https://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/cross-check/my-go-to-arguments-for-free-will/

"By free will, I mean a capacity for deliberate, conscious decisions. Choices. Free will is variable. The more choices you have, the more free will you have. Our choices are constrained by all sorts of factors, physical, biological, social, economic, political, even romantic. My choices, for example, are often overruled by those of my willful girlfriend “Emily,” but that’s okay, because I’m with her by choice. Choices are never entirely free, but that doesn’t mean we lack them.

***

"Free-will deniers tend to be hard-core materialists, who think reality, ultimately, consists of particles pushed and pulled by fundamental forces. This hyper-reductive worldview can’t account for choice. ... It just means materialistic science, which does a splendid job explaining protons and planets, remains baffled by us.

***

"Free will is an idea, a packet of meaning, that cannot be reduced to mere physics. The idea of free will, not its instantiation in my brain, provoked me, my physical self, to type this column... Once I decide to write the column, then I must decide how to write it. That process entails countless choices. They are constrained, limited, by factors such as time, my verbal skills and knowledge, my sense of what readers will like and so on. Like I said, just because free will is never entirely free doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.

"Libet’s Experiments Are Bogus. Decades ago, psychologist Benjamin Libet monitored subjects’ neural activity while they chose to hit a button, and he discovered a burst of activity preceding the conscious decision to push the button by a split second. Free-will deniers seized upon Libet’s experiments as evidence that our brains make decisions, and our conscious choices are mere afterthoughts. Hence, no free will.

"First of all, deciding when to push a button is not remotely analogous to genuine choices, like whether to get married, have kids, get divorced. The Libet experiments are profoundly flawed, as psychologist Steve Taylor points out in a recent Scientific American column. The question is, why did anyone ever take seriously the claim that Libet had disproved free will? Why do smart people accept such flimsy evidence?

"You Reading This Sentence Is Proof Too. You don’t have to read this column, do you? Of course not. You choose to read it, freely. More proof of free will! If you’re irritated by the substance or style of this column, and you jump to Twitter to find something more amusing.

***

"You have more free will—more ability to see, weigh and make choices--now than when you were a baby. Right? You have more than if you were suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, or addicted to heroin, or imprisoned for manslaughter. If you are black or female, gay or transgender, and living in a democracy, you have more choices and hence free will than you would have 50, 100 or 200 years ago. If some people and societies have more choices than others—and they obviously do--free will must exist."

Comment: the simple approach recognizing none of us are free from past influences.

https://www.sciencealert.com/does-science-really-show-free-will-doesnt-exist-heres-what...

"It seems like we have free will. Most of the time, we are the ones who choose what we eat, how we tie our shoelaces and what articles we read on The Conversation.

"However, the latest book by Stanford neurobiologist Robert Sapolsky, Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will, has been receiving a lot of media attention for arguing science shows this is an illusion.

"Sapolsky summarizes the latest scientific research relevant to determinism: the idea that we're causally "determined" to act as we do because of our histories – and couldn't possibly act any other way.

"According to determinism, just as a rock that is dropped is determined to fall due to gravity, your neurons are determined to fire a certain way as a direct result of your environment, upbringing, hormones, genes, culture and myriad other factors outside your control. And this is true regardless of how "free" your choices seem to you.

"Sapolsky also says that because our behaviour is determined in this way, nobody is morally responsible for what they do. He believes while we can lock up murderers to keep others safe, they technically don't deserve to be punished.

"This is quite a radical position. It's worth asking why only 11% of philosophers agree with Sapolsky, compared with the 60% who think being causally determined is compatible with having free will and being morally responsible. (my bold)

"Have these "compatibilists" failed to understand the science? Or has Sapolsky failed to understand free will?

***

"The trouble with Sapolsky's arguments, as free will expert John Martin Fischer explains, is he doesn't actually present any argument for why his conception of free will is correct.

"He simply defines free will as being incompatible with determinism, assumes this absolves people of moral responsibility, and spends much of the book describing the many ways our behaviours are determined. His arguments can all be traced back to his definition of "free will".

"Compatibilists believe humans are agents. We live lives with "meaning", have an understanding of right and wrong, and act for moral reasons. This is enough to suggest most of us, most of the time, have a certain type of freedom and are responsible for our actions (and deserving of blame) – even if our behaviours are "determined".

