We, our conscious minds to be more precise, are not aware of all the information that we perceive through our sensory systems.I don't believe we are aware of all the information that enters our mind. — jgill
Isn't the subconscious process deterministic? Doubts are not allowed in a deterministic system. That is true since a deterministic system moves from one state to another unique state later. So there is only one state available for a deterministic system at any given time. There are two states available to choose from when we have doubts though.If that is the case what the subconscious processes may indeed inform us - in what seems to be an act of free will. — jgill
Isn't the subconscious process deterministic? Doubts are not allowed in a deterministic system — MoK
We don't choose to doubt. We face doubt.Can't doubt be a mechanism developed into, and operating within, a deterministic system; the "sense" that there is an agent doubting being, not a challenge posed by doubt so much as by the illusion of the agent "choosing" to doubt (the so called self/subject/ego)? — ENOAH
Matter including the brain as I discussed is deterministic entity so it cannot freely decide when we have doubt.Further, isn't it bad enough we superimpose a false duality by speaking of mind as a separate being from matter? — ENOAH
The mind is conscious. It is not unconscious.Do we really need to make mind itself consist of dualities--conscious/unconscious? — ENOAH
The mind is not a process to me but an entity with ability to freely decide. We would have problem to decide when we have doubt if mind is deterministic.Isn't the entire process we conventionally think of as mind, deterministic: choice, belief, and doubt? — ENOAH
We don't choose to doubt. We face doubt. — MoK
ENOAH
Matter including the brain as I discussed is deterministic entity so it cannot freely decide when we have doubt. — MoK
The mind is conscious. It is not unconscious. — MoK
an entity with ability to freely decide — MoK
What do you mean by self? Soul? — MoK
Mind is an indeterministic entity. It receives input from the brain. — MoK
decision is either based on a reason or not, — MoK
Well, that is the logical consequence of my argument. A deterministic entity such as the brain cannot decide when there is doubt.I'm not convinced there is a real self nor soul, if by those, we mean a separate entity with a will. — ENOAH
Will is the faculty of the mind.If the brain is deterministic (I believe you are suggesting so) and it feeds the indeterministic mind, where, if anywhere, does will fit in? — ENOAH
I am not talking about belief.Which one of these is confronted with the duality of belief v doubt? — ENOAH
What do you mean?And how does that entity settle upon either? — ENOAH
Yes, there is a series of causes that lead to the experience of doubt.If the mind is indeterministic, and, accordingly, the entity of "choice" (presumably willful choice), there are still presumably a series of causes (including the so called input from the brain) prior to that final "moment" where, what? — ENOAH
The mind does not choose to believe or doubt. The mind chooses between options.suddenly there is a gap in causes, and mind leaps, on its own, independently of any last cause, thus choosing willfully (even, perhaps, freely) to either believe or doubt? — ENOAH
There is no mechanism. The free choice is an indeterministic phenomenon.What mechanism does/causes that (free) choice? — ENOAH
The final step namely free decision cannot be deterministic.I personally have difficulty jumping into this idea of a self soul will to explain that gap. It makes more sense for me to believe (I recognize the seeming internal challenge of "I believe") that the final step too, belief/doubt is also "deterministic." — ENOAH
We cannot avoid the mind once we accept that doubt is real.Not pre-determined; not inevitable, but still, the final "choice," believe/doubt was triggered by that immediately preceding it; not by an agent willing it. — ENOAH
I am talking about different types of decisions here. The decision is called free when you don't have a reason to choose one option over another. Therefore, there cannot be any preceding cause for a free decision.Another way to express what I'm angling toward, is that "reason" is defined to restrictively above (or, I assume). A decision is always based on a preceding trigger, whether such a trigger can be defined as a "reason" or not. Nothing happens absolutely independently. Even the most randomly seeming "choice" can be traced back to its triggers, right up to the immediately pre ending domino that pushed the domino with choice printed on it. — ENOAH
The decision is called free when you don't have a reason to choose one option over another. Therefore, there cannot be any preceding cause for a free decision. — MoK
We don't know how doubt emerges from biochemical processes in the brain. We also don't know about the emergence of thought, qualia, and intentionality. — MoK
I think even a mouse can freely decide when it is in a maze.As you suggest, at the level of reality whatever the heck doubt is, is not what we're assessing here. A prehistoric human, like other animals lacked this 'artificial' autonomous process. When it faced a divergence in a path, it either used its senses and responded in accordance with its conditioning to follow the 'right' path, or it just moved forward indifferently. It did not have the pronoun to attach either congratulations for a right choice nor doubt with respect thereto. — ENOAH
We know that doubt is the result of the biochemical processes in the brain. Doubt is a sort of conscious phenomenon and all conscious phenomena are correlated with biochemical processes in the brain.We are assessing a thing we have over eons constructed and reconstructed, and transmitted from generation to generation, such that whatever real doubt is, has been displaced by it. The 'doubt' we are assessing is not that biochemistry, but the deterministic movement of images constructed and projected into this world of moving images--not world of natural conditioning where the chemistry is at play. And I realize they function together on a feedback loop, but we're really talking about the surface, the world of images, where d-o-u-b-t abides, with all of its triggering powers. I'm confident we're not going to find
d-o-u-b-t in any chemicals. — ENOAH
I used the example of the maze to show that doubt is real. We are not dealing with a doubtful situation in which one path is smooth and another one is rugged.I'm saying (oversimplified for space and time) those images move deterministically. For humans born into history, confronted by a divergence in a path, if one path appears rugged and dangerous, the other smooth, and these are the only factors, reason, moving images of a specific variety, autonomously gets to work, and the easy path is selected. If a given person happens to defy reason, they did not. Their 'reason,' just as autonomously applied as conventional reason, the rugged so-called choice was triggered by moving images of xyz autonomously moving them to take the rugged path. Finally if one cannot choose, and 'reads' into experience, moving images called doubt, that too, is pushed upon the body at that moment, e.g., a balance of xyz's or conflicting structures, just as autonomously playing on the next step/no step as reason or defiance did. — ENOAH
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