Attempt at reconciling free will and determinism

@Fil Albuquerque,

Oh piss off Fil!

See I did that to prove I could make a decision to do something that was contrary to everything else in my background, experience or character.

But I didn't have to :-)

1 Reply

@Leadfoot,

Leadfoot wrote:

Oh piss off Fil!

See I did that to prove I could make a decision to do something that was contrary to everything else in my background, experience or character.

But I didn't have to :-)

No but you were compelled to say it. Conditions arose that caused you to express it. And you did admitting that you normally don't. This is the determine condition that compels you to behave or act even when it's outside your normal behavior. Its not choice but it feels like it is.

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@Krumple,

Quote:

Its not choice but it feels like it is.

And the evidence for that is???

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@Krumple,

Quote:

Conditions arose that caused you to express it.

Until you can define exactly what those conditions are, it still requires an element of 'faith' to believe in determinism. And I'm not knocking 'faith' here. In addition, I will grant that in the absence of believing in a God or a soul, determinism is the only valid conclusion you could reach.

Sadly, there are plenty of cases where human behavior is deterministic. 99+ % of the time we follow the rat maze of the society we find ourselves in. But to believe in determinism you have to ignore the exceptions, even if you are the only one who knows about them and can't possibly 'show' them to anyone else.

This isn't to mimic the 'aggressive atheist' argument of 'you have no proof !" but what do determinism believers see as examples of cases that demonstrate determinism in the realm of human behavior? Is it just a case where it's the only logical answer in the absence of proof for God?

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@Leadfoot,

Quote:

I will grant that in the absence of believing in a God or a soul, determinism is the only valid conclusion you could reach.

Why that?

1 Reply

@Olivier5,

Quote:

Leadfoot Quote:
"I will grant that in the absence of believing in a God or a soul, determinism is the only valid conclusion you could reach."

Why that?

If life is strictly the consequence of 'natural forces' as we understand them, then our behavior is determined by our brain which would be a complex but deterministic state machine like a computer. A computer never does anything unexpected or 'of its own free will'.

We are nowhere close to understanding the brain down to the 'gate level' like we do computers so when the determinists say we have no free will, they are making the assumption that we can eventually do that. That's why the argument can't be settled at this time.

Again, all that assumes that there is no God or soul.

Some 'determinists' hedge and deny their 'no God' position by invoking some kind of evolved consciousness in all of existence or some such nonsense but that's just their internal struggle between the things they do understand about causation and the soul that they deny.

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@Leadfoot,

If the bloke had to ask why you surely should know an attempt at explaining him is a total waste of time...agreeing or not with me at least you get the basics of the debate.

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@Leadfoot,

There is no reason to assume that the brain is determinist or functions like the kind of computers we know of today.

Basically, we know not how the brain works, so we cannot assume anything about how it works.

1 Reply

@Leadfoot,

The conditions are knowable.

For example a premise that you don't favor will create a resistance. But the reason you don't favor a premise is because you hold to another premise that you believe supports the next premise. Since you felt justified in both your resistance manifests with conflict. So you express that conflict in a negative way because it seems obvious to you that both of your premises are true. So that obviousness comes out through irony to express the point to be obvious. You then back that up by saying you couldnt have said that if you didn't have a choice.

I object to both premises are unfounded and challenge your statement and now have proven faith is not required. The conditions are clear to what provoked your response naturally with out choice. You were compelled to express yourself in that way. No choice was made.

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@Olivier5,

You have a very hard time changing perspectives, even for the purpose of bettering your own.

Unless we can understand another viewpoint, we will never be able to establish the validity of the one we have or choose to drop it in favor of a better one.

Or maybe you are just trying to prove Krump's viewpoint that says we can't possibly hold any other viewpoint than the one we have so it's all a waste of time thinking about it anyway

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@Leadfoot,

My perspective is simply that there is a little bit of hazard, or chance, in this universe, and in brains too. That's all. Apart from that detail, i'm like any rationalist you know.

Determinism is not a necessary or even useful hypothesis. But yes, the brain is some sort of machine nevertheless.

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@Olivier5,

Quote:

there is a little bit of hazard, or chance, in this universe, and in brains too

Oh! Just like evolution! Thanks for clearing that up.

I'll just go wait for the next cosmic ray or other malfunction to make some random change in my brain so I can have an original thought now

1 Reply

@Leadfoot,

Leadfoot wrote:

Krump's viewpoint that says we can't possibly hold any other viewpoint than the one we have so it's all a waste of time thinking about it anyway

Those who argue against free will don't seem to realize that they are implicitly contradicting their own premises when they do so.

