Yes, deterministic causalism is another word for logic.
The facts, that things are determined more interestingly than humans can generally know, and that causes are more profound than humans dare to know, and that general human grasp on logic is wanting, are not due to any flaws deterministic causalism as such.
To argue against deterministic causalism using logic, which is deterministic causalism, is clearly not going to yield much fruit.
Still and all in order to make a proper logical argument one needs sound knowledge and understanding of all things considered to begin with. And such knowledge and understanding has emerged only quite recently in philosophy.
The fact wisdom exists, defeats what determinism is as a whole really. The system itself cannot be understood by itself, which leads to free will. The choice when the ability is had, to understand such system. The world used to be determinism ruled, until consciousness. Determinism effects the subconscious state much more.
In other words, the fact that your brain worked this out proves that your brain worked it out of your mind’s “I” own free will.
A world of words in which the words are true because they are defined and defended by more words still.
And if you took this intellectual contraption to the neuroscientists who are actually engaging the “scientific method” in probing the brain here experimentally, they would confirm beyond all possible doubt that this is true. Some even being able to go all the way back to explaining how the existence of the human species itself fits into a definitive understanding of why something exists rather than nothing, and why this something and not something else.
As a linear thing yes, but in a Relativistic universe causality is rounded on all sides, it is just a matter of where you begin attributing cause.
Some philosophers relinquish the will to know a first cause and simply posit their own wisdom as the central cause.
The mind contains future and past and brews them into something which exists in the present but is different from the present; a kind of antagonistic, very limited representation of the factors that go into and come out of the present which attacks it from both the past and the future. Inspiration is in allowing this attack to happen and orchestrate a part in it for oneself indifferently to anything other than the fact of attack.
“An Argument For Compatibilism”
Jason Streitfeld
from the Specter of Reason website
This observation alone encompasses just how problematic discussions like this can become. He says that he agrees but he may well be saying that only because he was compelled by his brain compelled by the laws of nature to say it. Just as we say we are choosing to read his words only in assuming that it was within our own autonomous capacity to choose not to. And then when, compelled or not, we bring God into the discussion that just adds another convoluted layer. After all, if an omniscient God is just another inherent manifestation of a wholly created universe…what then? Or, if, instead, an omniscient God created the universe and then created us to be autonomous how is what we choose to do not already known by God Himself. How here is free will squared with His omniscient nature?
And, again, in reflecting on all of this how is the mind of the compatibilist qualitatively different from the mind of the determinist? What, given the compatibilist perspective, would be any different? In particular, in regard to human interactions down here on Earth.
These points are embedded in an argument for compatibilism. When all I want to know is how on earth in a determined universe points that could only have been made are somehow in sync with the idea that peacegirl and others raise in distinguishing between choosing to raise them and “choosing” to raise them. I see this as embedded necessarily in the the psychological illusion of free will embedded necessarily in how the human brain must function.
The way forward [for me] is to explain how the past, present and future move as they do when a distinction is made between hard determinism and compatibilism. What changes in regard to what actually does happen?
And why focus on morality and moral responsibility if one is only ever able to make that the focus in the only argument that one is ever able to make. Isn’t that why? If you argue for a coherent picture going all the way back to what brought into existence the laws of matter themselves isn’t your argument going to be just another inherent component of that?
From chaos to free will
A crude understanding of physics sees determinism at work in the Universe. Luckily, molecular uncertainty ensures this isn’t so
George Ellis at the aeon website
Of course it doesn’t matter what he might have said, only whether he could have said something entirely different. And then the extent to which, if he could have, we can determine definitively how to demonstrate this.
What is or is not superfluous in regard to matter unfolding into the future?
Come on, we all know the toppled domino here that brings all of this into question: the evolution of matter into biological life into a central nervous system into a brain into a mind into an “I” actually able to convince itself that any number of things it chooses to think and feel and say and do excludes all of the things it freely chose not to.
This is where scientists and philosophers have been spinning their wheels now going back to the very first mind that tried to grapple with it all the way to the final explanation.
In philosophy it’s called an antimony: “a contradiction between two beliefs or conclusions that are in themselves reasonable”. Like the one where existence is infinite or it is not. Or the one where existence had a beginning or it did not.
