Except that we can chart people’s behavior. Not exactly- psychology isn’t that good. But a system that can be predicted is obviously deterministic and not random.
If you’re suggesting that because human behavior is somewhat predictable it is therefore deterministic, then you’re missing a couple very important things.
First, determinism can be inferred of a system only if we know it can (at least in principle) be 100% predicted.* We have no such confidence for persons, and I think our own experience tells us otherwise in fact. We can’t predict behavior with anything approaching that precision. Psychology is not only not good enough to do that now, there is no reason to think it ever will be.
Second, the dichotomy you set up between determinism and randomness does not tell the whole story. There is that what which is caused by necessity, which is deterministic and predictable. There is that which is random; of which the only true example may be quantum effects. And then there is causation by personal choice. Presumably it was personal choice that caused you to enter this comment here, for example.
If your assumptions rule out personal choice, then you are ignoring the empirical shared experience of billions of people, not to mention walking into a minefield of contradictions and incoherency.
*Determinism can be deduced when all the causes involved in the system are known, and are known to be necessary or lawlike, but that does not seem to be what Samuel was talking about here.
If your assumptions rule out personal choice, then you are ignoring the empirical shared experience of billions of people, not to mention walking into a minefield of contradictions and incoherency.
I agree. I enjoyed reading this article on the subject, particularly these snippets of nonsense and contradictions…
The arrival of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle and quantum mechanics represented the acquisition of fresh evidence requiring a new application of Occam’s razor. The universe was no longer just a pile of causality. It was now a mixture of causality and blind chance.
…..
Modern science acknowledges the reality of causality and chance, but nothing else. Is that enough to allow for free will? Assuming you can’t build free will out of dominoes and dice, Occam’s razor places the burden on the advocate of the reality of free will come up with evidence that requires us to add a third principle beyond dominoes and dice, a second revolution in physics on the scale of what Heisenberg brought about.
…..
[this one is a real mess]
We can have ethics without free will as long as we are willing to wish [wish !??!] to be good for its own sake, as opposed to being good because we hope to take personal credit for it.
…..
We can make ethical commitments even though we are not, in some ultimate sense, free to choose what those commitments will be. In fact, we do make ethical commitments when and only when we are caused to make them.
…..
If we could just give up this idea of holding people responsible for what they do, we could, at long last, start to behave responsibly in what we do.
…..
During the Leopold and Loeb trial in Chicago eighty years ago, the judge allowed Clarence Darrow to talk for four days about the fact that free will is an illusion. In New Jersey today, it is against the law for a lawyer to make that argument in court. You can argue that your client is insane, and therefore lacks free will, but you’re not allowed to argue that no one has free will. You can’t even bring it up. This is a violation of the constitutional rights of the citizens of New Jersey to free speech and representation by counsel. It’s also an unconstitutional imposition of the religious dogma of free will upon the courts and defendants of New Jersey. But no one questions it.
The weather is not completely predictable- we can’t get solid predictions past two weeks and even in a few days forecasts can be off. Economics is worse. The interesting thing is that they are both entirely natural systems- no “free will” escape. The reason is that they are complex systems- the parts react to each other and unless you know how they all work, unforeseen patterns emerge.
That describes the human mind pretty well. It may be purely matter, but it IS insanely complex.
How do you conclude that economics is purely natural? There are human decisions involved at every moment. I think you’re sneaking in a deterministic assumption here, and calling it your conclusion.
Earlier I had said that “determinism can be inferred of a system only if we know it can (at least in principle) be 100% predicted.” I think possibly you are suggesting this:
A. Weather cannot be 100% predicted, even in principle.
B. Economic activity cannot be 100% predicted, even in principle.
C. Weather is deterministic.
D. Therefore economic activity is (?) or may be (?) deterministic.
But (D) does not follow at all, of course. I may be guessing completely wrong on that, because it really is unclear to me what your point is. What (A) and (C) show is not any support for (D), but that my earlier statement is incorrect, and that a system may be deterministic even if it is not 100% predictable in principle. But note that I had footnoted that statement with this:
*Determinism can be deduced when all the causes involved in the system are known, and are known to be necessary or lawlike, but that does not seem to be what Samuel was talking about here.
If we had nothing to go by other than our observations of weather patterns, I think we would be hard-pressed to conclude that weather is deterministic. We wouldn’t have the data to show it at all, because we wouldn’t be able to infer lawlike causal principles at work, we would only have statistical generalities, and we would have evidence that weather sometimes does things that just can’t be explained by those generalities or by any laws we could come up with.
Nevertheless we all consider weather to be deterministic. This is because even though the causes of weather patterns interact in ways that are too complex to model at anything near 100% accuracy, we generally know and understand what those causes are, and that they operate deterministically. We have no question about the causes, our problem is with the complexity of their interactions.
With persons, there is considerable room to doubt that the causes of our behaviors and beliefs are deterministic. So we lack empirical evidence of predictability in the “system,” and we lack a priori confidence that we understand all the causes and know them to be deterministic. There is nothing in what Samuel has said so far that would lead one to conclude determinism in persons or the absence of free will.
My statement of this in the earlier comment was probably careless and wide open to criticism. I hope my intent is clearer now.
“How do you conclude that economics is purely natural? There are human decisions involved at every moment. I think you’re sneaking in a deterministic assumption here, and calling it your conclusion.”
Humans are natural actors. Hence, economics, which is cumulative human decisions, is natural. Unless you believe God has his hand in the Dow Jones.
“If we had nothing to go by other than our observations of weather patterns, I think we would be hard-pressed to conclude that weather is deterministic.”
… You have ZERO imagination my friend. Where I live you can set the seasons by the weather- we get rain in the winter and that is it. It is extremely deterministic. What do you think the calander is for?
My point, which you didn’t seem to grasp is that both weather and economics are natural systems that are NOT affected by randomness… and we still can’t predict them with anything resembling accuracy for the physical sciences!
My point is that weather and economics are hard to predict for the same reason people are.
“With persons, there is considerable room to doubt that the causes of our behaviors and beliefs are deterministic. ”
If you damage a person’s brain their personality changes. You don’t get much clearer evidence than that. In fact there is an entire field that is based on the idea that people are deterministic- neurobiology.
“There is nothing in what Samuel has said so far that would lead one to conclude determinism in persons or the absence of free will.”
No, free will is impossible because the idea is intellectually incoherant. Let me explain with a thought experiment.
Lets say you are placed in a similation. Each time you finish, your memory is erased so you forget what just happened and you start again. Here is the problem- are your actions differant each time, or are they the same?
If they are the same, you are deterministic, if they are differant, they are random. Free will doesn’t even enter as a contender!
Humans are natural actors. Hence, economics, which is cumulative human decisions, is natural. Unless you believe God has his hand in the Dow Jones.
Well, I do believe God has his hand in all events. More to the point, humans have a decision-making hand in all human events. The question I asked you was, how do you conclude economics is purely natural? And your answer was that “humans are natural actors.” Well, this is just a restatement of the key assumption, which is naturalism applied to humans and human systems.
… You have ZERO imagination my friend. Where I live you can set the seasons by the weather- we get rain in the winter and that is it. It is extremely deterministic. What do you think the calander is for?
