The impossibility of determinism

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
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Nietzsche wrote:

Facta! Yes, Facta ficta!— A historian has to do, not with what actually happened, but only with events supposed to have happened: for only the latter have produced an effect. Likewise only with supposed heroes. His theme, so-called world history, is opinions about supposed actions and their supposed motives, which in turn give rise to further opinions and actions, the reality of which is however at once vaporized again and produces an effect only as vapour—a continual generation and pregnancy of phantoms over the impenetrable mist of unfathomable reality. All historians speak of things which have never existed except in imagination. (Daybreak 307).

Now substitute “historian” for “brain” and you get the gist of the argument against determinism. Don’t get me wrong, Nietzsche advocates a version of determinism but it is a localized determinism, exhausted at each moment, but the effectiveness of each cause is questioned and so their strict qualification as “cause” is only a myth. Nietzsche does not object to myths in particular but to their consequences. He is no longer concern with the “Truth” but with “health”. But that is off the subject at hand.

A brain has to piece together an interpretation of physical stimulations to arrange then into what they could be, or what they are “supposed” to be. Everything is mediated, relayed and reconstructed, with the help of the human imagination, into an “effect”. Now interpretation is gradual, meaning that the process of “internalization”, as Nietzsche calls it sometimes, varies in strenght. For example, the stone in a grassy field requires little interpretation and our reaction to it is subject to a low degree of uncertainty. On the other hand you have other subjects that stand as an stimulant, a cause that demand a reaction but which are less objective than a rock sitting on a grassy field. Here he discusses “heroes”, but our brain has to consider other minds.

What physical cause is there for an interpretation of someone’s motive? We can see a rock and so the rock is more justly called the cause of our impression. But in the case of someone’s motives we do not sense them at all, as these are a private experience and so we reach a reaction to something within us: an idea.
This idea is the child of our imagination which projects onto another the same experiences we have of ourselves and determines that which is private as if it was public.

Determinsim has various definitions but let me use the one that I believe is farther from the truth: Causal determinism is the thesis that future events are necessitated by past and present events combined with the laws of nature. This causal determinism has a direct relationship with predictability. Perfect predictability implies strict determinism, but lack of predictability does not necessarily imply lack of determinism. We might have missed factors in our calculations and so find an imperfect prediction while still determined by causality. This type of determinism relies on some presuppositions, such as “laws of nature”, a uniformity of experience and also the idea of consistency, so that even if change is presumed the ratio of change is supposed to be a known variable.
The problem that renders this determinism impossible is the privacy of a motive. Now, a “motive” itself can coincide with a mental state, that is not the issue here. I am not arguing that there is a duality, or mind besides the body or mind besides the brain. No. The brain is the mind, but what affects the mind is not just outside stimuli but internal stimuli as well. Even after all physical conditions have been calculated we cannot predict what one will decide stands as someone’s motive or how we react to what we cannot be certain of. We believe our senses to a fault and so decisions are felt as determined by reality. Here we stand as a link in a perfect causal chain of events. But our behaviour need not be the effect of outside stimuli but an inside one one and because this is caused by imagination there is no law that can predict our fancy, or, better said: There is no law to our fancy.

Which brings us to another type of determinism, one that I believe Nietzsche alluded to, which is completed in the moment, exhausted completely at the moment. This type of determinism does however assist us in calculations because the values, factors, variants, are localized to each moment and cannot be universalized. We calculate, yes, but out of a desire to imposse ourselves into every empty gap of experience.

Though the title of my post speaks of the impossibility of determinism it must be noted that this determinism is a type of determinism and the best tool that the sciences have. But it has limitations. If applied to human behaviour then it reaches it’s negation and we have to say that it is impossible, not because we are special, outside of causal determination, but that the cause sometimes originates in us and the effect, again, is us. We should ask whether we can be as consistent as the entire universe, as uniform as the cosmos to even risk a law of our own fancy (can we say “falsifications”?). The universe gets the benefit of the doubt because it’s speed exceeds our own. In constrast we recognize ourselves (unlike the Universe which does not “play dice”) as “fickle”. This fickleness renders predictions untenable while we still maintain the necessity of the moment.

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Though the mind is indeed a mythmaker, and we can never completely explain an event due to causes (once we get down to the point of particles all we can do is assume “randomness” in quantum mechanics with imaginary particles… which, amusingly enough, are made to preserve the determinism from which we use the scientific method), I find your argument is sort of backwards (in that you are pointing out a human inability to know exactly what causes what), because in the end you are falling into the same problem by claiming determinism must be impossible (though we’re unable to demonstrate otherwise–any claim of non determinism is, at this point at least, nothing but an inability to point to a logical cause).

It all comes down to how useful a myth is. We’ve managed to “find” some cause and effects relationships that, having (sometimes) been assumed to the level of “physical laws”, have worked well for us (our prime goal, of course, being to not curse our experience/ourselves/the mind).

The body gets a serious wound, and the mind seeks to escape that feeling… there are certain things we should have to accept (in a cause and effect manner), in order to not be miserable.

