Determinism

“this atheist believes in free will”
James Kirk Wall from the ChicagoNow web page

This is where from my frame of mind the arguments get rather unreal, strange…even bizarre.

If Harris doesn’t believe in free will given the manner in which I have come to understand a determined universe then he could not have not been an atheist any more than religious folks could not have not believed in God. Yet his reactions to religion is precisely the reaction that one would expect from someone who believes that one is able [obligated] to freely choose atheism because it is more rational.

On the other hand, if Harris doesn’t say that science has proven that free will doesn’t exist, can Hall say that science has proven it does exist? How are both points of view not clearly embedded in all that is still yet to be learned by science here?

All any of us can explain about why we choose one selection from the menu rather than another is what we think “here and now” we know about what is happening “in our head” then. When in fact none of us do know everything that we must know in order to answer the question definitively.

That’s the part both sides seem unwilling to accept. The part that [to me] revolves more around a human psychology [compelled or not] ever and always inclined to believe that having an answer is far, far better than being unsure that there is an answer.

Besides, there must be an answer. Why? Because they have already found it!

“this atheist believes in free will”
James Kirk Wall from the ChicagoNow web page

Okay, but what I keep coming back to here is how interesting it might be to point out to Mr. Harris that in a wholly determined universe, i.e. a universe in which all matter [including brain matter] is governed by natural laws, what any of us come to understand about the definition of free will is the only thing we were ever able to come to understand about it.

In other words, over and again I’m confronted with the prospect that I must be missing something really important here about the manner in which folks like this discuss these relationships.

Same for the author here. How is he able to demonstrate that what he understands about these relationships is beyond all doubt the embodiment of his own free will? However circumscribed and/or circumvented it will be by any number of actual existential variables.

His leap to free will is no less an intellectual contraption in my view. We’re all stuck trying to pin the tail on this donkey going all the way back to why something rather than nothing exists at all. And why this something and not another something altogether.

In other words, why and how does the human brain do what it does such that this can be traced back to God or to nature or to some component embedded in the chemical and neurological interactions inside the brain that can be pinpointed to explain how this living matter became autonomous.

“Neuroscience vs philosophy: Taking aim at free will”
Scientists think they can prove that free will is an illusion. Philosophers are urging them to think again.
Kerri Smith in Nature magazine.

Here we have the classic example of how different people using the same words are not able to agree on how to understand the meaning of these words in any particular context.

Still, in talking about the “concept of free will”, how can philosophers explain this to the neuroscientists so as to enable them to test for it in their experiments with actual functioning brains making choices?

Sure, in a world of words, “free will” can be encompassed in many, many different ways. But sooner or later these “thought up” and “thought out” ideas have to be reconfigured into ways to probe both their use value and their exchange value when the focus shifts to an actual behavior being chosen in an actual context.

So, what we we need here are the latest reports from the scientific community in which the arguments of particular philosophers have been explored “for all practical purposes” given specific experiments conducted with actual functioning brains.

You know who:

Objectivists of his ilk are almost never able to grasp the irony embedded in assessments of this sort.

Sure, let’s presume for the sake of argument that free-will is an actual fact of life among our own species.

As he does.

Then, as with folks like Ayn Rand, he becomes obsessed with the idea of freedom. Of those individuals bold enough to actually exercise it. How? By yanking themsleves up out of the herd. Up out of the moronic masses who, as desparate degenerates in the modern world, are intent only on exorcising it from their lives.

But: there’s a catch.

In order for others to embody this noble freedom themselves they must first agree to think exactly as he does about, among other things, genes and memes and race and gender and sexual orientation.

This part:

1] I am rational
2] I am rational because I have access to the objective truth
3] I have access to the objective truth because I grasp the one true nature of the objective world
4] I grasp the one true nature of the objective world because I am rational

In other words, they yank themselves up out of our herd only in order to create a herd of their own.

Just as Christians must subsume their own freedom in God, the folks over at KT must be willing to subsume their freedom in Satyr.

“this atheist believes in free will”
James Kirk Wall from the ChicagoNow web page

Yes, and this is the part that, in a rather visceral, gut manner, seems very, very difficult for many to accept. Is our brain really pre-programed mechanically by the laws of matter to have chosen #937 instead of #47 because, going back to the very creation of matter itself, it could only have ever been that way?

