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?
See above. I realize I should have defined the term when I first used it.
LoserForHireX wrote: View Post
Loren Michael wrote: View Post
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.
This tacitly assumes that there's no such thing as an undetermined choice. If you reject that assumption, there's no need to posit a homunculus, though I think there are reasons to believe a mind is not simply the sum of its contents.
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.
You seem to run into the same issue with a deterministic system. Who does the directing in that? It seems like you want to say the environment coupled with biology.
I'm saying that the thing that does the choosing is the conscious mind. Nothing chooses for the mind. It receives the input from the environmental conditioning, the biological input, and it either chooses to obey those things, or it chooses to deny those things. After that, it directs the body into action. I don't see why I need to have something choosing for the mind to choose, for me to choose.
One request though, people keep talking about Nietzsche's determinism....what's the textual evidence for such a thing. I've only really read Human, all too Human (once), A Genealogy of Morals (Twice), and Beyond Good and Evil (Once), and I never got a strong determinist vibe off him. Maybe I'm a crazy person.
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
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Apothe0sisHave you ever questioned the nature of your reality?Registered Userregular
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).
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).
Randomly determined is still determined.
Randomness is not the solution.
Particularly computer-random-number generator random, since you just have to know what the seed is and the frequency and pattern of its changing.
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).
There was some literature I read about consciousness being an effect of action, not a cause, but I can't remember who the hell wrote the original or what book I read it in.
:P
I can't believe there's two references and no one has the motivation to go and look for it. This is the internet, for god's sake!
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.
This tacitly assumes that there's no such thing as an undetermined choice. If you reject that assumption, there's no need to posit a homunculus, though I think there are reasons to believe a mind is not simply the sum of its contents.
You seem to run into the same issue with a deterministic system. Who does the directing in that? It seems like you want to say the environment coupled with biology.
I'm saying that the thing that does the choosing is the conscious mind. Nothing chooses for the mind. It receives the input from the environmental conditioning, the biological input, and it either chooses to obey those things, or it chooses to deny those things. After that, it directs the body into action. I don't see why I need to have something choosing for the mind to choose, for me to choose.
How does the mind "choose" between one or the other?
I'll try to put this a different way: You say,
"[The mind] receives the input from the environmental conditioning, the biological input, and it either chooses to obey those things, or it chooses to deny those things."
I say, how or why would a mind choose a different way? What conditions would have to be different for the mind to "choose" something different? I am saying that, for any given choice, for another choice to have been made, either the mind (genetics) or conditions (environment) would have had to be different.
I am not sure what you are saying. Is choice just random? Is it somehow divorced from the inputs that it receives? How? Is the brain not intimately, inextricably a part of the biological factors that govern "choice"?
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).
Randomly determined is still determined.
Randomness is not the solution.
Particularly computer-random-number generator random, since you just have to know what the seed is and the frequency and pattern of its changing.
Though ACSIS's system is in fact determined (being merely pseudo-random), it's worth pointing out that Apotheosis's statement is ridiculous. "Randomly determined" is as straight-forward an oxymoron as you get in philosophy.
zakkiel on
Account not recoverable. So long.
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MrMisterJesus dying on the cross in pain? Morally better than us. One has to go "all in".Registered Userregular
Though ACSIS's system is in fact determined (being merely pseudo-random), it's worth pointing out that Apotheosis's statement is ridiculous. "Randomly determined" is as straight-forward an oxymoron as you get in philosophy.
I think his point was that whether the world is actually deterministic in all its physical interactions is irrelevant to the free will debate, which is a point I agree with (as evidenced by the posts I wrote in support of compatibilism).
MrMister on
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Apothe0sisHave you ever questioned the nature of your reality?Registered Userregular
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).
Randomly determined is still determined.
Randomness is not the solution.
Particularly computer-random-number generator random, since you just have to know what the seed is and the frequency and pattern of its changing.
Though ACSIS's system is in fact determined (being merely pseudo-random), it's worth pointing out that Apotheosis's statement is ridiculous. "Randomly determined" is as straight-forward an oxymoron as you get in philosophy.
A deterministic machine which takes a cue from a genuinely random input is still a deterministic machine. If only there were some mechanism to derive meaning from this seeming oxymoron. Some key we could use to unlock its secrets. Perhaps some sort of context in which to view it...oh, wait.
Also MrMr
Also, I hate this thread. The topic was broken in a recent epistemic upgrade, with deities moving into legacy status it's largely deprecated.
How does the mind "choose" between one or the other?
I'll try to put this a different way: You say,
"[The mind] receives the input from the environmental conditioning, the biological input, and it either chooses to obey those things, or it chooses to deny those things."
I say, how or why would a mind choose a different way? What conditions would have to be different for the mind to "choose" something different? I am saying that, for any given choice, for another choice to have been made, either the mind (genetics) or conditions (environment) would have had to be different.
I am not sure what you are saying. Is choice just random? Is it somehow divorced from the inputs that it receives? How? Is the brain not intimately, inextricably a part of the biological factors that govern "choice"?
Randomness I think might be a decent way to put it. I prefer to think of it as being a measure of total unpredictability. Even if we had perfect knowledge of a given subjects environment and biology and the implications and forces that would result from those, we would still be unable to project with certainty what any given choice would be.
I certainly think that biology and the environment are always a part of any choice, even if the choice is made freely. To deny that there is not a place for biology and the environment would be silly. But to say that there is no way for someone to run counter to both biology and the environment I think is also incorrect.
I do admit that there is a certain part of this is my feeling on the issue. Something really rubs me the wrong way about being a sophisticated computer.
Also, mind and metaphysics are the areas of philosophy where I have the least amount of education, admittadly so.
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
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VariableMouth CongressStroke Me Lady FameRegistered Userregular
edited May 2008
just because we don't understand how the biology works, as in can't predict the outcome, that doesn't mean free will intervenes.
Yeah, the random number generator is deterministic. It still gets the job done.
But that is not my point.
My point is that you can not make decisions simply based on input from the outside. You need some sort of "inner compass" , in the case of the tank a RNG in its main program skeleton (actually its a inner de-orientation tool, quite the opposite). Wich is a crude tool, but you can not simply rely on outside data. Its not working.
So i have to agree that you are PARTLY product of your enviroment. But its at least as important what you make of these experiences.
And thats completely up to you (the everchanging part of you who actually makes decisions and gets altered in the process). Wich means you are quite responsible for your actions. As responsible as the RNG in our tank example for directing in wich direction to turn.
Sorry if this has been dealt with (doesn't look like it), but:
Any claim that there is such a thing as "free will" must explain how this free will evolved.
Do chimps have free will? How about less complex vertebrates like amphibians and fish? Do insects have free will? Jellyfish? Sponges? Protozoa?
At which point in the evolutionary line did organisms evolve the ability to make non-deterministic decisions?
If you believe in free will, there must be some cut off (you can't have a "little bit" of free will, just like how you can't be "a little pregnant.") Where is this cut-off, and how on earth did you determine it?
Sorry if this has been dealt with (doesn't look like it), but:
Any claim that there is such a thing as "free will" must explain how this free will evolved.
