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General => General Discussion => Topic started by: Ħ on September 13, 2012, 07:35:57 AM
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I'm very curious to see what you guys think about free will. It seems like there's a huge trend in my generation to embrace determinism. But there's so many different ways to look at things. One friend of mine is huge on physics, but he totally does not believe in determinism because of quantum mechanics.
One thought experiment on determinism is to think about rewinding the clock of history like you rewind a VCR. When you press play, will history play out in the exact same way? Will people make the exact same choices, even in their nuanced decisions, such as sniffling at a certain time, or having a thought about elephants at a certain time? If you think they will make the exact same choices, then you are probably a determinist. (Note that the option of free will is available to you, through "compatibilism".)
I definitely believe in free will. Not sure about determinism. Probably not, though.
Also, I put this in GD because it's neither religious nor political. So this seems like the right place for it.
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Free will, I guess.
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Determinism is far easier to make argument for, since it's process based. Free will arguments are basically trying to interject something into a process so end up more abstract. I doubt I have the mental capacity to determine which is the correct belief.
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Voted "not sure" because, in all honesty, I don't know, and I don't care all that much about what the answer is anyway.
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Voted 'both', because I believe it's a combination of both.
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Voted "not sure" because, in all honesty, I don't know, and I don't care all that much about what the answer is anyway.
If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.
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determinism
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I will choose free will.
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Voted "not sure" because, in all honesty, I don't know, and I don't care all that much about what the answer is anyway.
If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.
ok
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I would have a panic attack if I thought about this for too long.
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It's relative. Like everything else.
But of course the VCR thing would turn out the same way.
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Determinism. Because when I went back in time and checked what I voted in this poll the first time, it was Determinism.
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I will choose free will.
I see what you did there
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Free will. There's no mystical energy field that controls my destiny.
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Free will. There's no mystical energy field that controls my destiny.
Actually, the arguments sort of go the other way around. Determinism, in simplicity, views the universe as moving from one state to another with no randomness. Free will interjects the 'mystical' ability to have chosen reactions.
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I dont think it is about controlling destiny....i think it is more about if you are given the same exact choices, in the same exact scenario, would you go through the same exact processes to make the same exact choices. I feel you would....why wouldnt anyone choose differently? I use this little excercise to not feel regret for past decisions. I tell myself that, without knowing what I know now of course, that given the same situation, I would have made the same decision....so why regret it?
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theseoafs fails the Rush test and should be temp banned for 2 weeks, that should be long enough to listen to the Rush discography several times.
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Necessitarianism.
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I did NOT fail the Rush test.
DTVT is spreading libel and should be temp banned for 2 weeks.
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theseoafs fails the Rush test and should be temp banned for 2 weeks, that should be long enough to listen to the Rush discography several times.
I'd rather just take a perm-ban than have to endure that. :loser:
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People also failed the Star Wars test.
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Determinism, though in the end it's kind of irrelevant.
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No such thing as free will, only the illusion of free will. Whether the universe is deterministic is questionable, but there is no free will regardless.
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People also failed the Star Wars test.
Nobody truly fails the Star Wars test. Just sit back, have a drink, and relax. :cantina:
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People also failed the Star Wars test.
All right, I'll give it a try.
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Voted "not sure" because, in all honesty, I don't know, and I don't care all that much about what the answer is anyway.
If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.
I was going to post EXACTLY what blackest_floyd posted. DAMMIT! Sniped again. I guess that's what I get for being asleep at that time. :yeahright :)
Anyhoo... lump me in the "not sure" crowd.
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I was oddly compelled to vote free will, as if I had no choice???
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Both. Mostly deterministic, but we can exercise small pockets of free will, which some exaggerate to think we have more free will than we actually have.
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People also failed the Star Wars test.
Nobody truly fails the Star Wars test. Just sit back, have a drink, and relax. :cantina:
Yeah. I guess it's all a lot of simple tricks and nonsense.
