There is a growing body of evidence that a wide range of personality traits are strongly influenced, maybe even determined, by chemical conditions in the womb. This encompasses things ranging from sexual orientation to disposition to musical ability.
Suppose that in the near future it becomes possible to "engineer" your child's personality by diet, pills or injections administered at appropriate point during pregnancy. What ethical concerns do you see?
What if you could take a pill that would dramatically change your child's chances of being intraverted, cheerful, athletic, mathematical, adventurous, or conservative?
Would it make a difference if it was a pill or a vitamin supplement or just eating more X?
Would you draw a distinction for traits that are commonly considered a disability (like ADD or Autisim or maybe homosexuality) vs. those that are just normal personality traits?
How would it change society if a mother could choose her child's personality?
There would likely be trade offs. If you knew that eating more brusselsprouts (for example) while you were pregnant would improve your child's intelligence ability but increase their chances of suffering from anxiety as an adult -- what would you choose?
What if it were discovered that some combination of diet & drugs could determine whether your child would be conservative or liberal, religious or atheist, serious or fun loving?
And I should add, at least some of this is likely to become a realistic possibility in the next few years, long before it would be possible to genetically engineering such traits.
Posted by Foust (Member # 3043) on :
I don't think there are any real moral concerns here.
Let's say you completely buy into determinism. We have no soul, no disembodied mind - we are just a series of chemical reactions. Then what does it matter if we induce one chemical reaction over another?
If you do believe in a soul or some sort of free will, then what does it matter what genetic chances are introduced in the womb? You're still you, the person God (or whatever) made you to be.
That being said, the idea of absolute physical determinism is kinda goofy. I do consider myself a hard-core materialist, but the idea of complete determinism is just as silly as the idea of complete free will.
I'm being interrupted, gotta go.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
I think to a great extent we can determine this by a "would I want it done to me" question, and trying not privileging either action or inaction while asking this.
Would I want to be autistic? A very strong NO. So I wouldn't do it to my children, and if there was a way to prevent autism from my children, I'd take it in a heartbeat.
Would I want to be gay? A less strong "no", which is primarily mainly caused not by the condition itself but by the context of living in a heteronormative (and often homophobic) society.
If I could choose to be bisexual though, I'd probably take it; so I'd likewise be tempted by a diet/drug that would increase the possibility (or ensure) of bisexual children.
quote:If you knew that eating more brusselsprouts (for example) while you were pregnant would improve your child's intelligence ability but increase their chances of suffering from anxiety as an adult -- what would you choose?
It probably depends on how much overall happiness/success I would anticipate for them throughout their lives.
quote:drugs could determine whether your child would be conservative or liberal, religious or atheist,
If they determined directly "believe in thing A" versus "believe in thing B", either determination would be a negative by itself, as it would mean that thing was believed for the sake of the belief rather than because it held the correct truth-value and corresponded to the reality of the universe.
If they merely indirectly led to these beliefs, by more circuitous and more proper paths, then I would choose the values that best corresponded to reality as I perceived it, since this would mean a greater correspondence with such positive features as sanity, intelligence, problem-solving.
In the current circumstances for me this would mean "atheism", rather than "religion".
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:I don't think there are any real moral concerns here.
Your post argues that are no real moral concerns *anywhere*, so frankly you don't belong in this discussion. You are not discussing the topic in question, you are just saying "nothing matters". Which is actually self-evidently false.
Some things matter to me. Hence some things matter. Hence your position is disproved.
quote:Then what does it matter if we induce one chemical reaction over another?
Moral concerns matter, because they matter to people, and people are real.
They matter to people, because people are so made as to care about what happens to them and to other people, regardless of whether they're made out of chemical reactions or "soul-stuff".
A child doesn't know if things are made out of chemicals or soul-stuff, but they still matter to it. And hence they matter full-stop.
quote:That being said, the idea of absolute physical determinism is kinda goofy. I do consider myself a hard-core materialist, but the idea of complete determinism is just as silly as the idea of complete free will.
What is goofy is that you think determinism and free will are opposites. They aren't opposites but REQUIREMENTS of each other. If our present selves don't determine our choices then we don't have free will. Free will is only meaningful if we DETERMINE our choices, hence free will is directly proportional to (and meaningful IF AND ONLY IF) determinism.
Posted by PSI Teleport (Member # 5545) on :
quote: Your post argues that are no real moral concerns *anywhere*, so frankly you don't belong in this discussion.
Wow. I...think you jumped to a lot of conclusions about Foust's intentions, and in doing so missed the point of his comment: that human intervention should not be able to trump God's sovereignty over the matter, if you believe in such a thing. And if you don't believe in such a thing, then where is the moral problem?
