Hello Rafajafar My names Pascals Wager.
I neglected to register/use my registered name in my first couple of posts.
What’s your definition of “The Creator”?
And what is it that Sartre said about the paperknife, again?
Nevermind.
We should be asking how freewill would be possibile with or without a “god,” actually.
Even if, granting Sartre’s argument, freewill were impossible if a god exists, it would still be experienced by the agent if he/she/it were conscious and aware of choice. Freewill does not mean a lack of causality and is no argument against determinism. It is a state where a being is conscious of itself engaged in deciding and acting. It is ontological, not ethical, and the existence of a god to provide a predetermined script for human existence is doubly irrelevent.
This sounds like “Soft determinism”
There is a difference between “Practical” freedom & “Metaphysical” freedom.
Practical freedom is the freedom to do what you want. You can have it in different degrees.
If you were in a cell you’d have less freedom than if you were not.
Metaphysical freedom is being ultimately responsible for your choices.
You can choose how you react to being locked up. Whether you fight against it, or compose poetry.
Determinism threatens this kind of freedom.
If you were hypnotised to pick vanilla ice-cream when given a choice between vanilla & chocolate. Were given the choice & picked vanilla, you would be exercising “practical freedom”. If asked why you chose, you would probably say that you preferred vanilla. You would be doing what you wanted to do.
Prblem is, the choice was something you weren’t ultimately responsible for.
There was internal coercion. Your choice was predictable.
You made a practically free decision, but in a metaphysical sense, you weren’t exercising free will.
If you accept determinism & are asked whether you believe we are ultimately free in our choices, the answer is no.
Nice demonstration, PW.
I want to provide a decent counter argument and spend some time with it.
Right now, however, I feel like playing so I will pick this conversation up later.
Toodles.
Thanks de’trop.
I look forward to it
Honestly, I dispise the Cosmological argument as much as you probably do, but I was trying to say that Occam’s Razor supports the Cosmological argument, if anything.
My definition of the creator is the force that caused causality…the First Cause.
…but guess what, causality is an illusion. That’s another topic, though.
Pascals Wager,
Lets say the argument against freewill was like this: that since it is impossible for subsequent acts to take place without a prior motive, and prior motives are always causal, then acts are caused. Seems simple enough, as it does obvious. But what if we choose both reasons and motives, but yet are never caused to choose as we do?
If, for example, I opened a letter addressed to my lover which might be a letter from a lover she is having an affair with, it would be because of the possibility that she was cheating and that I wanted to know. We would say that this is because of jealous suspicion.
Of course to say that jealousy was the cause if obviously it happened before I opened the letter would be to admit that this is no exercise of freewill. But I have to reaffirm that jealously, open the letter, and project myself toward the possibility of confirming or disconfirming my jealous suspicion by reading the letter. Sure, a motive must precede an action, but what makes an act effective, “intentional,” is the simultaneous reaffirmation and recovery of that jealously in the choice I make of the act and end.
I cannot open the letter unless I am jealous, but I cannot be jealous unless she is cheating. I know this is weak, PW, and it seems ridiculous to claim that we choose our motives. But do you see how the motive is an intentional projection into a future possibility, that the actual “reason” for the act of opening the letter was undetermined? How can a cause come from the future? When it is only possible and not certain that the events in the letter make me jealous, that’s how. I admit that this is confusing.
Perhaps I want to say that I will never deny that physical events are caused by antecedent conditions, but I can never allow that the intentionality be from absolute causes. I think it is organized from an ensemble of reason, motive, and end. The result is never completely finished and resolved, so as to call it a “cause.”
It has yet to be and is possibly not, at the same time.
To: De’trop
Your argument for free will is simply taking the subjective state of willing or choosing or deciding and abstracting it away from an preceeding or antecedent cause (some religionists do this by stating that will has no cause but simply pops into existence all on its own like some epiphenomenal “hanger-on”; I argue that this is the only way will can truly be “free” independent of the abstraction that you are doing)
Indeed for will to be free it would have to violate the dictates of materialism, which holds that everything has a physical cause and depends on the physical even in order to exist.
In materialism, the physical substance of our universe never had a beginning to it’s existence, and will never have an end (the most underrated but important implication of the first thermodynamic law of nature, or the conservation of energy and mass). If this is true, then YOUR BRAIN has essentially ALWAYS EXISTED, at least in potential as free quarks and leptons and then atoms as the universe cooled and the four forces of nature were formed in the fraction of a second after the big bang.
