We don't assume a dog barks because he first thinks it over. He barks because he is driven to bark by instinct (a determining factor). I think human decision making operates on a similar principle but we have a conscious thought process that makes us believe we are thinking outside our natural instincts and determining factors. As far as we can tell other animals don't have that.
Lois
I think you need to look deeper into how the human brain has evolved. The one word "instinct" is not broad enough to cover the complexity. We have parts of our brain that function similar to lizards and others more like higher intelligent creatures, then we have our highest functions, like language, that other animals barely have at all. My guess is, what you are describing is those higher functions being aware of the lower functions. This isn't a belief in something that isn't there, it's an experience of different thought processes going on in one brain.
This doesn't solve the determinism problem, because we still can't say that even our level of thinking is not driven by instinct. It's just different than an instinct to say, choke the sh** out of someone who is being a jerk.
Only in the sense that we THINK we are acting out of free will. Even hard determinists are determined to think that way. We all act and speak of our decisions as if we are making them freely, even those of us who know better.
If I make the assertion "I made a voluntary choice" then do you think that's mistaken?
Yes. All of our choices are involuntary but we tend to assume they are voluntary.
Lois
We don't assume a dog barks because he first thinks it over. He barks because he is driven to bark by instinct (a determining factor). I think human decision making operates on a similar principle but we have a conscious thought process that makes us believe we are thinking outside our natural instincts and determining factors. As far as we can tell other animals don't have that.
Lois
I think you need to look deeper into how the human brain has evolved. The one word "instinct" is not broad enough to cover the complexity. We have parts of our brain that function similar to lizards and others more like higher intelligent creatures, then we have our highest functions, like language, that other animals barely have at all. My guess is, what you are describing is those higher functions being aware of the lower functions. This isn't a belief in something that isn't there, it's an experience of different thought processes going on in one brain.
This doesn't solve the determinism problem, because we still can't say that even our level of thinking is not driven by instinct. It's just different than an instinct to say, choke the sh** out of someone who is being a jerk.
Being awareof what we're doing does not mean we are in control of our actions or thoughts. We simply have the ability to assume we're in control. As I said in my previous post our actions are SIMILAR to instinct in that we don't control them, not that they are exactly the same.
Lois
Being awareof what we're doing does not mean we are in control of our actions or thoughts. We simply have the ability to assume we're in control. As I said in my previous post our actions are SIMILAR to instinct in that we don't control them, not that they are exactly the same.
Lois
No argument, just pointing out what I think I know. Which ain't much. I kinda see the conscious voice in my head as simply a narrative. Things are already happening, decisions made using some algorithm that I'm barely aware of, then "I", the "me" that I think I am, comes along and says, "what a good boy am I", or "whoops".
Yes. All of our choices are involuntary but we tend to assume they are voluntary.
Lois
Presumably I can still say "Well, I wasn't under the influence of mind-altering drugs, and I wasn't suffering symptoms of mental illness, and no-one used any threat of coercion to try to get me to do what I didn't want to do".
Yes. All of our choices are involuntary but we tend to assume they are voluntary.
Lois
Presumably I can still say "Well, I wasn't under the influence of mind-altering drugs, and I wasn't suffering symptoms of mental illness, and no-one used any threat of coercion to try to get me to do what I didn't want to do".
Those are great points and exactly what we need to start considering if we go down this road of determinism. Currently, the insanity plea is pretty difficult to pull off. Further down the spectrum, we classify people as "vulnerable adults" and take away many of their rights to make their own decisions for their own safety. The rest of us are in between somewhere. The whole of idea blaming something other than own minds for our actions is a thorny issue.
We know alcohol impairs our ability to drive, but you don't get to run a stoplight because of it, you decided to have the drink in the first place. Or did you? Isn't is Budweiser's fault for making those ads that made you do it? If they aren't making you buy beer, then why are they making ads at all? And what about my alcoholic father, isn't it his fault? (Purely hypothetical, FYI).
Chemistry may have already proven that everything is just a reaction to something else, but culture has a long way to go in catching up with the implications of that.