I’m sure you must recognize, my friend, that deciding whether the weather is deterministic is not a matter of “imagination.” Imagination has produced a whole lot of explanations for weather down through the ages, and the majority of them were certainly not deterministic! Your passage just quoted was in answer to my statement,
“If we had nothing to go by other than our observations of weather patterns, I think we would be hard-pressed to conclude that weather is deterministic.”
Let me review from the context wherein I originally wrote that. Determinism can be inferred when:
1) Systems are shown to be completely predictable, or
2) All the causes involved in a system are known, and are known to be deterministic.
My statement, which you were answering, was in reference just to (1). It was about deciding whether weather is deterministic, without reference to known causes (2) for weather patterns. Weather is certainly not completely predictable, but only partially so, which is the point you made yourself. So just by (1), without knowledge (2) of the causes of weather, we would not conclude that weather is deterministic. I think that’s clear enough.
My point, which you didn’t seem to grasp is that both weather and economics are natural systems that are NOT affected by randomness… and we still can’t predict them with anything resembling accuracy for the physical sciences!
I do grasp that point. It’s quite clear, and I restated it myself in A through D above, so I hope you will grant me credit for that awareness. Now, what can we infer from the fact that weather and economics have this characteristic in common? You suggest this:
My point is that weather and economics are hard to predict for the same reason people are.
That’s one possible conclusion, certainly. If naturalism were true of human systems, we might expect to see chaotic (in the technical sense) behavior in economics. But if naturalism is not true of human systems, we can equally expect to see chaotic behavior in economics. So chaos in economics provides no evidence whatever for naturalism or determinism.
If you damage a person’s brain their personality changes. You don’t get much clearer evidence than that. In fact there is an entire field that is based on the idea that people are deterministic- neurobiology.
But that is also explainable under non-deterministic assumptions. First, I do not suggest that the brain is uninvolved or has no role to play in personality, cognition, or behavior. My position is that it is involved, but that the neural/chemical/electrical events in the brain are not the whole story; that there is a non-deterministic element of our behavior and cognition, which we call “mind.” Mind interfaces with the physical world through the brain, and if the interface is compromised, then there will be effects in the physical world.
That’s a much-too-short summation on that topic, but I probably ought to leave it at that. The point is that brain damage and its effects on personality can be explained under more than one theory, so it is not conclusive proof of just one theory.
No, free will is impossible because the idea is intellectually incoherant. Let me explain with a thought experiment.
Lets say you are placed in a similation. Each time you finish, your memory is erased so you forget what just happened and you start again. Here is the problem- are your actions differant each time, or are they the same?
If they are the same, you are deterministic, if they are differant, they are random. Free will doesn’t even enter as a contender!
This is evidence-free theorizing at its worst. Let me point out three problems with what you have suggested here.
1. Your experiment would have to provide that every single condition, without exception, was exactly the same upon each repetition of the experiment, and we are a long way from there. The “memory wipe” itself would probably result in some different conditions in the brain each time.
2. The “memory wipe” would presumably be purely a brain effect. You assume that by accomplishing this brain effect, you have brought the person’s entire state back to its original condition. In other words, you assume that there is no mind behind the brain. If you smuggle in the assumption that there is no mind, you cannot use that as proof that there is no mind.
3. But suppose you could solve both of those issues to everyone’s satisfaction. What you have done is taken the definition of libertarian free will and defined it as randomness. What is this randomness, then? Is it quantum randomness? As far as we know with today’s science, it almost has to be, for there are no other candidates for truly random action in nature. Or could it be the apparent randomness of a person making a different decision, on the basis of reasons?
Sometimes when I make a decision I’m torn between two options. Both seem equally good and equally bad to me; they’re balanced 50-50. I decide to do one, recognizing that if I had it to do over again, I might as easily have decided to do the other. It’s quite likely then, that given a brain/mind wipe and exactly equivalent conditions the next time, I would decide the other. Does that mean I didn’t decide?
Therefore your thought experiment, it seems to me, fails to show that free will is incoherent.
Free will means that when you typed out your comment to me, you intended to type it, you decided to type it, and you chose to do so for reasons other than neural/chemical/electrical necessity. It means (among other things) that you typed what you did because you believe it. It means that your belief itself was part of the causal string of events that led to your typing it. Did you choose your belief? Did reasons have anything to do with your choice? Or did it merely happen as a result of (mindless) neural necessity and (mindless) randomness?
The causal chain either does or does not include a step where beliefs, chosen for reasons, have causal efficacy. By your accounting, all the causal efficacy is in neural/chemical/electrical necessity. You might have beliefs, but they were not caused by any reasons, they were caused by just physical necessity or randomness. Yet you present to me reasons for your beliefs, as if the reasons you present ought to cause me to consider changing my mind.
And thus I conclude that determinism is incoherent.
“Well, this is just a restatement of the key assumption, which is naturalism applied to humans and human systems.”
… You just declared that there is no natural sphere. If that is true, than the term “supernatural” loses all meaning.
“Imagination has produced a whole lot of explanations for weather down through the ages, and the majority of them were certainly not deterministic!”
All of the predictive ones were though.
“Let me review from the context wherein I originally wrote that. Determinism can be inferred when:
1) Systems are shown to be completely predictable, or
2) All the causes involved in a system are known, and are known to be deterministic.”
Why do I need to show 1 and 2 to infer something is deterministic? Determinism is the alternative to randomness and as long as there is no randomness it is deterministic.
“That’s one possible conclusion, certainly. If naturalism were true of human systems, we might expect to see chaotic (in the technical sense) behavior in economics. But if naturalism is not true of human systems, we can equally expect to see chaotic behavior in economics. So chaos in economics provides no evidence whatever for naturalism or determinism.”
We DON’T see chaos in economics. We see randomness. However, for simpler economic systems, more concrete and predictable patterns occur. Therefore determinism is true.
It is interesting you say that determinism and free will look exactly alike. Why should we go with the more complicated answer is it gives no additional resolution?
“But that is also explainable under non-deterministic assumptions. First, I do not suggest that the brain is uninvolved or has no role to play in personality, cognition, or behavior. My position is that it is involved, but that the neural/chemical/electrical events in the brain are not the whole story; that there is a non-deterministic element of our behavior and cognition, which we call “mind.” Mind interfaces with the physical world through the brain, and if the interface is compromised, then there will be effects in the physical world.”
Please. Why do you hate Occum’s Razor? It is important to note that your answer is still useless- we can change people’s PERSONALITIES by destroying sections of their brains. That means that “who they are” IS determined by their minds. Even if there is an entire extra supernatural layer, you can understand a person simply by using how their physical brain works.
“1. Your experiment would have to provide that every single condition, without exception, was exactly the same upon each repetition of the experiment, and we are a long way from there. The “memory wipe” itself would probably result in some different conditions in the brain each time.”
I know. If we only had individuals who have damage to their long term memory so that we could see such a situation… oh wait, we do. And they DO behavior like I described- they repeat themselves.
“2. The “memory wipe” would presumably be purely a brain effect. You assume that by accomplishing this brain effect, you have brought the person’s entire state back to its original condition. In other words, you assume that there is no mind behind the brain. If you smuggle in the assumption that there is no mind, you cannot use that as proof that there is no mind.”
So you are proposing an unfalsifiable idea? Remember, things that CANNOT be falsified are NOT science. As I stated just above you CAN affect a person’s memories by altering their brain.
There is a way to answer such a question- brain damage in certain parts makes people unable to think about certain things. Therefore whatever this “mind” you are proposing is, it is NOT involved in thought and hence personality.
