Determinism

[b]Moral Responsibility in a Deterministic Universe
by Ray Bradford

Dennett turned to the idea of the prisoner’s dilemma, well-known to economists for its relevance to self-interest models. In the prisoner’s dilemma, two individuals suspected of committing a crime are caught, but there is not enough evidence to convict either unless one confesses. If neither confesses (they cooperate with each other), both will be set free. If one confesses (the defector) but the other does not, the individual who confesses will be set free while the other (the cooperator) receives a long jail sentence. If both confess, they will both go to jail for a shorter, but still significant amount of time (two defectors). Under this scenario, an efficacious and low-risk, short-term policy for a self-interested individual would entail confession. The individual would either receive no jail term or a short jail term (defecting) as opposed to the alternative of a no jail term or long jail term scenario (cooperating). An even more beneficial short-run strategy for the self-interested individual would involve convincing the other prisoner of your intentions to cooperate, but confessing instead (bluffing for self-interest). While these policies may have short-run benefits to the self-interested individual, they are obviously not optimal for the “society” (both individuals). Over the long haul, if the prisoners could develop a way to know they could count on one another to avoid confessing (by obtaining an ability to accurately distinguish other cooperators from bluffing defectors), they both stand to benefit significantly more than they would by pursuing their own short-sighted self-interests as defectors. [/b]

How, in a determined world, could any of this be “calculated” other than in accordance with that which each prisoner is compelled to calculate in order to be in sync with the only possible world? Thus it’s not a question of doing either what is moral or what is expedient – only in doing what is always necessary.

How [realistically] can there be a distinction made doing what is or is not in your own self-interest when the “self” itself is just one more inherent component of the only possible reality?

Always I come back here to this: What in the world am I missing when I can only ever miss that which I am compelled to miss?

Then it all becomes entangled [for me] in the, at times, exasperating relationship between words and worlds. The limitations of language in grappling with things like this. Back perhaps to Wittgenstein’s,“Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”

Lessans offers nothing of this, he only asserts that it is so. There is no revelation of what he observed, only the assertion that his observations were astute and “spot on”. Details were sadly lacking either in the book or in Janis’s responses.

[b]From: “Moral Responsibility in a Deterministic Universe”
by Ray Bradford

Dennett goes on to say that our unadulterated inclinations have a bias toward short-term rewards at the expense of larger benefits down the road. This makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint of survival, since long-term benefits prove meaningless to a dead organism. Yet, as we have found with the prisoner’s dilemma, it is advantageous to us as organisms to pass up these smaller short-term gains for more sizable long-term ones–and convince others of our ability to do so. Thus, we have problems of both self-control and convincing our peers of our capacity for self-control, and it is from these grounds that moral responsibility emerges as the pinnacle of the arms race. [/b]

But just as with the choices that are being made regarding the dilemma faced by the prisoners, are not the choices that we make regarding the dilemma embedded in short-term vs. long term benefits, also embedded merely in the illusion of free choice?

Is not the evolution of life on earth just another inherent manifestation of the laws of nature? And of the necessity built right into it? How different really is that from the evolution of planet earth itself? In other words, before the advent of life. Is not the only distinction here that life has evolved to the point of mind – minds able to grasp that per the inherent laws of matter there really is no distinction to be made between the evolution of matter before and after the creation of life?

Yes, minds become conscious of the choices that they make…whereas before minds matter was consciuous of nothing at all. But the choices that they make would still seem only as they ever could be in the only possible reality there ever could be because reality is matter and matter unfolds only as it must.

This pivotal point for Dennett reflects the fact that our long-term reward consists of a sterling reputation of “moral” character that we must sacrifice short-term benefits’ “temptation” to obtain. What we consider morally responsible behavior emerges as a self-control mechanism, since demonstrating self-control at individual points of temptation proves difficult with our bias toward myopic self-interest. Thus, we essentially co-opt our emotions into “moral responsibility” to control our own behavior with “broad brushstrokes.”

But what can it even mean to speak of this in terms of “self-control” in a wholly determined world? Thus the need to speak of “moral” character rather than of moral character. We are tempted only in that we cannnot not be tempted.

All of the strokes [however broad] would seem to be at one with the mechanism that is the design unfurling itself like clockwork. One tick at a time.

