There is no established "scientific view" on consciousness and "free will." There are competing hypotheses undergoing testing. There isn't enough evidence for any of them to be an established "scientific view."
COMMENT: Scientific materialism entails--as a mater of logic-- the denial of freewill. The insistence on the causal closure of the physical (however you define "physical") entails--as a matter of logic--that there is no room for agent causation in the sense of genuine freewill (i.e interjecting mental causes into physical processes). So, yes, by default, that is the scientific view, just as Wegner defined it, both in my quote of him and in his book generally.
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Henry Bemis wrote:
In other words, how does science accommodate belief in genuine freewill? What is the scientific "freewill theory." In short, there is none.
Science doesn't operate on "belief." And yes, there is none. Which is what I said. And which is what you denied, claiming Wegner's hypothesis to be the "scientific view," then admitting above there is no "scientific view." Make up your mind :)
COMMENT: That's right, science (excluding the so-called human sciences) is generally not interested in mind, consciousness, or the nature of "beliefs." That is why you're right, they have not offered a scientific theory of such things. But again, their scientific assumptions, regarding specifically causation, natural law, and quantification, and related concepts such as mass and force, is based upon a closed scientific system with no room for subjective components. So, freewill, a metaphysical prospect, *is* exactly ruled out be default. Moreover, given such scientific assumptions there does not appear to be any theory that even in principle could accommodate freewill. This is precisely why people like Wegner reject it.
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Henry Bemis wrote:
COMMENT: Materialist science broadly includes all things that are scientifically quantifiable. Science cannot escape its materialist history, tradition, and methodology by merely stating the "magic" of non-quantifiable emergent properties.
Science continually changes and adapts to new information, and nothing is declared "magic." Your statement is as absurd as saying, "Science cannot escape its history and tradition of a steady state universe." It can, it did -- because new information came along. Scientists (not the scientific method) have in the past been manifestly materialistic. Many still are. Science isn't, and never has been.
COMMENT: Well, science may one day expand its methodology to include metaphysics of the subjective, including consciousness, freewill, paranormal phenomena, etc. but such a move would create havoc in physics. Look at QM's initially proposed suggestion that consciousness was an explanation for the collapse of the wave function. Such an idea was, and continues to be, vigorously opposed and dismissed. There is simply no room in materialist science for metaphysical speculations involving consciousness, mind, and freewill. There is no theory because such things are rejected as not being encompassed by science.
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Henry Bemis wrote:
Genuine freewill and consciousness cannot be quantified, or causally explained by the scientific method. Saying that consciousness comes from a physical brain may well be true, but that of itself is not explanation of how mental properties emerge from physical brain states, much less how a self coupled with freewill might so emerge. I do not know of a single scientist in any discipline that thinks consciousness and freewill are explained by applying the scientific method.
I know many -- but they can't yet provide sufficient evidence to make their view the accepted scientific view. That we don't know (yet) means we don't know (yet), a position perfectly acceptable (in fact, essential) in "science."
COMMENT: Many? Name one! I am not looking for a bare, speculative theory; there are a few of those. What I am looking for is a theory that is subject to verification, falsification and replication; i.e. the scientific method, which, by the way, you dogmatically insist upon in comments on this Board.
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Henry Bemis wrote:
You will not find "emergent properties" in any physics textbook, or for that matter, consciousness or freewill. That is because neither can be incorporated into materialist science broadly defined as requiring only some means of quantification.
Physics doesn't deal with consciousness. Yet you will indeed find "emergent properties" in physics textbooks, and associated with physical systems:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence#Non-living.2C_physical_systemsCOMMENT: Well, I doubt you would find it in a physics textbook because ANY property in physics has to be quantifiable, and talk of emergent, non-reducible properties (which is what emergence means) suggests something mysterious; or at best a place holder for further explanation. But, again, of itself, "emergent property" does not explain anything at all, any more than the claim that God is an emergent property of the universe." It adds nothing more than, "we don't know, isn't this interesting." Now in systems theory models emergent, non-reducible, properties do occur, but they are not explained. There is no mathematical equation that identifies how a non-reductive emergent property arises from a physical process.
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And since the scientific method isn't "materialist," your straw-man sits there silently worthless.
COMMENT: To say that the scientific method is not materialist is to fail to understand what "materialism" means. It means that all of reality is quantifiable, and subject to natural laws, which explain causal relationships within our common empirical experience. The scientific method seeks to discover and apply such laws. As such, it is entirely "materialistic." Otherwise, you would have to be open to metaphysical "entities" like consciousness, as part of the scientific equation, which science expressly disallows.
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Henry Bemis wrote:
COMMENT: This manifests the part of my post that said: "Now, if you were to ask typical (non-theoretical) scientists (including Humanists) about all of this, they might say that they are both a humanist and a materialist scientist in the above sense. That just means they are confused, because such a position is inconsistent, for reasons just explained."
You cannot just announce your position.
Well, actually, yes -- I can.
COMMENT: Well, yes, you can, but not consistently, and not with a correct view of science.
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Henry Bemis wrote:
If you are NOT confused, you need to provide a scientific account of consciousness and genuine freewill.
Well, actually, no -- I don't. And I'm not confused. Why demand I provide what doesn't exist? There isn't yet a scientific account of consciousness and genuine freewill. There's also no conflict, since science doesn't claim to have an account of consciousness or genuine freewill, so there's nothing to conflict with humanism's assertions.
COMMENT: One more time. (1) Science is deterministic by its very nature and methodology, i.e. it does not allow causal gaps to be filled in by mental causes (freewill); it is causally closed; (2) Genuine freewill requires that such causes in physics are NOT closed, and that there is such a thing a mental causation. So, if you want freewill; if you want mental causation, you have to deny scientific assumptions. It is not just that science does not *currently* have theory of consciousness and freewill. It is that freewill is logically inconsistent with the very backbone assumptions of science, which is the causal closure of the physical; which is everything that science has discovered and postulated as being quantifiable, objective, and subject to natural law. Neither consciousness, or freewill fits that bill.
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Thanks for your participation in this discussion. Also, it was a nice change to have rare agreement in Tal's post. I am a bit worn on this topic, so I may drop out at this point.
HB