do you think it would be better for people to be raise people somewhat robotically but intelligently as opposed to having complete freedom for people to waste their lives away. in one way they have a more of an open mind if you brainwash them to think a sertain way so its in a way giving freedom of choice.
At first I was like, why the hell would this person even wonder about such a thing, bearing in mind the practical impossiblilty of ‘raising someone robotically’. But anyway, my take:
It would not be better for any one person or a set of people to program others to act in a cretain way or live a certain way. I love freedom for what it is, I thrive on it. First of all I wouldn’t trust anyone to take control over my life, to gear me towards whatever objective. I think that people generally want to live their lives based on their speed, strength, ability, preference etc. some soar above expectations, some more end up “not doing much” and others do evil things. But this does not open grounds for any individual or group to take full control and go about deciding on the life pattern of people… Any such possibility would make way for additional corruption and other vices…
“having complete freedom for people to waste their lives away.”
- I don’t think that we are ever completely free because of the fact that there are so many damn curbs and muzzles!! We are always having to sacrifice our preferences for the sake of doing things the way it was previously prescribed by some authoritative figure…
- With freedom, people don’t necessarily become wastrels, that’s too big of a generality on your part. They merely act and live according to their like. You must be able to think of atleast one person who could have led a better life with increased freedom. I admit there are many individuals out there with much freedom who have wasted away; but I think that this may be attributed to the fact that the ideal oppurtunity has not struck them just yet or perhaps they need to be encouraged some more or some thing…
“in one way they have a more of an open mind if you brainwash them to think a sertain way so its in a way giving freedom of choice.”
In my view, you’re either open-minded or not. The minute you go about brainwashing someone to think a certain way, you have effectively taken away their freedom of choice. The fact that their energy and stream of thought is being channelled towards a particular area, they are made to a large extent -closed-minded.
Githa,
I agree with much of what you say in your above post. We aren’t ever really free, but being brought up in a robotic fashion has it’s own downsides. I think people have been taught in a robotic fashion for hundreds of years. No one is told in grade 1 “we are going to teach you math today, but keep your minds open, since math is the best thing that has worked so far, but it doesn’t mean it is the best, so don’t be afraid to have your own thoughts about it and share them with the class.”
Githa stated:
I understand your frustration with people, I feel it too. I wish it was as simple as to say “you are open minded” and “the other is close minded”, unfortunately it isn’t that way. Some people are open minded about some things and close minded about others, but I don’t believe that any person is completely open minded, nor do I believe that any person is completely close minded. I also agree that brainwashing takes away a person freedom of choice, but not entirely. More importantly, I believe that a person who has been brainwashed to believe one thing, is capable with the right conversational tactic to be shown otherwise. Like in the movie Matrix, it isn’t easy to open peoples eyes, they will fight you, argue with you, hate you, and even kill you for trying to open their eyes. Because they don’t understand. But once you do it, you have saved their soul if you will allow the saying.
The way the education system looks at it is, “there is right and there is wrong, the fact that Columbus discovered America is a fact and therefore right, to say otherwise is wrong. We don’t want people thinking wrong things, so why tell them to keep an open mind? We have to teach people about how things are” what they don’t realize is that teaching is done by humans from books that were written by humans and humans make mistakes. So no matter what may seem as truth, fact, or right - may not be so no matter how simple or basic it might seem. Although, they don’t tell the whole truth, since the whole truth about math is that we did invent it and it is that which has served us best, but it is by no means the solution or in any way perfect, if it was than it would not have needed to be altered at the sub-atomic levels (since otherwise it didn’t work) nor would it have needed to be altered when applied to space. But telling this whole truth casts doubt on the established belief in use, and as people especially at a young age love to do, is demean, make fun of, disbelieve, cast doubt, and generally have anarchy type attitudes. So math wouldn’t go very far, or so they believe, we will never know until we start teaching students to have open minds.
What’s your take?
"The minute you go about brainwashing someone to think a certain way, you have effectively taken away their freedom of choice. "
i meant you go about brainwashing someone to exploit their freedom of choice rather than ignoring it.
