Proactive Behaviour and Causality

[Roger Bissell]

Michael, for Christ's sake, would you ~please~ stop playing "gotcha" with Bob. :-/ How many times does he have to stand on his head and say "primitive science (so-called)" and refer to modern science as "real science" in order for you to get the idea that when he refers to the "science" of the ancients, he does not mean the term IN THE SAME RESPECT as he means it in regard to physicists of the past 400 years?

Your "gotcha" game, showing Bob is "guilty of a contradiction," relies on your own dropping of the context of the Law of Contradiction -- not to mention the context of Bob's comments. So, cease. Desist!

You want the discussion to be less "esoteric" and less of a "turnoff? Then enough with the defective "contradiction" accusations, OK?

You referred to Bob's denigrating philosophy in relation to science in the current discussion. I saw where Bob referred to the defect of philosophy being that it is qualitative, not quantitative. Rather than a defect, I would call it a limitation, based on philosophy's nature. But on the other hand, philosophy identifies why it is that mathematics and observation and experimental method can work in philosophy. Peikoff's last 3 lectures in "Induction in Physics and Philosophy" are very illuminating in this regard.

As for Aristotle's contributions and influence as a philosopher/scientist/philosopher of science/natural philosopher...some of Aristotle's conclusions about physical nature were simply goofy, and the reverence people had for him as a logician and rational and empirical thinker did indeed impede the development of modern science. (People were unwilling in the Middle Ages and Renaissance to discard some of his battiest notions, out of respect for all the good things he contributed -- in much the same way that some Objectivists are unwilling to discard, for instance, Rand's notions about women Presidents or homosexuals, out of respect for all of her good ideas.) But he also discovered the basic methodology of rational thought, and so he was also a huge influence in that same development.

I know I'm starting to sound like a broken record, but I think that Bob would do well to listen to Peikoff's lectures on induction. He would get a whole new perspective not only on the extent of Peikoff's supposed intellectual deficiences in regard to science and philosophy, but also on the supposed irrelevance of philosophy to science.

REB

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Roger,

I am not playing "gotcha" and I will continue to call Bob on consistency and correctness. I have read post after post after post after post about how science invalidates philosophy, about how Aristotle delayed the progress of humanity for centuries, about how Rand was an ignoramus about math and science, and so on. I let all this go, but if anyone wants to preach this kind of nonsense in multiple and constant posts and try to convince by repetition, the least I personally require is consistency.

Bob's meaning may be obvious to you, but it is certainly not obvious to others who have read all this stuff.

I do not understand you mischaracterizing this as "gotcha." Possibly you did not read the sheer volume of previous posts that I am referring to.

Words mean things.

Michael

[BaalChatzaf]

Roger,

I am not playing "gotcha" and I will continue to call Bob on consistency and correctness. I have read post after post after post after post about how science invalidates philosophy, about how Aristotle delayed the progress of humanity for centuries, about how Rand was an ignoramus about math and science, and so on. I let all this go, but if anyone wants to preach this kind of nonsense in multiple and constant posts and try to convince by repetition, the least I personally require is consistency.

Bob's meaning may be obvious to you, but it is certainly not obvious to others who have read all this stuff.

I do not understand you mischaracterizing this as "gotcha." Possibly you did not read the sheer volume of previous posts that I am referring to.

Words mean things.

Michael

Yup. By science I mean the hypothetico-deductive method. Invented about 400 years ago. I should not have called what the Egyptians did science. It was really a rule of thumb heuristic pragma or practic, not science.

No one did science (in the modern sense of the word) prior to 400 years ago or so.

Do you have it now?

Bob Kolker

[Dragonfly]

On the other hand, Dragonfly's argument has an elegance to it. Just as ancient people thought the gods must be responsible for the natural phenomena they could not understand, so modern man deifies his own poorly understood motives with the magnificent notion that he is the unmoved mover of his own will. I suppose, then, self-esteem would, at best, be relegated to the level of a "necessary fiction."