Do chimps have free will? How about less complex vertebrates like amphibians and fish? Do insects have free will? Jellyfish? Sponges? Protozoa?
At which point in the evolutionary line did organisms evolve the ability to make non-deterministic decisions?
If you believe in free will, there must be some cut off (you can't have a "little bit" of free will, just like how you can't be "a little pregnant.") Where is this cut-off, and how on earth did you determine it?
I was going to say pretty much that in response to this:
...to say that there is no way for someone to run counter to both biology and the environment I think is also incorrect.
Anyways...
How is this possible? At which point, ever, does something escape either biology or environment and how does this work conceptually?
One request though, people keep talking about Nietzsche's determinism....what's the textual evidence for such a thing. I've only really read Human, all too Human (once), A Genealogy of Morals (Twice), and Beyond Good and Evil (Once), and I never got a strong determinist vibe off him. Maybe I'm a crazy person.
"We laugh at him who steps out of his room at the moment when the sun steps out of its room, and then says: “I will that the sun shall riseâ€; and at him who cannot stop awheel, and says: “I will that it shall rollâ€; and at him who is thrown down in wrestling, and says: “here I lie, but I will lie here!†But, all laughter aside, are we ourselves ever acting any differently whenever we employ the expression “I willâ€?"
(from Morgenröte/Daybreak section 124)
The question, of course, is a rhetorical one. The act, or better, the Quale of willing, stands outside of the action that occurs. There is no causal connection whatsoever between willing and action.
There is a part in the Genealogy of Morals on determinism, methinks, I'll see if I can find that.
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)
Look up Nietzsche's Gay Science, section 127. Not a study of any sort, but he lays out exactly this.
One request though, people keep talking about Nietzsche's determinism....what's the textual evidence for such a thing. I've only really read Human, all too Human (once), A Genealogy of Morals (Twice), and Beyond Good and Evil (Once), and I never got a strong determinist vibe off him. Maybe I'm a crazy person.
"We laugh at him who steps out of his room at the moment when the sun steps out of its room, and then says: “I will that the sun shall rise”; and at him who cannot stop awheel, and says: “I will that it shall roll”; and at him who is thrown down in wrestling, and says: “here I lie, but I will lie here!” But, all laughter aside, are we ourselves ever acting any differently whenever we employ the expression “I will”?"
(from Morgenröte/Daybreak section 124)
The question, of course, is a rhetorical one. The act, or better, the Quale of willing, stands outside of the action that occurs. There is no causal connection whatsoever between willing and action.
There is a part in the Genealogy of Morals on determinism, methinks, I'll see if I can find that.
Pretty much all of Nietzsche's work on the eternal recurrence points to a deterministic setting - even if you don't take it as a cosmological theory, Nietzsche is arguing that a deterministic perspective allows for the best foundation (which is one of my favorite bits because you can always argue that we will never "know" if we can chalk everything up to necessity, but it doesn't matter because a deterministic outlook is superior anyway - something the freewill advocates will probably never admit).
In GS, 108 we have Nietzsche's cautioning against anthropomorphizing the universe, chalking the whole thing up to necessity (but not order or beauty).
Then in GS, 341 we have the introduction of the eternal recurrence, the heaviest weight, etc. The rest of the good stuff on that is in Zarathustra and his unpublished notes from 1881.
I know there is more on this in Twilight of the Idols and BG&E, but I've only got the Gay Science with me right now.
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)
Look up Nietzsche's Gay Science, section 127. Not a study of any sort, but he lays out exactly this.
I think it goes along the line of that we like to think we have something comanding(our mind), and having something obeying (our body), so there's this duality we are always in when we act. But rather than accepting at this duality, we make up the concept of the "I", we derive pleasure from identifying with the part that commands while the body moves according to our "free will", iirc. If I make no sense, that might be because I should be doing something else ;-)
How is this possible? At which point, ever, does something escape either biology or environment and how does this work conceptually?
Okay, I don't know if I can answer your question right now. You seem way more well read on this than I, so in an effort to not look like a total retard, I must pass on this. For the time being, and until I can formulate a response, you have me here sir. However, something else did occur to me.
What if I have two options that are totally equal, they both satisfy the same biological drive, in an equal way. They both satisfy the same environmental drive in the same way. Why would I do one or the other?
I mean at it's most basic, why choose one Butterfinger bar over another if they are both the same size? I realize that this is kind of a silly case, but I don't think that there's a biological or environmental answer to that. It seems to me like a fairly undetermined choice.
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
Okay, I don't know if I can answer your question right now. You seem way more well read on this than I, so in an effort to not look like a total retard, I must pass on this. For the time being, and until I can formulate a response, you have me here sir. However, something else did occur to me.
What if I have two options that are totally equal, they both satisfy the same biological drive, in an equal way. They both satisfy the same environmental drive in the same way. Why would I do one or the other?
I mean at it's most basic, why choose one Butterfinger bar over another if they are both the same size? I realize that this is kind of a silly case, but I don't think that there's a biological or environmental answer to that. It seems to me like a fairly undetermined choice.
I'm not sure it ever happens that everything in the universe attending to our decision on two points is entirely equal. For one, our world isn't entirely symmetrical to begin with.
What if I have two options that are totally equal, they both satisfy the same biological drive, in an equal way. They both satisfy the same environmental drive in the same way. Why would I do one or the other?
I mean at it's most basic, why choose one Butterfinger bar over another if they are both the same size? I realize that this is kind of a silly case, but I don't think that there's a biological or environmental answer to that. It seems to me like a fairly undetermined choice.
But there is a mechanism that determines your body's "choice" of the butterfinger over the snickers—something fires in your brain that makes your body reach towards one candy bar over the other.
Brains are material objects that are governed by non-random natural forces. And if you want to posit some kind of "soul" (in a traditional sense, not in a merely consciousness-that-arises-from-brain-state sense) that governs the brain's actions, then you are going to need to explain how in the hell this soul evolved.
What if I have two options that are totally equal, they both satisfy the same biological drive, in an equal way. They both satisfy the same environmental drive in the same way. Why would I do one or the other?
I mean at it's most basic, why choose one Butterfinger bar over another if they are both the same size? I realize that this is kind of a silly case, but I don't think that there's a biological or environmental answer to that. It seems to me like a fairly undetermined choice.
But there is a mechanism that determines your body's "choice" of the butterfinger over the snickers—something fires in your brain that makes your body reach towards one candy bar over the other.
Brains are material objects that are governed by non-random natural forces. And if you want to posit some kind of "soul" (in a traditional sense, not in a merely consciousness-that-arises-from-brain-state sense) that governs the brain's actions, then you are going to need to explain how in the hell this soul evolved.
I'm more talking about the choice of one butterfinger over another. all their characteristics apparently being equal. The only thing that I might posit is a mind, but I'm pretty shaky on philosophy of mind, so once again I'd be in some pretty untested waters for me.
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
Look, I don't want to make anyone look dumb, so I'm sorry if my tone got overly aggressive in the last couple of posts. I'm trying to nudge you into an epiphany, and I might have gotten punchy.