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Freewill requires something "outside" of nature to interrupt the sequence of natural phenomena (i.e., the idea of "decision making"). Your brain is no less subject to these phenomena than anything else.
So: determinism.
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I voted both because I have the opinion of freewill being an emergent property of our rather clusterfucky brains. In fact, it is worth noting that the less organized one's thought process is, the more one is inclined to ascribe it to freewill.
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I have no idea.
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me either. voted not sure. in the end, no one really knows, i guess.
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People also failed the Star Wars test.
Nobody truly fails the Star Wars test. Just sit back, have a drink, and relax. :cantina:
Yeah. I guess it's all a lot of simple tricks and nonsense.
Looks like you failed my Star Wars test.
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You can choose a ready guide in some celestial voice.
If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.
You can choose from phantom fears and kindness that can kill;
I will choose a path that's clear...
I will choose Free Will!
Actually, I don't know. I just couldn't pass on the opportunity to quote Rush.
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Free will.
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Great song
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Your brain is nothing more than a difference engine. Every decision your brain makes is a result of the computation of an unfathomable number of variables. Nothing is random. From the moment your brain develops, it starts firing electrical impulses. Each impulse is triggered by one before it. You can't choose which neurons you want to fire, nore can you magically initiate a firing sequence. Even when you think you've come to a difficult decision, your brain went with the option is did due to a series of predetermined events. You could rewind the clock to as many times as you want and the result would still be the same.
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Rewinding the tape wouldn't change anything. You would have to interject something to create different results.
I picked both. I certainly think we make choices and all choices have consequences. Actions reverberate and create ripples, effecting our surroundings. That essentially "pushes" things in a certain direction. I think that looking at it like a math equation, eventually the numbers will add up and you may be able to predict the end result. But variables periodically dropped in change the overall outcome.
If you want to use the VCR analogy, imagine having a TV show recorded. It has a determined beginning, middle and end. If you rewind it and make a change by recording something else halfway through, you have now altered the rest of the tape. Continually doing the same thing at various points will make for a very interesting result. Another interesting thing to note is how if you go to a random point on the tape and say record a segment that is shorter than the remainder, the rest then switches back to what was previously recorded. That raises the question about whether dropped in "variances" would ultimately alter the end result. This reminds me of a time-travel theory I read about in one of the Terminator books, that changing the past creates a split. Both strands might over time attempt to combine again and return to a single linear stream... but that gets into a whole deeper discussion.
So yeah, in short, I picked both... just because.
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Your brain is nothing more than a difference engine. Every decision your brain makes is a result of the computation of an unfathomable number of variables. Nothing is random. From the moment your brain develops, it starts firing electrical impulses. Each impulse is triggered by one before it. You can't choose which neurons you want to fire, nore can you magically initiate a firing sequence. Even when you think you've come to a difficult decision, your brain went with the option is did due to a series of predetermined events. You could rewind the clock to as many times as you want and the result would still be the same.
Based on this, determinism seems like the only option. But if there is more to this world than physical objects (such as minds and souls) that don't respond to concrete laws, then that kind of messes determinism up.
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I believe in free will. It makes no sense for me, that at the start at the times, something has decided that I post to DTF on September 14 about how I don't believe in determinism.
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I believe in free will.
Not that I have a choice in the matter.
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But if there is more to this world than physical objects (such as minds and souls) that don't respond to concrete laws, then that kind of messes determinism up.
The "minds and souls" you talk about are still events in the brain, which are governed by physical laws. These sequences are chaotic (which are still deterministic), like weather, and weather is governed by a few basic physical laws. I suppose this question is another form of asking if there is a god or not, since if you believe that these "minds and souls" exist outside of physical law, then its the same as believing in supernatural forces.
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I believe in free will.
Not that I have a choice in the matter.
:clap:
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Neither. We are not deterministic as our brain chemistry no doubt has a stochastic element, but our decisions ultimately obey the laws of physics.
