Free Will

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Dragonfly,

The law of identity, which works hand-in-hand with causality is vague only if you exclude essential elements.

Your idea of the computer is a perfect example. There is an essential element missing from your analysis of t1, t2, gateways, etc.: a human being.

If there is no human being to turn the thing on and feed it juice, it won't work. That underlies all the rest. You can't take the human being out of the computer. The human being is part of its organization, or system, or structure, or in my terms, identity.

If the identity breaks down, no assemblage of its parts work anymore. In other words, you can't have a functional block without first having a function. And what determines the function to the structure is not the part, it is inherent in the structure itself. The part fits so it is added on by the needs of the structure, it doesn't determine a structure that just emerges at random.

A part ("functional block") can impact a structure and change it, but it cannot create an initial structure. The structure chooses it from among other possibilities, so to speak, by creating the needs. The initial structure happens outside the part. An illustration (as a kind of poor metaphor) is a magnet in motion making forms out of metal clippings instead of wood chips.

Michael

[Dragonfly]

The law of identity, which works hand-in-hand with causality is vague only if you exclude essential elements.

The law of identity is a useless as an argument, as it doesn't prove anything, it's the basis of logic but has zero empirical content.

Your idea of the computer is a perfect example. There is an essential element missing from your analysis of t1, t2, gateways, etc.: a human being.

If there is no human being to turn the thing on and feed it juice, it won't work. That underlies all the rest. You can't take the human being out of the computer. The human being is part of its organization, or system, or structure, or in my terms, identity.

For the definition of a deterministic system it is irrelevant how it is created. It can be created by the purely mechanical process of evolution or by the second order process via a conscious designer. When we talk about a computer we think in general of a man-made machine, but the principle remains the same for a machine that has evolved without human interference, for example a bacterium, just as the laws of optics are the same for a man-made lens as for the lens of an eye.

If the identity breaks down, no assemblage of its parts work anymore. In other words, you can't have a functional block without first having a function. And what determines the function to the structure is not the part, it is inherent in the structure itself. The part fits so it is added on by the needs of the structure, it doesn't determine a structure that just emerges at random.

A part ("functional block") can impact a structure and change it, but it cannot create an initial structure. The structure chooses it from among other possibilities, so to speak, by creating the needs. The initial structure happens outside the part.

Not necessarily. In evolution the buildling blocks (macromolecules, cells) coevolve with the structure. Paley's argument is invalid, read Dawkins' The Blind Watchmaker.

[anonrobt]

Ayn Rand (on Tom Snyder): Objectivism "is true."

Could this have been more accurate? Objectivism "is truth."

~ Shane

No, that's just dogmatism. "Objectivism is true" or "truth" is only true inside the world of Atlas Shrugged. Objectivism is four basic principles, two of them axiomatic, logically linked sequentially, the last two, ethics and politics containing many derivative statements many controversial or undemonstrated. I am not saying Objectivist epistemology is not controversial; I just don't go there personally. Anything Rand wrote about esthetics is just her opinions with no logical relationship to her philosophy as such, albeit very interesting. Rand formulated her philosophy by asking herself what her ideal man would need, not what humankind needed. Thus we have both a great overlapping and a great disconnect in realistic and desirable ethics and politics. If you are going to prescribe ethics you had better know people a lot better than she did, to put it mildly, and properly appreciate the genius of monotheistic religion, especially Christian, and come up with a real substitute and avoid the hubris of calling your own philosophy "true."

--Brant

Anything Rand wrote about esthetics is just her opinions with no logical relationship to her philosophy as such, albeit very interesting.

of course that is just YOUR own opinion... actually, aesthetics is, properly, ethics applied in a personal context, just as politics is ethics applied in a social context...

Edited December 6, 2008 by anonrobt

[Brant Gaede]

Ayn Rand (on Tom Snyder): Objectivism "is true."

Could this have been more accurate? Objectivism "is truth."

~ Shane

No, that's just dogmatism. "Objectivism is true" or "truth" is only true inside the world of Atlas Shrugged. Objectivism is four basic principles, two of them axiomatic, logically linked sequentially, the last two, ethics and politics containing many derivative statements many controversial or undemonstrated. I am not saying Objectivist epistemology is not controversial; I just don't go there personally. Anything Rand wrote about esthetics is just her opinions with no logical relationship to her philosophy as such, albeit very interesting. Rand formulated her philosophy by asking herself what her ideal man would need, not what humankind needed. Thus we have both a great overlapping and a great disconnect in realistic and desirable ethics and politics. If you are going to prescribe ethics you had better know people a lot better than she did, to put it mildly, and properly appreciate the genius of monotheistic religion, especially Christian, and come up with a real substitute and avoid the hubris of calling your own philosophy "true."

--Brant

Anything Rand wrote about esthetics is just her opinions with no logical relationship to her philosophy as such, albeit very interesting.

of course that is just YOUR own opinion... actually, aesthetics is, properly, ethics applied in a personal context, just as politics is ethics applied in a social context...

