thoughts on determinism

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Trouble with Compatibilism
Marcus Arvan at the Philosopher’s Cocoon

Now, I know compatibilists think they have arguments that compatibilism is interesting and fruitful. They may say, perhaps, that Frankfurt-cases show that we can be morally responsible even in cases where we couldn’t behave otherwise.

Harry Frankfurt cases: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankfurt_cases

[b]"The principle of alternate possibilities (PAP) forms part of an influential argument for the incompatibility of responsibility and causal determinism, often called the core argument for incompatibilism. This argument is detailed below:

PAP: An agent is responsible for an action only if said agent could have done otherwise.
An agent could have done otherwise only if causal determinism is false.
Therefore, an agent is responsible for an action only if causal determinism is false.[/b]

In other words, the compatibilists may think and say what they do [about responsibility or anything else] but only because this too is an inherent manifestation of the only possible reality. It’s like they accept determinism…but not really. But noting this is in turn just another necessary component of a determined universe.

Yet I have to confess that I’ve always been baffled by how Frankfurt cases are used in the debate. Here, after all, is the classic Frankfurt case set-up. We are supposed to (A) imagine a person making a choice P, and then (B) imagine a mechanism which, if the person tried to make some alternative choice Q, would force the person to instead choose P. Here, for instance, is a typical case (copied from Wikipedia):

Donald is a Democrat and is likely to vote for the Democrats; in fact, only in one particular circumstance will he not: that is, if he thinks about the prospects of immediate American defeat in Iraq just prior to voting. Ms White, a representative of the Democratic Party, wants to ensure that Donald votes Democratic, so she secretly plants a device in Donald’s head that, if activated, will force him to vote Democratic. Not wishing to reveal her presence unnecessarily, Ms White plans to activate the device only if Donald thinks about the Iraq prior to voting. As things happen, Donald does not think about Iraq prior to voting, so Ms White thus sees no reason to activate the device, and Donald votes Democratic of his own accord. Apparently, Donald is responsible for voting Democratic although, owing to Ms. White’s device, he lacks freedom to do otherwise.

Got that? Well, if you get only what your brain compelled you to get…congratulation? But the compatibilists insist you are still responsible for getting it that way instead of another way. But: Not being free to say otherwise?

Here is the problem. Frankfurt cases are strongly disanalogous to physical determinism. In a Frankfurt case, the person’s action is not determined by any actual physical laws.

Or it is determined by physical laws, but their brain is also determined by physical laws to think about it differently

The sense in which the person “cannot do otherwise” is entirely counterfactual. It is that if they tried to choose otherwise, someone (or some mechanism) would step in and ensure that they don’t succeed. But this “trying” isn’t even possible under physical determinism. It’s not the case that if I tried to behave otherwise than I do, physical laws would step in and stop me. It’s that I can’t even try to behave otherwise if physical determinism is true (it is not a physical possibility).

In other words, as I understand it [compelled or not], nothing that we think, feel, say or do is exempt from the laws of matter themselves. Even if we strongly embrace the belief that we are both determined and morally responsible this is only because “somehow” the human brain has evolved on planet Earth to delude some into thinking this. When in fact it’s not. We think we are trying to behave otherwise but that too is just an illusion.

This, then, is the problem with Frankfurt cases. They push certain intuitions – that we can be morally responsible for our actions even if we couldn’t do otherwise – because, contrary to determinism, they smuggle in libertarian intuitions.

The, “I just know I have free will and nothing you say is going to change my mind!”

The sheer mystery embedded in why or how the human brain did evolve in this manner. If it’s true. That memes are a manifestation of both nature and nurture.

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The Dogmatic Determinism of Daniel Dennett
Eyal Mozes
BOOK REVIEW: Daniel C. Dennett, Freedom Evolves.
at The Atlas Society

THE CONCEPT OF “MEME”

Though, in my view, so much more to the point in a free will world is the part where we find ourselves interacting with others out in a particular world bursting at the seams with a plethora of actual accumulating historical, cultural and experiential memes. Many of them often understood in very different ways.

Whereas in a wholly determined world both genes and genes are entirely in sync with the laws of matter. Dennett discussing them only as he was ever able to discuss them. And the author here reacting to him only as he was ever able to.

Thus…

In explaining the evolution of human culture, Dennett employs the concept of “meme,” coined by Richard Dawkins. A meme is an idea viewed as an agent seeking to reproduce itself in people’s minds and competing with other memes through a cultural version of Darwinian natural selection.

…reflecting the only possible reality. And here I am typing these words and you reading them as but inherent components of material/phenomenological Reality in turn.

The “competition” is part and parcel of the illusory nature of human autonomy. You, me, Dennett, Dawkins and Mozes toppling over onto each other within the one and the only overall ontological parameters of existence itself. Only brain matter is particularly mystifying because to the best of our knowledge [whatever that means in a determined universe] brain matter is the only matter able to broach teleology as well. With or without GOD.

The idea of memes is an incoherent theory, and its adoption by writers such as Dennett and Dawkins demonstrates their desperation to avoid ascribing causal efficacy to the mind.

No, what is incoherent to some are those like Rand who insist that however others understand such things as genes and memes, they are necessarily wrong if they don’t subscribe to her own definitions and meanings. Even more preposterous how they are applicable to all human interactions where moral and political conflicts unfold. For all practical purposes in particular. Only her own mind is ultimately synonymous with the most “causal efficacy” that human minds are capable of.

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Free Will’s Absurdist Paradox
How Camus’ Absurdism unifies Compatibilism and Incompatibilism
DANIEL MIESSLER

Philosophers and scientists have been debating the concept of free will for centuries.

