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Chris OConnor 
Rhodes Scholar
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Joined: 05 May 2002
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 Posted: Sun Nov 04, 2007 11:22 am Post subject:
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George, another fine essay. 
I'm not so sure the recent college killings could be classified as an accident or random. There were causes an effects, despite our inability to pinpoint or identify them. For practical purposes this was a random event in that all the factors that led up to that horrible day were not and could not be seen or understood as factors, but there were factors nonetheless.
Using the word "random" or the phrase "shit happens" seems to me to be throwing in the towel and giving up trying to link causes to effects. This is the key difference between faith-based beliefs and science-based beliefs.
Although, shit does happen...but it happens for reasons. Reasons are sometimes impossible to identify because they happen at the chemical or subconscious level, or maybe even the quantum level.
Last edited by Chris OConnor on Sun Nov 04, 2007 11:24 am; edited 1 time in total |
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George Ricker
Junior
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| Posted: Sun Nov 04, 2007 11:51 am Post subject:
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| Chris OConnor wrote: |
Using the word "random" or the phrase "shit happens" seems to me to be throwing in the towel and giving up trying to link causes to effects. This is the key difference between faith-based beliefs and science-based beliefs.
Although, shit does happen...but it happens for reasons. Reasons are sometimes impossible to identify because they happen at the chemical or subconscious level, or maybe even the quantum level. |
Saying events are random does not suggest or imply that they are causeless. And it certainly doesn't suggest we should "throw in the towel" and stop seeking answers to our questions about how the world works. Although there do appear to be some "causeless" events at the quantum level, that really isn't what we're talking about when we discuss the events in the lives of human beings.
The issue is not whether there may or may not be a cause for this or that occurrence but whether or not the occurrence is something that is within our ability to control or influence or predict.
George |
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MadArchitect
Joined: 14 Nov 2004
Posts: 2609
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| Posted: Sun Nov 04, 2007 12:54 pm Post subject:
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Dennett's book attempts -- or at least claims -- to address the idea that we have no control. The most precise way to express it, actually, might be that Dennett is addressing those who claim that determinism is incompatable with free will. It is possible to hold an incompatibilist perspective without denying that we have some control over our lives, but the traditional solution to that incompatibility is to say that we do no live in a completely deterministic universe. Dennett's argument is simply that free will is not incompatible with determinism -- his explanation of that compatibility is anything but simply, though. And as it turns out, his argument strikes me as flawed in some very important ways.
Since no one else is reading the book at the moment, this isn't really the place to discuss it. I bring it up because Dennett's argument is one of the most prominent in modern philosophy. That it's so problematic illustrates the difficulty in resolving the problem, particularly if, like Dennett, you want to preserve both a deterministic perspective and the notion that humans are free to direct (which is not to say control) their own destinies.
It does seem to me, though, that Dennett is right in pointing out that the apparant indeterminacy at the quantum level isn't much help in resolving the problem, so unless someone has a specific argument as to how quantum indeterminacy could lead to human free will, I think we're safe dropping that qualifier from here on out.
As Chris points out, the real problem begins with the idea of cause and effect. If you take the deterministic position seriously, then our behavior would appear to be overdetermined, in a sense. From a scientific perspective, there is virtually no need for an explanation like "free will". All of our choices can be reduced to Pavlovian response, evolutionary strategy, neurological patterns -- to the extent that we can only really apply the term "choice" in a sense that fails to capture what we usually mean when we talk about free will. We have the "feeling" that our choices are freely made, albeit within certain constraints, but that feeling itself is not proof. If we can suffer from the illusion that we have more control than we actually do, then we can also suffer from the illusion that we have any when we might, in fact, have none.
To be clear, I'm not saying that we don't have free will -- the idea that we do is quite important to me. What I am saying is that there does appear to be a conflict betwee free will and deterministic positions in logical extension, and that no one, Dennett included, seems to have sorted it out as yet. |
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riverc0il
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| Posted: Sun Nov 04, 2007 7:06 pm Post subject:
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Mad, I think you would enjoy Wegner's book based on your posts so far in this thread. Though if you are looking to reconcile free will with determinism, you won't find it with Wegner who speaks to the namesake of his book... that conscious will is an illusion.
