I expect simple behaviours here. Friendship, and love. Any advice should be from the perspective of the person asking, not the person giving! We have had to make new membership moderated to combat the huge number of spammers who register
Location: USA
Registered: November 2008
Messages: 973
I'm starting this thread per Dee's sugestion. It got unwieldy under 'Parents'
Its a very important subject for me. I've come to a deterministic view of life after a lifetime of deep consideration. In a word, an individual can not be blamed for his actions. In fact, is there really anything individual in our makeup? I don't see what it might be. I understand the nature of genetics. I understand the nurture of society. I can not fathom what else that can go into our makeup, save by belief in something like a soul. I would love to believe that, but I need a basis for that belief.
Now I realize that this has a huge implication on personal responsibility. If I am not guilty for anything, why should I control myself? But you can also view this from the other side, and accept guilt for deeds not perpetrated by your hand, via your membership in the society that produced the malefactor. If we lay blame on individuals, are we not at the same time absolving ourself of any societal responsibility to eradicate evil? So there are knarley problems on both sides of the issue.
So, if you are a 'free will' groupie, then tell me what is the origin of that free will. If it is neither nuture nor nature, I fail to see what it could be.
Behold, how good and how pleasant it is
For brothers to dwell together in unity!
Ps 133:1 NASB
People will tell you where they've gone
They'll tell you where to go
But till you get there yourself you never really know
Where some have found their paradise
Other's just come to harm
Location: Seaofstars
Registered: August 2003
Messages: 563
BTW Yeah Free Will is.
Just had to back and say, “but not because of those articles,” yes I did read them back in Jan but remember almost nothing other than they were interesting, yeah right if you’re a geek lol, no they were interesting in their own esoteric geeky way…. I hope someone may find and enjoy them!::-)
[Updated on: Wed, 06 May 2009 15:34]
People will tell you where they've gone
They'll tell you where to go
But till you get there yourself you never really know
Where some have found their paradise
Other's just come to harm
Location: Seaofstars
Registered: August 2003
Messages: 563
That was one of my fav shows. Strangle enough back in the late 60’s when I lived in North Carolina there was a channel that played current British television. That’s where I was first turned on to The Prisoner early Dr Who, and even Monty Python.
I just looked up “The Prisoner” and they only list Leo McKern as #2 in episode #3 but I distinctly remember him showing up in the last couple of episodes. Maybe as number one? ??
People will tell you where they've gone
They'll tell you where to go
But till you get there yourself you never really know
Where some have found their paradise
Other's just come to harm
Location: South Africa
Registered: October 2004
Messages: 159
Here is my humble oppinion. After thinking about it while I should have been paying attention in mathematics, I have come to the conclusions that:
1. An individual exists, yet is definitively and actively a part of and influenced almost every second of every day by the sum of all their relationships, direct or indirect, with all persons, organisms and physcial environments they interact with even in the most surface way whenever they are not asleep, and usually even then too and influence all other humans in the same way. Without this 'society', no human could be more than an animal.
However,
2. Personal responsibility remains a very real thing, and humans are not the only things that influence other humans; they are not the only things that makes us whom we are. Individualism is a very real thing, and we each do have unique aspects, even if these are only a product of small random mutations in our genes, which I do not beleive they are. I am fully of the oppinion - and It seems logical - that humans may, can and do influence themselves. This ability, I beleive, creates to some degree a responsibility to take the best, most humane, and - at its basest level - the most iffecient decisions possible in our lives, to improve ourselves, which will, as a natural cumulative consequence improve society which will in turn affect ourselves for the better again as well.
The ability to change ourselves for the better is the very thing that makes us individual, unique, and, just by-the-by, seperates us from computers and just that little bit above most animals. Nature and nurture may play and integral and inescapable part in who we are, but we ourselves play a part as well. This makes us responsible for our own actions - the very ability to be responsible for them makes us so. This responsibility, however, does extend to a degree to society as a whole and it does not preclude that society is not to some degree responsible for the influences they have on you.
That may have been a bit jumbled or confusing, because I just ran with my thoughts and set them free as they came. If you can sort them out, though, I think I was trying to say that I see some middle ground here and agree with both arguments to some extent - that they are not necesarilly mutually independent.
A truth told with bad intent
Beats all the lies you can invent
It could be that all our choices are determined by factors we may not be able to see and if they are then the question would be "Can we be held responsible for our actions?" [And the answer would be NO.]
If all our choices are determined then what we think of as choice is an illusion. If choice is an illusion then morality is an illusion.
I believe that I can choose whether to have tea or coffee and that it wasn't determined beforehand. I can choose whether to have another glass or to stop drinking. I can choose between actions that will do no harm to other people and actions that may do harm.
So I believe in free will. I don't believe in the notion of a clockwork universe that is just unwinding its spring. Nor do I believe in the undetermined universe that is the consequence of putting randomness into our model of physics. I believe that I (and all of you) can make choices and that they are not predetermined and that they make a difference.
