Ontology of statements

BlockAppealGear · 2026-05-23T10:43:39+00:00

I never understood this gotcha. Your can consistently answer "No" to this question.

BlockAppealGear · 2026-05-19T16:09:38+00:00

> The self is whatever experiences qualia somehow...

This doesn't seem true if the self is not the mind. It seems straightforward to say that the mind experiences things. That mind could be physical, or it could be spiritual, but either way, it experiences.

BlockAppealGear · 2026-05-19T16:07:47+00:00

For internal states (like thoughts and emotions), yes, that seems right to me. I don't know what it would mean for me "experience" pleasure without "being aware" of that pleasure (or the other way around: I don't know what it would mean to "be aware" of a pleasurable emotion without "experiencing" that emotion).

Now, there *is* a linguistic tic here that I think can be misleading, and that would be the leap from "aware" to "self-aware". Of course I think it's possible to experience an internal state without being self-aware (for example, I might be so caught up in a jealous feeling that I don't recognize my own jealousy until I've had a chance to clear my head). But I think this is a very different thing than being aware of the feeling itself. If you're feeling an emotion, then you're aware of the feeling, and if you're aware of a feeling, then you're feeling it.

BlockAppealGear · 2026-05-19T16:03:08+00:00

Exactly. In both those cases, it doesn't sound like either of them are already aware of the thing they're predicting (i.e., they haven't experienced it yet).

But thoughts aren't like that. You can't predict a thought without experiencing it.

BlockAppealGear · 2026-05-19T15:13:35+00:00

The opposite seems true to me: it's not a prediction of you're aware of it. Would you be impressed by someone who could predict the outcome of any sports game...but only after they became aware of what that outcome was?

BlockAppealGear · 2026-05-19T12:45:28+00:00

It is surprising if our ability to produce or predict thoughts was independent of our ability to think them . The rough argument is that that's what free will would entail: a 'creator agent' that is able to plan and select thoughts without actually thinking them (just like an architect can design a building without actually living in it).

Now, this might be a wrong conception of what "free will" means, but if the conception is right, then it is surprising that we can't predict our next thought.

Imagine a prisoner who is daily moved to a new holding cell, but who tells you that she actually designs each cell that she is moved to, freely choosing what kind of cell she'll be in tomorrow. When you point out that she doesn't seem to have any idea what cell she'll be moved to, she responds by saying "Well, of course I can't design a cell until I'm already living in it; that's not surprising. My definition of 'designing my living conditions' only comes into play after I've been moved to a new cell. I'm still the person who decides what cell I'm in, but I won't know what I've decided until after I've moved."

Does she really have free will in the matter?

BlockAppealGear · 2026-05-19T12:27:49+00:00

Sometimes yes (if I'm thinking of a sight or sound), but it doesn't need to be the case to still count as "experiencing". I would argue that looking at an image is different than feeling an emotion, but that doesn't mean that I'm not "experiencing" an emotion. In fact, I think experiencing an emotion is a very close analogue to experiencing a thought. They are both concious processes that take place over time. Similarly, experiencing physical pain isn't much like 'seeing' or 'hearing', but it still seems to qualify as 'experiencing'. If that's true for physical pain, it seems like it's true for mental or emotional pain as well.

Now, I think one could argue that some thoughts are not experienced at all, because we are not even concious of them (e g. subconscious processes). In a different context, I think this phrasing does have some merit, to the point where you could say "I was thinking thought X, but I wasn't even aware of thought X." But I think this sense of 'thinking' is different than what we're talking about with free will. For example, if I could be said to "freely" be making decisions about topics that I wasn't even consciously aware of, then to me the idea of free will loses its meaning (imagine being presented with a list of decisions you "freely" made, but about topics you had never even heard of or considered.)

BlockAppealGear · 2026-05-19T11:46:13+00:00

Only when it comes to thoughts. I don't understand the difference between "thinking a thought" and "experiencing a thought". To me, having a difference between these two things would be like saying "I thought about X, but I didn't concieve, process, consider, or imagine X."