“3. But suppose you could solve both of those issues to everyone’s satisfaction. What you have done is taken the definition of libertarian free will and defined it as randomness. What is this randomness, then? Is it quantum randomness? As far as we know with today’s science, it almost has to be, for there are no other candidates for truly random action in nature. Or could it be the apparent randomness of a person making a different decision, on the basis of reasons?”
Quantum. It is important to note that there is a difference between free will and randomness. Randomness is just like determinism… except you get different results each time.
“Or could it be the apparent randomness of a person making a different decision, on the basis of reasons?”
That is psychology. Just because a person THINKS something is reasonable doesn’t mean it is.
“It’s quite likely then, that given a brain/mind wipe and exactly equivalent conditions the next time, I would decide the other. Does that mean I didn’t decide?”
If you were mind wiped, you’d make the exact same decision. That was my point. It might be a close decision, but SOMETHING caused you to decide one over the other and that same thing will make you do so again. And again.
“Free will means that when you typed out your comment to me, you intended to type it, you decided to type it, and you chose to do so for reasons other than neural/chemical/electrical necessity.”
No it doesn’t. Free will means that there isn’t a casual chain of events that determined my actions. Adding in a soul (or mind as you like to say- bloody technobabble) DOESN’T remove this problem. Or have you forgotten that the Calvinists believed in predestination and determinism? Having a supernatural element just pushes back the cause of your actions one more step.
“Or did it merely happen as a result of (mindless) neural necessity and (mindless) randomness?”
You seem to think there is some sort of Platonic Form of mind. There isn’t.
“By your accounting, all the causal efficacy is in neural/chemical/electrical necessity. You might have beliefs, but they were not caused by any reasons, they were caused by just physical necessity or randomness. Yet you present to me reasons for your beliefs, as if the reasons you present ought to cause me to consider changing my mind.
And thus I conclude that determinism is incoherent.”
Obviously you have never heard of emergent properties. It is simple- the whole has properties its parts do not.
For example, you seem to think that just because I do not choose my beliefs that you can say determinism is incoherent… except the entire point of logic and reason (which you are badly mishandling in your attempt to prove your point) is BASED on the idea that you can’t choose to believe it. If you accept the premises of a logical argument you MUST accept the conclusion. There is NO choice in there what so ever except to shut down your brain.
“Yet you present to me reasons for your beliefs, as if the reasons you present ought to cause me to consider changing my mind.”
Well, if my brain is purely physical AND said reasons resulted in a reconfiguration of my neural network than the circuit is reinforced and when I get into a similar situation the retrieval is activated and the argument is rewritten, in order to rewrite your mind.
Seriously, ideas ARE rewriting of your brain. I don’t choose to believe in anything- it either is true or it isn’t. Reason is the fact checking system that my brain uses… but it had to be taught that. And, before you ask about regression, it is because reason works.
You seem to think that if something is physical it is somehow wrong, disgusting, dirty (why Plato? WHY?)- an assumption which has NO basis in reality.
… You just declared that there is no natural sphere.
Huh? Explain, please. This cryptic style of argumentation, which uses no analysis or explanation, is not advancing us anywhere.
There is a natural sphere, and there is natural law, but it’s not a closed system. It’s not the whole story. That’s what I would hope you would have understood from what I said. I certainly didn’t deny natural law or randomness; I just said they are not the only forms of causation.
Why do I need to show 1 and 2 to infer something is deterministic? Determinism is the alternative to randomness and as long as there is no randomness it is deterministic.
Samuel, I’m going to ask you a very serious question and stop right here with it. I’m not going to address the rest of your comment until we’ve worked through this.
What you have just said is that determinism is proved, or can be reliably and accurately affirmed at least, when randomness is ruled out. That is true, if we know that there is no third option, e.g., non-deterministic human decision-making on the basis of reasons, or non-deterministic action on the part of God.
Do we know that? Well, I think that is the point you are trying to make, but it is also the point in question. That is, I am saying there is another form of causation besides natural necessity or randomness, and you are trying to persuade me that I am wrong. But this last offering is only true if we assume your position is correct.
This is not the first time you have come with an assumption and offered it as a conclusion. So I’m going to offer you some coaching in argumentation here. I suggest you enumerate your assumptions, and write out the conclusions you want to persuade me to reach. We have some shared assumptions, like the value of logical discussion, the fact of natural necessity operating in at least large proportions of reality, the chaotic behavior of weather and economics (or at least I thought we did until I read your latest; economics absolutely is not random!), and so on. You can rely on those shared assumptions in your argumentation.
But some of your assumptions are actually your conclusion in disguise. Your conclusion is that there is no causation except for that by natural necessity or randomness. You relied on that conclusion when you made the argument I quoted above. That’s not logically valid (it’s called arguing in a circle), and it’s not going to be effective here.
I do need to respond to just one more thing in your comment, your closing line:
You seem to think that if something is physical it is somehow wrong, disgusting, dirty (why Plato? WHY?)- an assumption which has NO basis in reality.
I’m no Platonist, and I don’t think the physical is wrong, disgusting, dirty. I spent part of the afternoon today walking a forest path and enjoying it. I swim a couple miles every week and I really love the feel of being in the water. I like good food. I could get even more personal but I’ll refrain. More to the point, I never, ever, said anything approaching what you have suggested here. I have only said that the physical is not the whole story.
You have put those words in my mouth, Samuel; so now I’m going to offer more coaching again, even at the risk of seeming patronizing. Respond to what the person says, please, and not to your stereotypes or assumptions regarding what the person says.
It does no good for you to call on me to defend a position I haven’t stated and don’t hold.
“Huh? Explain, please. This cryptic style of argumentation, which uses no analysis or explanation, is not advancing us anywhere.
There is a natural sphere, and there is natural law, but it’s not a closed system. It’s not the whole story. That’s what I would hope you would have understood from what I said. I certainly didn’t deny natural law or randomness; I just said they are not the only forms of causation.”
He declared that humans are supernatural actors and anything working off of humans would also be considered supernatural. Given that humans have started messing with the center of gravity of Earth (Three Gorges Dam- the effects are tiny, but measurable) it basically eliminates the concept of a natural sphere.
As for “other forms of causation” you didn’t give any. Free will works by… you don’t say. We both know how determinism works and randomness works, but you haven’t explained how free will works and is differant.
“That is true, if we know that there is no third option, e.g., non-deterministic human decision-making on the basis of reasons, or non-deterministic action on the part of God.”
… You really don’t understand what determinism means, do you? Reason is BLATANTLY deterministic- it gets the same answer everytime. As for God…how is he not deterministic either? After all, he has goals and he knows the best course for achieving them- his actions should be entire deterministic.
” (or at least I thought we did until I read your latest; economics absolutely is not random!), ”
In a rational market, the market is essentially impossibletobeat because it adjusts so quickly and a large degree ofvolitility will be random.
“Your conclusion is that there is no causation except for that by natural necessity or randomness.”
Nope. Determinism is true even if there is a god. Why? Because supernatural phenomena is causal just like natural phenomena. It doesn’t matter if mind is material or not- it will still be deterministic!
“You have put those words in my mouth, Samuel; so now I’m going to offer more coaching again, even at the risk of seeming patronizing. Respond to what the person says, please, and not to your stereotypes or assumptions regarding what the person says.
