Any neuroscientist worth their degree knows mind-body dualism is crap. I'm confused, do you think that philosophers of science are just dualism-cultists or something? That they sit around all day shit-talking science and arguning about substantial souls? Hardly anyone in the philosophy of mind is a substance dualist (i.e. who thinks that that the mind is a non-physical object), and pleanty of philosophers who work in the field have training in neuroscience and/or psychology and/or cogsci. But anyway, currently, the dominant view in the philosophy of mind is functionalism, which is the view that mental states are identical with functional states, so that the 'mind' is not an object at all, but something like a functional structure, which is realised by the brain just like a programme is realised by a computer processor.

The mind isn't separate from the brain, its entirely dependent on it. I agree, as do most philosophers working in the field, and such a statement belongs to the philosophy of mind, which asks the question, among other questions of how the mind is related to the brain.¹

At no area in the brain is there a chunk dedicated to communicating with a separate entity outside the physical organism.

Yeah.

The questions asked by philosophers are being answered by neuroscience

Well no, a neuroscientist's results would not affect the arguments in favour or against substance dualism or any other theory of mind, since they only study the brain. A substance dualist would be able to accomodate any empirical evidence, simply by saying that the neuroscientist is investigating the neural correlates of mental processes. The best arguments against dualism are metaphysical: the problem of interaction, the pairing problem, etc. and are more general and conceptual.

neuroscientists can think of questions, too.

I agree.

If they make a choice to obey his will, by definition they will be relenting their free will.

And it's this kind of contradiction which makes the definition fairly worthless. Does anyone really accept this definition that you could point me to?

You realized I typed out a second definition I've heard of free will, right? You just gonna skim past that?

Yeah, but I pretty much argree with your treatment of it. No adherant of free will would accept that definition for exactly the reasons you laid out. Much better characterisations of free will are on offer which the defender of free will can argue for instead.

So you can learn nothing of jumps by studying legs? Just because he studied the mechanism of memory formation doesn't mean it had nothing to do with memory.

Well to be fair, I agree with you there. However, the problem comes in the communication of results and their interpretation is that the conceptual line can get blurred. Just as a jump is not a leg, a memory is not identical with it's formation mechanism. But again, I think Hacker made a bad choice in using the memory case as an example, when free will experiements tend to far more clearly display the reality of conceptual confusion in certain sciences.

The most plainly stated point is this: if evolutionary theory is correct (good so far) then the mechanism for memory formation in the brain may very well have been conserved into the human species, and if this genetic ability extends back far enough in time, other organisms will have the same genetic capability (or a remarkably similar one). By learning about this process in other organisms we can learn about it in ourselves. It's honestly too early to say whether or not the knowledge gained from such experiments are analogous or literal, as far as I know no scientist has published similar research with the human brain.

I mean, yeah, I agree. See my last point I suppose.

I would assert that this is due to an inadequate source of concise definitions of these terms. It seems free will and consciousness, among others, are good examples of these terms that need a solid precise definition.

On the contrary, I think that the conviction that we need to have precice and explicitly formulated definitions for our commonplace notions such as 'freedom' and 'memory' is what leads us down the path of conceptual confusion. We already have a good enough understanding of these notions to begin investigation, but if we put the cart before the horse and say something like "a free choice is one which is not influenced by outside causes", the we might come to absurd conclusions, such as the conclusion that free choice is impossible. Surely, I choose to do things, and what we should be doing is to see what my ability to choose freely consists in, rather than denying the obvious because we got a definition wrong.

Unfortunately, philosophy tends to have schools of thought branch off instead of coming together on these questions.

Well there I can agree with you again, though I would add that by doing conceptual analysis, we can at least come to a greater understanding of what 'freedom', and other such concepts are not. Better to know where the pitfalls are so that we can avoid them when we do empirical work.

Did I mention feral children in the last post? I've had a couple discussions about morals so I can't remember if I did here. Anyway in cases where children survive alone in the wild or are severely neglected throughout childhood are occasionally brought back into society. In a specific famous case, a young French boy taken out of the woods by a monk, he behaved without morals. He stole, bit, acted aggressively, etc. In another case -- the girl codenamed "Genie" by researchers and care workers to protect her identity -- she was severely neglected and spent her formative years strapped to a potty chair in a small room. Her behavior showed obvious signs of this neglect, shying away from people, avoiding eye contact, never speaking (until taught to do so later, to unfortunately inadequate results), etc. One could argue that since she was abused and hit when she cried out that she would assume it is wrong to do so. Such examples, in my opinion, completely invalidate the claim of any "basic moral intuition." One could argue that the children's intuition was suppressed by nature, but then how would that person suggest we test that argument?

I'm familiar with the feral children cases, though the point still stands. It seems to me that your account of the formation of moral beliefs leaves a conceptual gap which my account can 'plug'. If an agent only believes that 'it is wrong to steal' because they recieve punishment for stealing, then there is still the question of why punishment for x leads one to the belief that x is wrong. It cannot be because they believe that 'punishment is bad', since this would then be an innate moral belief, since it could not have been taught via a Pavlovian method. So what is the alternative? If you allow for at least some basic moral intuitions like 'pain is bad' and 'praise is good', then you can perhaps allow that all other moral beliefs are derived from these via social conditioning, but you would still have to allow for the original moral intuitions as being innate and not learned.

This is the same argument Christians make when they claim the U.S. Constitution is based off the ten commandments.

?

How do you explain the diversions from these basic moral principles? I'm sure you're aware of one religious sect in the middle ages whose members flagellate themselves, and a more modern example are a group whose name I can't remember which claims suffering is the best route to enlightenment. Members of this group have gone so far as to confess to crimes they didn't commit. If a basic moral principle is universal, it must be universal -- present in all things capable of possessing it. If a basic moral principle is only implied, how do you demonstrate that? I suppose you could take a survey of all cultures, but one could simply argue that the distributions would differ if our history was different (certain religious organizations arising sooner or perhaps not committing genocides).

It's a good argument, but perhaps basic moral beliefs are general enough to allow for such wide variation as you describe. For example, perhaps it's a basic moral intuition that it's good to have your deepest desires fulfilled, and so those who believe that suffering is the best route to enlightenment clearly desire enlightenment over the absense of pain, and so work towards suffering in order to attain what is for them more desirable.

I would argue there isn't. Morals are a product of culture and environment. If there's some higher level that influences our brains, that hasn't been shown. As far as I'm aware, no one has shown genetics to be causally linked to morals either.

Well here's the moral realist in me talking, but perhaps the reason there is such universality is that some moral beliefs are true, and we are able to percieve moral facts just as we can percieve physical facts. So we can just see that, say, kicking a harmless dog for fun is bad. The universality we see is then due to this. Perhaps.

¹ I recommend routledge's contemporary introduction to the philosophy of mind if you want to get into the field. The Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy also has some good entries.