Those are great points and exactly what we need to start considering if we go down this road of determinism. Currently, the insanity plea is pretty difficult to pull off. Further down the spectrum, we classify people as "vulnerable adults" and take away many of their rights to make their own decisions for their own safety. The rest of us are in between somewhere. The whole of idea blaming something other than own minds for our actions is a thorny issue.
We know alcohol impairs our ability to drive, but you don't get to run a stoplight because of it, you decided to have the drink in the first place. Or did you? Isn't is Budweiser's fault for making those ads that made you do it? If they aren't making you buy beer, then why are they making ads at all? And what about my alcoholic father, isn't it his fault? (Purely hypothetical, FYI).
Chemistry may have already proven that everything is just a reaction to something else, but culture has a long way to go in catching up with the implications of that.
I have a past personal experience of a kind that is related to these considerations.
In the past I experienced a psychotic episode, from which I recovered with medication. And after that happened my mother would say "It is not your fault that you dropped out of university, that was an early warning sign of your illness". But I found this somewhat difficult to accept, I tended to think that I ought to be held responsible. It is interesting trying to draw the line between things that you are responsible for and things that are not your fault because they are part of your illness, it is not always such an easy judgement to make. And ultimately it is a continuum, symptoms of mental illness are on a continuum with the problems that other people have who do not suffer from mental illness. I currently have a friend who is suffering from depression and seems to tend to blame herself for being unmotivated more than she ought to. It can be a tricky matter to decide what should be considered a moral shortcoming and what should be considered a symptom of an illness.
My mother insists that alcoholism is not a choice. But I think it is a choice. But alcoholics are genetically predisposed to have more difficulty in exerting self-control than other people, and obviously at a certain point the burdens of changing your behaviour would be quite substantial because you would have to go through withdrawal. But it is still a choice at each stage of the process, or at least if you are prepared to say that anyone ever makes any choices at all. But there can be considerations which make you less blameworthy for making an imprudent choice.
In the past I experienced a psychotic episode, from which I recovered with medication. And after that happened my mother would say "It is not your fault that you dropped out of university, that was an early warning sign of your illness".
Thanks for sharing that. We can't know what's going on with people's head, unless they let us know. I didn't have actual episodes, but there were times I wondered. Sometimes I wished my parents were more demanding, like when I failed Calculus. Not uncommon, but they could have seen that as more of a warning sign. I managed, just like everyone, but who knows what human beings are capable of if we dealt with things like mental illness and alcoholism as truly treatable and as something that should be dealt with, rather than just left to see how we all turn out.
With laws and systems as they are now, those are going to continue to be things that are only handled if the individual seeks help. People who are at a point where they can't or won't take their medication on schedule, or check in within someone when they feel like having a drink will continue to fall through the cracks.
Being awareof what we're doing does not mean we are in control of our actions or thoughts. We simply have the ability to assume we're in control. As I said in my previous post our actions are SIMILAR to instinct in that we don't control them, not that they are exactly the same.
Lois
No argument, just pointing out what I think I know. Which ain't much. I kinda see the conscious voice in my head as simply a narrative. Things are already happening, decisions made using some algorithm that I'm barely aware of, then "I", the "me" that I think I am, comes along and says, "what a good boy am I", or "whoops".
You've got it, Lausten. Congratulations.
Those are great points and exactly what we need to start considering if we go down this road of determinism. Currently, the insanity plea is pretty difficult to pull off. Further down the spectrum, we classify people as "vulnerable adults" and take away many of their rights to make their own decisions for their own safety. The rest of us are in between somewhere. The whole of idea blaming something other than own minds for our actions is a thorny issue.
We know alcohol impairs our ability to drive, but you don't get to run a stoplight because of it, you decided to have the drink in the first place. Or did you? Isn't is Budweiser's fault for making those ads that made you do it? If they aren't making you buy beer, then why are they making ads at all? And what about my alcoholic father, isn't it his fault? (Purely hypothetical, FYI).
Chemistry may have already proven that everything is just a reaction to something else, but culture has a long way to go in catching up with the implications of that.
I have a past personal experience of a kind that is related to these considerations.