In science, on the other hand, beliefs are tested “in the lab”. Actual experiments are conducted with the human brain in order to pin down the empirical relationships between the chemical and neurological interactions. And here the assumption on their part may or may not be that they are going about this of their own free will.
From chaos to free will
A crude understanding of physics sees determinism at work in the Universe. Luckily, molecular uncertainty ensures this isn’t so
George Ellis at the aeon website
And then the considerably more problematic part: brains evolving into minds evolving into self-conscious minds evolving into you and I grappling to come up with a definitive understanding of whether or not the understanding itself is only as it could ever have been.
Really, is it any wonder than that, given some explanation for the existence of free will, one of the first things that the minds of mere mortals will do is to invent Gods. Let Him be the explanation. Then we are left only with reconciling human autonomy with the fact that most insist that their own God is omniscient.
It might seem or it must seem? Isn’t that the question? And yet try as most of us might [including myself] to wrap our heads around the reality that typing these very words or reading them is really just another manifestation of nature on automatic pilot, it just seems ridiculous. We invent words like “visceral” to connote a sense of certainty that goes beyond simple explanation. We just know we have free will.
From chaos to free will
A crude understanding of physics sees determinism at work in the Universe. Luckily, molecular uncertainty ensures this isn’t so
George Ellis at the aeon website
So, will there ever be a time when it doesn’t have to be “set aside”? A time when the world of the very, very large and the world of the very, very small fit together seamlessly in an actual extant “theory of everything”. And then the part where the theory can be translated into an explanation for how the human mind fits into it given our day to day interactions? To be or not to be free?
In fact, it’s that very fuzziness sustaining all the uncertainties that allows us to voice all manner of conflicting assumptions generating all manner of conflicting conclusions. You might not be correct but no one is able to establish that you are wrong. Compelled or not.
On the other hand, as MA noted on another thread, “if humans are made out of molecules, and if molecules can’t speak, neither can humans” is nonsense. And yet it clearly seems to be the case that somehow we go from the fact of being constructed out of non-conscious atomic and sub-atomic particles to a very much conscious “I”.
Doesn’t the whole matter of determinism then revolve around how on earth to explain mind itself? Matter becomes mindful. How? Why? The very fact that matter can now ponder matter itself “ontologically” and “teleologically” seems, well, almost surreal to some.
Or, to others, attributable only to God. In particular, their God.
From chaos to free will
A crude understanding of physics sees determinism at work in the Universe. Luckily, molecular uncertainty ensures this isn’t so
George Ellis at the aeon website
Okay, but what of the “structure of molecules” when the brain configures into mind configures into “I”? What of these molecules when, as most intrigues me, one “I” comes into contact with another “I” and fierce conflicts erupt over which set of behaviors will be either rewarded or punished?
What of DNA and proteins and messenger molecules then? Where does nature’s code end and our own autonomous free will begin when, say, the conflict becomes entangled in politics such that attempts are made to encode human behaviors through the law? Behaviors actually able to be enforced.
Here’s how remarkably mechanical it gets on the biological level:
And it all unfolds such that, to the best of my knowledge, none of the biological “players” here have the slightest inkling as to why they do this instead of that? How then are the dots connected here between biological imperatives and any one particular “I” using these laws of nature to “instruct” the body – their own – to choose one thing over another?
Yep, here we go again. Making an attempt at an explanation by noting the manner in which material interactions on the quantum level are often indeterminant. Surreal even. At least in terms of pinning down definitively why and how relationships unfold as they do – as they must – “down there”. What of cause and effect when the “viewers” themselves somehow determine the outcome? We can only imagine that consciousness itself is explainable in regard to all of the pieces still missing when biologists and physicists either agree or disagree with respect to what is actually happening in a brain derived from DNA derived from matter containing who knows what combinations of these guys: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elementary_particle
And that’s before we get to how all of this fits into a definitive understanding of dark matter and dark energy.
From chaos to free will
A crude understanding of physics sees determinism at work in the Universe. Luckily, molecular uncertainty ensures this isn’t so
George Ellis at the aeon website
Again, if you are a free will skeptic isn’t this “confounding thing” no less only what it could ever have been? Either from inside your head, inside the heads of others or wholly in sync with nature going back to the explanation for nature’s existence itself.
Thus, once we admit that we are all stuck here until “I” itself is understood definitively, these “intellectual assessments” can only be but one more component of what seems to be an inherently problematic examination itself. Unless, of course, I keep missing something here that makes my own ambiguity/ambivalence go away.