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:I don't think there are any real moral concerns here.
I think it raises all kinds of ethical questions that have nothing to do with free will, the soul or chemical determinism. Conditions in the woman are at most one of many components that influence development of a human being.
Posted by Strider (Member # 1807) on :
quote:Let's say you completely buy into determinism. We have no soul, no disembodied mind - we are just a series of chemical reactions. Then what does it matter if we induce one chemical reaction over another?
I think it matters a lot. But defending that would take a lot of time, I'll try later to put something together.
Let me ask you this though, why would determinism, or even a non-deterministic universe where there is no free will, make all life meaningless and all choices irrelevant? You seem to be arguing that there can be no ethics without god, why?
Posted by dkw (Member # 3264) on :
Thinking back to when I was pregnant, I would have to be really motivated to adopt any eating plan other than "What will make me the least queasy?"
If there was evidence that eating or not eating certain things would drastically reduce the chances of serious life-threatening illnesses I would probably do it, but for personality traits? I'll take whatever massive quantities of watermelon gets me.
Posted by Synesthesia (Member # 4774) on :
Other than health, no, I would not tamper with a future child like that....
Unless it made them more likely to have synesthesia. But, supposed they were driven up a tree and overwhelmed with colours that swim in front of their eyes?
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:If there was evidence that eating or not eating certain things would drastically reduce the chances of serious life-threatening illnesses I would probably do it, but for personality traits? I'll take whatever massive quantities of watermelon gets me.
I presume that you avoided alcohol and nicotine when pregnant? They can cause serious birth defects, but are very rarely life-threatening. What about folic acid supplements? These reduce the incidence of a number of birth defects, but once again these are rarely life threatening.
What if there was a pill that could dramatically reduce the incidence of Schizophrenia or any other serious psychological problem?
Where do you draw the line?
[ June 30, 2011, 11:35 AM: Message edited by: The Rabbit ]
Posted by dkw (Member # 3264) on :
I don't drink or smoke anyway, so no I didn't specifically avoid them while pregnant.
And I did a lousy job of taking my prenatal vitamins last time -- I think I maybe took 12-15 of them the whole 9 months.
Posted by Anna (Member # 2582) on :
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit:
quote:If there was evidence that eating or not eating certain things would drastically reduce the chances of serious life-threatening illnesses I would probably do it, but for personality traits? I'll take whatever massive quantities of watermelon gets me.
I presume that you avoided alcohol and nicotine when pregnant? They can cause serious birth defects, but are very rarely life-threatening. What about folic acid supplements? These reduce the incidence of a number of birth defects, but once again these are rarely life threatening.
Spina bifida, which folic acid help preventing, is a serious disease.
Posted by dkw (Member # 3264) on :
It would be more accurate to expand "life-threatening" in my post to include threatening quality of life and life-shortening, not only immediately-terminal illnesses.
I did take folic acid supplements before I got pregnant, but once the nausea (and brain-scatteredness) kicked in the vitamin regime was not as regular as it should have been. I feel bad about that.
Edit to add: "Feel bad" is an understatement. I in no way think that pre-natal vitamins are unimportant. I only posted what I did to point out that for me if I can't even keep to a vitamin regime that has clear and documented heath benefits while pregnant the idea that I would change my eating habits or take daily pills to change personality traits or reduce the chance of social anxiety is ludicrous. Other women have much different experiences while pregnant, of course, or are more motivated to affect those sorts of traits. But you did ask "what if you could . . ." and "would you . . ." and the answer for me is that I doubt I would even if I might want to.
[ June 30, 2011, 12:24 PM: Message edited by: dkw ]
Posted by Olivet (Member # 1104) on :
If I could, I would pop out Aspies (or near-Aspies) like and Aspie-popping machine.
Which, I guess I sort of did anyway. (I was going to throw in a smilie, but to be perfectly honest, I'm not even entirely certain whether or not I'm joking.)
Posted by Foust (Member # 3043) on :
And I'm back, rather belatedly.
I'll complete my original thought, then deal with the responses.
The OP has a duel subtext. The first subtext is an anxiety about a parent's influence on their children more generally, the second is an anxiety about what humanity actually is.
So, parents. Parents take their kids to be reflections of themselves to the world. If the kid is smart, then the parent must be smart. If the kid is well adjusted, then the parent is emotionally stable.
Except, of course, kids are individuals. Kids grow up and inevitably stymy their parent's best laid plans for constructing perfect little robotic reflections of themselves - because hey hey, personality development is ridiculously complicated.
You're not going to engineer your kid out of a craving for commodities a sense of disgust at working in a Cube Farm or any of the other things that go along with living in our culture. You're still going to raise a 21st century North American, with all the pros and cons that entails.