We take our own leap here in accepting a particular set of assumptions that, in my view, are as a result of having [existentially] come into contact with sources that were predisposed existentially themselves to think this instead of that. Accepting that the overwhelming preponderance of us do not have either the education or training as actual brain scientists to fathom the human mind here systemically.

Here we go again: taking that leap from hard determinism in the either/or world [which most of us just take for granted] to no free will in the is/ought world [which most of us reject].

Here [for some] free will becomes like religion: even if it doesn’t actually exist, we’d still feel the need to invent it. Only here the need to invent it is, in and of itself, no less compelled by nature.

I’ll probably never grasp this frame of mind. In a determined universe [as I understand it] we could only determine if free will doesn’t exist because we were never able not to determine that it doesn’t exist. There is no yes or no answer here other than as the only answer we could have come to. And if we live in a wholly determined universe, we would ask ourselves if we should change our system of justice only because we were never able not to ask ourselves that. And certainly Change or No Change is but another inherent, necessary component of this determined universe

What the fuck do I keep missing here?

σάτυρος

Of course, I frame this distinctinction as “I” having been, being now and becoming an “existential contraption”. Only, unlike some, I am willing to acknowledge that I have no way in which to demonstrate beyond all doubt the distinction I make either is or is not in fact the only one I was ever able to make.

And, then, when moral and political narratives come into conflict [assuming some measure of free will], I recognize that those who argue from the perspective of “freedom from” are able to pose narratives just as reasonable as those who argue from the perspective of “freedom to”.

For example, the arguments embedded here: gun-control.procon.org/

Some wish to live in a world where guns are not permitted to be owned by private citizens [freedom from guns], while others wish to live in a world where private citizens could purchase heavy artillery if they want to [freedom to have guns].

Here, of course, the objectivists pile on. They insist that they [and only they] are able to provide us with the most rational philosophical assessment. They simply come back to different fonts: God, reason, political ideology, nature.

“this atheist believes in free will”
James Kirk Wall from the ChicagoNow web page

Over and over again: As though if Wall was only ever able to note this in a wholly determined universe, crime would only ever have been able to continue or not continue back in that old west town wholly in sync in turn with the immutable laws of matter.

For me, it’s not a question of what the sheriff says, but of whether, given what he says, he was able to freely opt to say something else. The sheriff, the criminals and the law abiding folks in that town at that time and in that place would be at one with any and all human interactions over all of time and across all of space.

If the actions of the sheriff were entirely determined then the consequences of his actions precipitated a positive and significant impact that was also only what could ever have been.

Then [for me] we are back to the part where people like peacegirl make this distinction “in their head” between human brains “choosing” rather than choosing what they do. As though anything would have been other than what it must have been when the new sheriff came to town.

No, the bottom line [mine] is that if, given nature’s laws of matter encompassing human brains/interaction, law and order is established, it is only because there was never any possibility of it not being established. And if people are made accountable it is only because they were never able to not be made accountable. Constructive and destructive decisions become interchangeable in determined universe. Actions here and now compelled necessarily to beget actions there and then.

Unless of course I’m wrong.

“this atheist believes in free will”
James Kirk Wall from the ChicagoNow web page

Actually, the hardest determinist of all would seem to throw out the most extreme example of all: That having or not having a brain tumor or schizophrenia does not make someone violent. They will be violent solely because they were never able not to be violent.

Just as the author here was never able not to make his point. Just as you were never able not to be reading mine.

Isn’t that basically the consequence of living in a universe in which the human brain is no less entirely in sync with the laws of matter?

Over and again though I can’t help but assume I must be misunderstanding his point. But: given how I have come to understand determinism there was never any possibility of my not missing it.

Same thing. What difference does it make if we “choose” to let them off or “choose” not to let them off when we did not really choose anything as an autonomous human being?

For the life of me, if this is an accurate depiction of fatalism, how does anyone actually imagine that it can be true other than in a wholly determined universe?