Opinions galore, my point precisely. Not sure if what you say is what Rand ever did, though. Do you have a quote? What you say is interesting, but I reject it if for no other reason than "personal context" means subjective evaluation which is NOT Objectivism, ever. You don't know my context and I don't know yours so how could you know the objectification of my personal esthetics? Is your bottom line someone is immoral if his/her esthetics are non-objective? Then you've got both nonsense and a contradiction. After all, ethics concern right and wrong. And we aren't going to reverse the process and claim Hitler was moral because his esthetics were "objective," now, are we?

The relationship between philosophical categories is both sharp and logical. Ethics is not politics; esthetics is not ethics--or vice versa and vice versa, respectively. The essential individualism of Objectivism, for example, derives from the epistemological axiom wherein there is only one brain thinking. That's epistemology and ethics (and politics too), but one is in no ways the other. (Individualism, of course, involves the entire human animal and reality, metaphysics through politics--and even more. That's the heart of the logical relationship between each category: a real human being. One's personal philosophy will always be broader than Objectivism involving all knowledge and beliefs even the arbitrary, contradictory, opinions without data, subjectivism, scientific knowledge and what-have-you--esthetics too. If there is no room for subjectivism then there is no room for true individualism. The trick is it is not acceptable for the subjective to contradict the objective for you end up with "whim-worshipping" and unnecessary and destructive contradictions. Claiming objectification in esthetics is the objectification of artistic tyranny and the end of artistic creativity in an Objectivist gulag. Both Stalin and Hitler did this. Don't claim Rand really did. While we argue, let the others dance. No objection? Good. Your heart is in the right place.)

--Brant

Edited December 7, 2008 by Brant Gaede

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

The law of identity is a useless as an argument, as it doesn't prove anything, it's the basis of logic but has zero empirical content.

Dragonfly,

The law of identity has plenty of empirical evidence through observation, which is the starting point of all inquiry. By the standard you gave above, you could say that the very concept of "prove" has zero empirical content. But this totally disconnects observation from reality. If you cut out observation, what is your standard of "empirical? Something can be "empirical" without observation? How?

For the definition of a deterministic system it is irrelevant how it is created. It can be created by the purely mechanical process of evolution or by the second order process via a conscious designer. When we talk about a computer we think in general of a man-made machine, but the principle remains the same for a machine that has evolved without human interference, for example a bacterium, just as the laws of optics are the same for a man-made lens as for the lens of an eye.

Here is the blank that I mentioned. It most definitely does matter systemically if something is man-made or occurs without man's input. Man is the top-down agent making new forms. Without that, there would be no "deterministic system" like a computer to look at.

Not necessarily. In evolution the buildling blocks (macromolecules, cells) coevolve with the structure. Paley's argument is invalid, read Dawkins' The Blind Watchmaker.

This makes a presumption that I do not hold, which is that "macromolecules, cells", etc., do not have identity of their own.

My view is the holon concept, where a self-contained structure can also be a part of a larger one, but also be made up of smaller ones. I have no problem with the idea of "coevolve." I do have a problem denying the identity of the structure as one of the "coevolvents."

It also makes another erroneous presumption, that the law of identity applied to entities is the same as Intelligent Design. These are separate matters. Debunking Paley does not debunk an entity's identity, especially as a holon.

Michael

[Dragonfly]

The law of identity has plenty of empirical evidence through observation, which is the starting point of all inquiry.

Then you don't understand the law of identity. You cannot verify the law of identity through observation, as this would imply that it could in principle be falsified. This is impossible however, as it is a logic law, and logic laws cannot be falsified, nor verified (which are 2 sides of the same coin).

By the standard you gave above, you could say that the very concept of "prove" has zero empirical content.

Right, the concept "prove" has zero empirical content.

But this totally disconnects observation from reality. If you cut out observation, what is your standard of "empirical? Something can be "empirical" without observation? How?

Who's talking about cutting out observation? Not me! I'm all for observation and empirical research. Therefore I don't bother with the law of identity, as it doesn't make any difference in empirical research.

Here is the blank that I mentioned. It most definitely does matter systemically if something is man-made or occurs without man's input. Man is the top-down agent making new forms. Without that, there would be no "deterministic system" like a computer to look at.

No, it is not relevant to the question how it works (and that was what I was discussing), not how it came into existence.

This makes a presumption that I do not hold, which is that "macromolecules, cells", etc., do not have identity of their own.

"Identity" is a meaningless term. Does it give us any new information?

My view is the holon concept, where a self-contained structure can also be a part of a larger one, but also be made up of smaller ones. I have no problem with the idea of "coevolve." I do have a problem denying the identity of the structure as one of the "coevolvents."

What is the identity of the structure? Is that something different from the structure itself? If not, it is a superfluous concept.

It also makes another erroneous presumption, that the law of identity applied to entities is the same as Intelligent Design. These are separate matters. Debunking Paley does not debunk an entity's identity, especially as a holon.

