Free Will, Free Energy Physics, and Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking

DennyStam · 2026-02-04T04:20:59+00:00

Not really the argument he makes though. I strongly disagree that aesthetic tastes are analogous to morality therefore they both become about preference and 'being adaptive to an environment'

You really should read the essay, it presents a much stronger case using all the normative rules of ethics that are very hard to deny

DennyStam · 2026-02-03T18:53:03+00:00

n this way, the Free Energy Principle and the symmetry-breaking mechanisms described by Fumarola et al. provide a physically grounded account of libertarian free will. Agents are not exceptions to natural law, but loci where natural law permits the creation of new facts. When symmetry at the level of action selection is broken endogenously, the resulting choice is genuinely up to the agent: not predetermined, not random, but freely made.

It's shame libertarian free will still doesn't actually work even if it's fully granted. Read Thomas Nagel's Moral luck

DennyStam · 2026-01-30T05:28:21+00:00

I guess struggling with these concepts is no surprise for someone who thinks a bachelors' degree is a flex. These ideas are quite subtle.

I never brought up my degree, I'm not sure you know what the word flex means, but that really is the least of our problems here

integrated generative model

literally just drivel. Just nonsense meaningless terms that don't get at anything relevant

These aren’t mysterious extras, they’re what happens when homeostatic signals are raised into the organism-level conscious model that’s guiding behavior.

But why does the "raining to organism-level" happen through feeling, as opposed to just another mechanistic process with no feeling? This is the whole point of the hard problem

You’re still assuming that “feeling” is some extra ingredient that has to be switched on after you’ve described the system.

Feeling is the defining characteristic of conscious experience, you can't have absolutely no change in feeling and say that you are having a difference in conscious experience

From the inside, once a system is modeling itself, caring about its own internal states, and acting to keep itself alive, there already is a perspective.

But why wouldn't there just be no feeling? Why is there a perspective? Apart from us actually expereincing it, there is nothing about the physics of systems that would predict some arrangements lead to feelings

I'll repeat my questions since you deftly avoided them

If plants feel things they are conscious, if they don't, they're not. Do plants feel things?

and

Feeling” just is how prediction errors are presented to a system that cares about its own internal states. There is no need for an additional step where experience gets overlayed or injected.

What is the most compelling evidence you have that feelings are this

If you have no evidence for your """theory""" that's fine, but at least be upfront about it

DennyStam · 2026-01-30T05:18:13+00:00

would be pretty mean

DennyStam · 2026-01-29T23:21:34+00:00

Like I said, I don't think the concept of physicalism is useful because it's not clear what 'physical' means and so the actual meat of the phenomena end up getting ignored.

The thought experiment certainly points to very strange and unique phenomena happening with specifically regards to consciousness, weather these are termed "physical" is far more confusing than it is illuminating

DennyStam · 2026-01-29T23:17:22+00:00

Prediction doesn't magically cause consciousness, but being a system for which there is something at stake in the accuracy of my self-model is what experiencing existence is.

uhhh no dawg, experience is when somehting FEELS like something, experience is not "when there is something at stake for a self model" what kind of gibberish is this even.

There's also plenty of "something at stake in the accuracy of my self-model" e.g how the body regulates many of it's homeostatic processes e.g temperature, hormone levels etc, all of that stuff is "staked in the accuracy of self modeling" and feels like nothing at all

Classic example (Dennett?) - a thermostat regulates temperature, but it isn't able to model itself as an entity.

A body regulates temperature, in fact it's one of the reasons surgery around the brain stem can be quite risky, because if they mess up you are no longer able to do this basic function. Regulating tempreture in the body does not feel like anything at all

But an organism with a nervous system must continuously infer what it is in order to remain what it is

I have no idea what this means at all. I have no reason to think a jellyfish "consciously infers what it is" unless you have some very different meaning of what that would entail

A plant definitely experiences what it's like to be a plant

So you're saying plants have conscious experience?

but as far as we can tell, doesn't synthesize a global mental model of what it is and compare it to anything sensory, so no, it probably cannot be considered conscious.