And I believe that all the discussions about right and wrong are sensible and worth having and not just noise on the surface (which they would be if everything were predetermined).
So there is a middle way between on the one hand thinking everything is fixed by physical causes and on the other that some things are not determined but are random - undetermined and could happen in more than one way. The middle way is one where people have real choices.
The problem about either the wholly determined universe or the universe where some things are matters of chance is that the 'models' are plainly wrong. Laplace's clockwork universe relies on models that could operate backwards and so did Newton's. Actually there is no satisfactory model that even begins to explain why time can't run backwards.
And, of course, our understanding of the world consists of mental models that try to match the behaviour of objects in the world. And it is a common mistake that Kepler made to think that the world HAS to match some model. Kepler tried to make the orbits of the planets fit to the pattern of the spheres that could contain each of the platonic regular solids. Scientists today are trying to persuade you that because their model of quantum mechanics has random elements the world must also be partly random even if only at a subatomic scale.
I don't have a Theory of Everything. I just reject all the theories of everything that other people have put forward.
And I don't believe that choice is an illusion and so I do praise and censure people for their actions. I've even been known to apologise when I've done wrong!
Location: USA
Registered: November 2008
Messages: 973
Dee,
Thank you for your careful reading of my post and your thouhgtful response. My apologies re your math class. You aver that the individual does exist. The mechanism you propose for the existence of the individual is 'humans ...influence themselves'. Perhaps I misunderstand, but this seems somewhat tautalogical to me. It's another way of saying that the individual influences the individual, and its the existence of the individual that we are questioning. Before it has influence, we have to establish the individual's existence. So where is the origin of the individual if we are just products of nature and nuture? What is that which creates the 'individual'? I think that question puts us into the realm of faith rather than fact. I wish there were a factual source of the existence of the individual. Embracing determinism shattered my belief in a personal god. If I could believe in free will, I might be able to get my faith back. The most I can believe in with determinism is an uninvolved, impersonal god a la pop song 'You Found Me'. And there really isn't much value in believing in a god like that. BTW, what made you lose faith in god?
Behold, how good and how pleasant it is
For brothers to dwell together in unity!
Ps 133:1 NASB
Location: South Africa
Registered: October 2004
Messages: 159
Funnily, enough - I didn't actually lose faith. I just discovered I never really had any. I think no faith is and always was the default position. It was the absence that existed before I had any real faith.
Funnily enough, it was actually realising I was gay that was the catalist, like in so many things in my life. I had always 'known' deep down the same way that no god could exist for me. There came a point in my life, where I evaluated myself, really, really looking at myself for the first time, challenged everything I knew and thought I knew, because I realised that knowing stopped me from learning. I even went so far as to doubt the very existence of reality, of matter, of thought, except as a figment of my immagination, and even the existence of that, I doubted. Accepting nothing I finally learned to look at myself, going as far as self-hipnotisation to recall memories and facts I had forgotten.
I went at faith, at thought, at life, at love, at hope and emotions and existence and how I perceived color and delved into research, hiding away in possibilities so obscure and unlikely and theories so profound no science fiction book would publish them. I looked at every religion, compared them, wayed the pro's and con's. I lost myself so I could find myself. When I returned - and I'm not fully back yet, there are still things lurking, probably always will - I simply realised that what I beleived, thought, perceived; clashed with everything religion told me was right and I thought was sometimes heinous and sometimes laudable.
I think the objectivity this brought to look at myself and question everything, everyone, every relationship and every grain of sand untill I knew and understood It, and could start understanding it from the beginning again every day - thats what allowed me to accept myself exactly as I am and was and will be; that broke my faith. Everything simply cancelled out, and I realised I had gained nothing from the 'faith' I had once tried, and failed, to embrace. That I could easier accept the morals and love and the world from without any faith, any gods, wizards or magic (yes- I went that far in searching for understanding) than straight-jacketed inside of it. It was almost like mist - the closer I looked at my faith, the less I liked it, the less it seemed understandable and logical and good. Simply thinking of the Crusades today, and what it meant that two religions proclaiming love of a very similar god, basically differing only in who they proclaimed their prophet, killed in the 'holy name of good' and slaughtered more people than the second world war repulses me. Reading the Bible, the Koran, the Takra, and the Madjim and seeing a holy book proclaiming to tell the story of how to live your life, advise the slaughtering of children, the stoning to death of family and strangers and hating of someone just because they are or are perceived to be homosexual, a witch, or a normal person doing things I would fully condone, that hasn't adapted its values in two to five millenia I refused, finally, to obey blindly a God, god, gods or godesses or simply any authority who I saw as little more than harbringers of evil, pain and death. Personal pain, at times. There was nothing left, and now I cannot think of any Higher Power, except without being slightly repulsed and sick, wondering why I ever beleived in one after I stopped beleiving in Santa Clause, who was at least always kind.