Consciousness, on the other hand (meaning subjective internal experience as opposed to physical stuff that can be seen or felt, etc. or physical stuff that cannot be seen or felt but that have some effect on stuff that can be seen or felt, such as electromagnetic waves or air and so on)is nonphysical, so in materialism some explanation for it’s existence is necessary in a way that will make the physical responsible for it’s existing here in the first place.
The mind/body coherence in which brain-states always seem to be accompanied by some conscious/experience-state seems to imply materialism (it also implies non-materialism to be fair, as one can argue that subjective feelings and thoughts just pop into existence independent of the brain but accompany physical brain function by continuous coincidence).
Willing or choose or deciding is a property of consciousness-it too is nonphysical, in that it cannot be seen or felt or is not seen to have some effect on what can be seen or felt like EM waves or air. In materialism, willing or choosing must depend on some antecedent physical cause IN ORDER TO EVEN EXIST IN THE FIRST PLACE.
My decision to respond with this post, under materialism, depended on the causal chain of the physical universe (that played a role in the formation of my brain at conception, and that plays a role in the continued structural existence and function of my brain right now)somehow effecting my neurons to fire in such a way as to form the subjective decision to respond to you with this post. Had the causal web of the universe turned another way before I started this post, I would have been CAUSED to go to a movie, or go out to a nice resturant, or just to go to bed instead.
This is the causal dependency argument against free will. That even though will is a subjective (nonphysical) thing, it’s existence depended on something that existed before it to…bring it into existence. It does not exist all on it’s own, it must in a sense “wait” for the universe to causally produce it from nonexistence. This is the most underlooked but vitally important implication of secular materialism (and theistic materialism, as I am a theist who holds that God has this power over wills in a proactive rather than reactive way: I call this control of God over our wills: CAUSAL MONISM).
If you want to just get us to just “look” at the subjective feeling or state of choosing and deciding without looking at any antecedent NEED of that subjective state to even exist from the random or intelligent pre-actions of pre-existing entities, and call this subjective state “free will”-fine…but it might confuse things in talk about causality. As most hold that having free will also must include freedom from BEING CAUSED at all. Sometimes it is easy even as a materialist to get bogged down in all of the subjective notions and forget that those subjective states wouldn’t even exist if not for the chance random causal fluctuations of the physical universe(if one is secular or atheist) or the interactionistic will of a God in a universe that holds to causal monism (if you are my kind of theist: most theists hold that God does not control will and has a self-imposed “hands-off” policy at least on human will-which I deny. In my view of theism, God is the novelist and we are his characters in a matter-energy “play” that he has put on for his own self-amusement…but that’s just me. I cannot reconcile the notion of free will to my view of the universe)
But ultimately, free will arguments…like atheist/theist arguments are doomed to the same eternal “uh-huh”/“nuh-uh” exchanges in the philosophical domain.
Thanks,
Jay M. Brewer
phenomenal graffiti
…and that’s what I’m trying to do. Thank you for your permission, Jay.
I think that in philosophy, pushing “freewill” is the only justified lie. Unfortunately, some people intelligent enough not to fall for it, like yourself, come along and screw it all up. Thanks a million, pal.
Now, everything is lost. Everybody will sit around on their ass and say, “the universe made me do it.”
Let me gather my marbles and I’ll come up with a way to trick even you, my friend.
Until next time.
Oh, and Marshall, this post is classified information. Don’t let the others see it. Destroy it as soon as Jay reads it.
A long time ago, this thread started off with:
First: To what degree are our thoughts original? If I think things that I have heard or seen, and reason on growing evidence, isn’t the sorting of evidence the original part - me, if you like?
But if the sorting process is guided by a moral teaching, then even that isn’t me. That explains why people can change their behaviour either by gaing more evidence or a new moral basis.
Luther used a simple picture to describe this predicament: Mankind is always being ridden by some influence - you have to choose: God or the Devil. The Devil being the Metapher for everything ungodly. By that reasoning, Mankind has no free will.
Second: If everything is predestined, then even a resignation on my part would be predestined, just as a crime or a death would be too. It wouldn’t matter what I do, I couldn’t be held responsible. This seems to be something cooked up by ambivalent cardinals looking for some excuse.
This presents us with a predicament that we don’t seem to get out of, because we don’t have enough information. It leaves me acknowledging the wise teachers who taught that some questions just lead us into a vicious circle.