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Neither. We are not deterministic as our brain chemistry no doubt has a stochastic element, but our decisions ultimately obey the laws of physics.
So doesn't that mean that physics dictates our brains?
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But if there is more to this world than physical objects (such as minds and souls) that don't respond to concrete laws, then that kind of messes determinism up.
The "minds and souls" you talk about are still events in the brain, which are governed by physical laws. These sequences are chaotic (which are still deterministic), like weather, and weather is governed by a few basic physical laws. I suppose this question is another form of asking if there is a god or not, since if you believe that these "minds and souls" exist outside of physical law, then its the same as believing in supernatural forces.
Yes, I'm not talking about our brains (which are governed by physical laws which are deterministic) but minds which are immaterial. I suppose you could call that a "supernatural force". But if immaterial objects like souls and minds exist, we'd have no way to know if they are governed by deterministic laws.
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Neither. We are not deterministic as our brain chemistry no doubt has a stochastic element, but our decisions ultimately obey the laws of physics.
So doesn't that mean that physics dictates our brains?
Yes.
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Both, but determinism more in the Skinner way than the God way.
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If someone believes that people ultimately have no choice in how they react to any particular situation then wouldn't it be unfair for them to get upset at someone being an asshole to them. It's impossible for them to act in any other way, so it's not their fault. But then I guess they have no choice but to react the way they do, despite supposedly knowing better. That's convenient, I guess.
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If someone believes that people ultimately have no choice in how they react to any particular situation then wouldn't it be unfair for them to get upset at someone being an asshole to them. It's impossible for them to act in any other way, so it's not their fault. But then I guess they have no choice but to react the way they do, despite supposedly knowing better. That's convenient, I guess.
Just because one recognizes that they're essentially a sophisticated organic robot doesn't mean that they can detach themselves from their emotions like an inorganic robot.
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So, like I said, they should know better, seeing as how they recognize that supposedly no one has any choice in any of their actions but, wouldn't you know it, they just just so happen to not be able to change how they react to anything either. Except you'd think if they realize the contradictions in their actions they'd be able to do something about how they react, even if just on an ideological level. Even if we ignore adjusting our own reactions to things that happen to us personally, you'd think people would realize things like our entire justice system become pretty questionable if no one is ultimately responsible or at fault for any of their actions. But even that doesn't happen.
Which raises the question of what the point asking questions like this is if you're just going to then say it doesn't matter and you can't do anything about it. A bunch of people who are self aware enough to conclude that they have apparently no choice in their actions beyond a natural reaction to a stimuli, but that conclusion still doesn't change anything when it comes down to affecting anyone's outlook on life based on that realization. Why even care at that point?
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The entire debate is so poorly defined and recursive that's it's essentially meaningless. I mean, the idea is that no one has any choice in their actions because their actions are determined by the state of their brain at any given point - i.e, you put someone in the same exact place 100 times and they'll make the same decision 100 times. Of course, you're defining that person's will as the consciousness that emerges from the interactions in that same brain, so how can you say they aren't responsible?
Obviously things in our mind we can't control - instincts, thoughts that just pop up, dreams, moments of inspiration, etc. But that's the point - there's no solid definition of what constitutes a person's consciousness, and so it's impossible to really say what kind of control we have over ourselves in the end.
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But of course the VCR thing would turn out the same way.
Why? Random processes like atom decay could turn out differently and influence people's decisions.
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I would even challenge people to give solid reasons that people's behavior is governed by more than the physical brain. What is special about us that requires a whole new unseen force?
We can talk. Well, so can a lot of other animals. We can reason, but so can others too. We show compassion and empathy, but that's not uniquely human either. Is tye simple combination of those things enough to justify a whole new section? I don't think so.
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I would even challenge people to give solid reasons that people's behavior is governed by more than the physical brain. What is special about us that requires a whole new unseen force?
We can talk. Well, so can a lot of other animals. We can reason, but so can others too. We show compassion and empathy, but that's not uniquely human either. Is tye simple combination of those things enough to justify a whole new section? I don't think so.