Hey peacegirl,

I’ve finally found the time to give you some feedback on Chapter 2 of your father’s book. Sorry about the delay. I didn’t find as much this time around to pick apart and scrutinize, but there were a few points:

Is it justified to strike back in retaliation when you are a determinist? I mean, when you know the first person couldn’t help but to strike you first? Your father did say:

I agree with you.

People take risks when they choose that which they might be punished for, but all the more reason to choose when you won’t get punished. I realize there is an argument coming up for why someone would have no incentive to strike the first blow when there are no risks (i.e. no blame, no punishment), but that makes me wonder what the current argument is trying to support.

This is a point that keeps coming up, and I’m still not clear on it–how can one be free and not free at the same time? Compelled from a 3rd person’s point of view but free from your own 1st person point of view. What does “free” mean in this case?

I know I agreed with this earlier, but does this imply that one who knows he will never be blamed or punished will also take full responsibility for his actions? I mean, keep in mind, not all actions are under our control even if it isn’t other people who are responsible for them. Being bed ridden because one is sick is no one’s fault, not the one who is sick nor other people.

Finally, I’m compelled to question what the ultimate incentive is to refrain from striking the first blow when you know there will be no blame or punishment returned to you. Is it unbearable guilt? Is it risking making enemies or hatred/fear of you? Is it that there is no logical possibility of getting anything out of it (like stealing might get you riches)? Is it just that it wouldn’t accomplish anything useful to you?

I would also like to question exceptional circumstances–like when one is compelled by some kind of brain abnormality which results in his compulsive and uncontrollable harming of others (like turrets syndrome), or when one is starving and must steal in order to eat (the desire in this case wouldn’t be to harm another, certainly not to retaliate, but to satisfy one’s hunger only, which may outweigh the harm caused to others or the deterring effects of causing such harm, and may be carried out with at least the attempt to satisfy one’s desire without harming the other)?

[b]Why Buridan’s Ass Doesn’t Starve?
by Michael Hauskeller

Imagine you go to a restaurant. Looking at the menu, you discover that they serve your two favourite meals – say asparagus and spinach tart. What will you do? You may hesitate for a while, but then you will make your choice. You have to make a choice, don’t you? Even if you’re hungry or greedy enough to order both, you have to decide which to eat first.

Now, how do you decide? Given that you like both equally, why do you choose, say, spinach tart, and not asparagus? There are two possible general answers. You can say either that:

a) There is no reason (no cause) for your choice. You just act, and you could equally well choose the other meal. Or:
b) There is a reason, but it’s unknown to you.

The second answer seems more plausible, because it accords with a principle that’s fundamental to the way we think. This principle is commonly called Leibniz’s Law, or the Principle of Sufficient Reason. It can be stated in various ways:

• Nihil sine ratione: Nothing is without a reason.
• Nothing happens without a sufficient reason/cause.
• For each event A there is another event B (or a combination of events) that precedes it and fully explains why A had to happen.
• Ex nihilo nihil fit: Nothing comes out of nothing.[/b]

Just how mysterious are the choices that we make? Leaving aside those that revolve around moral responsibilty, the mere fact of choosing what to eat [or what to eat first] can be made to seem quite perplexing.

We know that “I” is in there somewhere but we don’t know if “I” can ever really grapple with this wholly.

Try as I might, I am not able come up with an argument that would seem to contain the whole truth here. I know that my choice of foods is embedded in dasein. Which is to say that I choose the sort of foods that I have become acclimated to choose given the life that I have lived. For example, I don’t choose the foods that someone who was raised in a more affluent/cosmopolitan family/community might choose. In other words, those who are more familiar [existentially] with far more exotic, “gourmet” meals from around the world.

That’s just never been a part of my life. Now, sure, I could perhaps choose to explore that world. Anyone who has the financial wherewithal, always has that option. But, given the manner in which I have come [again, existentially] to think about food in my life, it is just not something I have any inclination to do. But that too is no less embedded in dasein.

So, the reasons that I choose to eat as I do seem apparent to me. But is there actually the possibility that what seems apparent to me is only that which must seem apparent to me? Is my “agenda” regarding food no different from my moral and political agendas: merely the embodiment of matter unfolding as it only ever could have unfolded?

But then I am back to the seeming futility of devising a methodology for determining this…given all of the conflicting arguments I have come accross over the years that tug me ambivilantly in equal and opposite directions.

As for nothing and something, some seem to argue that everything there is came out of nothing at all. And how do we pin that down?