I agree that (our illusions often tell us) we have free-will, that we have a part in shaping our experiences/reality, but I think there is no argument sound enough to make it productive for us to not accept that we only have certain thoughts/experiences because the brain has gone through certain experiences/the neurons have been networked a certain way. I think we should embrace some of the illusions (the one’s we’re stuck with for now), like the illusion of the self, but I think, for the optimal acceptance of our experiences, we need to be aware that the mind only exists for a moment, and that it is not the body (past minds have just regularly associated their experiences with those of the bodies’ conditions), so we don’t take our"selves" so seriously (to a degree we actually suffer/not accept our reality due to something that doesn’t really even exist outside that mind/myth and doesn’t have an overall productive use towards satisfaction).

Believing that everything acts due to cause and effect calls for us to habitually think and act in such a way that will minimize suffering due to illusions/delusions, which (assuming we are training ourselves in productive ways to achieve productive goals) I think will have a better effect than thinking someone can do or not do something if they just try hard enough (some people’s bodies simply can’t do certain things).

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you seem to be saying that behavioral impredictability or uncertainty leads to the conclusion that hard determinism is false. this seems to be confusing human ability to predict future events with objective conditions of causality-- just because we dont know why one event happened rather than another does not mean that hard determinism could not be true.

hard determinism (the theory that “every event which occurs was necessarily predetermined by prior causes/forces and could not have been otherwise”) cannot be ruled out as impossible; there is NO WAY to either empirically or logically conclude that hard determinism is false. we can assume that hard determinism is false for the sake of retaining either randomness or freedom, but as neither randomness nor freedom can ever be proven demonstrably, hard determinism can never be falsified. so strictly speaking, saying “determinism is impossible” is a necessarily-false statement.

and if youre going to claim that Nietzsche was a determinist, even a “localized” determinist (im not sure what this means) then you should probably provide some evidence from his writings for this; because i can think of several places where he attacks the concepts of determinism AND freedom; he didnt seem to expressly care about defining or defending any concepts of determinism or freedom, and instead talked about his quasi-materialist ‘becoming’ of all “things” (wills to power/forces). he just didnt seem concerned with lumping his theory of becoming into common categories of “deterministic” or “free”… i actually dont remember him talking about “Determinism” per se at all, other than with regard to science, in which case he was typically critical of scientific determinism.

as for the mind creating reality, yes this is quite true, but do not confuse this with “the mind creates Reality (capital ‘R’)”; the human mind constructs our subjective reality/experience by extracting information from our environment via sensation and then processing/changing/filtering/adapting/dropping/interpreting this information. perception is a process of creation, this is very true-- peptide-channels and neural synapses play a very crutial role in this process, as modern threories show how peptides and protiens throughout the body store memories and emotions by how cell-membranes are constantly reconfiguring their receptors depending on incoming stimuli. what we “see” or believe is “real” is indeed created by our brains for us, by a process of utility and necessary minimalism of efficient functioning. this is a good thing, because if there were no process of creation/filtering we would never be able to assimilate or comprehend/decode all the billions of bits of information that enter the body every second.

however… this process doesnt say anything about hard determinism, one way or another. hard determinism could be true and this mind/brain process of perception filtration/creation could still obtain-- likewise, hard determinism could be false and the process could still obtain. neither situation presents with contradiction. and since hard determinism is impossible to prove or disprove, it is meaningless to try and evoke the mind/brain perceptual processing as evidence one way or another. as far as we can TELL this process is deterministic, it SEEMS like all body processes of chemistry do obey strict causality of predetermination-- yet since we cannot PROVE this, even scientifically/theoretically, it really doesnt do any good to take any of the biological or mental/brain process examples out of context and extrapolate that they apply universally, that they mean “there is no reality” or that they somehow prove or disprove causality or hard determinism. its just not logical to make such assumptions.

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Hello matthatter:

— I find your argument is sort of backwards (in that you are pointing out a human inability to know exactly what causes what)
O- How would I then know what cannot be known? No. What my argument points is to types of determinism.

— because in the end you are falling into the same problem by claiming determinism must be impossible (though we’re unable to demonstrate otherwise–any claim of non determinism is, at this point at least, nothing but an inability to point to a logical cause).
O- The argument suggest that the nature of inference about other minds, motives, destroys the possibility for determining “an” identity of “a” cause. Lacking this identity there is no cause and so a hole in our causal chain, in such cases, but not in all possible scenarios.

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Hello 3Times:

— you seem to be saying that behavioral impredictability or uncertainty leads to the conclusion that hard determinism is false. this seems to be confusing human ability to predict future events with objective conditions of causality-- just because we dont know why one event happened rather than another does not mean that hard determinism could not be true.
O- Not so much that hard determinism is “false” but inapplicable to certain circumstances because of behavioral impredictability. This is not because we lack knowledge about the “objective conditions of causality”. I have not denied the case of determinism but argued for a localized form of determinisn, which I think finds it’s voice in Nietzsche’s theory of the will. This goes on because of the nature of the chain. The Newtonian Laws of motion for example do not easily apply to human beings. Here, in strict physics, one body alters another. In the case of the imagination, a body may affect itself.

