I was with you until there. While I agree that the arguments are often trite, I think there is obviously value, or people wouldn't be so upset about the prospect of determinism. As for falsifiability, free will/determinism is just as falsifiable (in many forms) as anything else we know about. Say, for example, that material monism is correct, and I somehow decipher all of physics. Then, working backward or forward, I am able to determine, mathematically, any past or future event (let's say I've got a really nice computer).
I think part of the reason people get so heated with this issue is that there is a large emotional investment. An attack on free-will can be taken as an attack on the very nature of self-hood. Supporting free-will, though, to a large extent puts you at odds with our modern scientific system, and its preconceptions, thus at odds with "our understanding of the world", for lack of better terms. Both sides are massively personally invested, and to see either basis fall would be disastrous.
I'm not sure if it is falsifiable. An equation will never be as internally valid as our perception of self. I can get 5000 people to choose a number, and all will state a choice, and I can get brainscans of 5000 people saying it was determined. Which wins?
As for the predicting all events... to be pedantic, at least part of the functioning of the universe is probabilistic, and symmetric. Thus predicting back in time will be as problematic as predicting forward.
This would, for all reasonable purposes, prove determinism. If such a system existed, and encountered some sort of magic field around rational human decisions that its predictions could not penetrate, that would be pretty good evidence of free will, wouldn't it? Now, maybe free will can't be proven absolutely, but determinism could definitely be established with as much scientific rigor as any other of our dearly-held theories. As such, it would certainly also be falsifiable -- if we DID have the perfect physics system and an accompanying superdupercocmputer, and we could prove that any event was NOT subject to its predictions, then that formulation of determinism is certainly wrong.
I often wonder how complete we can ever make our understanding of the universe. Science is a system, and has no guarantees of being capable of understanding everything. Not to say it isn't, but I wouldn't be surprised if there were objects completely outside of its scope and possible comprehension. Can science be complete? This is a fun question for another day. The other problem is the actors in science, us. Our brain is wired to see things in certain ways, this does not mean that these are the "true" ways. I don't think we can ever escape our involvement in the universe coloring our understanding of it, this is even more vexing when we turn to ourselves. Science, also, is nothing but a modeling system, with certain rules to connect facts, and rule to choose what rule we use in this. Is parsimony built into the cosmos, or is it merely convenient to us.
What I'm getting at is questioning the idea that science is the "be-all-end-all" of understanding, or knowledge. And if such a thing is even possible.
What if all of science is wrong? Don't take that at face value, but it is an interesting philosophical question. How could we prove it is wrong? How can we prove it is correct?
There are no current trends in cultural interpretaion towards removing individual culpability and responsibility.
I disagree. Everything is a disorder now, and everything has a drug attached to it, with the innate preconception that all of our personality problems (and thus personality) is based on chemistry, and not individual choice.
Think of the number of people who blame their quirks on "depression", or "adult AD/HD", or "Aspergers", recently, when these personality traits were considered in a normal range just 10 years ago, but are now grounds for medication.
Think of the amount of people who check into rehab for things we not long ago considered to be personality flaws, but are now "illness"... Like that Spitzer guy deciding he's a "sex addict", and going to rehab, since he (as implied) can't help himself. (in reality, who wouldn't be a sex addict...)
Yes, there is a double standard. Never claimed otherwise.
Sorry for being a bit rusty. This is a topic I haven't given much thought to of late. My interest flagged a bit when I realized it was a very bitter morass, with limited potential for polite argument, everyone is invested in it a bit too much to be truly dispassionate (myself included).
For Dennett, the "intentional stance" is not a theory that is either true or false but a methodological approach that is either useful or not useful in a given context.
This might be part of my problem. The various tendrils of pragmatism in western thought are rather... I have some issues with them. I don't see how usefulness can lead to truth, nor even validity.
Limiting it to a relatively small set of alternatives causes it to become a somewhat indeterminate one - at the very least, it pushes the problem of determination to whatever system generates the alternatives, which would be specified in the design or physics levels of description. At the same time, the moral dimensions of free will, including accountability for choice, are retained.
I have issue with this too. Most of the determinism debate (or whatever we want to term it) is based on reductionism. The reductionism in science is what gave rise to the debate itself. Pushing the determinism down to a further layer doesn't really add much to things that wasn't there before. "Your actions are indeterminate, but the mechanism for this is determined by the rules of a lower level" isn't really saying much.
I still don't see how accountability arises from this (not that accountability influences the truth of anything). Perhaps I'm missing the point (a real possibility), but by saying you make "free" decisions based on lower determinations is a cop-out. I suppose the accountability problem is a larger problem than mere determination itself.
Freedom Evolves is an extension of his earlier view. Dennett is actually a compatibilist so I think you may be projecting somewhat with the supposed confusion. He does lean on explanations that diminish control, hence the metaphors about the self as the center of narrative gravity, or like a symphony, and some silly views about qualia; however he is a compatibilist and does think we do exercise control (maybe less than others would tend to think) hence the subtitle "varieties of free will worth having"
I might have read a bit into it. Its been a long while since I truly focused on this issue. I always preferred Hopfstader's "strange loopiness" explanation, though, myself. It always seemed to me that Dennet was arguing about something completely different, but couched it in terms of "free will vs. determinism", and then supported his constraints with weakly with the arguments that were actually the point of the book.