It does no good for you to call on me to defend a position I haven’t stated and don’t hold.”
You believe that determinism doesn’twork because them logic would be the physical processes inside my brain, rather than magical reactions inside the celestial realm. That IS Platonism- just because you fail to recognize the label doesn’t make it false.
The basic problem here is you create a made up problem (materialism can’t account for reason) and generate an incoherant answer. Free will means people choose? What about computers? They are programmed to do that? What is learning and the genetic code?
Samuel, you’ve raised several issues here, some of them valid (I haven’t explained how non-physical causation works) and some of them not (economics is not random, and if you think it is, you really don’t understand what random means).
This is entirely opaque to me:
He declared that humans are supernatural actors and anything working off of humans would also be considered supernatural. Given that humans have started messing with the center of gravity of Earth (Three Gorges Dam- the effects are tiny, but measurable) it basically eliminates the concept of a natural sphere.
Since I really don’t know what you were trying to say there, I’ll move on to another point. You said reason is deterministic. But you will have a very hard time showing that it is deterministic in the sense of its causal factors being entirely physical. If you apply the label of determinism to it, you are equivocating on the term. I thought the discussion here was about physical determinism.
But then you say this, and I wonder just what you do mean by determinism:
Determinism is true even if there is a god. Why? Because supernatural phenomena is causal just like natural phenomena. It doesn’t matter if mind is material or not- it will still be deterministic!
I really did think the discussion was about physical determinism, that is, whether all of causation is subsumed under either natural necessity (law) and quantum randomness. If “determinism” means something other than that to you, then please explain how you define the word.
You believe that determinism doesn’twork because them logic would be the physical processes inside my brain, rather than magical reactions inside the celestial realm. That IS Platonism- just because you fail to recognize the label doesn’t make it false.
Well, first of all, you didn’t only accuse me of Platonism, you said that I conceived of the physical realm as “somehow wrong, disgusting, dirty.” I don’t, and you were wrong to read that into what I said.
Second, I believe physical determinism doesn’t work because then logic would be just physical processes, and reasons are not physical entities; nor are propositions, or syllogisms, or any of the standard furniture of logical reasoning. Whether that’s Platonism or not, it’s still an argument to contend with. I happen to think it’s valid; I’m also quite sure you won’t knock it down just with a label.
The basic problem here is you create a made up problem (materialism can’t account for reason) and generate an incoherant answer. Free will means people choose? What about computers? They are programmed to do that? What is learning and the genetic code?
It’s not a made-up problem, my friend. You haven’t begun to address it, really, for it is in fact very difficult to explain how to account for reason under materialism. My answer is not incoherent, it’s incomplete, as I’ve already acknowledged (though I have gone into much deeper elsewhere).
And computers are not “programmed to choose.” The very phrase is self-contradictory. They are programmed to follow the path that is laid out for them, and they cannot swerve from it to the right or to the left.
“Since I really don’t know what you were trying to say there, I’ll move on to another point.”
Declaring everything affeted by humans (aka economics)doesn’t work because EVERYTHING has been affected by humans.
“I really did think the discussion was about physical determinism, that is, whether all of causation is subsumed under either natural necessity (law) and quantum randomness. If “determinism” means something other than that to you, then please explain how you define the word. ”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Determinism
Determinism is the philosophical proposition that every event, including human cognition and behaviour, decision and action, is causally determined by an unbroken chain of prior occurrences.[1]
“Well, first of all, you didn’t only accuse me of Platonism, you said that I conceived of the physical realm as “somehow wrong, disgusting, dirty.” I don’t, and you were wrong to read that into what I said.”
You propose a non material sphere as an alternative to having things like logic exist in the material realm because it somehow “doesn’t work”. You are a Platonist
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platonism
The central concept is the Theory of forms. The only true being is founded upon the forms, the eternal, unchangeable, perfect types, of which particular objects of sense are imperfect copies. The multitude of objects of sense, being involved in perpetual change, are thereby deprived of all genuine existence. The number of the forms is defined by the number of universal concepts which can be derived from the particular objects of sense.
That sounds an awful lot like how you view logic and conciousness, now doesn’t it?
“Whether that’s Platonism or not, it’s still an argument to contend with. I happen to think it’s valid; I’m also quite sure you won’t knock it down just with a label. ”
Knocking down with just a label is an ad hominum. It is a quick way to show what is wrong with something- you can type in “Platonism, criticism of”.
“Second, I believe physical determinism doesn’t work because then logic would be just physical processes, and reasons are not physical entities; nor are propositions, or syllogisms, or any of the standard furniture of logical reasoning. ”
and
“It’s not a made-up problem, my friend. You haven’t begun to address it, really, for it is in fact very difficult to explain how to account for reason under materialism. My answer is not incoherent, it’s incomplete, as I’ve already acknowledged (though I have gone into much deeper elsewhere). ”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materialism
The philosophy of materialism holds that the only thing that can be truly proven to exist is matter, and is considered a form of physicalism. Fundamentally, all things are composed of material and all phenomena (including consciousness) are the result of material interactions; therefore, matter is the only substance. As a theory, materialism belongs to the class of monist ontology. As such, it is different from ontological theories based on dualism or pluralism. For singular explanations of the phenomenal reality, materialism would be in contrast to idealism.
Would you look at that! Materialism holds that all thing that have a physical existance are made up of matter. Do ideas have a physical existance? No- ideas are descriptions of reality and don’t actually physically exist.
More to the point you seem not to really understand logic. It isn’t some set of rules handed down from on high- it is a set of rules derived from reality. Logic is no more mysterious than the scientific method or the theory of gravity.
You might argue that materialism can’t account for them either…but that is similar to arguing that materialism can’t account for language. Or the color red.
The fact of the matter is that all these things are ideas and concepts- they exist only in our minds. The reason they feel real is that they accurately reflect reality.
There is also a fundamental flaw in your argument- “can’t account for something” is an argument from ignorance unless you can show logical impossibilty. Which would require you showing ideas existing seperately from individuals. Which, although rather intriguing, is impossible.
“And computers are not “programmed to choose.” The very phrase is self-contradictory. They are programmed to follow the path that is laid out for them, and they cannot swerve from it to the right or to the left.”
Which is exactly how people work if they are deterministic.
Interestingly enough, they DO fit under the internet definition. They can select from a variety of options. CHoice does not require intelligence- only the ability to interact and respond to your environment.
Samuel, I think you are continuing to make assertions without arguments, false dichotomies, cherry-picked definitions, and more; and since that doesn’t amount to a real discussion, I’m just going to let it stand here without further response.
I’m sure you won’t agree with that assessment. If I’m wrong about it, perhaps some other reader will let me know I’ve misunderstood. That’s certainly how it seems to me at this point.
The fact of the matter is that all these things are ideas and concepts- they exist only in our minds. The reason they feel real is that they accurately reflect reality.
This is why the concept of morality feels so real to us. It accurately reflects reality.
“Samuel, I think you are continuing to make assertions without arguments, false dichotomies, cherry-picked definitions, and more; and since that doesn’t amount to a real discussion, I’m just going to let it stand here without further response.
I’m sure you won’t agree with that assessment. If I’m wrong about it, perhaps some other reader will let me know I’ve misunderstood. That’s certainly how it seems to me at this point.”