Seems obvious to me that if self-esteem is a real value, then free will must be a real phenomenon. In psychotherapy we are confronted again and again by the praxis of free will, in contraversion to a life-time's worth of causation and addictions, coming forward out of the mysterious individual human being to say, "No, I am not simply the result of the many forces in my life. Today, this moment, I choose to unwrite the program and begin anew." No respectable therapist would ever claim agency for such a patient's shift. It's something in the individual, something unprecedented and transformative.

Put even more simply, I'm talking about creativity itself. Is creativity an illusion? Can a Dragonfly honestly say that the creation of great art that transforms consciousness and propels the race toward greater and greater levels of awareness is just an inevitable result of Newtonian principles? And if he can, then--and I mean this very seriously--why do we care about any of it?

Is free will a real phenomenon? To answer that question you have to define what you exactly mean by "free will", which is not as trivial as it may seem.

[Paul Mawdsley]

Is free will a real phenomenon? To answer that question you have to define what you exactly mean by "free will", which is not as trivial as it may seem.

Free will: The capacity to initiate an action of mind and/or body that was not necessitated by antecedent actions. The core of consciousness has the ability to generate impulses which initiate actions of consciousness and are the essence of what we call making choices. This same core can also initiate the choice to generate new and creative approaches to integrating information and problem solving, thus generating unique action possibilities that were not prior determined.

Paul

Edited September 11, 2007 by Paul Mawdsley

[BaalChatzaf]

Is free will a real phenomenon? To answer that question you have to define what you exactly mean by "free will", which is not as trivial as it may seem.

Free will: The capacity to initiate an action of mind and/or body that was not necessitated by antecedent actions.

Paul

Are you saying the free will action is uncaused? What made it happen? And why should actions that take place in our brains and nervous systems be exempt from physical-causal laws? Are you implying that our minds are objects that are not subject to physical laws?

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Bob,

Ever heard the phrase "end in itself"? This is the core that Paul mentions.

Michael

[Paul Mawdsley]

Are you saying the free will action is uncaused?

No. I'm suggesting that causation is not as simple as our intuitive perspectives make it out to be. We need to challenge our intuitive concepts of causation. Perhaps causation proceeds from a different dynamic than we have come to imagine. We need to consider if we can discover another choice. Traditionally, causation either proceeds from an ill defined conscious/supernatural agency that initiates actions in things or it proceeds from the transfer of some (possibly supernatural) stuff we call energy that initiates change in otherwise inert matter. Could there be a third choice that could make better sense of the physical realm and the spiritual/mental realm without the need to create arguments for ignoring certain types information, explorations or evidence?

What made it happen?

I did. At least if we are referring to my will. I made a choice. I generated an impulse that caused the action of my consciousness. Just because our intuitive notions of causation cannot accommodate what this means without jumping to conclusions about it being either supernatural or uncaused, it doesn't mean I did not generate the impulse. It means our notions of causation are not up for the challenge of integrating all the evidence. We should improve our notions of causation.

And why should actions that take place in our brains and nervous systems be exempt from physical-causal laws?

I never said this. I do think that the intuitive causal context in which modern physics is set is mistaken, which has lead physics to an incomplete picture of reality and to ignore certain types of evidence.

Are you implying that our minds are objects that are not subject to physical laws?

No. My sensibilities will not be satisfied until we can account for all the evidence within one set of physical and causal laws. In case I haven't made it clear, my own worldview holds no place for gods or ghosts or magic. The supernatural is not an option for explaining what things are and why they behave as they do.

My metaphysics is most in alignment with Nathaniel Branden's from what I can gather reading his work. I bare witness to my own ultimate witness within. There is a unifying centre to my consciousness. It is separate from all my automated systems and responses. It is that which is aware. It is that which experiences existence and reacts to it organismically. It is the core of my being that initiates the actions of my consciousness and who's searchlight guides my creative processes. This core is not simply reactive, it is proactive. It is the driving integrating force of who I am and what I do. It acts according to a relatively simple principle: the principle of integration. My core, and my entire being, is driven from within to act for the purpose of my mental, physical and spiritual integration. It is this perpetual drive to integration that provides the impulse behind my will. It is this perpetual drive, which is not reactive but proactive, that convinces me that our view of causation is missing something. At it's very roots our concept of causation cannot account for the idea of perpetual motion. Intuitively we assume that a thing does not move until it is acted upon. Thus, it can only be reactive. This is what we need to reconsider.