In the past I experienced a psychotic episode, from which I recovered with medication. And after that happened my mother would say "It is not your fault that you dropped out of university, that was an early warning sign of your illness". But I found this somewhat difficult to accept, I tended to think that I ought to be held responsible. It is interesting trying to draw the line between things that you are responsible for and things that are not your fault because they are part of your illness, it is not always such an easy judgement to make. And ultimately it is a continuum, symptoms of mental illness are on a continuum with the problems that other people have who do not suffer from mental illness. I currently have a friend who is suffering from depression and seems to tend to blame herself for being unmotivated more than she ought to. It can be a tricky matter to decide what should be considered a moral shortcoming and what should be considered a symptom of an illness.
My mother insists that alcoholism is not a choice. But I think it is a choice. But alcoholics are genetically predisposed to have more difficulty in exerting self-control than other people, and obviously at a certain point the burdens of changing your behaviour would be quite substantial because you would have to go through withdrawal. But it is still a choice at each stage of the process, or at least if you are prepared to say that anyone ever makes any choices at all. But there can be considerations which make you less blameworthy for making an imprudent choice.
I don't think we are blameworthy for anything we do. We are simply reacting to conditions we have no control over. Your mother is right. Everything we do is a sympTom of our determining factors. If you dropped out of university it was as a result of your illness, not some "moral shortcoming" on your part. If your friend lacks motivation, it is also a reflection of determining factors. IMO, there is no such thing as a moral shortcoming. Our minds respond to our genes and environment. The idea of moral shortcomings has religious roots, not rational ones. I also doubt that alcoholism is a choice. If you have the determining factors to become an alcoholic and alcohol is available you will become one, and unless other factors intervene, you will most likely remain one. If alcohol is unavailable the alcoholic personality will find another outlet, probably a more dangerous one. You had the determining factors to be psychotic. Intervening factors (medication, therapy) changed your environment enough that you recovered and it had nothing to do with "moral shortcomings". You are a product of your genes and your environment. In your case if you had lived in another era, you might have remained psychotic as most people did before modern psycology and pharmacology. Neither you nor any other person exhibiting symptoms of psychosis had anything to do with the progress of the disease. I suspect you are blaming yourself for something you had no control over. If you are better now it had to do with a change in your environment, and it was not a result of some conscious intention on your part. All anyone can do to change the course of our lives or the lives others is to change our environment or have it changed for us. Nothing else will have any appreciable effect on our thoughts or actions.
Lois
I don't think we are blameworthy for anything we do. We are simply reacting to conditions we have no control over. Your mother is right. Everything we do is a sympTom of our determining factors. If you dropped out of university it was as a result of your illness, not some "moral shortcoming" on your part. If your friend lacks motivation, it is also a reflection of determining factors. IMO, there is no such thing as a moral shortcoming. Our minds respond to our genes and environment. The idea of moral shortcomings has religious roots, not rational ones. I also doubt that alcoholism is a choice. If you have the determining factors to become an alcoholic and alcohol is available you will become one, and unless other factors intervene, you will most likely remain one. If alcohol is unavailable the alcoholic personality will find another outlet, probably a more dangerous one. You had the determining factors to be psychotic. Intervening factors (medication, therapy) changed your environment enough that you recovered and it had nothing to do with "moral shortcomings". You are a product of your genes and your environment. In your case if you had lived in another era, you might have remained psychotic as most people did before modern psycology and pharmacology. Neither you nor any other person exhibiting symptoms of psychosis had anything to do with the progress of the disease. I suspect you are blaming yourself for something you had no control over. If you are better now it had to do with a change in your environment, and it was not a result of some conscious intention on your part. All anyone can do to change the course of our lives or the lives others is to change our environment or have it changed for us. Nothing else will have any appreciable effect on our thoughts or actions.
It's certainly a very interesting idea that no-one is blameworthy for anything. I once had a conversation with a man on the internet who said that his brother had been murdered, and that he was a hard determinist and he didn't think that the perpetrators were blameworthy and that he hoped that they would eventually be rehabilitated back into society and lead good and fulfilling lives. But I wonder if you would be prepared to go that far. If someone seriously hurt you or someone you love, do you really think that you would be able to hold the attitude that they are not blameworthy?
