Dragonfly

I think the following passage may be relevant in this regard. From Dennett's "Consciousness explained", Ch. 5 "Multiple drafts versus the Cartesian theater": seen at various moments on the drive, you would have had at least some sketchy details to report. The "unconscious driving" phenomenon is better seen as a case of rolling consciousness with swift memory loss. Are you constantly conscious of the clock ticking? If it suddenly stops, you notice this, and you can say right away what it is that has stopped; the ticks "you weren't conscious of" up to the moment they stopped and "would never have been conscious of" if they hadn't stopped are now clearly in your consciousness. An even more striking case is the phenomenon of being able to count, retrospectively in experience memory, the chimes of the clock which you only noticed was striking after four or five chimes. But how could you so clearly remember hearing something you hadn't been conscious of in the first place? The question betrays a commitment to the Cartesian model; there are no fixed facts about the stream of consciousness independent of particular probes.

How do you know that this can't be attributed directly to our five senses? There are many ways you can explain such a phenomenon without having to resort to mysterious extra senses. "Without having heard of seen" can here very well mean: "without consciously having heard or seen". It is very well possible that you did hear some slight noise, but that it was so insignificant that you weren't consciously aware of it until another equally slight noise may have triggered some alarm function in your subconscious. Similarly for some slight movement in the periphery of your vision, or a reflection in your glasses or in some polished surface, a slight diminishing (or other change) of the ambient light, a shifting shadow, a change of the acoustics in the room, a smell (see "Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman!" for an account of the amazing detection possibilities of our nose), a change of temperature/draft... It is amazing how subtle the clues can be that we may pick up. That has also always been a problem in paranormal research: it seemed that an experiment could only be explained by some paranormal mechanism, until a skeptic pointed out a possibility of sensory leakage. When that possibility was controlled, the effect also disappeared like snow in summer. Other examples are the efficacy of "cold reading" and with animals the "Clever Hans effect". So Kat, if I were you I'd also buy such an Occam razor, they're very useful (Michael still hasn't found his own razor?) It is interesting to note that this "feeling being stared at" syndrome seems to be an example of a paranormal occurence in one of Rand's books. I seem to remember that it is Dagny who has that feeling (she has a feeling that someone is looking at her and turning around she sees there is someone standing there), but I can't remember in what context. I suppose Rand would have vociferously denied the possibility of a paranormal explanation, but it's strange that she didn't realize that many people would read it like that.

That isn't important for this discussion, if you just keep in mind that classical or Newtonian mechanics is a deterministic system. That is exactly my point, I see no problem either. But other people do. That's also my my impression, it's just too confusing to follow. I'd formulate it a bit differently. The faculty of volition is just an aspect of consciousness (animal or human), and consciousness is a high-level description (seen from the intentional stance) of what our brain cells are doing. That idea has always struck me as nonsense, and it amazes me that so many people swallow that idea uncritically. On what does she base that belief? How can you choose to think? Choosing already implies thinking. The only thing you can do is to choose not to think by blowing your brains out, but I don't think that is what she means. Now some people have tried to make this notion more acceptable by amending it to the choice "to focus or not to focus". But that is still a very simplistic view which has no basis in reality, which is vastly more complicated than such a binary choice, supposedly leading to either clear thinking rational independent Objectivists or to fuzzy thinking evading evil whim-worshipping second-handers, collectivists, subjectivists etc. etc. Wouldn't it be nice if the world were that simple? Right. They can't deliberate or project the possible consequences of their choice in the future like we do, it's more a range-of-the-moment choice, but it is a choice.

But the question "free will and determinism" has nothing to do with the question of automatic and/or chosen/programmed reactions and choices. These may be interesting in themselves, but they divert us from the main question, namely the compatibility of what commonly is called "free will" (the possibility to choose between several alternatives) with "determinism" of the brain, where the latter is defined as the fact that the state of the brain in terms of the functionality of its fundamental building blocks (cells, neurons, or groups of them) at a certain moment uniquely determines the state of that brain at a later moment (ignoring possible glitches), in other words the brain as a classical Newtonian system.

I haven't established that the brain is a deterministic system, but it is a reasonable assumption. In view of the temperature of the brain and the size of its functional building blocks, it is very unlikely that quantum effects will determine the functioning of the brain (the brain is just too hot). That doesn't necessarily imply that quantum fluctuations will never have an effect, but that such an effect will at most be incidental, and not relevant for the systematic functioning of the brain. Based on our current knowledge of the physics and physiology of the brain this is the most logical assumption. We make the same assumption for the functioning of the rest of the human body.

The link didn't work until I discovered that I had to delete the period at the end... I tried to write a reaction, but I've been continuously rewriting the text and now it's such a mess that I'll leave it at the moment, I'll have to order my own thoughts first if I want to produce something coherent... Just one brief comment I think we should make a distinction between Rand's theoretical exposé and her concrete examples. In the first she doesn't confuse the external subject matter with the ultimate content; she even explicitly warns against it, but as soon as she writes about particular examples she does fall in that same trap. Not with regard to literature, but definitely when she discusses concrete examples of art and music. So for those particular examples I tend to agree with Kamhi and Torres.