I believe Ellen has pointed in a similar direction when she has noted that there appears to be a breakdown with the conservation of energy when we consider the concept of free will. Somehow it appears will has the ability to add energy to the system by initiating a causal chain that was not present prior to, nor necessitated by, an antecedent. I say this should point us to questioning our view of causation. Our understanding of the law of conservation of energy needs to go deeper into the view of causation at it's base.

Paul

Edited September 12, 2007 by Paul Mawdsley

[Paul Mawdsley]

Bob,

Ever heard the phrase "end in itself"? This is the core that Paul mentions.

Michael

Yes!

Good to see you, Michael. You don't look a day older. Shauna wants to know if you have some kind of nervous condition that stops you from moving your hand away from your chin.

Paul

Edited September 12, 2007 by Paul Mawdsley

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Paul,

It's great to see you back!

(pssssss... Don't blow my cover. I'm supposed to look like one badass heavy thinker...)

Michael

[BaalChatzaf]

My metaphysics is most in alignment with Nathaniel Branden's from what I can gather reading his work. I bare witness to my own ultimate witness within. There is a unifying centre to my consciousness. It is separate from all my automated systems and responses. It is that which is aware. It is that which experiences existence and reacts to it organismically. It is the core of my being that initiates the actions of

What you are referring to is what Daniel Dennett calls The Cartesian Theater. Dennett deconstructs this as a kind of "optical illusion" in his book -Consciousness Explained-.

See also

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartesian_theater

The fallacy of the Cartesian Theater leads to mind body dualism.

It also causes hair to grow on your palms and leads to blindness.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Edited September 12, 2007 by BaalChatzaf

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I like that term "optical illusion" in a context where mind is said not to exist.

The implications are astounding.

Michael

[Paul Mawdsley]

What you are referring to is what Daniel Dennett calls The Cartesian Theater. Dennett deconstructs this as a kind of "optical illusion" in his book -Consciousness Explained-.

See also

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartesian_theater

The fallacy of the Cartesian Theater leads to mind body dualism.

It also causes hair to grow on your palms and leads to blindness.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Consider the possibility that you have not correctly identified what I am referring to and that you need to gather more evidence, reevaluate and possibly create new integrations. I am in no way a dualist. Perhaps your, and Daniel Dennett's, intuitive causal context cannot allow for another way of conceiving the evidence. The Cartesian Theater is just another version of agent-to-action causation that I would never agree with. When combined with physical action-to-action causation it produces dualism. These are exactly what I am saying need to be reevaluated. Just because I do not ignore that I am witness to a seemingly proactive core to my consciousness, this doesn't imply I accept the Cartesian Theater or dualism.

Paul

I was always told it was something else that causes hair to grow on my palms and leads to blindness. I'm actually looking for something that causes hair to grow on my head.

Edited September 12, 2007 by Paul Mawdsley

[Dragonfly]

Free will: The capacity to initiate an action of mind and/or body that was not necessitated by antecedent actions.

How do you know that this capacity exists?

[Brant Gaede]

Free will: The capacity to initiate an action of mind and/or body that was not necessitated by antecedent actions.

How do you know that this capacity exists?

We don't. How about the validity of this statement?: The capacity to initiate action of mind and/or body.

That we have free will is a theory. That we don't is trying to prove a negative--and to do so using free will, a contradiction. The only question, it seems to me, is whether free will theory(ies) is (are) falsifiable. To say, btw, that things could not have been different is to look at history with no imagination and is also trying to prove (through mere assertion too!) a negative. (However, can anyone actually "prove" a positve outside a logical costruct.?)