If something isn't answerable to biology or environment, well, what is it answerable to? Once you remove those as factors, there's not much scientific and rational discourse can say about the subject, and I don't think being more well-versed in the philosophy of mind (which I confess to being largely ignorant of myself) is going to find a successful argument to change that.
I'm more talking about the choice of one butterfinger over another. all their characteristics apparently being equal. The only thing that I might posit is a mind, but I'm pretty shaky on philosophy of mind, so once again I'd be in some pretty untested waters for me.
I think you're overcomplicating the situation.
There are two options here.
1. The universe is deterministic. Every movement and action in the universe is the result of pre-determined physical forces.
2. The universe is not deterministic. Certain things in the universe have "free will" and their actions result not from physical laws but from some sort of soul or supernatural entity.
Introducing the concept of a "mind" to this doesn't really change anything. If #1 is true (and I believe it is), the mind and all the choices that your mind appears (to you) to make are also the result of physical forces, chemical reactions in the brain. And the mind's choice of a butterfinger over a snickers is just as explainable as a leaf on a river drifting to the right rather than the left.
We can't measure all the tiny eddies and currents in a river, and we can't measure all the neural pathways and functions of the brain. But if we could, we would be able to see why the leaf drifts that way, or why you choose butterfinger by apparent spontaneousness.
On the other hand, we certainly can measure the broad flows of a river, as well as the broad proclivities of human brains. We know that, given enough time and water, a leaf on the Nile will end up flowing north. We also know that, given hunger and the smell of food, most human beings will tend to gravitate towards the smell of food. Human behavior is obviously much more complex than the behavior of a river, but that doesn't make it any less based in physical, deterministic laws.
I'm more talking about the choice of one butterfinger over another. all their characteristics apparently being equal. The only thing that I might posit is a mind, but I'm pretty shaky on philosophy of mind, so once again I'd be in some pretty untested waters for me.
In this case, we'll never have to ask Loren's question or involve the philosophy of mind because their characteristics can't be equal. There are no identical objects, and we aren't isolated subjects being presented with "things." One will be closer to your dominant hand, one will have more crinkles in the wrapper than the other, the wind might blow, your eyes have to see one of them first, etc. The list goes on beyond comprehension and everything plays a part, no matter how minuscule, in the process.
I find it hilarious that the "irreducible complexity" argument popped up in the concept of free will of all things. Intelligence isn't an on-off switch, and I see no reason to suspect any other mental function would be either.
Look, I don't want to make anyone look dumb, so I'm sorry if my tone got overly aggressive in the last couple of posts. I'm trying to nudge you into an epiphany, and I might have gotten punchy.
If something isn't answerable to biology or environment, well, what is it answerable to? Once you remove those as factors, there's not much scientific and rational discourse can say about the subject, and I don't think being more well-versed in the philosophy of mind (which I confess to being largely ignorant of myself) is going to find a successful argument to change that.
You can't really use science in this sort of debate because its not very falsifiable. Too many damn variables, and many deterministic arguments go along the lines of "there's an ILLUSION of free will that appears exactly the same way as if we actually had it". Ok, how the fuck do you test for that? Answer: If it legitimately appears the same way you can't.
You can try to reason your way through, but its difficult on both sides not to get caught in logic traps or paradoxes..
EDIT: and showing broad human behavior is a long, long way from showing that "given input A, human mind outputs B. Always." which is what a truely deterministic behavior model would require. Until you can do that, you can't really show that the human mind might do C sometimes. Just to be random. (which can be an evolutionary advantage in some cases).
I find it hilarious that the "irreducible complexity" argument popped up in the concept of free will of all things. Intelligence isn't an on-off switch, and I see no reason to suspect any other mental function would be either.
Is this a response to my statement about free will being all-or-nothing?
If it is, can you explain what on earth you mean? I agree that intelligence is not an all-or-nothing quality. But how can you have "a little bit" of free will? I'm not saying free will is irreduceably complex, I'm saying it's conceptually and logically nonsensical.
You can't really use science in this sort of debate because its not very falsifiable.
But I have yet to see any explanation for free will that doesn't rely on some sort of dualism or magical thinking.
EDIT: and showing broad human behavior is a long, long way from showing that "given input A, human mind outputs B. Always." which is what a truely deterministic behavior model would require.
What? I think you are using a different definition of "deterministic" than I am using. That is not at all what I am arguing.
Until you can do that, you can't really show that the human mind might do C sometimes. Just to be random. (which can be an evolutionary advantage in some cases).
You would need to prove there is such a thing as randomness. If you mean random like a computer generates random numbers then the process by which the so-called random behavior is generated is not actually random at all.
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).
All that tells us, at least those of us who understand how computers work, is that no matter how random or irrational the machine's behaviour appears to the observer, it is still a machine following concise instructions and rules, and there is a solid reason behind each of its decisions. Pseudorandom number generators are not random, each number it spits out was arrived at through some process that was predefined by whoever wrote it.
You have not created something which makes decisions. You have created a series of instructions for the computer to follow.
I'm more talking about the choice of one butterfinger over another. all their characteristics apparently being equal. The only thing that I might posit is a mind, but I'm pretty shaky on philosophy of mind, so once again I'd be in some pretty untested waters for me.
Let's say that I'm in the gas station, reaching out towards a rack of butterfingers, and the thought suddenly occurs to me to grab a butterfinger from the seventh row. After all, seven is a nice, classy, prime number.
Of course, if asked at that moment why I picked that particular butterfinger, I'd say "no reason". Even though the real reason was that, being a math freak and somewhat strange, it amused me to pick a butterfinger from that row. Now, why did it amuse me? Well, a hereditary predisposition towards numbers and logic surely plays a part, as does my focus on mathematics in school, a career as a programmer, etc.
Saying "I chose X, because it amused me" isn't incorrect. It's just the same thing as saying "I chose X because the sum total of the genes and experiences that have influenced me produced that choice."
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I find it hilarious that the "irreducible complexity" argument popped up in the concept of free will of all things. Intelligence isn't an on-off switch, and I see no reason to suspect any other mental function would be either.
Is this a response to my statement about free will being all-or-nothing?
If it is, can you explain what on earth you mean? I agree that intelligence is not an all-or-nothing quality. But how can you have "a little bit" of free will? I'm not saying free will is irreduceably complex, I'm saying it's conceptually and logically nonsensical.
Well, its clear that the environment and internal brain chemistry has an impact on behavior. So you could define free will as how much the organism is capable of overriding those factors. Something with 100% free will wouldn't be affected by the environment at all in its decisions. That's unlikely to happen because something like that would die in short order, from being too busy to bother to eat if nothing else. Something with none would act in a completely deterministic way. Everything else, somewhere in between.
You can't really use science in this sort of debate because its not very falsifiable.
But I have yet to see any explanation for free will that doesn't rely on some sort of dualism or magical thinking.
So? This doesn't prove your side of the argument.
EDIT: and showing broad human behavior is a long, long way from showing that "given input A, human mind outputs B. Always." which is what a truely deterministic behavior model would require.
What? I think you are using a different definition of "deterministic" than I am using. That is not at all what I am arguing.
How does
1. The universe is deterministic. Every movement and action in the universe is the result of pre-determined physical forces.
