My problem with Free Will

[Selene]

Brant, And what does it mean to "choose" or to be "making choices"?

Dean, where do you differ from B. F. Skinner on the issue of "free will" and "choice?"

[deanwins]

Selene,

I don't know B.F.Skinner, so I can't answer your question... sorry. But from reading some of the wikipedia article on him, it looks to me like he has rejected or under emphasized the role of higher level intelligence found in humans "Unlike less austere behaviorism, it does not accept private events such as thinking, perceptions, and unobservable emotions in a causal account of an organism's behavior", such as:

- Using the scientific method to increase confidence in generated/taught ideas about how reality works (learning how reality works)

- Using information about how reality works to predict how one's potential actions might influence goal attainment

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

The validity of the analogy breaks when you imply that we don't know where to look to find physical evidence of software. We know exactly where it is and exactly what it looks like.

Deanna,

The problem I always had with that analogy is that you have to have a programmer to have a software program. Also, someone has to run it, but that only compounds the original problem.

This is a perfect metaphor for intelligent design.

The first guy who ever used that metaphor on me to illustrate why the mind doesn't really exist except virtually (Daniel Barnes to name names) thought he was being clever. He even congratulated himself--or maybe he only acted like it so much and my memory is adding things. I thought it sucked qua metaphor and the programmer is why.

We didn't arrive a mutual understanding.

Michael

[Selene]

I don't know B.F.Skinner, so I can't answer your question... sorry. But from reading some of the wikipedia article on him, it looks to me like he has rejected or under emphasized the role of higher level intelligence found in humans "Unlike less austere behaviorism, it does not accept private events such as thinking, perceptions, and unobservable emotions in a causal account of an organism's behavior", such as:

- Using the scientific method to increase confidence in generated/taught ideas about how reality works (learning how reality works)

- Using information about how reality works to predict how one's potential actions might influence goal attainment

He is much more malignant than that. I despise him. See:

His book, Walden Two, is a utopian presentation of how he imagined the application of is theories would work out in real life. Of course, they never have worked out in real life despite his assertions and beliefs. In Beyond Freedom and Dignity,

Skinner put forth the notion that Man had no indwelling personality, nor will, intention, self-determinism or personal responsibility, and that modern concepts of freedom and dignity have to fall away so Man could be intelligently controlled to behave as he should. Despite the fact of the degree of implied human degradation involved,

the question always remained just who would decide what Man should

Mr. & Mrs., Skinner view daughter Debbie in a Skinner Box be, how he should act, and who would control the controllers?

http://www.sntp.net/behaviorism/skinner.htm

It is referred to as operant conditioning...

Operant Conditioning (B.F. Skinner)

The theory of B.F. Skinner is based upon the idea that learning is a function of change in overt behavior. Changes in behavior are the result of an individual's response to events (stimuli) that occur in the environment. A response produces a consequence such as defining a word, hitting a ball, or solving a math problem. When a particular Stimulus-Response (S-R) pattern is reinforced (rewarded), the individual is conditioned to respond. The distinctive characteristic of operant conditioning relative to previous forms of behaviorism (e.g., connectionism, drive reduction) is that the organism can emit responses instead of only eliciting response due to an external stimulus.

Reinforcement is the key element in Skinner's S-R theory. A reinforcer is anything that strengthens the desired response. It could be verbal praise, a good grade or a feeling of increased accomplishment or satisfaction. The theory also covers negative reinforcers -- any stimulus that results in the increased frequency of a response when it is withdrawn (different from adversive stimuli -- punishment -- which result in reduced responses). A great deal of attention was given to schedules of reinforcement (e.g. interval versus ratio) and their effects on establishing and maintaining behavior.

One of the distinctive aspects of Skinner's theory is that it attempted to provide behavioral explanations for a broad range of cognitive phenomena. For example, Skinner explained drive (motivation) in terms of deprivation and reinforcement schedules. Skinner (1957) tried to account for verbal learning and language within the operant conditioning paradigm, although this effort was strongly rejected by linguists and psycholinguists. Skinner (1971) deals with the issue of free will and social control.

http://www.instructionaldesign.org/theories/operant-conditioning.html

A...

[deanwins]

Michael: Various unpredictable causal changes to polymers such as RNA, proteins, and DNA combined with natural selection had been the only programmer here on earth until man came along. "Someone has to run it"... reality changes... it runs.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Michael: Various unpredictable causal changes to polymers such as RNA, proteins, and DNA combined with natural selection had been the only programmer here on earth until man came along. "Someone has to run it"... reality changes... it runs.

Dean,

You missed my point.

I was talking about the metaphor, not the argument.

If the position in the quote above is your position, that software metaphor is a half-assed way to present it (in my humble opinion ), especially to people who believe in God.

The whole point of a metaphor like that is to persuade and explain (simplify) by analogy. The moment someone mentions the programmer, it does neither. On the contrary, it suddenly persuades and explains the contrary view by analogy.