And yet you don’t bother to give a SINGLE example of me doing that. If I am
a troll, you should try to rebut me
a genuinely curious individual, you should try to answer
a debator, you should try to give me more data
Instead, you simply declare my arguments… don’t count.
Do you see why atheists think theists are deluded? If we get them to a point where we show their beliefs are false, they declare the entire line of reasoning wrong… but without saying why!
Samuel, I cannot accept your closing premise that I have failed to answer you. I have done so with every comment I’ve posted. I have noted at every turn how you have equivocated on “determinism” (I hope you know the technical meaning of the term), set up false dichotomies, argued in a circle, misused the idea of imagination, presented an unconvincing thought experiment and called it conclusive, wrongly charged me with misunderstanding randomness, committed a fallacy in drawing conclusions that weather and economic have similar kinds of causes, made bald assertions without arguing for them, falsely accused me of Platonism (the belief that there is non-physical reality is not necessarily Platonism, for there are many non-Platonic versions it can take), falsely accused me of considering the physical world of being disgusting and dirty, posted opaque statements;
and now most recently you say,
“And yet you don’t bother to give a SINGLE example of me doing that.”
I have bothered to give you multiple examples, my friend. Since you have missed all of them, I conclude there is not much to be gained from continuing to try.
"Thinking Christian is one of the better places I know on the web to learn and practice solid Biblical thinking, and to understand what it means that Christianity is really true." — Josh McDowell
Except that we can chart people’s behavior. Not exactly- psychology isn’t that good. But a system that can be predicted is obviously deterministic and not random.
If you’re suggesting that because human behavior is somewhat predictable it is therefore deterministic, then you’re missing a couple very important things.
First, determinism can be inferred of a system only if we know it can (at least in principle) be 100% predicted.* We have no such confidence for persons, and I think our own experience tells us otherwise in fact. We can’t predict behavior with anything approaching that precision. Psychology is not only not good enough to do that now, there is no reason to think it ever will be.
Second, the dichotomy you set up between determinism and randomness does not tell the whole story. There is that what which is caused by necessity, which is deterministic and predictable. There is that which is random; of which the only true example may be quantum effects. And then there is causation by personal choice. Presumably it was personal choice that caused you to enter this comment here, for example.
If your assumptions rule out personal choice, then you are ignoring the empirical shared experience of billions of people, not to mention walking into a minefield of contradictions and incoherency.
*Determinism can be deduced when all the causes involved in the system are known, and are known to be necessary or lawlike, but that does not seem to be what Samuel was talking about here.
I agree. I enjoyed reading this article on the subject, particularly these snippets of nonsense and contradictions…
The arrival of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle and quantum mechanics represented the acquisition of fresh evidence requiring a new application of Occam’s razor. The universe was no longer just a pile of causality. It was now a mixture of causality and blind chance.
…..
Modern science acknowledges the reality of causality and chance, but nothing else. Is that enough to allow for free will? Assuming you can’t build free will out of dominoes and dice, Occam’s razor places the burden on the advocate of the reality of free will come up with evidence that requires us to add a third principle beyond dominoes and dice, a second revolution in physics on the scale of what Heisenberg brought about.
…..
[this one is a real mess]
We can have ethics without free will as long as we are willing to wish [wish !??!] to be good for its own sake, as opposed to being good because we hope to take personal credit for it.
…..
We can make ethical commitments even though we are not, in some ultimate sense, free to choose what those commitments will be. In fact, we do make ethical commitments when and only when we are caused to make them.
…..
If we could just give up this idea of holding people responsible for what they do, we could, at long last, start to behave responsibly in what we do.
…..
During the Leopold and Loeb trial in Chicago eighty years ago, the judge allowed Clarence Darrow to talk for four days about the fact that free will is an illusion. In New Jersey today, it is against the law for a lawyer to make that argument in court. You can argue that your client is insane, and therefore lacks free will, but you’re not allowed to argue that no one has free will. You can’t even bring it up. This is a violation of the constitutional rights of the citizens of New Jersey to free speech and representation by counsel. It’s also an unconstitutional imposition of the religious dogma of free will upon the courts and defendants of New Jersey. But no one questions it.
The weather is not completely predictable- we can’t get solid predictions past two weeks and even in a few days forecasts can be off. Economics is worse. The interesting thing is that they are both entirely natural systems- no “free will” escape. The reason is that they are complex systems- the parts react to each other and unless you know how they all work, unforeseen patterns emerge.
That describes the human mind pretty well. It may be purely matter, but it IS insanely complex.
How do you conclude that economics is purely natural? There are human decisions involved at every moment. I think you’re sneaking in a deterministic assumption here, and calling it your conclusion.
Earlier I had said that “determinism can be inferred of a system only if we know it can (at least in principle) be 100% predicted.” I think possibly you are suggesting this:
A. Weather cannot be 100% predicted, even in principle.
B. Economic activity cannot be 100% predicted, even in principle.
C. Weather is deterministic.
D. Therefore economic activity is (?) or may be (?) deterministic.
But (D) does not follow at all, of course. I may be guessing completely wrong on that, because it really is unclear to me what your point is. What (A) and (C) show is not any support for (D), but that my earlier statement is incorrect, and that a system may be deterministic even if it is not 100% predictable in principle. But note that I had footnoted that statement with this:
If we had nothing to go by other than our observations of weather patterns, I think we would be hard-pressed to conclude that weather is deterministic. We wouldn’t have the data to show it at all, because we wouldn’t be able to infer lawlike causal principles at work, we would only have statistical generalities, and we would have evidence that weather sometimes does things that just can’t be explained by those generalities or by any laws we could come up with.
Nevertheless we all consider weather to be deterministic. This is because even though the causes of weather patterns interact in ways that are too complex to model at anything near 100% accuracy, we generally know and understand what those causes are, and that they operate deterministically. We have no question about the causes, our problem is with the complexity of their interactions.
With persons, there is considerable room to doubt that the causes of our behaviors and beliefs are deterministic. So we lack empirical evidence of predictability in the “system,” and we lack a priori confidence that we understand all the causes and know them to be deterministic. There is nothing in what Samuel has said so far that would lead one to conclude determinism in persons or the absence of free will.
My statement of this in the earlier comment was probably careless and wide open to criticism. I hope my intent is clearer now.
“How do you conclude that economics is purely natural? There are human decisions involved at every moment. I think you’re sneaking in a deterministic assumption here, and calling it your conclusion.”
Humans are natural actors. Hence, economics, which is cumulative human decisions, is natural. Unless you believe God has his hand in the Dow Jones.
“If we had nothing to go by other than our observations of weather patterns, I think we would be hard-pressed to conclude that weather is deterministic.”
… You have ZERO imagination my friend. Where I live you can set the seasons by the weather- we get rain in the winter and that is it. It is extremely deterministic. What do you think the calander is for?
My point, which you didn’t seem to grasp is that both weather and economics are natural systems that are NOT affected by randomness… and we still can’t predict them with anything resembling accuracy for the physical sciences!
My point is that weather and economics are hard to predict for the same reason people are.
“With persons, there is considerable room to doubt that the causes of our behaviors and beliefs are deterministic. ”
If you damage a person’s brain their personality changes. You don’t get much clearer evidence than that. In fact there is an entire field that is based on the idea that people are deterministic- neurobiology.
“There is nothing in what Samuel has said so far that would lead one to conclude determinism in persons or the absence of free will.”
No, free will is impossible because the idea is intellectually incoherant. Let me explain with a thought experiment.