Shalom
Bob
To: De’trop and Bob
Of course the notion of free will holds us as ultimately responsible (as the sole cause) of our actions!
And of course the notion of ruling out free will is used by those who want to escape responsibility for their actions and blame things on something else that “made them do it”.
But one can argue that the notion of there not being free will is ultimately an ontological argument rather than just an “escape” from responsibility for one’s actions.
If materialism is true, then we are not ontologically (ultimately and existentially) responsible for our subjective EXISTENCE-physical processes MADE US TO EXIST AND DETERMINE THE SHAPE AND COURSE OF OUR CHOICES. A choice cannot subjectively emerge into existence unless and until certain neurons fire a certain way, precisely by the random causal chains in physical nature.
But this same neuronal depostism can be argued to give rise to the idea that we ARE responsible for our actions and choices, that the subjective self does not depend on some preexistent physical entity (the brain) to even exist, and that we do punish and reward people for their acts AS IF they were responsible for their own actions and choices, despite the ontological fact of the matter (if materialism is true) that they were NOT.
Frederick Hayek, who also ruled out the existence of free will with the implications of materialism also said this. That the universe causes us to BELIEVE that we have free will even though we do not. And the universe causes us to BELIEVE that we are the self-creators and are responsible for the existence of our choices even if the real creator is the physical universe itself (by our neurons).
Hayek claimed that this delusion, if you will, that we are the masters of our destiny is itself only a random creation of our neurons, which is belied by the causal dependency of our choices and subjective selves on the random actions of physical entities that exist beyond ourselves and will continue to exist even after our subjective selves are gone (as implied by the first thermodynamic law of the conservation of mass and energy).
The neurons can’t know that they are creating this feeling or delusion that we choose apart from them and decide independent of their pre-actions, so the idea that we have free will is just another fall-out of materialism, according to Hayek (and myself).
Of course, one can always be anti-materialist, and hold to the notion of free will. As I have said before and will say again (and again) being “free” means also freedom from dependency on something for your very existence( not just in the past, but on a case-by-case basis). If materialism is true, the existence of our choices from time a to time b must first be manufactured by our neurons on a case-by-case basis, and these must occur FIRST before a subjective choice even EXISTS. This is not freedom, my friends.
As before, you can abstract away from (ignore the ontological determinism of) the neurons and the physical world and just look at the subjective experience of choosing and deciding and calling that “free”, but this is just calling EXISTING “free”.
But, this like everything else is my own humble opinion,
Jay Brewer
phenomenal_graffiti@yahoo.com
P.S Might I invite anyone in the forum to have a look at my book about SUPERCHRISTIANITY, or a new version of the religion about what might have gone on in the mind of Jesus Christ while dying on the cross? Interested parties can contact me will a snail mail address at my email address as the book is not online but is in paper/notebook format.
(Superchristianity depends on a sort of “theological materialism” that mirrors secular materialism, only that the Judeo-Christian God controls all wills, such that we are ultimately only matter-energy “puppets” of that God. This view is adamantly opposed by normal Christianity, but I hold that it is still a logical possibility about the real or actual world, for all we can know a priori.)
No thanks, Jay, I’m trying to quit.
Excellent post.
Relativity asserts that matter & energy are interchangeable, therefore energy is just as fundamental as matter.
Consequently, many choose to use the term “Physicalism”, seeing it as a more accurate label than “Materialism”.
It sounds as though this is what you are saying. Sort of a “Determinist-Physicalism”
I’m just curous as to why you place “God” in the mix?
Do you, like Rafajafar, simply use the word “God” to refer to a “first cause”.
Like you said, “In materialism, the physical substance of our universe never had a beginning to it’s existence, and will never have an end”, so that would be a contradiction.
It sounds like you have a more fleshed out notion.
What attributes does your God possess,(besides a sense of humour) & why do you feel the need for such a being?
To: Pascal’s Wager
Thanks for your response.
My desire to introduce God into the physicalism-mix is derived from the same materialism, or what I call: “neuronal insistence on the belief in a God”.
If the causal chain of the physical universe determines the course of my will and thought and action, then one can say that the universe forces or causes me (and all other theists) to believe in a God (Judeo-Christian or otherwise), and one can say that the universe causes us to be somewhat unable to shake the notion that a God exists (even if in fact he does not).