On the other hand, in debating the concept of free will, they will, sooner or later, have to get around to connecting the dots between their technical conclusions and their actual behaviors. Either alone or in social, political and economic interactions with others.

Although here of course some never do.

Also, whatever they “think up” in a world of words will eventually have to be taken to the scientists that study the functioning brain experientially and experimentally.

Still, even in debating free will “theoretically” philosophers have failed to reach a consensus regarding human autonomy. Some argue in the general direction of the libertarians, some in the general direction of the determinists, some in the general direction of the compatibilists.

Meanwhile the “hard guys and gals” aren’t really any closer to pinning it all down either.

To the best of my current knowledge.

While there are many nuances and subtleties, there are generally three main positions.

1] Libertarian Free Will is the idea that we have a completely free will that is not significantly determined by our makeup or our surroundings. Basically, our choices are our own, and physics and environment might have an influence but don’t ultimately determine anything.

Then there are those who refuse to make a distinction between empirical truths and moral truths. Not only are we free to choose what we think, feel, say and do but if we do so rationally, we can arrive at an objective truth in regard to value judgments. Their own of course.

Most modern believers in Libertarian free will believe in a supernatural God that gave them this freedom.

I don’t know about that. Sure, there are Christian Libertarians. And henry quirk is a Deist Libertarian. But there are also Objectivists who are adamantly atheists.

2] Compatibilists believe the world is deterministic—meaning that outcomes are ultimately determined by a set of initial conditions combined with the laws of physics (which likely include randomness). But they believe we can still have free will within this deterministic framework, i.e., they believe free will is compatible with determinism.

Again, that sound you hear is me groping to understand how anyone can actually believe this other than because in a wholly determined universe they were never able not to.

Incompatibilists also believe the universe is deterministic, but they believe that a world constrained in this way offers no room for a free will.

Though, as well, there are those here who seem to embrace this while at the same time appearing to argue that those who don’t think like they do really are fools.

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Free Will Is Real and Materialism Is Wrong
Michael Egnor

I’ve written before in reply to materialist Jerry Coyne’s assertion that free will is an illusion. The gist of Coyne’s denial, shared by others of course, is that nature is deterministic and that the mind is a wholly material process, yoked to the laws of physics and to an organism’s evolutionary history. Thus, our choices are completely determined and free will is an illusion.

The classic philosophical argument of course. Words telling us what other words mean without actually connecting them to a definitive experiential – scientific – understanding of how the human brain does in fact function in doing what, to the best of our current knowledge, no other matter in the universe does: think philosophically.

The words go around and around subjectively in circles: “This is what I think about determinism philosophically. What do you think about determinism philosophically?”

Then when asked to explain how we would go about demonstrating that what we believe “in our head” philosophically about these things corresponds with the laws of matter in regard to physics and chemistry and biology we can go “shopping” for a neuroscientist that comes closest to our own subjective philosophical prejudices. This too perhaps being “beyond our control” in the only possible world.

This guy too…

I’ve already pointed out his error on the question of determinism. Today I’ll focus on his error regarding the materiality/immateriality of the will.

As though he can pin down definitively whether Coyne has in fact made an error in a world where errors themselves reflect the only possible reality. If philosophically Coyne can only conclude what he must, well, what kind of an error is that? Same with Egnor’s conclusion. Maybe he is correct about Coyne. But if he was compelled by his own brain to argue that he was, well, what kind of a correct is that? How to nature [whatever that means] is it not interchangeable with Coyne’s error?

Now more philosophy…

We have a variety of mental capabilities (or powers). We have sensation and perception, memory, imagination, intellect, and will. Philosophers since Aristotle have noted that intellect and will differ qualitatively from other mental powers. The difference is in the substrate on which intellect and will act, on the one hand, and sensation, perception, memory, imagination, and desire act, on the other.

That’s not the point say some determinists. Yes, we have all of these things. And we do distinguish them in different ways. But if both human intellect and will [along with instincts, drives, libidos etc.] are inherent components of brain matter wholly in sync with the laws of matter themselves then…then in a No God world how do we explain how and why that is the case?

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Daniel Dennett is Wrong About Free Will
by Daniel Miessler

Transparency is key

Harris:

If you don’t know what your soul is going to do, you are not in control.

Dennett:

Really? When you drive a car, are you not in control? You know “your soul” is going to do the right thing, whatever in the instant it turns out to be, and that suffices to demonstrate to you, and the rest of us, that you are in control. Control doesn’t get any more real than that.

I am stunned that he calls this an argument.

How on earth does one even begin to intertwine the “soul” here into free will, determinism and compatibilism? Unless one speaks of a soul in a No God world, wouldn’t it always come back to God? And thus beyond our ever grasping until and unless God Himself chooses to reveal Himself.

I suppose for some philosophers the “soul” is just the word they use to describe that aspect of a mere mortal’s Being in a No God world that the Self itself can be reduced down to. The Real Me.

But that inevitably gets tricky because if this core Self does exist where does the part about autonomy fit in?

Though even with God it can all get problematic:

Let’s try this with feeling God.

Really? When you pray, are you not feeling God? You know “your soul” is going to do the right thing, whatever in the instant it turns out to be, and that suffices to demonstrate to you, and the rest of us, that you are feeling God. Feeling God doesn’t get any more real than that.

Only here we’re back to “somehow” reconciling an omniscient God with feeling Him. How, if God knows all, does that not include what you did, do or ever will feel about Him? You pray for only that which an all-knowing God already knew that you would pray for. So, how, for all practical purposes, does that unfold exactly? Nothing is not always real in a world where either an omniscient God or the immutable laws of matter prevail.
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Free Will Is Real and Materialism Is Wrong
Michael Egnor

Particulars are specific things in nature that are presented to the mind by our senses — an apple sitting on my desk, or a wedding ring on a finger, or a friend walking into an office. Universals, on the other hand, are concepts that do not have physical instantiation in nature. The beauty of the red color of an apple, love for a spouse symbolized by a wedding ring, musings about the nature of humanity occasioned by a friend in an office are all examples of universals. Goodness, truth, and justice are universals.