Michael

[Peter]

The following may be of some interest, and a bit different. I found the following on my computer without attribution. I think the headings for each topic are mine. And I think these quotes are all from George H. Smith or were quoted by Ghs.

Peter

The self-evident, Naive Philosophical view:

“After several centuries of arrogant proclamations, no determinist has come up with anything like a theory determining all of men's actions. Surely the burden of proof must rest on the one advancing a theory, particularly when the theory contradicts man's primary impressions.”

The self contradictory view:

“For determinism, as applied to man, is a self-contradictory thesis, since the man who employs it relies implicitly on the existence of free will . . . In short, the determinist must rely, for the spread of his ideas, on the nondetermined, free-will choices of others, on their free will to adopt or reject his ideas." (*Scientism and Values," ed. Schoeck and Wiggins, p. 161.)

The semantics issue –is it an island or a peninsula?

“I would never use this kind of language -- i.e., I would never say that I have "no choice" but to marry someone (unless perhaps it is literally a shotgun wedding) -- and I don't recall ever meeting someone who thinks like this. Moreover, to say that a person has "no reason to choose otherwise" in no way implies that his choice is causally determined -- unless, of course, we fail to understand the nature of "reasons" and insist on treating them like mechanistic causes . . . The soft determinist want to substitute the *interpersonal* concept of a *voluntary,* non-coerced choice with the *intrapersonal* concept of a *free* choice. This merely bypasses the problem by cashing in on various meanings of "free." Lord Acton once estimated that the word "freedom" has been defined in 200 different ways. Although this rich vein of definitions may provide a good deal of wiggle room for the determinist, the practice of hopping from one definition to another doesn't solve any philosophical problems . . . The soft determinist may have great faith in the power of this verbal legerdemain to solve complex philosophical problems. But I don't share this interest in word magic, so I will let the matter rest here and move on to more serious issues . . . I stand by my original statement. What Bill regards as "careful analysis," I see as definition-hopping.”

Soft Determinism rejects the sciences of Psychiatry, Psychology, Biology and most Scientific studies of Consciousness.

“In the final analysis, to say that a person acts on the basis of his preferences doesn't tell us anything at all about the free-will problem -- for it doesn't say *how* those preferences are formed; and it doesn't explain how, from a welter of conflicting preferences, one is eventually chosen over others. A theory should have at least some explanatory value, but soft determinism explains nothing at all. It is an article of faith based on the erroneous assumption that "reasons" in the inner world of consciousness function exactly like "causes" in the external world of physical objects.”

“As I said before, I prefer to confront the phenomena of consciousness on their own terms, rather than resort to a pseudo-explanation that, in the final analysis, explains nothing at all. When the soft determinist is able to postulate a causal law of consciousness that will enable us to predict our future thoughts and actions, then I will be impressed. Until then, I will continue to regard soft determinism as a circular method of "explanation" that derives from a inappropriate analogy with physical causation.”

This is from “Mind in Objectivism, A Survey of Objectivist Commentary on Philosophy of Mind” by Diana Mertz Hsieh:

In his two 1986 lectures on free will from The Foundations of Knowledge, David Kelley focuses on the issue of mental causation in order to refute the claim that free will contradicts the law of identity (Kelley 1986). As a result, many of his discussions in these two lectures are extremely relevant to philosophy of mind.

Kelley identifies the source of the apparent conflict between causality and free will as the Humean view of causality, in which events cause other events. As a result of this error, philosophers generally regard causality dependent upon the passage of time, such that to be caused is to be determined by “antecedent factors.” This view of causality obviously conflicts with free will.

In contrast, Kelley argues that the Aristotelian/Objectivist account of causality, in which “causality is a matter of the nature or identity of the objects which act,” does not limit causality to antecedent factors. Rather, it allows for “many different modes of causality in nature,” including simultaneous causality between the levels of organization that emerge in complex systems, such as in conscious organisms. Kelley discusses two basic forms of such simultaneous causality: upward causation and downward causation. In upward causation, entities acting at a lower level of organization simultaneously cause effects on the entities in a higher level of organization. Downward causation is simply the reverse, such that entities acting at a higher level of organization simultaneously cause effects on the entities in a lower level of organization. For Kelley, consciousness is “a higher level phenomenon distinct from the electrical activity of specific parts of the brain.”

Unfortunately, Kelley leaves implicit perhaps the most critical point about such simultaneous causality within complex systems, namely that these lower and higher levels are equally real, with causal powers of their own. Modern analytic philosophy, in contrast, tends to be deeply reductionistic about such levels of organization, such that the higher levels are seen as really “nothing but” the lower levels, such that everything eventually reduces to the microphysical. Consequently, higher levels of organization (including the perceptual level) are seen as less real (if real at all) and the existence of downward causation is denied. The rejection of this “collapsing levels” metaphysics is clearly critical to Kelley's account of causation, even though never explicitly discussed.