--Brant

Edited September 12, 2007 by Brant Gaede

[Dragonfly]

How do you know that this capacity exists?

We don't. How about the validity of this statement?: The capacity to initiate action of mind and/or body.

That we have free will is a theory. That we don't is trying to prove a negative--and to do so using free will, a contradiction.

Machines and computers also have the capacity to initiate action. The question is: do they have free will?

The problem with the theory that this action is not necessitated by antecedent actions [actions in the widest sense, namely also anything that happens in the brain, otherwise the definition would be meaningless] is that it is not in accordance with what we know about the physics of the brain. Therefore it is an extraordinary claim that demands extraordinary evidence. What is the evidence?

[Brant Gaede]

How do you know that this capacity exists?

We don't. How about the validity of this statement?: The capacity to initiate action of mind and/or body.

That we have free will is a theory. That we don't is trying to prove a negative--and to do so using free will, a contradiction.

Machines and computers also have the capacity to initiate action. The question is: do they have free will?

The problem with the theory that this action is not necessitated by antecedent actions [actions in the widest sense, namely also anything that happens in the brain, otherwise the definition would be meaningless] is that it is not in accordance with what we know about the physics of the brain. Therefore it is an extraordinary claim that demands extraordinary evidence. What is the evidence?

I am coming to think that arguing for and against free will per se is a waste of time. If you have a belief and can support it by logically impeccable statements and empirical evidence you are cognitively doing your job. When someone says you don't have free will (ha, ha, ha), nobody does (ha, ha, ha), they are only trying to attack cognitive efficacy, yours in particular and generally. They are only trying to let you know that your life is some kind of cosmic joke and you are self deluded. Everything is determined. All one really needs to do in the face of such an assault is to say, "I don't agree, but I'm sorry you have such a low opinion of yourself. Here are my arguments and my evidence about x. You can't refute any of it by denying free will. You must deal with these other things."

--Brant

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I am coming to think that arguing for and against free will per se is a waste of time.

Brant,

Are you arriving at that conclusion on your own?

I am always a bit confused about determinism applied to life. All living things have an innate identity that makes them act in certain manners, but I see life (as a form of existence) as the manifestation of something breaking out of predetermined molds. I even think higher animals have a primitive volitional faculty in the human sense.

I once gave an example that I find perfectly valid. Doggy is lazily drowsy—not exhausted—and laying down. Master comes near with dog biscuit and calls out. Doggy raises its head and looks at the dog biscuit with great interest for several seconds, but then lowers its head and yawns while its tail does a thump or two. Doggy goes to sleep. Doggy has made a value judgment based on free will. Doggy decided between two pleasures at the moment.

Michael

[BaalChatzaf]

I am coming to think that arguing for and against free will per se is a waste of time.

--Brant

Arrrggghhhh. Smart as paint, ye arrreeee.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Dragonfly]

I am coming to think that arguing for and against free will per se is a waste of time. If you have a belief and can support it by logically impeccable statements and empirical evidence you are cognitively doing your job. When someone says you don't have free will (ha, ha, ha), nobody does (ha, ha, ha), they are only trying to attack cognitive efficacy, yours in particular and generally. They are only trying to let you know that your life is some kind of cosmic joke and you are self deluded. Everything is determined. All one really needs to do in the face of such an assault is to say, "I don't agree, but I'm sorry you have such a low opinion of yourself. Here are my arguments and my evidence about x. You can't refute any of it by denying free will. You must deal with these other things."

I don't think arguing for or against free will has to be a waste of time. The problem is that you have to pinpoint first what exactly is meant by "free will". A determinist isn't necessarily against the notion of free will, but you'll have to determine(!) first what you're talking about. I can't remember that I ever laughed at freewillists, and the argument that I must have a low opinion of myself (ha, ha, ha) doesn't hold.

I was surprised to learn that there was on RoR, in general a dull and soporific forum, an interesting discussion about this subject, in which Dean Michael Gores made some good points here and here. He is beginning to understand the issue. (If Rowlands were consistent, he would ban Dean now to the dissent section. But of course he is not consistent.) And yes, even Bill Dwyer made some good points...

