How could there be options in a deterministic world?

[Bahman]

Ok, let me ask you this question: Is a human brain a deterministic object?

I am not sure that your question makes sense, especially as you don't seem to see the connection between determinism and free will.

I am not interested in the connection between determinism and free will. I am wondering how all options could be real in a deterministic world considering the fact that only one state of affairs is permissible in the future given the current state of affairs.

The brain Is the wiring mechanism, and, on this basis, could be seen as an 'object' but it is all about processes and systems. There is the whole issue of physicalism and the question of free will, and determinism may be important in both areas of philosophy. But to view the brain as an object may to see it as detached from the imminent aspects of consciousness and the human experiences.

No, I consider consciousness when I argue about options being real. I argue that the experience of options coincides with a delay in our physical activity and this cannot be a matter of chance therefore options are real. Determinists in fact argue that only one of the options is real and the other are illusions even if our experience of options seems real.

I simply don't understand where you are coming from if you don't see any connection between the issue of determinism and free will. I simply don't understand how you approach philosophy or whether you have read any philosophy at all. As it is, your thread for last month and this month are the most popular. I would certainly not wish to undermine your contributions but I feel so despondent when the thread of this month on a philosophy site appears to see determinism and free will as not related. I am not wishing to dismiss your ideas and endeavours, because it is likely that people find your views as far more interesting than mine, But, I do think that you need to read a little in philosophy in order to see how the relationship between determinism has a relationship with the philosophical issues of free will.

Free will and determinism have been the subject of a long debate in the philosophy of mind. I am aware of that and I was not interested to open another thread on this topic and instead open another thread. To elaborate we have three things when it comes to a decision in a situation: 1) An agent who makes the decision in the situation, 2) the situation that is defined by at least two options, 3) the act of free decision by the agent which leads to choosing one of the options. Now there are two important questions: 1) How could a deterministic agent be free? and How could options be real in a deterministic world? As you noticed and as I mentioned I am not interested in the first question but the second one.

I hope that the things is clear now. By the way, I have a PhD in physics but left physics to study philosophy.

[Bahman]

As I said I am not discussing free will here. I am discussing the existence of options in a deterministic world.

This is a bit like saying I'm not discussing water, I am discussing seas, river, oceans, and stuff you drink.

So what do you think "free will" implies?

Free will is the ability of a free agent to unbiasedly (by unbiased I mean without any inclination) choose between two options.

1. You said you were not going to talk about free will.
2. You cannot make a choice without bias. Bias is the basis of your opinion. With no opinion there is only indecision.

My question is not how a person can choose one of the options but how options could be real in a deterministic world.

It's the same thing. Choices are always present moment by moment, and each moment determines the next pathway. As long as no one is pointing a gun at you, you are free to chose according to your self determination.
Thus in a deterministic world we can all freely make choices providing we have not collected too many obligations or we live in a society where others are free to determine and guide out actions.
If we are slaves, or enter into employment contracts we loose our freedom to determine our own pathways. Yet the choice remains. Get up put your socks on, go to work. Or not as we chose.

As I already said: "My question is not how a person can choose one of the options but how options could be real in a deterministic world.". I don't really know how to explain it more simpler than this for you.

[Sculptor1]

This is a bit like saying I'm not discussing water, I am discussing seas, river, oceans, and stuff you drink.

So what do you think "free will" implies?

Free will is the ability of a free agent to unbiasedly (by unbiased I mean without any inclination) choose between two options.

1. You said you were not going to talk about free will.
2. You cannot make a choice without bias. Bias is the basis of your opinion. With no opinion there is only indecision.

My question is not how a person can choose one of the options but how options could be real in a deterministic world.

It's the same thing. Choices are always present moment by moment, and each moment determines the next pathway. As long as no one is pointing a gun at you, you are free to chose according to your self determination.
Thus in a deterministic world we can all freely make choices providing we have not collected too many obligations or we live in a society where others are free to determine and guide out actions.
If we are slaves, or enter into employment contracts we lose our freedom to determine our own pathways. Yet the choice remains. Get up put your socks on, go to work. Or not as we chose.