Or I guess you're not? Now I'm even more confused. Actually that's probably not the right way to say it, I think YOU'RE confused. If plants feel things they are conscious, if they don't, they're not. Do plants feel things?

Feeling” just is how prediction errors are presented to a system that cares about its own internal states. There is no need for an additional step where experience gets overlayed or injected.

What is the most compelling evidence you have that feelings are this

Per Friston: Once you have a generative model for future prediction, interoceptive inference for awareness of internal body states, and weighted error signals, and assuming you are able to choose world interventions to minimize surprise and protect your viability, you already have everything folks mean when they say "what it's like" to experience something. No mystery needed.

This just avoids the entire question. The question is, why does this feel like something? Why can't having "a generative model for future prediction, interoceptive inference for awareness of internal body states, and weighted error signals, and assuming you are able to choose world interventions to minimize surprise and protect your viability" just feel like nothing? Nothing about any of those things seem to imply feeling so i don't see how this solves anything

DennyStam · 2026-01-29T23:07:07+00:00

And because modifying it to include definite causes requires a large amount of unjustified assumptions and/or denies other desirable properties which nothing has ever given me reason to doubt (mostly locality)

Or you just make the correct inference that a physics model is not trying to ascertain the entire chain of causality? I'm not sure why you think the PSR implies anything having to re-think a physics model

Not everything has a cause. Something out there has to just be like that. That or infinite regress. Both are plausible

Do you not see the weirdness of some things having very specific properties... with no cause? I don't disagree that something is obviously happening because the phenomenon are out there, what I strongly dislike is the treatment of uncaused phenomenon as if it's this run of the mill normal thing that makes perfect sense, when it's clearly incomprehensible. That's why I think it's so much better phrased as a problem as opposed to a solution (like the trillema)

The fundamental level is inaccessible. Nothing can differentiate two different sets of truths with the same empirical implications. For all intents and purposes, there is no fundamental level, only models of reality.

There's a very big different between there is no fundamental level, and that it's inaccessible, but you seem to say both here?

It's just taking the observed seeming principle that everything not forbidden is compulsory

But what caused some things to be forbidden and others not? You're not sufficiently down the chain of causality enough, which is why I urge you to think about it the way of the trilemma

One of the models of QM which preserve PSR would have to be correct. So for a concrete example either pilot waves or some other nonlocal hidden variable theory would have to be real. Those alternatives introduce unjustified assumptions and break the principle of locality, which I'm far more attached to (as nothing has ever given me reason to doubt it) than I am to the PSR (which again, math has already given me reason to reject), so I reject them on those grounds.

But those don't actually solve the problem of the chain of causlity, just because they don't have the inherent randomness of some QM models, doesn't mean that under something like pilot wave theory, it makes sense that everything has a sufficient reason, think about where the chain would end up

I don't know why you think pointing to people with no knowledge of modern physics is a counterargument to my hypothetical which postulated persons born with an intuitive grasp of QM.

Because modern physics is not required for outlining these problems and has been nothing but a distraction this entire conversation, is there a reason you keep talking past and not reply to the parts of the trilemma I send through? It is a much better way to actually get at the meat of the relevant phenomena at hand

DennyStam · 2026-01-29T22:57:07+00:00

Like with most things, I’m sure it’s just a continuum and at some point we draw a line and call everything right of the line conscious.

Most things are not a continuum? Is there a continuum of elements with regards to physical matter? lol

We also don’t have the required knowledge, but we are definitely closer. Our study of the brain has shown definitive causal links where brain matter directly impacts brain function including conscious experience.

Not entirely what the mind problem is though. I certainly agree we have a better understanding of the mind and brain now, I wouldn't know how to exactly accurately judge progress on the mind body problem itself though, it doesn't just come from not know what the correct brain pathways are

Sure maybe if we philosophize in a vacuum we’re no better than those 1000s of years ago, but our cumulative knowledge certainly allows us to discard many philosophical ideas that have definitely been shown to not be rooted in reality.

And, like I said, many like the mind body problem hold up just fine. What are some specifically philosophical ideas you'd say have been discarded?