I don't think we are blameworthy for anything we do. We are simply reacting to conditions we have no control over. Your mother is right. Everything we do is a sympTom of our determining factors. If you dropped out of university it was as a result of your illness, not some "moral shortcoming" on your part. If your friend lacks motivation, it is also a reflection of determining factors. IMO, there is no such thing as a moral shortcoming. Our minds respond to our genes and environment. The idea of moral shortcomings has religious roots, not rational ones. I also doubt that alcoholism is a choice. If you have the determining factors to become an alcoholic and alcohol is available you will become one, and unless other factors intervene, you will most likely remain one. If alcohol is unavailable the alcoholic personality will find another outlet, probably a more dangerous one. You had the determining factors to be psychotic. Intervening factors (medication, therapy) changed your environment enough that you recovered and it had nothing to do with "moral shortcomings". You are a product of your genes and your environment. In your case if you had lived in another era, you might have remained psychotic as most people did before modern psycology and pharmacology. Neither you nor any other person exhibiting symptoms of psychosis had anything to do with the progress of the disease. I suspect you are blaming yourself for something you had no control over. If you are better now it had to do with a change in your environment, and it was not a result of some conscious intention on your part. All anyone can do to change the course of our lives or the lives others is to change our environment or have it changed for us. Nothing else will have any appreciable effect on our thoughts or actions.
It's certainly a very interesting idea that no-one is blameworthy for anything. I once had a conversation with a man on the internet who said that his brother had been murdered, and that he was a hard determinist and he didn't think that the perpetrators were blameworthy and that he hoped that they would eventually be rehabilitated back into society and lead good and fulfilling lives. But I wonder if you would be prepared to go that far. If someone seriously hurt you or someone you love, do you really think that you would be able to hold the attitude that they are not blameworthy?
If I understand Lois, part of our decision making is involuntary (subconscious), this would be the part we really cannot control. However part of our decision making is conscious and becomes part of the overall deterministic condition which governs our behavior. This is the part we think of as having free will and for which we can be held responsible.
We may pick an apple of a fruit tree in the wild, but we may not steal an apple from an apple cart. Subconsciously we want to pick the apple, but the law forbids us from taking the apple. This is not a free will decision, it is a coerced decision, however it is always deterministic.
Am I on the right track here?
I don't think we are blameworthy for anything we do. We are simply reacting to conditions we have no control over. Your mother is right. Everything we do is a sympTom of our determining factors. If you dropped out of university it was as a result of your illness, not some "moral shortcoming" on your part. If your friend lacks motivation, it is also a reflection of determining factors. IMO, there is no such thing as a moral shortcoming. Our minds respond to our genes and environment. The idea of moral shortcomings has religious roots, not rational ones. I also doubt that alcoholism is a choice. If you have the determining factors to become an alcoholic and alcohol is available you will become one, and unless other factors intervene, you will most likely remain one. If alcohol is unavailable the alcoholic personality will find another outlet, probably a more dangerous one. You had the determining factors to be psychotic. Intervening factors (medication, therapy) changed your environment enough that you recovered and it had nothing to do with "moral shortcomings". You are a product of your genes and your environment. In your case if you had lived in another era, you might have remained psychotic as most people did before modern psycology and pharmacology. Neither you nor any other person exhibiting symptoms of psychosis had anything to do with the progress of the disease. I suspect you are blaming yourself for something you had no control over. If you are better now it had to do with a change in your environment, and it was not a result of some conscious intention on your part. All anyone can do to change the course of our lives or the lives others is to change our environment or have it changed for us. Nothing else will have any appreciable effect on our thoughts or actions.
It's certainly a very interesting idea that no-one is blameworthy for anything. I once had a conversation with a man on the internet who said that his brother had been murdered, and that he was a hard determinist and he didn't think that the perpetrators were blameworthy and that he hoped that they would eventually be rehabilitated back into society and lead good and fulfilling lives. But I wonder if you would be prepared to go that far. If someone seriously hurt you or someone you love, do you really think that you would be able to hold the attitude that they are not blameworthy?
