You say that the "I" is quite real, because "you are it." I think you are failing to recognize that, in your scenario, the self too arises from the brain's mechanical properties creating an environment in which to act. If we are determined to act in a certain way, there is no self, there is no "subject." There is just the human animal, which is just a fancy vehicle to carry genes. (Which, itself, is just a beautiful result of atoms moving in a particular way.) You cannot believe the self is anything other than a virtual phenomena resulting from reflection if you are a biological determinist.
Which is, indeed, more or less what I believe to be true.
The practical reality of that is virtually nil for me, though it does have - as I have said before - some useful guiding ideas when we go to implement policy that will affect other peoples lives, or ask the question "why do people act like that?"
I think that this is a tree/forest problem, but there is one immediate problem with this situation, which has been brought up in this very thread before for a different reason:
If you are simply a hollow, formal creation resulting from brain process, you cannot be held accountable for your crimes you commit, because you are not an entity. Rather, you are not a single entity, but the result of previous, physical interactions of processes which are not "your own."
Why is the inability to be held accountable for your actions a problem? All of the justifications for punishment still hold, the only difference is that some of them become more honest.
Because there is no self. If you are only you in that instant, and every other bond is just a formal illusion, then you are not punishing the criminal. It would be like punishing my father for a crime I committed.
An alternative is to consider someone as an entity as the physical person that they are and every factor that has come into creating them. Anyway, there's still predictability, if a murderer pre-meditates a murder they have a much larger chance of committing another murder than any other person. A large enough chance that you can justify incarcerating them until they exhibit signs that can lead you to predict that if they were released into society again they would not commit the crime again. Anyway, accountability is a ridiculous notion in purely logical terms, it's an intuitive structure that is roughly assembled by the human mind because it conveys simple practical advantages to social interactions. Accountability used in any other form is dense.
AJAlkaline40 on
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MrMisterJesus dying on the cross in pain? Morally better than us. One has to go "all in".Registered Userregular
It means that you had very little choice. Still some, if there was a non-zero chance that you might choose having your eyes poked out, but really it's so close to no choice as makes no difference and it would be fairly accurate to say you were forced to go on vacation to Hawaii.
You're using choice and force in a different sense than I am. Consider a different example: suppose that I am at a restaurant and there's both a chocolate and a vanilla shake on the menu. Not that I have anything against chocolate, I just like vanilla more, and so I order the vanilla. That order expresses a choice on my part, despite the fact that anyone who knew me particularly well could have predicted that I would have chosen the vanilla.
Determinism isn't exclusive of free will, because prediction isn't exclusive of free will. It's true that the arrangement of physical matter in my brain was such that I was going to order vanilla, and because of that I couldn't have done otherwise. However, that arrangement of physical matter in my brain is me. I am nothing over and above my brain, and the fact that it was configured in such a way that I was going to order the vanilla is just the very same fact as me preferring vanilla. Hence, I ordered it because I wanted it and because I chose it, because the facts of me wanting it and choosing it are just the very same facts as the facts of what was physically going on in my brain at the time.
Edit: this is also why determinism isn't exclusive with moral responsibility.
It means that you had very little choice. Still some, if there was a non-zero chance that you might choose having your eyes poked out, but really it's so close to no choice as makes no difference and it would be fairly accurate to say you were forced to go on vacation to Hawaii.
You're using choice and force in a different sense than I am. Consider a different example: suppose that I am at a restaurant and there's both a chocolate and a vanilla shake on the menu. Not that I have anything against chocolate, I just like vanilla more, and so I order the vanilla. That order expresses a choice on my part, despite the fact that anyone who knew me particularly well could have predicted that I would have chosen the vanilla.
Determinism isn't exclusive of free will, because prediction isn't exclusive of free will. It's true that the arrangement of physical matter in my brain was such that I was going to order vanilla, and because of that I couldn't have done otherwise. However, I that arrangement of physical matter in my brain is me. I am nothing over and above my brain, and the fact that it was configured in such a way that I was going to order the vanilla is just the very same fact as me preferring vanilla. Hence, I ordered it because I wanted it and because I chose it, because the facts of me wanting it and choosing it are just the very same facts and the facts of what was physically going on in my brain at the time.
Edit: this is also why determinism isn't exclusive with moral responsibility.
What you're describing is what I was trying to describe earlier. However, it's not accurate to say that free will and determinism are co-existing, because that doesn't make the distinction that free will is actually just a practical way of comprehending and understanding the actions that people make because it's basically impossible to function by considering people's actions in a strictly deterministic manner. You can still speak in terms of their "choices" and what not, but know that those choices are determined entirely by the outside factors that they're subject to.
Deterministic wouldn't mean fully understandable and predictable.
Tell a father whose daughter was raped, that it was determined. Emotions are stronger than Reason.
I'll have much more to say on that topic and will elaborate on that later, but now I have to go play a few games of poker.
Certainly not predictable, no, the complexities of both genetics and environment are far, far too complex.
Understandable though... yes, I would suggest that embracing a deterministic paradigm leads to far more understanding. I think it's fairly safe to say that emotions are stronger than reason, but reason can also severely blunt the impact of emotion when understanding is increased.
As much as determinism is certain, WE HAVE TO BLAME PEOPLE FOR WHAT THEY DID.
Because let's face it, that's just how we roll.
I think a stronger argument is that we can't honestly blame people for what they do, but given that blame works as a deterrent, we must. If that's what you mean by "how we roll", okay.
So, I've tried to get the entirety of this thread digested.
Podly's definition of Free Will is pretty close to the position that I tend to advocate.
There are factors that influence every decision that I make, some of these factors are my past, some are what my body chemistry is currently, some are how I feel and what is currently occurring. However, in situation X I can choose either Yes or No. I may lean to No, but I could have chosen Yes. In fact, if you put me in situation X an infinite amount of times, I may choose No each time, and never choose Yes. However, I always possess the ability to choose Yes.
Now, because of the inherent practicality of many of the people here, I assume that the pertinent question is, why?
I pulled this from Wikipedia. Replace the argument about "who is looking?" with "who is choosing?"
One may explain (human) vision by arguing that the light from the outside world forms an image on the retinas in the eyes and something (or some'one') in the brain looks at these images as if they are images on a movie screen (this theory of vision is sometimes termed the theory of the Cartesian Theater: it is most associated, nowadays, with the psychologist David Marr). But the question is: 'who' is it who is looking at this 'internal' movie inside the brain? The assumption here (although this is rarely made explicit) is that there is a 'little man' or 'homunculus' inside the brain 'looking at' this movie. (Alternatively it might be proposed that the images on the retinas are transferred to the visual cortex where it is scanned. But here again, all that has been done is to place a homunculus in the brain behind the cortex.)
Having no Free Will, as has been addressed before removes people from moral agency. How is it legitimate to punish someone for performing action Y when there is no chance that he could have done anything other than action Y? Is it really his fault?
On the same notion, I also think that having no Free Will reduces the amount of responsibility that we have to take for our lives. Myself, I tend to be with Mr. Satre.
This has been addressed in here already, as you know. My understanding is that punishment is a necessary tragedy to prevent greater tragedy. Evil Multi elaborated better than I.
Determinism isn't exclusive of free will, because prediction isn't exclusive of free will. It's true that the arrangement of physical matter in my brain was such that I was going to order vanilla, and because of that I couldn't have done otherwise. However, I that arrangement of physical matter in my brain is me. I am nothing over and above my brain, and the fact that it was configured in such a way that I was going to order the vanilla is just the very same fact as me preferring vanilla. Hence, I ordered it because I wanted it and because I chose it, because the facts of me wanting it and choosing it are just the very same facts as the facts of what was physically going on in my brain at the time.
So understanding the above, what is free will?
EDIT: I should add, I think Dennett's great, but I find his positions on "free will" to be uncharacteristically woolly.
It means that you had very little choice. Still some, if there was a non-zero chance that you might choose having your eyes poked out, but really it's so close to no choice as makes no difference and it would be fairly accurate to say you were forced to go on vacation to Hawaii.
You're using choice and force in a different sense than I am. Consider a different example: suppose that I am at a restaurant and there's both a chocolate and a vanilla shake on the menu. Not that I have anything against chocolate, I just like vanilla more, and so I order the vanilla. That order expresses a choice on my part, despite the fact that anyone who knew me particularly well could have predicted that I would have chosen the vanilla.
You're not making a choice here, you're exercising a habit. If there's no question as to what you would do, then there is no deliberation and no choice, no more than you choose how to tie your shoes in the morning. You knew what you would order as soon as you decided to get ice cream (assuming that itself was a choice, and not something you automatically do after every meal); at no point did you actually make a decision about it.
EDIT: Another way to put it would be to say that for you, the choice to get ice cream was synonymous with the choice to get vanilla ice cream.
Determinism isn't exclusive of free will, because prediction isn't exclusive of free will. It's true that the arrangement of physical matter in my brain was such that I was going to order vanilla, and because of that I couldn't have done otherwise. However, I that arrangement of physical matter in my brain is me. I am nothing over and above my brain, and the fact that it was configured in such a way that I was going to order the vanilla is just the very same fact as me preferring vanilla. Hence, I ordered it because I wanted it and because I chose it, because the facts of me wanting it and choosing it are just the very same facts as the facts of what was physically going on in my brain at the time.
I think your view of identity is indefensible, but that's a different debate.
It means that you had very little choice. Still some, if there was a non-zero chance that you might choose having your eyes poked out, but really it's so close to no choice as makes no difference and it would be fairly accurate to say you were forced to go on vacation to Hawaii.