A truth told with bad intent
Beats all the lies you can invent
Location: USA
Registered: November 2008
Messages: 973
Anthony, I admire your ability to communicate with words and to say so much in so few of them. But again and again you say "I believe". Is this just a religious-like belief, or do you have concrete reasons for believing that there is a modicum of free will in the world? Do you believe it because it feels good? Do you believe it because the world works better if we believe it? We can explain how genetics affects us. We can explain how environment affects us. Your beliefs seem to posit a mystical human consciousness. Hell, why not call that a soul and found a religion?
Let me try to answer my own question in my own way and maybe you will see why I am uncomfortable with even a modicum of free will.
Each human being is a little pot of genetic material and stored life experiences. Consciousness can be considered to be the cascading electrical impulses that link all kinds of past experiences to an external stimulus, at hand. THis search of stored experience is constant, even in sleep, because it is impossible to ever escape external stimuli. The "free will" decision is determined by this review of past experiences. Your choice is determined by your experiences. But, do you have a free will in determining what experiences you choose to store, or is that based on even more remote experience? Do you have free will in determining the impact point of the stimulus on your brain (is it an emotional or logical thing) because it is at least possible that beginning the cascade at a different storage area can lead to a different decision, or has that impact point been preset because previous experience has taught you where to begin to analyse this stimulus. I find the study of how we think a very interesting area to explore in sorting out my beliefs regarding determinism.
I think the quantum data can be disregarded. The experience in the quantum world is likely due to the item being observed being affected by the observation medium, be it light or whatever. Its like a bowling pin in a dark room has a definite location (determinism), but we can not determine its location unless we roll bowling balls into the dark room until we hit the pin (probability). This because (in the quantum world) switching on the light on a quantum bowling pin would alter its state. This is a physical determinant and has nothing to do with the consciousness of the observer.
Like I said, I admire YOUR ability to say a lot with a few words. It appears I have said but a little with many of them.
Behold, how good and how pleasant it is
For brothers to dwell together in unity!
Ps 133:1 NASB
Location: USA
Registered: November 2008
Messages: 973
You discovered that you never had faith. I think I always did believe because I was raised around folks where religion was a really big part of how they conducted their lives. So I think there's a difference there. The similarity comes in when I consider what led me to question my faith. Like you, it was my realization that I was gay and condemned by my beliefs. I felt guilty, and looked for ways to remove a guilt that was obviously unjust. I did not choose to be gay by my free will. I didn't even want to be gay. But I was what I was and I had to attack my beliefs to escape my guilt. So like you, I embarked on an exhaustive search for knowledge. I found knowledge that supported and in my mind proved determinism. So I won, faith lost. But now, I see so much that was nice about believing or maybe its just nostalgia. Whats more, through other reflection, I have come to feel very innocent about being gay. So, I'm trying to find a way back to believing. For me determinism slew guilt, and lack of guilt slew religious belief. So I'm looking for a 'free will' that I can understand and accept without just believing it on faith. But either I'm too dim to see it, or it does not exist. That's how I see it, so far anyway.
Behold, how good and how pleasant it is
For brothers to dwell together in unity!
Ps 133:1 NASB
Metaphysics is a murky area and by definition there is no way of "proving" a particular viewpoint.
I understand that if one takes a logical viewpoint it can be hard to justify the existence of free will. Starting at the beginning and working through known science it seems like the human brain is just a systematic chain of chemical reactions and there's nothing that could allow for choice in that model.
However, I believe in philosophy there's two valid approaches. One is the approach you take- taking a premise or number of premises and working through to the conclusion. Another approach, that I think is important in areas like these, is to start with a particular intuition or conclusion and to look at the ramifications of that intuition, regardless of whether or not the intuition itself seems sound.
So using the second approach lets look at free will. There's a few important questions to ask here, like:
-Does a belief in free will seem to better serve my preferences as a human? I'd have to definitely argue yes, free interactions work better than interactions I feel forced into.
-What ramifications does the absence of free will have for morality?
Personally I think a world without free will, or a perception of free will, would be a hell hole. There would be no responsibility, no motivation, no rights. The individualistic viewpoint may not yet be proven by science, but it definitely guarantees the best results. My desire for free will may paradoxically be deterministic in origin, but that doesn't mean it's any less valid. The entirety of human society revolves around notions of free will- the very thing you say makes free will invalid, makes free will essential.
And we don't know all there is to know about science or the human brain. Maybe we're just looking for free will in the wrong way. When you look at a patch of open sky at night there's millions of GALAXIES filled with millions of stars in that "black" space. We're only just scratching the surface of quantum mechanics, too. I think there's definitely room for free will in my world. Even if, for now, it is just a belief. I don't rely on the existence of a God to shape my world view, but I do rely on the existence of free will. Without free will, nothing would make sense.
