Exposing "free will" as no answer - does not make "determinism" a realistic explanation ;- ) {incomplete...}

General Discussion
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Be happy, this is my exploration, not a hissy fit missy. And the fact is everyday we need to make many choices on many different levels That those choices are made from within the confines of this sea of determinism that is existence on this planet in the flow of time, doesn't make every choice pre-determined.
No it doesn't and I never said it was. Determinism is not predeterminism. Determinism means the factors change every moment and we're unaware of the process or the factors.? You think you are making choices but you don't consider what is driving those choices. You think it's your conscious mind. but your conscious mind is also determined by the same process and the same factors. I say it's millions of factors we don't know about and we can't know or control which ones are taking precedence over others. Wanting to have it and thinking we have it is not evidence. Lois
If you still think we have free will, please provider some evidence.
Tossing stuff like that at me, is what might send me off into a hissy fit - since it makes obvious you don't actually try to hear what I'm saying/asking. Rather than telling me what I think, I'm more interested in hearing you explain what you believe - beyond JUST BECAUSE ! Which is all you offer. Do a better job of tackling the conundrum We are decision making machines, decisions result in feedbacks we constantly assess. We also have desires and goals we work towards, We make choices that we learn to moderate depending on feedbacks we receive, in light of goals we desire. and so on and so forth ~~~~~~~~~ Explain why your version of "determinism", doesn't lead to nihilism. {As for my heroin junky allusion, years ago I had a good and intelligent friend who was a junky for a while and he shared with me that the magic of heroin was that (to use his metaphor) it took you back to your mama's womb, nodding out in total peaceful and security. I've never done it - but I believed him and it made quite an impression and sense in light of other things I knew/saw. And that's what your simple acquiesce of this "determinism" sounds like, withdrawal into something cozy less challenging then actually living life in the moment, since according to the words I hear from you - the moment doesn't belong to you anyways. } Like I said, I'm on an exploration so your consistently defensive approach smacks of the absolutist preacher - so excuse my irreverence.
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Determinism is a philosophical position. We know determinism is true in all forms of life and controlled laboratory tests have confirmed that the human brain makes decisions before we are consciously aware of them. Since there is no objective evidence that we can make choices independently of our determining influences, determinism is the rational position to take.
But since the subject of determinism is so alien to your being, Citizen Challenge, and tends to send you into a rage, why don’t you relax and just accept the myth of free will as one accepts the myth of god and stop engaging in discussions about a concept you reject? Trying to explain determinism to a person who is incapable of understanding it and accepting it is like trying to explain evolution to a young earth creationist. No amount of explanation and no amount of evidence is going to make a dent in his faith in creation, just as no amount of explanation or evidence is going to make a dent in your faith in free will. So stop torturing yourself and leave the subject of determinism vs. free will to those who can understand it and who don’t fly into helpless rages at the mere mention of it. Don’t worry, be happy.

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IMO, all conscious desires come from factors we have no control over.
And IMO and Bugs and GdB's and Tim's. Watch out, Stephen. Many months ago I already said that I don't use the word 'control' because it confuses. Every servo system has control over its environment, and servo systems are made to react deterministically. That of course does not mean that servo systems have free will, but it shows that having control is a a very easy requirement that can be implemented in simple systems like thermostats. Now of course a thermostat has no control over how it is made and on what temperature it switches a current on or off. But that changes nothing in the fact that it controls its environment. Here is Lois' confusion: by saying that the thermostat has no control over its own parameters, she does as if the thermostat has no control over the temperature (or the switch). In other words, she denies that the thermostat plays an essential causal role in the temperature. Or better applied to humans: she denies that we have control over our behaviour, by saying that our parameters are not caused by us, i.e. we have no control over them. She demands that we have control over them, but even the simplest servo system hasn't such control, and still has control over its output. The only reason that our capabilities were selected for in evolution is because these capabilities have causal impact. Otherwise there wouldn't be something for evolution 'to work on'. I think this is one of the causes why free will discussion are so endless: because people like Lois use wrong concepts, or the right concepts in the wrong way.
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I don't at all deny the constraints the distant past has put on who/what I am.