Not require that? If everything is pre-determined, then logically you MUST be able to predict everything that happens if you know all the variables. That includes inside the human brain.
Until you can do that, you can't really show that the human mind might do C sometimes. Just to be random. (which can be an evolutionary advantage in some cases).
You would need to prove there is such a thing as randomness. If you mean random like a computer generates random numbers then the process by which the so-called random behavior is generated is not actually random at all.
Grab an individual atom from a radioisotope. Now, when is it going to decay? Not random, but beyond our ability to predict (currently).
How could you tell something like that from something which is truly random?
Well, its clear that the environment and internal brain chemistry has an impact on behavior. So you could define free will as how much the organism is capable of overriding those factors.
What other factors are there that could determine behavior?
So? This doesn't prove your side of the argument.
You're the one proposing that there is "something else"—free will—that determines behavior apart from brains and their reaction to environmental stimuli. The burden of proof is on you, my friend.
If everything is pre-determined, then logically you MUST be able to predict everything that happens if you know all the variables. That includes inside the human brain.
We don't know all the variables and probably never will. Also, the variables do not remain constant, which is what your sentence had seemed to imply (i.e. that determinism = brain + a = b every time).
But just to be clear: if we did know all the variables and had a predictive model based on them (which I happen to think is impossible for humans to achieve), then I believe we could predict human behavior perfectly. Or advanced robots could, or whatever. Ultimately, human behavior is not fundamentally different than the movement of storms, the flow of rivers, or the revolution of planets around stars. It is all based on the same set of physics—that was my point.
Grab an individual atom from a radioisotope. Now, when is it going to decay? Not random, but beyond our ability to predict (currently).
How could you tell something like that from something which is truly random?
Irrelevant, because there is a conceptual problem here. You are defining "random" as "outside our ability to predict." This is not a hard-and-fast definition but is, rather, a shrinking category—for example, planetary motions would have been random before Ptolemy.
Slight tangent, but the same conceptual problem plagues the word "supernatural." The way most people use that word, it is not defined as based upon some objective category, but rather upon the lack of current human understanding—again, a shrinking and provincial definition. Lightning was supernatural (but now we know what it is, so it's not). Diseases were supernatural, caused by demons (but not anymore). ID proponents claimed that things like the flagellum motor are supernaturally constructed because we didn't know all the evolutionary pathways for its development. You've probably heard of the expression "God of the Gaps." The word "supernatural," much like your use of the word "random," seems resigned to those gaps, which are readily shrinking.
Also, are you denying that the behavior of quantum particles obeys—i.e. is determined by—natural, physical laws?
Well, its clear that the environment and internal brain chemistry has an impact on behavior. So you could define free will as how much the organism is capable of overriding those factors.
What other factors are there that could determine behavior?
Remember my little A + B = C comment? Its entirely possible that in some cases A + B = D instead. We don't know enough about brain function yet to get to that level of detail. Hold that thought until we get down to your tangent.
So? This doesn't prove your side of the argument.
You're the one proposing that there is "something else"—free will—that determines behavior apart from brains and their reaction to environmental stimuli. The burden of proof is on you, my friend. [/quote]
Actually, no. You don't get to say "my theory is the basis of how things work, and the burden is on you to disprove it" unless you have a hell of a lot more evidence and background than you do. If I'm proposing that things don't always fall down, the burden of proof is on me. If its AD 1000 and I'm proposing that matter is continuous and you think its atomic the burden of proof is on both sides because neither has really shown anything yet.
Well, that and I'm not actually arguing for free will per se, besides that bit about how you could have small amounts of it.
If everything is pre-determined, then logically you MUST be able to predict everything that happens if you know all the variables. That includes inside the human brain.
We don't know all the variables and probably never will. Also, the variables do not remain constant, which is what your sentence had seemed to imply (i.e. that determinism = brain + a = b every time).
But just to be clear: if we did know all the variables and had a predictive model based on them (which I happen to think is impossible for humans to achieve), then I believe we could predict human behavior perfectly. Or advanced robots could, or whatever. Ultimately, human behavior is not fundamentally different than the movement of storms, the flow of rivers, or the revolution of planets around stars. It is all based on the same set of physics—that was my point.
Right. "If", "If", "If". How are you proposing to prove any of this? The entire point of this little side-argument was that scientific methods of proof are (currently) useless because we don't have the tools or the knowledge to get the evidence we need through that method yet.
Grab an individual atom from a radioisotope. Now, when is it going to decay? Not random, but beyond our ability to predict (currently).
How could you tell something like that from something which is truly random?
Irrelevant, because there is a conceptual problem here. You are defining "random" as "outside our ability to predict." This is not a hard-and-fast definition but is, rather, a shrinking category—for example, planetary motions would have been random before Ptolemy.
Slight tangent, but the same conceptual problem plagues the word "supernatural." The way most people use that word, it is not defined as based upon some objective category, but rather upon the lack of current human understanding—again, a shrinking and provincial definition. Lightning was supernatural (but now we know what it is, so it's not). Diseases were supernatural, caused by demons (but not anymore). ID proponents claimed that things like the flagellum motor are supernaturally constructed because we didn't know all the evolutionary pathways for its development. You've probably heard of the expression "God of the Gaps." The word "supernatural," much like your use of the word "random," seems resigned to those gaps, which are readily shrinking.
Also, are you denying that the behavior of quantum particles obeys—i.e. is determined by—natural, physical laws?
You missed the point. The point there is finding something truly random is difficult, for exactly the reason your tangent points out- you can't tell if this is actually random, or if you just don't have the tools to find out the causes behind it. Therefore proving randomness is a bitch and a half...gee, like everything else about this debate.
Until you CAN see the all the variables, thinking that you have the One True Answer is likely to get you burned. Going back upwards- you asked me what else COULD affect behavior. The answer is a simple I don't know.. If your response is then there can be nothing else you're being almost as bad as the villagers who blame lightning on the gods.
"What else COULD be causing lighting?"
Ignorant answer: "I don't know."
"Then it MUST be this."
Like I said, its entirely possible that the brain can give more than one output for a given input. That would play merry hell with any deterministic model.
I'm more talking about the choice of one butterfinger over another. all their characteristics apparently being equal. The only thing that I might posit is a mind, but I'm pretty shaky on philosophy of mind, so once again I'd be in some pretty untested waters for me.
I think you're overcomplicating the situation.
There are two options here.
1. The universe is deterministic. Every movement and action in the universe is the result of pre-determined physical forces.
2. The universe is not deterministic. Certain things in the universe have "free will" and their actions result not from physical laws but from some sort of soul or supernatural entity.
Introducing the concept of a "mind" to this doesn't really change anything. If #1 is true (and I believe it is), the mind and all the choices that your mind appears (to you) to make are also the result of physical forces, chemical reactions in the brain. And the mind's choice of a butterfinger over a snickers is just as explainable as a leaf on a river drifting to the right rather than the left.
We can't measure all the tiny eddies and currents in a river, and we can't measure all the neural pathways and functions of the brain. But if we could, we would be able to see why the leaf drifts that way, or why you choose butterfinger by apparent spontaneousness.