Based upon this rich understanding of causality, Kelley argues that both upward and downward causation are involved in consciousness through an example of an animal seeing a predator and fleeing. After tracing the “antecedent factor” causality in both the brain (the lower level) and the mind (the higher level) in this situation, Kelley turns to the connections between these levels of organization. In upward causation, the brain causes changes in consciousness. Thus the visual cortex might upwardly cause perception and the limbic system might upwardly cause recognition and fear. In downward causation, consciousness causes changes in the brain. Thus perception might the “affect the visual cortex by keeping its activities centered on the appropriate object” and fear might determine “which particular set of neural impulses gain control of the motor cortex.” Such simultaneous upward and downward causation, on Kelley's account, is an integral part of any conscious process.

Kelley then specifies the role of all three forms of causality (upward causation, antecedent factors, downward causation) with respect to free will. The “capacity to focus” is an instance of upwards causation because it owes its existence “the nature and structure of the brain.” A person's “specific knowledge,” “hierarchy of values,” and “thinking skills” are all antecedent conditions which “set limits on what it is possible ... to focus on.” But within those limits, the choice to focus or not, to raise or lower one's level of consciousness or not is “pure downward causation.”

The theory of mind Kelley sketches in these lectures is far from complete, but nevertheless promising. His detailed explanation of the Objectivist/Aristotelian alternative to Humean causality and his non-reductionistic view of levels of organization seem indispensable for accounting for mental causation in an Objectivist theory of mind.

[Francisco Ferrer]

Hey, no difference really, but I was the "fictional character in Namibia"...;)

"Fictional" does bring up another critical angle.

I think science - or, really the fault of one modern offshoot of science, skeptical philosophy - has let us down in regard to determinism and free will.

Who knows of any scientist who has bluntly rejected all claims that there exists any connection between 'human' determinism and the law of causality? I don't recall, but there must have been, surely? To anyone with imagination, it's self-obvious that emotions, feelings and thoughts have always powerfully influenced men's behavior. How can anyone assert that his parents were 'meant' (to not just meet), but to mutually react, emotionally, in that unpredictable manner called love? Then to pursue it to the point that a child was born? How many other near-infinite permutations of people and emotions didn't come to pass?

Then imagine backwards to their parents' parents - etc.etc.? Try to 'determine' all that.

I don't know of any non-theological determinist who would say "meant"--for that would imply an intention behind all the forces of the universe, i.e. a supreme being.

The non-theological determinist does not believe that events are "arranged" in such a way as to produce certain results. Rather, nature is blind (to use a form of personification) and, given a particular context, there can only be one result.

It takes the artist, particularly novelists and poets, to come closest to revealing the way of an individual's deepest emotions, mind and character. They show that little always goes to plan, where the human heart and mind are involved... until it does. As the result of his conviction, passion,perseverance and ambition..

'Pre-determine' that combination!

Nothing 'had to be' (as far as man, or one man goes), it simply was and is.

As artist and philosopher, Rand premised Romanticism on man's volition. It seems her artist influenced her intellectual, and the intellectual informed the artist - in order to arrive at her fundamental truths. I think her finest writing on volitional consciousness is in TRM, of all places.

A constrained imagination then, is another consequence of a belief in determinism. It must be a mechanist and robotic world that a determinist inhabits . Except I think he's saved by this one fact, that determinism (like altruism) can't possibly be practised consistently; it can only by theorized. The hardest determinist still constantly 'chooses' -- contrary to his credo.

imo:

a) The causal chain has been increasingly weakened since man came on the scene. Whether he chooses to accept it or not, plainly each man is largely his own cause and effect, where it counts.

b) along with "order", it was man's consciousness which first introduced "randomness" to his world.

The determinist does not discount the role of emotion. Human brains and bodies still, even after millions of years of evolution, react with haste, violence, and passion--with cogitation entering the picture only later.

Why must the determinist's imagination be constrained? Did you think that, like certain religious orders, we place limits on what we allow ourselves to think? For what purpose?

Of course, a determinist chooses. No one has said otherwise. But the choices do not occur in a vacuum. They are the product of previous choices which are prompted by the individual's psychological nature, physical condition, environment--and other forces that the individual had no hand in creating.

Regarding inspiration, the vast array of sense memory our brains store is fertile ground for endless artistic, literary, scientific and entrepreneurial exploration. We do not need to suppose a vaporous soul, spirit or psyche whispering through the gray matter to explain the a person's power to reach deep into the past or make a sudden connection between two apparently unrelated elements.

I have no idea what you mean by practicing determinism consistently--unless it means not to make contradictory statements about free will in a discussion forum.

As for determining oneself, that idea reached full flower in the teachings of the early Christian scholar Origen who held that the soul pre-exists the body. Supposedly we're up there in heaven, and at the proper moment before birth we descend to inhabit the body.

[Brant Gaede]

Brant, And what does it mean to "choose" or to be "making choices"?

