I don’t dispute that both the “search algorithm” idea and the “algorithm that implements this cognitive functionality” idea are valuable, and cut through some parts of the confusions related to free will and consciousness respectively. But the things I mention are hardly “out of scope”, if without them, the puzzles remains (as indeed they do, IMO).
In any case, claiming that the questions of either free will or consciousness have been “solved” by these explanations is simply false, and that’s what I was objecting to.
In the case of human free will, it’s true that we don’t have a “game tree” written out the way the rules of chess specify the game tree for a chess engine, but figuring that out seems like “merely” an enormously difficult empirical cognitive science problem, rather than the elementary philosophical confusion being addressed by the blog posts.
This is the sort of claim that it’s premature to make prior to having even a rough functional sketch of the solution. Something might look like ‘“merely” an enormously difficult empirical cognitive science problem’, until you try to solve it, and realize that you’re still confused.
I don’t dispute that both the “search algorithm” idea and the “algorithm that implements this cognitive functionality” idea are valuable, and cut through some parts of the confusions related to free will and consciousness respectively. But the things I mention are hardly “out of scope”, if without them, the puzzles remains (as indeed they do, IMO).
In any case, claiming that the questions of either free will or consciousness have been “solved” by these explanations is simply false, and that’s what I was objecting to.
This is the sort of claim that it’s premature to make prior to having even a rough functional sketch of the solution. Something might look like ‘“merely” an enormously difficult empirical cognitive science problem’, until you try to solve it, and realize that you’re still confused.