Lets say you are placed in a similation. Each time you finish, your memory is erased so you forget what just happened and you start again. Here is the problem- are your actions differant each time, or are they the same?
If they are the same, you are deterministic, if they are differant, they are random. Free will doesn’t even enter as a contender!
Samuel, you wrote,
Well, I do believe God has his hand in all events. More to the point, humans have a decision-making hand in all human events. The question I asked you was, how do you conclude economics is purely natural? And your answer was that “humans are natural actors.” Well, this is just a restatement of the key assumption, which is naturalism applied to humans and human systems.
I’m sure you must recognize, my friend, that deciding whether the weather is deterministic is not a matter of “imagination.” Imagination has produced a whole lot of explanations for weather down through the ages, and the majority of them were certainly not deterministic! Your passage just quoted was in answer to my statement,
Let me review from the context wherein I originally wrote that. Determinism can be inferred when:
1) Systems are shown to be completely predictable, or
2) All the causes involved in a system are known, and are known to be deterministic.
My statement, which you were answering, was in reference just to (1). It was about deciding whether weather is deterministic, without reference to known causes (2) for weather patterns. Weather is certainly not completely predictable, but only partially so, which is the point you made yourself. So just by (1), without knowledge (2) of the causes of weather, we would not conclude that weather is deterministic. I think that’s clear enough.
I do grasp that point. It’s quite clear, and I restated it myself in A through D above, so I hope you will grant me credit for that awareness. Now, what can we infer from the fact that weather and economics have this characteristic in common? You suggest this:
That’s one possible conclusion, certainly. If naturalism were true of human systems, we might expect to see chaotic (in the technical sense) behavior in economics. But if naturalism is not true of human systems, we can equally expect to see chaotic behavior in economics. So chaos in economics provides no evidence whatever for naturalism or determinism.
But that is also explainable under non-deterministic assumptions. First, I do not suggest that the brain is uninvolved or has no role to play in personality, cognition, or behavior. My position is that it is involved, but that the neural/chemical/electrical events in the brain are not the whole story; that there is a non-deterministic element of our behavior and cognition, which we call “mind.” Mind interfaces with the physical world through the brain, and if the interface is compromised, then there will be effects in the physical world.
That’s a much-too-short summation on that topic, but I probably ought to leave it at that. The point is that brain damage and its effects on personality can be explained under more than one theory, so it is not conclusive proof of just one theory.
This is evidence-free theorizing at its worst. Let me point out three problems with what you have suggested here.
1. Your experiment would have to provide that every single condition, without exception, was exactly the same upon each repetition of the experiment, and we are a long way from there. The “memory wipe” itself would probably result in some different conditions in the brain each time.
2. The “memory wipe” would presumably be purely a brain effect. You assume that by accomplishing this brain effect, you have brought the person’s entire state back to its original condition. In other words, you assume that there is no mind behind the brain. If you smuggle in the assumption that there is no mind, you cannot use that as proof that there is no mind.
3. But suppose you could solve both of those issues to everyone’s satisfaction. What you have done is taken the definition of libertarian free will and defined it as randomness. What is this randomness, then? Is it quantum randomness? As far as we know with today’s science, it almost has to be, for there are no other candidates for truly random action in nature. Or could it be the apparent randomness of a person making a different decision, on the basis of reasons?
Sometimes when I make a decision I’m torn between two options. Both seem equally good and equally bad to me; they’re balanced 50-50. I decide to do one, recognizing that if I had it to do over again, I might as easily have decided to do the other. It’s quite likely then, that given a brain/mind wipe and exactly equivalent conditions the next time, I would decide the other. Does that mean I didn’t decide?
Therefore your thought experiment, it seems to me, fails to show that free will is incoherent.
Free will means that when you typed out your comment to me, you intended to type it, you decided to type it, and you chose to do so for reasons other than neural/chemical/electrical necessity. It means (among other things) that you typed what you did because you believe it. It means that your belief itself was part of the causal string of events that led to your typing it. Did you choose your belief? Did reasons have anything to do with your choice? Or did it merely happen as a result of (mindless) neural necessity and (mindless) randomness?
The causal chain either does or does not include a step where beliefs, chosen for reasons, have causal efficacy. By your accounting, all the causal efficacy is in neural/chemical/electrical necessity. You might have beliefs, but they were not caused by any reasons, they were caused by just physical necessity or randomness. Yet you present to me reasons for your beliefs, as if the reasons you present ought to cause me to consider changing my mind.
And thus I conclude that determinism is incoherent.
With the mind/brain under the control of randomness and determinism, imagination looks just like reality and falsehood looks just like truth.
“Well, this is just a restatement of the key assumption, which is naturalism applied to humans and human systems.”
… You just declared that there is no natural sphere. If that is true, than the term “supernatural” loses all meaning.
“Imagination has produced a whole lot of explanations for weather down through the ages, and the majority of them were certainly not deterministic!”
All of the predictive ones were though.
“Let me review from the context wherein I originally wrote that. Determinism can be inferred when:
1) Systems are shown to be completely predictable, or
2) All the causes involved in a system are known, and are known to be deterministic.”
Why do I need to show 1 and 2 to infer something is deterministic? Determinism is the alternative to randomness and as long as there is no randomness it is deterministic.
“That’s one possible conclusion, certainly. If naturalism were true of human systems, we might expect to see chaotic (in the technical sense) behavior in economics. But if naturalism is not true of human systems, we can equally expect to see chaotic behavior in economics. So chaos in economics provides no evidence whatever for naturalism or determinism.”
We DON’T see chaos in economics. We see randomness. However, for simpler economic systems, more concrete and predictable patterns occur. Therefore determinism is true.
It is interesting you say that determinism and free will look exactly alike. Why should we go with the more complicated answer is it gives no additional resolution?
“But that is also explainable under non-deterministic assumptions. First, I do not suggest that the brain is uninvolved or has no role to play in personality, cognition, or behavior. My position is that it is involved, but that the neural/chemical/electrical events in the brain are not the whole story; that there is a non-deterministic element of our behavior and cognition, which we call “mind.” Mind interfaces with the physical world through the brain, and if the interface is compromised, then there will be effects in the physical world.”
Please. Why do you hate Occum’s Razor? It is important to note that your answer is still useless- we can change people’s PERSONALITIES by destroying sections of their brains. That means that “who they are” IS determined by their minds. Even if there is an entire extra supernatural layer, you can understand a person simply by using how their physical brain works.
“1. Your experiment would have to provide that every single condition, without exception, was exactly the same upon each repetition of the experiment, and we are a long way from there. The “memory wipe” itself would probably result in some different conditions in the brain each time.”
I know. If we only had individuals who have damage to their long term memory so that we could see such a situation… oh wait, we do. And they DO behavior like I described- they repeat themselves.
“2. The “memory wipe” would presumably be purely a brain effect. You assume that by accomplishing this brain effect, you have brought the person’s entire state back to its original condition. In other words, you assume that there is no mind behind the brain. If you smuggle in the assumption that there is no mind, you cannot use that as proof that there is no mind.”
So you are proposing an unfalsifiable idea? Remember, things that CANNOT be falsified are NOT science. As I stated just above you CAN affect a person’s memories by altering their brain.
There is a way to answer such a question- brain damage in certain parts makes people unable to think about certain things. Therefore whatever this “mind” you are proposing is, it is NOT involved in thought and hence personality.