On my conception of God, God is a disembodied (or nonembodied) conscious mind that overdetermined the four forces of nature (and the “superforce” before that) such that the world that we know has an imperceptible conscious or “telekinetic” force guiding us and controlling our wills and actions alongside the physical forces of gravity, electromagnetism, etc. The fifth force is mental so it will not be able to be scientifically measured (just as the subjective experience cannot be placed on the lab table: we must infer it’s existence and it’s states from brain states-but even here it is just a guess…this does not contradict physicalism, but questions our range of sensory knowledge in knowing facts about to the mind/body coherence outside of just believing a subject’s report about his/her experiences alongside brain function)
This theological telekinetic “masterminding” of the states of the universe is what I call: “causal monism” (one-cause, with a tongue-in-cheek flair)
stating that consciousness determines the physical on a higher level but on a lower level the physical determines consciousness in common physicalism, but shadowed by the telekinetic overdetermination of a higher God.
This makes God (at least in my view) the overdetermining cause of everything in the universe (including all moral truths, such as the existence of human evil. This view has gotten me in a lot of hot water with other religionists-heh heh)But it’s all good speculative belief, I think.
Yes, I think yours is as good a speculation as any. But I still believe that your thoughts put you amongst the blind men identifying the elephant - and that you are no further than any of us.
I appreciate your use of language and science - and feel that you may be trying to obtain a kind of pseudo-scientific status, which would be misleading. God remains a mystery that, to my mind, is best described poetically in order that we don’t reach the assumption that we have “proven” anything.
Shalom
Bob
Hi phenomenal_graffiti.
What about “Neuronal Insistence” on the non-belief of god?
If you’re saying that a god of some description must exist due to the fact that the universe makes you feel that way, that hardly approaches anything resembling evidence.
What about those who have a non-belief?
Can it not be said that the universe is equally responsible for their convictions?
Both cannot be true (The existence & non-existence of God, that is).
Essentially, it seems that you’re playing the “It’s just a feeling” card which precludes any rational discussion of the topic.
Why does the universe cause you to believe in this particular flavour of god?
Regarding your model, you’ve just really stated a bunch of unsubstatiated theories/attributes with no rational basis.
How are we to discuss this model rationally?
Are we to discuss it at all?
If not, why allude to it in a forum?
What seperates your model from the countless others other than the fact that this model is of your formulation?
Just as a side note, what are the “Moral Truths” of which you speak?
Maybe there is no free will, it is just an allusion. Determinism beliefs that your choices in life are already made up. A great example would be: would you a.) Eat your favorite meal or b.) Eat a slice of bread. Ofcorse you would eat you favorite meal right, that choice was already decided for you. If you think about it just about every choice in life is like that. Most of the choices you will make will be for your benefit, whether you think it is or not.
To: Pascal’s Wager
In no way did I intend for neuronal insistence, or the universe causing a theist to believe that there is a god, to be a sort of “revelation” that a god exists. Neuronal insistence is responsible for atheism as well. The same causal chains inferred in physicalism produce both an unshakeable belief in the existence of God and an unshakeable belief in the nonexistence of God in different minds.
I could argue that neuronal insistence is caused by a God, and that God causes atheism for his own self-amusing reasons, but I digress for the moment.
My point was that, whether a God exists or not, if physicalism is true, then the universe causes some conscious physical systems to believe in the existence of God ( I’m referring to the Judeo-Christian God as the most relevant example)…and it also causes some conscious physical systems to sit on the fence about the matter (agnostics)…and some conscious physical systems to deny the existence of such a Diety altogether (atheists).
As to why neuronal insistence exists…why not ask why matter and energy exists in the first place? It just is. ( If physicalism is true). To paraphrase David Chalmers in his online paper: “Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness”, there are some things that we must take as fundamental, holding that they exist for no other reason than that they exist. Belief in God or nonbelief in God as a byproduct of neuronal insistence can be reduced to such ontological fundamentalism.
Indeed, just raising the subject of God can be considered to be just the universe up to it’s old tricks again, as part of the natural way of things in terms of how the brain comes up with conscious aspects. The brain wants to inject God into a conversation, and it does through typing words on a computer keyboard or by word of mouth. Just causal circumstance at work, my friend. The same goes for atheistic concepts and explanations of the world as well.
As for the existence of God…in general the nonexistence of God is generally “justified” by lack of sensory evidence for the existence of God. Usually we judge that things exist or don’t exist by their availablility in principle or availability in practice and actuality to the senses…or as I have said before, if they are too small for the senses, such as quantum Em waves and so on, they must nonetheless have some physical effect on big stuff that we can perceive with the senses. Laboratories are good for this.