"Compatibilists would point out that being constrained by determinism isn't the same as being constrained to a chair by a rope. Failing to save a drowning child because you were tied up is not the same as failing to save a drowning child because you were "determined" not to care about them. The former is an excuse. The latter is cause for condemnation.

***

"Compatibilists and incompatibilists both agree that, given determinism is true, there is a sense in which you lack alternatives and could not do otherwise.

"However, incompatibilists will say you therefore lack free will, whereas compatibilists will say you still possess free will because that sense of "lacking alternatives" isn't what undermines free will – and free will is something else entirely.

"They say as long as your actions came from you in a relevant way (even if "you" were "determined" by other things), you count as having free will. When you're tied up by a rope, the decision to not save the drowning child doesn't come from you. But when you just don't care about the child, it does. (my bolds)

***

"Sapolsky needs to show why his assumptions about what counts as free will are the ones relevant to moral responsibility. As philosopher Daniel Dennett once put it, we need to ask which "varieties of free will [are] worth wanting".

"The point of this back and forth isn't to show compatibilists are right. It is to highlight there's a nuanced debate to engage with. Free will is a thorny issue. Showing nobody is responsible for what they do requires understanding and engaging with all the positions on offer. Sapolsky doesn't do this.

"Sapolsky's broader mistake seems to be assuming his questions are purely scientific: answered by looking just at what the science says. While science is relevant, we first need some idea of what free will is (which is a metaphysical question) and how it relates to moral responsibility (a normative question). This is something philosophers have been interrogating for a very long time.

"Interdisciplinary work is valuable and scientists are welcome to contribute to age-old philosophical questions. But unless they engage with existing arguments first, rather than picking a definition they like and attacking others for not meeting it, their claims will simply be confused.

Comment: I view this article as offering the best current philosophic answer to the question of free will by tying it to a moral sense.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/free-will-is-only-an-illusion-if-you-are-too...

"In 2008 a group of researchers found that some information about an upcoming decision is present in the brain up to 10 seconds in advance, long before people reported making the decision of when or how to act.

***

"Most empirical studies of free will—including Libet’s—have focused on these kinds of arbitrary actions. In such actions, researchers can indeed “read out” our brain activity and trace information about our movements and choices before we even realize we are about to make them. But if these actions don’t matter to us, is it all that notable that they are initiated unconsciously? More significant decisions—such as whether to take a job, get married or move to a different country—are infinitely more interesting and complex and are quite consciously made.

"If we start working with a more philosophically grounded understanding of free will, we realize that only a small subset of our everyday actions is important enough to worry about. We want to feel in control of those decisions, the ones whose outcomes make a difference in our life and whose responsibility we feel on our shoulders. It is in this context—decisions that matter—that the question of free will most naturally applies.

***

"In 2019 neuroscientists Uri Maoz, Liad Mudrik and their colleagues investigated that idea. They presented participants with a choice of two nonprofit organizations to which they could donate $1,000. People could indicate their preferred organization by pressing the left or right button. In some cases, participants knew that their choice mattered because the button would determine which organization would receive the full $1,000. In other cases, people knowingly made meaningless choices because they were told that both organizations would receive $500 regardless of their selection. The results were somewhat surprising. Meaningless choices were preceded by a readiness potential, just as in previous experiments. Meaningful choices were not, however. When we care about a decision and its outcome, our brain appears to behave differently than when a decision is arbitrary.

"Even more interesting is the fact that ordinary people’s intuitions about free will and decision-making do not seem consistent with these findings. Some of our colleagues, including Maoz and neuroscientist Jake Gavenas, recently published the results of a large survey, with more than 600 respondents, in which they asked people to rate how “free” various choices made by others seemed. Their ratings suggested that people do not recognize that the brain may handle meaningful choices in a different way from more arbitrary or meaningless ones. People tend, in other words, to imagine all their choices—from which sock to put on first to where to spend a vacation—as equally “free,” even though neuroscience suggests otherwise."

What this tells us is that free will may exist, but it may not operate in the way we intuitively imagine. In the same vein, there is a second intuition that must be addressed to understand studies of volition. When experiments have found that brain activity, such as the readiness potential, precedes the conscious intention to act, some people have jumped to the conclusion that they are “not in charge.” They do not have free will, they reason, because they are somehow subject to their brain activity.

Comment: this definitive approach clearly supports free will and doesn't jump to Libetian conclusions

https://mindmatters.ai/2022/01/prof-fine-tuning-in-nature-is-due-to-the-mind-of-the-uni...