As I already said: "My question is not how a person can choose one of the options but how options could be real in a deterministic world.". I don't really know how to explain it more simpler than this for you.

It might help if your underlying assumptions did not lead you to this contradiction.
1) Do you think the world is deterministic?
2) Do choices exist?

[Bahman]

The mind becomes important when it comes to making a decision when there is a conflict of interest in options. That is an interesting but different problem. My point however is how options could possibly be real in a deterministic world. I have an argument for the realness of options though. The heart of my argument is the coincidence of subjective experience of options and the pause in our physical and mental activity. I am arguing that this coincidence can not be due to chance so we can trust the subjective experience and be sure about the existence of options.

In the context I gave I don't think noting one type of correlation is enough to draw conclusions from. And Libet and subsequent similar experiments offer a different perspective on a 'readiness potential' pause you might want to check out.

I am aware of Libet experiment. By pause I don't mean the readiness potential but the time between facing options and making a decision.

I also disagree that there's a pause in physical brain activity or mental activity when we consider options - did you really mean to say that?

But anyway I gave an alternative possibility to that point within my post -

As far as we know, there are no physical brain processes which are in principle not following physicalist deterministic laws in response to physical stimuli. The pause then could reflect the complex physical brain processes taking time, or perhaps never, hitting the threshold to instigate motor neuron behaviour.

My question is why the brain processes should take the time or perhaps never end if options are not real. Why do these two phenomena, the pause and the subjective experience of option coincide? It could not be a matter of chance.

I assume the pause you refer to is the pause in behaviour - I might stay sitting for a few seconds while I decide if I fancy a coffee or tea, before I go to the kitchen and make a cuppa? 

Yes, by pause I mean the delay between facing the options and choosing one of the options.

If we assume neural correlation holds, then the time I mentally mull the options is mirrored by correlated neural activity.  Physicalist determinists would say the neural interactions make the 'decision', based perhaps on the strengths of previously established neural patterns of connections.  These neural interactions being re-sparked in slightly different circs take a bit of time before they in turn spark the motor neurons which get me to the kitchen. Libet (controversially) claims on top of that, there's a pause between the physical neural processes (in quick decisions at least) becoming conscious, the neurons have made the 'decision' before I'm consciously aware. But there was never really an option or decision, just neurons physically reacting to physical stimuli. The correlated conscious experience being useless epiphenomenal baggage.

The case of a complex choice which takes a long time is similar in principle I'd think.  Say I'm thinking of changing career because I don't like my job, but it has a lot of perks and I'm not sure I should. I might think over the pros and cons for weeks on and off.  That thinking over is similarly correlated to neural interactivity, which physicalist determinists say will make the actual 'decision'.  But it takes weeks for a pattern of neural activity to be strong enough to spark the motor neurons to tell my boss I resign.  Perhaps it took a final straw argument at work, or particularly bad day to strengthen the required neural connection to instigate the behaviour of resigning.  And again Libet-arians might say I don't consciously know I've told my boss until very shortly after I've done it.

So for physicalist determinists at least, the pause in the behaviour of enacting a choice which coincides with mentally considering options doesn't make the options real. I would always do the same thing, behave the same way, if the same physical stimuli caused the same physical neuronal activity.

Yes, that is what determinists say as I mentioned in OP.

Of course physicalist determinists don't understand the mind-body relationship any better than anybody else, so they could be wrong.  And many physicalists believe they can mentally choose options and mentally will their actions. It certainly feels that way. They just don't know how that could work.  And neither do you when you claim options exist.

Well, that is one of the things that I am thinking of right now. I know our thought have contents and options sometimes are a part of the contents of our thoughts. I also know that thinking is pattern recognition but I don't know how we realize options in a thought.