Thanks for the links, I'll read through them next time I have time devoted to "weighty" issues.
You again... I guess its my lot to argue with you all day. Good fun.:)
Where are these evil genes ravaging the environment? They die out in the wild because they do not confer a survival advantage.
Yet. Just because it hasn't happened yet doesn't mean it won't. Also we must remember that cultivated crops might have a muted response to evolutionary pressures being that they are man-selected. The infertile GM crops are already in existence, obviously, and are not very evolution friendly. Not agreeing with the GPs doom and gloom, but just saying an ounce of caution might be needed.
Modifying an organism such that it can't reproduce is a GOOD thing if you are worried about the organism wrecking havoc in the wild.... Self destruct code cannot spread to the wild by definition - what will spread it if it cannot reproduce?
This depends. If the plant still produces viable pollen, but itself is infertile, then the gene can spread if it is passed in pollen. Thus if it pollinates a normal crop, then the offspring of these crops can still polinate, even if they can't be pollinated themselves. Remember that evolution only cares about the spreading of genes, the rest is superfluous, these hypothetical crops are still, then, evolutionarily viable since they pollinate other crops.
I'm not sure, to be honest, if that is the case here. Perhaps the pollen here is infertile too, and not just the female bits.
Because some of us believe that however imperfect, profit motive is the economic model which best serves people on the whole.
But this doesn't say anything about ethics. Profit itself says nothing of actions. If I find a profitable way to render people's grandmothers into dog food, but it requires living grandmothers, does profit alone make it okay? I'd be morally irresponsible to do so, EVEN if I can make a ton of money, and make happy dogs.
Flawed analogy, I know. But you get the point. Profit itself does not make an action good or bad. Look at the robber barons of the 19th and early 20th century for example. Very profitable, made Ayn Rand happy, but generally not morally, or ethically, good.
You won't be able to grow enough food to get this whole planet up out of poverty without some kind of genetic engineering - and that's assuming that population growth eventually slows down.
I would argue that the ends don't justify the means. But then again I always argue this, for all cases.
Thanks for invoking Godwin... Much deserved. Crops have NOTHING to do with genocidal German dictators, or the mass killing of human life. I'm sick of Hitler analogies... Only Nazis make Hitler analogies to disparate fields (sorry...)
Belief does not make something true. No matter how this debate ultimately falls we will still have the subjective experience of choice, whether this choice is based in reality or not. The subjective does not influence the truth value of the objective.
As a note, I phrased my original response rather too strongly. This debate makes me cranky.
I'm going to have to look up this Dennett article. Most of my views on his take on this topic are from Freedom Evolves, in which I found him almost a religious adherent to !determinism=freewill. Apparently he is a moving target.
Part of my issue with Dennett ideas, such as the one you recount, is that there still is a bit of wishful thinking involved. I don't think that "pseudorandom" can be stated as freewill, as everyone else defines it. This doesn't make it true or false, I just think his choice of vocabulary is wrong.
Though, obviously, any version of free will (or intention) is going to be constrained. I have no issue with this. The problem is the selection mechanism for the small array of possible choices, this is where intention either enters the argument, or leaves it. If we see a pseudorandom choice in intentional terms, then we still don't clarify if it IS intentional, we just say that we see it as such for whatever reason.
That said, free will or the illusion of free will could very well be essential to certain behaviors that have given us a competitive advantage over our ancestors who did not have it. I was merely providing an off-the-cuff example, not trying to sound like an expert in evolutionary sociology:) (Is there such a field?)
Your probably on the ball there. I would guess that all human characteristics (barring religious intervention, of course) would have to have arisen from some evolutionary pressure, even free will, or the perception of it.
Sorry for harping on your statement. It was late, and this topic makes me cranky. I read it as "the illusion of free will leads us to make better decisions"
I think there is such a field emerging. I'm not sure what its academically called though. Dennett, and Dawkin's books on religion as evolutionary features fall into the category. I think I also once read a book putting human ethics into an evolutionary light, sadly I forgot the title and author (might have been Pinker, not sure though), though. It is an interesting topic.
This is a pretty well accepted view in all philosophical circles, not just the European ones. Neither side of the pond really addresses the issues of the other, much. So it is as much a Anglocentric view, as a Eurocentric one.
The perception of it is always there, sure. But whether it is true or not is another question.
I agree and disagree. As a warning, I did go to school for philosophy, so expect me to weasel around a bit.
From the western empirical tradition, you are completely right, of course. If it is ever proven as true, which we are far from doing.
From the continental position, this doesn't matter as much, since at least the perception of free will would still be a fact of being. It is subjectively necessary. Thus pure scientific validity doesn't invalidate the concept.
I could argue that, in at least this case, that science is abstract, and what is truly true, is the world we experience.
Truth be told, I'm not quite sure where I fall. I view science as an important tool, but I also view it as somewhat arrogant. Science connects facts, the facts are true, but the models we use to explain the facts are just that; models. On somedays I am a full fledged science nerd, and revel in the wealth of discoveries that we've found, and on others I ponder if they really have changed how we subjectively interface with reality.
Haven't read that one, I'm going mostly from Freedom Evolves, where he confused !determinism=freewill, rather weakly. If I had to pick a cog-sci person to even half agree with it would be Hofstadter.
As I stated to the guy your replying to: I'm sorry for the harsh terms, it was late, and this debate is one that rather annoys me.