And what might that be?
Constraints would become but one more domino toppling over in a causal chain that includes all of the dominos in all of the material interaction that there ever were, are now or ever will be. Sure, one can speak of them in assessments such as this as though one might have “chosen” not to have spoken of them at all [or spoke of them differently], but nothing in the assessment itself is an actual outlier given what would seem to be a seamless intertwining of all matter in sync with the laws that compel them over time and across space.
Okay, suppose he had done that. So what? Given the assumptions of those who suppose that all interactions – from what Newton did then to what we are doing now – are at one with the only possible reality. What constrains everything that everyone of us think and feel and say and do are the laws of matter. If…if those laws are no less applicable to the human brain configured into mind configured into consciousness configured into “I”.
Yes, given the laws of physics, the apple on the string would behave differently from the apple not on a string and just falling to the ground. But how is this applicable or not in turn to Newton either tying the apple to a string or not tying it?
And it’s not like the atoms involved in either context get together to decide this.
When you say things like the brain compelling things, it just makes me think of inanimate matter, what compelled such unconscious state of matter to react and diversify even further? What compels a tree to do what a tree does, all without a brain, it’s root system? It just seems more than such. Consciousness came before physical manifestation, the intent is the evolutionary string itself of which directs this all, a simultaneously overlapping change. That ‘something’ over nothing. Timeless awareness doesn’t always obey cause coming before effect. Sometimes the effect is the cause and if one may rest outside of that chain being causality, one is free from the standard of cause leading to effect rather than vice versa.
So if determinism is cause and effect, causality, and if one is timeless awareness not necessarily always bound to present, what is effect that may lead to cause? If an effect occurs before a cause, does there have to be a cause if choice simultaneously exists?
Is this not why people teach children to “turn the other cheek”? Or why they teach them at all? If it was all drawn out as being just pure causality, what’s the need for educating? To eliminate possible causes? No, to eliminate effects, and if one can SEE so far ahead as to what an effect MAY be, it proves not only timeless awareness but a will that IS free, outside of the chain. Like it has been stated already, the observer is not bound. An identity(ego) is merely a mechanism or receiver to function in a physical manifested existence that was consciously imagined or dreamt up, it is nothing more than that. It isn’t reverse.
Back to dreams. I don’t know about yours, but mine are simply breathtaking when it comes to creating these astonishing “worlds” that I find myself “in”. And rarely are mine “surreal”. Instead they revolve around actual contexts I am entirely familiar with. I find myself being with others from my past. I find myself seeing things, hearing things, touching things, reading things, experiencing things in great detail. They simply boggle my mind.
But it is my brain that is creating these worlds.
Why? and How? And how can I know beyond all doubt that my material brain is not able in turn to create the psychological illusion of my freely choosing to type these words. Sure, a part of me scoffs at this. But that’s not definitive proof that there is an autonomous me calling the shots.
The fact is that, as a species, we just don’t know what is actually going on here. Let alone being able to connect all of the dots between what we think we do know as individuals here and now and all that can be known about the entirety of existence itself.
Then the part where speculations of this sort…
…are grappled with by neuroscientists exploring empirically, experientially, experimentally how the brain functions when explored using the “scientific method”. What has, as of now, been pinned down beyond all doubt by these folks?
Now, I suspect there is nothing really conclusive yet. Such that they have in fact determined the extent to which “I” is or is not “free” in regard to thinking and feeling and saying and doing…what exactly? I would think that if definitive conclusions had been reached that would be Big News. And PBS and the Science Channel and the BBC among others would be airing documentaries about it. Not to mention all the print publications and internet sites.
But, if they have, I’m not familiar with them.
Okay, but what’s the need for anything to exist at all? Why the need that it be this way and not some other? The teleological parameters of existence? What is the meaning and the purpose “behind” “all there is”?
God, maybe? The thing that Buddhists or deists attribute to the “universe”?
Or, perhaps, one of the many TOE [religious or otherwise] that have been proposed right here at ILP. The James S. Saint/Fixed Jacob Syndrome?
As some here know, I often come back to dreaming in regard to free will:
But when I Google “dreaming free will” it’s slim pickings. Moistly in regard to “lucid dreams”.