First of all, last light on a PBS Nova documentary, the extraordinary relationship between the human brain, the human mind and human senses aired: youtu.be/HU6LfXNeQM4

Above all else, in my view, it explored just how large [or small] the gap might be between what we think and feel and sense about the reality of the world around us and the role the brain does play in making all of this in part an illusion.

And while the apple and the ring and musings of a friend might be particular instances of reality, to speak of color and love and the nature of humanity in terms of “goodness, truth, and justice”? The documentary above made it clear that the color of the apple itself is something that is created in the brain. As for love and the nature of humanity, scientists don’t even know yet if we possess the free will necessary to opt for our personal assessments, let alone whether given particular contexts an understanding of love and humanity can be pinned down.

Our senses present us with particulars. We see and smell the apple, we feel a ring on a finger, we hear a friend. Particulars grasped through sensation and perception, as well as imagination and memory, have an obvious composition with matter.

Okay, but does this “composition with matter” pertaining to the apple, the ring and humanity entail autonomy? Given the gap between what we think matter encompasses here and now and all that would need to be known about matter going back to what or who created it in the first place? And what we take in with our senses is in part particular to each of us alone. Even in regard to the either/or world the documentary above made note of how with respect to what we see and hear, different people literally see and hear different things.

The Dress for example: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dress

And then the part where some argue that men should be free to wear dresses just as women are free to wear pants. Even in a free will world where is the universal goodness, truth, and justice here?

We use our eyes to see, our skin to feel, our ears to hear. There are well-defined regions in the brain whose activity seems to be necessary for the exercise of these sense-perception powers by which we grasp particulars. In that sense, the grasp of particulars is material, or at least depends on matter in a necessary way.

Exactly.

But: How far back to take this?

All the way? All the way to the point that everything we think, feel, say and do is entirely embedded in a brain that is wholly in sync with the laws of matter? What if the wide-awake world is just another manifestation of the dream world? Just in a way that the mere mortals we call scientists and philosophers have not been compelled by nature to grasp going back to grasping why and how existence itself came to be.
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Free Will’s Absurdist Paradox
How Camus’ Absurdism unifies Compatibilism and Incompatibilism
Daniel Miessler

Compatibilists have a number of powerful arguments on their side.

1] We experience choice, therefore we have it

We experience choice in our dreams as well but don’t have it then. And then all of the other components of our bodies – those 100 trillion cells – that function entirely on automatic pilot. “Somehow” the brain is different?

2] The kind of free will that we experience is the only kind that’s possible, so we should stop thinking about the kinds that are impossible due to Determinism (Daniel Dennett)

Like anyone can establish this [empirically or otherwise] going all the way back to how we fit into the existence of existence itself.

3] We cannot, as humans, practically live as if we don’t have free will

Or we live for all practical purposes in the only possible manner in which the laws of matter compel us to.

4] Believing we have free will is useful to us as a society because if we told people they didn’t have free will they would stop behaving morally

This one in particular always baffles me. We find free will useful, so this in and of itself establishes that we have it? Well, what if we are compelled by our brains to find it useful? My thinking here always starts with the assumption that if the human brain is just more matter and, like all other matter, is in thrall to the laws of matter, then nothing that we think or feel or say or do is anything other than what we could never not think and feel and say and do.

It’s as though some, however, accept determinism…but not really. This “internal”/“external” distinction between the “in my head” components of choice and all that is outside my head “in the world”. The “someone puts a gun to my head” and says “do it else” example. As though they themselves were not in turn wholly compelled to put the gun to my head and say do it or else. And that what I do [gun or no gun] isn’t but another inherent/necessary manifestation of the only possible world.

Though as always – click – I’m the first to admit the problem here is me not being able to grasp the compatibilism arguments correctly.

5] The model of humans making choices is the most useful way to describe what happens in the real world on a day to day basis

Same thing. Something being useful to us doesn’t necessarily make it any less compelled.

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Free Will’s Absurdist Paradox
How Camus’ Absurdism unifies Compatibilism and Incompatibilism
Daniel Miessler

Incompatibilists have their points as well.

1] If we agree that Determinism is true, and that we don’t control the universe or the laws of physics, then it’s not possible to control any higher-level phenomenon either

On the other hand, how exactly do we pin down that anything we do agree on either is or is not determined? Instead, given this…

All of this going back to how the matter we call the human brain was “somehow” able to acquire autonomy when non-living matter “somehow” became living matter “somehow” became conscious matter “somehow” became self-conscious matter.

…we either are or are not compelled to agree or disagree about everything in the only possible world.

2] If you could not have done otherwise for any previous decision (because Determinism is true) then you also cannot do otherwise for your next decision

Exactly: If.

3] Just because we experience making choices doesn’t mean that’s happening. We also experience the color red, or being filled with the Holy Spirit, and these things don’t exist independently from being experienced by someone

That’s the particularly tricky part. Even if we are wholly determined to choose something we are still choosing it. That’s why I imagine those aliens inhabiting a free will segment of the universe observing us “choosing” things in a determined segment. They note that we are choosing things. But they note that we choose things only what our brains compel us to choose.

It would be like someone being able to videotape our dreams. They play back the dream and we see ourselves choosing things. But then we acknowledge that it was only our brains “somehow” choosing for us instead. Or we watch a movie and note the actors choosing things. But only because they are being directed to choose them based on a writer’s script.