We are also determined to place blame, and to punish. It doesn't matter if we're determinists or believe in free will. We are all going to act according to our determining factors and that means we will have a tendency to blame people.
I can only say that since I developed a deterministic stance I am much more forgiving and understanding of everyone's shortcomings, including my own. I have no idea how I would react to someone murdering a loved one. We react both intellectually and emotionally and both of those reactions will be present at the same time. Emotionally, we can blame while intellectually we can be more understanding. I often imagine that our emotional self is like a child inside us, immature, uncontrollable, unable to think rationally, while our intellectual self is like a knowing parent trying to teach the "child" to calm down and think things through.
Lois
......
We are also determined to place blame, and to punish. It doesn't matter if we're determinists or believe in free will. We are all going to act according to our determining factors and that means we will have a tendency to blame people.
I can only say that since I developed a deterministic stance I am much more forgiving and understanding of everyone's shortcomings, including my own. I have no idea how I would react to someone murdering a loved one. We react both intellectually and emotionally and both of those reactions will be present at the same time. Emotionally, we can blame while intellectually we can be more understanding. I often imagine that our emotional self is like a child inside us, immature, uncontrollable, unable to think rationally, while our intellectual self is like a knowing parent trying to teach the "child" to calm down and think things through.
I have a friend who is a social worker who is also a skeptic about moral responsibility. He often works with people who suffer from mental illness or who have been incarcerated and he believes that no-one is ever blameworthy for anything they do.
But I mean, would it follow from your stance that guilt is always an irrational emotion? Any time I feel guilty about something I should think to myself that my feeling is irrational? Or not?
Yes. All of our choices are involuntary but we tend to assume they are voluntary.
Lois
Presumably I can still say "Well, I wasn't under the influence of mind-altering drugs, and I wasn't suffering symptoms of mental illness, and no-one used any threat of coercion to try to get me to do what I didn't want to do".
Those are great points and exactly what we need to start considering if we go down this road of determinism. Currently, the insanity plea is pretty difficult to pull off. Further down the spectrum, we classify people as "vulnerable adults" and take away many of their rights to make their own decisions for their own safety. The rest of us are in between somewhere. The whole of idea blaming something other than own minds for our actions is a thorny issue.
We know alcohol impairs our ability to drive, but you don't get to run a stoplight because of it, you decided to have the drink in the first place. Or did you? Isn't is Budweiser's fault for making those ads that made you do it? If they aren't making you buy beer, then why are they making ads at all? And what about my alcoholic father, isn't it his fault? (Purely hypothetical, FYI).
Chemistry may have already proven that everything is just a reaction to something else, but culture has a long way to go in catching up with the implications of that.
That's right. It doesn't matter how many people accept the idea of determinism, everyone is still guided by other factors, such as the motivation to blame and punish. We will still act as if people do things out of free will and we will continue to blame and punish. A lot of factors would have to change before we'd see much difference in the way people place blame. An conscious acceptance of determinism is only one infinitesimal factor. The world won't change, people's actions won't change, at least not in the short run. What will change is our understanding of how people behave. IMO, it has an overall calming effect.
Lois
That's right. It doesn't matter how many people accept the idea of determinism, everyone is still guided by other factors, such as the motivation to blame and punish. We will still act as if people do things out of free will and we will continue to blame and punish. A lot of factors would have to change before we'd see much difference in the way people place blame. An conscious acceptance of determinism is only one infinitesimal factor. The world won't change, people's actions won't change, at least not in the short run. What will change is our understanding of how people behave. IMO, it has an overall calming effect.
Calming? Maybe for you and me, but a lot of people get pretty upset when you say someone can't control their actions. "Can't control your actions" is a misinterpretation of determinism, maybe, but that's not the point. I'm saying that simply trying to sell the idea of determinism is not sufficient. Even if you did, "punishment" would still look similar. We could still determine that someone is unsafe to society due to their chemical makeup and justify incarcerating them. We still need to examine when and how to attempt to rehabilitate, but we're already experimenting with that in many ways.