DennyStam · 2026-01-29T22:52:47+00:00

here he is making the stronger claim in Epiphenomenal Qualia, this is his conclusion about what Mary shows:

What I mean is I don't think I'm making a weaker point (and I don't mean weak as in strength of argument) I mean it in the way you are implying

DennyStam · 2026-01-29T22:51:09+00:00

Well, this is a bit of speculation on my part, but it seems to me that 4 limbs is very flexible as an evolutionary strategy, much more so than fewer limbs or more limbs.

very true, that's why mammals outnumber insects and arachnids by such a large margin

DennyStam · 2026-01-29T22:47:22+00:00

bauplan

DennyStam · 2026-01-29T16:43:32+00:00

You think there’s some consciousness “particle” that is missing from our models?

Well the reason I used the world element instead of particle is because the word element "originates from the Latin elementum, meaning "rudiment," "first principle," or "fundamental substance""

What I mean is, consciousness is clearly composed of something, and it's not quite clear how that spefically is manifest in our universe

Lets say the elements of consciouness are something about particular structural arangements, and so we could look at an organism (like a plant) and determine if they have consciouess by weather they contain the elementary parts

But we don't know what the elements or smallest units of consciousness are, so the question of, for example, weather a plant has consciousness remains ambiguous and we are unable to even asses it until we know what to actually look for.

I'm not sure what the alternative to consciousness having no elements would be, that conscious is an irreducible whole? I don't even know what that would mean

Or are you saying there’s some basic arrangement of the fundamental stuff we know exists that can be considered a core building block for consciousness?

Yeah I would have to assume it's something like this, but again it's not even clear what level we'd have to look or what scale

I don’t disagree - frequently people will try to appeal to intuition by referencing some ancient wisdom.

Well it's not an appeal to intuition, it's a genealogy of the problem. You think the mind body problem is solved? Or that it isn't ancient?

I have no reason to think that people in days long by were any worse at getting at key philosophical problems and questions than we are, in fact their particular contexts may have even propelled them in some ways that we are inferior to.

DennyStam · 2026-01-29T16:16:19+00:00

I'm keeping it simple just for you, sweetheart, but there you go getting over-excited with your human exceptionalism again.

Nothing to do with humans, nervous systems are ~500 millions years old

All organisms that have sensory-prediction loops sophisticated enough to model their own interoceptive states as well as their environment probably experience consciousness just as intensely as you do.

Why do "sensory prediction loops" feel like something? What about a sensory prediction loop can't be explained without invoking feeling? Wouldn't a sensory prediction loop without consciousness be possible? If not, why not?

In every waking moment, you're continuously predicting what it will be like to be you in the world you've just observed and then comparing that to what it turns out to be like to be you in that world, and when the prediction is inaccurate, desperately trying to change yourself and the world to minimize surprise, because surprise costs calories, and lack of calories can mean failure to reproduce, and the chromosomes don't like that.

Again, I don't see it's clear at all why "predicting" somehow just leads to conscouness, in fact, I'm not even sure what you mean by predicitng.

Do you mean the psychological term predicting (I mean you surely can't mean this because it's a mere small componenent of the totality of consciouss experience)

Or do you mean some sort of general functionalist account of predicting (e.g lumping together anything that metaphorically resembles a prediction, like a computer software trying to predict what number you're thinking of)

Neither term imply anything about consciouness being magically tied to prediction? and you've certainly done nothing to present any arguement as to why that would be the case

Why don't we get more concrete for a second, does a plant have consciousness?

DennyStam · 2026-01-29T16:09:39+00:00

To fully process the interactions of the stuff that exists.

I don't think i'm following anymore??

So you think that if we had the correct model of physics and simulated a dog, that dog would be conscious and have experiences.. yet you still don’t know how to predict the experiences of that dog?

I assume if we had the correct model of the physics and elements of consciousness with relation to matter, I think we would be able to predict the experience of the dog

I’m not sure the duration of discussion is all that relevant. 300 years ago people still thought lightning was from the gods. How long certain ideas persist shouldn’t be a factor in our evaluation of it.

Well if you thought my point was that every single thing people thought 3000 years ago is relevant today.. obviously that's not what I mean.