[Rodney]

The Dissent section of RoR is, I believe, only for those whose sole object in posting is to belittle AR or her thought--or who at least give that strong impression.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Dragonfly,

I had to laugh on reading Gores's analysis of whether to sleep or continue reading Atlas Shrugged. In arguing against free will, he said the issue is self-determination instead.

Heh.

If there is a self. If it determines. That is free-will.

If the self is determined and merely passes on previous determination in its acts (like a robot), that is not free will.

The true fact is that part of our selves is determined by its nature and part is free will. One does not negate the other. (Of course, I am ignoring the logical runaround of saying that free will is its nature, so free will is actually determined. On that level, everything that exists is "determined" just by existing. However, things get sticky when one realizes that nothing can be determined without a determiner.)

If you like this guy, how about his essay on how to eliminate essentials from definitions, remain mostly concrete-bound and let abstractions flop all over the place? I refer to The Equivocation of Chickens. One thing is interesting in that one. Gores formally stated that he does not consider himself to be human. At his tender age, he did not know enough to try to disguise the logical conclusion of where it all leads to when you use the flawed method of leaving out essentials.

I give him good marks for knowledge in physics and poor marks in philosophy. You are right. His presence on RoR (much less being an insider) is inconsistent if the value is to promote Objectivism. Gores's stated views on metaphysics and epistemology are diametrically opposed to Objectivism. His form of activism is to equivocate chickens.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

The Dissent section of RoR is, I believe, only for those whose sole object in posting is to belittle AR or her thought--or who at least give that strong impression.

Rodney,

That's the impression they want to give, anyway.

I got assigned to the Dissent section, but this was not because I was considered as having as "sole object in posting" "to belittle AR or her thought." Rowlands has stated clearly that he thinks I do not understand Objectivism since I do not agree with his interpretations, and that I am an idiot and so forth. (He has gotten quite nasty when I have pointed out his errors.)

It was because of a discussion about Hugo Chavez and my objection to oversimplifying what Latin American people are. After living there over 30 years, certain kinds of pompous "those people are ..." statements get me riled, especially when they expound on nothing but stereotypes and the person speaking has no real knowledge of what he is talking about.

But underneath that, I got impatient because what I was reading bordered on bigotry (admittedly, in a more benign form) and I am getting less tolerant with bigotry as I get older.

Michael

[Rodney]

Yes, I forgot about that. Maybe I am misinterpreting, but that seems to be the principle that they follow most of the time. It is a good principle for certain types of forums.

Note that they did not send Bill Dwyer to Dissent, and others who agree with most of Objectivism except for certain points, and others who have significant disagreements. I suspect there is something of a personality conflict here.

I should say that the present forum is also a very good format, though I personally do not have much time to delve into debates with those who have such deep differences intellectually.

Edited September 14, 2007 by ashleyparkerangel

[Dragonfly]

The true fact is that part of our selves is determined by its nature and part is free will. One does not negate the other. (Of course, I am ignoring the logical runaround of saying that free will is its nature, so free will is actually determined. On that level, everything that exists is "determined" just by existing. However, things get sticky when one realizes that nothing can be determined without a determiner.)

And what is the problem with that?

If you like this guy, how about his essay on how to eliminate essentials from definitions, remain mostly concrete-bound and let abstractions flop all over the place? I refer to The Equivocation of Chickens. One thing is interesting in that one. Gores formally stated that he does not consider himself to be human. At his tender age, he did not know enough to try to disguise the logical conclusion of where it all leads to when you use the flawed method of leaving out essentials.

I don't know if I like this guy on the basis of two posts. For all I know he may have written the most outrageous bullshit elsewhere. But I liked the fact that he (at least in these posts) didn't pontificate and didn't scoff at other people, but that he was more or less thinking aloud, not dogmatic and pretending to have all the answers. And in his post about the chickens he also made a good point, which you probably missed, given your derision.