— hard determinism (the theory that “every event which occurs was necessarily predetermined by prior causes/forces and could not have been otherwise”) cannot be ruled out as impossible; there is NO WAY to either empirically or logically conclude that hard determinism is false.
O- Only in the situations where imagination enters the causal chain and voids it. A type of determinism remains but it is a localized version of it. If man was consistent then it would be a different matter but the constents of our awareness are unpredictable. When it comes to our social reactions based on what we think of others, an event, there is no necessity because it is our fancy, our imagination. Our reaction is not predetermined by “prior causes” but by “causa sui”, and could very well have been otherwise. Is there any necessity is a rorschach test response? Now the bulk of reality is made of innanimate materials and it is there that hard determinism is fully applicable. But in the realm of social interactions I think that a localized determinism better describes reality. As it stands hard determinism is impossible because of the involvement of the imagination as “cause”.

— and if youre going to claim that Nietzsche was a determinist, even a “localized” determinist (im not sure what this means) then you should probably provide some evidence from his writings for this; because i can think of several places where he attacks the concepts of determinism AND freedom; he didnt seem to expressly care about defining or defending any concepts of determinism or freedom, and instead talked about his quasi-materialist ‘becoming’ of all “things” (wills to power/forces). he just didnt seem concerned with lumping his theory of becoming into common categories of “deterministic” or “free”… i actually dont remember him talking about “Determinism” per se at all, other than with regard to science, in which case he was typically critical of scientific determinism.
O- Check out Beyond Good and Evil, Part 1, section 21:
“Suppose someone were thus to see through the boorish simplicity of this celebrated concept of “free will” and put it out of his head altogether, l beg of him to carry his “enlightenment” a step further, and so put out of his head the contrary of this monstrous conception of “free will”: I mean “unfree will,” which amounts to a misuse of cause and effect. One should not wrongly reify “cause” and “effect” as the natural scientists do (and whoever, like them, now “naturalizes” in his thinking), according to the prevailing mechanical doltishness which makes the cause press and push until it “effects” its end; one should use “cause” and “effect” only as pure concepts, that is to say, as conventional fictions for the purpose of designation and communication - not for explanation. In the “in itself” there is nothing of “causal connections,” of “necessity,” or of “psychological non-freedom”; there the effect does not follow the cause, there is no rule of “law.” It is we alone who have devised cause, sequence, for-each-other, relativity, constraint, number, law, freedom, motive, and purpose; and when we project and mix this symbol world into things as if it existed “in itself,” we act once more as we have always acted - mythologically. The “unfree will” is mythology; in real life it is only a matter of strong and weak wills.”
And section 22:
"…but he might, nevertheless, end by asserting the same about this world as you do, namely, that it has a “necessary’’ and “calculable” course, not because laws obtain in it, but because they are absolutely lacking, and every power draws its ultimate consequences at every moment.”
The second essay of the Genealogy, section 1, is also a good read about the process of “inpsychation”.

— as for the mind creating reality, yes this is quite true, but do not confuse this with “the mind creates Reality (capital ‘R’)”; the human mind constructs our subjective reality/experience by extracting information from our environment via sensation and then processing/changing/filtering/adapting/dropping/interpreting this information.
O- So what then remains of a “cause”? For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction…unless those bodies happen to be conscious, for then the “action” is not a necessity, but an interpretation and the reaction is a reaction to a fiction, that is exhausted, as idea, in that moment.

— perception is a process of creation, this is very true-- peptide-channels and neural synapses play a very crutial role in this process, as modern threories show how peptides and protiens throughout the body store memories and emotions by how cell-membranes are constantly reconfiguring their receptors depending on incoming stimuli. what we “see” or believe is “real” is indeed created by our brains for us, by a process of utility and necessary minimalism of efficient functioning. this is a good thing, because if there were no process of creation/filtering we would never be able to assimilate or comprehend/decode all the billions of bits of information that enter the body every second.
O- You have been reading as of late. We agree on this. But this limitation of our awareness makes any given “cause” an alternative we settled upon.

— however… this process doesnt say anything about hard determinism, one way or another. hard determinism could be true and this mind/brain process of perception filtration/creation could still obtain-- likewise, hard determinism could be false and the process could still obtain.
O- The issue is the nature of the determination. If the cause is imagined then it is not necessary and thus you lose the “hard”. You can still maintain a local determinism because the moment was caused inevitably by our imagination at the time. Yet, unlike hard determinism, this determinism argues that even if all material factors were recreated, the imagination, not being a material factor, would make the effect uncertain even if determined.

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Hey Omar,

I am going to reply to your replies to 3xsgreat because I can more easily make sense of your points from them than from your OP.

As of right now, I don’t feel totally comfortable I understand your point. Nevertheless, I am going to reply as if I am (that way you’ll at least get an idea of what I think you are saying); please help me out if I am missing anything obvious.