Sorry, this doesn't make sense to me. In biological systems the structure evolves with those parts, there is no "initial" structure (which is the thesis of ID), only a momentary structure. Putting "holon" labels on some parts doesn't change anything about that. It's just another superfluous concept.

[Jonathan]

Ayn Rand (on Tom Snyder): Objectivism "is true."

Could this have been more accurate? Objectivism "is truth."

~ Shane

No, that's just dogmatism. "Objectivism is true" or "truth" is only true inside the world of Atlas Shrugged. Objectivism is four basic principles, two of them axiomatic, logically linked sequentially, the last two, ethics and politics containing many derivative statements many controversial or undemonstrated. I am not saying Objectivist epistemology is not controversial; I just don't go there personally. Anything Rand wrote about esthetics is just her opinions with no logical relationship to her philosophy as such, albeit very interesting. Rand formulated her philosophy by asking herself what her ideal man would need, not what humankind needed. Thus we have both a great overlapping and a great disconnect in realistic and desirable ethics and politics. If you are going to prescribe ethics you had better know people a lot better than she did, to put it mildly, and properly appreciate the genius of monotheistic religion, especially Christian, and come up with a real substitute and avoid the hubris of calling your own philosophy "true."

--Brant

Anything Rand wrote about esthetics is just her opinions with no logical relationship to her philosophy as such, albeit very interesting.

of course that is just YOUR own opinion... actually, aesthetics is, properly, ethics applied in a personal context, just as politics is ethics applied in a social context...

Robert disagrees with Rand. Here's what she had to say on page 21 of the Romantic Manifesto:

It is important to stress, however, that even though moral values are inextricably involved in art, they are involved only as a consequence, not as a causal determinant: the primary focus of art is metaphysical, not ethical. Art is not the “handmaiden” of morality, its basic purpose is not to educate, to reform or to advocate anything. The concretization of a moral ideal is not a textbook on how to become one. The basic purpose of art is not to teach, but to show—to hold up to man a concretized image of his nature and his place in the universe.

Any metaphysical issue will necessarily have an enormous influence on man’s conduct and, therefore, on his ethics; and, since every art work has a theme, it will necessarily convey some conclusion, some “message,” to its audience. But that influence and that “message” are only secondary consequences.

Why do you think Rand was wrong, Robert?

J

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

No, it is not relevant to the question how it works (and that was what I was discussing), not how it came into existence.

Dragoinfly,

OK.

Do it your way. How it works.

If you don't turn that particular "deterministic system" on, it doesn't work. It can't.

See? That's easy to understand. Here's the rest.

Only a human being can ultimately turn the darn thing on (and power it). If there is no human being, there will be no working deterministic system in a computer. It will be a metaphysical piece of junk just like a rock.

Elements like human beings are not superfluous to man-made systems. The are just ignored in language by those who take them for granted in concept and in practice.

EDIT: I get kind of amused by this go-nowhere back and forth. It often seems like you are trying to win some kind of argument or something rather than trying to understand what I am getting at.

At any rate, you will have to do better than you have done if you wish to convince me that evidence can exist (in any form) without the law of identity, that the identity of an entity is a "superfluous concept," or that the law of identity is not confirmed by observation. Just saying it ain't so ain't good enough.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Jonathan,

On rereading Rand's passage in your last post, this prompted a question in my mind. I understand (and fully sympathize with) your objection to attributing things to art that are simply not there, such as the capacity of revealing to others the viewer's soul, etc. Some of that gets really silly.

Yet in your discussion with Robert, the idea of a theme was hinted at, but not expounded on. How do you view the idea of theme in an art work? What is it made of? What governs the organizing principle? Obviously moral principles can be a part of the theme of some kinds of art, but they are certainly not the be-all and end-all of theme as I have seen characterized at times in Objectivist literature, even at the "metaphysical value judgment" level.

Michael

[Jonathan]

Jonathan,

On rereading Rand's passage in your last post, this prompted a question in my mind. I understand (and fully sympathize with) your objection to attributing things to art that are simply not there, such as the capacity of revealing to others the viewer's soul, etc. Some of that gets really silly.

Yet in your discussion with Robert, the idea of a theme was hinted at, but not expounded on. How do you view the idea of theme in an art work? What is it made of? What governs the organizing principle? Obviously moral principles can be a part of the theme of some kinds of art, but they are certainly not the be-all and end-all of theme as I have seen characterized at times in Objectivist literature, even at the "metaphysical value judgment" level.

Michael

I guess we'd first have to define "theme," and determine if every work of art must have one by the same standards applied to all art forms.

Rand seemed to define "theme" as a sort of condensed summary of the meaning of a work of art. She seemed to think that each work of art had (or should have) a single, objectively identifiable theme, and that proper artists should create art according to very consciously chosen themes.

To me, a "condensed summary of the meaning of a work of art" is as good a definition of "theme" as any. But then again, I don't think that a such literary-based definition is necessarily commensurate with all visual or musical themes. Are such themes translatable into words?