On the other hand, we certainly can measure the broad flows of a river, as well as the broad proclivities of human brains. We know that, given enough time and water, a leaf on the Nile will end up flowing north. We also know that, given hunger and the smell of food, most human beings will tend to gravitate towards the smell of food. Human behavior is obviously much more complex than the behavior of a river, but that doesn't make it any less based in physical, deterministic laws.
How can you know that though, how can you know that there is a biological cause for my liking of butterfingers? Are you just inferring that because there are biological causes for some of my behaviors that all my behaviors must have a biological cause (though not necessarily only a biological cause)? It seems like you are treading dangerously close to unfalsifiability.
The same to vrtra - how can you know that the reason you like math is biological?
I realize that a good portion of this relies on the presence of a non-physical mind. Which is why I brought up the philosophy of mind in the first place. From the little I understand about attribute dualism, it sounds quite appealing and much more likely to be correct. The idea that the mind amounts to conscious experience, and the the mind is simply mentally attributed brain matter. It seems to be that a strict materialism has a problem with no solution, the "What Mary Doesn't Know" issue.
For those of you who might not know what "What Mary Doesn't Know" is, imagine that there's a scientist, Mary, who has lived her whole life in a black and white room. In this room, she has learned everything there is to know about the physical way the world works. She knows what wavelength of light the color red is, she knows what happens to the brain when red light is seen by the eyes, she knows everything about society about what red means, and what things are red. Still, there's something Mary doesn't know.
This argument is used to illustrate that there needs to be more than just a material, physical experience to the world, but rather that there is something to consciousness beyond the physicality.
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"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
The "What Mary Doesn't Know" story has never held much water with me. I get the idea, but to me, that's like describing someone who has read thousands of first-hand accounts of skydivers, and studied the physics of jumping out of an airplane, and knows what the sensation of weightlessness and the rush of air on a person's face does to their brain, but has never actually jumped out of a plane.
Knowledge about physical inputs into the brain is not the same thing as the brain actually experiencing those inputs.
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Remember my little A + B = C comment? Its entirely possible that in some cases A + B = D instead. We don't know enough about brain function yet to get to that level of detail.
Again, our lack of knowledge is irrelevent—you are making a God-of-the-gaps argument.
Actually, no. You don't get to say "my theory is the basis of how things work, and the burden is on you to disprove it" unless you have a hell of a lot more evidence and background than you do.
We are talking about behavior.
Behavior is the movement of animal muscles, the flexing and stretching of which is caused by a pattern of neurons firing in the brain.
This is not controversial.
You are now arguing that, in addition to the internal, physical structures of the brain, there is "something else," called free will, that influences behavior. Presumably you think it influences the brain, rather than the muscles directly—but okay, what is it?
Is it physical? Is it made out of atoms and shit? If it is, then it would obey the same physical laws that the brain does and would therefore also be deterministic. If it isn't, then realize you are proposing dualism.
Well, that and I'm not actually arguing for free will per se, besides that bit about how you could have small amounts of it.
And this still doesn't make sense because you haven't identified what there would be small amounts of. We can look through evolutionary history and see brains and eyeballs of various levels of complexity, leaves with "small amounts" of chlorophyll, etc—because these are physical structures with physical properties (that, incidentally, deterministically obey physical laws).
So if you are going to posit that there is a "free will" that you can have a little or a lot of, I'm going to need to know what it is before I can argue that point. Is it made of matter/energy (if so, where is it?), or does it exist in a dualistic spiritual plane or something (if so, what the fuck)?
Right. "If", "If", "If". How are you proposing to prove any of this?
Lack of any feasible alternative?
We don't know the variables of wind direction and rock formations on Europa—are you seriously arguing that because we don't know all the variables it is reasonable to doubt that avalanches on Europa follow physical laws?
You missed the point. The point there is finding something truly random is difficult, for exactly the reason your tangent points out- you can't tell if this is actually random, or if you just don't have the tools to find out the causes behind it. Therefore proving randomness is a bitch and a half...gee, like everything else about this debate.
You are using the term "randomness" like ID-proponents use the term "intelligent designer"—as a gaps argument.
Until you CAN see the all the variables, thinking that you have the One True Answer is likely to get you burned.
Again, gaps argument. Yes, we don't know every variable—that doesn't mean that "God," "free will" or "randomness" exist between the gaps.
Going back upwards- you asked me what else COULD affect behavior. The answer is a simple I don't know..
No. Your answer was "free will."
Are you now defining "free will" as the sum total of our ignorance about ethology?
Like I said, its entirely possible that the brain can give more than one output for a given input. That would play merry hell with any deterministic model.
Do you believe the brain consists entirely of physical structures? If so, then how in the hell is this "entirely possible"? (And no, you can't hand-wave with an invocation of quantum indeterminability)
And if you are a dualist, are you just dualist about human brains? Or all animal brains (if so, where's the cut-off)? Are brains the only parts of the universe that have non-material components?
How can you know that though, how can you know that there is a biological cause for my liking of butterfingers? Are you just inferring that because there are biological causes for some of my behaviors that all my behaviors must have a biological cause (though not necessarily only a biological cause)? It seems like you are treading dangerously close to unfalsifiability.
The same to vrtra - how can you know that the reason you like math is biological?
So one person's argument is too close to being unfalsifiable because we don't have the technological apparatus to directly verify it, but then you argue your point with vague, unsupported denials of all modern scientific understanding. If the reason for vrtra's mathematical inclination is not biological, what are you suggesting it is?
How can you know that though, how can you know that there is a biological cause for my liking of butterfingers? Are you just inferring that because there are biological causes for some of my behaviors that all my behaviors must have a biological cause (though not necessarily only a biological cause)?
Before we get any further I think we should be careful to define our terms—what do you mean by "biological cause"?
If you're talking about genetics, then I agree with you—there is more to behavior than the genetic construction of a person's brain (which includes instincts). An animal's brain also enacts behavior based on outside stimuli and (in many vertebrates), learned behavior.
For example, chimpanzees bite down sticks and use them to "fish" for termites in trees. This behavior is not instinctual; it is not hardwired into their brains by genetic code. Instead, they learn how to do it from other chimps, and one chimp must have "discovered" how to do this at some point in the past and taught it to others. But there is nothing about this whole process that contradicts determinism—the brain is still made of physical matter, and the neurons arrange themselves based on physical stimuli (in this case, sights and sounds of other chimps biting down sticks and fishing).
I realize that a good portion of this relies on the presence of a non-physical mind. Which is why I brought up the philosophy of mind in the first place. From the little I understand about attribute dualism, it sounds quite appealing and much more likely to be correct.
But dualism is nonsense. If something is not material, then how can it "push" material things—like neurons and muscles"? How does your nonphysical mind interact with the physical matter that is required to express the behaviors we are talking about?
A better way to think of the mind is as a pattern of physical structures in the brain—a code. In the same way, the pattern of nucleotides on a strip of DNA forms a pattern, a "gene," and it is often useful to talk about genes as if they were abstract entities, like we're talking about minds. In one sense, they are abstract entities. But they exist as patterns in physical matter.
