free will that does satisfy our understanding of being free agents is possible if you disregard free from and concentrate on free to.