All this stuff about genetic manipulation just seems like a really, really expensive version of forcing your kid take piano classes.
That's what the "ethical" question in the OP is basically asking: should you be a genetic Tiger Mom?
Which is not bad, perhaps just... expensive and ineffectual. And of course if I could prevent my kid from having Down's or autism, I'd do it in a heartbeat.
The second subtext is about the nature of humanity, which I basically covered in my first post. Are we only genetics, or is there something more? If we are only genetics, what's the problem is changing them? If we are something more, then changing our genetics will not affect that "something more."
The too long, did not read version: 1) The OP is asking if we should be genetic Tiger Moms, but I am convinced that any version of the Tiger Mom project is basically useless, whether it focuses on nature or nurture. 2) The OP is asking if it is ok to genetically tamper with a person's humanity, and I am saying the question of humanity is meaningless.
quote:Some things matter to me. Hence some things matter. Hence your position is disproved.
Lollerskates. You actually don't see that (2) is just a repeat of (1)? And (3) has no connection to either premise, or anything I said?
quote:What is goofy is that you think determinism and free will are opposites. They aren't opposites but REQUIREMENTS of each other. If our present selves don't determine our choices then we don't have free will. Free will is only meaningful if we DETERMINE our choices, hence free will is directly proportional to (and meaningful IF AND ONLY IF) determinism.
Dude, your equivocations cause me pain. Like, physical pain. You're saying the present self determines itself - that is just the old version of free will by another name. You're talking about an autonomous self, but for some reason, using the word "determinism."
Edit: First post! Not first power.
[ July 01, 2011, 07:28 AM: Message edited by: Foust ]
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:You actually don't see that (2) is just a repeat of (1)?
No, it's not a repeat. (1) "Some things matter to Person X" is more specific than (2) "Some things matter".
As such (1) proves (2), but (2) doesn't prove (1)
quote:And (3) has no connection to either premise, or anything I said?
Your position, the way I understood it, was that things don't matter.
I've disproved it.
quote:You're saying the present self determines itself
No, I'm not. I'm saying the present determines the future. Our current self is part of the "present". Our choices create part of the "future".
So for a person (part of the present) to be able to determine their future course of action (part of the future), it is a REQUIREMENT that the present (as a whole) determines the future (as a whole).
Because person is part of the "present" Because future course of action is part of the "future".
The people who think there's a contradiction between determinism and free will are the people who are already confused by millenia of clerics talking garbage about non-physical souls. WE ARE PHYSICS. Our choices are real BECAUSE they are embedded in PHYSICS.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
And I suggest you stop using such a mocking tone, when your reading comprehension is so weak that you can't see the difference between "some things matter" and "some things matter to me". That's a whole two words you failed to notice.
Posted by Anna2112 (Member # 12493) on :
quote: The OP has a duel subtext.
*ahem*
I think that to some extent we do try to influence our children's traits anyway, to improve their quality of life. On a fundamental level, we raise them with values that we want them to internalize. We want our children to believe "treat others the way you want to be treated" and we try to raise them to be kind (among other traits. I tried to pick a non-controversial one.) On a more tangible level, we sign them up for classes that will make them smarter (Or that we hope will. Kindermusic?). So yes, I would definitely take a pill that would make my child more intelligent if I could, if I was sure there were no side effects.
Posted by Foust (Member # 3043) on :
quote:Originally posted by Anna2112:
quote: The OP has a duel subtext.
*ahem*
What, am I overestimating my audience? I apologize.
Ok, Aris, I'll spell it out.
1. Some things matter to me. 2. Hence some things matter. 3. Hence your position is disproved.
In order for (2) to not be reducible to (1), you have to add the word "inherently".
1. Some things matter to me. 2. Hence some things matter inherently. 3. Hence your position is disproved (because some things matter inherently).
Except just because X matters to you, does not mean it matters inherently.
If you refuse to make "mattering" something inherent in the object, what you get is this:
1. X matters to me. 2. Therefore X matters to someone. 3. ???? 4. PROFIT!!!
And anyways, my argument was not that I don't think anything matters or that there is nothing of moral or ethical importance. Your interpretation was way overextended.
quote:Your position, the way I understood it, was that things don't matter.
I've disproved it.
I think my second post should have clarified what I meant there. The question of how we'd modify our kids in the womb is interesting to us, and it feels pressing to us, because underlying it is a question of what our humanity is. If we're just chemicals, re-arranging those chemicals will not impinge on our essential humanity. If we're more than chemicals, re-arranging those chemicals will not impinge on that "something more."
quote:Because person is part of the "present"
And what of the chain of conditions that led up to the present? Either we are exempt from the past chain of conditions, or we aren't. If we aren't, then we do not "determine ourselves."