Okay so you agree that we don’t lack knowledge of “objective conditions of causality” (which I take to mean we have cases of Ys causing Zs that are so reliable we accept the cause-effect relationship as valid). I am just noting I understand your agreement there.

Can you explain more of what you mean by arguing for a “localized form of determinism”? Do you mean we ought to believe that some things are caused by other things, but not assume that means everything is caused by something (acting due to determinism)?

Well, that’s a case in the imagination, though. Surely you’re not arguing against hard determinism by using a subjective ignorance as an argument, so I don’t understand what point this is supposed to make. There is no body that exists as an equal thing for more than a single moment (though an outsider may think I am the same “Matt” when I look off into space and then suddenly get up from my seat, but there’s been a lot of activity/changes going on in “my body” that led to my getting up).

I understand it’s more difficult to explain some events causally than others, but is that reason to not accept hard determinism?

By the way, are you claiming that the localized determinism you are advocating most accurately describes “reality”, or are you saying that we ought to believe/accept this localized determinism, because it better suits us (how our minds work, the environments we are in, or whatever else)?

But the imagination, and all things in the mind, come up due to memory. You memorize one word and overtime it becomes associated with certain events and feelings and then when that word comes up you interpret it based on that context. Certain movement through certain networks of neurons bring up certain kinds of memories and when they are related to another object (which brings them up) there is a slight alteration in the network; that will be maintained with repetition (before stronger habits alter those new networks).

I can view the flux of my mind all the time, and most of the time I can don’t have much trouble understanding how (habits) result in the following subjective experiences. Just because some people don’t have this intrapersonal insight doesn’t mean their thoughts aren’t the only possible thoughts they could have, given all their past experiences (habits of interpretation/association) and the situation.

But we can’t NOT think mythologically. We can never know, with absolutel logic and rationality, the best way to act in every situation. I agree that it is important to not misuse the idea of cause and effect–“It’s not my fault I murdered that person, it was just how it happened”, of course human beings have a role in it! But it is still not a lack of determinism, it is simply a mind being suspeptible to the ideas of “trying”, “making an effort”, “making a better future”, “the golden rule”–leading to the computer’s ability to install the software–that results in these things. As long as a culture realizes that “good”, at its very base, comes down to a mind accepting its experience (not cursing it, trying to escape it, calling it “bad”), and values the experience of “freedom” to make a choice (even if it actually isn’t a true choice, being programmed with the idea that one wanting to make a choice = programming the mind to “access” the decision-making process = more likely to carefully make choices = more likely to program the mind to minimize future “bad”), then I think it would have a much, much better effect on the human mind than not believing and acting according to the way the world actually works. Better to teach the school the best way to swim with the stream, than suggest they all swim against it.

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omar, may i ask what the difference is between your theory of “localized determinism” (or “imagination intervening on causality”) and the theory of Agent Causation?

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Hello matthatter:

— Can you explain more of what you mean by arguing for a “localized form of determinism”? Do you mean we ought to believe that some things are caused by other things, but not assume that means everything is caused by something (acting due to determinism)?
O- Sauwelios understands it as “quanta” of will. I mean “local” to the moment; that it does not extend infintely into every possible past or future where the material circunstances repeat themselves because the imagination or the determination made by our imagination about the motives of someone else, are not themselves a material factor but a mental factor. A mental image is formed about what is not picked up directly by the senses but created by several assumptions and often incorrect. Besides this there is no necessity because the mental image is pure imagination and so it is an alternative we settled upon. I mentioned rorschach inkblot test, others have used the famous guilded canddle/two faces ambiguous image. It is this ambiguity that remains in play until the intellect reaches a decision about how it feels about it and fixes it, but at this point, then, it is not affected by physical factor but by itself and it’s ideas and the same physical conditions, if repeated to the most minute detail, I theorize, would lead to the opposite conclusion.

— Well, that’s a case in the imagination, though. Surely you’re not arguing against hard determinism by using a subjective ignorance as an argument, so I don’t understand what point this is supposed to make. There is no body that exists as an equal thing for more than a single moment (though an outsider may think I am the same “Matt” when I look off into space and then suddenly get up from my seat, but there’s been a lot of activity/changes going on in “my body” that led to my getting up).
O- As I said before:
“Though the title of my post speaks of the impossibility of determinism it must be noted that this determinism is a type of determinism and the best tool that the sciences have. But it has limitations. If applied to human behaviour then it reaches it’s negation and we have to say that it is impossible, not because we are special, outside of causal determination, but that the cause sometimes originates in us and the effect, again, is us. We should ask whether we can be as consistent as the entire universe, as uniform as the cosmos to even risk a law of our own fancy (can we say “falsifications”?). The universe gets the benefit of the doubt because it’s speed exceeds our own. In constrast we recognize ourselves (unlike the Universe which does not “play dice”) as “fickle”. This fickleness renders predictions untenable while we still maintain the necessity of the moment.”