You're using choice and force in a different sense than I am. Consider a different example: suppose that I am at a restaurant and there's both a chocolate and a vanilla shake on the menu. Not that I have anything against chocolate, I just like vanilla more, and so I order the vanilla. That order expresses a choice on my part, despite the fact that anyone who knew me particularly well could have predicted that I would have chosen the vanilla.
You're not making a choice here, you're exercising a habit. If there's no question as to what you would do, then there is no deliberation and no choice, no more than you choose how to tie your shoes in the morning. You knew what you would order as soon as you decided to get ice cream (assuming that itself was a choice, and not something you automatically do after every meal); at no point did you actually make a decision about it.
EDIT: Another way to put it would be to say that for you, the choice to get ice cream was synonymous with the choice to get vanilla ice cream.
What is the difference between a zakkiel with free will who gets vanilla ice cream and a deterministic zakkiel machine who gets vanilla ice cream?
It means that you had very little choice. Still some, if there was a non-zero chance that you might choose having your eyes poked out, but really it's so close to no choice as makes no difference and it would be fairly accurate to say you were forced to go on vacation to Hawaii.
You're using choice and force in a different sense than I am. Consider a different example: suppose that I am at a restaurant and there's both a chocolate and a vanilla shake on the menu. Not that I have anything against chocolate, I just like vanilla more, and so I order the vanilla. That order expresses a choice on my part, despite the fact that anyone who knew me particularly well could have predicted that I would have chosen the vanilla.
You're not making a choice here, you're exercising a habit. If there's no question as to what you would do, then there is no deliberation and no choice, no more than you choose how to tie your shoes in the morning. You knew what you would order as soon as you decided to get ice cream (assuming that itself was a choice, and not something you automatically do after every meal); at no point did you actually make a decision about it.
EDIT: Another way to put it would be to say that for you, the choice to get ice cream was synonymous with the choice to get vanilla ice cream.
What is the difference between a zakkiel with free will who gets vanilla ice cream and a deterministic zakkiel machine who gets vanilla ice cream?
1) The statements uttered by the zakkiel machine indicate only the patterns imposed by physics - they cannot be said to be the product of reason, though of course the machine may think that they are. They are as devoid of real intelligence as radio static, and only their complexity makes it appear otherwise.
2) There is nothing that machine zakkiel can be said to cause. Causation is meaningless in physics; there is only mechanics, the predicted evolution of systems, and zakkiel is not a closed system.
3) Machine zakkiel cannot ever act other than he does, and is therefore only to be pitied for his misdeeds, never condemned. He is as helpless to avoid pulling the trigger as the bullet is to halt its flight.
4) Worst of all, machine zakkiel is in the grip of an inescapable delusion; he views himself as free and his decisions as real choices that might go either way. He believes in options and possibilities despite the fact that such things are illusory at the macroscopic level. Even if he becomes a determinist he will continue to regard himself in this way because it is impossible for him to make sense of his motives and actions as the products of ineluctable physical laws.
It means that you had very little choice. Still some, if there was a non-zero chance that you might choose having your eyes poked out, but really it's so close to no choice as makes no difference and it would be fairly accurate to say you were forced to go on vacation to Hawaii.
You're using choice and force in a different sense than I am. Consider a different example: suppose that I am at a restaurant and there's both a chocolate and a vanilla shake on the menu. Not that I have anything against chocolate, I just like vanilla more, and so I order the vanilla. That order expresses a choice on my part, despite the fact that anyone who knew me particularly well could have predicted that I would have chosen the vanilla.
You're not making a choice here, you're exercising a habit. If there's no question as to what you would do, then there is no deliberation and no choice, no more than you choose how to tie your shoes in the morning. You knew what you would order as soon as you decided to get ice cream (assuming that itself was a choice, and not something you automatically do after every meal); at no point did you actually make a decision about it.
EDIT: Another way to put it would be to say that for you, the choice to get ice cream was synonymous with the choice to get vanilla ice cream.
What is the difference between a zakkiel with free will who gets vanilla ice cream and a deterministic zakkiel machine who gets vanilla ice cream?
1) The statements uttered by the zakkiel machine indicate only the patterns imposed by physics - they cannot be said to be the product of reason, though of course the machine may think that they are. They are as devoid of real intelligence as radio static, and only their complexity makes it appear otherwise.
2) There is nothing that machine zakkiel can be said to cause. Causation is meaningless in physics; there is only mechanics, the predicted evolution of systems, and zakkiel is not a closed system.
3) Machine zakkiel cannot ever act other than he does, and is therefore only to be pitied for his misdeeds, never condemned. He is as helpless to avoid pulling the trigger as the bullet is to halt its flight.
4) Worst of all, machine zakkiel is in the grip of an inescapable delusion; he views himself as free and his decisions as real choices that might go either way. He believes in options and possibilities despite the fact that such things are illusory at the macroscopic level. Even if he becomes a determinist he will continue to regard himself in this way because it is impossible for him to make sense of his motives and actions as the products of ineluctable physical laws.
So we would use different terms, but a rose by any other name...
3) Machine zakkiel cannot ever act other than he does, and is therefore only to be pitied for his misdeeds, never condemned. He is as helpless to avoid pulling the trigger as the bullet is to halt its flight.
4) Worst of all, machine zakkiel is in the grip of an inescapable delusion; he views himself as free and his decisions as real choices that might go either way. He believes in options and possibilities despite the fact that such things are illusory at the macroscopic level. Even if he becomes a determinist he will continue to regard himself in this way because it is impossible for him to make sense of his motives and actions as the products of ineluctable physical laws.
The point you make in 3 is one that keeps coming up: a person whose misdeeds are caused by things beyond his control (his environment, his DNA, etc- the deterministic idea) should not be punished for them. I think this point overlooks the fact that punishment would just be an input intended to make him less likely to do the same thing in the future. Throwing him in jail wouldn't merely be a way of saying 'You did something wrong you bad person, you', it would be a mechanism for teaching him 'things unpleasant to you happen when you act this way, so you shouldn't act this way again.'
As far as 4 goes, I'm not sure what point you are trying to make. There is nothing harmful about the idea of free will, and as AJAlkaline was saying, it is easier to live in the world while considering that you and others have free will. Why is it so troubling that he doesn't actually have these options? I'm not sure, but it may be something related to the whole 'life needs to have meaning' idea, which I don't subscribe to.
1) The statements uttered by the zakkiel machine indicate only the patterns imposed by physics - they cannot be said to be the product of reason, though of course the machine may think that they are. They are as devoid of real intelligence as radio static, and only their complexity makes it appear otherwise.
2) There is nothing that machine zakkiel can be said to cause. Causation is meaningless in physics; there is only mechanics, the predicted evolution of systems, and zakkiel is not a closed system.
I don't think you understand the concept of reason or intelligence very well. In any decision an intelligent agent has a desire and a set of information about the state of the world. The intelligent agent then makes the decision that it understands will best bring about the desired state as according to the information about the current state. That is intelligence. Reason is using logical operations on the available information to deduce new pieces of information or alter the presentation of the information. If the information available, the desired outcome of the agent, and the predictive understanding of the agent are all known, then the outcome of the decision can be accurately predicted. You will always choose what seems best to you given your current goal and the available information you have about the world, that's beyond arguing. You operate off this assumption that a deterministic system and an intelligent system can not be the same thing. There's no evidence to support that.
Anyway, causation only ever exists if you consider a link the chain of causation. The only thing that we suspect to not have a cause is the big bang, and even that might have some sort of cause. Free will necessarily requires that the "decision maker" be outside of the chain of causation, as it somehow manages to cause things while not being caused by anything. The logic of causation does not break down in a deterministic system, it just means that any cause requires its own cause.
Free will necessarily requires that the "decision maker" be outside of the chain of causation, as it somehow manages to cause things while not being caused by anything.
Exactly. We are not each some sort of causa sui that gets to run around making decisions. No matter how someone breaks down the philosophy of mind, free will advocates will have to resort to metaphysics at some point if they want to maintain an actual "will" that is "free." Even Kant had to posit the noumenon to address the will. And the idea of compatibility itself is hilarious because people are already assuming that the "will" is something that can even, and does, exist.
You can still speak in terms of their "choices" and what not, but know that those choices are determined entirely by the outside factors that they're subject to.
Again. Exactly. People too often chalk up free will to a perception and feeling of being able to talk about choices. Actually understanding how "choices" are "made" in a determinist system and viewing them as determined leads to far different ethical processes.
The hardest hit to determinism is the fact that we can't actually account for causality. We can't explain a push, only describe it as precisely as possible in human terms. Which... you know what? That's fine with me.
Determinism isn't exclusive of free will, because prediction isn't exclusive of free will. It's true that the arrangement of physical matter in my brain was such that I was going to order vanilla, and because of that I couldn't have done otherwise. However, I that arrangement of physical matter in my brain is me. I am nothing over and above my brain, and the fact that it was configured in such a way that I was going to order the vanilla is just the very same fact as me preferring vanilla. Hence, I ordered it because I wanted it and because I chose it, because the facts of me wanting it and choosing it are just the very same facts as the facts of what was physically going on in my brain at the time.
So understanding the above, what is free will?
A phantom created by 'cartesian theater' views of the self.
EDIT: I should add, I think Dennett's great, but I find his positions on "free will" to be uncharacteristically woolly.
I haven't really read dennett---this is just my reflection on the topic.
Having no Free Will, as has been addressed before removes people from moral agency. How is it legitimate to punish someone for performing action Y when there is no chance that he could have done anything other than action Y? Is it really his fault?
On the same notion, I also think that having no Free Will reduces the amount of responsibility that we have to take for our lives. Myself, I tend to be with Mr. Satre.