Look at this tree. I cannot make it blossom when it suits me nor make it bear fruit before its time [...] No matter what you do, that seed will grow to be a peach tree. You may wish for an apple or an orange, but you will get a peach.
Master Oogway
Dear Macky, you wrote the below and I've interspersed comments:
Each human being is a little pot of genetic material and stored life experiences.
I think each human being is a body. The genetic material and memories are just part of it.
Consciousness can be considered to be the cascading electrical impulses that link all kinds of past experiences to an external stimulus, at hand. THis search of stored experience is constant, even in sleep, because it is impossible to ever escape external stimuli.
I am unconscious when asleep. This simply means that you are using the word consciousness in a non-standard way and I don't understand.
The "free will" decision is determined by this review of past experiences. Your choice is determined by your experiences.
I don't see why my choice is determined by my experiences. I've made lots of choices that were out of the way and some that were off the wall as they say nowadays. Why do you think you can't choose something new?
But, do you have a free will in determining what experiences you choose to store, or is that based on even more remote experience?
Obviously (at least to me) I don't choose what to remember. If I could exams would be easy. It isn't a (normal) choice.
Do you have free will in determining the impact point of the stimulus on your brain (is it an emotional or logical thing) because it is at least possible that beginning the cascade at a different storage area can lead to a different decision, or has that impact point been preset because previous experience has taught you where to begin to analyse this stimulus. I find the study of how we think a very interesting area to explore in sorting out my beliefs regarding determinism.
And, as my previous answer indicates, I don't have that sort of free will. In fact I think that what you mean by free will is quite alien to me. You seem to mean that I would have free will onlu if I had complete control over my mental and bodily processes - as if I were a puppet-master pulling my strings. And there is no puppet. Only me.
So we are really talking at cross purposes because we don't agree about what it means to say I have free will.
And, of course, I have a harder time because I also reject the idea of a soul or spirit and assert that there is no god.
And I believe we have free will because all the time I see people making choices and thinking they are choosing (not acting as determined by their inheritance and environment). Surely you don't REALLY believe you can't choose what you will have when I offer you a drink?
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13751
So you need to believe in something. And believing that everything is predetermined means you have no guilt.
Unfortunately it also excuses you from any action you take "because it is predetermined." You were always going to run that child over, and were always meant to be drunk when you drive. So what? It's predetermined anyway.
This allows you to pass through life doing precisely what you want, "because it is predetermined." You make and end friendships, not because you choose to, but because it was predetermined.
It all seems pretty convenient to me. It means that you are not, in your eyes, accountable for your actions.
Unfortunately this belief in predetermination is total unmitigated bullshit.
Do I have to prove it to you? No. Will I try to? No. It cannot be done because you express your faith in predetermined things dogmatically. If you truly open your eyes you will see this for yourself. You needed an excuse to be gay and no longer be religious. Ok, you've used the excuse. Now you have permission not to need the excuse any more.
Location: USA
Registered: November 2008
Messages: 973
I have sensed a certain righteous anger in some posts on this subject, which I didn't understand. I think I've got it now. I apologize for being dogmatic on the subject. To me being dogmatic entails trying to convert others to my opinion. In my zeal to defend my opinion, I fear that I might have sounded dogmatic in this respect. I was trying to get input. I was not trying to be dogmatic.
Having said that, I would ask you for the right to express myself as I am on this board without derision, and not allow myself to become buried in facades again, like I have done for most of my life. I would like to ask the board for input that is meaningful to me, without offending anyone. I admit that I might not always be totally logical to everyone here, but what I post is sincere. So please believe that. Some may want their foreskins back; I want my faith back. I would hope that both subjects would be given equal respect in discussions on this forum. And at this juncture, I should apologize for being rather flip at times, in the foreskin thread. I like fun, and I now realize that fun does not apply to everyone in the same way on certain subjects.
For me, a deterministic outlook on life has not led to a life of crime. I can see how it might be interpreted that way by others. All the more reason to take care not to slip into dogmatism.
I do not require you to prove anything to me. You are free to accept on faith, whatever your life view requires, and it is right for you to defend that freedom. It just so happens that I have a need to seek palpable evidence of the existence of the "free will". I come to the board to seek assistance and not to preach. Forgive me if I came across as the latter.
Behold, how good and how pleasant it is
For brothers to dwell together in unity!
Ps 133:1 NASB
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13751
"Righteous anger"? No.
I see someone who has traded one religion for another.
Dogma does not mean what you say it means, I fear. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogma has a reasonable definition. A paragraph from there says "At the core of the dogma concept is absolutism, infallibility, irrefutability, unquestioned acceptance (among adherents) and anti-skepticism. These concepts typically invoke criticism from moderate and modulated conceptual approaches, and thus "dogma" is often colloqually used to indicate a doctrine which has the problem of claiming absolute truth, when other concepts may be superior."