— I understand it’s more difficult to explain some events causally than others, but is that reason to not accept hard determinism?
O- If I am dealing, fixing, a Turboprop engine then I think about hard determinism. I am only saying that I cannot use this same theory when dealing with human behaviour. In hard determinsm event A effectively and without exception causes event B. In human behaviour event A may cause event B, or it may not, because event A (our imagination) is not something that necessarly extends past the moment.

— By the way, are you claiming that the localized determinism you are advocating most accurately describes “reality”, or are you saying that we ought to believe/accept this localized determinism, because it better suits us (how our minds work, the environments we are in, or whatever else)?
O- Not that it better describes “Reality”, but is better suited to explain human behaviour. Reality is made of particles and energy, including ourselves, but at our level of awareness, the transmission of energy, or momentum is broken up and edited. A causes B which in turn causes C. In the level of awareness A (gesture) may or may not cause B (imagined motive), which in turn causes C (our reaction to what we have imagined). there is little ambiguity in rain or fire and this is why we can say here that we are determined by such factors. My being wet is the effect of rain, which was the cause. But human gestures are full of ambiguity to the point that we are determined by ourselves, so that we are cause and effect at once. What do we remember, what do we absorb from a gesture also not a given or controlled factor. The presence of water has clear and inevitable consequences, effects, but this is not the same with the presence of a gesture.

— But the imagination, and all things in the mind, come up due to memory. You memorize one word and overtime it becomes associated with certain events and feelings and then when that word comes up you interpret it based on that context. Certain movement through certain networks of neurons bring up certain kinds of memories and when they are related to another object (which brings them up) there is a slight alteration in the network; that will be maintained with repetition (before stronger habits alter those new networks).
I can view the flux of my mind all the time, and most of the time I can don’t have much trouble understanding how (habits) result in the following subjective experiences. Just because some people don’t have this intrapersonal insight doesn’t mean their thoughts aren’t the only possible thoughts they could have, given all their past experiences (habits of interpretation/association) and the situation.
O- Suppose you see a man throw himself into the heart of a battle. Is he a courageous man or a coward? Nietzsche repeats this, as well as LaRouchfoucauld, Freud and others who went “behind” the apparent to discover the real…While I do not necessarly propose a duality, I do acknowledge the possibility of different interpretations for the same gesture, either among different observers but also in the same observer.

From Three Times:

— omar, may i ask what the difference is between your theory of “localized determinism” (or “imagination intervening on causality”) and the theory of Agent Causation?
O- I have not thought of it. Is it defined as:“This hypothesis states that volitional acts are a special category of event, one that is caused not by any other event but - in some deeply mysterious way - by the agent itself.”? Then no. I do not think so. For example if you throw a rock at me I am going to move to the side of it’s path. This volitional act is an effect to a missile comming my way. There is little ambiguity in this. Even the ability to infer is hampered or possible due to certain structures in the brain. I am not denying the physicality of the self, or positing an alter ego for the soul. Rather I am exploring the idea that human perception, regardless of the physical background, is edited and incomplete. Further, that in the case of human interaction, we infer completely.
Now our perception of how things are cause us to react in a certain way. I perceive the missile therefore I duck. But our perception of other people’s motives is really a creation, not a perception, and our reaction is a reaction to ourselves, to our own imagination. And I consider the imagination as fickle, able to be the witness for very different things. The same scene can be repeated before us again and again but there is no necessity that it will elicit again and again the same exact response from our imagination.
There is one thing that you are absolutely correct about: These are mere speculations.
The key to this argument is ambiguity. Does it exist? Suppose we can watch the same movie again and again and imagine what is in the minds of the characters…the problem here is that we change with each showing…we are not necessarly the same. So the question is if we were the same and the movie is shown again and again to the same physical specimen, would I be able to reach a different illusion? We may not be able to remain in the moment, but suppose we showed a couple of twins the same movie. Would they reach different and opposite conclusion about motives or one and the same? Perhaps even creativity is measurable or perhaps not. Twin studies offer a strong argument that hard determinism applies throughout the range of Reality and even Behaviour. But while these studies reveal a likeness, they do not reveal necessity or equality. But it is still a strong argument to make that the more alike the causes the more similar the effects.

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Heya Omar,

Well okay I am pretty confident my initial interpretation of your arguments were correct. I’ll try to keep this short.

I think dualism is important for the purpose of distinguishing the mind and the body, but you’re in error to think mental factors are independent of material factors.

It’s not as simple as the senses being “(clean) eyeglasses” for the mind to see the external world (as it is). It’s not like the senses, all at once, take in all the information and immediately present it to the mind in pure form (I am aware that isn’t what you’re saying here this, but your argument is limited by habitual remnants of this early-nurtured philosophy).

( I can’t think of any good reason not to assume that) all mental images are a result of how the body takes in certain kinds of information, filtering the “external” information, which causes certain physical changes as “information” affects other parts of the body; again and again and again “information (which is no longer from the external world, but “based” on it, existing due to an external stimulus) is altered” (I put that in quotes because it’s not like some “information” existing through spacetime is moving through the human body–that’s just an illusory way of looking at it); (a) part(s)of the body is affected by the external world, which then causes a reaction which affects other parts, which cause a reaction that affects other parts, on and on and on until it reaches different neuron networks, which (may) eventually present a “mental image”.