If it's proven not to be true: No harm lost...but if it is true: I win. A slight correction, its more like:
If its proven not to be true, everything is the same... but if it is true, everything is still the same.
This is the cause of my problem with the discussion. If we definitively proved that there was no free will (or visa versa) tomorrow, it wouldn't make a damn bit of difference in our subjective relationship with reality. We still must act as if it is true, even if it is objectively not true.
As I stated previously, as well, it is hubris to claim that YOU KNOW THE ANSWER. We're not even close to knowing it yet, if ever. Sure, the results of this experiment are interesting, but not even close to being nearly as definitive as they claim.
Don't get me wrong, I went to school for philosophy, there is nothing I love more than a large, never ending debate. Keeping this in mind, I get suspicious when someone slams the book shut, and yells "My interpretation, of a somewhat small result, on a oddly set up experiment, PROVES EVERYONE WRONG!"
No. They just expanded the topic slightly, it isn't by any means over. It's hubris to say otherwise.
It's somewhat like claiming that Newton explained gravity. He just added a new level to the discussion, which others could later add to.
Sorry for my harsh tone, it was late, and I've gotten into endless flame wars over this topic before. I suppose a better way to have phrased it would have been; that this discussion is like the atheism/theism debate, only amateurs know they have an answer.
Deleuze, at the end of the day, is strongly tied to the English (or rather Scottish!) empiricist tradition.
I had some suspicions of this from my readings. But I couldn't be too sure since I only read it once, and, as in all philosophical matters of late, had no one else to discuss it with.
As for his collaborations with Guattari, I can't even tell. Anti-Oedipus was almost unreadable to me. The Marxist/Machine images got a little... To be honest I could only comprehend one out of two paragraphs, and had to reread that one paragraph 10 times for it to be seemingly senseful. It was like reading Kant, without the pay-off. I kept on picturing images of a disjointed early Baudrillard.
I disagree with your assessment of Sartre though, in a lot of American circles he is still taken as the penultimate Continental philosopher, while Heidegger is always (fallaciously, IMO) dismissed for his Nazi ties. Generally his philosophy as seen as an apology for Nazism, even though it predates his turn. It is somewhat a shame. Heidegger has the best potential of connecting the various threads of philosophy.
Speaking of, what is your thoughts on Rorty? Is the pragmatic take on Continental philosophy a valid one, in your opinion? Ignoring the trite, and oft repeated, "philosophy is dead" sentiment.
From what you say, I see the relation of Badiou with Foucault. Without have read him yet, he seems like a Foucault with a smaller dosage of Marx and conflict.
Always nice to run into a philosoph in an unexpected setting. If you don't mind my asking, did you go to school for it, and where did you study? My main course of study was philosophy of science (discovering the relation between Kuhn and Foucault was momentous!), but I found continental studies to be completely lacking. I lucked out to find wandering Canadians, who replaced our required cryptochristian, and Wittgensteinian chair.
No, if you take away free will you become a rat, pigeon or any other killable animal considered a thing. What we need to learn is that free will exists at more levels, including plants, animals, etc. If we become machines, than anything that happens is just OK, because we are not really choosing anything.
How does it make it less true, though? Just because it wouldn't be convenient doesn't make it false.
"If our DNA mutated, it would lead to bad effects, like cancer, and the pain caused by these effects. Therefore DNA can't mutate"
You present an argument from emotion, it doesn't carry any weight. The truth is the truth, no matter how we feel about it.
To accept the concept of free will, one should accept that there is something above and beyond the physical processes involved, that there is something beyond the physical processes going on here. Were it not, you would be defined entirely by who you are (genetically speaking), and the experiences you go through.
No. To accept free-will is not to accept dualism, or any higher "spiritual", or "immaterial" cause. I recommend looking up, within this context, the idea of "emergence". The complexity of the process itself can bring in attributes not causally linked to the sum of the components. Think chaos theory, turbulence, or such. Instead of bringing in something "higher", it denies base reductionism.
It would also be absurd to state that there is any such thing as perfect freewill. Any freedom would be constrained by the laws of physics, and basic anatomy. If I removed you Brocca's region, you can't talk, no matter how much you want to. If I give you a tumor somewhere, you can't control the effects. Freewill will be more of a weighted decision process, where you decide against a finite list of actions, each weighted by certain pre-disposed (experience, biology, and genetic) characteristics.
Ermm... Philosophy is academically divided into Continental, and Anglophone philosophy. Continental is more colloquially called "existential" philosophy. Anglophone philosophy closely follows the path of Russel, Popper, and Whitehead, where continental is following Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Sartre. Anglophone focuses on logic and pragmatism, mostly, and continental on being, existence, and experience.
I alway hoped that these two branches would merge, since they both are on to something (except maybe pragmatism... kidding!). But Rorty was too weak, and moronic to do so.
The continent gave up on free will for decision-making ages ago, and Heidegger recognized the rote nature of most so-called "decisions."
I'd say Sartre's philosophy pretty much implicitly depends on the concept of "free will", but then again I often hear the debate that Sartre is really a through back to post-Nietzschean rationalism, and that the most innovative thread of continental philosophy was Nietzsche->Heidegger->Foucault, since it follows a path of removing the dependence on conscious objects of thought. I'd agree, but it as I read Heidegger there is still a bit of old-fashioned free will involved with Authenticity, since it somewhat denies (or at least comes to terms with) Mitsein (doing as one does, etc), this, though, to be authentic in-itself would have to be free.