I'm not reducing the matter further; we are both speaking, reading and writing standard American English. You seem to be shifting from the mental to the physical person in that the hand reaches for the soda because of the Big Bang with no conceptual, cognitive interference.

--Brant

determinism is like anthropogenic global warming: forward looking models pretending to illuminate the future because of a certain past

[deanwins]

Michael, OK, I see what you are saying. Never the less, it is a case of the same relation between two different things: brain:consciousness computer:info processing

=====

Brant: "You seem to be shifting from the mental to the physical person in that the hand reaches for the soda because of the Big Bang with no conceptual, cognitive interference."

I propose that both are the case at the same time. The former looks at the fundamental process of physics, and the later looks at the meta process of information processing. I think it is rather you that are trivializing the complexity of my view of what consciousness/human mind is. Maybe due to previous proponents of determinism?

For example, in 1936 Alan Turing invented the concept of a Universal Turing Machine. Add to a Universal Turing Machine lots of: sensors and actuators (including sensors that sense unpredictable data), and give it lots of memory and the ability to change its own programs... and now you have closer to an idea of what I think humans are. If you do not study computer science and know what a UTM is... well it is an essential dependency, so if you do not understand than forever the way our minds work will be a mystery to you.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I'm not reducing the matter further...

Brant,

I don't blame you.

I just watched a 3 hour debate (2:45 to be more precise) between a creationist and a science apologist. Here is the video if anyone is interested.

Bill Nye Debates Ken Ham

I was actually surprised by the level of cleverness on both sides. It sure as hell gave me a lot of food for thought. But I kept feeling that both were missing something critical.

Finally, very near the end (2:27:37 to 2:30:07), Nye sums up the problem clearly. He is discussing intelligent design. He finally admits that the view of religion is from the top down and the view from science is from the bottom up, and that the two are incompatible.

Taking religion out of it, I would like to know why this is incompatible. That's rhetorical wondering because I know better. I hold that both top and bottom are fundamental.

Emergence exists and so does form that draws elements into itself. Both are part of reality and both are observable. I don't know why this silly insistence on one or the other--that's simply an arbitrary assumption very similar to any religious faith.

The determinism I see promoted on this thread falls into the same category for me. It's not either determinism or volition. It's both. I won't repeat why (unless someone asks) because I've given my reasons many times in the past, including my position that humans are still evolving, so there is still a lot of reality unperceived at the present.

That's an assumption, of course, but I think it's a far better one than the assumption that humans already perceive all there is to perceive of fundamental reality. Or the assumption that a personified God created all this for His amusement.

Incidentally, one of the best insights I got from that video came from the creationist side and it was about science. (No, I'm not a creationist and I think the concept that the earth is only 6,000 years old is pretty lame. Also, I find the concept of the Judeo-Christian God good storytelling but not very good metaphysics. However, there is a lot more thought that went into the creationist view than those who mock would have you see--for instance some spot on criticisms about the biases of modern science.)

Ham kept dividing science into historical science and observed science. Setting aside his religious agenda, he has a point. Science that unfolds in the present, that you can observe and test and repeat, etc., is one thing. Conjecture about the past based on remains that you examine in the present is quite another. The simple fact is nobody can go into the past and observe what happened. Not for the dinosaurs. Not for the Big Bang. And on the religious side, not for the Garden of Eden.

I found it odd that Nye rejected this distinction, showed visible discomfort every time it was raised, offered no real counterargument, but tried to rebut it with the lame rationalization that since technically we observe everything in the past because it takes time for sensory input to arrive at us and time for our brains to process it, perceiving the present is an illusion. In other words, our perception of the present is the same thing as, say, talking about 200,000 years ago.

It isn't.

Ham has a valid point. I think Nye knows it, but does not want to cede one iota on any important insight like that because he considers Ham's position crackpottery.

Why did I invest that much time in this lecture? I wasn't going to because I was not too keen on taking creationism seriously, but I started seeing two quite brilliant minds giving it their best shot. Even though I think both are wrong at the root, they are still brilliant and I learned a lot from them.

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

Michael, OK, I see what you are saying. Never the less, it is a case of the same relation between two different things: brain:consciousness computer:info processing

=====

Brant: "You seem to be shifting from the mental to the physical person in that the hand reaches for the soda because of the Big Bang with no conceptual, cognitive interference."

I propose that both are the case at the same time. The former looks at the fundamental process of physics, and the later looks at the meta process of information processing. I think it is rather you that are trivializing the complexity of my view of what consciousness/human mind is. Maybe due to previous proponents of determinism?