In other words, we all know that what we do in the present is going to precipitate consequences for the future. What we don’t know [for certain] is if what we do in the present is the only thing that we were ever able to do given a determined universe.

And, in a determined universe, as I understand it, what happens in the future is not just related to what happens in the present being related to what happens in the past, but is wholly in sync with the laws of matter such that the past, present and future are as one.

Including the existence of self-conscious matter – you and I – if the human brain itself is wholly in sync with the laws of matter.

Again, how tricky this all gets. If you conclude that someone is a victim of causality, it is only becasue you were compelled by the laws of nature to conclude this. At least to the extent that it can be determined definitively that the human brain is but a necessary adjunct of the same laws.

But: even the attempts to demonstrate this can only be as they were ever able to be in a wholly determined universe.

On the other hand, in a determined universe, concluding that you are a victim of chance is encompassed in the same set of assumptions.

What we conclude that causality implies is only what we were ever able to conclude that it implies.

This part:

Exactly: Maybe this, maybe that. Assuming that we do have some measure of free will allowing us to come to our very own autonomous conclusions.

right, andy hit it. but we need not assume ‘that we do have some measure of free will allowing us to come to our very own autonomous conclusions’ in order for what he said to make sense. in the event that someone believes they have some measure of freewill, it merely means it is determined that they believe this. for such people an element of logic is missing in their reasoning; this is the explanation… that they lack the intelligence to understand it, or, in combination with this lack, a mixture of ‘defense mechanisms’ such as regression, splitting, and wishful thinking, might also be at play to produce what is experienced in the person who rejects determinism as the reasonable conclusion that freewill exists.

in general i’ve found that moralists tend to endorse freewill - not because of sensible or compelling arguments - but because it is a more comfortable belief. this could be the result of ‘reaction formation’; the thought that freewill doesn’t exist produces incredible anxiety, and this is to be avoided at all costs.

as a nihilist, what is strange to me as much as it is amusing, is that people need to believe what they want and do is ‘right’ in order to justify for themselves, doing it, as well as justify passing judgement on others. what i can’t figure out is why that notion - that moral notion of ‘conduct’ and ‘virtue’ that is defined by [insert favorite philosophy]- is necessary to rationalize what people want to do, and to what degree they approve of what others do.

there is nothing epistemologically solid about any meta-ethical theory that we’ve ever seen. at best there’s only a rough, intersubjective conventional agreement on what constitutes ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ conduct. some people never seem to transcend this annoying tedium and despite what they believe about themselves, remain more of what N classed as ‘herdlike’. which is to say - in the way you might put it - the sum total of ethical beliefs is nothing more than the result of an existential trajectory that represents a conglomerate of what one has learned and experienced. qualitatively the same, each person’s version, each person’s morality, has in common that one essential feature that is identical in every case. not what is virtuous (these concepts can be in conflict), but that there is virtue in the first place.

here, stirner’s egoism is the spade that cuts even N’s master-morality. master-morality being still another herd-like concept… what stirner would call a ‘spook’.

i, personally, don’t believe there is any work to be done in ethics any longer. instead what is happening in the world is a series of re-translations of various ethical theories to adapt to a materialistically evolving civilization which is moving toward a more utilitarian scheme. by that i mean, a redistribution of property and wealth. formerly… i should say during the last three hundred years… the ‘status-quo’ had made of ethical theory an adaptation that was fitting for the advantages of the ruling/upper classes… and this interpretation was passively accepted by most of the intelligent world. today a grand re-evaluation is occurring involving the basic premises of classical ethical theories. in other words, the same philosophical/ideological foundations that supported the rise of the bourgeois is now being used to rationalize their abolition. a case of history arriving late, so to speak.

during this phasing-out, there will be a tremendous ruckus made by those who’s ‘existential trajectory’ has been situated under the influence of rightist ideology… and there is any number of reasons why a person might identify as a rightest… be it their own convenient economic advantage (at the expense of the working classes), or… they could even be part of the ‘backward’ working classes that has justified its unnecessary struggle through a series of uninformed ideas… these being the result of the hegemonic dominance of the ruling class ideology that infects the western mind. and that is one helluva package, btw. platonism, christianity, darwinism, a cocktail of gobbledygook that has been incorporated into the intellectual coup that seized the development of the western world hundreds of years ago.