Well, in that case, it would definitely not be better than what we have going on right now… in any case I feel that we’re being exploited enough, anymore would be pushing the limits…
and magius, i guess you’re right.
Is it possible to teach anyone anything, though, without brainwashing them in some way?
If you raise a child, is it possible to raise them without indoctrinating them - for better or worse - with your own views and prejudices about what and what is not fact? Is it possible to raise anyone as anything other than a robot given - if I can draw such a long bow - that we are nothing but the sum of our experiences?
JP,
If I understand correctly, according to your logic there would never be any progression because people can’t think of anything new. What I’m trying to say is, people will always think about more complex things, more into the future, etc,etc but to make this habit of thinking better, widespread, and more efficient I believe we should teach people to be open minded and stay away from dogmatic teachings.
Yes, a child growing up in a certain society by certain people will be indoctrinated by these environmental/societal factors, but the important question is “to what degree?”, if we don’t teach people to be open minded than the degree is much deeper, but if we do than people will be more likely to think “outside the box” as the saying goes.
To say we are the sum of our experiences is to commit the fallacy by composition. Rememeber, we are more than the sum of our parts. Have you never thought about an experience that has never actually happened to you? The concept of God cannot exist in the world of human beings being only the sum of their experiences. Math would not be possible, since math works on theoretical axioms that don’t truly exist, ie. the perfect right angle triangle, the perfect square, etc, etc - since a perfect triangle or perfect square doesn’t actually exist in reality.
Your view is also a deterministic one, which is one of the longest unanswered debates in history (whether there is free will or is everything determined). You may truly be onto something. One of the best arguments against it that I have heard is that particle physics is statistical in some areas, like an atom in a vacuum where scientists actually have evidence of an electron jumping from one orbit to another without any cause. This would suggest that nothing determined it, some things just happen. I don’t know enough about particle physics to form my own opinion on it, but maybe you want to tell me what you think about it?
What’s your take?
“…that we are nothing but the sum of our experiences?”
“If I understand correctly, according to your logic there would never be any progression because people can’t think of anything new. What I’m trying to say is, people will always think about more complex things, more into the future, etc,etc but to make this habit of thinking better, widespread, and more efficient I believe we should teach people to be open minded and stay away from dogmatic teachings.”
I am in agreement with what JP says. And Magius, there would still be progression. So people may happen to imbue others with whatever opinions, but still, the extent to which these others will unconditionally follow these opinions is questionable. With time comes change: change of thought, knowledge, emotion, self, etc. etc. And would you not say that whatever progress we make is still an addition to our individual experience and therefore we are “the sum of our experiences?”
-Githa
I think maybe I took the statement too literally. I’ll explain, if we are nothing but the sum of our experiences, it would mean that we have no imagination…since we could only think about or imagine that which we have already experienced. But I understand what you both mean (JP and Githa). It leads me to think about an idea that is hard to act on, imagine all the people that have upset you or done you wrong, if you have ever returned the wrong or have blamed them for what they did…do you think it is right? What I mean is, if we are the sum of our experiences, than the fact that someone thinks in a certain way, or acts in a certain way is mainly because of his prior experiences. Therefore, if someone was always treated bad by, ie. their father, than can we blame that guy if he grows up to be a bad father as well? Since it isn’t really his fault but that of his fathers. But it gets worse, can we really blame this guys father? Since his father also must have had a bad father or had something traumatic happen in his life to make him be the way he was.
What do you think of the idea?
i like the idea of blaming parents for the future murder of their kids. we all die there is no avoiding it so that makes all parents murderers. but anyway i think to some extent we are influenced by our surroundings which is why i brought the topic up in the first place. would it make anything better? or would it be the same. its kind of an experiment on free will on a large scale. id like to believe that if we brought kids up with say robots that didnt have an opinion but just brainwashed kids to think a sertain way that we would end up different. but if we dont have free will then we will all turn out generally the same way. it isnt a definate experiment because not all the test subjects are identical. it would throw off the results. also if you introduce them into the type of environment that we live in then they will begin being influenced and that could also ruin the experiment. but say we did bring up kids with robots and all that what do you think the probability of them believing a god is the cause for the way they are living their life? if you were to put all the possible answers for life i think a person uninfluence would choose god. due to the simplicity and the fact that its like a disney story.
