“Also, if you can tell me what an Octopus is thinking and why it doesn't have self-awareness, I'd love to hear it.”

I can’t tell you what Mr. Puss is thinkin’ any more than I can tell you what you’re thinkin’. Both of you have to tell me what you’re thinkin’.

And: Mr. Puss may very well be self-aware, may very well be a free will.

I never said nuthin’ about humans bein’ the only ones (I’ve known a few dogs who seemed pretty self-aware and -directing).

You don't know how rare self-aware organisms with free will are, nor do any of us. I can't look at a transmission and tell you how to fix it and I also can't look through a telescope and tell you how many planets have complex life on them. That doesn't mean anything--it just means I don't know how to do it.

We have one example, life on Earth, and it seems self-awareness and free will are pretty common.

If life is common, and free will where there's life is common, where does the "humans are special" part come in?

“If life is common, and free will where there's life is common, where does the "humans are special" part come in?”

‘If’

As you say: we don’t know, may not ever know, may not be able to know.

We do know living matter exists ‘here’ and we know self-aware matter exists ‘here’, and it seems just within the confines of our system to be rare.

As I say: it would be great if the universe, our galactic cluster, our galaxy, our system, teemed with self-aware (or even just living) matter. My gut tells me not to hold my breath waiting for evidence.

As aside: if Reality is overflowing with living matter and self-aware matter, it still would be a rarity cuz - again - matter is rare (the universe is mostly a big empty volume).

and that’s me done till (probably) tomorrow
 

later

You got me there. It's big and empty, there's not much of anything in it.

Except whatever all that dark matter is. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

There's a hypothesis that dark matter and dark energy are one and the same, with properties of both matter and energy, like light. We can take it a step further by saying it could be one giant disembodied free will that's just yanking our chain into believing we're special. YMMV.

everything we (don’t) know about ‘stuff’ that may not exist
 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_matter

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_energy

henry quirk
 

You've shared a lot about what you think free will "is" but, what do you think is it's origin? How does organized matter become endowed with agency?

Pardon me for my obsession with understanding how things work, but I deeply believe in an orderly universe of cause and effect. And we don't have to understand how everything works to observe that nature displays predictable patterns-- driving the same events to happen over and over. Chemistry forms the same substances, biology programs the same features. We're a part of that.


I don't think we can understand the mechanics of how free will arises in a biological organism, but I think it's biological. I don't think we can analyze how an essentially mechanical process can produce a consciousness which possesses agency, but it does-- we're the proof.


...


Are we special? I find one unassailable hurdle-- what are the odds that we are unique, when our own consciousness is the only thing we have direct knowledge of? The universe produces a thinking ape, and the ape says, "I'm the best thing." It's a comedy.

"You've shared a lot about what you think free will "is" but, what do you think is it's origin? How does organized matter become endowed with agency?"

Hell if I know.

#

"Pardon me for my obsession with understanding how things work, but I deeply believe in an orderly universe of cause and effect."

All the evidence sez C & E is fundamental to everything, yeah.

#

"And we don't have to understand how everything works to observe that nature displays predictable patterns-- driving the same events to happen over and over."

On the fairly broad level we operate in, you're absolutely right.

#

"I don't think we can understand the mechanics of how free will arises in a biological organism, but I think it's biological."

I think it's 'natural'...don't know about 'biological'.

#

"The universe produces a thinking ape, and the ape says, "I'm the best thing." It's a comedy."

But what if that thinking, self-directing ape 'is' the best thing.

You say 'no'; I say 'mebbe'.

Why?

By the way: your attached image is off the mark. You say BOTH ARE TRUE but that's nonsensical.

What does my poll ask?

A human being is...

...bio-automation, organic machinery.
...sumthin’ more than bio-automation, not only organic machinery.

I already covered BOTH ARE TRUE.

...and...

It may be really complicated, and it may take a loooong time, but I think -- one day -- we'll understand it.

Why 'mebbe'?

gut feelin'

The way I figure it, it's not important for us to be able to understand it. Insomuch as it's difficult to understand, the details may be easily explainable at a level that's beyond our grasp. That is to say-- we don't understand how biology could produce consciousness, but that's not important.


What we DO know is that water and amino acids are ubiquitous, the conditions for life aren't as delicate as we once believed, and the one place we've seen it arise, it happened almost immediately. And this is the flaw in reasoning that we can't avoid-- we're looking at a small sample size. Although there's a nearly infinite number of chances for life to arise, we only know the details about this ONE instance. There's no conclusion we can really draw from that.


But...


The odds, the way a bookie would figure them, that our planet is the "winning lottery ticket" are as likely as, well, winning the lottery.

The bet I'm taking is the conservative, "play it safe" bet. The odds are that matter organizes into life almost everywhere, and when it does it has consciousness by default, because consciousness is just a biological operating system. Does that demean the value of a human life? I don't think it does. And even if it did, it doesn't influence the odds one way or the other.

This is the Hard problem of consciousness ?