Science proves choice is noise

[Wolf DeVoon]

Mike at his best, interviewed at a heavy equipment show.

 

[moralist]

Mike at his best, interviewed at a heavy equipment show.

Not watching TV, up to today I had no idea who this guy was.

Trades are the American Wild West... a wide open Capitalist frontier full of risk and reward... stretching before for any autonomous American pioneer with the passion to explore it.

Greg

[SoAMadDeathWish]

Consciousness is reducible to nothing more than physical processes in the brain. It is not something that acts "above" those processes. It is those processes.

And, strictly speaking, choice is an illusion, since all thoughts are the outcome of purely deterministic physical laws.

Having expressed those two statements... do you regard humans as being morally accountable for their actions?

Greg

Yes.

[moralist]

Consciousness is reducible to nothing more than physical processes in the brain. It is not something that acts "above" those processes. It is those processes.

And, strictly speaking, choice is an illusion, since all thoughts are the outcome of purely deterministic physical laws.

Having expressed those two statements... do you regard humans as being morally accountable for their actions?

Greg

Yes.

Can you explain how a person can morally choose when, according to you, choice is only an illusion?

And can you explain how people can be conscious of their choice when, according to you, consciousness is only physical chemical reactions in the brain?

[BaalChatzaf]

And can you explain how people can be conscious of their choice when, according to you, consciousness is only physical chemical reactions in the brain?

It is an electrochemical process that happens to manifest itself in subjective modes of awareness. Just accept it. The ions flow in our bodies and we are aware. It is a basic fact.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[moralist]

And can you explain how people can be conscious of their choice when, according to you, consciousness is only physical chemical reactions in the brain?

It is an electrochemical process that happens to manifest itself in subjective modes of awareness.

So which is the horse that pulls the cart, electrochemical processes, or awareness?

Greg

[BaalChatzaf]

And can you explain how people can be conscious of their choice when, according to you, consciousness is only physical chemical reactions in the brain?

It is an electrochemical process that happens to manifest itself in subjective modes of awareness.

So which is the horse that pulls the cart, electrochemical processes, or awareness?

Greg

The electrochemical processes are real. Awareness is an epi-phenomenon of the underlying electro-chemical processes

Ba'al chatzaf

[Brant Gaede]

It's all electrical, ya know.

--Brant

plugged in

[moralist]

And can you explain how people can be conscious of their choice when, according to you, consciousness is only physical chemical reactions in the brain?

It is an electrochemical process that happens to manifest itself in subjective modes of awareness.

So which is the horse that pulls the cart, electrochemical processes, or awareness?

Greg

The electrochemical processes are real. Awareness is an epi-phenomenon of the underlying electro-chemical processes

Ba'al chatzaf

If chemical reactions are the sole "underlying" determinant of your own personal behavior... then you are not morally accountable for your behavior since you have no free will to act contrary to the chemical reactions in your brain. So you are powerless to act contrary to every thought and emotion that happens to wander through your head.

If someone gives you just the right chemical, you will behave morally, and if they give you another chemical, you will behave immorally. So your behavior is completely controlled by chemical reactions. You are all brain with no choice but to be enslaved to respond to chemical stimuli ... and have no mind with which to freely make moral choices..

You share the view of the popular collective liberal narcoculture where no one is morally responsible for their own personal behavior. It's all just chemical reactions. No one has any choice in how they behave..

Greg

[SoAMadDeathWish]

Can you explain how a person can morally choose when, according to you, choice is only an illusion?

And can you explain how people can be conscious of their choice when, according to you, consciousness is only physical chemical reactions in the brain?

Only "choice" in the sense of "having chosen one could always have chosen otherwise" is an illusion. Having made a certain choice, we can infer the beliefs, preferences, and values of the person and can conclude that they would always make the same choice under identical circumstances. However, they do have the "freedom" to make a real choice regardless, as long as we understand that an individual's choice depends only on his own beliefs, preferences, values, and deliberations.

As for the second question, it is nonsensical because it presupposes the possibility of choice in the first sense. You first have to demonstrate that that kind of free will is possible, but this will be difficult for you since that kind of free will contradicts the known laws of physics.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

If all choice is an illusion, I wonder what real reality is and how anyone can know it.