This is an interesting issue, and one that I think can be solved. It is legitimate to "punish" someone insofar as you a) deter other people from committing crimes and b) prevent him from committing further crimes, while still c) respecting his rights as a human being. Ideally, imprisonment would simply be removal from society and suspension of privileges such that it acts as a deterrent, although the power of that deterrent would need to be analyzed and quantified. Punishment just for the sake of it, though, makes little sense even without a deterministic framework, and certainly makes no sense within one, and I think that's a good thing.
Responsibility and accountability are tricky with deterministic thought, but remember that you still have the same goals and desires as ever: keeping people safe, making people happy, etc etc. If you shoot someone and then say "oh, well, it's not my fault because my genes made me do it," you're not immune to response; you're still going to be removed from a position where you can harm others, especially if your brain chemistry is such that you cannot be deterministically socialized to prevent further violent action.
Here's the issue though, say that I'm a person that has a desire to rape women, and that I will always act on that desire if given the opportunity. I do so, and rape someone. Now I am punished, even though I didn't have a choice in doing so, I could only have done so.
This seems like punishing a mountain lion for killing a jogger, it has to, there's no other way for it to live. Now, of course we'd shoot the lion, because it's dangerous, but we recognize that shooting the lion is like cutting down a tree that's about to fall over, it's not because the lion was being immoral. Also, you aren't punishing the lion, or the tree, you are just removing something dangerous.
LoserForHireX on
"The only way to get rid of a temptation is to give into it." - Oscar Wilde
"We believe in the people and their 'wisdom' as if there was some special secret entrance to knowledge that barred to anyone who had ever learned anything." - Friedrich Nietzsche
So, I've tried to get the entirety of this thread digested.
Podly's definition of Free Will is pretty close to the position that I tend to advocate.
There are factors that influence every decision that I make, some of these factors are my past, some are what my body chemistry is currently, some are how I feel and what is currently occurring. However, in situation X I can choose either Yes or No. I may lean to No, but I could have chosen Yes. In fact, if you put me in situation X an infinite amount of times, I may choose No each time, and never choose Yes. However, I always possess the ability to choose Yes.
Now, because of the inherent practicality of many of the people here, I assume that the pertinent question is, why?
I pulled this from Wikipedia. Replace the argument about "who is looking?" with "who is choosing?"
One may explain (human) vision by arguing that the light from the outside world forms an image on the retinas in the eyes and something (or some'one') in the brain looks at these images as if they are images on a movie screen (this theory of vision is sometimes termed the theory of the Cartesian Theater: it is most associated, nowadays, with the psychologist David Marr). But the question is: 'who' is it who is looking at this 'internal' movie inside the brain? The assumption here (although this is rarely made explicit) is that there is a 'little man' or 'homunculus' inside the brain 'looking at' this movie. (Alternatively it might be proposed that the images on the retinas are transferred to the visual cortex where it is scanned. But here again, all that has been done is to place a homunculus in the brain behind the cortex.)
Having no Free Will, as has been addressed before removes people from moral agency. How is it legitimate to punish someone for performing action Y when there is no chance that he could have done anything other than action Y? Is it really his fault?
On the same notion, I also think that having no Free Will reduces the amount of responsibility that we have to take for our lives. Myself, I tend to be with Mr. Satre.
This has been addressed in here already, as you know. My understanding is that punishment is a necessary tragedy to prevent greater tragedy. Evil Multi elaborated better than I.
I would actually assume that the Me that does the choosing is my mind. My mind and I are the same thing. My mind interacts with my brain, but is not the same thing as my brain, my mind being more analogous to my consciousness (seemingly, though we're getting into fairly untested water for me). Attribute dualism appeals to me, with the little I know. I've been told to read Chalmers, I hear he's a dualist.
LoserForHireX on
"The only way to get rid of a temptation is to give into it." - Oscar Wilde
"We believe in the people and their 'wisdom' as if there was some special secret entrance to knowledge that barred to anyone who had ever learned anything." - Friedrich Nietzsche
Having no Free Will, as has been addressed before removes people from moral agency. How is it legitimate to punish someone for performing action Y when there is no chance that he could have done anything other than action Y? Is it really his fault?
On the same notion, I also think that having no Free Will reduces the amount of responsibility that we have to take for our lives. Myself, I tend to be with Mr. Satre.
This is an interesting issue, and one that I think can be solved. It is legitimate to "punish" someone insofar as you a) deter other people from committing crimes and b) prevent him from committing further crimes, while still c) respecting his rights as a human being. Ideally, imprisonment would simply be removal from society and suspension of privileges such that it acts as a deterrent, although the power of that deterrent would need to be analyzed and quantified. Punishment just for the sake of it, though, makes little sense even without a deterministic framework, and certainly makes no sense within one, and I think that's a good thing.
Responsibility and accountability are tricky with deterministic thought, but remember that you still have the same goals and desires as ever: keeping people safe, making people happy, etc etc. If you shoot someone and then say "oh, well, it's not my fault because my genes made me do it," you're not immune to response; you're still going to be removed from a position where you can harm others, especially if your brain chemistry is such that you cannot be deterministically socialized to prevent further violent action.
Here's the issue though, say that I'm a person that has a desire to rape women, and that I will always act on that desire if given the opportunity. I do so, and rape someone. Now I am punished, even though I didn't have a choice in doing so, I could only have done so.
This seems like punishing a mountain lion for killing a jogger, it has to, there's no other way for it to live. Now, of course we'd shoot the lion, because it's dangerous, but we recognize that shooting the lion is like cutting down a tree that's about to fall over, it's not because the lion was being immoral. Also, you aren't punishing the lion, or the tree, you are just removing something dangerous.
Unlike the Lion though, punishing the man could change his behavior because he's a smarter being, he may even think of the punishment before hand that would steer him away from rape. This man has chosen to rape someone based on who they are and what is available and has ignored the consequences. By punishing him, we hope to send a message to others, to rehabilitate him and have him think about his actions and consequences. If he cannot be changed then he would be locked up for life or executed.
He raped because that's who he is, what he thinks, and we try to create an environment conducive to change that with punishment.
The lion is not as good a thinking machine as the man is, so we punish the thinking man so that he would think better next time.
Here's the issue though, say that I'm a person that has a desire to rape women, and that I will always act on that desire if given the opportunity. I do so, and rape someone. Now I am punished, even though I didn't have a choice in doing so, I could only have done so.
This seems like punishing a mountain lion for killing a jogger, it has to, there's no other way for it to live. Now, of course we'd shoot the lion, because it's dangerous, but we recognize that shooting the lion is like cutting down a tree that's about to fall over, it's not because the lion was being immoral. Also, you aren't punishing the lion, or the tree, you are just removing something dangerous.
what's it mater. You are a serial rapist. Ok, it's not really your fault. There are really people like that. It normally isn't really their fault. Life has fucked most of them over pretty good. Or they are genetically twisted. or both.
It doesn't matter much. We can't have you running about like that. Can we fix you? no? Ok, that leaves two options where you don't endanger the rest of society.
It would probably be really healthy if we could get past the whole vengeance thing.
Hell, there is no reason not to be pragmatic about it either. If punishing criminals has a positive cathartic effect on victims and society as a whole, there is no reason we can't still do it. It's not really fair, but it is what is best for society. If it creates the least destructive environment for everyone, then pragmatically that is what we should do.
Hey, in the neat interview thing they kinda talk about AI. Sort of. Considering there are bot nets out there now programed use basically a learning algorithm to automatically test find successful infection vectors, including social engineering attacks. You basically have people attempting to build networks that pass the Turning test. Should determinism affect our decisions about artificial life?
The point you make in 3 is one that keeps coming up: a person whose misdeeds are caused by things beyond his control (his environment, his DNA, etc- the deterministic idea) should not be punished for them. I think this point overlooks the fact that punishment would just be an input intended to make him less likely to do the same thing in the future. Throwing him in jail wouldn't merely be a way of saying 'You did something wrong you bad person, you', it would be a mechanism for teaching him 'things unpleasant to you happen when you act this way, so you shouldn't act this way again.'
I don't believe this theory of punishment is moral; it allows us to do whatever we want to whomever we want so long as it will improve the outlook of society as a whole. I'm not a utilitarian. Regardless, though, my point wasn't that acts of punishment are immoral - they can't be, no more than the acts the provoke the punishment - only that there is no theory of justice under determinism.
As far as 4 goes, I'm not sure what point you are trying to make. There is nothing harmful about the idea of free will, and as AJAlkaline was saying, it is easier to live in the world while considering that you and others have free will. Why is it so troubling that he doesn't actually have these options? I'm not sure, but it may be something related to the whole 'life needs to have meaning' idea, which I don't subscribe to.
It's not an issue of what's troubling. You can't regard yourself as an object. It's impossible to simultaneously hold determinism and make decisions. The act of choosing tacitly assumes freedom. Determinism is in this sense a meaningless position; people may believe it for the purposes of abstract philosophical debates, but no one takes it seriously as regards their own actions and motivations.
If you're having trouble seeing this, consider the discussion of morality. Under determinism it is absurd to talk about what I should do, just as it would be to talk about what any object should do. I will do what I will do under the rule of physical law. But of course I can't think this way, not because it's disquieting but because it's psychologically impossible.
I don't think you understand the concept of reason or intelligence very well.
That's a statement that requires truly breath-taking condescension, but ok.
In any decision an intelligent agent has a desire and a set of information about the state of the world. The intelligent agent then makes the decision that it understands will best bring about the desired state as according to the information about the current state. That is intelligence.
That's a pretty terrible definition of intelligence, but it makes my point for me. Physical systems have neither desires nor understandings.
Anyway, causation only ever exists if you consider a link the chain of causation. The only thing that we suspect to not have a cause is the big bang, and even that might have some sort of cause.