I am not trivializing just because I'm ignoring your view. I'm not interested in it. What I'm about is how the determinist likes to cover everything with his determinist blanket as the fundamental in any discussion which I regard as psychologically devastating to young, ignorant and unsophisticated minds. In human being I know what is and isn't deterministic and what's practically important to a functioning person. As you well know, other than that you're getting no or little engagement from me. I also tend to avoid discussions about metaphysics and epistemology. Too axiomatic. Reason and reality. Truth. That's why in those discussions I usually only ask if there's an improvement on scientific methodology about. Never any affirmative response. I even abjure most of Rand's ITOE. Concepts exist in the head and metaphysically, if valid, have existential referents. And concepts can be built on top of concepts. Okay. Enough (for me). What I then want is logic, reason, efficient thinking.

If a scientist isn't interested in truth and the way to truth, he's a fraud. Regardless, he doesn't need an ITOE. Never did, never will. He can even believe in God as many do as long as his God (religion) is compartmentalized. Caesar and God.

I understand you et al. find value in these types of give and take. By and large, I don't. I don't disrespect that per se, but I will not tolerate disrespect for human action and being--competence--qua human no matter how implicit only and not meant as such. I'll keep dragging it out of the discussion at hand, hosing it off and do my standard "wax on, wax off."

--Brant

"You didn't make that," the Big Bang made that (same, same)

there is one great value in ITOE: it displaces the philosophical bs taught in college and is an essential part of a "philosophy of reason"

[dldelancey]

Michael, OK, I see what you are saying. Never the less, it is a case of the same relation between two different things: brain:consciousness computer:info processing

=====

Brant: "You seem to be shifting from the mental to the physical person in that the hand reaches for the soda because of the Big Bang with no conceptual, cognitive interference."

I propose that both are the case at the same time. The former looks at the fundamental process of physics, and the later looks at the meta process of information processing. I think it is rather you that are trivializing the complexity of my view of what consciousness/human mind is. Maybe due to previous proponents of determinism?

For example, in 1936 Alan Turing invented the concept of a Universal Turing Machine. Add to a Universal Turing Machine lots of: sensors and actuators (including sensors that sense unpredictable data), and give it lots of memory and the ability to change its own programs... and now you have closer to an idea of what I think humans are. If you do not study computer science and know what a UTM is... well it is an essential dependency, so if you do not understand than forever the way our minds work will be a mystery to you.

I wasn't arguing that the relation does not exist (brain:consciousness computer:info processing). I was arguing that the conclusion drawn from that relation is invalid. If not invalid, then at least not meaningful. So humans are pimped-out UTMs. Okay, based on that assumption, what meaningful conclusion can be drawn from that?

"Someone has to run it... reality changes... it runs."

If the event that changes reality is a category 5 hurricane that blows away your data center, then no, it doesn't run. Unless, of course, someone had a disaster recovery plan in place, and someone enacted that plan. Even so, there's probably some window, during which, it doesn't run.

To follow MSK's line of thought, this someone would be the intelligent designer (or perhaps a proxy). Is this then the meaningful conclusion that we are to draw from the relation (brain:consciousness computer:info processing)? That humans, i.e. pimped-out UTMs, have an intelligent designer? And that we do not yet understand the specifics of the design and/or have not yet met the designer?

[deanwins]

Michael, I agree with your post 100%.

============

I also watched the debate, and I think it helped me solidify my view of the world.

Let me first state my worldview...

Only the current state of our reality exists. The current state of our reality continually changes through a causal process. Time is a measure of how much parts of reality have changed. Relationships between some parts of reality stay intact while other relationships change. Our reality is a fully self consistent system. All fully self consistent systems exist, but such systems cannot interact. This solves the answer to the question "Why does our reality exist?": all permutations of fully self consistent systems exist... but we can only observe parts of the system that we are a part of.

Let me debunk Ken Ham's (creationist) position somewhat...

So lets say that first we use the scientific method to discover increasing understanding the process by which our reality changes. Given that we can simulate this process in reverse, we can make predictions about the past just like we can make predictions about the future. This is what science is all about: making predictions about future observations, and then in the future making the observation and either confirming our prediction process or discovering that our prediction process has a flaw.

This does work the same way for predicting what you might observe when you dig down to a particular layer of the earth and predicting what you will observe soon after you launch a cannonball into the air. One is simulating reality's changes in the forward direction to predict future observations, and one is in the reverse direction to predict future observations. Significant portions of the relations between the parts of reality which make the fossils have remained intact while other parts of reality had changed.

"Historical science" as Ken calls it is a story that is created by using our best current understanding of the process of reality's change, simulated in reverse, performed on our current observations of reality in order to predict what happened in the past. Fully in contradiction to what Ken claims, it is confirmed or denied by future collected evidence.

On the other hand, Ken wants us to believe the story he has created from particular verses he accepts as literally true from an old book. The old book was a translation of previous translations of a story that probably was first not even written but rather told by mouth for generations. The old book has many stories of the past which have been proven to contradict observation, such as the flood story. Using the scientific method, any honest scientist would then reject using the bible as a reliable source for predicting what the past was.