Using this standard, you certainly can't choose to know it without being a victim to an illusion.

The real nonsense: excluding the agency of the decreer from decrees about everything else.

Michael

[anthony]

And can you explain how people can be conscious of their choice when, according to you, consciousness is only physical chemical reactions in the brain?

It is an electrochemical process that happens to manifest itself in subjective modes of awareness.

So which is the horse that pulls the cart, electrochemical processes, or awareness?

Greg

The electrochemical processes are real. Awareness is an epi-phenomenon of the underlying electro-chemical processes

Ba'al chatzaf

If chemical reactions are the sole "underlying" determinant of your own personal behavior... then you are not morally accountable for your behavior since you have no free will to act contrary to the chemical reactions in your brain. So you are powerless to act contrary to every thought and emotion that happens to wander through your head.

If someone gives you just the right chemical, you will behave morally, and if they give you another chemical, you will behave immorally. So your behavior is completely controlled by chemical reactions. You are all brain with no choice but to be enslaved to respond to chemical stimuli ... and have no mind with which to freely make moral choices..

You share the view of the popular collective liberal narcoculture where no one is morally responsible for their own personal behavior. It's all just chemical reactions. No one has any choice in how they behave..

Greg

Yup, and how. There can't be a more effective way to abscond from self-responsibility, or to allow others their lack of responsibility, than to claim pre-determinism. Now that we have achieved some further degree of civilisation and knowledge, determinists can cry: "It couldn't have happened any other way!"

Oh yes, it could. Thankfully, there've been enough pioneers and solid creators and honest "average Joe's" who knew better, allowing determinists the luxury of their 'scientific' faith. A nightmare to end all nightmares would be to dream that their numbers are increasing all around, those who believe that integrity, conviction and morality are all a matter of 'what went before'-- and to wake up and realise it wasn't a nightmare after all, but happening.

[SoAMadDeathWish]

Yup, and how. There can't be a more effective way to abscond from self-responsibility, or to allow others their lack of responsibility, than to claim pre-determinism. Now that they have achieved some degree of civilisation and knowledge, determinists can cry: "It couldn't have happened any other way!"

Oh yes, it could. Thankfully, there've been enough pioneers and solid creators and honest "average Joe's" who knew better, allowing determinists the luxury of their faith. A nightmare to end all nightmares would be to dream that their numbers are increasing all around, those who believe that integrity, conviction and morality are all a matter of 'what went before'-- and to wake up and realise it wasn't a nightmare after all, but happening.

In your view, is it possible that, given a complete description of a person's neurology, beliefs, preferences, values, and deliberations and a proof that those factors (absent any other factors not taken into account here) will cause the person to choose X, that that person could choose something other than X? If so, what would be the cause of the person choosing "not-X"?

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

In your view, is it possible that, given a complete description of a person's neurology, beliefs, preferences, values, and deliberations and a proof that those factors (absent any other factors not taken into account here) will cause the person to choose X, that that person could choose something other than X? If so, what would be the cause of the person choosing "not-X"?

Illusion?

btw - How do you prove anything since proof is based on choice? Is all proof based on illusion?

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

... given a complete description of a person's neurology, beliefs, preferences, values, and deliberations...

If it is given, somebody gave that. If if they gave that, they chose what to give. Did they suffer from an illusion when they so chose?

Seeing that all choice is an illusion.

And if so, why on earth would anyone take an illusion from another seriously?

Inquiring minds so desperately seek enlightenment to escape the constant illusions that keep one up at night...

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

... given a complete description of a person's neurology, beliefs, preferences, values, and deliberations...

If it is given, somebody gave that. If if they gave that, they chose what to give. Did they suffer from an illusion when they so chose?

Seeing that all choice is an illusion.

And if so, why on earth would anyone take an illusion from another seriously?