I don't think you understand physics very well. Under classical mechanics it was still possible to speak of causation in the sense that one could say the entirety of the universe in one instant caused the entirety of the universe in the next instant, though even that is a rather dubious formulation. With the relativity of simultaneity one can no longer even say that, since there is no such thing as a universal instant.
Colloquially we might say that I fell because you pushed me. In physics, one would just describe the evolution of the expectation value of my position as a function of the potentials created by local matter.
Free will necessarily requires that the "decision maker" be outside of the chain of causation, as it somehow manages to cause things while not being caused by anything.
Sloppy ideas of free will require this. Really, free will only requires genuine decisions, which as I said are indeterministic.
Sorry about that statement by the way, what I should've said was that we obviously have differing understandings of what defines reason and intelligence, I won't try to imply that you're stupid and don't know what you're talking about, I just meant to say that I think you used the concepts poorly in your argument.
Anyway, you're still failing to separate what is real and what is practical. Newtonian physics work in the majority of instances even though they're fundamentally wrong because they're a valuable approximation of the real system. In that same manner the world could be entirely deterministic yet our brains are structured to function under the "free will" manner of assumption because it's practical. It has been observed in some studies that the consciousness only seems to become aware of a decision after the decision has already been made. In fact, in split-brain patients, where the two hemispheres of the brain cannot communicate with each other, that are shown a visual cue such as "walk forward", which is read only by the visual processing side of the brain, who then go forth with the action and then are asked audibly why they preformed the action seem to immediately generate an untrue explanation for why they just walked forward. They might say that they were restless or they were going to go get something, but they never indicate that they had read the paper which told them to walk forward, indeed they don't show any signs that would indicate that they don't honestly believe in what they said. Of course, this is tentative research and it's non-conclusive, but it lends itself to the conclusion that free choice is not something that exists, its an explanation that your brain uses to comprehend the actions that it makes. You necessarily have to operate as though you have free choice because that's the way in which your brain was wired to understand the world.
In that same manner the world could be entirely deterministic yet our brains are structured to function under the "free will" manner of assumption because it's practical.
I don't really see the analogy with Newtonian physics, but my point is that of course one can believe this consistently about other people. You are unable to believe it about yourself except at the most superficial level. This doesn't prove that determinism is wrong, and I haven't tried to use it that way, but it does prove that it is trivial - an interesting topic of conversation that doesn't actually alter the way one regards oneself or acts in the world. Consequently I think there's a kind of tragedy in determinism as a philosophy, which is what I alluded to in my fourth point.
It has been observed in some studies that the consciousness only seems to become aware of a decision after the decision has already been made.
The authors of those studies do not support that conclusion; consciousness still has a veto power. The results also assume that the participants are able to time their decisions down to a tenth of a second - the lag could just as easily be accounted for by any number of other factors, including their own unconscious urge to locate the decision just before they hit the button. In any case, I don't think those events could even be characterized as decisions because there was no motivation at play. The participants were basically asked to use their brains as random number generators, and they did.
In fact, in split-brain patients, where the two hemispheres of the brain cannot communicate with each other, that are shown a visual cue such as "walk forward", which is read only by the visual processing side of the brain, who then go forth with the action and then are asked audibly why they preformed the action seem to immediately generate an untrue explanation for why they just walked forward. They might say that they were restless or they were going to go get something, but they never indicate that they had read the paper which told them to walk forward, indeed they don't show any signs that would indicate that they don't honestly believe in what they said. Of course, this is tentative research and it's non-conclusive, but it lends itself to the conclusion that free choice is not something that exists, its an explanation that your brain uses to comprehend the actions that it makes. You necessarily have to operate as though you have free choice because that's the way in which your brain was wired to understand the world.
Or to the conclusion that people are sometimes deceived about their own motives, or maybe just that people with severe brain damage lose much of their ability to act freely.
In that same manner the world could be entirely deterministic yet our brains are structured to function under the "free will" manner of assumption because it's practical.
I don't really see the analogy with Newtonian physics, but my point is that of course one can believe this consistently about other people. You are unable to believe it about yourself except at the most superficial level. This doesn't prove that determinism is wrong, and I haven't tried to use it that way, but it does prove that it is trivial - an interesting topic of conversation that doesn't actually alter the way one regards oneself or acts in the world. Consequently I think there's a kind of tragedy in determinism as a philosophy, which is what I alluded to in my fourth point.
Well, I do agree that when referring to oneself it's a moot point whether or not you undergo determinism, and I believe it was alluded to earlier in this thread that for practical purposes you should at least treat yourself as a "free" individual because as human beings we don't have a choice not to (whether there might come the ability to extend our minds to actually take determinism into account when referring to the self through technology is another discussion, I suppose). However, it does, necessarily change how you understand and comprehend the actions of others. As we've brought up before concerning morality in a deterministic system, you'd have to accept that the system of morality that we uphold is, like free will, a short-hand that's practical for the functioning of society, and that's it. You said before that you're not a utilitarian, well...I am.
Maybe this is discussion for a different thread, but a tyrannical utilitarianism isn't utilitarianism at all. The concept that one person can be sacrificed for the good of the rest of society doesn't actually produce an outcome of high utility, as then every individual lives in fear of the fact that they might become sacrificed. I don't see how a utilitarian system could really be bad. (This is to say, of course, only a roughly utilitarian system as happiness can't be quantified etc, etc). I think that if we were to take a deterministic approach to dealing with society's problems, as we already partially do, that we would see much better results.
As far as what you see as the "tragedy", that's subjective. To be honest, such a concept is not all that tragic to me, I can understand that my actions are only possible and only occur because of the influences upon me, and simultaneously know that I still practically consider myself as having free will because that's the simplest and most efficient way to understand my own actions. There's actually things that are a little bit beautiful about it; in this deterministic system men are not actually islands, singular consciousnesses ultimately alone and separate, they are amalgamations of all the vast number of influences that preceded them; thousands of years of cultural developments, millions of generations of evolving individuals, billions of years of minute interactions between tiny specs of matter, all converging in a single ridiculously complex product that we arbitrarily define as a man, which will then further to alter the reality of all those that come after it. It's almost this Brahmic sort of interconnectedness between all parts of the universe; every single particle a speck of paint in this cosmic masterpiece. So, no, I don't find it all that tragic.
Maybe this is discussion for a different thread, but a tyrannical utilitarianism isn't utilitarianism at all. The concept that one person can be sacrificed for the good of the rest of society doesn't actually produce an outcome of high utility, as then every individual lives in fear of the fact that they might become sacrificed. I don't see how a utilitarian system could really be bad. (This is to say, of course, only a roughly utilitarian system as happiness can't be quantified etc, etc). I think that if we were to take a deterministic approach to dealing with society's problems, as we already partially do, that we would see much better results.
But what you're saying so far sounds like, "My version of utilitarianism conveniently requires exactly the same things that a theory of justice requires." You posit some impact from determinism, then immediately neuter it. What sorts of imperatives do you think determinism gives rise to that are morally plausible and distinct from those arising from theories of agency and justice?
You can look at as having free will, but that will is subject to you and who you are, which was shaped by the environment, genetics, and your body chemistry.
The point you make in 3 is one that keeps coming up: a person whose misdeeds are caused by things beyond his control (his environment, his DNA, etc- the deterministic idea) should not be punished for them. I think this point overlooks the fact that punishment would just be an input intended to make him less likely to do the same thing in the future. Throwing him in jail wouldn't merely be a way of saying 'You did something wrong you bad person, you', it would be a mechanism for teaching him 'things unpleasant to you happen when you act this way, so you shouldn't act this way again.'
I don't believe this theory of punishment is moral; it allows us to do whatever we want to whomever we want so long as it will improve the outlook of society as a whole. I'm not a utilitarian. Regardless, though, my point wasn't that acts of punishment are immoral - they can't be, no more than the acts the provoke the punishment - only that there is no theory of justice under determinism.
There are lots of theories of justice under determinism. See: Nietzsche, Bernard Williams, even Rawls' original position could operate under determinism.
As far as 4 goes, I'm not sure what point you are trying to make. There is nothing harmful about the idea of free will, and as AJAlkaline was saying, it is easier to live in the world while considering that you and others have free will. Why is it so troubling that he doesn't actually have these options? I'm not sure, but it may be something related to the whole 'life needs to have meaning' idea, which I don't subscribe to.
It's not an issue of what's troubling. You can't regard yourself as an object. It's impossible to simultaneously hold determinism and make decisions. The act of choosing tacitly assumes freedom. Determinism is in this sense a meaningless position; people may believe it for the purposes of abstract philosophical debates, but no one takes it seriously as regards their own actions and motivations.
If you're having trouble seeing this, consider the discussion of morality. Under determinism it is absurd to talk about what I should do, just as it would be to talk about what any object should do. I will do what I will do under the rule of physical law. But of course I can't think this way, not because it's disquieting but because it's psychologically impossible.
You're assuming (1) it's impossible to talk about what you should do under determinism and (2) deontological morality is the only viable form of ethics. If both were true, the world would have been satisfied with Kantian ethics.
If you're having trouble seeing this, consider how easy it is to talk about how a car should operate. Cars can be broken and operate poorly. Secular morality is already based on how we think things should operate. Determinism doesn't interfere with this. We just fix cars because we know how we want them to run.
Meanwhile, knowing my decisions are determined doesn't stop me from making them, it only functions as a factor in how.