"In Goff’s view, the best account of the matter is that consciousness is fundamental to the nature of the universe. This is rather a different approach to consciousness from the usual “Eureka! We have figured out how human consciousness got started! It helped early hominids hunt better!” that one regularly reads in popular science tabloids. He goes on:

"However, a number of scientists and philosophers of science have recently argued that this kind of ‘bottom-up’ picture of the Universe is outdated, and that contemporary physics suggests that in fact we live in a ‘top-down’ – or ‘holist’ – Universe, in which complex wholes are more fundamental than their parts. According to holism, the table in front of you does not derive its existence from the sub-atomic particles that compose it; rather, those sub-atomic particles derive their existence from the table. Ultimately, everything that exists derives its existence from the ultimate complex system: the Universe as a whole.

"Holism has a somewhat mystical association, in its commitment to a single unified whole being the ultimate reality. But there are strong scientific arguments in its favour. The American philosopher Jonathan Schaffer argues that the phenomenon of quantum entanglement is good evidence for holism. Entangled particles behave as a whole, even if they are separated by such large distances that it is impossible for any kind of signal to travel between them. According to Schaffer, we can make sense of this only if, in general, we are in a Universe in which complex systems are more fundamental than their parts.

"Goff argues for cosmopsychism, a form of panpsychism in which “the Universe is conscious, and that the consciousness of humans and animals is derived not from the consciousness of fundamental particles, but from the consciousness of the Universe itself.” He wrote a book on the topic, Consciousness and Fundamental Reality (2017).

***

"Goff closes with

"The idea that the Universe is a conscious mind that responds to value strikes us a ludicrously extravagant cartoon. But we must judge the view not on its cultural associations but on its explanatory power. Agentive cosmopsychism explains the fine-tuning without making false predictions; and it does so with a simplicity and elegance unmatched by its rivals. It is a view we should take seriously."

Comment: I t hink we live in the mind of God.

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-06-neuroscience-doesnt-undermine-free.html

"Experiments spanning the 1960s and 1980s measured brain signals noninvasively and led many neuroscientists to believe that our brains make decisions before we do—that human actions were initiated by electrical waves that did not reflect free, conscious thought.

"However, a new article in Trends in Cognitive Science argues that recent research undermines this case against free will.

"'This new perspective on the data turns on its head the way well-known findings have been interpreted," said Adina Roskies, the Helman Family Distinguished Professor and professor of philosophy at Dartmouth College, who co-wrote the article. "The new interpretation accounts for the data while undermining all the reasons to think it challenges free will."

***

"According to the research team, this part of Libet's logic was based on a premise that is likely false.

"'Because the averaged readiness potential reliably precedes voluntary movement, people assumed that it reflected a process specifically directed at producing that movement. As it turns out, and as our model has shown, that is not necessarily the case," said Aaron Schurger, an assistant professor of psychology at Chapman University who co-wrote of the article.

"The article highlights new research using computational modeling that indicates that the standard interpretation of the readiness potential should be reassessed, particularly for its relevance to the question of free will.

"The study points to findings that suggest that the readiness potential—the pre-movement buildup of activity—reflects the neural activity that underlies the formation of a decision to move, rather than the outcome of a decision to move.

"'These new computational models account for the consistent finding of the readiness potential without positing anything like an RP in individual trials. The readiness potential itself is a kind of artifact or illusion, one which would be expected to appear just as it does given the experimental design, but doesn't reflect a real brain signal that begins with the RP onset or is read out by other areas," said Roskies.

"The article also highlights several challenges to the idea that the readiness potential causes humans to act: difficulty distinguishing the readiness potential from other electrical signals in the brain; the presence of a readiness potential when tasks do not involve motor activity; and 'noise' in analyses which makes it difficult to confirm whether the readiness potential always predicts movement.

"False positives, in which readiness potential is observed but fails to initiate movement, and inconsistencies in the amount of time between the buildup of the brain waves and movement also complicate the understanding of the connection between the electrical activity in the brain and free will.

"Finally, the article emphasizes the philosophical aspects of attempting to address the problem of free will with brain data."

Comment: I can't reject these findings.

https://aeon.co/ideas/modern-technology-is-akin-to-the-metaphysics-of-vedanta?utm_sourc...

