Freedom under Naturalistic Dualism

"But conscious states are strongly determined by brain states as far as we can check"

You can only "check" your own mental states, so that is not very far. 

"Consciousness doesn't need to be fundamentally distinct from non-consciousness"

I cannot argue against eliminativism, because perhaps you are nos conscious. Still, I would not eat you because of cultural taboos and legal complications...but no longer for moral reasons! :-)

As commented in the article, this philosopher is conscious for sure, but the regarding the gentle reader, he only can hope. Not even the Laplace demon would know, and my phenomenic knowledge is vastly inferior.

Laplace demon cannot assess sentience” is begging the question just as much as “philosophical zombies are possible” It’s obviously true only if you assume the premise of counsciousness epiphenomenality.

It's also true if you assume there is no possible reductive explanation of phenomenal consciousness ... which dualists like Arturo do.

If Laplace's Demon knows All Physics, and the reductive explanation of phenomenal consciousness isn't part of All Physics, then Laplace's Demon doesnt know any facts about consciousness.

Actually, absolutely not the case here! The way Macias uses “real” has nothing to do with non-inevitability.

I was speaking for myself.

Moreover, these are real possibilities, not merely conceptual or logical ones.

And here you failed to describe the word “real” without using the word “real” not only in spirit but also in letter.

I mean the same thing by "real" as you do.."in the territory".

A possibility could be a feature of reality, "in the territory" or it could be a merely apparent, in the map as, a result of ignorance, AKA "Knightian uncertainty". The existence of real, in the territory possibilities is the equivalent to the falsehood of strict causal dterminism. Which means Laplace's Demon could settle the question of the existence of real possibilities: if it cant predict the future given perfect knowledge of the present, determinism is false, and real possibilities exist.

The ability to make a difference , and choose non-inevitable futures.

And this ability affects our desicion making or moral responsibility, how exactly?

It makes it more worth having, since it makes more of a difference. That's the question I was answering: why is libertarian free will worth wanting?

You might make the same decisions, whether it not you have LFW, but that's another question.

Last time I directly asked you this question about five times and you kept dodging it. Now, when you just renamed “real choice” to “non-inevitable” choice, the question still stands.

I've always answered your questions as stated, but you keep jumping from one to another.

Are you actually talking about an epiphenomenon? Like is it logically possible to have two universe where everything happened exactly the same for the same reason but one had libertarian free will and the other didn’t?

Yes it is, but that has nothing to do with epiphenomenality. Given a finite sequence of random events that have already happened you could always construct a deterministic algorithm that produces the same sequence...but that doesn't show the initial sequence was deterministic.

OTOH, given an infinite random universe, you can find any compressible sequence, too. (Boltzman brains). Randomness can be mistaken for determinism.

There are circumstances under which determinism and indeterminism are hard to distinguish, but that doesn't mean they are the same, and it doesn't mean they are of equal value.

Ape in the coat

“Are you using a different definition of "fundamental"? What I mean by it is an element that is not produced by any other elements”

Epistemologically, your subjective experience is more fundamental than physical reality. The entire world could be a simulation, and then Physics would be false; on the other hand, subjective experience and Mathematics is true in absolute and aprioristic grounds. Color red, an orgasm, and natural numbers and the Fermat theorem are true, even if you are trapped in Matrix, under the power of a “malign genius”. 

Cartesian subjectivism and Newtonian mechanism were almost contemporaneous, and they created a massive Schism in philosophy and the Western mind. From the perspective of the mathematician and the philosopher, subjective experience is immediate and “fundamental”, while sensorial experience imply “faith”. You cannot prove anything about physical reality because you cannot prove there is a physical reality at all. But in Mathematics, you can prove many things, because they refer to mental objects, and your mind and its objects are (unproblematically) real. That is why mathematical theorems are more certain than physical laws. When you accept that, it implies that conscience is more epistemologically fundamental than physical reality. You are trapped in your self, and the “world” is not more than an act of faith or a useful hypothesis that coordinates your experience. 

Of course, I have faith in sensory experience (unlike Tensor White, see comment below, that has more faith in God and less in brutal matter). But I am aware of the abyss that separates me from wherever Physical reality is, and the fact that that abyss can only be crossed by faith (unlike you accept St Anselm ontological proof of God existence, as Descartes did).

“Instead of trying to understand the mystery of how consciousness is produced by matter interactions it just postulates that it's a separate entity”

I begin my exposition describing what means “explanation” in Physicalism. Life is explained by pointing out that its apparent special characteristics (reproduction, autopoiesis, etc) are simply results of the laws of Physics. Reductionist biology takes a life form, makes inverse engeneering and show the “plans” of the being, and you can understand how it works from physical and chemical laws (that means finally only Physics). 

But what about chat GTP? How helpful are the “plans” of the machine to assess conscience? What additional scientific knowledge do you need? You have the generative model, the most complete set of plans and physical relations you can dream of. Regarding chat GTP you are almost like the Laplace demon. Still, you don’t know how sentient is it. 

For me that is “Naturalistic dualism”: the physicalist-reductionist explanation (no matter how perfect) is simply not enough for the assessment of sentience.  Either there is some other type of scientific explanation beyond reductionism-physicalism, or simply conscience is beyond our scientific assessment (not understanding! The typical naturalistic dualist thinks that “there is nothing to explain” nor understand, probably because we accept what explanation is since Newtonian “hypothsys non fingo”). Sentience is real, and it is simply “there” for some physical systems, there is no way to assess which ones.

“What if there was an entity that could consider possible futures conditional on its actions and choose one of them - suiting its goals the best, - and yet this entity completely lacked conscious experience?”

If it “considers”, “chose” and “has goals”, it is conscious. 

Tensor White

Thank you for your comment. I cannot answer you with the kind of detail that I did to “Ape in the coat”, because I am a materialist (as materialist as possible, in a Universe where conscience exists). I agree that it takes a lot of intellectual machinery and some leaps of faith, but reality is as it is: atoms and emptiness, as Democritus discovered more than 2500 years ago.

TAG

“Doesnt that amount to saying that free will isn't really real,but seems real?”

It is as “real” as the set of natural numbers or as real as “true love”. For me that is more real than a neutron star that nobody has ever seen. The stream of my conscience is more real than anything else and well defined mental objects there are very real.

“Libertarian free will allows the future to depend on decisions which are not themselves determined.”

Everything is physically determined. But when a conscious being has N options, and choses one, he chooses what he wants (=he is free), no matter how determined is what he wants.

The discussion on moral responsibility comes from that: when you accidentally kill your wife you can say you didn’t chose. On the other hand, if there is intent, the determination by material causes of your act does not change that the act was conscious and then your conscience [=you] is evil.

As Jan Blomqvist said, we are “ghosted machines”. The fact that the ghost comes from the machine doesn’t mean that the product of the machine cannot be an evil ghost.

Thank you very much for this marvelous discussion. At least, even if does not end as an academic paper, I am very happy with this exchange. 

Sorry for the delay, but there are posting (one per hour, 3 per day) limitations for low karma participants even in their own posts.