I wouldn't agree that good art must be created with a theme in mind, or that a good work of art should have a single, Objectively identifiable theme -- I don't think that a painter has to confine himself to trying to use the methods of an Objectivist novelist, and he doesn't have to communicate any intended "theme" to others.

I think that some art is created with quite specific themes in mind, and it can be very powerful, including art which contains overt ethical material. But some art that is consciously thematic also seems to be quite staged and didactic because it is so consciously thematic (I'm thinking here of some of Rand's imitators).

Have I answered your questions?

J

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Jonathan,

It helped. We think in very similar lines often. But I am still mulling the idea of theme over.

The following is not a fully fleshed out thought, so please don't take it as one. I think theme involves a bit more than a condensed summary of meaning. It also involves a standard by which to evaluate the cognitive abstractions within a work.

For a simple example in music, if a composer writes a tonal work and purposely includes a loud obnoxious sour note in the middle, he has either violated the theme of the work (in my meaning), or he is trying to establish some kind of other theme.

The thought comes to mind that this is a cousin of an old trick I learned for composing a long time ago: the more you use a special effect, the less effect it has.

I wish I had more time to pursue this because I am glimpsing something I believe is important and I don't have a grip on it yet.

Michael

[BaalChatzaf]

If free will really exists then nature is NOT deterministic. Why? Because our decision making machinery is very physical stuff. Our (so-called) wills and minds are epiphenomena of neural processes.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Brant Gaede]

If free will really exists then nature is NOT deterministic. Why? Because our decision making machinery is very physical stuff. Our (so-called) wills and minds are epiphenomena of neural processes.

Yes, but it is "decision making" and you can't have that without "free will." The "physical stuff" is my physical stuff and yours and others. It's mine and I use it. Without free will science is as arbitrary as anything else might be, such as esthetics. BTW, you do more than reduce everything to the physical because since everything is already physical you cut out some of that with your reductions--you have too; you've nothing else to address. You are actually trying to cut out consciousness itself, but are stopped by the contradiction albeit willfully oblivious to it all. To put it another way, epistemology is a subcategory to metaphysics just as ethics is a subcategory to epistemology and politics is a subcategory to ethics. If there were no suddenly no more humans--mirabile dictu!--all four would disappear immediately although physical reality would remain.

--Brant

[Flagg]

In that case deterministic machines also have free will.

You are incorrect about Barbara's statement. She stated, "Free will is an axiom of consciousness and, like all axioms, it must be accepted in the very act of denying it."

There's the contradiction. You use something to deny it. It doesn't get much clearer than that and that is not a simple claim like "X is a contradiction" is a simple claim. Do you want to see the impossibility of the syllogism?

Premise: Free will is the ability to initiate a conscious choice.

Premise: I have the free will to consciously choose to deny that free will exists.

You don't get it. I'm not saying that free will (the ability to initiate choices) doesn't exist, only that it is not incompatible with a deterministic brain. No one has shown that this incompatibility exists.

This equivocates on "the ability to initiate choices" - in the compatibilist context, this simply means man is the ultimate source of his actions. This is too broad an assertion, and pardon my Rand language here, but it package-deals "passive" within "ability to make choices." Rand's difference with compatibilism is that man actively chooses, and is not passive to his internal premises. Both Rand's version and the compatibilist version are correct in the broad assertion (and even libertarian free will is, but that old medieval notion places the ultimate means of choices at best to something akin to schizophrenia and at worst to the equivalent of a die roll, which not only wipes out man as the ultimate active chooser but also implies solipsism).

Maybe you have a different definition of free will, but all that is doing is using the same word to represent a different concept. For instance, you said, "In that case deterministic machines also have free will."

Nope. Not in the meaning being discussed. Deterministic machines might be able to bounce back and forth between predetermined outcomes delimited internally (by definition), but this is not the same meaning of free will in the sense Barbara (and Rand) was using.

What do you mean by predetermined outcomes delimited internally? The only limitation is by the amount of time and the available memory - and the same limitation holds for the human brain. An outcome doesn't have to be part of the program, it can be generated by the program, so the term "predetermined" is misleading. It seems you're thinking of "canned responses", but that is an unwarranted limitation. In a deterministic system every state of the system is determined by the state at a previous time, but if the system interacts with the external world, it is determined by its own state and that of the external world. We might feed it with random input, but for any given input the next state is still determined by its previous state.

How is it determined by the previous state? What determines it? Your context and previous states would have to determine it; follow the chain back, and you are left with an infant with no previous context and nothing but remnant genetic instincts, like hunger and jerking one's knees when tapped in the right place. How, then, is an infant to build knowledge of separate perceptions? How can an infant grow to identify similar perceptions as things such as "rose" or "jumping" or higher concepts such as "love"? Since lit-up brain areas are the metaphysical, neurological component to our epistemic perceptions and concepts, the compatibilist is forced into the position that such ideas have been preprogrammed into our minds since birth, or at least the ability to conceptualize in reaction to outer stimuli must be present since birth (in an undamaged human). I'm sure you and I can dismiss the former, since we certainly preprogrammed with e.g. the preconceptual space compartmentalized for "internet." Try going back 40,000 years and seeing if that works for an aboriginal.