Just to clarify, my questions weren’t necessarily indicative of my perspective (though, looking back now, I suppose that they are in a sense) I was just posing them for the sake of argument more than anything else.
However, on my point about humans being “the sum of their experiences” I don’t necessarily believe that in the strict sense, but if you are familiar with the philosophy of Satre then you probably appreciate where I’m coming from. If I were forced to elaborate my own thoughts on the nature of consciousness though, it’s that we are the sum of our experiences, which in turn both influence and are influenced by our neural structure. That is, you take the same brain and run it through the same set of experiences (i.e. sensory impressions) twice and you will end up with the same “consciousness” both times. I see little room for indeterminism and randomness in this case: what other sources can consciousness originate from? If not from our brain - which both shapes and is shaped by our experiences - and our experiences themselves?
I understand the consequences of such a deterministic perspective, but if I were to remain faithful to the pursuit of knowledge, then it’s a hard perspective to defeat. I’m unfamiliar with that “electron jumping” theory, but I am familiar with a similar law (called something like the “unpredictability law”) which states that it is impossible to simultaneously measure the exact location and the exact speed of any given electron: that is, ascertaining one attribute of the electron makes it mathematically impossible to measure the other. While it does give the indeterminists something to cling to, I suspect (without knowing the physics behind it at all) that it is more a faliure of our system of mathematics or our methods of empirically measuring such things, rather than irrefutable proof of unpredictable “randomness” in nature.
Well as silly as it may sound, in a way, yes, that’s a consequence of my perspective. That is not to say that there is nothing new for humanity or for any individual to learn, just that there is a definate “cap” to the type and amount of knowledge we are capable of acquiring. That is, try conceiving of an object beyond anything you have ever experienced.
You may argue that you can conceive of a unicorn, which is obviously a being that you have never experienced and can say, with relative assuredness, that the conceiving of this being is to supercede your experiences and to create something new that exists independantly of them. However, if we look at it more closely (and from the perspective of David Hume’s philosophy if I haven’t got my Brittish empiricists mixed up) we find that the conception of the unicorn is simply a fusion of different ideas that have come via your sensory experiences - which, as per this philosophy, is where all ideas come from. Thus, you have not conceived a being entirely independant of your experiences, you have simply fused two simple ideas (that of a horse and that of a single horn) and fused them together into a complex idea. As per the philosophy of Hume, all simple ideas are derived directly from sensual experience (which both determine and are determined by the state of our brains) and the extent of our imagination extends only so far as our ability to fuse these simple ideas together into ever more complex ones. Evidence that simple ideas can only ever come from sense experience can be found in trying to conceive things that lie beyond our experiences: can you, for instance, imagine a colour that you have never seen before? Or, in a similar vain, can a person blind from birth have any concept of what we call “green” or of any other colour?
Of course, your partial solution of conceiving of “perfect shapes” as evidence of the possibility of “conception beyond experience” is a good one, and, if I’m not mistaken, very similar to the Kantian method: i.e. the conception of space and time exist a priori in the mind and independantly of any experience. But I am skeptical of this position and would be quick to argue that the conception of a perfect shape simply constitutes a “complex” idea, in that we perceive an “imperfect” shape, and from this, within the limits of imagination, we are able to postulate a perfect one. For instance, imagine a mind devoid of any sensual experience for the entireity of its existence: would it be possible for this mind to have any ideas of any kind? Would it be able to conceive “perfect shapes” or achieve any simple idea at all? Would it attain any notion of consciousness? Or would it remain empty? Surely, while this situation is obviously highly hypothetical, you have to see that a mind deprived of any sensory input could probably never conceive anything, and would never reach anything close to what we could call consciousness - not even self-consciousness (as what reference point would this mind use to realise this fact?).