[/b]

I’ve always thought Buridan’s Ass conflates two philosophical concepts and confuses one for the other: the concept of determinism and the concept of (let’s call it) mathematical equality, by which I mean the case in which you have a force F1 counterbalanced with an equal and opposite force F2, the net result being a kind of balance or suspension leading to inaction. Determinism does not necessarily entail mathematical equality between opposing forces, at least not in the consequences. For example, in the Ass’s brain there could be some neural circuitry that jumps into action only when other neural circuits are at a standstill. The latter may have computed with some degree of mathematical precision that the choice to go left and the choice to go right are equally justified, and therefore cannot decide which one to act upon. But when such neural circuitry enters into such a state, that’s when the former circuitry comes into play, operating by some (possibly arbitrary) rule that says: when at a standstill, choose left. This is a general principle that can be extended beyond neurons and brains. In principle, you can have systems in nature in a state of equilibrium or balance (due to equal but opposite forces keeping each other in suspension) without the end result being a form of inaction. You can have the end result being equivalent to that which would occur if one of the forces overpowered the others. So long as this followed consistently in all such cases, you would still have a deterministic system.

Suppose John Doe has chosen to tether the ass to a stake in the ground. Why? Because, in the manner in which I construe dasein, he had become predisposed to take pleasure in watching the animal starve to death. Given the manner in which you construe determinism [re the human mind] can he then be held morally responsible for doing this? In other words, given the manner in which peacegirl seems to embrace the immutable laws of matter unfolding [out of necessity] into the only possible world, could he have ever freely chosen not to do this to the animal?

I suppose not. Why do you ask?

I ask because, as I have noted before on this thread, determinism is of interest to me only to the extent that it is relevant to the manner in which we choose to hold others responsible for what they do. Which, out in the world that we live in, is clearly linked to blame and punishment.

Now, if John Doe must take satisfaction in choosing to torture animals and others must take satisfaction in choosing to punish him for doing so, then we really are no different from the dominoes toppling over only as they must in the only possible world. The one distinction being that the human mind is matter that has evolved to the point of becoming cognizant of it.

Blame and punishment then become merely another manifestation [embodiment] of the mechanism that is the nature of peacegirls “design”. Just as is this exchange we are having. It was fated to unfold as it necessarily must from the moment that matter was fated to unfold per whatever it is that brought into existence the laws of matter.

And, just out of curiosity, what do you know of that? Or, rather, what do you think you know about it?

I haven’t been following along in this thread for several months now. I only posted here because I promised peacegirl I’d get back to her with my feedback on Chapter 2. So I don’t think I have a thorough grasp of what you’re saying–at least not as much as I otherwise could–but what you explain here makes sense. There’s not much to elaborate on what I know, or think I know, about this: if the world is exhaustively determined, then of course we are all, and always were, determined to punish and blame since the first punishment and blame. I’m even inclined to say blame and punishment would continue even if we were painfully aware of how determined everything is. Knowing that one couldn’t help it doesn’t necessarily get rid of the desire to blame and punish.

Not sure if peacegirl will be back. On the other hand, she was never really able to choose freely to come back.

If I understood her.

Somehow she was able to make this leap from blame and punishment in the world as we know it today everywhere] to a world in which, once everyone is able to grasp her father’s discovery/principle about a world sans free will, blame and punishment would no longer exist.

Well, other than among those who refused to become citizens of her father’s utopia…a world where all embody a universal consciousness. Which may or may not include something that may or may not be analogous to God.

But, again, I may have misunderstood her. I may well be the one missing the point.

We discussed this as well. And she acknowledged that our emotional and psychological reactions to the world were also necessarily subsumed in a design necessarily subsumed in the immutable laws of matter. Our desires, in other words, were no less wholly determined.

[b]From “The Information Philosopher” website:

Peter Strawson argued in 1962 that whatever the deep metaphysical truth on the issues of determinism and free will, people would not give up talking about and feeling moral responsibility - praise and blame, guilt and pride, crime and punishment, gratitude, resentment, and forgiveness.