If you seriously don't deny it then what I've been saying follows, so see if it makes sense this time: If the distant past had been appropriately different you would be a murderer on death row. If a murderer on death row had an appropriately different distant past he would not have committed his crime. That logically follows from determinism. The only way it might not is if there are no possible causal conditions that combined with your genetic make up would have produced that result. But then you just got lucky to get the genes you got. :-) This is very important because we realize that what we are and what we get to do is sheer luck in the sense I'm describing to you. I've never tried to argue away any of that. Though that example exposes why much of this talk strikes me as crossing over into the silly. The reason being is that there are way the hell more proximal determining factors that dictate whether I commit first degree murder, get caught, get convicted, get stuck on death row. At every stage in that flow of events there are a myriad other determining factors, (including decisions I make) most having little to do with my deep past. You know some determining factors overwhelming other determining factors. ... When I get serious and really focus on all that, it always seems to end up in an infinity mirror regression, it's reminded me of a couple times as a young kid trying real hard to imagine infinity and actually getting dizzy, it was sort of fun, but weird too and a couple mind experiments was enough and I dropped it. After all, given appropriate circumstances (determining factors) most of us, as in who we are right here and now, but given the appropriate future circumstances and our reactions to them, and that whole chain of feedbacks and events, are capable of killing someone. (I think many kid themselves into thinking we're above circumstances and feedbacks having the ability to manipulate our behaviors into realms never anticipated - I don't. Thus I try to be wary of myself as well as the circumstances and I allow anticipation to color my choices/actions. Or at least be cognizant of the potentials my choices could steer me towards. ) That I do that may not be "free" will - but I'm still left with each circumstance presenting countless choices, each informing how the situation develops, with me having to decide on one choice/action at a time. But, I digress. ... or hell, for that matter, we could find ourselves on death row for first-degree murder having committed none. Although there you probably could, quite often, find some more distant determining factors having a inordinate amount of sway, such as being born black. ~ ~ ~ It's easy enough to falsify "free" will, but that still leaves us with having a living will and choices to make. While it's' true enough that "I am the sum total of all the days that preceded this moment," that still leaves me with having to move forward and knowing my future choices, decisions, actions will influence the flow of future events. Thus the splendid mystery
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We know determinism is true in all forms of life and controlled laboratory tests have confirmed that the human brain makes decisions before we are consciously aware of them.
Yea and there are also controlled laboratory tests that confirmed Uri Geller could bend spoons but that doesn't mean he's a real psychic. You're allowing your convictions to way the heck over extrapolate from experiments that merely showed the human brain calculates and anticipates future events, nothing more. As for the rest of your rant - fine… actions, reactions, OK I had it coming. And now I smacked myself in the face on your behalf, twice even (though not that hard). As for you erecting a strawman to burn down, not so sharp. This is a thread I started, don't tell me what I can or can't try to discuss in as coherent a manner as my determined and limited intellect will allow.
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... Look at free will the way we look at evolution...
You can only do that to a certain extent. Organisms evolve due to traits that enable them to survive to the point of reproduction, in certain environmental conditions, in which others don't, as effectively, survive to reproduction. But they don't "evolve" due to ontological contingencies the same way that behavior does.
... Do you think animals have made conscious choices and changed the arc of evolution?
Uh, yeah. How do you think we human animals got here? Lois, probably you, and everyone else in the world could care less, but I realized that I used the word "ontological" above, (and even italicized it, when I meant to use was the word "ontogenic". It changes the meaning completely, so if anyone was confused, I apologize.
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but I realized that I used the word "ontological" above, (and even italicized it, when I meant to use was the word "ontogenic". It changes the meaning completely, so if anyone was confused, I apologize.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
probably you, and everyone else in the world [wouldn't notice]
You're right, I never stopped a beat.
But they don’t “evolve" due to ontological contingencies the same way that behavior does. the branch of metaphysics dealing with the nature of being. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ But they don’t “evolve" due to ontogenic contingencies the same way that behavior does. the branch of biology that deals with ontogenesis. Compare with phylogeny.