4] We have already shown in numerous studies that humans can be made to think that they made a decision on their own when the outcome was externally generated, and the human can’t tell the difference

The determinists then just take it all back a step further. Suggesting that the studies themselves are but another inherent manifestation of the only possible reality. You can’t really win with them. Why? Because even when you are convinced that you have won that too is just another necessary component of this only possible world.

Thus…

5] Believing in free will justifies the concepts of reward, blame, and punishment, and negates any requirement to explore the physical, biological, and environmental causes of undesirable behavior

Believe only what you must, right?

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Free Will Is Real and Materialism Is Wrong
Michael Egnor

The same [above post] is not true of intellect and will. There is not the same intimate link between intellect and will with matter that there is between perception and imagination, etc., and matter. Through our intellect we grasp and comprehend universals, not particulars, and our will carries out decisions made by our intellect. For example, we see (perceive) a picture of Nelson Mandela (particular), we ponder (intellect) injustice (universal) done to political prisoners, and we donate (will) to Amnesty International.

Over and over and over those who champion free will make note of things like this. Yes, we clearly do lots and lots of things of this sort all the time. And we “just know” deep, deep, deep, deep down inside that we did them of our own volition. Some just take it further and insist not only can we opt to choose these things freely but if we do choose things of this sort rationally and virtuously, we will ponder Nelson Mandela and political prisoners so as to be in sync with one or another rendition of objective morality.

So the fundamental question is this: Are intellect and will material powers, like sensation and perception are material powers?

No, some suggest, the more fundamental question is this: that, given how human brains are but more matter, how and why [chemically, neurologically] is intellect intertwined with will intertwined with sensation and perception going back to how and why matter was able to configure into biological/living entities about 3.7 billion years ago.

Or sooner if you start with God. Though, if you start with God, your answers become Divine.

Only some will take a leap of faith from science here and examine these relationships more theoretically in a world of words. What we call philosophy.

The answer is no. Intellect and will are immaterial powers, and obviously so. Here’s why.

Let us imagine, as a counterfactual, that the intellect is a material power of the mind. As such, the judgment that a course of action is good, which is the basis on which an act of the will would be done, would entail “Good” having a material representation in the brain. But how exactly could Good be represented in the brain? The concept of Good is certainly not a particular thing — a Good apple, or a Good car — that might have some sort of material manifestation in the brain. Good is a universal, not a particular. In fact the judgment that a particular thing is Good presupposes a concept of Good, so it couldn’t explain the concept of Good. Good, again, is a universal, not a particular.

Got that? Are you basically in agreement with what you think the author means in defining and defending the words as he does?

Okay, fine. Now, in regard to Mary aborting Jane, what do you tell her given this assessment if she asks you 1] if choosing an abortion is something she is able to opt for freely and 2] if it is, is choosing an abortion moral or immoral?

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Free Will’s Absurdist Paradox
How Camus’ Absurdism unifies Compatibilism and Incompatibilism
Daniel Miessler

What I’ve come to learn is that the problem with Incompatibilism is not that it’s wrong, but that it’s incomplete. It insists on prioritizing the abstracted world of quarks, atoms, and molecules, instead of the human world we actually live in.

Again, when you Google “incompatibilism” you get this link right at the top:

“Incompatibilism is the thesis that free will is incompatible with the truth of determinism. Incompatibilists divide into libertarianians, who deny that determinism is true and hard determinists who deny that we have free will.” from the PhilPapers site.

So…you can call yourself an incompatibilist and be at completely opposite ends of the philosophical spectrum?

As for whatever it is that someone prioritizes here, we are still confronted with the fact that [as of now], even in presuming human autonomy that presumption remains entangled in all that we do not know regarding this:

All of this going back to how the matter we call the human brain was “somehow” able to acquire autonomy when non-living matter “somehow” became living matter “somehow” became conscious matter “somehow” became self-conscious matter.

And you tell me where the world of the really, really small ends and the world of the really, really big begins. Quarks, atoms and molecules pertaining to Mary aborting Jane?

Compatibilism would be more correct if they were just saying that we should behave as if we have free will even though we don’t. But that’s not what they’re saying.

What they’re saying is that free will is compatible with determinism. It’s the actual definition of Compatibilism. They’re saying we actually have free will.

And here, admittedly, I become particularly perplexed. In regard to what I sometimes call the “free will determinists”. They embrace determinism…but not really? They argue that they have no free will…but others who don’t think about not having free will as they do are still wrong?

It just seems ridiculous to argue that we should behave as though we do have free will when, in a determined universe as I understand it [compelled to or not]…one that encompasses the human brain…everything that we think and feel and say and do reflects the only possible reality.

Same with those who come back time and again to how we define determinism. How do we not define it only as we must?

[peacegirl]

@iambiguous

Free Will’s Absurdist Paradox
How Camus’ Absurdism unifies Compatibilism and Incompatibilism
Daniel Miessler

What I’ve come to learn is that the problem with Incompatibilism is not that it’s wrong, but that it’s incomplete. It insists on prioritizing the abstracted world of quarks, atoms, and molecules, instead of the human world we actually live in.

Again, when you Google “incompatibilism” you get this link right at the top:

“Incompatibilism is the thesis that free will is incompatible with the truth of determinism. Incompatibilists divide into libertarianians, who deny that determinism is true and hard determinists who deny that we have free will.” from the PhilPapers site.

So…you can call yourself an incompatibilist and be at completely opposite ends of the philosophical spectrum?

As for whatever it is that someone prioritizes here, we are still confronted with the fact that [as of now], even in presuming human autonomy that presumption remains entangled in all that we do not know regarding this:

All of this going back to how the matter we call the human brain was “somehow” able to acquire autonomy when non-living matter “somehow” became living matter “somehow” became conscious matter “somehow” became self-conscious matter.