Michael

Our poster is beating around the bush abandoning her undefensible position of pure determinism. Choice, of course, is suffused with all sorts of whatevers that go into choice including genetic predisposition. For instance, unlike some members of the cat family humans are necessarily social animals. You need more than one hero to take on the Cave Bears and that nasty tribe next door and little baby Johnny and little baby Mary need Mother Jane to protect and nurture them while Dad--Dads--brings home the Wolly Mammoth and young, luscious human captive females for work and breeding. What cannot be denied is human consciousness itself with its conceptual reasoning abilities and why, in its youth--right now--humans can use their brains to trade instead of raid and seduce instead of rape and live in peace instead of war and having a great and wonderful productive time with it all. If we had no need of choosing we would have no need of thinking--using and manipulating concepts. We would liklely just grunt at each other.

--Brant

live long and prosper

[SoAMadDeathWish]

In your view, is it possible that, given a complete description of a person's neurology, beliefs, preferences, values, and deliberations and a proof that those factors (absent any other factors not taken into account here) will cause the person to choose X, that that person could choose something other than X? If so, what would be the cause of the person choosing "not-X"?

Illusion?

btw - How do you prove anything since proof is based on choice? Is all proof based on illusion?

Michael

... given a complete description of a person's neurology, beliefs, preferences, values, and deliberations...

If it is given, somebody gave that. If if they gave that, they chose what to give. Did they suffer from an illusion when they so chose?

Seeing that all choice is an illusion.

And if so, why on earth would anyone take an illusion from another seriously?

Inquiring minds so desperately seek enlightenment to escape the constant illusions that keep one up at night...

Michael

Your questions are all based on an equivocation of two entirely different meanings of the word "choice". I did not claim that the phenomenon of choice itself is an illusion, but rather that choice, in the sense of "having chosen, it is always possible one could always have chosen otherwise" (the first meaning), is an illusion. What choice really is, is the outcome of the beliefs, values, preferences, and deliberations of a person's mind, themselves products of purely deterministic processes. Choice, in this second sense, is not an illusion.

Our poster is beating around the bush abandoning her undefensible position of pure determinism. Choice, of course, is suffused with all sorts of whatevers that go into choice including genetic predisposition. For instance, unlike some members of the cat family humans are necessarily social animals. You need more than one hero to take on the Cave Bears and that nasty tribe next door and little baby Johnny and little baby Mary need Mother Jane to protect and nurture them while Dad--Dads--brings home the Mamouth and young luscious human captive females for work and breeding. What cannot be denied is human consciousness itself with its conceptual reasoning abilities and why, in its youth--right now--humans can use their brains to trade instead of raid and seduce instead of rape and live in peace instead of war and having a great and wonderful productive time with it all. If we had no need of choosing we would have no need of thinking--using and manipulating concepts. We would liklely just grunt at each other.

--Brant

live long and prosper

My position was never purely determinist, it was always compatibilist.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

However, they do have the "freedom" to make a real choice regardless, as long as we understand that an individual's choice depends only on his own beliefs, preferences, values, and deliberations.

How do these arise?

Automatically?

(Well... some actually do, but not all.)

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

In your view, is it possible that, given a complete description of a person's neurology, beliefs, preferences, values, and deliberations and a proof that those factors (absent any other factors not taken into account here) will cause the person to choose X, that that person could choose something other than X? If so, what would be the cause of the person choosing "not-X"?

Illusion?

btw - How do you prove anything since proof is based on choice? Is all proof based on illusion?

Michael

... given a complete description of a person's neurology, beliefs, preferences, values, and deliberations...

If it is given, somebody gave that. If if they gave that, they chose what to give. Did they suffer from an illusion when they so chose?

Seeing that all choice is an illusion.

And if so, why on earth would anyone take an illusion from another seriously?

Inquiring minds so desperately seek enlightenment to escape the constant illusions that keep one up at night...

Michael

Your questions are all based on an equivocation of two entirely different meanings of the word "choice". I did not claim that the phenomenon of choice itself is an illusion, but rather that choice, in the sense of "having chosen, it is always possible one could always have chosen otherwise" (the first meaning), is an illusion. What choice really is, is the outcome of the beliefs, values, preferences, and deliberations of a person's mind, themselves products of purely deterministic processes. Choice, in this second sense, is not an illusion.