anywho, what i’m saying is that we had to go through a few thousand years of philosophical hot-air before we could recognize it for what it was - hot-air - and then re-simplify what was never that complicated to begin with. a system conducive to a better distribution of wealth and a more equal distribution of labor requirement. the irony is, that’s something a ten year could understand… and yet here we had countless philosophers writing day and night only to produce a bunch of unintelligible nonsense in an effort to avoid this conclusion; this is all there is. this is all mankind can do. it gets no better than this. there are those who work… and there are those who do not. historical materialism is that dynamic that has been working to resolve this conflict… or bust. bust; eternal conflict between the productive and parasite economic classes.

(lol… and to think there could be such a thing as a ‘constitution’ or ‘law’ or a ‘code of ethics’ in a world where these two classes are intrinsically at odds with each other, eternal enemies. who’s the dipshit philosopher who thought that was possible?)

The greatest conflict now is not remotely economic but is cultural and specifically the eternal wars of ideas which are being fought in cyberspace
They have occurred in the last twenty years since the universal availability of the internet for just about anyone with an opinion on anything at all
They are incredibly important as there is zero historical precedent for this degree of mass communication which is another level of reality entirely

This fundamental technological and intellectual upheavel in society is the single greatest phenomena of this century as nothing else is remotely comparable
We take it for granted now but anyone as old as me will remember there was a time when this did not exist as it was nothing more than pure science fiction
It is literally like the entirety of human consciousness has gone digital and anyone can immediately access what anyone else is thinking anytime they want to

The information overload is however too much for a human brain to process though not all of it is even worth processing but it has happened so it can not be reversed
We are also spending more time on machines than ever and this is another problem for it is one that is entirely separate from what we are actually accessing on them
So on multiple levels the internet has revolutionised human society but like all revolutions bad can come from it as much as good and so this needs to be remembered

I’ll be the first to admit he may well be closer to a more reasonable understanding of these relationships than I am. But: Given the assumption I make about determinism, even these very exchanges themselves are only as they ever could have been. Nothing that we think, feel, say and do would seem to be excluded if it is an objective fact that the human brain, in sync with whatever the definitive relationship between mind and body is, functions wholly in sync with the laws of matter.

As a consequence, shifting gears from the either/or world to the is/ought is just another psychological illusion embedded in the brain of mindful matter here on Earth that evolved from mindless matter. They are wholly intertwined in the only possible reality.

It’s just that I have absolutely no capacity to demonstrate that this is true; let alone to explain more specifically, how and why it is. I just presume that this is applicable to all of us. The rest then is whatever the hard guys and gals with their fMRIs are able to finally pin down…scientifically?

One has to understand what it means to say that something could have been different. In everyday parlance, it simply means that a thing could have been different if some other thing was different in some specific way. For example: John could have killed Mary if he had decided to do so. He didn’t decide to do so, so didn’t kill her. Whether the decision to kill her was caused by some prior event or not is irrelevant.

Normally, the word “freewill” refers to one’s ability to obey decisions. We say you have freewill if you can choose to do X and then do X. The greater the number of things that you can choose-and-then-do, the greater your freewill. Such a concept of freewill is perfectly compatible with the concept of determinism.

It’s not just compatible, but it requires the theory of determinism because freewill is a theory of ‘agent causation’ or ‘immanent causation’. Only, in the case of freewill, there’s something other than material forces making things happen… namely the ‘self’… which then must be that immaterial thing, the agent, making the body move.

Most proponents of freewill miss this point or simply can’t grasp it. In the company here, Sil is the only one who I’ve seen demonstrate a comprehension of this.

So keep in mind that freewill is a version of determinism… the contrary being indeterminism, in which case nothing causes anything, neither material or immaterial.

We’re talking about two different notions of free-will. But let’s ignore that and focus on what you’re saying instead. The concept of “free-will” you speak of can be defined as “the ability to make decisions independently from what happened in the past”. If a human being can make decisions independently from what happened in the past (i.e. if his decisions cannot be predicted from prior events), then we can say that he has free-will.