But... let me now argue Ken's point. Conceivably all of what we observe in our reality was created as a computer simulation... and the computer simulation started at 4000 BC. And there is a guy in that other reality, who made the computer and set up the simulation... he goes by the name of "God", or maybe he goes by some other name who cares? But anyways he made our reality look as if things had been intact for billions of years (such as a 4.5 billion year old earth) and created all of the fossil layers etc. So then what we observe as our reality is a subset of his reality, starting at the year 4000 BC. We don't have any EVIDENCE today that such happened other than an old translated book... but none the less, such is a possibility.

Similarly, our reality could have been crafted at the first moment of 2014-01-01, or any other arbitrary past moment. But we have left the realm of using evidence and making predictions about future observations.

I would ask Ken about John 3:16: "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life."... why would such a God make whether we believe in him as the deciding factor as to whether we have eternal happiness or eternal pain (or stop existing depending on whether he believes in hell). Especially since the God hasn't given me any evidence that he exists... more reasonably a God would not want me to accept arbitrary ideas because then I would become the slave of manipulative liars.

Because that is really the essence of what this debate is about. Should we accept things as true because of the evidence we have found ourselves and our own reason? Or should we just accept arbitrary ideas that others tell us?

[deanwins]

Brant: "In human being I know what is and isn't deterministic" I would reword that to "what is and isn't predictable". I assure you I do not mean to "psychologically devastate" anyone. Rather, it is my intention to seek to discover the truth, no matter how devastating it might be. I have both positions at the same time:

1. Reality is fully causal/deterministic (but ridiculously vast in entity quantity and hence ridiculously complex and unpredictable)

2. Currently living humans each individually exist as separate unique distinct parts of reality, and humans determine their own destiny.

Deanna: "If the event that changes reality is a category 5 hurricane that blows away your data center, then no, it doesn't run." If a catagory 5 hurricane blows a person's head at 50 MPH into a slab of concrete, then the brain doesn't run either. But that's the wrong analogy from the perspective of having evolution/natural selection as the programmer of RNA, DNA, and proteins. You have gone into specifics rather than general. Here is the analogy that you were just using:

particular computer in the storm:info processing:catagory 5 hurricane

particular human in the storm:consciousness:catagory 5 hurricane

But I was using:

computers in general: info processing

human-like life forms:consciousness

​And then furthermore... a category 5 hurricane doesn't stop evolution & natural selection. Rather, a category 5 hurricane would be a way that nature culls the "unfit". But life/evolution/natural selection still runs/goes on here on earth, continuing to "program"/"design" RNA, DNA, and proteins.

Anyways... I think we get each others points.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Michael, I agree with your post 100%.

Dean,

Good God!

I'm losing my edge!

Michael

[Selene]

Michael, I agree with your post 100%.

Dean,

Good God!

I'm losing my edge!

Michael

Allow me to offer some help...

A...

[deanwins]

Audioslave: "Be Yourself"

Someone falls to pieces Sleeping all alone

Someone kills the pain Spinning in the silence To finally drift away

Someone gets excited In a chapel yard Catches a bouquet

Another lays a dozen White roses on a grave

To be yourself is all that you can do (2x)

Someone finds salvation in everyone And another only pain

Someone tries to hide himself Down inside himself he prays

Someone swears his true love Until the end of time Another runs away

Separate or united? Healthy or insane?

To be yourself is all that you can do (4x)

And even when you've paid enough, been pulled apart or been held up

With every single memory of the good or bad, Faces of luck

Don't lose any sleep tonight. I'm sure everything will end up alright

You may win or lose... (But) to be yourself is all that you can do (yea)

To be yourself is all that you can do (4x)

http://youtu.be/BShyYZQEmBk

Incubus: "Make Yourself"

If I hadn't made me, I would've been made somehow..

If I hadn't assembled myself, Id've fallen apart by now.

If I hadn't made me, I'd be more inclined to bow.

Powers that be, Would have swallowed me up

But that's more than I can allow.

But...

If you let them make you, they'll make you Paper-Mache

At a distance you're strong, until the wind comes

Then you'll crumble and blow away.

If you let him fuck you there will be no foreplay.

Rest assured, They'll screw you complete, Until your ass is blue and grey!

You should make amends with you,

If only for better health. (Better health)

But if you really want to live,

Why not try, and Make your self?

Make your self (Make your self)

If I hadn't made me, I'd have fallen apart by now.

I won't let them make me..It's more than I can allow.

So when I make me, I won't be paper-Mache..

And if I fuck me...I'll fuck me in my own way.

Fuck me in my own way (4x)

You should make amends with you,

If only for better health (Better health)

But if you really want to live,

Why not try, and Make your self?

Make your self (4x)

[dldelancey]

Dean,

I think we also have proven, or at least provided some evidence, that you're a software engineer, and I'm a business analyst. And yes, I realize that you and I are maybe the only ones who will "get" that.

[deanwins]

So humans are pimped-out UTMs. Okay, based on that assumption, what meaningful conclusion can be drawn from that?