For those of you who might not know what "What Mary Doesn't Know" is, imagine that there's a scientist, Mary, who has lived her whole life in a black and white room. In this room, she has learned everything there is to know about the physical way the world works. She knows what wavelength of light the color red is, she knows what happens to the brain when red light is seen by the eyes, she knows everything about society about what red means, and what things are red. Still, there's something Mary doesn't know.
I'm familiar with this analogy, and with qualia. Let me try to explain:
What we call "red" is an internal representation of a specific wavelength of light. So the concept of "red" is meaningless not just to Mary but to the vast majority of organisms on earth.
Red does not exist "out there." The word is a label for a phenomenon that exists "in here," in our brains, when light of a certain wavelength strikes our eyes. But it is still physical.
On an tangent, (a very fucking loose one), I learned in Astronomy class that our sun is actually green and our eyes can't see it. We see it as yellow and can only see green pigments or light that has been colored green by something else.
In short, its not a gaps argument. Its a "you don't have enough evidence, you just admitted you don't have enough evidence, so stop pretending you do" argument. Lack of any feasible alternative is not proof, and you're not just talking about behavior any more.
What you're proposing is this:
The brain is a system that responds to inputs and produces outputs in an entirely predictable way. If we could completely control its environment and gave it stimuli A, it would produce neuron firing pattern B, which is thought/behavior C.
Proof? Tests? Predictions? Do you have anything like that? "It should be so based on what we know" is a good rational basis, but it isn't particularly scientific in and of itself. You start at the "observation" step, then skip everything else.
I would not doubt that landslides follow physical laws. I'd doubt anyone who claimed they could predict the exact time and manner a landslide would occur, though, if they had as much proof as you do.
One more time. If you wanted to prove that the brain was deterministic, how would you go about doing so?
I'm not positing anything. I'm not even going to bring the partial argument up again, because you're apparently misconstruing it. Its a side argument.
It's hard to directly prove that it any given thing is deterministic, sure. But it's not much of a stretch to infer that something is deterministic, because everything real is deterministic. No matter how unpredictable or complex it may appear to be.
It's hard to directly prove that it any given thing is deterministic, sure. But it's not much of a stretch to infer that something is deterministic, because everything real is deterministic. No matter how unpredictable or complex it may appear to be.
Right. Which isn't scientific, which was my entire fucking point until I let myself get sidetracked. :P
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See above. I realize I should have defined the term when I first used it.
You seem to run into the same issue with a deterministic system. Who does the directing in that? It seems like you want to say the environment coupled with biology.
I'm saying that the thing that does the choosing is the conscious mind. Nothing chooses for the mind. It receives the input from the environmental conditioning, the biological input, and it either chooses to obey those things, or it chooses to deny those things. After that, it directs the body into action. I don't see why I need to have something choosing for the mind to choose, for me to choose.
One request though, people keep talking about Nietzsche's determinism....what's the textual evidence for such a thing. I've only really read Human, all too Human (once), A Genealogy of Morals (Twice), and Beyond Good and Evil (Once), and I never got a strong determinist vibe off him. Maybe I'm a crazy person.
"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
Randomly determined is still determined.
Randomness is not the solution.
Particularly computer-random-number generator random, since you just have to know what the seed is and the frequency and pattern of its changing.
:P
I can't believe there's two references and no one has the motivation to go and look for it. This is the internet, for god's sake!
Oh, okay.
...
Jesus, that's a lot of words. I have to go in fifteen minutes, I'll think about that shit later.
How does the mind "choose" between one or the other?
I'll try to put this a different way: You say,
I am not sure what you are saying. Is choice just random? Is it somehow divorced from the inputs that it receives? How? Is the brain not intimately, inextricably a part of the biological factors that govern "choice"?
Though ACSIS's system is in fact determined (being merely pseudo-random), it's worth pointing out that Apotheosis's statement is ridiculous. "Randomly determined" is as straight-forward an oxymoron as you get in philosophy.
I think his point was that whether the world is actually deterministic in all its physical interactions is irrelevant to the free will debate, which is a point I agree with (as evidenced by the posts I wrote in support of compatibilism).
A deterministic machine which takes a cue from a genuinely random input is still a deterministic machine. If only there were some mechanism to derive meaning from this seeming oxymoron. Some key we could use to unlock its secrets. Perhaps some sort of context in which to view it...oh, wait.
Also
Also, I hate this thread. The topic was broken in a recent epistemic upgrade, with deities moving into legacy status it's largely deprecated.
Randomness I think might be a decent way to put it. I prefer to think of it as being a measure of total unpredictability. Even if we had perfect knowledge of a given subjects environment and biology and the implications and forces that would result from those, we would still be unable to project with certainty what any given choice would be.
I certainly think that biology and the environment are always a part of any choice, even if the choice is made freely. To deny that there is not a place for biology and the environment would be silly. But to say that there is no way for someone to run counter to both biology and the environment I think is also incorrect.
I do admit that there is a certain part of this is my feeling on the issue. Something really rubs me the wrong way about being a sophisticated computer.
Also, mind and metaphysics are the areas of philosophy where I have the least amount of education, admittadly so.
"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
But that is not my point.
My point is that you can not make decisions simply based on input from the outside. You need some sort of "inner compass" , in the case of the tank a RNG in its main program skeleton (actually its a inner de-orientation tool, quite the opposite). Wich is a crude tool, but you can not simply rely on outside data. Its not working.
So i have to agree that you are PARTLY product of your enviroment. But its at least as important what you make of these experiences.
And thats completely up to you (the everchanging part of you who actually makes decisions and gets altered in the process). Wich means you are quite responsible for your actions. As responsible as the RNG in our tank example for directing in wich direction to turn.
Any claim that there is such a thing as "free will" must explain how this free will evolved.
Do chimps have free will? How about less complex vertebrates like amphibians and fish? Do insects have free will? Jellyfish? Sponges? Protozoa?
At which point in the evolutionary line did organisms evolve the ability to make non-deterministic decisions?
If you believe in free will, there must be some cut off (you can't have a "little bit" of free will, just like how you can't be "a little pregnant.") Where is this cut-off, and how on earth did you determine it?
I was going to say pretty much that in response to this:
Anyways...
How is this possible? At which point, ever, does something escape either biology or environment and how does this work conceptually?
"We laugh at him who steps out of his room at the moment when the sun steps out of its room, and then says: “I will that the sun shall riseâ€; and at him who cannot stop awheel, and says: “I will that it shall rollâ€; and at him who is thrown down in wrestling, and says: “here I lie, but I will lie here!†But, all laughter aside, are we ourselves ever acting any differently whenever we employ the expression “I willâ€?"
(from Morgenröte/Daybreak section 124)
The question, of course, is a rhetorical one. The act, or better, the Quale of willing, stands outside of the action that occurs. There is no causal connection whatsoever between willing and action.
There is a part in the Genealogy of Morals on determinism, methinks, I'll see if I can find that.
Look up Nietzsche's Gay Science, section 127. Not a study of any sort, but he lays out exactly this.
Pretty much all of Nietzsche's work on the eternal recurrence points to a deterministic setting - even if you don't take it as a cosmological theory, Nietzsche is arguing that a deterministic perspective allows for the best foundation (which is one of my favorite bits because you can always argue that we will never "know" if we can chalk everything up to necessity, but it doesn't matter because a deterministic outlook is superior anyway - something the freewill advocates will probably never admit).