The latter notion, that one has the ability to organize perceptions into concepts automatically (in proper accordance to one's IQ, granted) is easily answered by analysis of language. Study up, for instance, on how hard it is to translate ancient Greek from Biblical manuscripts and you'll learn what a task it is to transcribe the inerrant word of Jebus into words that aren't in a long-dead language. This whole idea of deterministic conceptualization is routed by the fact that human beings have drastic changes in conceptualizing (and subsequently in language) with little to no change in their culture.

Perhaps it's a combination of nurture and nature, you might say? And within nurture, that it's a combination of (to use more Rand words) the metaphysically given and the man-"made" (more specifically, the parent- and society- taught)? Then by what means did the first learners of the changes in reality grasp these brand new concepts, since they by definition could not have themselves been taught?

There's only one answer that consistently ties all of these together to make a case for compatibilism: claiming that God, creating all the future by His decree, implanted ideas in man's mind to cause them to do actions suited to His purpose, deterministically and absolutely, for His glory (i.e. Calvinism). There is no naturalistic, non God-of-the-Gaps means to wrap the difficulties of compatibilism all together.

Listen. I know Dennett's case; I saw a Youtube video on it thinking he meant volition before finding out the old saw had been revived again. Dennett, as you pointed out, puts an intuition pump in our minds as a means for compatibilistic choice - but from where does this intuition pump draw its information? Where is the water in the pump's underlying well? This isn't touched upon, but it's implicit in everything discussed: it comes from outside ourselves, and we process our contents automatically and, in the context of our intellectual ability, perfectly, without error. The fact that I am late returning tests to my students is a perfect reasoning in the framework of my abilities according to a sum of all my previous states and the premises such states have spat out in my mind; deep within, I hate teaching, I hate my students, and I hate the Calculus I teach to my students. It wasn't a misstep of lazily skipping my value hierarchy for the immediate gratification of playing Final Fantasy III on the DS; it must reveal something more sinister, and if I don't delay my grading again it MUST mean I'm doing it for reasons higher than the aforementioned values in my hierarchy, i.e. I don't want to risk bad student reviews and lose my hated job and have no means for money, don't want to risk not being liked by people I want to have power over since I'm their teacher, etc. Perhaps I should choose (or, since I can't choose, be forced) to do another job instead that I secretly don't hate, or just beg for enough change to keep my DS going while slurping free sludge in the local soup kitchen.

After all, even if it's epistemologically impossible to assess outcomes of situations, I'm metaphysically determined, and since one's mind cannot mold reality, this determinism - internal or external (compatibilism, as I have demonstrated, is necessarily external, whether external in the framework of your own experience or of the genetically inherited properties forged by your ancestor's experiences) - takes precedence, and a manipulative, sane serial killer deserves as much credit as a fighter of tyranny like Ghandi: zero. This leads to two choices: society must be egalitarian on the basis of metaphysics, even though it will fall apart due to the lack of means, by definition, of human beings to epistemologically perceive how their neighbors that rape their daughter did it deterministically (they must ultimately accept such explanation by faith), or continue on as we are, blaming each other for actions which we are all asked to take, again on faith, as metaphysically deterministic, i.e. living an illusion, i.e. living in ignorance to reality, i.e. doing as well as one who shrugs and stays upstairs drinking beer and watching the oncoming tornado while all his relatives are safe in the basement below. Humanity, under compatibilism, is in a state worse than moral relativism, which at least asserts some people's actions are consistent with reality even though they are fundamentally different from someone else's; it is a state of hopelessness, of a stasis between living a system which is by definition literally impossible to calculate in metaphysical specifics versus living in a system in which everyone believes an epistemological notion they know is metaphysically false. You either: (1) blame and praise people for actions in which they are not the initiator, but merely the source, and to live consistently one might as well thank the washing machine for a batch of clean clothes and imprison it for a week for a batch of dirty ones; or (2) do not blame or praise anyone for any action, knowing the general, but withholding that nagging frustration that the designer of an efficent, eco-friendly car is metaphysically just as determined as a man on a playground molesting children. This means: man cannot live in accordance with reality; he must either fake it metaphysically or epistemologically.

These previous two paragraphs in no way disprove compatibilism (I think I began to address a disproof earlier in this post) but they do illustrate why this debate is *crucial.* Ever read "The Stimulus and the Response," Rand's commentary on Skinner's "Beyond Freedom and Dignity?" Well, I read the book itself, as my stepdad is a psychologist with this sitting plainly in his library in Mom's house. It's not pretty. Rand didn't cover the implications in full, and her bite doesn't snap off all of the implications of compatibilism. That book is reasonably close to the conclusion of compatabilist free will; read it and don't tell me that you, at least in a couple of places, pushed a little nagging consciousness back in the dark with the presupposition of being "progressive" and "scientific."