"Vedanta offers a model to integrate subjective consciousness and the information-processing systems of our body and brains. Its theory separates the brain and the senses from the mind. But it also distinguishes the mind from the function of consciousness, which it defines as the ability to experience mental output. We’re familiar with this notion from our digital devices. A camera, microphone or other sensors linked to a computer gather information about the world, and convert the various forms of physical energy – light waves, air pressure-waves and so forth – into digital data, just as our bodily senses do. The central processing unit processes this data and produces relevant outputs. The same is true of our brain. In both contexts, there seems to be little scope for subjective experience to play a role within these mechanisms.

"While computers can handle all sorts of processing without our help, we furnish them with a screen as an interface between the machine and ourselves. Similarly, Vedanta postulates that the conscious entity – something it terms the atma – is the observer of the output of the mind. The atma possesses, and is said to be composed of, the fundamental property of consciousness. The concept is explored in many of the meditative practices of Eastern traditions.

"You might think of the atma like this. Imagine you’re watching a film in the cinema. It’s a thriller, and you’re anxious about the lead character, trapped in a room. Suddenly, the door in the movie crashes open and there stands… You jump, as if startled. But what is the real threat to you, other than maybe spilling your popcorn? By suspending an awareness of your body in the cinema, and identifying with the character on the screen, we are allowing our emotional state to be manipulated. Vedanta suggests that the atma, the conscious self, identifies with the physical world in a similar fashion.

***

"In Vedanta psychology, this is akin to the atma adopting the psychological persona-self it calls the ahankara, or the ‘pseudo-ego’. Instead of a detached conscious observer, we choose to define ourselves in terms of our social connections and the physical characteristics of the body. Thus, I come to believe in myself with reference to my gender, race, size, age and so forth, along with the roles and responsibilities of family, work and community. Conditioned by such identification, I indulge in the relevant emotions – some happy, some challenging or distressing – produced by the circumstances I witness myself undergoing.

***

"These observations mirror the Vedantic claim that our ability to form meaningful relationships is diminished by absorption in the ahankara, the pseudo-ego. The more I regard myself as a physical entity requiring various forms of sensual gratification, the more likely I am to objectify those who can satisfy my desires, and to forge relationships based on mutual selfishness. But Vedanta suggests that love should emanate from the deepest part of the self, not its assumed persona. Love, it claims, is soul-to-soul experience. Interactions with others on the basis of the ahankara offer only a parody of affection.

"As the atma, we remain the same subjective self throughout the whole of our life. Our body, mentality and personality change dramatically – but throughout it all, we know ourselves to be the constant observer. However, seeing everything shift and give way around us, we suspect that we’re also subject to change, ageing and heading for annihilation.

***

"Some commentators interpret Vedanta as suggesting that there is no real world, and that all that exists is conscious awareness. However, a broader take on Vedantic texts is more akin to VR. The VR world is wholly data, but it becomes ‘real’ when that information manifests itself to our senses as imagery and sounds on the screen or through a headset. Similarly, for Vedanta, it is the external world’s transitory manifestation as observable objects that makes it less ‘real’ than the perpetual, unchanging nature of the consciousness that observes it.

"To the sages of old, immersing ourselves in the ephemeral world means allowing the atma to succumb to an illusion: the illusion that our consciousness is somehow part of an external scene, and must suffer or enjoy along with it. It’s amusing to think what Patanjali and the Vedantic fathers would make of VR: an illusion within an illusion, perhaps, but one that might help us to grasp the potency of their message."

Comment: Interesting definition of consciousness, but doesn't advance our 'hard problem' with it.

DAVID: Of course cells cooperate. Multicellular life could not exist without cooperation.

dhw: You accused me of expanding the meaning of the word consciousness as a ploy to support my idea that all organisms have a degree of intelligence. I was simply pointing out that my idea concerning the emergence of our own self-awareness through the cooperation of intelligent cell communities is an expansion of the observations of some scientists, and has nothing to do with definitions of consciousness.

DAVID: I think life is a miracle, which requires a supernatural source.

dhw: Another definition of miracle” is “any amazing or wonderful event” (Encarta)

DAVID: I thought we weren't going to argue about definitions.

dhw: The idea I have outlined above has nothing to do with definitions of consciousness. In the context of miracles, I am simply making it clear that the word itself does not necessarily imply a supernatural cause.

True enough.

DAVID: I thought we weren't going to argue about definitions.