I see what you mean. Thanks
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We know determinism is true in all forms of life and controlled laboratory tests have confirmed that the human brain makes decisions before we are consciously aware of them.
Yea and there are also controlled laboratory tests that confirmed Uri Geller could bend spoons but that doesn't mean he's a real psychic. You're allowing your convictions to way the heck over extrapolate from experiments that merely showed the human brain calculates and anticipates future events, nothing more. My problem with what Lois says here, is that she is using this very limited amount of scientific evidence to over-extrapolate, that consciousness and awareness has no effect on our subsequent behavior. Also, in her statement above, there is the problem of the implication that "we" and "our brains" exist as separate entities. Beyond that, let's say, for a moment that it is found to be true that processes occur in our brain that essentially comprise any thought that we are aware of. (And let's use any verbal thought that one is aware of, e.g., "I hate Qantas." or any other thought.) Might there be other processes going on in the brain, prior to the formation of the particular neurological pattern that comprises our awareness of that thought? For sure. Does that mean that our awareness of thinking "I hate Quantas." does not possibly lead in some ways to other thoughts or behavior, that might otherwise not have been emitted? ( i.e, particular patterns of neurological sequencing, one pattern, sometimes, effecting, to a greater or lesser degree, the formation of subsequent particular patterns of neurological sequencing) If one believes fervently in determinism, how can one exclude awareness of thoughts, as a factor that can also be part of the tapestry of causal events that determine what happens?
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We know determinism is true in all forms of life and controlled laboratory tests have confirmed that the human brain makes decisions before we are consciously aware of them.
Yea and there are also controlled laboratory tests that confirmed Uri Geller could bend spoons but that doesn't mean he's a real psychic. There are no confirmed laboratoty tests that Geller can bend spoons. There are stage performances, that's all. It's unfortunate that you can't tell the difference. You're allowing your convictions to way the heck over extrapolate from experiments that merely showed the human brain calculates and anticipates future events, nothing more. No, the tests showed that decisions were made before the person was consciously aware of them. As for the rest of your rant - fine… actions, reactions, OK I had it coming. And now I smacked myself in the face on your behalf, twice even (though not that hard). As for you erecting a strawman to burn down, not so sharp. This is a thread I started, Starting a thread has no beaRing on the truth. don't tell me what I can or can't try to discuss in as coherent a manner as my determined and limited intellect will allow. You're right about the limited intellect part. Lois
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If one believes fervently in determinism, how can one exclude awareness of thoughts, as a factor that can also be part of the tapestry of causal events that determine what happens?
BINGO next . . .
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Lois
Doing the best I can with what I got. :kiss:
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Most people take free will for granted, since they feel that usually they are free to act as they please. Three assumptions can be made about free will. The first assumption is that part of one’s brain is concerned with making plans for future actions, without necessarily carrying them out. The second assumption is that one is not conscious of the “computations" done by this part of the brain but only of the “decisions" it makes – that is, its plans, depending of course on its current inputs from other parts of the brain. The third assumption is that the decision to act on one’s plan or another is also subject to the same limitations in that one has immediate recall of what is decided, but not of the computations that went into the decision.
So, although we appear to have free will, in fact, our choices have already been predetermined for us and we cannot change that. The actual cause of the decision may be clear cut or it may be determined by chaos, that is, a very small perturbation may make a big difference to the end result. This would give the appearance of the Will being “free" since it would make the outcome essentially unpredictable. Of course, conscious activities may also influence the decision mechanism.
One’s self can attempt to explain why it made a certain choice. Sometimes we may reach the correct conclusion. At other times, we will either not know or, more likely, will confabulate, because there is no conscious knowledge of the ‘reason’ for the choice. This implies that there must be a mechanism for confabulation, meaning that given a certain amount of evidence, which may or may not be misleading, part of the brain will jump to the simplest conclusion.
Francis Crick
Co-discoverer of the structure of DNA
Nobel Prize in Phsyiology or Mediicine, 1962
http://wiki.mgto.org/_media/freewill_essay.doc

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There are no confirmed laboratoty tests that Geller can bend spoons. There are stage performances, that's all. It's unfortunate that you can't tell the difference. Lois
You sure about that?