I prefer Foucault's epistemes, personally. We are linked to the structures of the world, and the freest we can be is still dictated by these structures, and boils down to the mere consciousness of our being enmeshed with them.
Thank you for putting a continental spin on this, though. It's so rare that this debate is EVER put into the continental context. It's alway shades of naive empiricism, positivism, and naive reductionism. Mentioning Heidegger in any western debate is akin to going to a relatives funeral naked, you get odd looks, but are completely ignored.
I haven't read any Badiou, have any books to recommend? Gilles and Deluize put a bad taste in my mouth.
Its rare that/. caters to both my interests, philosophy and science... I must savor this.
I don't think of the brain this way. Therefore your argument collapses.:)
Seriously though, I don't like the I/O models that so many people run around with. Its a model, only a model, and more often than not when we confuse models with reality we are led astray. A model is only useful as long as we realize that we're dealing with only an abstraction.
My brain is not a computer, it is not even like a computer. My brain is like a brain. Its like comparing a horse to a car, and trying to get useful information, all we get are analogies, but not real answers.
I have issues with people who put too much stock in reductionism. Its useful, but I don't know if it is a good way of getting meaningful data.
If we must run with the computer analogy (and I will not bring up Searle's chinese box), then we must accept that the brain has almost unlimited inputs, since it mirrors its own functioning internally, and mirrors external systems internally as well, meaning more than half its inputs are internal. Also we must then realize that half of these internal inputs are NOT logical inputs, but creative factors. This starts making the computer model not at all computer like.
There is no neuron or group of neurons that is "you."
Again, I disagree. The gestalt of neurons (the full set) is "you". Obviously there is a difference between "you" and "~you", and as you say we are all brain, and no mind, this difference must exist in the neurons, or more precisely, the arrangement of them. Or in a smaller sense, the connection of groups to other groups, and the connections within each group.
And, as an interesting mind game, try to live a day of your life as if you did not have free will. The idea (if not the thing itself) is innate.
I always hated the cog-sci cultists (Dennet, mostly) attacking free will, as if it was his personal calling to do so. I think the very discussion is rather dumb.
If freewill isn't real, it doesn't matter, we subjectively must still act as if it is true. If free will is real, we must still act as if it is true. We must, too, in any case, also treat others as if they have free will (as it is the basis of law, society, and most human empathy and ethics). The idea of free will, if not it-itself, is built into our head, and all of our actions.
I think the freewill/not-freewill debate is just like the "God doesn't exist" debate, trite, and the grounds for amateur philosophers. It makes a good argument, but not much truth value. For one it isn't falsifiable.
In the current result (which isn't new), we could claim that the act of free-will happens with a seven second lag, or that certain potential centers are activated before the act of choosing a branch. Etc... I think, also, there is a large cultural element to the debate, the current trends in cultural interpretation is towards removing all individual culpability and responsibility (as we can see in the rise of psychotropic drug prescriptions, and "Twinkie" defenses).
As a philosophy buff, lets leave it to religion. It doesn't add to any argument.
If you take a long enough view, entropy wins everytime.
The concerns, I think, are over the effects in human time scales, not geologic. If it weathers fine enough, it can stick around for a very long time before becoming sediment. If it's light enough, it can float for a very long time, and continue to interfere with ecosystems.
Perhaps your right with the bacteria. But as of yet this hasn't happened. And evolution makes pretty shitty betting. Its best to curtail our use a bit, instead of waiting for entropy (and geologic time) to fix things, or waiting for evolution (and unspecified time scales and probabilities) to fix things.
How much of modern plastic packaging actually useful, or needed? I doubt anyone will say "no plastics, EVER!", its more like "use some moderation, and forethought, please". Do I really need my food packaging to be 75% packaging by volume? I thought the goal was the product, not the amount of plastic you can use to cover it.
Sorry for any errors, trying to get used to a macbook keyboard.
Plastic never goes away. In the book, A World Without Us, the author pointed out who plastics are weathering over time into smaller and smaller particles, and eroding into the oceans, where they are taken up by smaller organisms, the ones that act that the basis of the marine food-chain, to possibly detrimental effects to the tropic levels above.
Every bit of plastic ever manufactured is still here today.
Evil is a human emotion. Do you really think corporations have human feelings? Bottom lines are what matters.
Evil is not an emotion. Evil is a social judgment on ones actions, in accords with a value system. Evil, also, can be determined either by motive or effect (depending on what ethical system we are looking at). Thus you setting out to murder a family, but actually curing cancer, can still be evil. Or, you accidentally killing a family while on your way to cure cancer, can be evil.
Though we can, arguably, remove the "social" aspect, and find some basis of what we term good and evil in more biological, or evolutionary, terms.
Reading this, pretty much anything capable of action can be said to be capable of evil. Corporations are capable of action, and thus can do evil. If a corporation can make lots of money by slaughtering babies, I would say this is an evil act by a corporation.
The problem comes from where do we assign blame. I personally think it should be distributed to every member of the organization who had knowledge of the "evil" act.