And you tell me where the world of the really, really small ends and the world of the really, really big begins. Quarks, atoms and molecules pertaining to Mary aborting Jane?

Compatibilism would be more correct if they were just saying that we should behave as if we have free will even though we don’t. But that’s not what they’re saying.

What they’re saying is that free will is compatible with determinism. It’s the actual definition of Compatibilism. They’re saying we actually have free will.

And here, admittedly, I become particularly perplexed. In regard to what I sometimes call the “free will determinists”. They embrace determinism…but not really? They argue that they have no free will…but others who don’t think about not having free will as they do are still wrong?

It just seems ridiculous to argue that we should behave as though we do have free will when, in a determined universe as I understand it [compelled to or not]…one that encompasses the human brain…everything that we think and feel and say and do reflects the only possible reality.

Same with those who come back time and again to how we define determinism. How do we not define it only as we must?

I haven’t read all the theories that you have compiled. This could go on forever and make it appear there is no answer. You can have tons of arguments as to why one plus one does not equal two, and none of them are correct. Philosophers in this very important debate cannot keep telling people that they cannot help doing what they do. It’s true, but only after the fact. This is not fatalism. Stop making this more difficult than it already is!

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Free Will Is Real and Materialism Is Wrong
Michael Egnor

So how could a universal concept such as Good be manifested materially in the brain?

Or:

1] how could single cell biological matter evolve into human brains on planet Earth?
2] how could lifeless/mindless matter evolve into biological matter itself on planet Earth?
3] how could matter itself come into existence at all?

Also: Why?

As for a universal concept of Good, given what set of circumstances? And then “for all practical purposes” how to resolve countless instances whereby our Good comes into conflict with their Good.

The only answer possible from the materialist perspective, it would seem, is that the concept of Good must be an engram, coded in some fashion in the brain. Perhaps Good is a particular assembly of proteins, or dendrites, or a specific electrochemical gradient in a specific location in the brain.

Again, to grasp just how numbingly complex all of this really is back to Nova:
pbs.org/video/your-brain-pe … on-0mqxyc/
pbs.org/video/your-brain-wh … ol-q6suyy/

The only possible answer? Right.

Yes, perhaps Good is just “a particular assembly of proteins, or dendrites, or a specific electrochemical gradient in a specific location in the brain.”

Or perhaps it is derived from one or another God. Your own maybe?

Speculate…speculate…speculate:

But the materialist is not home yet. Because in order for Good to be an engram in the brain, the Good engram must be coded in some fashion. How could Good be coded? A clump of protein of a specific shape two mm from the tip of the left hippocampus? Obviously there’s nothing that actually means Good about that particular protein in that particular location — one engram would be as Good as another — so we would require another engram to decode the hippocampal engram for Good, so it would mean Good, and not just be a clump of protein. Yet that engram for the code for the engram of Good would itself have to have some representation of Good in order for it to mean that it signifies the code for the Good engram, which would require another engram for the engram for the Good engram, ad nauseam.

Got that?

Of course, most of is here are “just philosophers”. We grapple with free will, determinism and compatibilism in a “world of words”. We think up definitions for words and attach them to the definitions we give to other words to form deductions about all of this. Arguments we call them.

Or – click – we embrace the definitions and the deductions and the arguments of others.

Some even write books about it. Like this guy: amazon.com/Decline-Fall-All … 1553953304

Go ahead, investigate it.

[peacegirl]

@iambiguous

Free Will Is Real and Materialism Is Wrong
Michael Egnor

So how could a universal concept such as Good be manifested materially in the brain?

Or:

1] how could single cell biological matter evolve into human brains on planet Earth?
2] how could lifeless/mindless matter evolve into biological matter itself on planet Earth?
3] how could matter itself come into existence at all?

Also: Why?

As for a universal concept of Good, given what set of circumstances? And then “for all practical purposes” how to resolve countless instances whereby our Good comes into conflict with their Good.

The only answer possible from the materialist perspective, it would seem, is that the concept of Good must be an engram, coded in some fashion in the brain. Perhaps Good is a particular assembly of proteins, or dendrites, or a specific electrochemical gradient in a specific location in the brain.

Again, to grasp just how numbingly complex all of this really is back to Nova:
pbs.org/video/your-brain-pe … on-0mqxyc/
pbs.org/video/your-brain-wh … ol-q6suyy/

The only possible answer? Right.

Yes, perhaps Good is just “a particular assembly of proteins, or dendrites, or a specific electrochemical gradient in a specific location in the brain.”

Or perhaps it is derived from one or another God. Your own maybe?

Speculate…speculate…speculate:

But the materialist is not home yet. Because in order for Good to be an engram in the brain, the Good engram must be coded in some fashion. How could Good be coded? A clump of protein of a specific shape two mm from the tip of the left hippocampus? Obviously there’s nothing that actually means Good about that particular protein in that particular location — one engram would be as Good as another — so we would require another engram to decode the hippocampal engram for Good, so it would mean Good, and not just be a clump of protein. Yet that engram for the code for the engram of Good would itself have to have some representation of Good in order for it to mean that it signifies the code for the Good engram, which would require another engram for the engram for the Good engram, ad nauseam.

Got that?

Of course, most of is here are “just philosophers”. We grapple with free will, determinism and compatibilism in a “world of words”. We think up definitions for words and attach them to the definitions we give to other words to form deductions about all of this. Arguments we call them.

Or – click – we embrace the definitions and the deductions and the arguments of others.

Some even write books about it. Like this guy: amazon.com/Decline-Fall-All … 1553953304

Go ahead, investigate it.