Then, that mental image keeps the cause and effect going as it causes further reactions to the body, and, to a certain extent, the external world.

The mental world only seems opposed to the natural world. This is a result of a symbol-using, abstract thinking mind–it can label objects with words (that don’t actually exist in the external world… you won’t find any "good"s or "bad"s out there). Mental images can just seem opposed to the deterministic natural world because the mind can experience that which isn’t currently present (in that shared external environment); this can result in the mind differentiating itself from the external world. The truth is, whatever the mind is it is. If it is experiencing interpretations of memories, that’s what the mind is (whatever it is attending to/experiencing) at that moment; if it sees a “tree” based off information from the external world, and it thinks it is beautiful, the mind is the experience of (deeming) that beautiful tree.

The experience of (what we call/associate with) “free-will” (the illusion of choice and seperation from the carnal deterministic world) is productive and useful in that it can result in a kind of mental potential “act”/“not act” switch which is set to “not act” when a combination of memories (which includes events, definitions/associations of words, beliefs, everything that is “programmed”/facilitated by current neuron network connections) brings up the (habitually programed/potential) [b]idea/value that one should “decide” which kind of action is best…

At that point, certain networks are activated, creating a “context” [/b](set of potential mental associations/physical reactions) that results in neuron firings that sometimes result in mental images, and can then result in the mental experience that a presented idea/possiblity (of action) is "good" (meets the context/purpose/goal), which may (if the resulting neuron firings don’t cause any/much cognitive dissonance)or may not then result in the switch being switched to “act”.

…this can result in a better likelihood of creating associations/interpretations (network organizations) of objects, as well as having access to certain objects (coming from certain external environments), that reduce the likelihood of a mind being in conflict with its experience (itself).

BUT, as I have said (you can see my posts in the subjective versus objective thread for more related information on this), actually believing you have free-will independent/seperate from the cause-effect determinism of the natural world will only prolong a cycle of confusion, alienation, anger and misery. It is one thing to accept, use, appreciate and enjoy an (inevitable) illusion, it is another to let it make you act (unknowingly) based off delusions, resulting in your cursing objects/situations that you could otherwise enjoy (if you weren’t deluded).

As consistent? How is that relevant to thinks acting by cause and effect? The human brain is very complex; there are billions of pyramidal neuron cells that result in trillions and trillions of connections. Your idea of consistency is based off human illusion (I see a human body and I am trained to focus on their social behavior, ignorant of all the cause and effect reactions taking place in their body). Everything would be totally consistent if we knew every cause-effect relationship at a single moment; but we are ignorant of this, so we don’t (I am advocating we realize our ignorance of something is not an expression that those things don’t exist/aren’t happening).

Oh, well in that case, okay! Humans experience illusions (when compared to how the external stuff actually is outside their mind), which (so far, for the most part) causes them to act according to delusions. So yes, the argument you present (as it is based off a significant delusion) explains (most) human behavior (which results from the same kinds of delusions).

Yes it is. The brain is just very complex so it’s not as simple as predicting other reactions.

People will interpret the behavior in different ways because the stimulus will bring up a combination of different associations, due to eachperson’s unique life experience(s).

Man’s (current) impredictability, and/or different bodies(and thus minds) resulting in different mental impressions of the “same” external "object (that the different bodies can point to as the source) does not equal lack of hard determinism (applying also to mental reality).

10

Hello matt:

— I think dualism is important for the purpose of distinguishing the mind and the body, but you’re in error to think mental factors are independent of material factors.
O- I don’t say that they are independent of material factor but that mental factors, interpretations, are random for they are creative. The creator, to use a metaphor, is not independent, for even God merely shaped the chaos around him and gave it order. We are much the same. This “order” is not independent of other people, the objective world or even our own material composition at any given time, but the ways in which our genetic ability, disposition, character, interact with objective (what is sensed) and subjective (what we infer) to give it meaning is not necessitated either by our material composition, the composition of the world or by what we sense or guess about the world.
The opposite argument is that we differ from ourselves in time and so come to different conclusions at different times in our life. But the more alike the material speciments the more alike the subjective ideas of said specimens. Thus, the farther in time we repeat a scenario the more variance we find. Twin studies suggest that the closer the material state, the closer the subjective state. This is a very strong argument but the counter is that the equality of material does not translate to an equality of experience. As similar as they may be they are distinguishable as two distinct experiences. This is because, I think, because of the random character of experience. What catches our eye, our attention, is not under some law. I think that our material situation conditions our character traits, some of our behaviour but does not determine our awareness or what we become aware of.

— ( I can’t think of any good reason not to assume that) all mental images are a result of how the body takes in certain kinds of information, filtering the “external” information, which causes certain physical changes as “information” affects other parts of the body
O- We are in agreement here. The question is whether the editor or editing is determined by the material circumstances. If it was the case then we would have to explain the differences among twins for example and debate how, if at all, a set of twins can be considered individuals and not really the same person times two.