These “reactive attitudes” were for Strawson more real than whether they could be explained by fruitless disputes about free will, compatibilism, and determinism. They were “facts” of our natural human commitment to ordinary inter-personal attitudes. He said it was “a pity that talk of the moral sentiments has fallen out of favour,” since such talk was “the only possibility of reconciling these disputants to each other and the facts.” [/b]

How I translate this:

Even if we are not able [philosophically, scientifically etc.] to pin down the objective relationship between determinism and moral responsibility [out in the world of human interactions] we react to others as though we are in fact choosing our behaviors freely and thus we can be held responsible for the consequences of those behaviors that others do not approve of. And especially regarding those behaviors that others deem harmful to them.

This feels “real” to us and that has to be enough until the objective truth can finally be pinned down.

But it would seem that, however one either talks or does not talk of “moral sentiments”, we are still just groping in the dark. We each of us one by one take a more or less educated leap of faith to a point of view that either assigns moral responsibility to ourselves and to others or presumes this is all just an illusion in a world where everything that we think, feel and do is only as it ever could have been.

My own dilemma moreover goes further still. Even if I do take that leap to free will [and I do] I still land on this:

If I am always of the opinion that 1] my own values are rooted in dasein and 2] that there are no objective values “I” can reach, then every time I make one particular moral/political leap, I am admitting that I might have gone in the other direction…or that I might just as well have gone in the other direction. Then “I” begins to fracture and fragment to the point there is nothing able to actually keep it all together. At least not with respect to choosing sides morally and politically.

Exactly.

[b]

[/b]

Since I have taken my own “existential leap” to “free will”, the question I always focus on is not whether “I” have some capacity to control the choices I make [I presume that I do] but the extent to which “I” can ever really grasp how much control is really within my reach.

Again, some things that we choose to do are more or less embedded in necessity. We can’t choose to forgo food and water or we will die. We can’t choose to be successful at some task unless we first learn how to do it. We can’t choose to ignore the laws of nature or we will suffer the consequences.

Similarly, we can’t not choose a moral or a political agenda if we wish to interact with others.

But here the choices are different in that they do not revolve around either/or so much as is/ought. It is one thing to make choices when you are a doctor aborting a fetus, another thing altogether when you are an ethicist arguing which choice is moral and which immoral.

That’s the part I focus on pertaining to dasein and conflicting goods.

In other words, some choices revolve around either/or. Either you choose to do the right thing [the thing aligned objectively with reality] or you will not accomplish the task the choice aims toward.

Even if the doctor does presume that she is free to choose to perform abortions, there are particular choices that she must make [of necessity] if she wishes to do this successfully. This transcends dasein and conflicting goods.

But for the ethicist, dasein and conflicting goods are marbled through and through her decisions.

And that’s where my “dasein dilemma” comes into play. Just having free will does not enable someone to choose “the right thing to do” when confronted with the conflicting value judgments embedded in the abortion wars. Whereas one can choose the right course of action if the task revolves instead around aborting the baby.

There is a consequential confusion here, as a result , based on the seeming loss of freedom due to the equivocation of freedom with responsibility. If that identity I usage has resulted in the priority of identifying categorically, why the guy replace the term responsibility for freedom, it would go a long way to enable a rationale for it. Was he justified? or did he simplyy refer to a prior 60’s book, ‘Freedom and Responibility’ by I beleive Rollo May. Maybe it was a realization that was based on increasing number of bad trips among young kids on drugs. Who had no idea how to come down. They couldn’t because they did not understand how they, individually got there in the first place.

Your problem is similar, in that You are looking for a way to retract from Your leap, and there may not be a way to find the source, or the origin of where You Are coming from.

Please do not misunderstand, it is not Your cognition which may be at question here, but the whole package, maybe You are asking Yourself, whether You leapt before You thought out all of the ramifications not all of which may have depended on an analysis of the right thing, or, the thing to do, but,
Overwhelmed by numerous choices with differing aims, did the choice entail the best choice available, or rather, was based on what appeared to be the right, the only apparent choice, based on some thought of bravado, or a need to make a complete break,where only a clearly identifiable choice would or could prevail?

it’s obvious that doing the responsible thing is not always the only, or even the best choice, when that series brings in the sequence of what is best in terms of how one sees it. And this figures on the idea that leaps or breaks are contingent in most part on how one sees or interprets what that is. Within the construct of his own Dasain. That breaks categorically the idea of what one should do, therefore the problem of identifying what one ought to do, with one sees as the best thing to do. The leaps themselves become problematically adverse and contradictory to the sense of what one should do.