Slashdot Mirror
I was with you until there. While I agree that the arguments are often trite, I think there is obviously value, or people wouldn't be so upset about the prospect of determinism. As for falsifiability, free will/determinism is just as falsifiable (in many forms) as anything else we know about. Say, for example, that material monism is correct, and I somehow decipher all of physics. Then, working backward or forward, I am able to determine, mathematically, any past or future event (let's say I've got a really nice computer).
I think part of the reason people get so heated with this issue is that there is a large emotional investment. An attack on free-will can be taken as an attack on the very nature of self-hood. Supporting free-will, though, to a large extent puts you at odds with our modern scientific system, and its preconceptions, thus at odds with "our understanding of the world", for lack of better terms. Both sides are massively personally invested, and to see either basis fall would be disastrous.
I'm not sure if it is falsifiable. An equation will never be as internally valid as our perception of self. I can get 5000 people to choose a number, and all will state a choice, and I can get brainscans of 5000 people saying it was determined. Which wins?
As for the predicting all events... to be pedantic, at least part of the functioning of the universe is probabilistic, and symmetric. Thus predicting back in time will be as problematic as predicting forward.
This would, for all reasonable purposes, prove determinism. If such a system existed, and encountered some sort of magic field around rational human decisions that its predictions could not penetrate, that would be pretty good evidence of free will, wouldn't it? Now, maybe free will can't be proven absolutely, but determinism could definitely be established with as much scientific rigor as any other of our dearly-held theories. As such, it would certainly also be falsifiable -- if we DID have the perfect physics system and an accompanying superdupercocmputer, and we could prove that any event was NOT subject to its predictions, then that formulation of determinism is certainly wrong.
I often wonder how complete we can ever make our understanding of the universe. Science is a system, and has no guarantees of being capable of understanding everything. Not to say it isn't, but I wouldn't be surprised if there were objects completely outside of its scope and possible comprehension. Can science be complete? This is a fun question for another day. The other problem is the actors in science, us. Our brain is wired to see things in certain ways, this does not mean that these are the "true" ways. I don't think we can ever escape our involvement in the universe coloring our understanding of it, this is even more vexing when we turn to ourselves. Science, also, is nothing but a modeling system, with certain rules to connect facts, and rule to choose what rule we use in this. Is parsimony built into the cosmos, or is it merely convenient to us.
What I'm getting at is questioning the idea that science is the "be-all-end-all" of understanding, or knowledge. And if such a thing is even possible.
What if all of science is wrong? Don't take that at face value, but it is an interesting philosophical question. How could we prove it is wrong? How can we prove it is correct?
Sorry for the tone, I'm being rather playful.
There are no current trends in cultural interpretaion towards removing individual culpability and responsibility.
I disagree. Everything is a disorder now, and everything has a drug attached to it, with the innate preconception that all of our personality problems (and thus personality) is based on chemistry, and not individual choice.
Think of the number of people who blame their quirks on "depression", or "adult AD/HD", or "Aspergers", recently, when these personality traits were considered in a normal range just 10 years ago, but are now grounds for medication.
Think of the amount of people who check into rehab for things we not long ago considered to be personality flaws, but are now "illness"... Like that Spitzer guy deciding he's a "sex addict", and going to rehab, since he (as implied) can't help himself. (in reality, who wouldn't be a sex addict...)
Yes, there is a double standard. Never claimed otherwise.
Sorry for being a bit rusty. This is a topic I haven't given much thought to of late. My interest flagged a bit when I realized it was a very bitter morass, with limited potential for polite argument, everyone is invested in it a bit too much to be truly dispassionate (myself included).
:)
For Dennett, the "intentional stance" is not a theory that is either true or false but a methodological approach that is either useful or not useful in a given context.
This might be part of my problem. The various tendrils of pragmatism in western thought are rather... I have some issues with them. I don't see how usefulness can lead to truth, nor even validity.
Limiting it to a relatively small set of alternatives causes it to become a somewhat indeterminate one - at the very least, it pushes the problem of determination to whatever system generates the alternatives, which would be specified in the design or physics levels of description. At the same time, the moral dimensions of free will, including accountability for choice, are retained.
I have issue with this too. Most of the determinism debate (or whatever we want to term it) is based on reductionism. The reductionism in science is what gave rise to the debate itself. Pushing the determinism down to a further layer doesn't really add much to things that wasn't there before. "Your actions are indeterminate, but the mechanism for this is determined by the rules of a lower level" isn't really saying much.
I still don't see how accountability arises from this (not that accountability influences the truth of anything). Perhaps I'm missing the point (a real possibility), but by saying you make "free" decisions based on lower determinations is a cop-out. I suppose the accountability problem is a larger problem than mere determination itself.
Again, sorry for being rusty.
Freedom Evolves is an extension of his earlier view. Dennett is actually a compatibilist so I think you may be projecting somewhat with the supposed confusion. He does lean on explanations that diminish control, hence the metaphors about the self as the center of narrative gravity, or like a symphony, and some silly views about qualia; however he is a compatibilist and does think we do exercise control (maybe less than others would tend to think) hence the subtitle "varieties of free will worth having"
I might have read a bit into it. Its been a long while since I truly focused on this issue. I always preferred Hopfstader's "strange loopiness" explanation, though, myself. It always seemed to me that Dennet was arguing about something completely different, but couched it in terms of "free will vs. determinism", and then supported his constraints with weakly with the arguments that were actually the point of the book.