Our poster is beating around the bush abandoning her undefensible position of pure determinism. Choice, of course, is suffused with all sorts of whatevers that go into choice including genetic predisposition. For instance, unlike some members of the cat family humans are necessarily social animals. You need more than one hero to take on the Cave Bears and that nasty tribe next door and little baby Johnny and little baby Mary need Mother Jane to protect and nurture them while Dad--Dads--brings home the Mamouth and young luscious human captive females for work and breeding. What cannot be denied is human consciousness itself with its conceptual reasoning abilities and why, in its youth--right now--humans can use their brains to trade instead of raid and seduce instead of rape and live in peace instead of war and having a great and wonderful productive time with it all. If we had no need of choosing we would have no need of thinking--using and manipulating concepts. We would liklely just grunt at each other.

--Brant

live long and prosper

My position was never purely determinist, it was always compatibilist.

Gee, is this the first time you've used this word?

Let me look it up.

--Brant

education on the fly

edit: okay, I'm something of a compatibilist and something not of a compatibilist, but I don't mix up determined and not determined

Edited July 1, 2014 by Brant Gaede

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Your questions are all based on an equivocation of two entirely different meanings of the word "choice". I did not claim that the phenomenon of choice itself is an illusion, but rather that choice, in the sense of "having chosen, it is always possible one could always have chosen otherwise" (the first meaning), is an illusion. What choice really is, is the outcome of the beliefs, values, preferences, and deliberations of a person's mind, themselves products of purely deterministic processes. Choice, in this second sense, is not an illusion.

This is pure rationalistic gibberish.

It is a distinction that is not based on what one can observe, starting with agency itself.

Michael

[anthony]

Yup, and how. There can't be a more effective way to abscond from self-responsibility, or to allow others their lack of responsibility, than to claim pre-determinism. Now that they have achieved some degree of civilisation and knowledge, determinists can cry: "It couldn't have happened any other way!"

Oh yes, it could. Thankfully, there've been enough pioneers and solid creators and honest "average Joe's" who knew better, allowing determinists the luxury of their faith. A nightmare to end all nightmares would be to dream that their numbers are increasing all around, those who believe that integrity, conviction and morality are all a matter of 'what went before'-- and to wake up and realise it wasn't a nightmare after all, but happening.

In your view, is it possible that, given a complete description of a person's neurology, beliefs, preferences, values, and deliberations and a proof that those factors (absent any other factors not taken into account here) will cause the person to choose X, that that person could choose something other than X? If so, what would be the cause of the person choosing "not-X"?

The common retort from determinists is an all or nothing one, which is a false alternative. Of course, what went before has weight in one's life. What one can determine for oneself, one can, and the degree is fluid and increasing, not fixed. The cause of a person choosing "not-X" is self-interestedly wanting more (or less), or wanting different. I think it begins with realizing 'the possibility' through awareness and self awareness. Convictions and character are then perceivable and attainable, and they are the essential conscious foundation of chosen actuality.

[Brant Gaede]

NOTICE NOTICE NOTICE NOTICE NOTICE NOTICE NOTICE NOTICE NOTICE NOTICE NOTICE

OL is one tough SOB of a place!

--Brant

not me--I'm just a pussy--if I bitch slap someone it's just with reality (you know, benevolent universe!)

[SoAMadDeathWish]

However, they do have the "freedom" to make a real choice regardless, as long as we understand that an individual's choice depends only on his own beliefs, preferences, values, and deliberations.

How do these arise?

Automatically?

(Well... some actually do, but not all.)

Michael

No one knows how exactly consciousness arises from neural activity, but it's ridiculous to believe that it doesn't.

Your questions are all based on an equivocation of two entirely different meanings of the word "choice". I did not claim that the phenomenon of choice itself is an illusion, but rather that choice, in the sense of "having chosen, it is always possible one could always have chosen otherwise" (the first meaning), is an illusion. What choice really is, is the outcome of the beliefs, values, preferences, and deliberations of a person's mind, themselves products of purely deterministic processes. Choice, in this second sense, is not an illusion.