The observation that we are constantly moving away from a dissatisfying position to a more satisfying position each and every moment of our existence is not a definition. It is not words stacked upon words that have no basis in reality. It’s not even an argument. It’s a demonstration. Moreover, how can the idea of good be found anywhere in the brain as a clump of proteins when this is a value that comes from one’s personal experiences?

[peacegirl]

@iambiguous

Nick Trakakis

[b]

It is often thought that the first and most obvious casualty in the moral realm, once hard determinism is adopted, is the idea that human beings are sometimes morally responsible for their decisions and actions. Indeed, this result seems to simply fall out from the account of hard determinism given above that there is no free will of the sort required for moral responsibility. But what is it for a person to be morally responsible? Roughly speaking, to be morally responsible for something (e.g., an action, an omission, a character trait) is to be worthy of a particular kind of reaction – typically, praise or blame. But when are such reactions of praise and blame appropriate or called for? Answers to this question give rise to two competing conceptions of moral responsibility. According to one view, the merit-based view, praise or blame is an appropriate reaction toward someone if and only if they merit – in the sense of `deserve’ – such a reaction, given their behaviour and/or character traits. This is perhaps the commonsensical view of moral responsibility, but there is an alternative: the consequentialist view, according to which praise or blame is an appropriate reaction if and only if a reaction of this sort is likely to bring about a desired change in the agent and/or their behaviour.

[/b]

Yes, this is a rather succinct manner in which to sum up the ways in which most of us approach the relationship between “free will” and “moral responsibility.”

We choose to do the right thing and are praised. We choose to do the wrong thing and are blamed. Or even punished. And right and wrong here can revolve either around a deontological or a consequentialist frame of mind.

What it leaves out entirely however is the manner in which I construe moral narratives as rooted in dasein, conflicting goods and in political economy.

But at least we can reasonably grasp the manner in which it frames the relationship between free will and moral responsibility.

Not really. If will is not free and we are coming from that position, where does blame and praise enter into it? According to the merit-based view, praise or blame is an appropriate reaction, but what does it mean to merit a reaction of either sort if will is not free? And the consequentialist view is no better, for where is praise or blame an appropriate reaction for the same reason? It doesn’t follow. It is understandable, however, why Durant and other philosophers could not get past the implications.

[i]To show you how confused the mind can get when mathematical relations are not perceived, Will Durant, a well- known philosopher of the 20th century, wrote on page 103 in the Mansions of Philosophy, “For even while we talked determinism we knew it was false; we are men, not machines.” After opening the door to the vestibule of determinism, and taking a step inside, he turned back because he could not get past the implications. Now let us understand why the implications of believing that man’s will is not free turned Durant and many others away. Remember, most people know nothing about the implications of this position; they just accept as true what has been taught to them by leading authorities. If determinism was true, he reasoned, then man doesn’t have a free choice; consequently, he cannot be blamed for what he does. Faced with this apparent impasse he asked himself, “How can we not blame and punish people for hurting others? If someone hurts us, we must believe that he didn’t have to, that his will was free, in order to blame and punish him for what he did. And how is it possible to turn the other cheek and not fight back from this intentional hurt to us?” He was trying to say in this sentence that philosophies of free will would never stop returning just as long as our nature commands us to fight back when hurt, an eye for an eye. This is undeniable and he was one hundred percent correct because this relation could be seen just as easily with direct perception as two plus two equals four, and there was no way that this statement could be beaten down with formulas or reasoning, but this is not what he actually said. He, as well as many philosophers, helped the cause of free will by unconsciously using syllogistic reasoning which is logical, though completely fallacious. He accomplished this by setting up an understandable assumption for a major premise: “If there is an almost eternal recurrence of philosophies of freedom it is because direct perception can never be beaten down with formulas, or sensation with reasoning.” Can you not see how mathematically impossible is his observation? This simple paraphrase will clarify a point: "If there is an almost eternal recurrence of@ four equaling two plus two, “it is because” two equals one plus one, and one plus one plus one plus one totals four. But when a person perceives certain undeniable relations is it necessary to make an equation out of four equaling two plus two, or out of the fact that once free will is proven untrue it can no longer exist and its philosophies of freedom return? Using this same syllogistic reasoning he tried to prove freedom of the will by demonstrating, in the same manner, that determinism could never prove it false. In other words, when a major premise is not obviously true, then fallacious reasoning has to result. The purpose of reasoning is to connect mathematical relations not to prove the validity of inaccurate perceptions.

[/i]

[peacegirl]

@iambiguous

Trouble with Compatibilism
Marcus Arvan at the Philosopher’s Cocoon

So I just finished reading Carolina Sartorio’s new paper in Phil Review, “Making a Difference in a Deterministic World”, and I’m puzzled. I’m not puzzled by the paper – which is clear and well-argued enough – so much as I am puzzled by the entire view it is concerned with: compatibilism.

As I would be regarding a paper that argues one can make a difference in a determined world. On the other hand, let me bring back those hypothetical aliens observing Earthlings in their own free will slice of the universe. Earthlings themselves inhabiting the wholly determined slice of the universe. Now, they note that John has chosen to have sex with Mary and after Mary’s birth control device fails she gets pregnant. She then chooses to have an abortion. Now both John and Mary make choices that then make all the difference in the world. Mary gets pregnant and then she kills her unborn baby.

But, as the aliens note, given that neither John nor Mary are actually opting of their own volition to do what they do, the differences that they are making are differences that are entirely in sync with the only possible reality on Earth. And that makes all the difference in the world when it comes to holding them responsible for what they do.

Some on Earth might in fact do precisely that. But, again, only because they were never of their own free will responsible for doing so. Nothing, as the aliens note, is ever other than what it can only ever be on planet Earth.