In GS, 108 we have Nietzsche's cautioning against anthropomorphizing the universe, chalking the whole thing up to necessity (but not order or beauty).
Then in GS, 341 we have the introduction of the eternal recurrence, the heaviest weight, etc. The rest of the good stuff on that is in Zarathustra and his unpublished notes from 1881.
I know there is more on this in Twilight of the Idols and BG&E, but I've only got the Gay Science with me right now.
I think it goes along the line of that we like to think we have something comanding(our mind), and having something obeying (our body), so there's this duality we are always in when we act. But rather than accepting at this duality, we make up the concept of the "I", we derive pleasure from identifying with the part that commands while the body moves according to our "free will", iirc. If I make no sense, that might be because I should be doing something else ;-)
Okay, I don't know if I can answer your question right now. You seem way more well read on this than I, so in an effort to not look like a total retard, I must pass on this. For the time being, and until I can formulate a response, you have me here sir. However, something else did occur to me.
What if I have two options that are totally equal, they both satisfy the same biological drive, in an equal way. They both satisfy the same environmental drive in the same way. Why would I do one or the other?
I mean at it's most basic, why choose one Butterfinger bar over another if they are both the same size? I realize that this is kind of a silly case, but I don't think that there's a biological or environmental answer to that. It seems to me like a fairly undetermined choice.
"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
Brains are material objects that are governed by non-random natural forces. And if you want to posit some kind of "soul" (in a traditional sense, not in a merely consciousness-that-arises-from-brain-state sense) that governs the brain's actions, then you are going to need to explain how in the hell this soul evolved.
I'm more talking about the choice of one butterfinger over another. all their characteristics apparently being equal. The only thing that I might posit is a mind, but I'm pretty shaky on philosophy of mind, so once again I'd be in some pretty untested waters for me.
"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
If something isn't answerable to biology or environment, well, what is it answerable to? Once you remove those as factors, there's not much scientific and rational discourse can say about the subject, and I don't think being more well-versed in the philosophy of mind (which I confess to being largely ignorant of myself) is going to find a successful argument to change that.
There are two options here.
1. The universe is deterministic. Every movement and action in the universe is the result of pre-determined physical forces.
2. The universe is not deterministic. Certain things in the universe have "free will" and their actions result not from physical laws but from some sort of soul or supernatural entity.
Introducing the concept of a "mind" to this doesn't really change anything. If #1 is true (and I believe it is), the mind and all the choices that your mind appears (to you) to make are also the result of physical forces, chemical reactions in the brain. And the mind's choice of a butterfinger over a snickers is just as explainable as a leaf on a river drifting to the right rather than the left.
We can't measure all the tiny eddies and currents in a river, and we can't measure all the neural pathways and functions of the brain. But if we could, we would be able to see why the leaf drifts that way, or why you choose butterfinger by apparent spontaneousness.
On the other hand, we certainly can measure the broad flows of a river, as well as the broad proclivities of human brains. We know that, given enough time and water, a leaf on the Nile will end up flowing north. We also know that, given hunger and the smell of food, most human beings will tend to gravitate towards the smell of food. Human behavior is obviously much more complex than the behavior of a river, but that doesn't make it any less based in physical, deterministic laws.
You can't really use science in this sort of debate because its not very falsifiable. Too many damn variables, and many deterministic arguments go along the lines of "there's an ILLUSION of free will that appears exactly the same way as if we actually had it". Ok, how the fuck do you test for that? Answer: If it legitimately appears the same way you can't.
You can try to reason your way through, but its difficult on both sides not to get caught in logic traps or paradoxes..
EDIT: and showing broad human behavior is a long, long way from showing that "given input A, human mind outputs B. Always." which is what a truely deterministic behavior model would require. Until you can do that, you can't really show that the human mind might do C sometimes. Just to be random. (which can be an evolutionary advantage in some cases).
If it is, can you explain what on earth you mean? I agree that intelligence is not an all-or-nothing quality. But how can you have "a little bit" of free will? I'm not saying free will is irreduceably complex, I'm saying it's conceptually and logically nonsensical.
But I have yet to see any explanation for free will that doesn't rely on some sort of dualism or magical thinking.
What? I think you are using a different definition of "deterministic" than I am using. That is not at all what I am arguing.
You would need to prove there is such a thing as randomness. If you mean random like a computer generates random numbers then the process by which the so-called random behavior is generated is not actually random at all.
You have not created something which makes decisions. You have created a series of instructions for the computer to follow.
Let's say that I'm in the gas station, reaching out towards a rack of butterfingers, and the thought suddenly occurs to me to grab a butterfinger from the seventh row. After all, seven is a nice, classy, prime number.
Of course, if asked at that moment why I picked that particular butterfinger, I'd say "no reason". Even though the real reason was that, being a math freak and somewhat strange, it amused me to pick a butterfinger from that row. Now, why did it amuse me? Well, a hereditary predisposition towards numbers and logic surely plays a part, as does my focus on mathematics in school, a career as a programmer, etc.
Saying "I chose X, because it amused me" isn't incorrect. It's just the same thing as saying "I chose X because the sum total of the genes and experiences that have influenced me produced that choice."
Well, its clear that the environment and internal brain chemistry has an impact on behavior. So you could define free will as how much the organism is capable of overriding those factors. Something with 100% free will wouldn't be affected by the environment at all in its decisions. That's unlikely to happen because something like that would die in short order, from being too busy to bother to eat if nothing else. Something with none would act in a completely deterministic way. Everything else, somewhere in between.
So? This doesn't prove your side of the argument.
How does
Not require that? If everything is pre-determined, then logically you MUST be able to predict everything that happens if you know all the variables. That includes inside the human brain.
Grab an individual atom from a radioisotope. Now, when is it going to decay? Not random, but beyond our ability to predict (currently).
How could you tell something like that from something which is truly random?
You're the one proposing that there is "something else"—free will—that determines behavior apart from brains and their reaction to environmental stimuli. The burden of proof is on you, my friend.
We don't know all the variables and probably never will. Also, the variables do not remain constant, which is what your sentence had seemed to imply (i.e. that determinism = brain + a = b every time).
But just to be clear: if we did know all the variables and had a predictive model based on them (which I happen to think is impossible for humans to achieve), then I believe we could predict human behavior perfectly. Or advanced robots could, or whatever. Ultimately, human behavior is not fundamentally different than the movement of storms, the flow of rivers, or the revolution of planets around stars. It is all based on the same set of physics—that was my point.
Irrelevant, because there is a conceptual problem here. You are defining "random" as "outside our ability to predict." This is not a hard-and-fast definition but is, rather, a shrinking category—for example, planetary motions would have been random before Ptolemy.
Also, are you denying that the behavior of quantum particles obeys—i.e. is determined by—natural, physical laws?
Remember my little A + B = C comment? Its entirely possible that in some cases A + B = D instead. We don't know enough about brain function yet to get to that level of detail. Hold that thought until we get down to your tangent.