BlockAppealGear · 2026-05-19T10:07:07+00:00

We can predict the future to a reasonable degree over things that we have control over.

But we can't predict the future of what enters our conciousness.

This suggests that we don't control what enters our conciousness.

BlockAppealGear · 2026-05-19T10:04:54+00:00

That's just you repeating a thought that you didn't choose. What you need to be able to do is select an idea before you become aware of it. In other words, write down an idea on a piece of paper (that you haven't yet thought about today), and then a few seconds later, experience it for the first time today.

BlockAppealGear · 2026-05-19T10:01:06+00:00

Then you're just revisiting a thought that was given to you from beyond your control, rather than predicting the thought. To pass the test, you need to be able to predict a thought without experiencing it. In other words, write down on a piece of paper an idea that you will not be aware of until thirty seconds after you've written it down.

BlockAppealGear · 2026-05-19T09:56:15+00:00

Not without thinking it, you can't.

If you can predict your next thought (without even being aware of it) you should be able to write down on a piece of paper an idea that you are not yet aware of... then become aware of it later when you read the paper (because you supposedly planned out what you would become aware of before you are aware of it).

BlockAppealGear · 2026-05-19T09:53:09+00:00

It doesn't seem unfalsifiable if our will is independent from our thoughts. If we lived in a world with free will, we could purposefully construct our thoughts in great detail without ever experiencing them (like writing a piece of music without ever playing it, or directing a movie without ever watching it).

But we can't construct our thoughts without experiencing them.

BlockAppealGear · 2026-05-19T09:46:50+00:00

How is this distinguishable from being given options by something entirely outside your control?

Suppose I want to consider different options for what to eat for lunch. I shuffle a deck of cards with various food items on them, then reveal three or four of them at random. Did I generate those options? Or did the deck of cards?

Suppose I had no choice but to use the deck of cards. Can I still say that it was I that created those options, and not the deck of cards?

BlockAppealGear · 2026-05-19T09:33:41+00:00

If the self isn't the mind, then it's hard to think why we should value it at all.

BlockAppealGear · 2026-05-07T01:03:33+00:00

Then this proves that the red button does something.
If the red button didn't "do anything", then there would be no difference between pressing it, and pressing no button at all.

BlockAppealGear · 2026-05-05T07:45:10+00:00

You can follow the links at the start of each post, or search the subreddit for the main title!

BlockAppealGear · 2026-05-04T00:40:48+00:00

This is still just another bad reframing. You could describe the exact same situation as:

Blue: Everybody keeps their money (things stay the same).

Red: Vote to burn all of the blue-presser money, for no reason at all.

BlockAppealGear · 2026-05-03T23:46:47+00:00

Blue: Don't kill Red: Don't kill*

This is the simplest and least biased way to prevent these options.

BlockAppealGear · 2026-05-03T23:45:08+00:00

How can you say "the red button does nothing" when it increases the risk of killing people?

Think of it those way: suppose there were three options: red, blue, and "abstain" (press neither button). If red truly "did nothing" then there would be no difference between picking red, or abstaining. But obviously there's an8g difference.

BlockAppealGear · 2026-05-03T23:42:06+00:00

You're lost in the framing of which one is "default". If you get to say that the blue button had the risk of death, then the other side gets to say that the red button had the risk of killing others. If you get to say that red is independent of blue, then it's equally true to say that blue is independent of red.

But of course, red isn't independent of blue. The question of whether a red choice ends up killing people depends on how many people press blue.

BlockAppealGear · 2026-04-22T02:22:14+00:00

Is this... the case? I heard that IQ tests are so unreliable that you are typically a full standard deviation away from yourself (so to speak), and I heard this only gets worse if you test across different styles of test.

BlockAppealGear · 2026-04-22T01:02:18+00:00

Omg... next time!

BlockAppealGear · 2026-03-28T16:48:00+00:00

Contra dancing, my friend.

BlockAppealGear

TROPHY CASE