I am not angry at your reliance on "the will of society" or "fate" or "determinism" or whatever you wish to call it. But I am horrified that you, a sentient being, have exchanged a fundamentalist religion for fatalism.
Location: USA
Registered: April 2009
Messages: 429
Well, I enjoyed part of one ((the first one). I do feel we are in all part of the "Universe", and have always entertained our (humankind and universe-kind) roles in this thing we do call the universe. We have to consider our roles. We're embedded so deep in layers of existance, our gayness is just one aspect of our existance. And frankly, it's not just left to geeks or esoteric ramblings if we on this planet are ever to understand the concepts of nature. Sorry to ramble out in left field. I guess this is a passion that doesn't leave me.
Location: USA
Registered: November 2008
Messages: 973
Thank you Saben,
Of course I agree with you regarding the necessity of free will in setting standards for human behavior. Moreover, your post here has provided me with the type of input that I have been seeking. Thank you for taking the time to study my posts and untangle my jumbled words.
You give me 2 important points to consider.
1) The idea of working from an end and seeking circumstantial evidence that would seem to point to a things existence, as a philosophical method. You suggest that cold pragmatism is a valid starting point to begin building one's philosophy. I sort of see this, but I don't know if I accept it...yet...it gives me a new vein to continue my consideration of the subject.
2) You give me an affirmation that it is OK to accept a philosophical principle on faith. I want to do that, but I still desire something more concrete to base that faith on. But the more I hear people make this assertion, the closer I become to accepting the thing a priori.
Thank you.
Behold, how good and how pleasant it is
For brothers to dwell together in unity!
Ps 133:1 NASB
You say, “I understand the nature of genetics. I understand the nurture of society. I can not fathom what else that can go into our makeup”. I say another element is CHANCE, or LUCK if you prefer.
Here is an example. Many of us are old enough to remember the day when bicycle helmets didn't even exist; the many, many accidents during the 60's and 70's is what brought them into existence. A young boy falls of his bicycle and hits his head on the curb causing brain damage. How many lives are changed by this chance accident? Certainly the boy's since his mind will never advance beyond the abilities of an adolescent. Also the boy's parents since they will have a child to tend to for the rest of their lives. And what about the boy's older brother who will have to takeover his care when their parents are no longer able to do so.
Regarding individual responsibility versus societal responsibility I think you are placing too much emphasis on societal responsibility. The individual has the opportunity to overcome society it he chooses and is willing.
Here is an example. A child is raised in the ghetto surrounded by drugs, violence, death. He never knows his father, his mother is addict, his older brother killed in a gang shooting, his older sister is whore. He refuses to walk this road and earns whatever money he can from age ten, stays in school against the pressure of his family and peers, puts himself through college and becomes a successful adult. This is not fiction, it happens in real life, even if it is the exception rather than the rule.
We as individuals have the opportunity and must accept the responsibility for our lives and our actions. Society interacts and impacts our lives in countless ways every day, how we react to those interactions is our choice and we much take responsibility for the choices we make.
Here is an example. The above mentioned brain damaged boy's older brother has a choice of caring for his brother of not. Even if he feels pressured by society to accept responsibility for his brother's care he can not blame others, society included, for the impact upon his life that caring for his brother has; it is his choice.
Again, we must accept responsibility for our lives and our actions. I chose to remain single, Timmy did not. For either of us to blame others or society for our choice is wrong.
Location: USA
Registered: November 2008
Messages: 973
I think each human being is a body. The genetic material and memories are just part of it.
I am unconscious when asleep. This simply means that you are using the word consciousness in a non-standard way and I don't understand.
I don't see why my choice is determined by my experiences. I've made lots of choices that were out of the way and some that were off the wall as they say nowadays. Why do you think you can't choose something new?
Obviously (at least to me) I don't choose what to remember. If I could exams would be easy. It isn't a (normal) choice.
And, as my previous answer indicates, I don't have that sort of free will. In fact I think that what you mean by free will is quite alien to me. You seem to mean that I would have free will onlu if I had complete control over my mental and bodily processes - as if I were a puppet-master pulling my strings. And there is no puppet. Only me.
So we are really talking at cross purposes because we don't agree about what it means to say I have free will.
And, of course, I have a harder time because I also reject the idea of a soul or spirit and assert that there is no god.
And I believe we have free will because all the time I see people making choices and thinking they are choosing (not acting as determined by their inheritance and environment). Surely you don't REALLY believe you can't choose what you will have when I offer you a drink?
Love,
Behold, how good and how pleasant it is
For brothers to dwell together in unity!
Ps 133:1 NASB
Dear Macky, I have received a post that has my last post with gaps in between the paragraphs. Were there supposed to be comments in those gaps?
If so I'd be glad to read the comments sometime.
I'm puzzled by something you say in another post. You say to need a reason to believe in free will! Since you know what it is to choose and no-one is holding a gun to your head to make you say beer when you would rather have wine it seems to me that you need a reason to reject the view that you have a choice.