It's a way for people separate us from the rest of the animal kingdom. We get put on a pedestal.
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People also failed the Star Wars test.
Nobody truly fails the Star Wars test. Just sit back, have a drink, and relax. :cantina:
Yeah. I guess it's all a lot of simple tricks and nonsense.
Looks like you failed my Star Wars test.
I had a sinking feeling that would happen.
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I would even challenge people to give solid reasons that people's behavior is governed by more than the physical brain. What is special about us that requires a whole new unseen force?
We can talk. Well, so can a lot of other animals. We can reason, but so can others too. We show compassion and empathy, but that's not uniquely human either. Is tye simple combination of those things enough to justify a whole new section? I don't think so.
Remember this thread is not necessarily from the religious perspective. An easy way out of your objection is that animals' minds are not limited to their brains.
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I would even challenge people to give solid reasons that people's behavior is governed by more than the physical brain. What is special about us that requires a whole new unseen force?
We can talk. Well, so can a lot of other animals. We can reason, but so can others too. We show compassion and empathy, but that's not uniquely human either. Is tye simple combination of those things enough to justify a whole new section? I don't think so.
Remember this thread is not necessarily from the religious perspective. An easy way out of your objection is that animals' minds are not limited to their brains.
What indication is there that this is the case?
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Conceptually, it's coherent and plausible based on my experiences in life. There's no "scientific evidence" if that's what you want. But how could you ever expect to find scientific evidence for something outside the physical world? That seems like too high a standard to set.
Plenty of famous philosophers (Descartes, for example) had arguments for the separation of the mind from physical material. Some limited it to humans, others included animals, some even said all objects have a "mind" of sorts (monads from Leibniz). So it's definitely a viable option.
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So the evidence for your assertion that animals' minds are not limited to your brains is that some philosophers think that could be the case?
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I'm not asserting that that actually is the case. I'm saying that it is a viable possibility.
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Conceptually, it's coherent and plausible based on my experiences in life. There's no "scientific evidence" if that's what you want. But how could you ever expect to find scientific evidence for something outside the physical world?
Actually, isn't that rather easy? You simply show that the brain does something that is not explicable with physics. That shouldn't be too hard if it supposedly happens all the time in the brain.
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I'm talking about minds, not brains. Brains would clearly operate by physics, as brains are material objects.
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But minds are brains, scientifically speaking.
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No. Minds are outside the scope of science, so how could science makes any statement about minds being brains?
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Everything that you might think of as a "mind" occurs within the brain. Thought, reasoning, emotion, memories, self-ness: they all happen in the brain. Minds are brains.
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Do they? There's a shitton we don't know about the brain.
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Yes, all of these things happen within the brain, and neurobiologists study all of them.
Now, I'm not going to lie to you and tell you that we have a very in-depth understanding of how the brain does all of these things. We do not; the brain is by far the single most complex thing that humans have encountered. But just because we don't understand very much of it quite yet doesn't mean we have to default to a supernatural explanation.
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But just because we don't understand very much of it quite yet doesn't mean we have to default to a supernatural explanation.
Rather than that, wouldn't it be better to default to "We don't know" than to insist that something you don't, in fact, know is the truth?
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Conceptually, it's coherent and plausible based on my experiences in life. There's no "scientific evidence" if that's what you want.
Yes, that is what I want. Or if there is no evidence, then at least something that is at least logically consistent with what we observe in the natural world. There's no reason to inject spirituality into it when there is no evidence for it and is inconsistent with what we observe in the natural world.
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@Hef: Well, we do know that minds are brains. There has as of yet been no compelling evidence to suggest that any of the processes of the "mind" are not carried out by the brain.