INFORMATION TRANSMISSION UNDER CONDITIONS OF SENSORY SHIELDING by Harold E. Puthoff, Ph.D., and Russell Targ, Stanford Research Institute, Menlo Park, California. Harold E. Puthoff is a senior research engineer at the Stanford Research Institute and a specialist in laser physics. He holds patents in the areas of lasers and optical devices, and is co- author of Fundamentals of Quantum Electronics, a text bridging quantum mechanics, engineering, and applied physics.BR Russell Targ is a senior research physicist at the Stanford Research Institute and an expert in the field of plasma physics. He is the inventor of the tunable plasma oscillator at microwave frequencies, the FM laser, and the high-power gas-transport laser. His publications include more than two dozen articles on lasers, plasma physics, and psychic research. Published in Nature, VOL 252, No. 5476, Oct. 18, 1974, pp. 602-607. For completeness, all of the investigations conducted at SRI on Geller and on other subjects are presented here. WE PRESENT results of experiments suggesting the existence of one or more perceptual modalities through which individuals obtain information about their environment, although this information is not presented to any known sense. The literatures and our observations lead us to conclude that such abilities can be studied under laboratory conditions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_E._Puthoff https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3MsqnWtMWY ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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Channeling Francis Crick: Most people take free will for granted, since they feel that usually they are free to act as they please. Three assumptions can be made about free will. The first assumption is that part of one’s brain is concerned with making plans for future actions, without necessarily carrying them out. The second assumption is that one is not conscious of the “computations" done by this part of the brain but only of the “decisions" it makes – that is, its plans, depending of course on its current inputs from other parts of the brain. The third assumption is that the decision to act on one’s plan or another is also subject to the same limitations in that one has immediate recall of what is decided, but not of the computations that went into the decision.
Please do explain how the above three lead to this:
So, although we appear to have free will, in fact, our choices have already been predetermined for us and we cannot change that.
And what about those that don't assume those three assumptions to begin with? :smirk:
The actual cause of the decision may be clear cut or it may be determined by chaos, that is, a very small perturbation may make a big difference to the end result. This would give the appearance of the Will being “free" since it would make the outcome essentially unpredictable. Of course, conscious activities may also influence the decision mechanism. hmmm One’s self can attempt to explain why it made a certain choice. Sometimes we may reach the correct conclusion. At other times, we will either not know or, more likely, will confabulate, because there is no conscious knowledge of the ‘reason’ for the choice. This implies that there must be a mechanism for confabulation, meaning that given a certain amount of evidence, which may or may not be misleading, part of the brain will jump to the simplest conclusion.
Francis Crick Co-discoverer of the structure of DNA Nobel Prize in Phsyiology or Mediicine, 1962 http://wiki.mgto.org/_media/freewill_essay.doc
And since you brought up Dr. Crick and since he triggers my pissy side: Why should I accept the authority of Francis Crick on this topic? He's a very smart guy, at the right place at the right time - but he's also a ruthless self-serving prick. Known to manipulate facts for his own advantage and I'm not just talking about the Rosalind Franklin affair. Got a second opinion. :long: Besides, your missing the point of this dialogue by miles, yet again.
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Channeling Francis Crick: Most people take free will for granted, since they feel that usually they are free to act as they please. Three assumptions can be made about free will. The first assumption is that part of one’s brain is concerned with making plans for future actions, without necessarily carrying them out. The second assumption is that one is not conscious of the “computations" done by this part of the brain but only of the “decisions" it makes – that is, its plans, depending of course on its current inputs from other parts of the brain. The third assumption is that the decision to act on one’s plan or another is also subject to the same limitations in that one has immediate recall of what is decided, but not of the computations that went into the decision.
Please do explain how the above three lead to this:
So, although we appear to have free will, in fact, our choices have already been predetermined for us and we cannot change that.