We experience conscious will... that being the experience of having choice and control of our lives. But often times are choices and reactions are completely predetermined by our past experiences and biology.
In the most interesting example, picture yourself having to make a major decision in which no physiological reaction is taken into account. This is pure mental decision making. Despite all your thoughts about the given choice, ultimately, you will probably choose a certain course based on all your past experience, history, and your essential physiological make up. I had such an experience recently when choosing to accept a promotion that involved relocation for myself and my life partner. We talked about it, I thought about it, and ultimately made a choice knowing that ultimately, I will make the choice that perhaps was inevitable. However, that does not lessen the thought pattern involved nor my experience of consciousness.
If we allow the knowledge that determinism is not reconcilable to freewill interfere with our thoughts, judgements, beliefs, or how we conduct our lives we forfeit control. I guess you could say that you are either determined to live your life under the understanding of illusion or not. The choice is yours but your choice is a foregone conclusion 
Silliness, ain't it? Ultimately, it doesn't matter either way. We live our lives the same way and there are no implications unless we want to get into the issue addressed in my previous paragraph of allowing knowledge to guide life. For example, a typical issue raised is that of criminality. If people are determined to do things, is a criminal morally responsible for their actions? Irrelevant question, IMO. If you eliminate the Criminal Justice System on behalf of the criminal determined to commit crimes, then you cause more crime by preventing the deterrent. Do you cease education and crime prevention efforts? No. Determinism is ultimately irrelevant because you can't not change life or society based on whether or not free will can be reconciled.
Ultimately, I have come to the conclusion that cause and effect is reality. There is almost an infinite (from a human perspective) time line involving innumerable events on both the micro and macro scale that lead to events taking place every single micro second. An amazing thing to contemplate even the macro and obvious influences on one human decision let alone the course of history on Earth and the Universe. Free Will is ultimately irrelevant and determinism is a constant by definition and the two are essentially apples and oranges as far as I am concerned. What we experience as humans is an illusion of control via our conscious will and that is enough for me. I think "self, type out a message" and it happens regardless of whether it was determined or what ever. |
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MadArchitect
Joined: 14 Nov 2004
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| Posted: Mon Nov 05, 2007 2:00 am Post subject:
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| riverc0il wrote: |
| We live our lives the same way and there are no implications unless we want to get into the issue addressed in my previous paragraph of allowing knowledge to guide life. |
There are implications, though. One is that of responsibility for one's actions. If all of our actions are determined by phenomenon that precede our entrance on the scene, then we lose moral culpability. At which point, the notion of penalizing a person for immoral or illegal behavior grows dubious.
We need not even say that the answer to the question of whether or not we have free will ought to make us choose a different form of social control -- all we need say is that our response to certain forms of behavior is determined in part by our perception of whether or not we have free will. Once we concede that, then it should be unsurprising if we change our social systems to accomodate our more firm belief in the incompatilibity of free will with the deterministic world we live in.
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| If you eliminate the Criminal Justice System on behalf of the criminal determined to commit crimes, then you cause more crime by preventing the deterrent. |
Only if you're talking about a preventative and corrective system. If you're talking about a genuinely penal system, the the question of culpability is all-important. (As for prevention and correction, relevant studies would seem to indicate that our current system is not preventative, and far from being corrective, it tends to give criminals to opportunity to learn more crimes and more sophisticated forms of evasion.)
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| Ultimately, I have come to the conclusion that cause and effect is reality. |
This is, in part, where I think Dennett goes wrong. The question of free will is not one of whether or not causal relationships exist, or even of the degree to which they are prevalent. A "libertarian" position that denied causal effects would, in effect, cancel out its claim to free will. Rather, what's being demanded is some definitive answer as to whether we are, ourselves, causes, or merely effects of the system in which we exist.