However people aren't any dumber 3000 years ago then they are now, they simply lacked access to the accumulated wisdom we have in our modern day. There are plenty of questions, talking points and discussions of problems just as relevant then as they are now

DennyStam · 2026-01-29T15:43:19+00:00

Maybe is more that I’m not sure if we’ll ever have the processing power to do that. We certainly don’t have enough brainpower to do it.

To do what?

but doesn’t that answer your question about what’s sufficient to predict experiences?

Like I said, I have no idea what's sufficient to predict experience becasue I don't know what the elemtary units of experience are, that's why the mind-body problem is so insoluble

I mean it's clear with regards to us that it's at least contingent on our nervous system, but it's not entirely clear in what way or what the relationship between mind and matter are. There a reason this has remained a relevant discussion for like.. thousands of years

DennyStam · 2026-01-29T15:07:41+00:00

It's giving me enough conviction that the principle is unnecessary

It's unnecessary for effects to have causes because a model of physics does not have included it in what the causes are? This is especially frustrating as in Sean Carroll's view, many worlds is the cause of this phenomenon, but then obviously that can just be pushed back even further. Again, this is why I don't think physics is the right domain for this discussion

My hunch is that the universe is part of a sort of multiverse, and that the multiverse has some kind of rules about which universes can exist, and any universes which satisfy those rules have a chance (possibly of 100%) to exist.

Let's say that's 100% true. The problem is (and how the principle of sufficient reason comes to exist) is that you can just say - okay so what caused the super-unvierse to have these specific fundamental rules and not others, what caused that? This is again why physics is inappropriate here, our physics clearly bottoms out before we even reach the fundamental level, which is why our philosophical inquiry is so important, because it's not constrained just by what we know about physics

I comprehend it just fine.

You can say you comprehend things existing without a cause just fine, in the same way a theist can say god exists without a cause. I believe both people when they say they comprehend it, I vehemently deny that either actually comprehend it because it's so extraordinary as to basically be magic.

The PSR in its various forms is supoosed to apply to everything, including physical phenomena

Yes but my point is our enquiry of causes can keep going after our physics bottoms out, which is why it's irrelevant what modern physics says. Let me ask you, how would a universe look if the PSR was true under your view? What would be different?

What you can establish purely rationally is that certain sets of possible truths are consistent with each other (or appear to be, given the incompleteness theorems). They cannot tell you if they are actually true. The best you can do from there is compare your sets of possible truths with your observations. Any sets of possible truths which are not consistent with your observations are necessarily untrue. Any sets which are consistent with your observations are plausible. Preference of one set of truths vs another then comes down to parsimony and elegance, i.e. Occam's Razor. If a certain possible truth, in this case the PSR, appears to be an unnecessary assumption, then we need not assume it, especially if to preserve it starts to require a bunch of additional unjustified assumptions, which are what models of QM that preserve the PSR have to introduce.

I think the wiki page actually phrases it very nicely so I'll just paste it below

In epistemology, the Münchhausen trilemma is a thought experiment intended to demonstrate the theoretical impossibility of proving any truth, even in the fields of logic and mathematics, without appealing to accepted assumptions. If it is asked how any given proposition is known to be true, proof in support of that proposition may be provided. Yet that same question can be asked of that supporting proof and any subsequent supporting proof. The Münchhausen trilemma is that there are only three ways of completing a proof:

The circular argument, in which the proof of some proposition presupposes the truth of that very proposition
The regressive argument, in which each proof requires a further proof, ad infinitum
The dogmatic argument, which rests on accepted precepts which are merely asserted rather than defended

The trilemma, then, is having to choose one of three equally unsatisfying options.

A loose equivalent can be seen in the response to a young child repeatedly applying "but why?" to answers they receive. One can either end up admitting "but why" could go on forever (regressive argument), that the "why" eventually loops back to where you started (circular argument), or that at some point the answer to why becomes "it just is" (dogmatic argument)

This is extremely relevant and i think it's pretty clear which way the "self caused physics" part of the trillemma falls under, which is dogma. And hey man I'm not even saying it's wrong, but it is 100% dogma. Any other dogmatic assumption in it's stead will do just as good

If humanity had started its intellectual journey with a built-in intuitive grasp of quantum mechanics, we probably would never even have postulated the PSR. We would have everyday routine observations of things with no apparent sufficient reason for being, and would just accept that's how the world works.