And what about those that don't assume those three assumptions to begin with? :smirk:
The actual cause of the decision may be clear cut or it may be determined by chaos, that is, a very small perturbation may make a big difference to the end result. This would give the appearance of the Will being “free" since it would make the outcome essentially unpredictable. Of course, conscious activities may also influence the decision mechanism. hmmm One’s self can attempt to explain why it made a certain choice. Sometimes we may reach the correct conclusion. At other times, we will either not know or, more likely, will confabulate, because there is no conscious knowledge of the ‘reason’ for the choice. This implies that there must be a mechanism for confabulation, meaning that given a certain amount of evidence, which may or may not be misleading, part of the brain will jump to the simplest conclusion.
Francis Crick Co-discoverer of the structure of DNA Nobel Prize in Phsyiology or Mediicine, 1962 http://wiki.mgto.org/_media/freewill_essay.doc
And since you brought up Dr. Crick and since he triggers my pissy side: Why should I accept the authority of Francis Crick on this topic? He's a very smart guy, at the right place at the right time - but he's also a ruthless self-serving prick. Known to manipulate facts for his own advantage and I'm not just talking about the Rosalind Franklin affair. Got a second opinion. :long: Besides, your missing the point of this dialogue by miles, yet again. Speaking of ruthless self-serving pricks.
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Most people take free will for granted, since they feel that usually they are free to act as they please.
Free to act as we please isn't a bad definition of compatibilist free will. So you can see that sometimes we have that freedom and sometimes we don't. But no, that isn't why most people feel we have libertarian free will at all. That's a mistake over CHDO combined with the concept of the choice being up to us. You're mixing the two concepts up. You must separate them and keep them separate.
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Determinism is a philosophical position. We know determinism is true in all forms of life and controlled laboratory tests have confirmed that the human brain makes decisions before we are consciously aware of them. Since there is no objective evidence that we can make choices independently of our determining influences, determinism is the rational position to take.
YES! You are completely right. Stephen, TimB, and I never denied that determinism (at least for all practical purposes) is true. BUT as I, and TimB and several others noted, and you irrationally deny, our desires, beliefs and reasons are in their turn causes for subsequent events. They are caused, but they are also causes in themselves. You take the irrational stance, that because something is caused, it in itself is not a cause for subsequent events. As long as you dogmatically refuse to see this fact, you will not even be able to understand what we are saying. You are opposing a position you do not even understand. Now that is irrational.
No amount of explanation and no amount of evidence is going to make a dent in his faith in creation, just as no amount of explanation or evidence is going to make a dent in your faith in free will.
And no amount of writing can let you understand that I fully accept determinism. But you have taken the position that determinism means 'there cannot exist a meaningful definition of free will that accounts for our societal praxis of praising, blaming and assigning responsibility'. You are so convinced of your position, that you do not even try to understand what others are saying, bleating 'we have no control over our determining factors' again and again. You can repeat as often as you like that determinism is a fact, but TimB, Stephen and I are already convinced of that. So instead of calling for 'evidence of free will', start to understand what the kind of free will is that I am defending. Stop bleating 'determinism is true, so every idea of free will is nonsense'. And don't ask what this kind of free will is: I explained this so often, but you keep as deaf as a post. Wonder of all this yelling in italic, bold and red helps... I am afraid not. Discussing with a dogmatic believer is useless...
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I don't at all deny the constraints the distant past has put on who/what I am.
If you seriously don't deny it then what I've been saying follows, so see if it makes sense this time: If the distant past had been appropriately different you would be a murderer on death row. If a murderer on death row had an appropriately different distant past he would not have committed his crime. That logically follows from determinism. The only way it might not is if there are no possible causal conditions that combined with your genetic make up would have produced that result. But then you just got lucky to get the genes you got. :-) This is very important because we realize that what we are and what we get to do is sheer luck in the sense I'm describing to you. I've never tried to argue away any of that. OK, good. Well this is the key part regarding praise and blame etc. So what people like me believe and some compatibilists believe too, is that belief in Libertarian Free will makes people believe we deserve what happens to us as a result of our choices, in a way we can't possibly. We think this negatively warps our moral intuitions in our daily judging of ourselves and each other on an individual scale and on greater scales. We treat people as if they were entirely to blame, as if they alone would have to have behaved differently for there to have been a different outcome. There is a free will illusion which comes from combining CHDO in the actual circumstances, with the choice being "up to us ". We think we would treat ourselves and each other better if we didn't believe in Libertarian Free Will https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfOMqehl-ZA
Though that example exposes why much of this talk strikes me as crossing over into the silly. The reason being is that there are way the hell more proximal determining factors that dictate whether I commit first degree murder,
Yes of course there are but for them to have been different the distant past would have had to be different too, assuming determinism.
get caught, get convicted, get stuck on death row. At every stage in that flow of events there are a myriad other determining factors, (including decisions I make) most having little to do with my deep past. You know some determining factors overwhelming other determining factors. ...