Note that indeterminism is nothing more than “the doctrine that not all events are wholly determined by antecedent causes”. Indeterminism really only opposes strict or hard deteriminism which is the idea that any portion of the universe can be predicted with 100% accuracy based on something that happened in the past. This means that indeterminism is perfectly compatible with other forms of determinism such as statistical determinism which is the idea that some or most but not all parts of the universe can be predicted with more than 50% accuracy based on something that happened in the past.

Since hard determinism requires that every part of the universe can be predicted with 100% accuracy based on something that happened in the past, it follows that the abovementioned notion of free-will is incompatible with it, for it requires the opposite of it. On the other hand, since statistical determinism has no such strict requirements, it follows that the concept of free-will we speak of is compatible with it.

The fact that we can say that such decisions are nonetheless caused by the subject has nothing to do with it. That would simply mean that the decision was created inside someone’s skull, not that it was caused by some prior event.

Oh now that was a meaty post. This pleases promethean75.

We’re gonna work on this later this evening. I’m standing in line at a Lowes right now.

somehow you infered that from something i’ve said, which is fine, but that doesn’t at all characterize what i mean by ‘freewill’. i couldn’t mean that, in fact, because even if a decision is free from physical, causal constraints, it still doesn’t happen ‘independently from what happened in the past.’ the order and connection of ideas is still there and decisions don’t spring spontaneously from nothing.

what i do mean by ‘freewill’ is stated a few times throughout this thread and elsewhere. it is a metaphysical theory dealing with what kinds of causes exist as what kind of substances; fundamentally it is a critique of the classical cartesian ‘second-substance’ theory that posits a second, immaterial substance that both acts as a causal property while also transcending (not being effected by) material causes.

following spinoza’s line of reasoning i would dispute this claim on the following grounds: there cannot be events that are not attributes of the same substance as all other events. that is to say, there can’t be some events that are not effects of antecedent causes while some other events are. this would mean there are two different kinds of events, which would mean there are two different kinds of substances… which would mean there are two kinds of causality.

i was thinking about this on the drive home - and that is indeed part of the main premises of hard-determinism - and i had a eureka moment.

if proof for determinism lies in the ability to predict furture events (provided one has omniscient knowledge of every entity of being, its precise location, its precise motion, etc., before a future event occurs), it would be fallible for this reason; the universe could very well be indeterminate, but events could still proceed in perfect correspondence to their predictions by accident, thereby leading the predictor to believe his prediction was accurate and his knowledge of antecedent causes, complete. see what i mean? predictability cannot be a proof of determinism. for all one knows, there may be no causation, and events happened to fall randomly into succession that one happened to guess right.

please edit the wikipedia page and add this remarkable insight of mine to the controversy/criticism section.

no. i believe hume was correct in saying that determinism cannot be proven a posteriori, and predictability lends no strength to the thesis.

this might be what’s confusing you. there is no cartesian space in which causation is suspended. no ‘inside’ the head and ‘outside’ in the world.

and this argument has everything to do with what we call the ‘subject’. what we mean by that word makes every bit of difference in what the thesis of freewill means.

freewill proponents often confuse the fact that the body is a determining force - that it participates in creating effects - with the idea that there is some ‘self’ in there making the body move. the ‘self’ is a peculiar neurological loop originating during a time lapse in the nervous system. it is an epiphenomenal product, not a cause.

all this metaphysical talk aside, i’m perfectly cool with talk or freewill in ordinary, non-technical terms. it’s just the philosophy of freewill that’s nonsense, not the ordinary uses we make of the word.

I am only aware of two definitions of the concept of free-will. These are:

  1. the ability to make decisions and act upon them
  2. the ability to make decisions independently from what happened in the past

The first is the ordinary (and the relevant) one embraced by ordinary people and compatibilists.

The second is the philosophical one (and also the irrelevant one), the subject of the philosophy of incompatibilism.

Now you’re speaking of a third one . . .
Interesting.

Are you saying that indeterminism is a meaningless, logically contradictory, position? If so, I would strongly disagree.

I see nothing contradictory about statements that describe indeterministic laws such as “X causes Y in 80% of the cases”.