By their hypothesis every thought, every momentary stammer or hesitation in speech, every slight movement of the hands or rolling of the eyes, and everything else that ever occurs was predestined to happen exactly the way it did, when it did, from the beginning of time.

If that's the case, where does the "argument," the reasoning, the advocacy, etc. regarding the lack of free will come from?

It cannot possibly come from independent rational analysis--the weighing of evidence, pro and con--any kind of insight, or any kind of understanding. Why? Because they are robots--machines pre-progammed to utter every word they utter. Their "thoughts" are not theirs, and they cannot possibly deviate from the script they have been forced, by fate, to recite without any choice in the matter.

They have no meaningful "thoughts," selected by them because those thoughts are more rationally appealing or consistent. They HAVE to think what they think, and say what they say, come hell or high water and this necessity is utterly irrespective of any evidence, logic, or experience they may have.

Why should I take the argument of some bot to be a product of "reasoning?"

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And, more to the point, how could they possibly think they are saying something meaningful, something "worthy of consideration?" There is no bona fide "consideration." There is no choice to make between more or less attractive options, because there are NO options.

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@Olivier5,

I agree that "determinism" doesn't explain anything. It has to do with the genes, environment and opportunity.

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@Leadfoot,

Leadfoot wrote:

You have a very hard time changing perspectives, even for the purpose of bettering your own.

Unless we can understand another viewpoint, we will never be able to establish the validity of the one we have or choose to drop it in favor of a better one.

Or maybe you are just trying to prove Krump's viewpoint that says we can't possibly hold any other viewpoint than the one we have so it's all a waste of time thinking about it anyway

To get annoying about this point. If the determined condition compelled you to consider all avenues, you will. If not you'll appear lazy taking up a point without acknowledgement of the alternative view point.

Its even possible that reality is both deterministic and free. But that seem contradictory and a little absurd, but people have often called reality absurd and crazy.

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@Leadfoot,

Leadfoot wrote:

Oh! Just like evolution!

Yes, a Darwinian system combining the random creation of new ideas with a selection process that picks up the best ones.

Where do you propose that new ideas come from? God? The Devil?

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@Olivier5,

Olivier5 wrote:

Yes, a Darwinian system combining the random creation of new ideas with a selection process that picks up the best ones.

Where do you propose that new ideas come from? God? The Devil?

Are you suggesting that "new ideas" are just random accidents, Ollie?

1 Reply

@layman,

Wrong on all accounts when jumping to non sequitur conclusions. Granted we don't claim actual authorship on our thoughts but wrong regarding the reasoning. Reason as it is shaped throughout spacetime is its own and its not bound to anything else. We as everything else in Order in our Cosmos express its Necessity. Reason does not conduct facts, Reason is the natural order of Facts themselves.

As for the other bloke appeal to randomness, it was explained to him, it is explained in the videos all over youtube randomness is not a valid argument for free will once will requires the opposite, it requires intention and authorship on the decision making not tossing a coin. Tossing a coin would make the responsibility of a decision fall on chance not on the subject !

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@layman,

layman wrote:

Olivier5 wrote:

Yes, a Darwinian system combining the random creation of new ideas with a selection process that picks up the best ones.

Are you suggesting that "new ideas" are just random accidents, Ollie?

Yes and no. I propose a Darwinian idea creation process, with a COMBINATION of random "raw idea" generation mecanism with hard analytical work to select the best ideas. Work (ie a voluntary prolonged attention given to a problem) is also needed to orient or configurate idea generation. You need to work at a problem hard (often fruitlessly at first) then give it a rest and space out.

Then, awake or asleep, a unconscious process sets in that generates random, raw ideas. Most are totally absurd and useless, just like most random mutations are useless in evolution. Some have some general fit with the problem. If you're lucky, one day you'll make up one idea that is a perfect fit. Like on a jigsaw puzzle when the little piece of cardboard goes in its place nice and tight.

At some point the unconscious process delivers the idea to your conscious mind, and then you consciously work on verifying whether it works or not.

So it's not just random.

All this from Poincaré and others.

Quote:

There is another remark to be made about the conditions of this unconscious work: it is possible, and of a certainty it is only fruitful, if it is on the one hand preceded and on the other hand followed by a period of conscious work. These sudden inspirations (and the examples already cited sufficiently prove this) never happen except after some days of voluntary effort which has appeared absolutely fruitless and whence nothing good seems to have come, where the way taken seems totally astray. These efforts then have not been as sterile as one thinks; they have set agoing the unconscious machine and without them it would not have moved and would have produced nothing.

-- Poincaré, “Mathematical Creation”, in The Foundations of Science

https://www.brainpickings.org/2013/08/15/henri-poincare-on-how-creativity-works/

1 Reply

Attempt at reconciling free will and determinism

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