Maybe this is discussion for a different thread, but a tyrannical utilitarianism isn't utilitarianism at all. The concept that one person can be sacrificed for the good of the rest of society doesn't actually produce an outcome of high utility, as then every individual lives in fear of the fact that they might become sacrificed. I don't see how a utilitarian system could really be bad. (This is to say, of course, only a roughly utilitarian system as happiness can't be quantified etc, etc). I think that if we were to take a deterministic approach to dealing with society's problems, as we already partially do, that we would see much better results.
But what you're saying so far sounds like, "My version of utilitarianism conveniently requires exactly the same things that a theory of justice requires." You posit some impact from determinism, then immediately neuter it. What sorts of imperatives do you think determinism gives rise to that are morally plausible and distinct from those arising from theories of agency and justice?
It can require the same things a theory of justice requires. You seem to be assuming that a theory of justice can only be based on either deontological ethics or hard utilitarianism. Not all cultures have subscribed to either of these, and, transhistorically, cultures all involve a concept of justice.
Maybe this is discussion for a different thread, but a tyrannical utilitarianism isn't utilitarianism at all. The concept that one person can be sacrificed for the good of the rest of society doesn't actually produce an outcome of high utility, as then every individual lives in fear of the fact that they might become sacrificed. I don't see how a utilitarian system could really be bad. (This is to say, of course, only a roughly utilitarian system as happiness can't be quantified etc, etc). I think that if we were to take a deterministic approach to dealing with society's problems, as we already partially do, that we would see much better results.
But what you're saying so far sounds like, "My version of utilitarianism conveniently requires exactly the same things that a theory of justice requires." You posit some impact from determinism, then immediately neuter it. What sorts of imperatives do you think determinism gives rise to that are morally plausible and distinct from those arising from theories of agency and justice?
This is maybe a situation where the Newton analogy is more apt. I would suggest that agency and justice, and frankly the majority of long-lived moral concepts are actually rough approximations of a utilitarian system created either by biological or cultural evolution. Would you not say that the overall desired outcome of agency and justice systems is a desired increased level of happiness and stability for society? The issue with the justice systems now is that while they can reach the approximate desired outcome (and obviously they have been beneficial to us), they're not exact. Almost exactly like Newton's laws they give a decent formula for acquiring the desired outcome but are not based on accurate premises. People who commit crimes are often likely to be repeat offenders, so in the interest of preventing future crime revenge is a great concept. It has an ultimate cause of utilizing probability to remove people who would likely cause problems at large, but proximately it's just based on a generalized desire to "get back" at criminals. This can cause problems, though, we now know that things like prison, when structured specifically for "getting back" at criminals, create high recidivism rates and may cause minor criminals to turn away from society, making their likeliness to commit crimes even higher. We need to shift the proximate cause away from "giving them what they deserve", and instead align it with the ultimate cause of making society happier and safer. If we shifted our primary focus to rehabilitation and away from revenge, we could reap lower crime rates as released criminals are prevented from returning to crime or criminals who have a high likeliness of committing another crime are kept from being released.
Basically, so the idea becomes, like Lyrium said, not "this is a bad man how can we punish him?" but "this man has a high probability of committing a crime, how can we lower this probability?".
Maybe this is discussion for a different thread, but a tyrannical utilitarianism isn't utilitarianism at all. The concept that one person can be sacrificed for the good of the rest of society doesn't actually produce an outcome of high utility, as then every individual lives in fear of the fact that they might become sacrificed. I don't see how a utilitarian system could really be bad. (This is to say, of course, only a roughly utilitarian system as happiness can't be quantified etc, etc). I think that if we were to take a deterministic approach to dealing with society's problems, as we already partially do, that we would see much better results.
But what you're saying so far sounds like, "My version of utilitarianism conveniently requires exactly the same things that a theory of justice requires." You posit some impact from determinism, then immediately neuter it. What sorts of imperatives do you think determinism gives rise to that are morally plausible and distinct from those arising from theories of agency and justice?
It can require the same things a theory of justice requires. You seem to be assuming that a theory of justice can only be based on either deontological ethics or hard utilitarianism. Not all cultures have subscribed to either of these, and, transhistorically, cultures all involve a concept of justice.
I certainly am not. I am placing theories of justice in opposition to utilitarianism, in which there is no conception of justice as an independent moral criterion. If a form of utilitarianism requires all and only the same things a theory of justice requires, then it cannot be said to be a distinct theory, and it certainly can't be said to impart significance to determinism.
I certainly am not. I am placing theories of justice in opposition to utilitarianism, in which there is no conception of justice as an independent moral criterion. If a form of utilitarianism requires all and only the same things a theory of justice requires, then it cannot be said to be a distinct theory, and it certainly can't be said to impart significance to determinism.
You would be hard pressed to find someone like Parfit claiming that "the greatest good for the greatest number" (or a subtler version thereof) was not based on a conception of what is the most just. It's simply derived from the pleasure principle instead of duty.
What about virtue ethics? Or any ethical system that doesn't involve morality. Do they miss the justice boat too?
I would suggest that agency and justice, and frankly the majority of long-lived moral concepts are actually rough approximations of a utilitarian system created either by biological or cultural evolution. Would you not say that the overall desired outcome of agency and justice systems is a desired increased level of happiness and stability for society?
My issue is that it is not at all difficult to identify past cultures that were deeply unjust, yet did quite well. I think it is quite difficult to show that all systems of slavery lowers overall utility, for example, and I have an equally hard time seeing how a utilitarian would avoid endorsing the Crucifixion as described in the New Testament.
For that matter, there are many past cultures where the majority of people were quite miserable - or at least lived in miserable conditions - yet they endured for centuries or millenia. I think it's very difficult to argue that utility plays the role of a selective evolutionary pressure on societies. Therefore, I am very suspicious of attempting to explain the remarkable congruity between two such wildly different theories as utilitarianism and deontology in terms of evolution. If anything, the argument would have to be, "We all have certain impulses created by evolutionary pressures. Utilitarianism and theories of justice are just different ways in which we try to ennoble these impulses as something more than base survival instincts, but both are ultimately illusions."
This can cause problems, though, we now know that things like prison, when structured specifically for "getting back" at criminals, create high recidivism rates and may cause minor criminals to turn away from society, making their likeliness to commit crimes even higher. We need to shift the proximate cause away from "giving them what they deserve", and instead align it with the ultimate cause of making society happier and safer. If we shifted our primary focus to rehabilitation and away from revenge, we could reap lower crime rates as released criminals are prevented from returning to crime or criminals who have a high likeliness of committing another crime are kept from being released.
But again, this doesn't seem to me a distinct contribution from determinism at all. Most of the people informed about the recidivism rates and the nature of our prison system think we ought to change it so as to be better at reforming criminals.
I certainly am not. I am placing theories of justice in opposition to utilitarianism, in which there is no conception of justice as an independent moral criterion. If a form of utilitarianism requires all and only the same things a theory of justice requires, then it cannot be said to be a distinct theory, and it certainly can't be said to impart significance to determinism.
You would be hard pressed to find someone like Parfit claiming that "the greatest good for the greatest number" (or a subtler version thereof) was not based on a conception of what is the most just. It's simply derived from the pleasure principle instead of duty.
What about virtue ethics? Or any ethical system that doesn't involve morality. Do they miss the justice boat too?
Virtue ethics is just a reformulation of moral principles in terms of virtues rather than behaviors. "Do not betray your friends" becomes "be loyal", etc.
I should have clarified what I meant by justice. Justice in classical texts refers to what is right generally. I use the word in a more specific way to refer to the principle that people deserve certain things based on their behavior - that good actions should be rewarded and bad actions punished. A theory of justice is a type of ethical theory which takes this statement to be an irreducible moral principle, perhaps one of several or perhaps the only one. It is possible to build a utilitarian theory of justice, but I've never seen one and can't imagine anyone really endorsing one.
I don't see how virtue ethics can be a reformulation of deontological morality since it existed first. It also involves much more than asserting a duty to embody a certain virtue, such as heavy conditioning, an understanding of why certain virtues are better than others, an enjoyment of being virtuous that cannot be absent from the theory. Most moral theory does not involve, inherently, an enjoyment of being moral.
I pulled this from Wikipedia. Replace the argument about "who is looking?" with "who is choosing?"
One may explain (human) vision by arguing that the light from the outside world forms an image on the retinas in the eyes and something (or some'one') in the brain looks at these images as if they are images on a movie screen (this theory of vision is sometimes termed the theory of the Cartesian Theater: it is most associated, nowadays, with the psychologist David Marr). But the question is: 'who' is it who is looking at this 'internal' movie inside the brain? The assumption here (although this is rarely made explicit) is that there is a 'little man' or 'homunculus' inside the brain 'looking at' this movie. (Alternatively it might be proposed that the images on the retinas are transferred to the visual cortex where it is scanned. But here again, all that has been done is to place a homunculus in the brain behind the cortex.)
I would actually assume that the Me that does the choosing is my mind. My mind and I are the same thing. My mind interacts with my brain, but is not the same thing as my brain, my mind being more analogous to my consciousness (seemingly, though we're getting into fairly untested water for me). Attribute dualism appeals to me, with the little I know. I've been told to read Chalmers, I hear he's a dualist.
...and that's the homunculus fallacy. Who chooses for the mind/brain? At a certain point, there is no room left for a tiny entity that can make a choice, and it ultimately comes down co a "choice" authored by your environment and your genetics, a choice made by physical necessity.
3) Machine zakkiel cannot ever act other than he does, and is therefore only to be pitied for his misdeeds, never condemned. He is as helpless to avoid pulling the trigger as the bullet is to halt its flight.
4) Worst of all, machine zakkiel is in the grip of an inescapable delusion; he views himself as free and his decisions as real choices that might go either way. He believes in options and possibilities despite the fact that such things are illusory at the macroscopic level. Even if he becomes a determinist he will continue to regard himself in this way because it is impossible for him to make sense of his motives and actions as the products of ineluctable physical laws.