Correct. If Mary decides it is in her best interest to abort the fetus, then once it’s done she could never have been able not to do this. When comparing meaningful differences, she chose, in the direction of greater preference (which is the only direction she could go) to abort her baby. Morality only enters into this when she is being judged for her actions. The baby is unaware of its existence so it is not the same thing as Mary deciding to kill a living human being. Obviously, this depends on one’s beliefs as to when life begins. There is no hard and fast rule that would say an abortion is murder in the same way as an intentional act of killing a child who is born.

Here, in a nutshell, is Sartorio’s main thesis: even if everything in the universe is fully determined in advance, there is nevertheless a sense in which our actions can make a difference in the world. Sartorio’s argument then is that because “difference-making” is intuitively tied to moral responsibility, and compatibilists prior to her paper haven’t made adequate sense of how our actions can make a difference in a deterministic world, she has provided a better compatibilist account of how we can be morally responsible for our actions.

We can be [morally] responsible for our actions in a deterministic world because conscience is not a manmade trait. It is an innate attribute that even young children have.

@iambiguous

So, the aliens interject…

“Yes, Sartorio’s main thesis is what it is. But that is because she was never herself able to opt freely not to make it. Our actions clearly do make a difference in the world. And we are responsible in the sense that had we not been around we would not have chosen the behavior that makes a difference. But we are only around because we were never able not to be around. And though we are around everything that we do that makes a difference is in turn a difference that could never have been otherwise.”

And that is why man can be controlled to choose only that which he could never not choose (which, under changed conditions, is the choice that hurts no one once this law of our nature is put into practice).

@iambiguous

Responsibility can get tricky.

As I once noted:

Years ago, I was walking to work when a dog ran out from around a corner, encountered me and, startled, ran out into the street where a pickup truck hit and killed him. Now, strictly speaking, I wasn’t morally responsible for that because, in terms of intention, it was beyond my control. On the other hand, my being there then did cause the dog to bolt into the street and get killed.

Only from my frame of mind nothing that unfolded that morning was ever going to not unfold because nothing that unfolded that morning was not wholly in sync with the laws of matter unfolding only as they ever could have.

That is true, but it does not mean that you were responsible in any way. It was a series of events that you played no part in other than being there. If you were careless (for example, you were the owner of the dog and left the gate open) which allowed the dog to escape, you would have felt the burden of responsibility and would want to find a way to secure the gate from now on. After all, we all know that once something is done, we can’t go back in time to undo it, but we can veer in a different direction to prevent it from happening again.

[iambiguous]

Free Will Is Real and Materialism Is Wrong
Michael Egnor

In short, any engram in the brain that coded for Good would presuppose the concept of Good in order to establish the code for Good. So Good, from a materialist perspective on the mind, must be an infinite regress of Good engrams. Engrams all the way down, so to speak, which of course is no engrams at all.

In short?

Translation: “The manner in which I assess the brain here…given my own particular ‘world of words’…is now the default argument.”

Then all we need is a follow-up. He takes this world of words to the brain scientists. They confirm that the materialists as he understands them are flat out wrong.

Or perhaps someone here can link us to this definitive conclusion.

The engram theory of intellect and will presupposes that which it purports to explain.

Right. Like his own analysis here does not in turn presuppose the meaning he gives to the words [that he’ll insist he chose of his own volition] isn’t just another example of circular logic. Of course his premises and his conclusion match. He defines the meaning of all the words in both.

But how are his definitions and his deductions then established to be true experientially, experimentally, empirically? Does he connect the dots between the words and the actual chemical, neurological, electrical interactions in the brain itself?

Concepts such as Good can’t be material manifestations in the brain. The intellectual grasp of concepts and acts of will based on universals are inherently immaterial.

What’s next, connecting our “intellectual grasp” to…the soul?

The irony being that without our material brain we would not even be able to imagine something being “immaterial”.

From the dictionary:

Immaterial: 2] Philosophy: spiritual, rather than physical.

And, sure, if it’s a spiritual font that explains free will, how exactly do the non-believers go about demonstrating that the religionists and the pantheists are wrong?

[iambiguous]

Free Will’s Absurdist Paradox
How Camus’ Absurdism unifies Compatibilism and Incompatibilism
Daniel Miessler

Examples from human experience

The best way to see this is to imagine all the real-world situations that break either the Compatibilist or Incompatibilist narratives, and demand a new model in their place.

Unless of course the best way to see anything is always the only way that you were ever able to see it. And, thus, entirely interchangeable with the worst way to see anything. Just as all the models are interchangeable.

We’re always stuck here because we still have no way in which to pin down how the human brain itself might be able to understand everything that can be understood about the human brain; and how that fits into everything that can be known about the existence of existence itself.

Of course [compelled to or not] when I bring that up here many [compelled to or not] start to groan: that again!

Like there could possibly be something that actually is more important than that?

Anyway…

You feel like you haven’t been trying hard enough to improve yourself, and while laying in bed you make a personal vow to get back into your projects and actively pursue your goals.

True enough. There’s no getting around the fact that we do live our lives from day to day truly, truly convinced that if we did try harder we could of our own volition improve ourselves. Even if in doing so that involves choosing behaviors that make things considerably worse for others. Like, for example, someone at work improving his situation there by firing someone else. Or someone who in pursuing her goals improves the chances of accomplishing them by aborting her unborn baby. The existential quagmire that free will can entail.

The uncertainties embedded in the Benjamin Button Syndrome given free will.

A man who’s tortured and killed multiple people in his life is shown in 2027 to have a set of genes that are associated with psychopathy, and he’s in the courtroom facing a judge and some of the victim’s families.