All as they are because the distant past was as it was (assuming determinism) and all would have required the distant past to have been different, to have been otherwise.
... or hell, for that matter, we could find ourselves on death row for first-degree murder having committed none. Although there you probably could, quite often, find some more distant determining factors having a inordinate amount of sway, such as being born black.
Yes. But the point about the sway the distant past has that I'm making is not to pick out individual factors. It's the state of the universe as it was then. Since this is the only way the universe could be given the way it was then, assuming determinism. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/determinism-causal/
Determinism: The world is governed by (or is under the sway of) determinism if and only if, given a specified way things are at a time t, the way things go thereafter is fixed as a matter of natural law.
While it's' true enough that "I am the sum total of all the days that preceded this moment," that still leaves me with having to move forward and knowing my future choices, decisions, actions will influence the flow of future events. Thus the splendid mystery
Yep.
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Starting reading this I thought I would read the first rational argumentation from Lois on this subject, but no, confusing me, because she is not able to set the text between quote tags, she is just citing a biologist, who based on his speciality, has nothing more to say about free will than every other well informed and thinking person.

Co-discoverer of the structure of DNA Nobel Prize in Phsyiology or Mediicine, 1962
We should take 6 grams of vitamin C per day - Linus Carl Pauling, Nobel Prize Chemistry 1954
Quantum theory is now being fruitfully combined with theories of information and computation. These developments may lead to an explanation of processes still not understood within conventional science such as telepathy, an area where Britain is at the forefront of research.
- Brian David Josephson, Nobel Prize in Physics, 1973. Now back to the subject: There are several errors in Crick's text: - His use of 'pre-determined'. Events are determined, of course, but they are determined by their immediate preceding events. Pre-determined tastes after, 'whatever you want, it changes nothing', which is fatalism. - The computational processes Crick describes are consciousness. Not of the computations themselves, of course, but of our desires, beliefs, our surroundings etc. This is an error even a first year's philosophy student would not make anymore. - If you notice that you are driving to a child on the street, you will brake. This is a combination of your observation (the child), your desire (not to kill an innocent child), and your belief (pushing the pedal will stop the car). These factors only work while they are just that: an observation, a desire, and a belief. What you do not know is how your brain does it. As Crick says, you are not aware of the computational level. But consciousness was not selected for to observe its own nerve cells. This is something, Lois, you cannot account for, and of course you will avoid to react on it, because it shows that your ideas about consciousness, free will and determinism are nothing else than dogmatism: if consciousness plays no causal role, how was it possible that evolution selected for it? What is the evolutionary advantage of consciousness?
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A theist could also say he has no control over what happens. Is he also a nihilist? Would a theist say god is in control or not?
Interesting thought. But in the case of Christianity it doesn't work: to rightly reward or punish people who did good or bad, free will is needed. But it might function that way in some versions of Hinduism? But I am not enough in Hinduism to answer that question. If you are not a nihilist (as I suppose) why you aren't when you do not have free will? Can people make you responsible for what you do?
Look at free will the way we look at evolution. Do you think animals have made conscious choices and changed the arc of evolution?
That is pure nonsense. I am born with two arms and two legs, I cannot help being that way. I cannot help that I do not like Brussels sprouts. But what I do is causally dependent on what I think and decide. But what I think and decide of course has also a causal history. You seem to deny the existence of a determined decision machine. BTW. Do not always just have a look at the last posting in a thread, but also what is said since the last time you looked into it. You will find there many questions and arguments pointed at you, that you just overlook. Speak for yourself.