The point you make in 3 is one that keeps coming up: a person whose misdeeds are caused by things beyond his control (his environment, his DNA, etc- the deterministic idea) should not be punished for them. I think this point overlooks the fact that punishment would just be an input intended to make him less likely to do the same thing in the future. Throwing him in jail wouldn't merely be a way of saying 'You did something wrong you bad person, you', it would be a mechanism for teaching him 'things unpleasant to you happen when you act this way, so you shouldn't act this way again.'
As far as 4 goes, I'm not sure what point you are trying to make. There is nothing harmful about the idea of free will, and as AJAlkaline was saying, it is easier to live in the world while considering that you and others have free will. Why is it so troubling that he doesn't actually have these options? I'm not sure, but it may be something related to the whole 'life needs to have meaning' idea, which I don't subscribe to.
Regarding (3), condemnation of the person isn't warranted, but it's useful. Condemnation of his circumstances are warranted, but they largely are not useful, except where those condemnations fall on ears that are affected towards change. Ergo, I would argue that we should do both, but be aware of (and work to change) the ultimate culprit, which would be the environment and the genetics of the individual involved.
The notion of free will is and has been exceedingly useful for society up until now, but at the moment, it's getting rapidly eroded in tis usefulness as its illusory nature is coming to light. Low serotonin, for example, has been linked to crime. Being abused as a child increases the likelihood of being an abuser as an adult. "Free will" shifts the responsibility of society away from these more subtle culprits, and cathartic, vengeance-seeking justice (against the individuals) hardens our hearts against the extreme urgency of their plights.
Here's the issue though, say that I'm a person that has a desire to rape women, and that I will always act on that desire if given the opportunity. I do so, and rape someone. Now I am punished, even though I didn't have a choice in doing so, I could only have done so.
This seems like punishing a mountain lion for killing a jogger, it has to, there's no other way for it to live. Now, of course we'd shoot the lion, because it's dangerous, but we recognize that shooting the lion is like cutting down a tree that's about to fall over, it's not because the lion was being immoral. Also, you aren't punishing the lion, or the tree, you are just removing something dangerous.
Unlike the Lion though, punishing the man could change his behavior because he's a smarter being, he may even think of the punishment before hand that would steer him away from rape. This man has chosen to rape someone based on who they are and what is available and has ignored the consequences. By punishing him, we hope to send a message to others, to rehabilitate him and have him think about his actions and consequences. If he cannot be changed then he would be locked up for life or executed.
He raped because that's who he is, what he thinks, and we try to create an environment conducive to change that with punishment.
The lion is not as good a thinking machine as the man is, so we punish the thinking man so that he would think better next time.
I'm not certain that the killing of the lion is entirely necessary. It may just be a cathartic response to a tragedy, influenced by the notion that "it has a taste for human blood", and I'm just not sure that "human blood" is going to send it looking for more people. Maybe, maybe not (I'm not informed, but just throwing that out there).
On the other hand, lions could probably be conditioned not to kill humans, it's just that it's way the hell too hard and expensive with way too much opportunity for catastrophe to make it a worthwhile enterprise for us, and it's not like the human conditioning facilities (prison, therapy, whatever) are going to work on a mountain lion in ways that are beneficial to anyone but the lion.
The point you make in 3 is one that keeps coming up: a person whose misdeeds are caused by things beyond his control (his environment, his DNA, etc- the deterministic idea) should not be punished for them. I think this point overlooks the fact that punishment would just be an input intended to make him less likely to do the same thing in the future. Throwing him in jail wouldn't merely be a way of saying 'You did something wrong you bad person, you', it would be a mechanism for teaching him 'things unpleasant to you happen when you act this way, so you shouldn't act this way again.'
I don't believe this theory of punishment is moral; it allows us to do whatever we want to whomever we want so long as it will improve the outlook of society as a whole. I'm not a utilitarian. Regardless, though, my point wasn't that acts of punishment are immoral - they can't be, no more than the acts the provoke the punishment - only that there is no theory of justice under determinism.
Actually, I think utilitarianism (with a little bit extra which I may get into later) is probably the most useful thing to derive moral guidance from in a deterministic paradigm.
When you say "no theory of justice" are you talking about Rawls, or something broader? Could you elaborate either way, please?
Hmm... i have a slight problem with this determinism theory.
I wrote programs for the behaviour of byte-tanks.
It is easy to write a program wich behaves different in a fixed enviroment.
It takes a main huter-killer-algorythm skeleton for processing some input variables and good deal of die rolls.
It is impossible for me to predict its actions, even for its creator. I know the behaviour patterns, i even recognize them, but i have no idea wich one will be applied because i made sure it chooses it more or less random (supported by a little input of its surroundings of course, version1 smacked into walls repeadetly and dozered through buildings, but i fixed that).
I would agree that the tought process is not a very sophisticated one, but it makes decisions even if its technically just flipping a coin to see if its heads or tails.
As a creator of something wich makes decisions i like to voice the opinion that its possible to get not predifined decisions as long as you predefine it (uhm... riiight).
It is impossible for me to predict its actions, even for its creator. I know the behaviour patterns, i even recognize them, but i have no idea wich one will be applied because i made sure it chooses it more or less random (supported by a little input of its surroundings of course, version1 smacked into walls repeadetly and dozered through buildings, but i fixed that).
Your ability to predict your creation's actions isn't necessarily related to the fact that its actions are determined by its inputs. In the case of your tank, you can easily imagine someone who could predict its actions - all it would take is someone who knew what the last random number generated in your program was, and knew what algorithm was being used to generate new ones.
edit because it wasn't clear: even if you argued that no one could predict the tank's actions, that still isn't a direct attack on determinism.
Vrtra Theory on
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Has anybody cited that study yet that showed some implications that people might actually NOT be making decisions, but rather rationalizing an action AS a decision and just perceiving them out of order so that they "fool" themselves into thinking that they have "free will?" I think I originally saw that cited here a long time ago, and it was very interesting (not proof of any sort, naturally, but it was reasonable).
Aside to the current argument: has anyone else ever gotten the feeling that only some people are actually "there" as in they're the same kind of conscious being you are but many people are not? I'm inclined to go with the whole "egocentric quirk" interpretation of that than actually believe that those occasional feelings mean something, but I never did hear from too many people on the subject. Did that make sense?
even if you argued that no one could predict the tank's actions, that still isn't a direct attack on determinism.
I disagree. If it would ONLY be determined by its input i should know best what it is going to do since i wrote it. But i can't. Because it is not ONLY guided by its input.
The input on the one map is always the same, so its behaviour should not change.
The point i am trying to make is that its not alone guided by its input.
It would not even partially work that way.
Some kind of decision making is needed to make it not go in dumb circles.
Generated variables are not input PERCIVED by the tank, its rather a internal process of selecting how to deal with the input. That are two pairs of shoes if you ask me. Because the process of selecting behaviour patterns belongs into the "skeleton" wich guides the "behaviour patterns", wich in turn govern how the incoming input is processed.
Besides - you can monitor the variables but by then it has already rolled, probing it to get the result of the roll, but thats impossible BEFORE the roll, thats not my definition of a fixed, unchangeable future.
You see how controversal even this simple example can be. Its pretty bold to assume there is no free will if we remeber that we have no clue how the human mind works or that we can not replicate a even barely funtional version.
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An alternative is to consider someone as an entity as the physical person that they are and every factor that has come into creating them. Anyway, there's still predictability, if a murderer pre-meditates a murder they have a much larger chance of committing another murder than any other person. A large enough chance that you can justify incarcerating them until they exhibit signs that can lead you to predict that if they were released into society again they would not commit the crime again. Anyway, accountability is a ridiculous notion in purely logical terms, it's an intuitive structure that is roughly assembled by the human mind because it conveys simple practical advantages to social interactions. Accountability used in any other form is dense.
You're using choice and force in a different sense than I am. Consider a different example: suppose that I am at a restaurant and there's both a chocolate and a vanilla shake on the menu. Not that I have anything against chocolate, I just like vanilla more, and so I order the vanilla. That order expresses a choice on my part, despite the fact that anyone who knew me particularly well could have predicted that I would have chosen the vanilla.
Determinism isn't exclusive of free will, because prediction isn't exclusive of free will. It's true that the arrangement of physical matter in my brain was such that I was going to order vanilla, and because of that I couldn't have done otherwise. However, that arrangement of physical matter in my brain is me. I am nothing over and above my brain, and the fact that it was configured in such a way that I was going to order the vanilla is just the very same fact as me preferring vanilla. Hence, I ordered it because I wanted it and because I chose it, because the facts of me wanting it and choosing it are just the very same facts as the facts of what was physically going on in my brain at the time.
Edit: this is also why determinism isn't exclusive with moral responsibility.
What you're describing is what I was trying to describe earlier. However, it's not accurate to say that free will and determinism are co-existing, because that doesn't make the distinction that free will is actually just a practical way of comprehending and understanding the actions that people make because it's basically impossible to function by considering people's actions in a strictly deterministic manner. You can still speak in terms of their "choices" and what not, but know that those choices are determined entirely by the outside factors that they're subject to.
Certainly not predictable, no, the complexities of both genetics and environment are far, far too complex.
Understandable though... yes, I would suggest that embracing a deterministic paradigm leads to far more understanding. I think it's fairly safe to say that emotions are stronger than reason, but reason can also severely blunt the impact of emotion when understanding is increased.
I think a stronger argument is that we can't honestly blame people for what they do, but given that blame works as a deterrent, we must. If that's what you mean by "how we roll", okay.