“3. But suppose you could solve both of those issues to everyone’s satisfaction. What you have done is taken the definition of libertarian free will and defined it as randomness. What is this randomness, then? Is it quantum randomness? As far as we know with today’s science, it almost has to be, for there are no other candidates for truly random action in nature. Or could it be the apparent randomness of a person making a different decision, on the basis of reasons?”
Quantum. It is important to note that there is a difference between free will and randomness. Randomness is just like determinism… except you get different results each time.
“Or could it be the apparent randomness of a person making a different decision, on the basis of reasons?”
That is psychology. Just because a person THINKS something is reasonable doesn’t mean it is.
“It’s quite likely then, that given a brain/mind wipe and exactly equivalent conditions the next time, I would decide the other. Does that mean I didn’t decide?”
If you were mind wiped, you’d make the exact same decision. That was my point. It might be a close decision, but SOMETHING caused you to decide one over the other and that same thing will make you do so again. And again.
“Free will means that when you typed out your comment to me, you intended to type it, you decided to type it, and you chose to do so for reasons other than neural/chemical/electrical necessity.”
No it doesn’t. Free will means that there isn’t a casual chain of events that determined my actions. Adding in a soul (or mind as you like to say- bloody technobabble) DOESN’T remove this problem. Or have you forgotten that the Calvinists believed in predestination and determinism? Having a supernatural element just pushes back the cause of your actions one more step.
“Or did it merely happen as a result of (mindless) neural necessity and (mindless) randomness?”
You seem to think there is some sort of Platonic Form of mind. There isn’t.
“By your accounting, all the causal efficacy is in neural/chemical/electrical necessity. You might have beliefs, but they were not caused by any reasons, they were caused by just physical necessity or randomness. Yet you present to me reasons for your beliefs, as if the reasons you present ought to cause me to consider changing my mind.
And thus I conclude that determinism is incoherent.”
Obviously you have never heard of emergent properties. It is simple- the whole has properties its parts do not.
For example, you seem to think that just because I do not choose my beliefs that you can say determinism is incoherent… except the entire point of logic and reason (which you are badly mishandling in your attempt to prove your point) is BASED on the idea that you can’t choose to believe it. If you accept the premises of a logical argument you MUST accept the conclusion. There is NO choice in there what so ever except to shut down your brain.
“Yet you present to me reasons for your beliefs, as if the reasons you present ought to cause me to consider changing my mind.”
Well, if my brain is purely physical AND said reasons resulted in a reconfiguration of my neural network than the circuit is reinforced and when I get into a similar situation the retrieval is activated and the argument is rewritten, in order to rewrite your mind.
Seriously, ideas ARE rewriting of your brain. I don’t choose to believe in anything- it either is true or it isn’t. Reason is the fact checking system that my brain uses… but it had to be taught that. And, before you ask about regression, it is because reason works.
You seem to think that if something is physical it is somehow wrong, disgusting, dirty (why Plato? WHY?)- an assumption which has NO basis in reality.
Huh? Explain, please. This cryptic style of argumentation, which uses no analysis or explanation, is not advancing us anywhere.
There is a natural sphere, and there is natural law, but it’s not a closed system. It’s not the whole story. That’s what I would hope you would have understood from what I said. I certainly didn’t deny natural law or randomness; I just said they are not the only forms of causation.
Samuel, I’m going to ask you a very serious question and stop right here with it. I’m not going to address the rest of your comment until we’ve worked through this.
What you have just said is that determinism is proved, or can be reliably and accurately affirmed at least, when randomness is ruled out. That is true, if we know that there is no third option, e.g., non-deterministic human decision-making on the basis of reasons, or non-deterministic action on the part of God.
Do we know that? Well, I think that is the point you are trying to make, but it is also the point in question. That is, I am saying there is another form of causation besides natural necessity or randomness, and you are trying to persuade me that I am wrong. But this last offering is only true if we assume your position is correct.
This is not the first time you have come with an assumption and offered it as a conclusion. So I’m going to offer you some coaching in argumentation here. I suggest you enumerate your assumptions, and write out the conclusions you want to persuade me to reach. We have some shared assumptions, like the value of logical discussion, the fact of natural necessity operating in at least large proportions of reality, the chaotic behavior of weather and economics (or at least I thought we did until I read your latest; economics absolutely is not random!), and so on. You can rely on those shared assumptions in your argumentation.
But some of your assumptions are actually your conclusion in disguise. Your conclusion is that there is no causation except for that by natural necessity or randomness. You relied on that conclusion when you made the argument I quoted above. That’s not logically valid (it’s called arguing in a circle), and it’s not going to be effective here.
I do need to respond to just one more thing in your comment, your closing line:
I’m no Platonist, and I don’t think the physical is wrong, disgusting, dirty. I spent part of the afternoon today walking a forest path and enjoying it. I swim a couple miles every week and I really love the feel of being in the water. I like good food. I could get even more personal but I’ll refrain. More to the point, I never, ever, said anything approaching what you have suggested here. I have only said that the physical is not the whole story.
You have put those words in my mouth, Samuel; so now I’m going to offer more coaching again, even at the risk of seeming patronizing. Respond to what the person says, please, and not to your stereotypes or assumptions regarding what the person says.
It does no good for you to call on me to defend a position I haven’t stated and don’t hold.
“Huh? Explain, please. This cryptic style of argumentation, which uses no analysis or explanation, is not advancing us anywhere.
There is a natural sphere, and there is natural law, but it’s not a closed system. It’s not the whole story. That’s what I would hope you would have understood from what I said. I certainly didn’t deny natural law or randomness; I just said they are not the only forms of causation.”
He declared that humans are supernatural actors and anything working off of humans would also be considered supernatural. Given that humans have started messing with the center of gravity of Earth (Three Gorges Dam- the effects are tiny, but measurable) it basically eliminates the concept of a natural sphere.
As for “other forms of causation” you didn’t give any. Free will works by… you don’t say. We both know how determinism works and randomness works, but you haven’t explained how free will works and is differant.
“That is true, if we know that there is no third option, e.g., non-deterministic human decision-making on the basis of reasons, or non-deterministic action on the part of God.”
… You really don’t understand what determinism means, do you? Reason is BLATANTLY deterministic- it gets the same answer everytime. As for God…how is he not deterministic either? After all, he has goals and he knows the best course for achieving them- his actions should be entire deterministic.
” (or at least I thought we did until I read your latest; economics absolutely is not random!), ”
In a rational market, the market is essentially impossibletobeat because it adjusts so quickly and a large degree ofvolitility will be random.
“Your conclusion is that there is no causation except for that by natural necessity or randomness.”
Nope. Determinism is true even if there is a god. Why? Because supernatural phenomena is causal just like natural phenomena. It doesn’t matter if mind is material or not- it will still be deterministic!
“You have put those words in my mouth, Samuel; so now I’m going to offer more coaching again, even at the risk of seeming patronizing. Respond to what the person says, please, and not to your stereotypes or assumptions regarding what the person says.
It does no good for you to call on me to defend a position I haven’t stated and don’t hold.”
You believe that determinism doesn’twork because them logic would be the physical processes inside my brain, rather than magical reactions inside the celestial realm. That IS Platonism- just because you fail to recognize the label doesn’t make it false.