Perhaps a more damning argument against being able to conceive objects beyond our experience would be for me to ask you to conceive of a 4-dimensional object: they exist - space is, of course, curved into the 4th dimension - but is it possible for us to conceive it? Surely if we can logically prove that these objects exist, by your theory, it would be possible to conceive them beyond any actual experience of them?
Anyway, I’ll leave it there for now. I have a couple more things to add, but it’ll have to wait until after work.
… and I’m back.
Yes, that’s a similar perspective to the one I outlined above, in that imagination is bound exclusively to what we have experienced: that is, regardless of how hard we try, we cannot conceive of anything that exists beyond experience. However, imagination rests in the ability - as with what I said earlier - to fuse the simple ideas taken from sensory experience (the colour white, a being in the form of a horse) and to fuse these ideas into complex ones (a white unicorn). If one is said to have no imagination, then it simply means that they are inept at creating these “complex ideas” from the simple ones.
I think I agree with you here, but it’s important to distinguish between the justification for any given action and the [/i]explanation[/i] for any given action. So, for instance, we could explain the action of the man beating up his son as being directly related to the fact the he himself was beaten up by his father when he was younger, yet that does not excuse - or justify - the fact that he has grown up to do the same thing to his own son. To quote what I said in the morality topic:
You may have to read all my posts in that topic to understand this, but my point here simply amounts to the fact that if one has no way of accessing what we would describe as a “desirable” moral outlook, then it is difficult to blame the individual solely (from a philosophical rather than a legal standpoint) for committing what conventional morality would dictate to be an “immoral” action. So for instance, if a child is beaten by his father, has no access to any moral standpoint that condemns this (either through ignorance, because his father represents the core of his inherited moral structure, or for any other reason) then it is hard to say that he is entirely “responsible” if he should grow up and do the same thing to his son. If, as pseudo-Freudian psychologogy would dictate (although I wasn’t hearing a lot of support for Freud in that last topic), there is a latent, inaccessible “sub-conscious” to ourselves that directly influences our behaviour even though we can never be fully aware of it, then how can we be held responsible, if, through no fault of our own, undesirable moral stances filter through into it?
Thus, yes, I do hold the position that if we are “the sum of our experiences” then it does lead to a somewhat “amoral” conclusion (as we can eschew responsibilities in this sense by insisting that the basis for our actions were formed from experiences beyond our control) but I still believe that there is hope to overcome this situation so as to be left with some workable system of morality and personal responsibility. That is, even though, in this case, we can provide an explanation as to why the father beat his son, we can still provide reasons why this action cannot be justified.
Let us assume that experience is the primary basis for morality (as per what I’ve been saying here) and there are two parts to our mind: that which we are conscious of, and that which we are not (a simple division, I know). Now, to make it more simple for me, assume that there are three people: A (who is the father of) B (who is the father of) C. A, for undetermined reasons, beat up B when B was a child, and B has gone on to beat up his own child, C. Now, if we assume that the primary basis for morality is via experience (as I said before), then B has two primary ways of forming a judgement on the morality of child-beating: either from the views of his own father, or from the experience of being beaten.
A, obviously, believes that child-beating is at worst acceptable or at best desirable. B, in child-hood, will accept these messages from a very early age, and perhaps this perspective will have settled into his subconscious before he reaches an age at which he is capable of rationally analysing it for himself: that is, the perspective that it is morally permissable to beat children (specifically) or people (in general). So, in “learning” - as we all do from our fathers - this moral message from A, B is left with this moral message as an inate experience that lies - perhaps unconsciously, perhaps not - somewhere in his mind.
The other experience he will use in deciding upon a moral stance with regards to child-beating, is the act of being beaten himself. I can only assume that he will not have enjoyed this experience, and, at this early age, would have considered being beaten to be an “undesirable” mode of affairs. So from the direct experience of being beaten, with direct regards to himself, he would have formed the moral opinion that child beating is morally undesirable.
So, thus, from experience, he is left with two conflicting moral stand-points: the first, which he inherits from his father, states that child beating is acceptable, whereas the second - the direct experience of having been beaten - states that it is not. Now, with direct reference to his (B’s) relationship with C, how does he decide which morality - or course of action - is the most suitable?