I pulled this from Wikipedia. Replace the argument about "who is looking?" with "who is choosing?"
This has been addressed in here already, as you know. My understanding is that punishment is a necessary tragedy to prevent greater tragedy. Evil Multi elaborated better than I.
So understanding the above, what is free will?
EDIT: I should add, I think Dennett's great, but I find his positions on "free will" to be uncharacteristically woolly.
EDIT: Another way to put it would be to say that for you, the choice to get ice cream was synonymous with the choice to get vanilla ice cream.
I think your view of identity is indefensible, but that's a different debate.
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What is the difference between a zakkiel with free will who gets vanilla ice cream and a deterministic zakkiel machine who gets vanilla ice cream?
1) The statements uttered by the zakkiel machine indicate only the patterns imposed by physics - they cannot be said to be the product of reason, though of course the machine may think that they are. They are as devoid of real intelligence as radio static, and only their complexity makes it appear otherwise.
2) There is nothing that machine zakkiel can be said to cause. Causation is meaningless in physics; there is only mechanics, the predicted evolution of systems, and zakkiel is not a closed system.
3) Machine zakkiel cannot ever act other than he does, and is therefore only to be pitied for his misdeeds, never condemned. He is as helpless to avoid pulling the trigger as the bullet is to halt its flight.
4) Worst of all, machine zakkiel is in the grip of an inescapable delusion; he views himself as free and his decisions as real choices that might go either way. He believes in options and possibilities despite the fact that such things are illusory at the macroscopic level. Even if he becomes a determinist he will continue to regard himself in this way because it is impossible for him to make sense of his motives and actions as the products of ineluctable physical laws.
So we would use different terms, but a rose by any other name...
The point you make in 3 is one that keeps coming up: a person whose misdeeds are caused by things beyond his control (his environment, his DNA, etc- the deterministic idea) should not be punished for them. I think this point overlooks the fact that punishment would just be an input intended to make him less likely to do the same thing in the future. Throwing him in jail wouldn't merely be a way of saying 'You did something wrong you bad person, you', it would be a mechanism for teaching him 'things unpleasant to you happen when you act this way, so you shouldn't act this way again.'
As far as 4 goes, I'm not sure what point you are trying to make. There is nothing harmful about the idea of free will, and as AJAlkaline was saying, it is easier to live in the world while considering that you and others have free will. Why is it so troubling that he doesn't actually have these options? I'm not sure, but it may be something related to the whole 'life needs to have meaning' idea, which I don't subscribe to.
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I don't think you understand the concept of reason or intelligence very well. In any decision an intelligent agent has a desire and a set of information about the state of the world. The intelligent agent then makes the decision that it understands will best bring about the desired state as according to the information about the current state. That is intelligence. Reason is using logical operations on the available information to deduce new pieces of information or alter the presentation of the information. If the information available, the desired outcome of the agent, and the predictive understanding of the agent are all known, then the outcome of the decision can be accurately predicted. You will always choose what seems best to you given your current goal and the available information you have about the world, that's beyond arguing. You operate off this assumption that a deterministic system and an intelligent system can not be the same thing. There's no evidence to support that.
Anyway, causation only ever exists if you consider a link the chain of causation. The only thing that we suspect to not have a cause is the big bang, and even that might have some sort of cause. Free will necessarily requires that the "decision maker" be outside of the chain of causation, as it somehow manages to cause things while not being caused by anything. The logic of causation does not break down in a deterministic system, it just means that any cause requires its own cause.
Red Tape.
A phantom created by 'cartesian theater' views of the self.
I haven't really read dennett---this is just my reflection on the topic.
Anyway, as usual, MrsMisses is completely correct. And surprisingly, Poldy, too. And whoever brought up predictability.
Here's the issue though, say that I'm a person that has a desire to rape women, and that I will always act on that desire if given the opportunity. I do so, and rape someone. Now I am punished, even though I didn't have a choice in doing so, I could only have done so.
This seems like punishing a mountain lion for killing a jogger, it has to, there's no other way for it to live. Now, of course we'd shoot the lion, because it's dangerous, but we recognize that shooting the lion is like cutting down a tree that's about to fall over, it's not because the lion was being immoral. Also, you aren't punishing the lion, or the tree, you are just removing something dangerous.
"We believe in the people and their 'wisdom' as if there was some special secret entrance to knowledge that barred to anyone who had ever learned anything." - Friedrich Nietzsche
I would actually assume that the Me that does the choosing is my mind. My mind and I are the same thing. My mind interacts with my brain, but is not the same thing as my brain, my mind being more analogous to my consciousness (seemingly, though we're getting into fairly untested water for me). Attribute dualism appeals to me, with the little I know. I've been told to read Chalmers, I hear he's a dualist.
"We believe in the people and their 'wisdom' as if there was some special secret entrance to knowledge that barred to anyone who had ever learned anything." - Friedrich Nietzsche
Unlike the Lion though, punishing the man could change his behavior because he's a smarter being, he may even think of the punishment before hand that would steer him away from rape. This man has chosen to rape someone based on who they are and what is available and has ignored the consequences. By punishing him, we hope to send a message to others, to rehabilitate him and have him think about his actions and consequences. If he cannot be changed then he would be locked up for life or executed.
He raped because that's who he is, what he thinks, and we try to create an environment conducive to change that with punishment.
The lion is not as good a thinking machine as the man is, so we punish the thinking man so that he would think better next time.
what's it mater. You are a serial rapist. Ok, it's not really your fault. There are really people like that. It normally isn't really their fault. Life has fucked most of them over pretty good. Or they are genetically twisted. or both.
It doesn't matter much. We can't have you running about like that. Can we fix you? no? Ok, that leaves two options where you don't endanger the rest of society.
It would probably be really healthy if we could get past the whole vengeance thing.
Hell, there is no reason not to be pragmatic about it either. If punishing criminals has a positive cathartic effect on victims and society as a whole, there is no reason we can't still do it. It's not really fair, but it is what is best for society. If it creates the least destructive environment for everyone, then pragmatically that is what we should do.
Hey, in the neat interview thing they kinda talk about AI. Sort of. Considering there are bot nets out there now programed use basically a learning algorithm to automatically test find successful infection vectors, including social engineering attacks. You basically have people attempting to build networks that pass the Turning test. Should determinism affect our decisions about artificial life?
It's not an issue of what's troubling. You can't regard yourself as an object. It's impossible to simultaneously hold determinism and make decisions. The act of choosing tacitly assumes freedom. Determinism is in this sense a meaningless position; people may believe it for the purposes of abstract philosophical debates, but no one takes it seriously as regards their own actions and motivations.
If you're having trouble seeing this, consider the discussion of morality. Under determinism it is absurd to talk about what I should do, just as it would be to talk about what any object should do. I will do what I will do under the rule of physical law. But of course I can't think this way, not because it's disquieting but because it's psychologically impossible.
That's a statement that requires truly breath-taking condescension, but ok.
That's a pretty terrible definition of intelligence, but it makes my point for me. Physical systems have neither desires nor understandings.
I don't think you understand physics very well. Under classical mechanics it was still possible to speak of causation in the sense that one could say the entirety of the universe in one instant caused the entirety of the universe in the next instant, though even that is a rather dubious formulation. With the relativity of simultaneity one can no longer even say that, since there is no such thing as a universal instant.
Colloquially we might say that I fell because you pushed me. In physics, one would just describe the evolution of the expectation value of my position as a function of the potentials created by local matter. Sloppy ideas of free will require this. Really, free will only requires genuine decisions, which as I said are indeterministic.
Anyway, you're still failing to separate what is real and what is practical. Newtonian physics work in the majority of instances even though they're fundamentally wrong because they're a valuable approximation of the real system. In that same manner the world could be entirely deterministic yet our brains are structured to function under the "free will" manner of assumption because it's practical. It has been observed in some studies that the consciousness only seems to become aware of a decision after the decision has already been made. In fact, in split-brain patients, where the two hemispheres of the brain cannot communicate with each other, that are shown a visual cue such as "walk forward", which is read only by the visual processing side of the brain, who then go forth with the action and then are asked audibly why they preformed the action seem to immediately generate an untrue explanation for why they just walked forward. They might say that they were restless or they were going to go get something, but they never indicate that they had read the paper which told them to walk forward, indeed they don't show any signs that would indicate that they don't honestly believe in what they said. Of course, this is tentative research and it's non-conclusive, but it lends itself to the conclusion that free choice is not something that exists, its an explanation that your brain uses to comprehend the actions that it makes. You necessarily have to operate as though you have free choice because that's the way in which your brain was wired to understand the world.
The authors of those studies do not support that conclusion; consciousness still has a veto power. The results also assume that the participants are able to time their decisions down to a tenth of a second - the lag could just as easily be accounted for by any number of other factors, including their own unconscious urge to locate the decision just before they hit the button. In any case, I don't think those events could even be characterized as decisions because there was no motivation at play. The participants were basically asked to use their brains as random number generators, and they did.
Or to the conclusion that people are sometimes deceived about their own motives, or maybe just that people with severe brain damage lose much of their ability to act freely.
Well, I do agree that when referring to oneself it's a moot point whether or not you undergo determinism, and I believe it was alluded to earlier in this thread that for practical purposes you should at least treat yourself as a "free" individual because as human beings we don't have a choice not to (whether there might come the ability to extend our minds to actually take determinism into account when referring to the self through technology is another discussion, I suppose). However, it does, necessarily change how you understand and comprehend the actions of others. As we've brought up before concerning morality in a deterministic system, you'd have to accept that the system of morality that we uphold is, like free will, a short-hand that's practical for the functioning of society, and that's it. You said before that you're not a utilitarian, well...I am.