But there is one thing that is claimed to exist by almost everyone but that is imperceptible to the senses in principle and practice…this remarkable thing is THIRD-PERSON CONSCIOUS EXPERIENCE. For example, I can only believe that you are a conscious person, but I cannot EXPERIENCE your consciousness for myself. All I see are words on a computer screen or if meeting you in person, all I would perceive is a moving object who approaches me and moves it’s mouth in my directing making certain sounds that come out as certain types of information that I can understand. There is no way for me to know that this object is conscious in the same way that I am conscious.
If one conceives of God as a universe-controlling disembodied mind, then one conceives of God as a TPE( Third-person experience) character, which could exist independent of sensory perception in the same way that you are conscious whether or not I believe that you are conscious or not.
I get into this in a book that I have written, entitled : “Can God Exist?” But it was worthwhile to address your question on neuronal insistence.
Sorry for the extra long post anyway,
Jay M. Brewer
phenomenal_graffiti@yahoo.com
hi folks…I have shared a deep passion for the philosophy of the “free will” debate for a couple years now, and I want to adress my own idea of the problem of temptation, and Holy spirit pursuations with “free will”
First…the definition of “free will”…I’ve read a lot of this on the internet, and people start off their little paragraphs by saying that there are many different definitions for this phrase, but I think I want to make it clear that it’s pretty obvious (to me atleast), that when somebody says “free will”, they mean “responsiblity”, or “accountability”, and not just the ability to make a choice.
So then what do people mean by responsibility or accountablity…to me this means that in order to be responsible, or accountable for something, then you have to have completely caused that something to happen in order to be completely responsible for it.
So then, when something happens…the responsiblity justly resides with the “somethings” cause, or causes. So then to have “free will” you must have completely caused what you are “responsible” for to happen…meaning that nothing in the environment, or in your genes can be “at all” held accountable…just yourself.
But, to me, then if we really had “free will” then temptation would be completely meaningless, and futile, as would the work of the Holy Spirit. Because if we are competely responsible for our actions, that means temptation and the work of the holy spirit MUST have absolutely no effect on our choices because if they did, then they would be partly responsible for the final outcome of the choice. They would be partly to blame, thus we would not be comepletely to blame.
So, then I conclude, that if we have “free will” then why does the Devil, or God waste their time trying to pursuade us in one direction over another, because no amount of pursuation (no matter how large) could ever effect our final decision. If it did, then it had an effect, and thus a “cause” and the blame for an event resides in the “cause” of that event. Right?
Same is true, with missionary work. If I knew somebody who never heard the word of God, and had the option to tell them that word, but chose not to, and that person Goes to hell, then wouldnt I be partially to blame for it. That person is suffering punishment for what I have left undone. That doesnt seem fair, or just at all to me. And if it is true, that your act of telling somebody about God truly effects their final choice, then that means people are not in complete control of their choices. Meaning We are dependent upon things outside of ourselves, so then why are we blamed completely for our actions as though we alone caused them?, when the truth is that so many things caused them, not just ourselves.
To: Justsomeguy
Well put…when we talk about responsibility and accountability in our talk of free will, it does indeed imply that a person is the sole and isolated cause of an event. But even in views of secular materialism or physicalism our subjective choices and decisions are in turn created for us by brain function, and brain function is supported in turn by the causal dynamics of the environment around that brain and the rest of the universe. So ultimately choices are caused by the circumstances and events preceeding that choice, and can be argued to not just pop “ex nihilo” into existence out of the context of the preexistents and proximities of the world that shaped a choice.
However, we can’t throw the entire universe in jail if someone commits a murder or a rape or something-so we (for convenience sake) must at least abstract away from the implications of materialism or physicalism and at least treat the person as if they were the sole cause of their actions and decisions, and punish them accordingly. Or those who wish to preserve materialism’s spirit even in criminality will treat our punishment of offenders to social or humanistic laws or rights as a sort of “quarantine”: If the universe causes a person to choose to commit a crime, then to protect the rest of us we must either kill off or imprision the person so that the universe cannot cause that person to at least PHYSICALLY act out their destructive choices.
The idea of responsibility and free will in my view works as a sort of “ethical” concept, abstracting away from universal and local causality of the subjective aspect to just look at the subjective in isolated context. It’s pretty and sexy, but seems wrong in the most honest philosophical discussion about the world and how it works.
Best,
Jay M. Brewer
phenomenal_graffiti@yahoo.com