[Bahman]

The "reality" is only deterministic in the sense that it "exists". To "exist" can be defined by the fact that anything that "exists" constantly changes. Therefore, change is part of the definition to "exist", where the change itself is a spontaneously emergent non-deterministic phenomenon of at least two possibilities.

Change can be two sorts, deterministic or non-deterministic. Our world is believed to be deterministic so the existence of options is like magic. What do you mean by non-deterministic?

How can change be "deterministic"? In order to change, there must be at least two possibilities: change & no change. From that point on, you have divergence of those two possibilities, which will very quickly "explode" in a chain reaction of divergence<>convergence between duality of "choice" (particle-wave).

I don't understand what you are talking about.

[Bahman]

There is no option in deterministic world. As majority of our action are pre designed based on past gathered information. Means our decisions are the outcome of prior experiences and information. Only option we have in deterministic world is to be more conscious and alert on data we accumulating through all the senses.
Other option is memory less observation. Which is practically impossible.
To sum up, as long as we have acquired functioning memory, options in deterministic world is an "illusion". Admissible to both mental and physical.

If the decision is predetermined then why there is this delay between experiencing options and making decisions that take a while, days, and even years?

[Bahman]

Could you please provide a link to the post? You wrote several posts.

If I knew how to provide a link, i would.

It is simple. Click on the title on the top left part of the post. This provides you with a link on the link bar that you can post it anywhere you like.

However, here's what I wrote:

"I opted to have lunch at McDonalds yesterday."

I cannot, of course, opt otherwise at this stage of the game. Nonetheless, the sentence is coherent, descriptive, and meaningful. If we can "choose" in the past tense, surely we can choose in the present tense. "Options" is a meaningful word whether or not they are determined.

Ok, that means that you believe that options are real. Now could you answer the question in the title given the definition of determinism in OP?

[Bahman]

Free will is the ability of a free agent to unbiasedly (by unbiased I mean without any inclination) choose between two options.

1. You said you were not going to talk about free will.
2. You cannot make a choice without bias. Bias is the basis of your opinion. With no opinion there is only indecision.

My question is not how a person can choose one of the options but how options could be real in a deterministic world.

It's the same thing. Choices are always present moment by moment, and each moment determines the next pathway. As long as no one is pointing a gun at you, you are free to chose according to your self determination.
Thus in a deterministic world we can all freely make choices providing we have not collected too many obligations or we live in a society where others are free to determine and guide out actions.
If we are slaves, or enter into employment contracts we lose our freedom to determine our own pathways. Yet the choice remains. Get up put your socks on, go to work. Or not as we chose.

As I already said: "My question is not how a person can choose one of the options but how options could be real in a deterministic world.". I don't really know how to explain it more simpler than this for you.

It might help if your underlying assumptions did not lead you to this contradiction.
1) Do you think the world is deterministic?
2) Do choices exist?

Cool. Now you get my point. I am challenging determinism here so I assume that determinism and choices are both true and show that there is a contradiction! Of course, I have my argument for options to be real as it is illustrated in OP and as it is discussed in several posts in this thread.

[Ranvier]

How can change be "deterministic"? In order to change, there must be at least two possibilities: change & no change. From that point on, you have divergence of those two possibilities, which will very quickly "explode" in a chain reaction of divergence<>convergence between duality of "choice" (particle-wave).

I don't understand what you are talking about.