I don't know what to say to you except "Have a drink on me. What's your poison?" Don't you then choose? Isn't that YOU CHOOSING? Who or what do you think is forcing you?
Well, I suppose, Saben, that when Macky needs a reason to believe in free will, your suggestion "That it makes morality possible." is a pretty good reason.
I look at it the other way round: whenever someone proposes an explanation of the world that makes morality impossible then I reject it.
And one of those models is the one where the priests say that the universe was created by a benevolent god who allows us to make mistakes and fail to carry out the will of god. Those priests (at least some of them) tell me that being moral IS doing what god wants. So if we were all obedient performing animals doing what god wanted the world would be perfectly moral.
Accepting orders is not moral in my book. I don't see how a moral person can serve in the armed forces or any service where they undertake to obey any order however immoral that was properly given by a superior. Similarly I don't see that doing what god wants can possibly be moral: it's just obeying instructions.
Location: Seaofstars
Registered: August 2003
Messages: 563
Thing we have to remember in all of this is that we do not live in bubbles. In a human world all of these beings and possible other of free will effect us. That would be the nature of free will would it not. It is a wonder that all is not chaos.
I don’t know what this has to do with it but I thought what the heck I’ll through it in just for fun.
I'm thinking I'm at the wrong sight to be adding these things but they seeem relevent maybe only to my bizarre mind.
People will tell you where they've gone
They'll tell you where to go
But till you get there yourself you never really know
Where some have found their paradise
Other's just come to harm
Location: USA
Registered: November 2008
Messages: 973
I think each human being is a body. The genetic material and memories are just part of it.
---OK---
I am unconscious when asleep. This simply means that you are using the word consciousness in a non-standard way and I don't understand.
---Ok. But I think our brains still function processing stimuli during sleep. For instance an especially cold room can awaken us.---
I don't see why my choice is determined by my experiences. I've made lots of choices that were out of the way and some that were off the wall as they say nowadays. Why do you think you can't choose something new?
---What is commonly considered new is always the result of a unique combination of old experiences.--
Obviously (at least to me) I don't choose what to remember. If I could exams would be easy. It isn't a (normal) choice.
---THen would you agree that we remember based on previous experience? That is to say an experience at hand is associated with a previous experience because that experience was pleasurable, and so it is stored.---
And, as my previous answer indicates, I don't have that sort of free will. In fact I think that what you mean by free will is quite alien to me. You seem to mean that I would have free will onlu if I had complete control over my mental and bodily processes - as if I were a puppet-master pulling my strings. And there is no puppet. Only me.
--- Saben made a point that I found interesting. He said that it is OK to start with the end..that there is free will..and then work backwards to find evidence to support that. And for him the pragmatism of the acceptance of free will is reason enough to embrace the concept. Those assertions give me food for thought. Can you add anything to support what Saben said?---
So we are really talking at cross purposes because we don't agree about what it means to say I have free will.
----A good point. Semantically, free will is a biological process to me, and thus not the common definition of free will. It is not something apart from the body that originates from some mystical source. Before I accept free will on faith, I feel obligated to thoroughly explore the biology of the matter. But, of course, the biology is not really there yet, so I sort of have to extrapolate based upon my readings. But I find even the extrapolation satisfying.---
And, of course, I have a harder time because I also reject the idea of a soul or spirit and assert that there is no god.
---I suppose my desire for faith does make my interest in determinism sort of focused on the large matters of faith. That is probably not the window through which most people view the subject.--
And I believe we have free will because all the time I see people making choices and thinking they are choosing (not acting as determined by their inheritance and environment). Surely you don't REALLY believe you can't choose what you will have when I offer you a drink?
---If you offered me a drink, I would accept it and ask for another, even if it is not my preferred beverage. As Ben Franklin used to say "A bird in hand is worth two in the bush." A less preferred drink in the belly is worth 2 as of yet unoffered.
Love,
Behold, how good and how pleasant it is
For brothers to dwell together in unity!
Ps 133:1 NASB
Location: USA
Registered: November 2008
Messages: 973
"Righteous anger"? No.
---Then you should know that I sometimes interpret some of your posts as angry. Don't feel obligated to change your method of expression on my account, just be aware that I bruise easily.---
I see someone who has traded one religion for another.
---This is vague to me. What is the new religion then? Do you recognize a difference between a religion and a philosophy?---
Dogma does not mean what you say it means, I fear. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogma has a reasonable definition. A paragraph from there says "At the core of the dogma concept is absolutism, infallibility, irrefutability, unquestioned acceptance (among adherents) and anti-skepticism. These concepts typically invoke criticism from moderate and modulated conceptual approaches, and thus "dogma" is often colloqually used to indicate a doctrine which has the problem of claiming absolute truth, when other concepts may be superior."
dog⋅mat⋅ic
/dɔgˈmætɪk, dɒg-/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [dawg-mat-ik, dog-] Show IPA
–adjective
1. of, pertaining to, or of the nature of a dogma or dogmas; doctrinal.