But I did find this at the “Catholic Answers Forums”:
Of course here it generally pertains to God and religion. The discussion aims at explaining God’s role in dreams given that He created us with free will. Or in pondering the question of committing sins in dreams that one would never do in “real life”.
For me though it’s a No God world. For me it’s all about how similar “I” am in my dreams as I am in “real life”. Why can’t the awake “I” be just another manifestation of the sleeping brain “I”?
From chaos to free will
A crude understanding of physics sees determinism at work in the Universe. Luckily, molecular uncertainty ensures this isn’t so
George Ellis at the aeon website
Higher level processes in the brain “reach down” to the lower level process. The macro-brain and the micro-brain somehow in tandem. But we still don’t have a full grasp of how these interactions unfold insofar as “I” become more or less the commander-in-chief. And as often as not when descriptions of this is brought down to earth they revolve around what unfolds only in the either/or world.
To wit:
But how do we go about determining beyond all possible doubt if our mental interpretations are merely, as of yet, not fully understood manifestations of physics wholly in sync with the material laws of matter?
Yet this basically crunch time for all who take an interest in grappling with their own choices. But: Given the mind-boggling nature of interaction between the billions and billions of bits of matter all the way down to the “ions and signaling molecules and synapses”, who but the neuroscientists themselves have access to anything that could lead only to the least uninformed leap of faith here.
And then the fact that, depending of the context in which the terrible accident above occurs, there may be those who do not feel “sympathy, fear or guilt” at all. For whatever personal reasons they may actually take satisfaction from it. And feel positive emotional and psychological states. Or see the whole thing as just “entertainment”.
The part where, free will or not, there’s no way to pin down how one ought to react to it.
There’s No Such Thing as Free Will
But we’re better off believing in it anyway.
Stephen Cave in The Atlantic
Unless of course someone – everyone – loses it only because nature, in unfolding only as it must, compels this to be the one and the only reality. But how exactly would philosophers or theologians come to know this if they can’t be entirely certain that what they came to know was as a result of being able to freely choose to know something else.
It still comes down to what the “hard guys” tell us based on the conclusions they come to utilizing all of the tools available to them through the “scientific method”.
But!
You know the rest.
Yet here even Kant falls back on the “transcending font”: his own “deduced” Creator. And, for most in the “Christian tradition”, this Creator is said to be omniscient. He knows all but somehow He does not know what we will freely choose. Because, if He did kn ow, how then would we truly be free to choose it?
And we are still back to assuming that the things we think up in regard to God and religion and ethics are examples of what we actually have no way in which to confirm beyond the assumptions themselves. Somehow, viscerally, intuitively, we just know these things.
And that’s before we get to the part where the behaviors we link “freedom and goodness” to are determined and then demonstrated to be ours and not theirs.
There you go. A leap of faith to free will. Just the thought that next week’s election here in America was “fated” going back to whatever brought into existence matter and the laws that govern it is simply beyond our grasp. Perhaps literally. It’s just that some are able – compelled or not – to shrug it off and to nestle comfortably in their own set of assumptions about “I”. Not to mention all of us who go about the business of living our lives from day to day not giving a single thought to these complex “philosophical” conundrums.
There’s No Such Thing as Free Will
But we’re better off believing in it anyway.
Stephen Cave in The Atlantic
Bolder is one thing, pinning down that there is absolutely no doubt that you are reading this only because you were never really free to choose not to read it, another matter all together.
In fact, how do we untangle ourselves from the conundrum itself? You’re a neuroscientist or someone able to do research on the brains of dead people. You’re poking around and performing all of these experiments. But what constitutes the part – that eureka! moment – when it finally becomes clear that it is only because you freely chose to do what you could have freely chosen not to do.
It’s like the human consciousness equivalent of figuring out why the universe is something and why it is this something. Or whether existence has always been around or actually started given a particular set of conditions.
Then, for some, cue God. Or some manifestation of the universe which they believe is “out there” able at least to provide an explanation. Meanwhile God or No God we continue to be stuck in antinomies…going around and around in circles trying to sort out – scientifically, philosophically, spiritually – what exactly it means to be dependent on our “biological inheritance”.
Wholly dependent? Compatibly dependent? Or “free at last!”?
The either/or world rendition of “conflicting goods”. Both sides can make reasonable arguments that the other side can deflect but never entirely make go away.