You're the one proposing that there is "something else"—free will—that determines behavior apart from brains and their reaction to environmental stimuli. The burden of proof is on you, my friend. [/quote]
Actually, no. You don't get to say "my theory is the basis of how things work, and the burden is on you to disprove it" unless you have a hell of a lot more evidence and background than you do. If I'm proposing that things don't always fall down, the burden of proof is on me. If its AD 1000 and I'm proposing that matter is continuous and you think its atomic the burden of proof is on both sides because neither has really shown anything yet.
Well, that and I'm not actually arguing for free will per se, besides that bit about how you could have small amounts of it.
Right. "If", "If", "If". How are you proposing to prove any of this? The entire point of this little side-argument was that scientific methods of proof are (currently) useless because we don't have the tools or the knowledge to get the evidence we need through that method yet.
You missed the point. The point there is finding something truly random is difficult, for exactly the reason your tangent points out- you can't tell if this is actually random, or if you just don't have the tools to find out the causes behind it. Therefore proving randomness is a bitch and a half...gee, like everything else about this debate.
Until you CAN see the all the variables, thinking that you have the One True Answer is likely to get you burned. Going back upwards- you asked me what else COULD affect behavior. The answer is a simple I don't know.. If your response is then there can be nothing else you're being almost as bad as the villagers who blame lightning on the gods.
"What else COULD be causing lighting?"
Ignorant answer: "I don't know."
"Then it MUST be this."
Like I said, its entirely possible that the brain can give more than one output for a given input. That would play merry hell with any deterministic model.
How can you know that though, how can you know that there is a biological cause for my liking of butterfingers? Are you just inferring that because there are biological causes for some of my behaviors that all my behaviors must have a biological cause (though not necessarily only a biological cause)? It seems like you are treading dangerously close to unfalsifiability.
The same to vrtra - how can you know that the reason you like math is biological?
I realize that a good portion of this relies on the presence of a non-physical mind. Which is why I brought up the philosophy of mind in the first place. From the little I understand about attribute dualism, it sounds quite appealing and much more likely to be correct. The idea that the mind amounts to conscious experience, and the the mind is simply mentally attributed brain matter. It seems to be that a strict materialism has a problem with no solution, the "What Mary Doesn't Know" issue.
For those of you who might not know what "What Mary Doesn't Know" is, imagine that there's a scientist, Mary, who has lived her whole life in a black and white room. In this room, she has learned everything there is to know about the physical way the world works. She knows what wavelength of light the color red is, she knows what happens to the brain when red light is seen by the eyes, she knows everything about society about what red means, and what things are red. Still, there's something Mary doesn't know.
This argument is used to illustrate that there needs to be more than just a material, physical experience to the world, but rather that there is something to consciousness beyond the physicality.
"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
Knowledge about physical inputs into the brain is not the same thing as the brain actually experiencing those inputs.
We are talking about behavior.
Behavior is the movement of animal muscles, the flexing and stretching of which is caused by a pattern of neurons firing in the brain.
This is not controversial.
You are now arguing that, in addition to the internal, physical structures of the brain, there is "something else," called free will, that influences behavior. Presumably you think it influences the brain, rather than the muscles directly—but okay, what is it?
Is it physical? Is it made out of atoms and shit? If it is, then it would obey the same physical laws that the brain does and would therefore also be deterministic. If it isn't, then realize you are proposing dualism.
And this still doesn't make sense because you haven't identified what there would be small amounts of. We can look through evolutionary history and see brains and eyeballs of various levels of complexity, leaves with "small amounts" of chlorophyll, etc—because these are physical structures with physical properties (that, incidentally, deterministically obey physical laws).
So if you are going to posit that there is a "free will" that you can have a little or a lot of, I'm going to need to know what it is before I can argue that point. Is it made of matter/energy (if so, where is it?), or does it exist in a dualistic spiritual plane or something (if so, what the fuck)?
Lack of any feasible alternative?
We don't know the variables of wind direction and rock formations on Europa—are you seriously arguing that because we don't know all the variables it is reasonable to doubt that avalanches on Europa follow physical laws?
You are using the term "randomness" like ID-proponents use the term "intelligent designer"—as a gaps argument.
Again, gaps argument. Yes, we don't know every variable—that doesn't mean that "God," "free will" or "randomness" exist between the gaps.
No. Your answer was "free will."
Are you now defining "free will" as the sum total of our ignorance about ethology?
Do you believe the brain consists entirely of physical structures? If so, then how in the hell is this "entirely possible"? (And no, you can't hand-wave with an invocation of quantum indeterminability)
And if you are a dualist, are you just dualist about human brains? Or all animal brains (if so, where's the cut-off)? Are brains the only parts of the universe that have non-material components?
If you're talking about genetics, then I agree with you—there is more to behavior than the genetic construction of a person's brain (which includes instincts). An animal's brain also enacts behavior based on outside stimuli and (in many vertebrates), learned behavior.
For example, chimpanzees bite down sticks and use them to "fish" for termites in trees. This behavior is not instinctual; it is not hardwired into their brains by genetic code. Instead, they learn how to do it from other chimps, and one chimp must have "discovered" how to do this at some point in the past and taught it to others. But there is nothing about this whole process that contradicts determinism—the brain is still made of physical matter, and the neurons arrange themselves based on physical stimuli (in this case, sights and sounds of other chimps biting down sticks and fishing).
But dualism is nonsense. If something is not material, then how can it "push" material things—like neurons and muscles"? How does your nonphysical mind interact with the physical matter that is required to express the behaviors we are talking about?
A better way to think of the mind is as a pattern of physical structures in the brain—a code. In the same way, the pattern of nucleotides on a strip of DNA forms a pattern, a "gene," and it is often useful to talk about genes as if they were abstract entities, like we're talking about minds. In one sense, they are abstract entities. But they exist as patterns in physical matter.
I'm familiar with this analogy, and with qualia. Let me try to explain:
What we call "red" is an internal representation of a specific wavelength of light. So the concept of "red" is meaningless not just to Mary but to the vast majority of organisms on earth.
Red does not exist "out there." The word is a label for a phenomenon that exists "in here," in our brains, when light of a certain wavelength strikes our eyes. But it is still physical.
In short, its not a gaps argument. Its a "you don't have enough evidence, you just admitted you don't have enough evidence, so stop pretending you do" argument. Lack of any feasible alternative is not proof, and you're not just talking about behavior any more.
What you're proposing is this:
The brain is a system that responds to inputs and produces outputs in an entirely predictable way. If we could completely control its environment and gave it stimuli A, it would produce neuron firing pattern B, which is thought/behavior C.
Proof? Tests? Predictions? Do you have anything like that? "It should be so based on what we know" is a good rational basis, but it isn't particularly scientific in and of itself. You start at the "observation" step, then skip everything else.
I would not doubt that landslides follow physical laws. I'd doubt anyone who claimed they could predict the exact time and manner a landslide would occur, though, if they had as much proof as you do.
One more time. If you wanted to prove that the brain was deterministic, how would you go about doing so?
I'm not positing anything. I'm not even going to bring the partial argument up again, because you're apparently misconstruing it. Its a side argument.
Right. Which isn't scientific, which was my entire fucking point until I let myself get sidetracked. :P