— Mental images can just seem opposed to the deterministic natural world because the mind can experience that which isn’t currently present (in that shared external environment); this can result in the mind differentiating itself from the external world. The truth is, whatever the mind is it is. If it is experiencing interpretations of memories, that’s what the mind is (whatever it is attending to/experiencing) at that moment; if it sees a “tree” based off information from the external world, and it thinks it is beautiful, the mind is the experience of (deeming) that beautiful tree.
O- The mind experiences only itself…some might suggest. The mind is judging it’s own state as “beautiful”. There might not even be a tree at all out there, if we want to subject the situation to scepticism. The memory is immediate; the perception of the beautiful tree is behind us in time. When we get the idea of tree or even a beautiful tree we are dealing with an apperception or the perception of a memory…but I get side-tracked.
The mind perceives always something that isn’t currently present, in the strict sense, because of the time that a sensation takes to be absorbed and filtered into a concept. A mental image, as undertsood by me, can have two different referrents: one is the public reality, for example a chair; the second is subjective, for example the emotional state of another person, or motivation, either of themselves or that other person. The chances of a public referrent being patently different from the imaged I have in my mind is not that great and even then we can verify it by other observers. On the other hand, a private referrent can be diametrically opposite to our image. However both a chair (objective image) or a what we believe about another person (a subjective image) can demand our action.

— The experience of (what we call/associate with) “free-will” (the illusion of choice and seperation from the carnal deterministic world) is productive and useful in that it can result in a kind of mental potential “act”/“not act” switch which is set to “not act” when a combination of memories (which includes events, definitions/associations of words, beliefs, everything that is “programmed”/facilitated by current neuron network connections) brings up the (habitually programed/potential) idea/value that one should “decide” which kind of action is best…
O- But I am not talking about free-will. A true free-will would make choices impossible. Rather my subejct here is about the mutability of fate by the determined chance in human perception.

— As consistent? How is that relevant to thinks acting by cause and effect? The human brain is very complex; there are billions of pyramidal neuron cells that result in trillions and trillions of connections. Your idea of consistency is based off human illusion (I see a human body and I am trained to focus on their social behavior, ignorant of all the cause and effect reactions taking place in their body). Everything would be totally consistent if we knew every cause-effect relationship at a single moment; but we are ignorant of this, so we don’t (I am advocating we realize our ignorance of something is not an expression that those things don’t exist/aren’t happening).
O- What is it that phycal laws require? Consistent results. We believe that a ball released from a adetermined height will fall because in the past it has consistently done so. If it did so only 50% of the time then our experience of it could not justify the inference of a regulatory law or mathematical translation. So the question is just how consistent is a mental image and is there a difference in the consistency between a subjective and an objective image?

— Yes it is. The brain is just very complex so it’s not as simple as predicting other reactions.
O- So we can predict what a person will see in a gesture? if I put a twin through a labyrhinth, a maze, would it be impossible for the second twin to follow a different route, different in any way from the first?

— People will interpret the behavior in different ways because the stimulus will bring up a combination of different associations, due to eachperson’s unique life experience(s).
O- So supposing we can do away with the variables and raise a set of perfect twins in the exact enviroment, this would necessite the exact same interpretation from each observer?

11

Well, there’s always the different of who who came out (was born) first… but assuming they were born with the exact same body (and exact same experience before birth), and have had exactly the same experiences (keep in mind this isn’t even close to a realistic hypothetical… exactly the same experiences means exactly same position at exactly time time eating the same exact specific, single apple, experiencing the same exact force of wind coming from the exact same direction on the exact same part of their cheek) then yes, if the body and all experieces have been exactly the same, then I cann’t think of any argument against their interpretations being any different.

12

quantum-level randomness via the collapse of superposed systems of wavefield information would lead to differences between the two twins, regardless of how absolutely identical they are in genetic/biological construction or experiential/perceptive exposures. non-duplicability is a fundamental effect of certain planck-level phenomenon, which are an integral part of the human conscious experience.

13

Hello matt:

Assuming they were born with the exact same body (and exact same experience before birth), and have had exactly the same experiences (keep in mind this isn’t even close to a realistic hypothetical… exactly the same experiences means exactly same position at exactly time time eating the same exact specific, single apple, experiencing the same exact force of wind coming from the exact same direction on the exact same part of their cheek) then yes, if the body and all experieces have been exactly the same, then I cann’t think of any argument against their interpretations being any different.

