[FRIAM] Subjective experience & free will

[thompnickson2 at gmail.com]

It’s certainly  an interesting problem.  It has bedeviled me all my life

 

Not to go all monistic on you, but …. Why not just conclude that a persons “personality”,as a lens cloud above a mountain is just a standing wave in a relation between airflow, moisture, and altitude, is a standing wave in the relation between a person’s repeated responses to situations and the societal norms for how to react in those circumstances.  We wouldn’t invoke a Lensic Spirit to explain the cloud; why we invoke a personality to explain the stableness of a person’s behavior.  What we see is what we get. 

 

n

 

Nick Thompson

ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com <mailto:ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com> 

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of Jochen Fromm
Sent: Saturday, February 27, 2021 3:54 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Subjective experience & free will

 

Leibniz tried to reconcile determinism and free will. He used the metaphor of "windowless individuals": we can not see the personality of another person - unless we experience how a person acts and reacts, i.e. if we do not know the personal history, there is no window where we can observe the character of someone. 

In this sense the hard problem of consciousness appears to be a problem but is in fact a solution of another problem: the combination of determinism and free will. The actions of a person are determined, but it is normally unknown to others by what influences. Because of this lack of knowledge the actions seem to be undetermined, although they are not.

 

Is this an interesting idea or just nonsense? What do you think? 

 

-J. 

 

 

-------- Original message --------

From: Jochen Fromm <jofr at cas-group.net <mailto:jofr at cas-group.net> > 

Date: 2/27/21 22:29 (GMT+01:00) 

To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com <mailto:friam at redfish.com> > 

Subject: [FRIAM] Subjective experience & free will 

 

I am reading a book about Leibniz and started to wonder if the hard problem of consciousness could be the reason why we have the illusion of free will and can not predict how others will act. 


>From the outside a person seems to have free will in principle. From the inside everybody feels something different and is controlled by emotions based on subjective experience, which is unknown to others, because the individual is not transparent and the history is not known.

Once we investigate the life of a person, for example by a detective as part of a criminal investigation, or as movie viewers in a cinema, we start to understand why a person acts they way it does. The more we step into the footsteps of a person, the better we understand the feelings, goals and motives.

Could it be that the same thing which  prevents us from understanding the subjective experiences of others also creates the illusion of free will?

 

-J.

 

 

 

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