Is free-will an illusion?

@Olivier5,

So who is Robert Port of Indiana University? How did he come up with this list?

Quote:

Fears born and bred: toward a more inclusive theory of fear acquisition, by Richie Poulton & Ross G. Menzies

Why are you including a paper on fear acquisition?

Quote:

The Psychology of Fear and Stress, by Jeffrey Alan Gray, CUP Archive, 1987 (eg p. 22)

Chapter upon chapter in this book discusses the various learning processes involved in fear. Where's the list of instincts and where's the scientific consensus?

1 Reply

@cicerone imposter,

Quote:

I agree. Compared to what, and in which ways. All animals have instincts for survival. Beyond that, I'm not so sure

There is a lot of debate in the literature on this topic. If survival is an instinct, then it is difficult to explain 1,000,000 suicides per year. http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/234219.php

Some examples of non-human animal instincts are:

imprinting in some species of bird
spiders building webs
baby kangaroos climbing into the mother's pouch
some species of turtle moving in the direction of light at birth
nest-building of birds
caterpillar making a cocoon

By observing the behavior or the effects of the behavior of an organism one can see a high degree of similarity across members of a given species. For humans there's suckling at infancy.

1 Reply

@Briancrc,

One million suicides in a population of 7.4 billion is natural. Many soldiers who return from battle fields commit suicide. Many who suffer emotional pain commit suicide.

Quote:

We don't have to agree with the desire to die in order to empathize with the pain lurking behind that desire. The thought of suicide most often occurs when a person feels they have run out of solutions to problems that seem inescapable, intolerably painful, and never-ending (Chiles & Strosahl, 2005).

1 Reply

@cicerone imposter,

I too think that survival is an instinct, but calling suicide natural doesn't explain the phenomenon; despite the relatively small number. When it comes to examples of non-human animal instincts there doesn't seem to be anything in the human species that rivals the repeatability of what can be found in non-human animals.

1 Reply

@Briancrc,

It's one of the human conditions that I see as natural. Many suffer from depression (PTSD), and feel life is not worth living. I don't believe in suicide, but think I have some idea of what depression is, and how that can translate into not wanting to live. Many soldiers returning from battle commit suicide. I think it's the idea that they were personally responsible for the killing of another human.

1 Reply

@Briancrc,

You wanted a list, I gave you one. Most of our instincts are innate fears, hence the focus of the second link. And you should really try to read page 22 in the third link.

No scientific consensus yet. Psychology is a recent and somewhat immature science, where pre-Darwinian ideas of human exceptionalism still survive. We'll get there ultimately.

Why does this comes as such a shock to you? What's the big scandal about human instincts?

1 Reply

@cicerone imposter,

Quote:

I think it's the idea that they were personally responsible for the killing of another human

This, at least, would be more helpful in explaining what led to the suicide. PTSD and other labels aren't helpful for explanation because they are just a shorthand description of the symptoms. But then we're left with, what caused the symptoms of depression? It wasn't the PTSD. PTSD is the symptoms.

But killing others, being shot at, the constant stress of needing to discriminate friend from foe, the conditioning of stimuli that generalize to other stimuli back home (e.g., car backfiring leading to a sense of being shot at) could all be identifiable causes that lead to the suicide.

0 Replies

@Olivier5,

I can't view that page. Certain pages are not viewable throughout the whole book.. 22, for me, unfortunately, is one of them. From what I did read the author seems to criticize earlier accounts of fears as only appealing to S-R theory. Operant psychology extended understanding of behavior a great deal beyond the early SR theorists. Equivalence relations and relational frames have added even more to the conceptual systems of behavioral development. Human instincts are not a scandal. There just seem to be very few in humans, and various fields in science regard the examples differently; treating some in a manner that is reminiscent of how one looks at a vestigial structure, aand nalyzes it's past function in relation to its present-day function; noting that the functions are entirely different.

1 Reply

@Briancrc,

Quote:

Human instincts are not a scandal. There just seem to be very few in humans

Like how many? Do you got a list? :-)

1 Reply

@Fil Albuquerque,

Fil Albuquerque wrote:

There is nothing magical in 3 lines of pseudo poetry written in a foreign language in the time frame of thirty seconds to convey an idea.

That part looked like some bad French philosophy, if you don't mind me saying so...

The part that looked like magical pantheist babble is when you said "the Universe speaks, not us". That reminded me of God speaking through the mouthes of prophets... How come the universe disagrees with itself then, as during our discussion? Are the mouthes of the universe not equal, with good and bad ones? :-)

Let me guess, you are the good voice of the universe, and I am the bad one, right? LOL

Let's keep the discourse within the bounds of reason, shall we? In actual fact, you speak your mind and I speak mine. That's why there is a disagreement: you and I are different people and we have different POVs. The universe has nothing to do with it.