Deanna,

1. It will give insights to engineers on the chance for success in enhancing a human's intelligence and abilities, either biologically or with high bandwidth brain-computer-machine interfaces. I actually give a physical description of what human "consciousness" is and what a "choice" is. To me its a breakthrough in understanding ourselves and gives us a greater insight in what can be.

1->Definitions of all sorts of words now have underlying physical meanings... "Love is a feeling that sprouts from the recognition of our deepest values." "Choosing is a process of comparing simulated outcomes of potential actions, and selecting the action having the greatest predicted goal attainment." "A feeling is direct sensory/information in such high details that it cannot be translated into words and is highly integrated with the particular neural/sensory network that had the information, too much detail to feasibly entirely record and recall at a later time, and impossible to communicate intact to another distinct neural network due to differences in the sensory network between the two entities."

2. Recognizing that the brain has physical features that impact its short term memory read/write bandwidth, short/long term memory size, deductive/serial computational operations per second, visual/parallel processing operations per second, limits in quantity of details in reality simulation... Differences between people on all of these features. Differences on a particular person through life from young to old. Differences on a particular person through a day. Differences due to nutritional and sleep quality. The recognition that intelligence/problem solving ability is not equal between people.

2-> Maintaining your health is essential for maximizing your mental performance... mental performance is absolutely not independent from health.

2-> That some people will forever have to take other people's word on things, because they are unable to know and understand all prerequisites and verify complex truth for themselves, and hence as long as there is unequal intellectual ability distributed through the population there will always be manipulators and manipulated (faith/religion).

1+2-> Work to find out why some people can learn faster, know more languages, a larger vocabulary, etc etc... and improve ourselves by putting together the best features of all designs.

Re: software engineer vs business analyst... I see a feature that is awesome, but fail to anticipate that others would recognize its implications... and you come to understand the feature and help translate it into how it can meet our needs for the less tech savvy? You know what the customer wants verses I get distracted by all sorts of unnecessary flashy features?

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Human beings are metaphysical feature-creep Rube Goldberg machines?

Hmmmm...

Michael

[anthony]

"Edges into..."? "Unfortunately"?

From where does the justification for the ethical-political derive, if not the metaphysical-epistemological??

You may derive ethics from metaphysics, but you have no basis for declaring that the determinist must be an altruist. If he must be, you must account for why I am not one.

That's what I meant earlier by the free market as "floating abstraction". It is not so, but that's how it is mostly treated and viewed by its opponents and proponents, alike - its foundations are largely ignored or dismissed. But if we don't know (or don't choose to know)the metaphysical-epistomological-ethical how's and why's of the free market, it will be lost to us.

Earlier you wrote, "In essence the skeptic switches his deity, from god to--whatever: the authority of collectivism or State, or even Science, or perhaps the floating abstraction of the free market." Since nothing in that statement describes me or anyone else participating in this discussion, it is altogether irrelevant.

I have no doubt about what the free market is, including its metaphysical-epistemological-ethical foundations. And since I haven't wavered in my support of laissez-faire for fifty years, there's scarcely a chance that the ideal will be lost to me.

"Millions of years before our births..." events unfolded that eventuated in man. A conscious and self-aware man. Therefore one who can select and direct his thought.

For once and all, I re-iterate there is no false alternative i.e.: all determined - or - all self-determined. I have not argued this.

No one said you had argued that a person's choices must be all "determined - or - all self-determined." I am simply juxtaposing to the free will argument my position: that all acts of wanting, favoring, deciding, selecting, and preferring are 100% dependent on prior environmental and/or biological forces.

You may say that the number is slightly or considerably less than 100%. But the essential point is that you think that some brain activity occurs without being determined. And it is just there that we disagree.

What I have argued reminds me of someone telling me once that men are 99% animal and one per-cent intelligent beings. Just for the moment accepting his arbitrary assertion, I responded - yeah, but look at what men or a single man can do with one per cent! Same for free-will. That small distinction is a defining charcteristic of man..

Actually, we don't need free will to define man. We can do that entirely by comparing human DNA samples with those of other animals.

SELF-sacrifice is willing, voluntary and volitional self-abnegation of one's independent mind to prevailing morality(ies). This is very distinct from FORCED sacrifice. As an over-lap, self-sacrifice might well be accompanied by (psychological) coercion, I suspect.

Good, we can both take a stance once and for all against forced sacrifice.

It boils down to ... one is as 'determined' as one chooses to be.

An immense contradiction in terms!

Once again, my position is that all brain activity is the result of biological-environmental context. A human can choose to move a chess piece on a board. So can a computer.

The computer does not need "free will" to select a rook ♜ and direct it to a particular square.

Neither does a human.

I think its conceptual axis is skepticism-determinism-collectivism, as opposed to the objectivity-free will-independence-rational egoism axis.