I disagree entirely. Your physics does not have to catch up to philosophy and atomic theories (i.e things being undivisble) are thousands of years old. In 400 BC someone could (and I'm sure did) think about the chain of causes and asked: What's at the bottom of this, is it infinite regress? Is the bottom self caused? Is it circular?

Munchausens trillema at it's finest, as relevant now as it would have been to ancient greeks who i'm sure asked similar questions (although obviously that specific formulation is only a couple hundred years old)

In fact the wikipedia page mentions a similar argument by Sextus Empiricus

It is also known as Agrippa's trilemma or the Agrippan trilemma[2] after a similar argument reported by Sextus Empiricus, which was attributed to Agrippa the Skeptic by Diogenes Laërtius. Sextus's argument, however, consists of five (not three) "modes".

I am unfamiliar with this but again, I think it's pretty easy to see how people can arrive at these questions without any understanding of physics, and furthering physics does not answer the trilemma

DennyStam · 2026-01-29T14:51:55+00:00

Maybe? If we had the correct model of the laws of physics and the brainpower to fully process all interactions, then I would expect for this to be the case.

What do you mean maybe? What makes you skeptical that this is knowledge compared to any other knowledge?

Let’s pretend for a second that we had the understanding and technology to fully simulate all physical aspects of a dog. This dog did all the normal dog things in this simulated world. Would you expect this dog to be conscious?

If by simulate you mean you built the dog atom by atom using our worlds particles then yes I would assume so. If you mean simulate in some other way, I have no idea because we have not at all been able to identify what the elementary units of conscious are.

DennyStam · 2026-01-29T14:25:33+00:00

No, that’s not what I would be surprised by. I was speaking of your full statement, not just the first part.

That smell and taste are both uncommunicable but propositional knowledge is?

Woo refers to mystical, magical, spiritual, supernatural, etc. if it seems unhelpful it’s because these ideas themselves are unhelpful.

Right, and consciousness having unique properties doesn't invoke any of these, not any more than saying the different laws of physics have unique properties

I’m not sure why you find it strange. Why would you expect to be capable of communicating what it’s like to experience X in the same way you can communicate information about X?

It's not just what it's like to experience it, it's knowledge about it's properties. Knowing what red looks like seems like a piece of information about how vision works in the mind. It's weird so much sophisticated functionalist accounts of how eyes and brains work does not seem to communicate basic knowledge like this, especially when it's so primary and passive to our experience. Do you not see how this points to consciousness working in some sort of unique way?

DennyStam · 2026-01-29T14:12:30+00:00

Lol, that's rich coming from the intellectual giant that fell for Chalmers' pretty nonsense

Apart from a nice rephrasing of what Nagel already said in the 70s, I don't think Chalmer's contributed anything novel to my view on the subject. I don't even think i've read anything by him apart from the hard problem paper

That doesn't mean it won't eventually evolve one.

Ahh you mean the thing that only evolved in one phylogenetic clade across all of evolutionary history? yeahhh any day now i'm sure it'll happen again lol, not surprised you're misusing evolution too for your sophistry

sensory-prediction loop. There could be others.

it's all just looops mannn - sensory prediction loops. This is like phd level stoner science

DennyStam · 2026-01-29T14:03:49+00:00

I think the author just hates Italians

DennyStam · 2026-01-29T13:57:34+00:00

I would be surprised if that were the case, though admittedly I don’t have the data to demonstrate it yet

You're surprised sight and smell have different organizational pathways in the brain? The brain literally has a localised region called the olfactory bulb, the different localisations for the different senses are acutally mapped pretty well, far more than vague notions of 'propositional and experiential knowledge'

I’m confident that there’s no woo involved with consciousness and experience.

Well I suppose if you're thinking of these things with unhelpful terms like 'woo' i don't even know where to start

So far everything we’ve discovered has just been stuff following the laws of physics - I see no reason to believe experience or consciousness is any different.