You tell a friend, or a colleague, that they should do x or y, instead of z.

In the first case, if you’re an Incompatibilist, why are you having an internal dialogue with yourself about improving your life? Who is talking to who? And since there is no free will, what exactly are you trying to change?

Exactly?

This may well be one of the things a hardcore determinist can fall back on. Everything that anyone ever thinks, feels, says or does is “naturally” “beyond their control”. And even if others blame them, well, they were never really able to not blame them, right?

[iambiguous]

Free will, the Holocaust, and The Problem of Evil
David Kyle Johnson

“Wenn es einen Gott gibt muß er mich um Verzeihung bitten.”
anonymous

This German quote, which translates as “If there is a God, he will have to beg my forgiveness,” appears in a documentary about the Mauthausen concentration camp.

Who among us would dare to go that far? What if we do have free will and we have it because God intended us to have it. On Judgement Day, after He explains exactly how our free will can be reconciled with His own omniscience, will we be given the chance to judge Him?

Starting with the Holocaust for some and for others starting with this…

…an endless procession of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions and tornadoes and hurricanes and great floods and great droughts and great fires and deadly viral and bacterial plagues and miscarriages and hundreds and hundreds of medical and mental afflictions and extinction events…making life on Earth a living hell for countless millions of men, women and children down through the ages…

Or does our free will revolve entirely around worshipping and adoring Him despite all of the things it might seem reasonable for Him to ask our forgiveness for.

Or has Harold Kushner himself having just died recently now been able to confirm that in fact God is not in the least omnipotent?

It was supposedly written by an unknown prisoner there, on the wall, during the holocaust. Because the walls have long since been painted over, the veracity of this claim is difficult to verify—but there is little reason to doubt it. The events of the holocaust have long raised questions about God’s existence, and why (if he exists) God would allow such suffering; so it’s not hard to imagine that a prisoner in one of Hitler’s concentration camps, in the throes of despair, would have etched such a thing on the wall of their prison cell.

It would be interesting to know the reaction of the other prisoners after reading it. Would some, smack dab in the middle of a death camp that an omnipotent God permitted to exist, consider it to be blasphemy? Would the prisoner who wrote it be hounded into taking it off the wall…to recant and beg forgiveness from God?

Now this quote is far from a clearly articulated argument with a specific conclusion. But once we realize that conditional (if… then) statements like this can be translated into disjunctive (either…or) statements, the potential conclusions the prisoner might have had in mind become clear. So translated, the quote becomes this:

“Either God doesn’t exist or he will have to beg for my forgiveness”

If we add in the assumption that God certainly exists, then the conclusion becomes that God will have to beg the prisoner for forgiveness. And from there, it is a short step to the conclusion that God is morally imperfect (I); any divine being that has done something to apologize for, by definition, cannot be morally perfect.

On the other hand, it’s not for nothing that the arguments of those like Harold Kushner manage to comfort the faithful. It’s not that God is morally imperfect but that He is not omnipotent. He created the Heavens and the Earth but He found Himself unable to fully control it. For example, suppose in creating the laws of matter, God Himself is not permitted to transcend the consequences of them in regard to those “natural disaster” above?

So, when you die and Judgment Day arrives, if you truly do worship and adore God, then your soul is saved and you are in Heaven. And once there all of the souls of the faithful who perished in those “natural disasters” are there as well.

[iambiguous]

@promethean75

For those unfamiliar with Libet’s experiment, of which there are few if any I hope, Harris, Sam will give u the low down @ 16:32

Of course, how far back does Harris take this himself?

Did his own brain compel him “beyond his control” as, say, libertarians understand this, to make the points that he did in that argument?

This is what I cannot wrap my own head around. How far back can this “gap” be taken? Clearly the brain is “in charge” regarding the preponderance of functions that autonomically our body parts [down to the billion billion billion atoms in it] perform routinely day after day after day.

But is there any part of Sam’s argument that “somehow” allows him to legitimately think that his points are more rational than those who oppose them?

Or is all of that just an illusion as well?

[iambiguous]

Free Will’s Absurdist Paradox
How Camus’ Absurdism unifies Compatibilism and Incompatibilism
Daniel Miessler

And finally we have the big one. The very concept of “should” is completely inert in a world where free will does not exist.

Why do we try to be better people?
Why do we dislike bad people?
Why do we try to create anything?
Why not lay in bed and wait for the universe to just happen?

[b]Inert:

1] “having no inherent power of action, motion, or resistance (opposed to active): inert matter.”
2] “inactive…by habit or nature.”[/b]

Okay, but as some determinists [compelled or not] understand this, we are inert as all other matter is…having no power whatsoever to do anything other than what our material brain does compel us to do.

Those aliens in the free will part of the universe may observe us choosing things just as they do. But they know that we are to laws of matter in the wholly determined part of the universe what actors are to a film director…doing what we’re told. What we are directed to do by the script.

Only our own brains are simply not capable of pinning down what that actually means. And may never be able to.

And then the part where even if we do “somehow” have free will who gets to say what makes people better, or what makes them bad? When and where and why?

In the interim, we are left noting things like this:

As logically-minded Incompatibilists we simply must accept that believing there is no free will must invalidate the entire concept of “should”, including everything that comes with it.

Planning. Praise. Punishment—all these concepts pivot on the belief that there are options in human behavior.

Well, that settles…what exactly? After all, here I am posting thoughts that I find it absolutely ridiculous to believe are not my own. But then I’m back to what “here and now” my brain notes regarding the truly persuasive arguments of the determinists. So, I think/“think” that I am one of them.

And then in regard to this thread my reaction/“reaction” to the compatibilists who insist that even if my brain does compel me to think what I do about what I do think about determinism I am still responsible for thinking it.