2. asserting opinions in a doctrinaire or arrogant manner; opinionated.---
I am not angry at your reliance on "the will of society" or "fate" or "determinism" or whatever you wish to call it. But I am horrified that you, a sentient being, have exchanged a fundamentalist religion for fatalism.
---I know you well enough to assume that you are not horrified because of the loss of my religion, so I take it that you find determinism horrible. Well, I am living OK with it and at least a couple of people kinda-sorta like me. But you are right, it is not the philosophy I would like to hold and so it is horrible in that sense. However, apparently I find determinism more difficult to dismiss, that do most people. I am not prepared to say if this is good or bad. It's just how I am right now.---
Behold, how good and how pleasant it is
For brothers to dwell together in unity!
Ps 133:1 NASB
I agree our brains go on functioning when we are asleep - but we are unconscious when we are asleep. When we talk about will and free will we are talking about the ability to make choices - not about what might happen when we are asleep. Choices require consciousness.
Obviously what we remember is always a previous experience. Obviously memories can't be imaginations or dreaming of the future or anything but what we recall of the past.
When you say free will is a biological process I wonder whether you just mean that it is something that living beings have (true) or whether you mean that it isn't that sort of a mental process which is commonly called an act of will or a choice (in which case I'd argue). Which do you mean?
I think if we can genuinely make choices then we have free will and to prove we haven't got free will you have to show that we can't *really* make choices - that is to say that when we think we are choosing we are misleading ourselves.
When I choose something, whether it is what to eat today or something really important such as to get married or to attempt conception, to deny free will you have to show that I could not have chosen otherwise. Saben is right - not particularly about where you start but in that it is a simple question whether you can choose or not and there is no need to 'have faith' that you can choose. The question is "Is choice illusory?" and I think you have a hard time to show that it is. Most people believe they make choices all the time and that they could have chosen other things and that shows that they have free will.
And will is what computers haven't got and explains why computers can never take over the world. They have no will and no-one has the least idea how to put will into a computer.
And if you build a mechanism to choose things it will be a model, of a mechanism or biology or whatever, that doesn't have free will because either the mechanism will reach a result that depends on its design (in which case it is determined) or it will reach a result that depends on chance and is undetermined but is random.
And I don't understand what 'a desire for faith' can be. Surely it doesn't make sense to say you want to believe something but you don't. If you don't, presumably you don't believe it because you think it isn't true. How can you want to believe something and at the same time be convinced it isn't true? And if you think it IS true how can you not believe it? If you think it is true then you DO believe it and no faith is required.
Is 'a desire for faith' maybe a desire for the comfort of certainty - which I recognise can be a comfort even when wrong.
And the reason I was offering you a drink was to make you see that you could either accept it or refuse it (maybe you would think I was trying to seduce you) and that was a REAL choice that you would make exercising your free will. You could even accept it although you believed I had such bad motives and that accepting might put you under my evil spell!
Love,
Anthony
PS Is this stuff boring everyone else to tears. Would we do better to go off and exchange emails?
Bell's inequality, the supposed ability of entangled photon pairs to communicate to each other over huge distances thus implying communication at faster than the speed of light (that Einstein said was impossible) is exploded.
It's a not-so-simple con trick. Carefully analysed it doesn't show action at a distance. Like Schrödinger's cat which was supposed to be both alive and dead at the same time - another con trick.
Schrödinger invented the cat-in-the-box as a thought experiment to show how absurd quantum theory was - that the equivalent was to suppose that a cat was alive and dead at the same instant. The truth is that you can say that ANYTHING you don't know is 'resolved' when you learn the truth about it. The cat was either alive all the time or dead all the time - it was just that you didn't know which! Not knowing whether the coin was a head or a tail does NOT mean that it is both until you look at it.
The people who devised quantum theories swallowed whole the idea that it was absurd and counter to common sense and made a virtue of the absurdity of their theories and their scientific community and in particular scientific journalists have loved it. The more absurd the idea the better they like it and the more publicity it gets.The rigmarole around it is like the magician's three card trick - mumbo-jumbo to distract you from what is really going on.
However I don't expect you to believe me. As far as I know the only written published material on it was written by my wife Sylvia.
There are two ways you can logically accept free will.
The first is Compatibilism whereby you accept the fact that both determinism and free will are real. I struggle to accept this viewpoint as there seems no logical way in which the two conflicting ideas are compatible. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatibilism
The second approach is to reject determinism outright and claim that only free will. This is called libertarianism and is advocated by some modern philosophers such as Nozick. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarianism_(metaphysics)
I feel libertarianism is a much stronger position to take and while intuitively determinism may hold some appeal, especially to those of us with a basic foundation in science, ultimately I don't believe it's requisite for understanding the universe. And in fact things such as quantum mechanics go some way, at least, to refuting the case of scientific determinism. And if scientifically there are things that are not entirely deterministic, perhaps there are human actions that are also not deterministic and based on some other principle (such as free will) instead.