This is pure rationalistic gibberish.

It is a distinction that is not based on what one can observe, starting with agency itself.

Michael

Assertions are not arguments.

Yup, and how. There can't be a more effective way to abscond from self-responsibility, or to allow others their lack of responsibility, than to claim pre-determinism. Now that they have achieved some degree of civilisation and knowledge, determinists can cry: "It couldn't have happened any other way!"

Oh yes, it could. Thankfully, there've been enough pioneers and solid creators and honest "average Joe's" who knew better, allowing determinists the luxury of their faith. A nightmare to end all nightmares would be to dream that their numbers are increasing all around, those who believe that integrity, conviction and morality are all a matter of 'what went before'-- and to wake up and realise it wasn't a nightmare after all, but happening.

In your view, is it possible that, given a complete description of a person's neurology, beliefs, preferences, values, and deliberations and a proof that those factors (absent any other factors not taken into account here) will cause the person to choose X, that that person could choose something other than X? If so, what would be the cause of the person choosing "not-X"?

The common retort from determinists is an all or nothing one, which is a false alternative. Of course, what went before has weight in one's life. What one can determine for oneself, one can, and the degree is fluid and increasing, not fixed. The cause of a person choosing "not-X" is self-interestedly wanting more (or less), or wanting different. I think it begins with realizing 'the possibility' through awareness and self awareness. Convictions and character are then perceivable and attainable, and they are the essential conscious foundation of chosen actuality.

Well then let's say we take this cause of the person's having chosen not-x into account along with every other event in reality that could potentially be a cause of a person's choice.

The way I see it, if we take every physical cause of a person's choice into account, then obviously, there can be no further physical causes that would allow the person to choose other than what the physical causes dictate. The only way that a person would then be able to choose other than what these causes dictate would be through a supernatural cause.

So either you believe that a person's free will stems from a supernatural source, or you see some other way in which free will is a) based entirely in deterministic natural causes but b) is not itself deterministic.

[Brant Gaede]

SoAMadDeathWish:

"No one knows how exactly consciousness arises from neural activity, but it's ridiculous to believe that it doesn't.

"Well then let's say we take this cause of the person's having chosen not-x into account along with every other event in reality that could potentially be a cause of a person's choice.

"The way I see it, if we take every physical cause of a person's choice into account, then obviously, there can be no further physical causes that would allow the person to choose other than what the physical causes dictate. The only way that a person would then be able to choose other than what these causes dictate would be through a supernatural cause.

"So either you believe that a person's free will stems from a supernatural source, or you see some other way in which free will is a) based entirely in deterministic natural causes but b) is not itself deterministic."

_________________________________________________________

The reason I cannot agree with you is the constant denial of the act of creation through use of consciousness. Use of consciousness makes the nuerons bang away, not just all those other things. It's a merry-go-round in which all the deterministic forces are riding their horses but you too are there riding and deciding what you are going to do when the ride stops and you go get on the ferris wheel.

--Brant

[moralist]

Can you explain how a person can morally choose when, according to you, choice is only an illusion?

And can you explain how people can be conscious of their choice when, according to you, consciousness is only physical chemical reactions in the brain?

Only "choice" in the sense of "having chosen one could always have chosen otherwise" is an illusion.

Then there is no choice and there is no moral accountability.

As for the second question, it is nonsensical because it presupposes the possibility of choice in the first sense.

Of course it's nonsense in your view that you have no free will to choose, and so there is no personal moral accountability for your own behavior.

You first have to demonstrate that that kind of free will is possible, but this will be difficult for you since that kind of free will contradicts the known laws of physics.

Your above statement reveals the root of the difference between our two views.

In my view, people are uniquely moral beings who constantly make moral choices, and so are morally accountable for their own personal behavior... while in your view they are not. Your view of choice being only an illusion is the current popular collective consensus of the secular libertine narcoculture that holds behavior is simply an amoral physical chemical process, and where "managing" people's behavior is simply a matter of giving them the right dope.

So you are deterministic about the act of choosing itself... while I am deterministic only about the just and deserved consequences we set into motion by our choices.

Greg