NOTE: I don't mean to attack you personally on this. I've read some threads you've linked and find you to be insightful and capable. Please don't think any harsh tones are directed toward you as a person; even though you believe in compatibilism, you at least accept the "illusion solution," which is the better option (like taking a gunshot in the head as opposed to the stomach). Personally I think it's because you know we all choose, deep down inside, but if my assumption isn't true, I'd ask you to look at the consistency of your position and whether it matches up with reality.

[Brant Gaede]

I don't know who you are quoting in the second set.

--Brant

Edited December 18, 2008 by Brant Gaede

[Flagg]

I don't know who you are quoting in the second set.

--Brant

The name order is identical to the first quote. I forgot to adjust for their inclusion ;)

[Brant Gaede]

I don't know who you are quoting in the second set.

--Brant

The name order is identical to the first quote. I forgot to adjust for their inclusion ;)

There is an edit function.

--Brant

[Flagg]

I don't know who you are quoting in the second set.

--Brant

The name order is identical to the first quote. I forgot to adjust for their inclusion ;)

There is an edit function.

--Brant

Thank you for pointing out the edit function, but unfortunately the effect of my nature and my nuture initiated a deterministic decision within my brain according to my biologically preferred desire to move on to additional arguments elsewhere for purposes of brain stimulation and learning, which, by the nurture of my rather messy mother, ended up higher in my neurological intuitionist priority than any desire related to fixing an improperly detailed document which, within context, would still yield effective and determined reasoning in a standard rational human being linking the previous quoted posts perfectly in order with the quoted posts following my analysis, collapsing any such actual editing of names into the second set into a useless tidying inferior to the information I otherwise gained during the seconds that task would have required for completion.

However, the Rube Goldberg intuition pump in your mind, through nurture of a mom, dad, or legal guardian who probably didn't leave leftovers in the fridge until the molding point like mine did, resulted in an inversion of this value for your specific case. So much is your destined dedication to orderly documentation that the particles in your mind not only clicked and clacked and spit out the predestined thought that the nil-pragmatic meaning of the renaming was irrelevant to the issue, but it also dumped from your intuition well a rebuke upon me for the result from my own mind's clicking and clacking that stood in such opposition to your particular sum of prior experiences. With the determined result in your mind of hope in changing some lever or pully in my own mind to fix this error in the future with greater certainty than had you politely stated your brain's foreordained judgment instead of using such biting sarcasm, you have gained as a stimulus-reward the feeling of using a rare comeback (called "wit" in the human verbal behavior set) to hopefully more reliably cause my own mind to push the bowels and poo out a different result upon the next encounter (i.e. actually fixing the quote).

[Brant Gaede]

I don't know who you are quoting in the second set.

--Brant

The name order is identical to the first quote. I forgot to adjust for their inclusion ;)

There is an edit function.

--Brant

Thank you for pointing out the edit function, but unfortunately the effect of my nature and my nuture initiated a deterministic decision within my brain according to my biologically preferred desire to move on to additional arguments elsewhere for purposes of brain stimulation and learning, which, by the nurture of my rather messy mother, ended up higher in my neurological intuitionist priority than any desire related to fixing an improperly detailed document which, within context, would still yield effective and determined reasoning in a standard rational human being linking the previous quoted posts perfectly in order with the quoted posts following my analysis, collapsing any such actual editing of names into the second set into a useless tidying inferior to the information I otherwise gained during the seconds that task would have required for completion.

However, the Rube Goldberg intuition pump in your mind, through nurture of a mom, dad, or legal guardian who probably didn't leave leftovers in the fridge until the molding point like mine did, resulted in an inversion of this value for your specific case. So much is your destined dedication to orderly documentation that the particles in your mind not only clicked and clacked and spit out the predestined thought that the nil-pragmatic meaning of the renaming was irrelevant to the issue, but it also dumped from your intuition well a rebuke upon me for the result from my own mind's clicking and clacking that stood in such opposition to your particular sum of prior experiences. With the determined result in your mind of hope in changing some lever or pully in my own mind to fix this error in the future with greater certainty than had you politely stated your brain's foreordained judgment instead of using such biting sarcasm, you have gained as a stimulus-reward the feeling of using a rare comeback (called "wit" in the human verbal behavior set) to hopefully more reliably cause my own mind to push the bowels and poo out a different result upon the next encounter (i.e. actually fixing the quote).

We seem to be locked in a deterministic embrace of witty but otherwise worthless palaver. It might be best just to put thee into a padded room or perhaps an oubliette and shovel in some food from time to time.

--Brant

Edited December 20, 2008 by Brant Gaede

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

You guys are a hoot.

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

However, the Rube Goldberg intuition pump in your mind, through nurture of a mom, dad, or legal guardian who probably didn't leave leftovers in the fridge until the molding point like mine did, resulted in an inversion of this value for your specific case.