The idea I have outlined above has nothing to do with definitions of consciousness. In the context of miracles, I am simply making it clear that the word itself does not necessarily imply a supernatural cause.

dhw: According to some scientists (it is not just my idea – see under “Horizontal gene transfer”), there are degrees of awareness, ranging from that of bacteria to that of humans, and they couple this with degrees of intelligence. Time and again we read about the cooperation between cells and cell communities at all levels. This is not an “idea”; it is a fact, both inside and outside our bodies. I have expanded this fact into the idea that cooperation between the intelligent cell communities of the brain may be the source of our own higher intelligence or self-awareness. But of course I do not pretend that the idea explains how cells became aware/intelligent in the first place, and your God is one of the three options I have suggested.

DAVID: Of course cells cooperate. Multicellular life could not exist without cooperation.

You accused me of expanding the meaning of the word consciousness as a ploy to support my idea that all organisms have a degree of intelligence. I was simply pointing out that my idea concerning the emergence of our own self-awareness through the cooperation of intelligent cell communities is an expansion of the observations of some scientists, and has nothing to do with definitions of consciousness.

DAVID: I think life is a miracle, which requires a supernatural source.

dhw: Another definition of miracle” is “any amazing or wonderful event” (Encarta)

I thought we weren't going to argue about definitions.

DAVID: Of course cells cooperate. Multicellular life could not exist without cooperation.

You accused me of expanding the meaning of the word consciousness as a ploy to support my idea that all organisms have a degree of intelligence. I was simply pointing out that my idea concerning the emergence of our own self-awareness through the cooperation of intelligent cell communities is an expansion of the observations of some scientists, and has nothing to do with definitions of consciousness.

DAVID: I think life is a miracle, which requires a supernatural source.

Another definition of miracle” is “any amazing or wonderful event” (Encarta)

DAVID’s comment: This wild theory thinks we are all associated to a universal consciousness and dissociated at the same time! But it mirrors some of my thinking.

dhw: I think all of us would agree that there is no satisfactory explanation of consciousness, and every attempt comes up with its own problems. However, even if we can’t explain it, we have lots of examples in the world of insects and microorganisms that show how fragmented (i.e. individual) consciousnesses DO combine to create higher levels of intelligence. My favourite example, of course, is ants, which create cities and lifestyles of enormous complexity entailing the combination of multiple skills. If we accept that even single-celled organisms are intelligent, there is no way we can know for sure that they are NOT capable of combining and producing levels of intelligence/consciousness that extend to that of high-level subjectivity. I find this theory considerably less “wild” than the one presented here.

DAVID: You continue to expand the meaning of a very precise term 'consciousness'. It always means self-awareness. You do that to support your idea that true intelligence is everywhere from single cells to non-human animals. A neat ploy.

dhw: Consciousness is the state of being conscious, and for some reason you refuse to accept that there are degrees of it. In humans it includes self-awareness, but even in your own post under "THEORY" you talk of animals being “consciously purposeful”. Do you believe your dog is conscious of your presence, of walkies time, of the doggy food on the plate, of ways to make you aware he wants to walk or eat? I suggest the answer is yes. Do you believe your dog wonders why it exists? I suggest the answer is no. But I am more than happy to distinguish between awareness and self-awareness if you prefer.

I prefer. We discuss here why humans are so different. Human consciousness is a major aspect of that difference.

dhw: There is no neat ploy, and it is irrelevant to my proposal. According to some scientists (it is not just my idea – see under “Horizontal gene transfer”), there are degrees of awareness, ranging from that of bacteria to that of humans, and they couple this with degrees of intelligence. Time and again we read about the cooperation between cells and cell communities at all levels. This is not an “idea”; it is a fact, both inside and outside our bodies. I have expanded this fact into the idea that cooperation between the intelligent cell communities of the brain may be the source of our own higher intelligence or self-awareness. But of course I do not pretend that the idea explains how cells became aware/intelligent in the first place, and your God is one of the three options I have suggested.

Of course cells cooperate. Multicellular life could not exist without cooperation. I think life is a miracle, which requires a supernatural source.

dhw: I think all of us would agree that there is no satisfactory explanation of consciousness, and every attempt comes up with its own problems. However, even if we can’t explain it, we have lots of examples in the world of insects and microorganisms that show how fragmented (i.e. individual) consciousnesses DO combine to create higher levels of intelligence. My favourite example, of course, is ants, which create cities and lifestyles of enormous complexity entailing the combination of multiple skills. If we accept that even single-celled organisms are intelligent, there is no way we can know for sure that they are NOT capable of combining and producing levels of intelligence/consciousness that extend to that of high-level subjectivity. I find this theory considerably less “wild” than the one presented here.