Regardless, our knowledge of how the brain works is admittedly limited. We know, for example, what the greater role of each section of the brain is, and how these sections interact with each other. (Even with only this knowledge, there is tremendous evidence that the workings of the "mind" really just take place in the brain -- for example, damage to specific parts of the brain can cause people to act extremely immorally or to believe irrationally that their parents are impostors.) We know, from a high-level perspective, that brain cells (neurons) fire in such a way as to excite nearby neurons, and that this process, repeated countless times by the billions of neurons in the brain's network, is responsible for all the wonderful things the brain does. But that network is so utterly huge and complex that it will be a while until, for example, we have a very in-depth understanding of how the brain is able to represent concepts like "chair" and "love" or perform high-level reasoning. Regardless, again, just because we don't currently know how the brain does something doesn't mean it doesn't do it.
So, if the question is
Rather than that, wouldn't it be better to default to "We don't know" than to insist that something you don't, in fact, know is the truth?
then the answer is that there is indeed a lot we don't know and that scientists are willing to acknowledge it when there is still work to be done. Asserting that something you don't know is in fact the truth is not a scientific thing to do at all; that practice lies more within the realm of religion.
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Whatever, I'm just fuckin' with ya.
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oh alright
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(https://i73.photobucket.com/albums/i238/hefdaddy42/funny/thedoctor.jpg)
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Do they? There's a shitton we don't know about the brain.
Sorry dude, but that's been established beyond doubt at this point, that the brain is the seat of the mind.
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But just because we don't understand very much of it quite yet doesn't mean we have to default to a supernatural explanation.
Rather than that, wouldn't it be better to default to "We don't know" than to insist that something you don't, in fact, know is the truth?
We MUST insist that we know what an answer is (or isnt), even if we dont, in fact, know. Do say "we don't know" is a breach of etiquitte (especially in P/R) and will surely bring destruction and shame to this forum. Duh.
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Really what this boils down to is the fallacy of naturalism. There's no reason to believe the natural world is all their is based on science, because science can only observe the natural world.
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Science would be happy to endorse the existence of the supernatural if there were any evidence the supernatural existed. Science does indeed deal in things we can't observe directly -- string theory is a great example of a modern scientific idea that's gaining a bit of traction despite still being very theoretical. All you need is evidence, and if there exists a supernatural world that is affecting the natural world, then there should be some evidence that these interactions are taking place.
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What I'm saying is that dualism does not contradict itself. It is a position that is consistent with science. So, just like The Matrix, just like the brain in a vat, it should be included in our bucket of possible truths.
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Sure! But science needs evidence before it can endorse any possible truths.
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Of course, you're defining that person's will as the consciousness that emerges from the interactions in that same brain, so how can you say they aren't responsible?
I was under the impression that the argument is that the concept of "free will" or "choice" can't exist if a person will always make the same decision under the same circumstances; since you're just going to break that down as everyone being robots making the only logical conclusions they can. If that's the case then saying a person is "responsible" for their actions is the same as saying any other animal or insect in the world is "responsible" for its actions. A human can understand more complex situations, but it's still just an organism reacting to a stimuli that never had any actual "choices" or "decisions" to make at any point.
Most human interaction kinda hinges on the idea that people consciously choose to perform most of the action they make, not that we're all victims to per-determined biological/psychological reactions to any potential situation. No one arguing from the conclusion that there's no such thing as choice seems to want to make the make the shift in thought that'd be necessary to reconcile with that idea.
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Sure! But science needs evidence before it can endorse any possible truths.
Even without science's endorsement of the existence of immaterial substances like minds, one can still rationally come to the conclusion that they exist. There are many avenues to truth that do not use science.
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Alright, go ahead then. Prove that you have a mind that is not your brain.
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OK, if you assume the existence of God and the afterlife, then materialism leads to contradictions for a number of reasons. So you can reject materialism.
The point with this example, is that given some starting assumptions (which all belief systems require), it is possible to arrive at materialism.
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So you believe in souls because you already believe in God. That's fine, but don't act as if there's something wrong with the scientific characterization of minds, because nothing that the brain does requires supernatural intervention.