Ok. A mere fact of change presents two options: change and no-change. Nothing interesting happens when there is no change but once something changes, now there are two "real" options: go back to the original state (A) or remain in state of change (B). We can imagine a "reality" of oscillation between A<>B ad infinitum but that's not what we observe in our "reality" of multiple different states (interesting). So how did we get to this interesting "reality"? Logically B had to have another choice of becoming something different from mere change back to A, with yet another change into C. All these changes between A<>B<>C require some "time", which opens another dimension of possibility, where there is some probabilistic percentage (%) of A, B , C at any given time. Each state has then a choice of becoming a new "change" to D and so on. This becomes a chain reaction of exponential growth in choices, where we can't "determine" the actual state of "reality" but an imaginary snapshot image of this constant change at any given point in "time" to achieve an illusion of "deterministic" view of "existence". However, this illusionary view can't be "real" as "reality" constantly changes from all these relative probabilistic choices. We can use science and our knowledge to force a deterministic outcome of our choice but then what's "deterministic" about how we decide what we choose to imagine in "reality"?

[Ecurb]

However, here's what I wrote:

"I opted to have lunch at McDonalds yesterday."

I cannot, of course, opt otherwise at this stage of the game. Nonetheless, the sentence is coherent, descriptive, and meaningful. If we can "choose" in the past tense, surely we can choose in the present tense. "Options" is a meaningful word whether or not they are determined.

Ok, that means that you believe that options are real. Now could you answer the question in the title given the definition of determinism in OP?

The OP poses a linguistic puzzle, not a philosophical problem. An option is "a thing that is or may be chosen." A "choice" is "an act of selecting or making a decision when faced with two or more possibilities." '

What does "faced with" mean? It refers to the point of view of the chooser. When LeBron James became eligible for the NBA draft, it was a forgone conclusion that he would be "chosen" first. Does this mean that "choice" is an inappropriate word in this case? I don't think so. When one says, "I chose to go to the store yesterday" no other choice is possible (any more). So what? The word "choice" aptly describes the sense in which you decided to go to the store.

The fact that there are reasons for choosing as we do is irrelevant. So is the notion that our choices may be inevitable. The word describes our mental processes, not the state of the universe, or the knowledge of an omniscient God.

[value]

At question would be whether consciousness is reduce-able to a product of the human body.

But it is.

If it is, then where is the repeatable evidence?

(2019) Science as we know it can’t explain consciousness – but a philosophical revolution is coming
There is growing suspicion among scientists that conventional scientific methods will never be able to explain consciousness.
https://theconversation.com/science-as- ... ing-126143

Do you agree that if consciousness is to follow as a product of the physical brain that it should have a repeatable and observable nature?

How do you think this relevant?

When a human makes a choice - 'has an option' - would the deterministic nature of that option rely on the abolishing of a moral reasoning component in the conscious act of choosing an option?

The argument is that the nature of observing does not allow that which is observed to fundamentally have been pre-known on cosmic level because it would render observation (consciousness) meaningless.

This sentence does not seem to parse well.
Can you break it up please?
What is "cosmic level"? You do not provide it with a grammatical article. Is there a reason for that?

The argument is simply that when that which is observed is fundamentally known cosmic-wise that the act of observing would be rendered meaningless.

When the cosmos would 'produce' consciousness causally it would imply that any 'information' within that cosmos would be fundamentally pre-known to any conscious observer which would be absurd because it would render the observing of that information meaningless.

[Sculptor1]

1. You said you were not going to talk about free will.
2. You cannot make a choice without bias. Bias is the basis of your opinion. With no opinion there is only indecision.


It's the same thing. Choices are always present moment by moment, and each moment determines the next pathway. As long as no one is pointing a gun at you, you are free to chose according to your self determination.
Thus in a deterministic world we can all freely make choices providing we have not collected too many obligations or we live in a society where others are free to determine and guide out actions.
If we are slaves, or enter into employment contracts we lose our freedom to determine our own pathways. Yet the choice remains. Get up put your socks on, go to work. Or not as we chose.

As I already said: "My question is not how a person can choose one of the options but how options could be real in a deterministic world.". I don't really know how to explain it more simpler than this for you.

It might help if your underlying assumptions did not lead you to this contradiction.
1) Do you think the world is deterministic?
2) Do choices exist?