Thanks for the links, I'll read through them next time I have time devoted to "weighty" issues.
You again... I guess its my lot to argue with you all day. Good fun. :)
... Self destruct code cannot spread to the wild by definition - what will spread it if it cannot reproduce?
Where are these evil genes ravaging the environment? They die out in the wild because they do not confer a survival advantage.
Yet. Just because it hasn't happened yet doesn't mean it won't. Also we must remember that cultivated crops might have a muted response to evolutionary pressures being that they are man-selected. The infertile GM crops are already in existence, obviously, and are not very evolution friendly. Not agreeing with the GPs doom and gloom, but just saying an ounce of caution might be needed.
Modifying an organism such that it can't reproduce is a GOOD thing if you are worried about the organism wrecking havoc in the wild.
This depends. If the plant still produces viable pollen, but itself is infertile, then the gene can spread if it is passed in pollen. Thus if it pollinates a normal crop, then the offspring of these crops can still polinate, even if they can't be pollinated themselves. Remember that evolution only cares about the spreading of genes, the rest is superfluous, these hypothetical crops are still, then, evolutionarily viable since they pollinate other crops.
I'm not sure, to be honest, if that is the case here. Perhaps the pollen here is infertile too, and not just the female bits.
Because some of us believe that however imperfect, profit motive is the economic model which best serves people on the whole.
But this doesn't say anything about ethics. Profit itself says nothing of actions. If I find a profitable way to render people's grandmothers into dog food, but it requires living grandmothers, does profit alone make it okay? I'd be morally irresponsible to do so, EVEN if I can make a ton of money, and make happy dogs.
Flawed analogy, I know. But you get the point. Profit itself does not make an action good or bad. Look at the robber barons of the 19th and early 20th century for example. Very profitable, made Ayn Rand happy, but generally not morally, or ethically, good.
You won't be able to grow enough food to get this whole planet up out of poverty without some kind of genetic engineering - and that's assuming that population growth eventually slows down.
I would argue that the ends don't justify the means. But then again I always argue this, for all cases.
Thanks for invoking Godwin... Much deserved. Crops have NOTHING to do with genocidal German dictators, or the mass killing of human life. I'm sick of Hitler analogies... Only Nazis make Hitler analogies to disparate fields (sorry...)
Belief does not make something true. No matter how this debate ultimately falls we will still have the subjective experience of choice, whether this choice is based in reality or not. The subjective does not influence the truth value of the objective.
As a note, I phrased my original response rather too strongly. This debate makes me cranky.
I'm going to have to look up this Dennett article. Most of my views on his take on this topic are from Freedom Evolves, in which I found him almost a religious adherent to !determinism=freewill. Apparently he is a moving target.
Part of my issue with Dennett ideas, such as the one you recount, is that there still is a bit of wishful thinking involved. I don't think that "pseudorandom" can be stated as freewill, as everyone else defines it. This doesn't make it true or false, I just think his choice of vocabulary is wrong.
Though, obviously, any version of free will (or intention) is going to be constrained. I have no issue with this. The problem is the selection mechanism for the small array of possible choices, this is where intention either enters the argument, or leaves it. If we see a pseudorandom choice in intentional terms, then we still don't clarify if it IS intentional, we just say that we see it as such for whatever reason.
That said, free will or the illusion of free will could very well be essential to certain behaviors that have given us a competitive advantage over our ancestors who did not have it. I was merely providing an off-the-cuff example, not trying to sound like an expert in evolutionary sociology
Your probably on the ball there. I would guess that all human characteristics (barring religious intervention, of course) would have to have arisen from some evolutionary pressure, even free will, or the perception of it.
Sorry for harping on your statement. It was late, and this topic makes me cranky. I read it as "the illusion of free will leads us to make better decisions"
I think there is such a field emerging. I'm not sure what its academically called though. Dennett, and Dawkin's books on religion as evolutionary features fall into the category. I think I also once read a book putting human ethics into an evolutionary light, sadly I forgot the title and author (might have been Pinker, not sure though), though. It is an interesting topic.
How so?
This is a pretty well accepted view in all philosophical circles, not just the European ones. Neither side of the pond really addresses the issues of the other, much. So it is as much a Anglocentric view, as a Eurocentric one.
Please explain you reasoning.
The perception of it is always there, sure. But whether it is true or not is another question.
I agree and disagree. As a warning, I did go to school for philosophy, so expect me to weasel around a bit.
From the western empirical tradition, you are completely right, of course. If it is ever proven as true, which we are far from doing.
From the continental position, this doesn't matter as much, since at least the perception of free will would still be a fact of being. It is subjectively necessary. Thus pure scientific validity doesn't invalidate the concept.
I could argue that, in at least this case, that science is abstract, and what is truly true, is the world we experience.
Truth be told, I'm not quite sure where I fall. I view science as an important tool, but I also view it as somewhat arrogant. Science connects facts, the facts are true, but the models we use to explain the facts are just that; models. On somedays I am a full fledged science nerd, and revel in the wealth of discoveries that we've found, and on others I ponder if they really have changed how we subjectively interface with reality.
Haven't read that one, I'm going mostly from Freedom Evolves, where he confused !determinism=freewill, rather weakly. If I had to pick a cog-sci person to even half agree with it would be Hofstadter.
I'll go this book down.