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No there's nothing wrong with it insofar as it being consistent within itself. But there's nothing wrong with a belief system that includes belief in souls and minds either. The latter provides an escape to determinism. And if you've got a possible escape to determinism, you can't say that nondeterminism is impossible.
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If you're talking to me in particular, I never suggested that nondeterminism was impossible - I said I didn't know what the correct answer was but that it doesn't make too much of a difference to me.
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No there's nothing wrong with it insofar as it being consistent within itself. But there's nothing wrong with a belief system that includes belief in souls and minds either.
Without any evidence for them though, couldn't just about anything be stipulated to exist?
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No there's nothing wrong with it insofar as it being consistent within itself. But there's nothing wrong with a belief system that includes belief in souls and minds either.
Without any evidence for them though, couldn't just about anything be stipulated to exist?
Why does your avatar suddenly come to mind? :lol
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No there's nothing wrong with it insofar as it being consistent within itself. But there's nothing wrong with a belief system that includes belief in souls and minds either. The latter provides an escape to determinism. And if you've got a possible escape to determinism, you can't say that nondeterminism is impossible.
You can't just use the realm of the unknown to insert your preferred ideas. Without anything to support it, any idea attempting to occupy this space is as good as any other.
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I don't think you guys are following correctly. Suppose you have the following in your starting assumptions:
1) God exists
2) the afterlife exists
3) the physical world exists
You can, from these assumptions, logically deduce that the physical world is not all there is. Because if naturalism was true, that would lead to contradictions in your belief system, and something would have to give.
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Sure, but there's no evidence for 1) or 2). So if we grant arbitrary "starting assumptions", you could "rationally come to the conclusion" that anything exists.
EDIT: Not that the proof you've presented is all that convincing even from a metaphysical logical standpoint, by the way. As it stands any proof you can derive from those assumptions will basically say "I believe something besides the natural world exists because I believe something besides the natural world exists".
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Sure, but there's no evidence for 1) or 2). So if we grant arbitrary "starting assumptions", you could "rationally come to the conclusion" that anything exists.
All belief systems have starting assumptions that can't be justified. (Don't take that as me admitting that God has no evidence.)
EDIT: Not that the proof you've presented is all that convincing even from a metaphysical logical standpoint, by the way. As it stands any proof you can derive from those assumptions will basically say "I believe something besides the natural world exists because I believe something besides the natural world exists".
That's not where I'm arguing from. Here's where I'm arguing from: the following three statements form an inconsistent triad.
1) God exists.
2) The afterlife exists.
3) Materialism is true.
If you assume those three statements, you can derive contradictions. For example, in the afterlife, if we are resurrected and built back into the particles that originally composed us, some of us would be sharing particles at the hip, which makes no sense. So you've got to reject one or more of those three assumptions.
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But that's hardly "rationally coming to the conclusion that immaterial objects like minds exist", as you posited earlier in the thread; that's just saying "I believe in God so I can't possibly be materialist".
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To make it easier, here's my thought process written in argument form regarding souls:
1) The Bible teaches the existence of the immaterial soul.
2) All that the Bible teaches is true.
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3) The existence of the immaterial soul is true.
Whether or not you believe the premises, the argument is valid, and anyone that accepts the two premises should rationally come to the conclusion that the immaterial soul exists (and thus that an immaterial object exists, contradicting naturalism).
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As it stands any proof you can derive from those assumptions will basically say "I believe something besides the natural world exists because I believe something besides the natural world exists".
This is the heart of it. The argument is tautological; just using different wording for the first and second part of the statement.
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The conclusion "something besides the natural world exists" is not hidden within either of those premises. Meaning - It is possible for the Bible to teach the existence of immaterial objects and for materialism to be true. It is also possible for Bible to teach only that which is true and for materialism to be true.
An argument that begs the question (i.e. the only way a person will believe one or both of the premises are true is if the person belives the conclusion in the first place) essentially contains the conclusion within the premises. This argument does not do this, so it is not an argument that begs the question.