O- Now consider this:
Same body: check.
Same experiences: check. You here go and declare that this would require the same position in space, but that would also require the same position in time. How is our doppleganger achieve that without being…us. There is no argument for our experiences being different because it would be ourselves, not an Other, having the experience. Since this cannot happen- two different bodies occupying the same position in the space time continuum, then I argue that each moment is unique and so the conditions cannot be recreated a second time but only occur for that unique moment. Suppose I eat an apple and then a second apple. Between the first apple and the second I may register no difference and so the second is, for me the observer, an exact copy of the first instance, while each was unique…similar but not the same.
Nietzsche criticized Determinism probably because the idea of desert was tied to it. He downsized the conditions of a person to be the cause of his own action. Psychological and physiological factors affect a person’s action, but I don’t believe that one moment can predict an entire life. The factors, while determinants, are determinants for this moment and cannot extend into following occasions because, as we saw, we cannot recreate the conditions in their entirety and so each moments brings with it the possibility for change.
Our psychological state is determined by physical factors, that we agree, but not solely by them because we are affected by things that are not material, not physical…ideas about things formulated through our imagination. The opinion we may take about a person’s behaviour, an ambiguous idea, may be a random effect, in the sense that if we were recreated, same time, same place, there is no reason why a different conclusion is not reached. This is mere speculation, same as the opposite idea that we cannot conceive a different outcome. To me the reasons why an idea is not predictable is because it is creative…in this case. Faced with a chair an idea forms. Faced with an ambiguous picture or a gesture (ambiguous meaning that it is not impossible to conceive something entirely different.) the brain and all antecedent causes accounted for can react to the picture in different ways. Now we like to think that the reaction tells us something about the person, his mental state, his physical state, things which made that conclusion inevitable. This is fine but it can only be a narration of events. Now suppose we tell the person that his conclusion was caused by what he ate (an exageration but you get the point), he may accept or reject the observation but is no closer to knowing the cause of his conclusion. I think that we simply misapply causality and forget about the effects of consciousness, which is an effect, but also a cause. Physiological causes are absorbed and are then the brain which is then the cause of an idea. The idea is not caused by the material causes because the idea is not necessitated by anything conceivable in matter, nor is an entirely different conclusion about an ambiguous perception inconceivable based still on the same material circumstances.

So, again, to tie up this megalith of links, each moment is unique, just as each conclusion, perfectly determined and yet exhausted it’s effect to that moment when the material circumstance was present. We cannot speak of a gesture as a “cause” because it is ambiguous while a cause in the classical sense is not. The cause of a ball moving might be another ball hitting it because this can be observed again and again without any ambiguity, but the idea we form about people can change, not just as we change in time, but even at that moment, as it is still in play and fixed not by material necessity but by human fiat.

14

Following the debate with interest but only half getting bits of it as ever!

Omar are you (or Nietzsche or LaRouchfoucauld, Freud etc) or saying that not only could observers differ as to why the man ran into battle but also that the same man could undertake the same actions on different occasions for different reasons.
That he might run into battle for courageous reasons today but cowardly ones tomorrow.
Or is this over stating the case ?

and another one - why would “a true free will make choices impossible” - Didn’t get that at all

kp

15

Heya Omar,

Yes, to be in the exact same space requires the exact same time. That was sort of my explanation of how two peoplle can’t have the exact same experiences/environments.

Lack of predictability does not mean lack of determinism.

16

Depends on the reason for our lack. If you mean our ignorance of processes, causal chains, then yes, our lack of predictability would only imply a lack on our part not a condition of the universe. However this is not my point. My point is that the lack of predictability in this region of the universe (apperception) is a condition of the universe. Let me repeat that I am concerned here with ambiguity or randomness and even creativity, though I haven’t fully decided on the nature of creativity or how it relates to the chaotic. Again, suppose you are seeing that picture of the guilded canddle/faces, you have to ask yourself which is it? A canddle or two faces? I think that human perception is a dynamic process and that the mind is involved in formulation of concepts even prior to conscious awareness of the thing in question. While this process is physically, yet partially, determined, it is not entirely necessitated and so the material condition of the observer does not bear all the responsibility, as a cause, of what we see or necessitate that we see the image without ambiguity. the picture is not of something that IS what it IS but of something that can be either something or something else entirely. To insist here about unknown processes is to misunderstand the idea of ambiguity.
Now, a possible conclusion I bring forth is that the effect of an idea can be hot or cold. The idea of a chair is pretty hot because the chair is before us without ambiguity. Ideas are tied to information. A whole chair brings forth the unambiguous idea of a chair, but a splinter of wood does not necessarly produce the idea of a chair at all. A cold idea is an idea that requires a higher amount of interpretation due to a lack of information in the sensation. In the case of other people we are predisposed to interpret facial gestures and that is a hot idea for us. But if we assume trickery and deception then that facial gesture, that tear in the eyes, that sadness becomes empty of meaning and is filled with a greater amount of interpretation; more because now we have to interpret it according to our imagination and not according to what we see.
As this goes in degrees you finally arrive at items that are “either/or” items. With gestures, what makes them either/or is the inconsistency of memory, an inconsistency rooted in how we are made, of course, but which renders action based on memories and calculations about what seem to be fanthoms and creative reconstructions that might just be patterned by spontaneous firings of neurons and free association…Three Times would add quantum theory to the determined amount of randomness in our brain-machine, but you get the idea.