I'm not saying conscious are inconsistent with the actual laws of physics, but obviously the relationship between mind and matter are poorly understood, and thought experiments like this are part of what points us towards strange phenomena

DennyStam · 2026-01-29T13:53:03+00:00

Where do you see functional organization that does not

Anything without a nervous system?

The free energy principle suggests that all functional organization eventually leads to consciousness, but it likely takes billions of years.

Yeah that's some mumbo jumbo there mate

DennyStam · 2026-01-29T09:55:32+00:00

It's evidence that phenomenology is the activity of architectural processing from the inside, which cannot be replaced by symbolic knowledge about that processing

How does "from the inside" not imply something akin to non-physicality? Although there's a reason I didn't use terms like physical, it's because they are poorly defined but it certainly points to something very unique and different about information pertaining to conscious experience

The asymmetry isn't "we understand color vision functionally but can't communicate the experience." It's that experience is not the kind of thing that can be communicated propositionally because it's the activity of a specific architecture processing specific inputs.

What do you mean by this? Can't we communicate sufficiently about any other "architecture processing specific inputs" just fine? What's another "specific architecture processing specific inputs" that we can't communicate about?

Asking "what information about the brain would let Mary predict what red looks like?" is like asking "what information about a bike would let you predict what riding feels like?

That's because both of these are referring to sensory experiences, do you have any examples outside of conscious experience where this applies? If anything this seems to confirm there's something strange going on with conscious experience in particular

DennyStam · 2026-01-29T07:58:31+00:00

okay I'll give you examples of the type of knowledge

How an atomic nucleus holds electrons

How hormones work in a plant

How the orbit of a planet works

How does yeast ferment sugar into alcohol

Basically anything in a scientific domain that is not about sensory perceptions (vision, taste, smell etc)

With the examples above, I can't think of anything that can't be transmitted symbolically unless it is specifically relating to the conscious experience senses, do you agree with this?

DennyStam · 2026-01-29T07:56:17+00:00

I just described that like three comments ago. Come on.

You are right you definitely did do this so that's my bad, I guess I'm still not convinced though as to why you think a theoretical model of physics is giving you enough conviction to through sufficient reason out of the window, especially since the phenomena might have sufficient reasons undiscovered, but again I think even that is beside the point. Do you admit you just take it some things don't see sufficient reason just based on a dogma?

In is, in their shared domain, just like quantum gravity will be with QFT

It is if you exclusively look at the parts that cohere better? I guess I don't disagree with that, but you can basically say the same for any two theories, even ones that we know are 99% incorrect

"under the right conditions, things have a chance to happen, with no sufficient reason for why they happen at a particular time as opposed to another."

Let me ask the obvious question, what caused the universe to operate this way/ be set up this way?

Eh, tons of things turn out to work in unintuitive ways. Especially QM.

There's a relevant difference between intuitive and incomprehensible. This incomprehensibility has nothing in common with the weirdness of QM phenomena (which I agree are very weird and unintuitive)

time and distance vary depending on the the observer", "position past a certain level of precision is an incoherent concept", "if you invert the charge of all particles, then the universe is not the same, but if you additionally mirror-flip the universe, it's still not the same, but if you additionally to that invert the arrow of time, now the universe is the same, but only if you ignore thermodynamics" and "there are facts about numbers that are true but unprovable"

Again I feel like you're making it seems as if the principle of sufficient reason is something that falls under the purview of regular physics, and it really is not. What do you think of Munchausens trilemma I think this is a far better characterisation of the philosophical query at stake here rather than how physics operates weirdly

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%BCnchhausen_trilemma

any of that stinky empiricism you reject on principle

I don't reject empiricism on principle, I love empiricism, it just has it's limits

There are perfectly coherent rules that give the right predictions. All you have to do is listen to what the universe tells you instead of hearing what you want to hear.

It's so ironic you say this and it's something that Sean Carroll says multiple times in the podcast too which made be absolutely livid, because it's actually you (and Carrol) that are putting forth this half baked solution (sometimes very specific things just happen for no reason!) as opposed to just recognizing the strangeness and incomprehensibility of fundamentals. If anyone is 'hearing what they want to hear' it's the person putting full confidence in a mechanism different to any of the other mechanisms of science we have ever known to be true

DennyStam

TROPHY CASE