The basic problem here is you create a made up problem (materialism can’t account for reason) and generate an incoherant answer. Free will means people choose? What about computers? They are programmed to do that? What is learning and the genetic code?
Samuel, you’ve raised several issues here, some of them valid (I haven’t explained how non-physical causation works) and some of them not (economics is not random, and if you think it is, you really don’t understand what random means).
This is entirely opaque to me:
Since I really don’t know what you were trying to say there, I’ll move on to another point. You said reason is deterministic. But you will have a very hard time showing that it is deterministic in the sense of its causal factors being entirely physical. If you apply the label of determinism to it, you are equivocating on the term. I thought the discussion here was about physical determinism.
But then you say this, and I wonder just what you do mean by determinism:
I really did think the discussion was about physical determinism, that is, whether all of causation is subsumed under either natural necessity (law) and quantum randomness. If “determinism” means something other than that to you, then please explain how you define the word.
Well, first of all, you didn’t only accuse me of Platonism, you said that I conceived of the physical realm as “somehow wrong, disgusting, dirty.” I don’t, and you were wrong to read that into what I said.
Second, I believe physical determinism doesn’t work because then logic would be just physical processes, and reasons are not physical entities; nor are propositions, or syllogisms, or any of the standard furniture of logical reasoning. Whether that’s Platonism or not, it’s still an argument to contend with. I happen to think it’s valid; I’m also quite sure you won’t knock it down just with a label.
It’s not a made-up problem, my friend. You haven’t begun to address it, really, for it is in fact very difficult to explain how to account for reason under materialism. My answer is not incoherent, it’s incomplete, as I’ve already acknowledged (though I have gone into much deeper elsewhere).
And computers are not “programmed to choose.” The very phrase is self-contradictory. They are programmed to follow the path that is laid out for them, and they cannot swerve from it to the right or to the left.
“Since I really don’t know what you were trying to say there, I’ll move on to another point.”
Declaring everything affeted by humans (aka economics)doesn’t work because EVERYTHING has been affected by humans.
“I really did think the discussion was about physical determinism, that is, whether all of causation is subsumed under either natural necessity (law) and quantum randomness. If “determinism” means something other than that to you, then please explain how you define the word. ”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Determinism
Determinism is the philosophical proposition that every event, including human cognition and behaviour, decision and action, is causally determined by an unbroken chain of prior occurrences.[1]
“Well, first of all, you didn’t only accuse me of Platonism, you said that I conceived of the physical realm as “somehow wrong, disgusting, dirty.” I don’t, and you were wrong to read that into what I said.”
You propose a non material sphere as an alternative to having things like logic exist in the material realm because it somehow “doesn’t work”. You are a Platonist
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platonism
The central concept is the Theory of forms. The only true being is founded upon the forms, the eternal, unchangeable, perfect types, of which particular objects of sense are imperfect copies. The multitude of objects of sense, being involved in perpetual change, are thereby deprived of all genuine existence. The number of the forms is defined by the number of universal concepts which can be derived from the particular objects of sense.
That sounds an awful lot like how you view logic and conciousness, now doesn’t it?
“Whether that’s Platonism or not, it’s still an argument to contend with. I happen to think it’s valid; I’m also quite sure you won’t knock it down just with a label. ”
Knocking down with just a label is an ad hominum. It is a quick way to show what is wrong with something- you can type in “Platonism, criticism of”.
“Second, I believe physical determinism doesn’t work because then logic would be just physical processes, and reasons are not physical entities; nor are propositions, or syllogisms, or any of the standard furniture of logical reasoning. ”
and
“It’s not a made-up problem, my friend. You haven’t begun to address it, really, for it is in fact very difficult to explain how to account for reason under materialism. My answer is not incoherent, it’s incomplete, as I’ve already acknowledged (though I have gone into much deeper elsewhere). ”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materialism
The philosophy of materialism holds that the only thing that can be truly proven to exist is matter, and is considered a form of physicalism. Fundamentally, all things are composed of material and all phenomena (including consciousness) are the result of material interactions; therefore, matter is the only substance. As a theory, materialism belongs to the class of monist ontology. As such, it is different from ontological theories based on dualism or pluralism. For singular explanations of the phenomenal reality, materialism would be in contrast to idealism.
Would you look at that! Materialism holds that all thing that have a physical existance are made up of matter. Do ideas have a physical existance? No- ideas are descriptions of reality and don’t actually physically exist.
More to the point you seem not to really understand logic. It isn’t some set of rules handed down from on high- it is a set of rules derived from reality. Logic is no more mysterious than the scientific method or the theory of gravity.
You might argue that materialism can’t account for them either…but that is similar to arguing that materialism can’t account for language. Or the color red.
The fact of the matter is that all these things are ideas and concepts- they exist only in our minds. The reason they feel real is that they accurately reflect reality.
There is also a fundamental flaw in your argument- “can’t account for something” is an argument from ignorance unless you can show logical impossibilty. Which would require you showing ideas existing seperately from individuals. Which, although rather intriguing, is impossible.
“And computers are not “programmed to choose.” The very phrase is self-contradictory. They are programmed to follow the path that is laid out for them, and they cannot swerve from it to the right or to the left.”
Which is exactly how people work if they are deterministic.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/choice
1: the act of choosing : selection
Interestingly enough, they DO fit under the internet definition. They can select from a variety of options. CHoice does not require intelligence- only the ability to interact and respond to your environment.
Samuel, I think you are continuing to make assertions without arguments, false dichotomies, cherry-picked definitions, and more; and since that doesn’t amount to a real discussion, I’m just going to let it stand here without further response.
I’m sure you won’t agree with that assessment. If I’m wrong about it, perhaps some other reader will let me know I’ve misunderstood. That’s certainly how it seems to me at this point.
This is why the concept of morality feels so real to us. It accurately reflects reality.
“Samuel, I think you are continuing to make assertions without arguments, false dichotomies, cherry-picked definitions, and more; and since that doesn’t amount to a real discussion, I’m just going to let it stand here without further response.
I’m sure you won’t agree with that assessment. If I’m wrong about it, perhaps some other reader will let me know I’ve misunderstood. That’s certainly how it seems to me at this point.”
And yet you don’t bother to give a SINGLE example of me doing that. If I am
a troll, you should try to rebut me
a genuinely curious individual, you should try to answer
a debator, you should try to give me more data
Instead, you simply declare my arguments… don’t count.
Do you see why atheists think theists are deluded? If we get them to a point where we show their beliefs are false, they declare the entire line of reasoning wrong… but without saying why!
Samuel, I cannot accept your closing premise that I have failed to answer you. I have done so with every comment I’ve posted. I have noted at every turn how you have equivocated on “determinism” (I hope you know the technical meaning of the term), set up false dichotomies, argued in a circle, misused the idea of imagination, presented an unconvincing thought experiment and called it conclusive, wrongly charged me with misunderstanding randomness, committed a fallacy in drawing conclusions that weather and economic have similar kinds of causes, made bald assertions without arguing for them, falsely accused me of Platonism (the belief that there is non-physical reality is not necessarily Platonism, for there are many non-Platonic versions it can take), falsely accused me of considering the physical world of being disgusting and dirty, posted opaque statements;
and now most recently you say,
“And yet you don’t bother to give a SINGLE example of me doing that.”
I have bothered to give you multiple examples, my friend. Since you have missed all of them, I conclude there is not much to be gained from continuing to try.