Yes. All of our choices are involuntary but we tend to assume they are voluntary.
Lois
Presumably I can still say "Well, I wasn't under the influence of mind-altering drugs, and I wasn't suffering symptoms of mental illness, and no-one used any threat of coercion to try to get me to do what I didn't want to do".
That might all be true but there are factors you are not aware of. Neither you nor I nor anyone else can say we are not under the influence of factors we don't know about. You may know you are not inder the influence of mind-altering drugs or suffering from any mental illnesses you know about, but how can you know what you don't know? For example, how can you be sure you aren't breathing in some unidentified and undetected gas you don't know is present that is affecting your decisions? Or how can you know that you are not suffering from some mental condition that has not yet been identified but which is affecting your decisions? Those are just two things you may not know about. What of the thousands (or millions) of other factors you have no knowledge of but which are affecting your decisions?
Lois
We are also determined to place blame, and to punish. It doesn't matter if we're determinists or believe in free will. We are all going to act according to our determining factors and that means we will have a tendency to blame people.
I can only say that since I developed a deterministic stance I am much more forgiving and understanding of everyone's shortcomings, including my own. I have no idea how I would react to someone murdering a loved one. We react both intellectually and emotionally and both of those reactions will be present at the same time. Emotionally, we can blame while intellectually we can be more understanding. I often imagine that our emotional self is like a child inside us, immature, uncontrollable, unable to think rationally, while our intellectual self is like a knowing parent trying to teach the "child" to calm down and think things through.
I have a friend who is a social worker who is also a skeptic about moral responsibility. He often works with people who suffer from mental illness or who have been incarcerated and he believes that no-one is ever blameworthy for anything they do.
But I mean, would it follow from your stance that guilt is always an irrational emotion? Any time I feel guilty about something I should think to myself that my feeling is irrational? Or not?
Not necessarily. It's just that you can't know all of the factors that drove whatever you did (or didn't do) that you are feeling guilty about. It's part of our nature (driven by deterministic factors), to feel guilty. Guilt is not an irrational emotion. In fact emotions are never irrational. They are products of our determining factors over which we have no control. One person may feel guilty about something another person feels no guilt at all about.
Your social worker friend is, in my opinion, right about no one being blameworthy about whatever they do. Blame is a human concept. We all have our own view of who should be blamed for anything. But placing blame and feeling guilt are just human concepts that are also driven by unconscious dtermining factors, like everything else. There are no standards of blame or guilt. We each have our determined stance. Nothing changes if we recognize this. We will continue to blame and feel guilt and wish to punish because we have no control over those feelings arising within us.
Lois
Guilt is not an irrational emotion. In fact emotions are never irrational. They are products of our determining factors over which we have no control.
You are making a huge category error here, Lois. You confuse the content of an emotion with the physical conditions of its appearance. Using your line of thought one can say that "2 + 2 = 5" is not wrong, because it is a product of determining factors: every falsehood said by anybody is determined by its causes. You cannot use the determined/not-determined distinction to see the difference between true or false propositions.
Same with voluntary or non-voluntary actions: if you look at them from the viewpoint of 'are they determined or not' then of course there is no difference between them. Both are determined. But if you look more carefully how they are determined, then there are differences, and some of these differences are sanctioned by our social practice. If, as Rupert says, I "wasn’t under the influence of mind-altering drugs, and I wasn’t suffering symptoms of mental illness, and no-one used any threat of coercion to try to get me to do what I didn’t want to do", then the action is voluntary. You cannot use the determined/not-determined distinction to see the difference between voluntary and non-voluntary actions.
Your social worker friend is, in my opinion, right about no one being blameworthy about whatever they do. Blame is a human concept. We all have our own view of who should be blamed for anything. But placing blame and feeling guilt are just human concepts that are also driven by unconscious dtermining factors, like everything else. There are no standards of blame or guilt. We each have our determined stance. Nothing changes if we recognize this. We will continue to blame and feel guilt and wish to punish because we have no control over those feelings arising within us.
Do you think that your view has normative implications for how we should run our criminal justice system?