Maybe this is discussion for a different thread, but a tyrannical utilitarianism isn't utilitarianism at all. The concept that one person can be sacrificed for the good of the rest of society doesn't actually produce an outcome of high utility, as then every individual lives in fear of the fact that they might become sacrificed. I don't see how a utilitarian system could really be bad. (This is to say, of course, only a roughly utilitarian system as happiness can't be quantified etc, etc). I think that if we were to take a deterministic approach to dealing with society's problems, as we already partially do, that we would see much better results.
As far as what you see as the "tragedy", that's subjective. To be honest, such a concept is not all that tragic to me, I can understand that my actions are only possible and only occur because of the influences upon me, and simultaneously know that I still practically consider myself as having free will because that's the simplest and most efficient way to understand my own actions. There's actually things that are a little bit beautiful about it; in this deterministic system men are not actually islands, singular consciousnesses ultimately alone and separate, they are amalgamations of all the vast number of influences that preceded them; thousands of years of cultural developments, millions of generations of evolving individuals, billions of years of minute interactions between tiny specs of matter, all converging in a single ridiculously complex product that we arbitrarily define as a man, which will then further to alter the reality of all those that come after it. It's almost this Brahmic sort of interconnectedness between all parts of the universe; every single particle a speck of paint in this cosmic masterpiece. So, no, I don't find it all that tragic.
There are lots of theories of justice under determinism. See: Nietzsche, Bernard Williams, even Rawls' original position could operate under determinism.
You're assuming (1) it's impossible to talk about what you should do under determinism and (2) deontological morality is the only viable form of ethics. If both were true, the world would have been satisfied with Kantian ethics.
If you're having trouble seeing this, consider how easy it is to talk about how a car should operate. Cars can be broken and operate poorly. Secular morality is already based on how we think things should operate. Determinism doesn't interfere with this. We just fix cars because we know how we want them to run.
Meanwhile, knowing my decisions are determined doesn't stop me from making them, it only functions as a factor in how.
It can require the same things a theory of justice requires. You seem to be assuming that a theory of justice can only be based on either deontological ethics or hard utilitarianism. Not all cultures have subscribed to either of these, and, transhistorically, cultures all involve a concept of justice.
edits: Appended instead of double posting.
This is maybe a situation where the Newton analogy is more apt. I would suggest that agency and justice, and frankly the majority of long-lived moral concepts are actually rough approximations of a utilitarian system created either by biological or cultural evolution. Would you not say that the overall desired outcome of agency and justice systems is a desired increased level of happiness and stability for society? The issue with the justice systems now is that while they can reach the approximate desired outcome (and obviously they have been beneficial to us), they're not exact. Almost exactly like Newton's laws they give a decent formula for acquiring the desired outcome but are not based on accurate premises. People who commit crimes are often likely to be repeat offenders, so in the interest of preventing future crime revenge is a great concept. It has an ultimate cause of utilizing probability to remove people who would likely cause problems at large, but proximately it's just based on a generalized desire to "get back" at criminals. This can cause problems, though, we now know that things like prison, when structured specifically for "getting back" at criminals, create high recidivism rates and may cause minor criminals to turn away from society, making their likeliness to commit crimes even higher. We need to shift the proximate cause away from "giving them what they deserve", and instead align it with the ultimate cause of making society happier and safer. If we shifted our primary focus to rehabilitation and away from revenge, we could reap lower crime rates as released criminals are prevented from returning to crime or criminals who have a high likeliness of committing another crime are kept from being released.
Basically, so the idea becomes, like Lyrium said, not "this is a bad man how can we punish him?" but "this man has a high probability of committing a crime, how can we lower this probability?".
I certainly am not. I am placing theories of justice in opposition to utilitarianism, in which there is no conception of justice as an independent moral criterion. If a form of utilitarianism requires all and only the same things a theory of justice requires, then it cannot be said to be a distinct theory, and it certainly can't be said to impart significance to determinism.
You would be hard pressed to find someone like Parfit claiming that "the greatest good for the greatest number" (or a subtler version thereof) was not based on a conception of what is the most just. It's simply derived from the pleasure principle instead of duty.
What about virtue ethics? Or any ethical system that doesn't involve morality. Do they miss the justice boat too?
For that matter, there are many past cultures where the majority of people were quite miserable - or at least lived in miserable conditions - yet they endured for centuries or millenia. I think it's very difficult to argue that utility plays the role of a selective evolutionary pressure on societies. Therefore, I am very suspicious of attempting to explain the remarkable congruity between two such wildly different theories as utilitarianism and deontology in terms of evolution. If anything, the argument would have to be, "We all have certain impulses created by evolutionary pressures. Utilitarianism and theories of justice are just different ways in which we try to ennoble these impulses as something more than base survival instincts, but both are ultimately illusions."
But again, this doesn't seem to me a distinct contribution from determinism at all. Most of the people informed about the recidivism rates and the nature of our prison system think we ought to change it so as to be better at reforming criminals.
Virtue ethics is just a reformulation of moral principles in terms of virtues rather than behaviors. "Do not betray your friends" becomes "be loyal", etc.
I should have clarified what I meant by justice. Justice in classical texts refers to what is right generally. I use the word in a more specific way to refer to the principle that people deserve certain things based on their behavior - that good actions should be rewarded and bad actions punished. A theory of justice is a type of ethical theory which takes this statement to be an irreducible moral principle, perhaps one of several or perhaps the only one. It is possible to build a utilitarian theory of justice, but I've never seen one and can't imagine anyone really endorsing one.
We've gotten a little far off topic, however.
...and that's the homunculus fallacy. Who chooses for the mind/brain? At a certain point, there is no room left for a tiny entity that can make a choice, and it ultimately comes down co a "choice" authored by your environment and your genetics, a choice made by physical necessity.
Regarding (3), condemnation of the person isn't warranted, but it's useful. Condemnation of his circumstances are warranted, but they largely are not useful, except where those condemnations fall on ears that are affected towards change. Ergo, I would argue that we should do both, but be aware of (and work to change) the ultimate culprit, which would be the environment and the genetics of the individual involved.
The notion of free will is and has been exceedingly useful for society up until now, but at the moment, it's getting rapidly eroded in tis usefulness as its illusory nature is coming to light. Low serotonin, for example, has been linked to crime. Being abused as a child increases the likelihood of being an abuser as an adult. "Free will" shifts the responsibility of society away from these more subtle culprits, and cathartic, vengeance-seeking justice (against the individuals) hardens our hearts against the extreme urgency of their plights.
I'm not certain that the killing of the lion is entirely necessary. It may just be a cathartic response to a tragedy, influenced by the notion that "it has a taste for human blood", and I'm just not sure that "human blood" is going to send it looking for more people. Maybe, maybe not (I'm not informed, but just throwing that out there).
On the other hand, lions could probably be conditioned not to kill humans, it's just that it's way the hell too hard and expensive with way too much opportunity for catastrophe to make it a worthwhile enterprise for us, and it's not like the human conditioning facilities (prison, therapy, whatever) are going to work on a mountain lion in ways that are beneficial to anyone but the lion.
Actually, I think utilitarianism (with a little bit extra which I may get into later) is probably the most useful thing to derive moral guidance from in a deterministic paradigm.
When you say "no theory of justice" are you talking about Rawls, or something broader? Could you elaborate either way, please?
I wrote programs for the behaviour of byte-tanks.
It is easy to write a program wich behaves different in a fixed enviroment.
It takes a main huter-killer-algorythm skeleton for processing some input variables and good deal of die rolls.
It is impossible for me to predict its actions, even for its creator. I know the behaviour patterns, i even recognize them, but i have no idea wich one will be applied because i made sure it chooses it more or less random (supported by a little input of its surroundings of course, version1 smacked into walls repeadetly and dozered through buildings, but i fixed that).
I would agree that the tought process is not a very sophisticated one, but it makes decisions even if its technically just flipping a coin to see if its heads or tails.
As a creator of something wich makes decisions i like to voice the opinion that its possible to get not predifined decisions as long as you predefine it (uhm... riiight).
Your ability to predict your creation's actions isn't necessarily related to the fact that its actions are determined by its inputs. In the case of your tank, you can easily imagine someone who could predict its actions - all it would take is someone who knew what the last random number generated in your program was, and knew what algorithm was being used to generate new ones.
edit because it wasn't clear: even if you argued that no one could predict the tank's actions, that still isn't a direct attack on determinism.
Aside to the current argument: has anyone else ever gotten the feeling that only some people are actually "there" as in they're the same kind of conscious being you are but many people are not? I'm inclined to go with the whole "egocentric quirk" interpretation of that than actually believe that those occasional feelings mean something, but I never did hear from too many people on the subject. Did that make sense?
I disagree. If it would ONLY be determined by its input i should know best what it is going to do since i wrote it. But i can't. Because it is not ONLY guided by its input.
The input on the one map is always the same, so its behaviour should not change.
The point i am trying to make is that its not alone guided by its input.
It would not even partially work that way.
Some kind of decision making is needed to make it not go in dumb circles.
Generated variables are not input PERCIVED by the tank, its rather a internal process of selecting how to deal with the input. That are two pairs of shoes if you ask me. Because the process of selecting behaviour patterns belongs into the "skeleton" wich guides the "behaviour patterns", wich in turn govern how the incoming input is processed.
Besides - you can monitor the variables but by then it has already rolled, probing it to get the result of the roll, but thats impossible BEFORE the roll, thats not my definition of a fixed, unchangeable future.
You see how controversal even this simple example can be. Its pretty bold to assume there is no free will if we remeber that we have no clue how the human mind works or that we can not replicate a even barely funtional version.