Look at this tree. I cannot make it blossom when it suits me nor make it bear fruit before its time [...] No matter what you do, that seed will grow to be a peach tree. You may wish for an apple or an orange, but you will get a peach.
Master Oogway
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13751
You are right. The horror is over determinism. That it has no obvious deity makes it no less a religion. That it has no places of worship makes it no less a religion.
It is your current way of life. But the logic of it entraps you. You cannot reject it until the predetermined time. But, by rejecting it at that time you obey the rules of predetermined action, so have to remain within it.
It feels like scientology without the alleged violence and threats
There seems to be a little misunderstanding of the determinist viewpoint that has lead to, I think, some slightly hostile arguments being taken, so to reiterate.
The basic argument of determinism goes as follows:
In science, if you combine the same elements in the same conditions you get the same reaction. There is a causal sequence of events in science based on exact and precise reactions at the atomic levels.
Humans are not exempt from this- in the realist viewpoint humans are nothing more than atoms and chemicals- there is no soul or anything spiritual. We are our body and our mind is nothing more than our brain. So if humans are just atoms, chemicals and electrical impulses then those atoms, chemicals and electrical impulses follow a strict sequence and every action we perform is the result of that sequence of chemical reactions. Everything that we see as "choice" and "action" on the macro-level is really just a long chain of chemistry at the micro-level.
There are objections to this basic principle, but there is nothing that can disprove it outright. From what we know of science, determinism is likely accurate. But personally I'd say that's a weakness of science rather than the strength of determinism.
Look at this tree. I cannot make it blossom when it suits me nor make it bear fruit before its time [...] No matter what you do, that seed will grow to be a peach tree. You may wish for an apple or an orange, but you will get a peach.
Master Oogway
Location: USA
Registered: November 2008
Messages: 973
Yes Mundo,
OUr being gay is a very small thing when you take it in the scope of how big everything else is and how small we are. And, you know, we are not the only ones looked down upon and discriminated against. Today I was thinking of overweight people and how difficult our society makes things for them. We at least, can hide our gayness, but the overweight people can not hide the thing that they are denigrated for. Again, I am not at all sure that it is an advantage to be able to hide. SO many of my problems as a gay man have been caused by the constant hiding and secrecy that seems to be necessary for a gay man to lead a normal life.
Behold, how good and how pleasant it is
For brothers to dwell together in unity!
Ps 133:1 NASB
Location: USA
Registered: November 2008
Messages: 973
ANthony,
This pretty much confirms your acceptance of the bowling ball in the dark scenario that I mentioned before. It is something definite. The state is absolute. Its just that it is beyond our capability to know it. That should not affect or alter the true state. The quantum enigma is a bunch of bunk. I would be interested in seeing Sylvia's writings on the subject.
Behold, how good and how pleasant it is
For brothers to dwell together in unity!
Ps 133:1 NASB
If I combine 2 parts hydrogen with 1 part oxygen is it luck that the resulting compound is water? Or that the same combination will produce the same compound each and every time I combine them?
There is no luck on an atomic level- the chemicals in my brain lead to a particular outcome every time. There is no reason to believe free choice is anything more than an illusion.
Humans have sense of free will. But believing in free will and having free will actually exist are totally separate. "Free will" is the mystical, spiritual concept.. "fatalism" is just logic. The burden of proof rests with those that purport the existence of this mythical "free will".
Of course I don't think free will scepticism is very constructive or conducive to a positive lifestyle. But on what basis do we justify a belief in free will? Just saying free will exists doesn't mean it does. Atomic "fatalism" has a sound foundation in the sciences- what makes humans more than the sum of our atoms?
Look at this tree. I cannot make it blossom when it suits me nor make it bear fruit before its time [...] No matter what you do, that seed will grow to be a peach tree. You may wish for an apple or an orange, but you will get a peach.
Master Oogway
Location: USA
Registered: November 2008
Messages: 973
Thanks Saben. THis is what I was trying to say. I agree that fatalism is not good tenet for constructing a moral society. I just can't logically explain to myself what this free will element is. But I am thinking I should just shut up about it here, because the good folks of APOS have told me all that they can. BTW, you speak my language regarding this philosophy very well. Have you had a long interest in philosophy?
Behold, how good and how pleasant it is
For brothers to dwell together in unity!
Ps 133:1 NASB
Location: USA
Registered: November 2008
Messages: 973
The weaknesses of science are manifest. Thank you for this consideration, Saben. It's a third point that I will give a lot of though to. BTW, Saben, the root of your name means something like "Knower", does it not? Hmmmm...gets me feeling all mystical and stuff.
Behold, how good and how pleasant it is
For brothers to dwell together in unity!
Ps 133:1 NASB
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