You can lump together any group of ideas and call them an "axis." Someone with equal validity could talk about the fascist-Zionist-vegetarian-anti-inflation axis.

Ayn Rand had some interesting thoughts about package-dealing.

How much might one avoid his ultimate, personal responsibility for his thoughts and actions, in the determinist credo? How little credit (and therefore, self-esteem) may one accept to oneself, if character, conviction, virtue and philosophy has all been pre-determined?

In a free society with a rational legal code, each individual is held responsible for his own actions. If you throw a brick through a shop window, it should not make any difference under the law whether you do it because the owner was a member of a hated ethnic group or because you like the sound of glass tinkling.

Understanding motives does not excuse actions.

You misunderstand me on your last point, but it is revealing that you should consider self-responsibility through a societal and individual rights lens. i.e., "held responsible" to not throw bricks through a window.

I earlier distinguished self-sacrifice from forced sacrifice; now I mention the determinist avoiding "ultimate, personal responsibility for his thoughts and actions." To each example, you recognised only the coercive sacrifice (political) in the first, and the "legal code" in the other.

SELF-responsibility; SELF-sacrifice - to- and of - oneself. Nobody else involved..

As moral a system as individual rights is, it is not a morality in itself, but a guardian of morality.

Which presupposes men holding a morality, ideally a rational one.

Responsibility to self - i.e. in thoughts, character and actions - is the primary. It necessitates a person constantly reasoning and then acting with consistency on the principles he holds true, those of objective reality. His effort and integrity in the quest are all his own doing, as are attaining any rightful fruits of his efforts - which is why rights have to be implemented, to bar intervention by others.

It has nothing, (primarily) to do with society or other people. It is for his own sake.

But that takes free will. Rational selfishness requires free will.

Determinism negates the self, and so is self-sacrificial.

[deanwins]

Random : Unpredictable causal event

Free Will : Causal unpredictable choice

"Rational selfishness requires free will." Accepted given the two definitions above.

"Determinism negates the self, and so is self-sacrificial." True for prior primitive deterministic philosophy. Invalid for latest deterministic philosophy. Or say, I am using deterministic in the physical science sense, not the philosophical group of thought sense.

"As moral a system as individual rights is, it is not a morality in itself, but a guardian of morality." Individual rights as written on paper is a description of rules of interactions between people. A moral system is a vast collection of ideas all related in the purpose of achieving a collection of goals. Morality of a person is the extent at which the effect of their actions increase their goal attainment. There are two kinds of moral systems: 1. Rule based: you follow the rules and either are moral by following them or are not moral by disobeying them; 2. Life based: there's no limit to what one's goals can be nor the extent at which the goals can be more satisfied. Individual rights is a rule based moral system. Accepted as a goal for a person to obey, it becomes their moral system, their bases for their morality.

[Selene]

Random : Unpredictable causal event

Free Will : Causal unpredictable choice

Dean:

Skinner argued that if he knew all the forces that could effect you flipping a coin, he would be able to predict, with absolute certainty whether the coin would land on the head side, the tail side, or on it's edge.

He then trtansformed that statement into stating the same about humans.

He was the ultimate behavioral determinist.

A...

[Francisco Ferrer]

You misunderstand me on your last point, but it is revealing that you should consider self-responsibility through a societal and individual rights lens. i.e., "held responsible" to not throw bricks through a window.

We hold the individual responsible because individuals are the only rationally definable units in a society. Again, see Mises on methodological individualism

I earlier distinguished self-sacrifice from forced sacrifice; now I mention the determinist avoiding "ultimate, personal responsibility for his thoughts and actions." To each example, you recognised only the coercive sacrifice (political) in the first, and the "legal code" in the other.

SELF-responsibility; SELF-sacrifice - to- and of - oneself. Nobody else involved..

Nobody is avoiding anything here. Legal/moral responsibility is a matter entirely separate from the question of whether or not there is a long chain of causation that results in a particular thought or action. Is my "free will" responsible for me running a red light? No, because there ain't no such thing. No ghost in the machine saying, "Boo!" Am I, as an individual, legally and morally responsible for actions under a rational legal code? Of course, because the individual is the basic unit of criminal law.

As moral a system as individual rights is, it is not a morality in itself, but a guardian of morality.

Which presupposes men holding a morality, ideally a rational one.

Responsibility to self - i.e. in thoughts, character and actions - is the primary. It necessitates a person constantly reasoning and then acting with consistency on the principles he holds true, those of objective reality. His effort and integrity in the quest are all his own doing, as are attaining any rightful fruits of his efforts - which is why rights have to be implemented, to bar intervention by others.

It has nothing, (primarily) to do with society or other people. It is for his own sake.

But that takes free will. Rational selfishness requires free will.

Determinism negates the self, and so is self-sacrificial.

Nope, I've never had to depend upon the existence of free will to come to a conclusion about whether or not something is in my self-interest--any more than a computer depends on free will in order to win a chess game.