Cool. Now you get my point. I am challenging determinism here so I assume that determinism and choices are both true and show that there is a contradiction! Of course, I have my argument for options to be real as it is illustrated in OP and as it is discussed in several posts in this thread.

No I asked you two questions. You cannot infer from two questions that I "now get your point".
Please answer the questions so that we can get on with the discussion.

[Sculptor1]

At question would be whether consciousness is reduce-able to a product of the human body.

But it is.

If it is, then where is the repeatable evidence?

(2019) Science as we know it can’t explain consciousness – but a philosophical revolution is coming
There is growing suspicion among scientists that conventional scientific methods will never be able to explain consciousness.
https://theconversation.com/science-as- ... ing-126143

Do you agree that if consciousness is to follow as a product of the physical brain that it should have a repeatable and observable nature?

How do you think this relevant?

When a human makes a choice - 'has an option' - would the deterministic nature of that option rely on the abolishing of a moral reasoning component in the conscious act of choosing an option?

The argument is that the nature of observing does not allow that which is observed to fundamentally have been pre-known on cosmic level because it would render observation (consciousness) meaningless.

This sentence does not seem to parse well.
Can you break it up please?
What is "cosmic level"? You do not provide it with a grammatical article. Is there a reason for that?

The argument is simply that when that which is observed is fundamentally known cosmic-wise that the act of observing would be rendered meaningless.

When the cosmos would 'produce' consciousness causally it would imply that any 'information' within that cosmos would be fundamentally pre-known to any conscious observer which would be absurd because it would render the observing of that information meaningless.

Nope - not making head nor tail of this.
You are not making yourself clear.
Maybe if you answered my questions we could move on?
What to you mean "cosmic level"?
Cosmic how?
WFT is cosmic consciousness? DO you have any evidence of such a thing?

[Carter Blunt]

My question is not how a person can choose one of the options but how options could be real in a deterministic world.

How they MIGHT be real? Maybe that quantum nonsense about "the secret", where the observer-dependent state of quantum particles is literally the observer choosing an option. Of course, that still wouldn't rule out the possibility that the ''soul" itself was always gonna come to the same decisions.

[value]

The argument is simply that when that which is observed is fundamentally known cosmic-wise that the act of observing would be rendered meaningless.

Nope - not making head nor tail of this.
You are not making yourself clear.
Maybe if you answered my questions we could move on?
What to you mean "cosmic level"?
Cosmic how?
WFT is cosmic consciousness? DO you have any evidence of such a thing?

With cosmic level is meant 'the whole of information' (totality) in a purely causal and deterministic cosmos. The term was used to indicate not consciousness but 'any information' originating from intrinsic existence that would fundamentally underlay consciousness (observing) of that information. The argument is that such 'cosmic level' (pre-known) information doesn't require an observer or consciousness, rendering consciousness meaningless, of which it is said that that is not justified.

Simplified: it is not justified to neglect the meaning of consciousness. One is obligated to explain consciousness.

When it concerns meaning it concerns the 'why' question of the cosmos. The act of observing - 'consciousness' - is necessarily meaningful and one is obligated to explain it's why question (why it is meaningful).

It is then seen that a proper addressing of the why question of consciousness prohibits one to claim that consciousness is a product of the cosmos because that would render the act of observing - and the cosmos with it - meaningless.

1. Causality (determinism) acquires its meaning from the concept 'begin' (subjective perspective).
2. The act of observing - 'consciousness' - acquires its meaning from being the origin of a begin (the essence of a subjective perspective) that therefore must fundamentally underlay the cosmos.

Therefore, when it concerns conscious options, there is a moral reasoning component involved which is the 'why' question of the cosmos that fundamentally underlays any conscious option.

In a deterministic world in which consciousness would be produced as a meaningless product, options would be just as meaningless as the consciousness that is produced by the 'cosmic level' (pre-known) information that it is observing.

The idea that determinism is true therefore is prohibited by the obligation to answer the why question of consciousness.