Personally, my life, is a chain of contradictions , and like Yours, one can not but love in uncertainty about
The context within which I placed my being. But my rationale consists of a demonstration that my original choices were not really that original, and I was to choose the things I did, on account of concern that others may be effected to a negative degree. Others diminished by uncertainty, by rewarding me with putting them into the equation. But then the dynamic of relinquishing control became a jigsaw puzzle, wherein I had to start a new schematics, of trying to figure out how to retain some control. At least to the degree, that would balance out needs and simply just a power struggle.

Your example of the abortion issue,Mahican I niticed You invariably use as an example has all these elements, except, that the unborn do not have as of yet elements of control deigned to them they are acted upon, and I am not sure, we should not assign to them at least some rights apart from being the products of a pleasurable act. The respect for life, and subsequent responsibility to imbue fetuses with their own possible being, is violated herein. Fetuses were not asked to be borne, as our own children off remind us at times when trouble arises, and we really have no credible way to get out from under such questions, because the question goes way back to the original choice of having respect for the dignity of life. So the leap to nothingness is re, or disqualified by a structural regression from what Freud calls the super ego.

I referred to Rollo May, and found a reinforcement to the above, wherein he did not consider freedom and responsibility contradictory. that answers the ontological problem of being, as not subscribing to conventional thought.

I, the God, appreciate your honesty. Honesty is the first step. My body has urges as well.
The Zs, in all their great wisdom, modified their DNA to get rid of all violent and sexual urges.

However, this was not wise. They see to remodify their DNA to revert to the old ways of sexual and violent urges.
I only seek to modify the DNA to eliminate primarily idiotic and selfish traits. This would benefit your species, whilst still allowing you enjoy hedonistic pursuits.

I have not yet read Peacegirl’s writings but mere writings are not enough. The human DNA is what’s at hand.

Here of course one starts with the assumption that there is an element of free choice entangled in our option to behavior in one way rather than another.

But, from my perspective, what we choose to do is always profoundly and problematically entangled in dasein. In fact, so entangled there is no realistic possibility that we can ever disentangle all of the thousands upon thousands of exitential variables that came to be our life. At least not such that we can pin down with any precision why we chose to do this rather than that.

And even if we could do this [discover our “true self”] there is no way [in a world sans God] to determine which moral values we come to predicate our behaviors on are neccesarily [objectively] the right values.

That, in fact, is when I challenge folks to take these relationships off the sky hooks and bring them down to earth. To discuss “freedom of choice” [or the lack thereof] in the context of abortion or some other issue where there are obvious conflicting narratives “down here” “out in the world” of actual human interactions.

And since I root moral narratives said to be true objectively in the “psychology of objectivism” – viewtopic.php?f=15&t=185296 – I make the further assumption that a belief in determinism is just another manifestation [embodiment] of this. I just don’t grasp how a belief in determinism can ever be compatible with free will unless it is expressed as “free will”.

Yes it would seem so, but, breaks are never clean, they always display reggae do edges to some degree, and it goes the same with freedom, the total break on closer examination consists of parts some denied,smoke understood, but the whole is phenomenal, it requires it to conform to aesthetic rules, of distance, proportion and vantage point, and here the individuals are not perceived on,y the aggregates. Freedom is a function of relative appreciation of these rules, if you fly too high to the sun, or too far away from it. the perspective of fallen ness is lost, and the the heaviest objects will appear to fall faster, and Dasein will be re embodied. Who has not occasioned this illusion, even Nowedays among most people? Their children who retain the fear of flying. They have to ground themselves, thus, they can never liberate themselves from the constraints of gravity. They see reality as a pointillistic abandonment embedded by surrounding trees
within a forest, where only the trees are visible.

[b]

[/b]

Yes, but are they not “natural human reactions” because they are fully in alignment with nature? And is not nature fully in alignment with the inherent laws of matters? And are not the inherent laws of matter fully in alignment with…with what exactly? With God? With whatever brought everything that exists into existence out of nothing at all?

Again: for all practical purposes, what does it mean [in a determined world] to speak of my “acceptance” of all this? As though there was ever any possibility [in a wholly determmined world] that this could be anything other than what it must be.

And yet I always come back to the assumption that, since these are the speculations of some very, very sophisticated minds, there must be something in my own mind that still doesn’t “get it”.

But: Are or are not our subjunctive reactions to the world around us [and to the subjunctive reactions of others] no less subsumed in the design? Necessarily subsumed.