Now there is no objective criteria to this - from an objective (i.e. non-anthropic) standpoint, child beating can be neither a moral nor an immoral action - so the main logic we can apply here, is to ensure that the logic that B employs in his conduct with regards to C, is internally self-consistent. If we accept this criteria as a (though not necessarily the) suitable means to ascertaining a moral action, then, as per his undesirable “direct experience” of being beaten himself, we can only say that it is logically inconsistent for him to inflict what he knows - as per his own experience - to be an unpleasant and undesirable action upon his own son.
If he were to employ the moral stance of his father when deciding on how to treat C, then we could explain away this behaviour of B in such terms - that is, he allowed the morality of his father to override his own experiential knowledge of how unpleasant the action really is. However, surely, given this knowledge, he has a responsibility not to inflict the pain on his own son: to do so, would be to commit mauvaise fois - “bad faith”. Now it’s this concept of mauvaise fois - which, put (too) simply, is a self-contradictory action (but it’s hard to explain in just one sentence) - which means that even though his beating of C can be “explained”, it can never be “justified”. Again, I did not wish for this post to be so long, but I hope I’ve gotten a point across.
Twas slightly off topic though.
Look at the progress of “behaviourism” with regards to this point: it says that the majority of human actions, can be explained away by traits present in all other members of the human race. That is, given the same, external stimuli (or “experiences” to keep the language in the post consistent) human beings will generally act in one of a small number of ways, making human behaviour both predictable and reducible to a set of generic laws that apply to every one of its members.
I’m not necessarily agreeing with this perspective, but it does seem to conform with much of what I have been saying about determinism and human behaviour.
first im just curious how do you quote?
“…human beings will generally act in one of a small number of ways, making human behaviour both predictable and reducible to a set of generic laws that apply to every one of its members.”
So say a few possibilities multiplied a couple million times for each individual thought we would end up with a lot of totally different people yet relatively the same. I’m beginning to believe that humans as of now have limited free will and as we progress will develop to have clearer thought. Assuming evolution is correct than we started with no free will and have progressed this far. But then there is the whole physics thing. If physics is correct and we don’t have free will then wouldn’t it prove evolution wrong in a lot of ways?
JP,
Bravo
Very well explained. You’ve covered most of the angles, from your own personal views to that of modern behavourists. One of the courses I took in University was on psychology and, coincedently, my girlfriend is a psychology major. It’s funny how I hear that many people approach psychology majors and say things like “Wow, are you reading my mind?”, or “do you know what I am about to do next?”, etc. Which is not something that an education in psychology permits a human being to do, but at the same time these responses are interesting. If everything is so determined (I agree with many of your deterministic views - not that all of them are) than why aren’t psychologists able to perdict with a good amount of certainty what the person is most likely thinking about or what they will most likely do next?
You must admit, that the psychology of an individual person is statistical, let alone a general explanation of many people. There are too many variables…what a person ate, who they talked to, what they did 5 minutes ago, what their future plans are, who their loved one are, their friends, their upbringing, all play an important role in the simple everyday actions of the individual person.
Nevertheless, this debate with you has created a proliferation of thought in my head, ones which after being sorted out I will definitely post.
JP stated:
I have had many discussions about the very words that you wrote above. But as I wrote in one of my previous posts, is that, your view and explanation invariably proves GODs existance. Since we can’t imagin anything that we haven’t experienced than that must mean we have experienced GOD before. But than again, the concept of GOD in any religion is yet again just simple things we already know from experience brought to an extreme. Ie. Omni-benevolent, Omniscient, etc.