So, what were your consquences? Most any child deserves better.

--Brant

[Flagg]

However, the Rube Goldberg intuition pump in your mind, through nurture of a mom, dad, or legal guardian who probably didn't leave leftovers in the fridge until the molding point like mine did, resulted in an inversion of this value for your specific case.

So, what were your consquences? Most any child deserves better.

--Brant

I turned out fine; I tend to exaggerate when I joke around on the Internet. It's all in good fun. And your use of the word "palaver" called back up the Dark Tower series; I think I might flip through that again soon.

[Dragonfly]

What do you mean by predetermined outcomes delimited internally? The only limitation is by the amount of time and the available memory - and the same limitation holds for the human brain. An outcome doesn't have to be part of the program, it can be generated by the program, so the term "predetermined" is misleading. It seems you're thinking of "canned responses", but that is an unwarranted limitation. In a deterministic system every state of the system is determined by the state at a previous time, but if the system interacts with the external world, it is determined by its own state and that of the external world. We might feed it with random input, but for any given input the next state is still determined by its previous state.

How is it determined by the previous state? What determines it?

The brain is subjected to the laws of physics. As I've argued elsewhere that the random processes of QM play no significant role in the processes in the brain, we may assume that classical physics (which is deterministic) gives a good description of those brain processes.

Your context and previous states would have to determine it; follow the chain back, and you are left with an infant with no previous context and nothing but remnant genetic instincts, like hunger and jerking one's knees when tapped in the right place. How, then, is an infant to build knowledge of separate perceptions? How can an infant grow to identify similar perceptions as things such as "rose" or "jumping" or higher concepts such as "love"? Since lit-up brain areas are the metaphysical, neurological component to our epistemic perceptions and concepts, the compatibilist is forced into the position that such ideas have been preprogrammed into our minds since birth, or at least the ability to conceptualize in reaction to outer stimuli must be present since birth (in an undamaged human).

Of course the ability to conceptualize in reaction to outer stimuli is an inborn trait. So there is in itself nothing remarkable that we can with this ability accumulate knowledge and all kinds of skills.

I'm sure you and I can dismiss the former, since we certainly preprogrammed with e.g. the preconceptual space compartmentalized for "internet." Try going back 40,000 years and seeing if that works for an aboriginal.

This sentence is not clear to me, I've no idea what "the preconceptual space comparmentalized for internet" means. I don't know how far the "language module" in the aboriginal 40000 years ago was developed, but I think it is very well possible that if we could somehow transplant an aboriginal baby of 40000 years ago to modern time, it would have no difficulty in learning and understanding the concept "internet". Now this may be no longer true if we go even farther back, but so what? We know that evolution works and that due to this completely mechanical process extremely complex systems can evolve from simpler systems and ultimately from some molecules. So no doubt this ability to conceptualize evolved from a more primitive form of conceptualizing and so on, just as our sophisticated eyes have evolved from simpler and more primitive versions.

The latter notion, that one has the ability to organize perceptions into concepts automatically (in proper accordance to one's IQ, granted) is easily answered by analysis of language. Study up, for instance, on how hard it is to translate ancient Greek from Biblical manuscripts and you'll learn what a task it is to transcribe the inerrant word of Jebus into words that aren't in a long-dead language. This whole idea of deterministic conceptualization is routed by the fact that human beings have drastic changes in conceptualizing (and subsequently in language) with little to no change in their culture.

Languages evolve too, so I don't see what the problem is. Of course our accumulated knowledge is reflected in our language. The ability to conceptualize is much more general than dictated by specific knowledge. I'm sure that our genetic endowment and with that this ability hasn't changed significantly for at least many thousands of years.

Perhaps it's a combination of nurture and nature, you might say? And within nurture, that it's a combination of (to use more Rand words) the metaphysically given and the man-"made" (more specifically, the parent- and society- taught)? Then by what means did the first learners of the changes in reality grasp these brand new concepts, since they by definition could not have themselves been taught?

The ability to conceptualize is also the ability to grasp brand new concepts, so I see no problem. Neither is the fact that this ability must have evolved once long ago, unless you have problems with evolution itself.

There's only one answer that consistently ties all of these together to make a case for compatibilism: claiming that God, creating all the future by His decree, implanted ideas in man's mind to cause them to do actions suited to His purpose, deterministically and absolutely, for His glory (i.e. Calvinism). There is no naturalistic, non God-of-the-Gaps means to wrap the difficulties of compatibilism all together.

As I've shown, compatibilism is the simple naturalistic explanation, there are no difficulties.