I wonder whether there are no genetic and/or organic factors that influence the likelyhood of getting addicted to alcohol. I drink one bottle of beer (33 cc) at dinner, and on special occasions at most two bottles in the evening. I've never been drunk in my life, I just don't like it when I get light in the head and drowsy, and that's a sign for me to stop. I just don't understand that people really like to continue drinking in such a situation. It seems to me that the fact that someone can't stop drinking after the first glass can't be explained only by psychological factors, I think that physiological factors must also play an important role.

Eh..yes.. of course.. well, you know, as English is not my native language it's not so easy for me to write some coherent article, it takes a lot of time to find the approximately right formulations... But perhaps I might just start something by asking a question. And what is better suited to put the cat among the pigeons (or the dragonfly among the flies) than to ask what the objection of Objectivists is against compatibilism, the notion that "free will" is compatible with the brain as a deterministic system. Discussions on Objectivist forums about this subject always generate a lot of heat but very little light. I still have to hear a coherent and compelling argument against compatibilism instead of an angry " it's obvious that it can't be true!" or "I know that it's false!" (if not: "A is A!"). Well it's not at all obvious to me, and perhaps we may have a discussion here without immediately letting the randroid dogs loose.

You should know that dragonflies have no sting... Wait a moment, I can't follow you here. I can understand what you mean by "brain activity". But "life activity" that produces sense organs? Do you mean evolution? Or just the activity of a living body? In the latter case brain activity is of course just a subset of life activity. Neither do I understand your point about addressing different parts of reality. That seems rather trivial to me, even different sense address different parts of reality, each organ has its own task. But of course they work together. To use the computer analogue: the brain is the processor, the senses are the peripherals that provide input from the outside world (scanner, camera, microphone) for the processor. What we can directly perceive is of course only a very small part of reality, but thanks to science and its instruments we can indirectly perceive a lot more. If there is anything that we can in principle not perceive (directly or indirectly), then it is not part of science, and for me therefore not part of existence. I reject supernatural phenomena, where I take "supernatural" in the literal sense (outside nature), not phenomena of which people think that they need a supernatural explanation. Take for example the notion of the "classical" orbit of an electron in an atom (i.e. the electron moving along a well-defined curve in space). We know now thanks to Heisenberg that we are in principle unable to measure such a classical orbit, we can only determine the probability that an electron will be at a certain position and we call this probability distribution an "orbital". The notion of a classical orbit is in this case meaningless, as it is in principle unmeasurable, so it is not part of reality. Then perhaps you're thinking of the possibility that there are things in reality that we could in principle find using scientific methods, but that we also can perceive directly with some new, developing sense organ. But what is the evidence for that? The explanation is not so mysterious. Many years ago I've even written computer programs to simulate this behavior, that can be explained by relatively simple mutual interactions between the animals in a group. Did you read Feynman's "Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman"? (If not, do read it, it is delicious, and you'll roar with laughter!). Herein he describes a few simple experiments he devised to account for the movements of ants. And it is instructive to see how even a non-specialist can find relevant information just by doing some clever, but simple tests. Flies (yumm!) In the meantime you should look for that razor!

Why would you propose a new kind of sense organ that receives input from a part of reality that is not accessed by the traditional senses? Is there any reason to suppose that our conceptual and cognitive faculty is not fully compatible with receiving input only from our traditional senses? Where have you left Occam's razor?

While Rand made many important points in TRM, the book has also a lot of weak points. I think she is at her best when she writes about literature, the field where she was of course a master herself. But her views on fine art and music are far too simplistic. She was obviously an amateur and quite out of her depth in those areas. I think that she was at least somewhat aware of this with regard to music; AFAIK (correct me if I'm wrong) she never published her bizarre ideas about the "malevolence" of Beethoven or what was "wrong" with Bach and Mozart. I think she must have realized that she was on thin ice here. But she had no inhibitions when writing about fine art, producing such howlers as calling Vermeer a representant of "bleak kitchen Naturalism", condemning Rembrandt for belonging to the "painterly school" and dismissing all Impressionists as "silly". I cannot but wonder how many of their paintings she really had seen in her life (there is a parallel with her knowledge of the writings of other philosophers, which seems to have been very superficial, Aristotle probably excepted). Apparently her idea of a positive sense of life in painting is equivalent to a detailed realism, bright colors, blue skies, skyscrapers, and people in ecstatic or heroic postures. Everything else must be the result of a malevolent sense of life. In fact there is here a strong reminiscence of the principles of Soviet realism and Nazi art (Arnold Breker for example), with their emphasis on heroic and exalted realism. I think this is a very narrow and stifling view which greatly detracts from the value of the book, making it much more difficult to be taken seriously by the "outsiders".