DAVID: You continue to expand the meaning of a very precise term 'consciousness'. It always means self-awareness. You do that to support your idea that true intelligence is everywhere from single cells to non-human animals. A neat ploy.

Consciousness is the state of being conscious, and for some reason you refuse to accept that there are degrees of it. In humans it includes self-awareness, but even in your own post under "THEORY" you talk of animals being “consciously purposeful”. Do you believe your dog is conscious of your presence, of walkies time, of the doggy food on the plate, of ways to make you aware he wants to walk or eat? I suggest the answer is yes. Do you believe your dog wonders why it exists? I suggest the answer is no. But I am more than happy to distinguish between awareness and self-awareness if you prefer. There is no neat ploy, and it is irrelevant to my proposal. According to some scientists (it is not just my idea – see under “Horizontal gene transfer”), there are degrees of awareness, ranging from that of bacteria to that of humans, and they couple this with degrees of intelligence. Time and again we read about the cooperation between cells and cell communities at all levels. This is not an “idea”; it is a fact, both inside and outside our bodies. I have expanded this fact into the idea that cooperation between the intelligent cell communities of the brain may be the source of our own higher intelligence or self-awareness. But of course I do not pretend that the idea explains how cells became aware/intelligent in the first place, and your God is one of the three options I have suggested.

DAVID: No mention of God but supports a theory of universal consciousness as an explanation of the presence of consciousness and the 'combination problem':
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/could-multiple-personality-disorder-e...

QUOTE: "constitutive panpsychism has a critical problem of its own: there is arguably no coherent, non-magical way in which lower-level subjective points of view—such as those of subatomic particles or neurons in the brain, if they have these points of view—could combine to form higher-level subjective points of view, such as yours and ours. This is called the combination problem and it appears just as insoluble as the hard problem of consciousness.
"The obvious way around the combination problem is to posit that, although consciousness is indeed fundamental in nature, it isn’t fragmented like matter.”

DAVID’s comment: This wild theory thinks we are all associated to a universal consciousness and dissociated at the same time! But it mirrors some of my thinking.

dhw: I think all of us would agree that there is no satisfactory explanation of consciousness, and every attempt comes up with its own problems. However, even if we can’t explain it, we have lots of examples in the world of insects and microorganisms that show how fragmented (i.e. individual) consciousnesses DO combine to create higher levels of intelligence. My favourite example, of course, is ants, which create cities and lifestyles of enormous complexity entailing the combination of multiple skills. If we accept that even single-celled organisms are intelligent, there is no way we can know for sure that they are NOT capable of combining and producing levels of intelligence/consciousness that extend to that of high-level subjectivity. I find this theory considerably less “wild” than the one presented here.

You continue to expand the meaning of a very precise term 'consciousness'. It always means self-awareness. You do that to support your idea that true intelligence is everywhere from single cells to non-human animals. A neat ploy.

QUOTE: "constitutive panpsychism has a critical problem of its own: there is arguably no coherent, non-magical way in which lower-level subjective points of view—such as those of subatomic particles or neurons in the brain, if they have these points of view—could combine to form higher-level subjective points of view, such as yours and ours. This is called the combination problem and it appears just as insoluble as the hard problem of consciousness.
"The obvious way around the combination problem is to posit that, although consciousness is indeed fundamental in nature, it isn’t fragmented like matter.”

DAVID’s comment: This wild theory thinks we are all associated to a universal consciousness and dissociated at the same time! But it mirrors some of my thinking.

I think all of us would agree that there is no satisfactory explanation of consciousness, and every attempt comes up with its own problems. However, even if we can’t explain it, we have lots of examples in the world of insects and microorganisms that show how fragmented (i.e. individual) consciousnesses DO combine to create higher levels of intelligence. My favourite example, of course, is ants, which create cities and lifestyles of enormous complexity entailing the combination of multiple skills. If we accept that even single-celled organisms are intelligent, there is no way we can know for sure that they are NOT capable of combining and producing levels of intelligence/consciousness that extend to that of high-level subjectivity. I find this theory considerably less “wild” than the one presented here.

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/could-multiple-personality-disorder-e...