1 Reply

@Olivier5,

The Universe "speaks"/moves/unfolds, through algorithms not will or choice and there are several layers of it, so what ? People cooperate when they need to in their tribal group of reference (for energy efficiency not for love, love is a tool programmed so that you want to cooperate) or as individuals they look for their own interest as a "system"...again so what ? Is it my fault that your computing power and your cultural frame of reference have pushed you into a deluded pov on free will/libre arbitre ? Of course not....I suffer the illusion of choice as much as you do, I have the appeal of magic and awe as much as you do...in fact I started as a romantic and existentialist as many of the humanists did...I just "decided" I needed more and better explanations, my machine needed more, and I bound myself to reason because evidence for a world of reason is all around me in nature. From fractals, to Fibonacci sequencing, golden rule, Darwinism, etc, I see the patterns and I stick with it. I follow evidence wherever it takes me.

1 Reply

@Olivier5,

Quote:

Like how many? Do you got a list? :-)

If there are a lot I'll be happy to see it since I think that it supports my position that our behavior is determined. If you want to add to the list of how it's determined via instincts, then be my guest Wink

1 Reply

@Briancrc,

I have no problem with instincts, neither from a "free will" angle nor otherwise.

Instincts help us survive and procreate. They are very useful and often quite enjoyable. It's enjoyable to obey them (e.g. to succomb to carnal desire, or to eat when you are hungry) and it's exciting to resist them (e.g. to dare your fears). They also link us to the animal realm, which I see as a plus. They help us feel life at a primal level.

And since humans are perfectly capable of resisting innate urges, I don't see instinct as a problem re. free will either.

1 Reply

@Fil Albuquerque,

Quote:

I follow evidence wherever it takes me.

Not according to your own reductionist views, which say that you don't really exist as a willing entity, that whatever experience there is "in there" is just some meaningless atomic or chemical babbling, following a predetermined path and that's all.

To "follow the evidence" requires the capacity to gather information from the world around us purposefully, to look for it, to THINK through it, to select the one that make the most sense, to invent hypotheses that would explain them, etc. You can't do that without an autonomous mind. You can't do that without some form of free will.

That's a very simple logical argument that I have been making again and again, but it seems you don't understand logic.

1 Reply

@Olivier5,

I don't deny any epiphenomena as real. I speak of several layers of real. A dream is a true dream if you are dreaming. It would be nonsense to say the dream is false. Now what I do is distinguish first second and third order phenomena. None of them is false but they abide by an order of priority. Some are more fundamental then others. Just that. Also I have no problem with top down accounts of reality so long they don't go against basic mechanics. This is not a topic about me being reductionist. I just don't think 2+2=5

1 Reply

@Fil Albuquerque,

IOW, you replace Descartes "two substances" by "several orders of reality". If it keeps you happy, I'm fine with that.

Still, for you to "follow the evidence", you'd need to be able to orient your own thinking, orient your own gaze, orient your actions in a meaningful way. Othertwise, you can't gather any evidence nor follow it anywhere... Logic is a bitch.

1 Reply

@Olivier5,

...yes systems within systems what's the news ? Social ecosystems are prior by Biology, Biology is prior by chemistry, and chemistry by physics, and probably physics by information... So what ? Its still the same substance Oliv.

1 Reply

@Fil Albuquerque,

Fil Albuquerque wrote:

...yes systems within systems what's the news ? Social ecosystems are prior by Biology, Biology is prior by chemistry, and chemistry by physics, and probably physics by information... So what ? Its still the same substance Oliv.

Yes, it's the same substance. That's where I must differ from Descartes. I'm also fine with the different levels of reality, which I call "planes" but it's a similar idea. I don't see then nested in one another but BUILT on one another. And i think there can be causal relationships between and within the levels: bottom-up, top-down, and sideways.

Information shapes all levels too. Including of course the mind level but also life as a whole, which is all about info management.

0 Replies

@Olivier5,

Quote:

They are very useful and often quite enjoyable

To be sure. What is it about the notion of determinism that troubles you or troubles you the most?

1 Reply

@MoralPhilosopher23,

Of course it is. When is the last time you were able to do something you actually wanted to know and not have to worry about anything. There is a consequences to everything you do in life. And people do not let you forgot it.

0 Replies

Is free-will an illusion?

Related Topics

Quick Links

My Account

able2know