If you have ever read the “Meno” (Plato), where Plato illustrates that all knowledge is hidden away in our minds, there only needs to be appropriate withdrawal strategies (education - freeing the mind), which would mean that we already know everything, and thinking about things (introspection) without having to experience them - can bring about an understanding or knowledge of a thing without having experienced it. One of the best refutations I have heard on this, is the case of ‘Clever Hanz’ which was a horse that created much controversy in Europe. Supposedly this horse was so smart he could do math, language, trivia, etc - and he was always right. More and more people came to see him, only to find their jaws gaping wide open at the astonishing truth. Until, a philosopher (I forget his name) came to see Hanz and found out that it had nothing to do with the horse knowing anything, but instead he was extremely sensitive to the environment around him. Hanz read signals that people were giving away inadvertantly as to the true answer to a question - once blind folded the poor horse got everything wrong and his fans dissipated. The point here being that Meno (slave boy) could have been reading Plato’s body language or some other stimuli that gave away the answer. I am not certain that this is a refutation, I wish to research this case about the horse further, since I know of it from hearsay. There are a few unanswered questions that I have and would clarify my confusion in the matter.
JP stated:
I agree and understand what you are saying, but I think there are many more variables that apply and blur the conclusion. For instance, humans have a habit of taking things out on those who they know they can get away with it. So, if father A beats his son B and B beats his own son, it could be none of the above reasons you mentioned but that he is taking out pent up anger from his childhood and taking it out on his son/daughter. This is just one other way to take it, I’m sure there are many more. Hence, people are statistical in reference to behaviour.
What do you think?
Yes, there is a limit to the practical application of behavioural science, I agree. I mean, I doubt we’ll ever get to the stage where we can predict someones behaviour that precisely, because, as you said, there are far too many factors involved.
However, what I’m more interested in is whether - if we could theoretically know a persons exact mind set - it would be possible to precisely predict their behaviour. I suppose all free will amounts toin this sense, is the idea that we have some control over the endless cycle of causes and effects that make up our personhood.
You’re assuming then that the concept of God is a simple idea rather than a complex one, whereas everything I understand about God seems to contradict this.
If he was a simple idea (that is, directly experienced) then we’d have a definate idea about his mode of existence (that is, his essence - what he “is”), and this “idea” would be entirely unique, and differ from any other simple idea (that is, anything that’s ever been directly experienced). However, look at how “god” is imagined: either he is a being that transcends all possible hope of a real definition (the ambiguity of which surely rules out any possibility of arguing that he has been directly experienced) or he is a mish-mash of different concepts (i.e. simple ideas) glued together in a distinctly anthropocentric manner.
It all comes down to whether you see God as a simple or complex idea, though I would argue - for reasons that should be quite clear if you look at the genealogy of religion - that he is the latter.
Yes, but this is the same as the perfect shape argument.
Shapes exist. They are simple ideas. Perfect shapes, however, do not exist. They are created by taking any “simple” shape, and made, within the mind, by taking this simple idea and logically extending it into what a perfect manifestation of this object may look like. But, once the mind has distorted this idea, it ceases to become simple, it becomes complex. It is no longer what has been perceived, it is what has been conceived.
Take, then, the concept of omniscience and apply the same logic. Knowledge is something that can be perceived, though, obviously not in quite the same way that a physical object can be. We perceive knowledge, note it’s qualities (to a degree), and are accutely aware of its existence. Knowledge then is a simple idea, directly perceived, directly sensed. When we speak of omniscience though (all-knowing) we have extended our perception and awareness of “knowledge” to its logical boundaries. There is no such thing as omniscience, we have just conceived knowlegde in its most perfect form, much in the same way that we can conceive of shapes far more perfect than their “real-life” inspirations. Thus, even though many aspects of religion are based on what has been directly perceived (knowledge) the end result is far different, and far more detached from actuality.
Knowledge is to omniscience what the number 1 is to infinity. The number one is tangible and capable of being perceived (in a sense) where infinity is neither and is simply our way of taking our system of numerology to its logical extremes. I hope you can see where the analogy with omniscience and God begins.
Yes his “motivation” for beating up his son could (and probably would) involve a plethora of different factors, I agree, I’m simply arguing that all these factors must be derived from certain experiences.
What specific experiences would go into making a father beat his son are irrelevant, I was simply trying to demonstrate how moral outlooks are determined by prior experience, and how these outlooks can control someones behaviour to such a degree.