"In 2015, doctors in Germany reported the extraordinary case of a woman who suffered from what has traditionally been called “multiple personality disorder” and today is known as “dissociative identity disorder” (DID). The woman exhibited a variety of dissociated personalities (“alters”), some of which claimed to be blind. Using EEGs, the doctors were able to ascertain that the brain activity normally associated with sight wasn’t present while a blind alter was in control of the woman’s body, even though her eyes were open. Remarkably, when a sighted alter assumed control, the usual brain activity returned.

"This was a compelling demonstration of the literally blinding power of extreme forms of dissociation, a condition in which the psyche gives rise to multiple, operationally separate centers of consciousness, each with its own private inner life.

"Modern neuroimaging techniques have demonstrated that DID is real.

***

"According to the mainstream metaphysical view of physicalism, reality is fundamentally constituted by physical stuff outside and independent of mind. Mental states, in turn, should be explainable in terms of the parameters of physical processes in the brain.

"A key problem of physicalism, however, is its inability to make sense of how our subjective experience of qualities—what it is like to feel the warmth of fire, the redness of an apple, the bitterness of disappointment and so on—could arise from mere arrangements of physical stuff.

"Physical entities such as subatomic particles possess abstract relational properties, such as mass, spin, momentum and charge. But there is nothing about these properties, or in the way particles are arranged in a brain, in terms of which one could deduce what the warmth of fire, the redness of an apple or the bitterness of disappointment feel like. This is known as the hard problem of consciousness.

***

"constitutive panpsychism has a critical problem of its own: there is arguably no coherent, non-magical way in which lower-level subjective points of view—such as those of subatomic particles or neurons in the brain, if they have these points of view—could combine to form higher-level subjective points of view, such as yours and ours. This is called the combination problem and it appears just as insoluble as the hard problem of consciousness.

"The obvious way around the combination problem is to posit that, although consciousness is indeed fundamental in nature, it isn’t fragmented like matter. The idea is to extend consciousness to the entire fabric of spacetime, as opposed to limiting it to the boundaries of individual subatomic particles. This view—called “cosmopsychism” in modern philosophy, although our preferred formulation of it boils down to what has classically been called “idealism”—is that there is only one, universal, consciousness. The physical universe as a whole is the extrinsic appearance of universal inner life, just as a living brain and body are the extrinsic appearance of a person’s inner life.

"So, for idealism to be tenable, one must explain—at least in principle—how one universal consciousness gives rise to multiple, private but concurrently conscious centers of cognition, each with a distinct personality and sense of identity.
And here is where dissociation comes in. We know empirically from DID that consciousness can give rise to many operationally distinct centers of concurrent experience, each with its own personality and sense of identity. Therefore, if something analogous to DID happens at a universal level, the one universal consciousness could, as a result, give rise to many alters with private inner lives like yours and ours. As such, we may all be alters—dissociated personalities—of universal consciousness.

"So, for idealism to be tenable, one must explain—at least in principle—how one universal consciousness gives rise to multiple, private but concurrently conscious centers of cognition, each with a distinct personality and sense of identity.

"And here is where dissociation comes in. We know empirically from DID that consciousness can give rise to many operationally distinct centers of concurrent experience, each with its own personality and sense of identity. Therefore, if something analogous to DID happens at a universal level, the one universal consciousness could, as a result, give rise to many alters with private inner lives like yours and ours. As such, we may all be alters—dissociated personalities—of universal consciousness.

Comment: This wild theory thinks we are all associated to a universal consciousness and dissociated at the same time! But it mirrors some of my thinking.


> DAVID: Animals sensory perceptions can be much more acute, nothing more. Explain your statement if it means more.
> 
> dhw: It does not mean anything more. It is part of my response to the author's statement. Allowing for all the different degrees, do you accept that animals think, have emotions and have perceptions, and that therefore his statement is completely, utterly, totally and absurdly wrong?-Based on the quote, you are correct. I haven't reviewed the article again, but I think in his context he was simply defining human use of the brain.


> DAVID: Not to the degree humans can, by a vast gulf.
> 
> dhw: Animal perceptions are often vastly more acute than human perceptions, we cannot measure emotion, but I agree with you that human thought exceeds that of our fellow animals by a vast degree. That is not the same as saying that “only a human thinks or has emotions or has perceptions.” - Animals sensory perceptions can be much more acute, nothing more. Explain your statement if it means more.