No harm lost
I win. A slight correction, its more like:
If its proven not to be true, everything is the same...
but if it is true, everything is still the same.
This is the cause of my problem with the discussion. If we definitively proved that there was no free will (or visa versa) tomorrow, it wouldn't make a damn bit of difference in our subjective relationship with reality. We still must act as if it is true, even if it is objectively not true.
As I stated previously, as well, it is hubris to claim that YOU KNOW THE ANSWER. We're not even close to knowing it yet, if ever. Sure, the results of this experiment are interesting, but not even close to being nearly as definitive as they claim.
Don't get me wrong, I went to school for philosophy, there is nothing I love more than a large, never ending debate. Keeping this in mind, I get suspicious when someone slams the book shut, and yells "My interpretation, of a somewhat small result, on a oddly set up experiment, PROVES EVERYONE WRONG!"
No. They just expanded the topic slightly, it isn't by any means over. It's hubris to say otherwise.
It's somewhat like claiming that Newton explained gravity. He just added a new level to the discussion, which others could later add to.
Sorry for my harsh tone, it was late, and I've gotten into endless flame wars over this topic before. I suppose a better way to have phrased it would have been; that this discussion is like the atheism/theism debate, only amateurs know they have an answer.
Deleuze, at the end of the day, is strongly tied to the English (or rather Scottish!) empiricist tradition.
I had some suspicions of this from my readings. But I couldn't be too sure since I only read it once, and, as in all philosophical matters of late, had no one else to discuss it with.
As for his collaborations with Guattari, I can't even tell. Anti-Oedipus was almost unreadable to me. The Marxist/Machine images got a little... To be honest I could only comprehend one out of two paragraphs, and had to reread that one paragraph 10 times for it to be seemingly senseful. It was like reading Kant, without the pay-off. I kept on picturing images of a disjointed early Baudrillard.
I disagree with your assessment of Sartre though, in a lot of American circles he is still taken as the penultimate Continental philosopher, while Heidegger is always (fallaciously, IMO) dismissed for his Nazi ties. Generally his philosophy as seen as an apology for Nazism, even though it predates his turn. It is somewhat a shame. Heidegger has the best potential of connecting the various threads of philosophy.
Speaking of, what is your thoughts on Rorty? Is the pragmatic take on Continental philosophy a valid one, in your opinion? Ignoring the trite, and oft repeated, "philosophy is dead" sentiment.
From what you say, I see the relation of Badiou with Foucault. Without have read him yet, he seems like a Foucault with a smaller dosage of Marx and conflict.
Always nice to run into a philosoph in an unexpected setting. If you don't mind my asking, did you go to school for it, and where did you study? My main course of study was philosophy of science (discovering the relation between Kuhn and Foucault was momentous!), but I found continental studies to be completely lacking. I lucked out to find wandering Canadians, who replaced our required cryptochristian, and Wittgensteinian chair.
No, if you take away free will you become a rat, pigeon or any other killable animal considered a thing. What we need to learn is that free will exists at more levels, including plants, animals, etc. If we become machines, than anything that happens is just OK, because we are not really choosing anything.
How does it make it less true, though? Just because it wouldn't be convenient doesn't make it false.
"If our DNA mutated, it would lead to bad effects, like cancer, and the pain caused by these effects. Therefore DNA can't mutate"
You present an argument from emotion, it doesn't carry any weight. The truth is the truth, no matter how we feel about it.
Why would it have to be? Without free-will would it matter if we felt we could trust another? Could we decide not to?
Not saying anything about whether I think it exists or not, but in this argument the concept is superfluous.
To accept the concept of free will, one should accept that there is something above and beyond the physical processes involved, that there is something beyond the physical processes going on here. Were it not, you would be defined entirely by who you are (genetically speaking), and the experiences you go through.
No. To accept free-will is not to accept dualism, or any higher "spiritual", or "immaterial" cause. I recommend looking up, within this context, the idea of "emergence". The complexity of the process itself can bring in attributes not causally linked to the sum of the components. Think chaos theory, turbulence, or such. Instead of bringing in something "higher", it denies base reductionism.
It would also be absurd to state that there is any such thing as perfect freewill. Any freedom would be constrained by the laws of physics, and basic anatomy. If I removed you Brocca's region, you can't talk, no matter how much you want to. If I give you a tumor somewhere, you can't control the effects. Freewill will be more of a weighted decision process, where you decide against a finite list of actions, each weighted by certain pre-disposed (experience, biology, and genetic) characteristics.
You answered your own question.
Compare religion with "faith-based adherence to ancient mythology", whats the difference?
Ermm... Philosophy is academically divided into Continental, and Anglophone philosophy. Continental is more colloquially called "existential" philosophy. Anglophone philosophy closely follows the path of Russel, Popper, and Whitehead, where continental is following Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Sartre. Anglophone focuses on logic and pragmatism, mostly, and continental on being, existence, and experience.
I alway hoped that these two branches would merge, since they both are on to something (except maybe pragmatism... kidding!). But Rorty was too weak, and moronic to do so.
The continent gave up on free will for decision-making ages ago, and Heidegger recognized the rote nature of most so-called "decisions."
/. caters to both my interests, philosophy and science... I must savor this.