After all, even if it's epistemologically impossible to assess outcomes of situations, I'm metaphysically determined, and since one's mind cannot mold reality, this determinism - internal or external (compatibilism, as I have demonstrated, is necessarily external, whether external in the framework of your own experience or of the genetically inherited properties forged by your ancestor's experiences) - takes precedence, and a manipulative, sane serial killer deserves as much credit as a fighter of tyranny like Ghandi: zero. This leads to two choices: society must be egalitarian on the basis of metaphysics, even though it will fall apart due to the lack of means, by definition, of human beings to epistemologically perceive how their neighbors that rape their daughter did it deterministically (they must ultimately accept such explanation by faith), or continue on as we are, blaming each other for actions which we are all asked to take, again on faith, as metaphysically deterministic, i.e. living an illusion, i.e. living in ignorance to reality, i.e. doing as well as one who shrugs and stays upstairs drinking beer and watching the oncoming tornado while all his relatives are safe in the basement below. Humanity, under compatibilism, is in a state worse than moral relativism, which at least asserts some people's actions are consistent with reality even though they are fundamentally different from someone else's; it is a state of hopelessness, of a stasis between living a system which is by definition literally impossible to calculate in metaphysical specifics versus living in a system in which everyone believes an epistemological notion they know is metaphysically false. You either: (1) blame and praise people for actions in which they are not the initiator, but merely the source, and to live consistently one might as well thank the washing machine for a batch of clean clothes and imprison it for a week for a batch of dirty ones; or (2) do not blame or praise anyone for any action, knowing the general, but withholding that nagging frustration that the designer of an efficent, eco-friendly car is metaphysically just as determined as a man on a playground molesting children. This means: man cannot live in accordance with reality; he must either fake it metaphysically or epistemologically.

There is an old story that goes somewhat like this: a man is tried for murdering his neighbor. He defends himself before the judge and says: "Your Honor, I couldn't help it, it has been written in the stars that I had to kill my neighbor, it was predetermined and I cannot be punished for something I couldn't avoid." The judge replies: Yes, yes, I see what you mean. But you know, I'm sorry, but it has also been written in the stars that I'll condemn you to death." The fact that our behavior is ultimately determined is no reason to treat everyone, virtuous men and scoundrels, the same. Determent and a system of justice do work, also in deterministic systems. That some people still end badly is unavoidable. Life isn't fair. We may be lucky that we have the kind of brain (genetic part of our character) and the relatively favorable circumstances in which we've grown up that probably will spare us such an ignominious end, but there is no such thing as a cosmic justice, no matter how attractive this notion may seem.

These previous two paragraphs in no way disprove compatibilism (I think I began to address a disproof earlier in this post) but they do illustrate why this debate is *crucial.* Ever read "The Stimulus and the Response," Rand's commentary on Skinner's "Beyond Freedom and Dignity?" Well, I read the book itself, as my stepdad is a psychologist with this sitting plainly in his library in Mom's house. It's not pretty. Rand didn't cover the implications in full, and her bite doesn't snap off all of the implications of compatibilism. That book is reasonably close to the conclusion of compatabilist free will; read it and don't tell me that you, at least in a couple of places, pushed a little nagging consciousness back in the dark with the presupposition of being "progressive" and "scientific."

Skinners overly simplified behaviorism has little to do with compatibilism. The determinism that steers our brain is far more subtle than the very crude stimulus-response theories of the Skinnerian behaviorists. This microscopic determinism is in fact practically invisible to us, we can only observe some large aggregate effects, which are at their level of description only very approximately deterministic.

NOTE: I don't mean to attack you personally on this. I've read some threads you've linked and find you to be insightful and capable. Please don't think any harsh tones are directed toward you as a person; even though you believe in compatibilism, you at least accept the "illusion solution," which is the better option (like taking a gunshot in the head as opposed to the stomach). Personally I think it's because you know we all choose, deep down inside, but if my assumption isn't true, I'd ask you to look at the consistency of your position and whether it matches up with reality.

Yup, it does! What we call "choosing, deep down inside" is in fact a description at a quite superficial level. It is at the much deeper level, which is not accessible to our consciousness, that our choice is determined. Schopenhauer expressed this idea nicely: "Der Mensch kann wohl tun, was er will, aber er kann nicht wollen, was er will" (literally: "Man can do what he wants, but he cannot want what he wants")

PS. I won't have always time to reply to such large messages, as it takes me far too much time.

[BaalChatzaf]

. You are actually trying to cut out consciousness itself, but are stopped by the contradiction albeit willfully oblivious to it all. To put it another way, epistemology is a subcategory to metaphysics just as ethics is a subcategory to epistemology and politics is a subcategory to ethics. If there were no suddenly no more humans--mirabile dictu!--all four would disappear immediately although physical reality would remain.

--Brant

Consciousness is one of the doings of a live working brain. It is a physical effect from physical causes.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Christopher]

It's difficult to argue that free will per se is the ability to make gross-level choices. Internally, we have many voices and stimuli making demands much like a senate room in ancient Rome as to what choice to take.

Perhaps the best defensible position for free will is to argue that free will is the ability to focus awareness. Through this focus, free will can give a little more attention to this senator or that one, making one voice eventually come out on top.

Chris

Edited February 2, 2009 by Christopher