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| What we experience as humans is an illusion of control via our conscious will and that is enough for me. I think "self, type out a message" and it happens regardless of whether it was determined or what ever. |
Didn't you (or Wegner) just suggest that there is no reason to suppose a causal relationship between "I think..." and "it happens"? And from a deterministic perspective, why would an illusion of control even be necessary? It seems a waste of resources if we don't actually have some measure of control. |
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riverc0il
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Location: Ashland, NH
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| Posted: Thu Nov 08, 2007 5:59 pm Post subject:
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| MadArchitect wrote: |
| Didn't you (or Wegner) just suggest that there is no reason to suppose a causal relationship between "I think..." and "it happens"? And from a deterministic perspective, why would an illusion of control even be necessary? It seems a waste of resources if we don't actually have some measure of control. |
An illusion of control is not necessary but Wegner proves it is there through research that suggests decisions are made before we are conscious of them. As far as a waste of resources, I think it is more a matter of interpreting our consciousness, thus the illusion... there is no illusion if you are conscious of the disconnect between what we think is happening versus what actually is. I may have misunderstood your comment? There is definitely a link between "I Think" and "it happens" but the causal aspect is where the illusion comes into play. "I Think" is not necessarily the cause but rather the "feeling of consciousness." Essentially, this perspective would suggest that "I Think" is just experiencing the act of a decision that has already been made. |
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MadArchitect
Joined: 14 Nov 2004
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| Posted: Thu Nov 08, 2007 10:04 pm Post subject:
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| riverc0il wrote: |
| An illusion of control is not necessary but Wegner proves it is there through research that suggests decisions are made before we are conscious of them. |
What do you mean "is not necessary"? Is not logically necessitated by the premises?
My understanding of the cognitive situation is that decisions are made more or less automatically, but that conscious thought gives us veto power over the decisions that are made. That's the picture derived from Michael Gazzaniga's survey of the current state of research, given in "The Ethical Brain", at any rate. If we do have some form of veto power over the autonomic decision making process, essentially making conscious choices by forcing that system to reiterate the process of formation until it returns a decision we won't decline, then there's no reason to conclude that conscious control is proven illusory, correct?
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| As far as a waste of resources, I think it is more a matter of interpreting our consciousness, thus the illusion... there is no illusion if you are conscious of the disconnect between what we think is happening versus what actually is. |
The illusion, if it exists, is pretty secondary to what I mean by "waste of resources". If consciousness is not a faculty for making decisions, then what is it? The alternative I suggested earlier in this post is that it's a critical faculty for evaluating decisions made at a pre-conscious stage. If it isn't that, then I'm not sure what function consciousness serves. It would almost start to look like one of those Enlightenment monstrosities -- a faculty that agnoizes over circumstances without having any impact over them. But what useful purpose is there to feeling or experiencing anything if that feeling is not part of a system of interaction?
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| "I Think" is not necessarily the cause but rather the "feeling of consciousness." Essentially, this perspective would suggest that "I Think" is just experiencing the act of a decision that has already been made. |
Exactly -- but what is gained by "experiencing the act of a decision that has already been made?" Our bodies direct a lot of resources towards thought. If all that is achieved by that faculty dead ends with the experience, then how do we explain the evolutionary persistence of thought? It seems like a supremely wasteful allocation of resources if there isn't some output. How would experiencing decisions that have already been made, without somehow turning that experience around so that it has an impact on future decisions, affect our chances of passing on our genes to our progeny? At essence, my question may be, What does it mean to experience if experience is only the aftermath of decisions that are in no sense free? |
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Robert Tulip 2
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Joined: 19 Nov 2007
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| Posted: Thu Nov 22, 2007 6:16 am Post subject:
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| I am a fan of Einstein's comment that God does not play dice. By this he meant that even if we cannot perceive the ultimate quantum causal mechanism, that does not mean it does not exist. Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle was more about the limits of human knowledge than the nature of causality. Quanta may well be deterministic, but the act of viewing them changes their behaviour, so we can never know. On Dennett and the relation between physics and biology, there was a great article in New York Review of Books, discussed at http://www.bautforum.com/questions-answers/66524-complementarity-bohr- v-einstein.html arguing that the complementarity of the particle and wave theories of quantum mechanics - neither is reducible to the other - has an analogy in a similar complementarity within biology between molecular chemistry and the biology of organisms. Niels Bohr held that organisms have their own level of causality which cannot be understood or explained in terms of physics. Hence organisms operate as free beings, regardless of whether there is an ultimate unknowable fate at the quantum level whereby their decisions are determined. |
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