I'd say Sartre's philosophy pretty much implicitly depends on the concept of "free will", but then again I often hear the debate that Sartre is really a through back to post-Nietzschean rationalism, and that the most innovative thread of continental philosophy was Nietzsche->Heidegger->Foucault, since it follows a path of removing the dependence on conscious objects of thought. I'd agree, but it as I read Heidegger there is still a bit of old-fashioned free will involved with Authenticity, since it somewhat denies (or at least comes to terms with) Mitsein (doing as one does, etc), this, though, to be authentic in-itself would have to be free.
I prefer Foucault's epistemes, personally. We are linked to the structures of the world, and the freest we can be is still dictated by these structures, and boils down to the mere consciousness of our being enmeshed with them.
Thank you for putting a continental spin on this, though. It's so rare that this debate is EVER put into the continental context. It's alway shades of naive empiricism, positivism, and naive reductionism. Mentioning Heidegger in any western debate is akin to going to a relatives funeral naked, you get odd looks, but are completely ignored.
I haven't read any Badiou, have any books to recommend? Gilles and Deluize put a bad taste in my mouth.
Its rare that
I don't think of the brain this way. Therefore your argument collapses. :)
Seriously though, I don't like the I/O models that so many people run around with. Its a model, only a model, and more often than not when we confuse models with reality we are led astray. A model is only useful as long as we realize that we're dealing with only an abstraction.
My brain is not a computer, it is not even like a computer. My brain is like a brain. Its like comparing a horse to a car, and trying to get useful information, all we get are analogies, but not real answers.
I have issues with people who put too much stock in reductionism. Its useful, but I don't know if it is a good way of getting meaningful data.
If we must run with the computer analogy (and I will not bring up Searle's chinese box), then we must accept that the brain has almost unlimited inputs, since it mirrors its own functioning internally, and mirrors external systems internally as well, meaning more than half its inputs are internal. Also we must then realize that half of these internal inputs are NOT logical inputs, but creative factors. This starts making the computer model not at all computer like.
There is no neuron or group of neurons that is "you."
Again, I disagree. The gestalt of neurons (the full set) is "you". Obviously there is a difference between "you" and "~you", and as you say we are all brain, and no mind, this difference must exist in the neurons, or more precisely, the arrangement of them. Or in a smaller sense, the connection of groups to other groups, and the connections within each group.
And, as an interesting mind game, try to live a day of your life as if you did not have free will. The idea (if not the thing itself) is innate.
Thank you.
I always hated the cog-sci cultists (Dennet, mostly) attacking free will, as if it was his personal calling to do so. I think the very discussion is rather dumb.
If freewill isn't real, it doesn't matter, we subjectively must still act as if it is true. If free will is real, we must still act as if it is true. We must, too, in any case, also treat others as if they have free will (as it is the basis of law, society, and most human empathy and ethics). The idea of free will, if not it-itself, is built into our head, and all of our actions.
I think the freewill/not-freewill debate is just like the "God doesn't exist" debate, trite, and the grounds for amateur philosophers. It makes a good argument, but not much truth value. For one it isn't falsifiable.
In the current result (which isn't new), we could claim that the act of free-will happens with a seven second lag, or that certain potential centers are activated before the act of choosing a branch. Etc... I think, also, there is a large cultural element to the debate, the current trends in cultural interpretation is towards removing all individual culpability and responsibility (as we can see in the rise of psychotropic drug prescriptions, and "Twinkie" defenses).
As a philosophy buff, lets leave it to religion. It doesn't add to any argument.
If you take a long enough view, entropy wins everytime.
The concerns, I think, are over the effects in human time scales, not geologic. If it weathers fine enough, it can stick around for a very long time before becoming sediment. If it's light enough, it can float for a very long time, and continue to interfere with ecosystems.
Perhaps your right with the bacteria. But as of yet this hasn't happened. And evolution makes pretty shitty betting. Its best to curtail our use a bit, instead of waiting for entropy (and geologic time) to fix things, or waiting for evolution (and unspecified time scales and probabilities) to fix things.
How much of modern plastic packaging actually useful, or needed? I doubt anyone will say "no plastics, EVER!", its more like "use some moderation, and forethought, please". Do I really need my food packaging to be 75% packaging by volume? I thought the goal was the product, not the amount of plastic you can use to cover it.
Sorry for any errors, trying to get used to a macbook keyboard.
Plastic never goes away. In the book, A World Without Us, the author pointed out who plastics are weathering over time into smaller and smaller particles, and eroding into the oceans, where they are taken up by smaller organisms, the ones that act that the basis of the marine food-chain, to possibly detrimental effects to the tropic levels above.
Every bit of plastic ever manufactured is still here today.
Evil is a human emotion. Do you really think corporations have human feelings? Bottom lines are what matters.
Evil is not an emotion. Evil is a social judgment on ones actions, in accords with a value system. Evil, also, can be determined either by motive or effect (depending on what ethical system we are looking at). Thus you setting out to murder a family, but actually curing cancer, can still be evil. Or, you accidentally killing a family while on your way to cure cancer, can be evil.
Though we can, arguably, remove the "social" aspect, and find some basis of what we term good and evil in more biological, or evolutionary, terms.
Reading this, pretty much anything capable of action can be said to be capable of evil. Corporations are capable of action, and thus can do evil. If a corporation can make lots of money by slaughtering babies, I would say this is an evil act by a corporation.
The problem comes from where do we assign blame. I personally think it should be distributed to every member of the organization who had knowledge of the "evil" act.