You go on to say we are embedded in physics. To the extent that this is true, it barely makes sense to speak of a self, never mind a self-determining self.
quote:And I suggest you stop using such a mocking tone
You started it. What'd you expect in response?
Posted by Strider (Member # 1807) on :
Aris certainly has an interesting take on this. I don't think determinism necessarily disproves free will, but if true, it does force us to defend a theory of persons, and the emergence of the self. If determinism is true we have to be able to defend some notion of a "free choice" at the level of persons. What that would entail, I'm not entirely sure.
But to argue that determinism is NECESSARY for there to be free will. That's something I've never seen before. And it doesn't seem like Aris is providing any real justification for the position. Aris, a choice in the present does determine the future, yes. But in virtue of what is it actually a "choice"? You call it a choice because you feel there were other choices that could have been made, and other courses of action that could have flowed from that choice. But in the end, only one thing was chosen, one path was followed. And if the behavior initiated was itself the result of a causal deterministic chain, how was it really a choice? In what way was it free?
I think you're confusing the subjective feeling of choosing, with the idea of free will.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
If your choices aren't determined by anything (even your self) but are just random, how is that freedom?
Posted by Strider (Member # 1807) on :
Are you asking that to me?
Posted by Strider (Member # 1807) on :
I'll answer anyway. I never said that choices aren't determined by anything. And I certainly didn't say that randomness bestows free will on an agent. I don't think that indeterminacy grants free will to an agent any more than determinism takes it away.
My point is that determinism or indeterminacy alone do not preclude free will. And determinism or indeterminacy alone also are also not necessary conditions for free will.
What I'm saying is that whether physical causal determinism is true, or whether the universe is non-deterministic (as quantum mechanics is pointing towards), neither case on its own answers the free will question. We need to define what exactly we mean by a free choice, and then we would have to defend how that type of free choice can exist at the level of persons. Is consciousness supervenient on lower level physical states, or can consciousness be said to emerge and have its own ontological nature? If the former, then free will questions are meaningless, if the latter, it is at the level of the decision we need to evaluate free will, not at the level of atoms or quarks.
Posted by Raymond Arnold (Member # 11712) on :
I've taken to just linking to Though Art Physics rather than getting into free will debates. TLDR: Yes, everything is mechanically determined, yes, you make decisions. (Reading this article saved me weeks of pointless free will debates. I recommend it)
quote:The OP is asking if we should be genetic Tiger Moms, but I am convinced that any version of the Tiger Mom project is basically useless, whether it focuses on nature or nurture.
This is an empirical fact, which can might be true or false. The opening premise of the thread is that it is false. IF you can dramatically alter a child's personality by eating stuff during pregnancy, what are the ethical concerns of that? (I think the notion that it's impossible to shape a child is, frankly, obviously wrong. Yes, there are elements of my personality that my parents didn't create, but there are also elements that clearly exist because of ways I was raised, as well as the peer groups I had access to. And genetic/womb manipulation could easily be far more potent than parenting)
I don't believe in God. I think we are quarks bouncing around according to deterministic rules. But things still matter to me, and when multiple people share the same preferences, a discussion of morality is useful.
Posted by Geraine (Member # 9913) on :
I think this all comes down to intent.
Would I like my child to be as smart as possible so that they have the opportunity to have a very fulfilling life? Absolutely. If there were certain things my wife could do in a diet or using supplements to help this, I would encourage it.
If you go in with the intent of creating a musical prodigy or a child actor or beauty queen simply for your own gain, I think that is where I would draw the line.
Helping your child to have opportunity for their own benefit is one thing, but if you were going to alter them to fit what YOU want them to be, well that is just selfish and wrong.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
quote:...but if you were going to alter them to fit what YOU want them to be, well that is just selfish and wrong.
No, it's just parenting. We make all kinds of moral and defining decisions for our children every day, and who else's judgement are you going to use but your own?
It is one thing to have them genetically or surgically altered...but to eat different foods?
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
Foust -- I never said that things matter "inherently". I said they matter. Something mattering or not mattering can only be defined in relation of conscious agent that have the capacity of having things matter to *them*.
To put it differently something "matters" if it matters to *anyone* in the world.
Your supposed concept of things mattering "inherently" is just confusion. It doesn't mean anything, you can't define it as anything, it's just distracting noise.
If it's not just noise tell me what it would mean for something to matter "inherently".
quote:Either we are exempt from the past chain of conditions, or we aren't. If we aren't, then we do not "determine ourselves."
For you to have free will *now*, you think you need your current self to have determined your *past* self?
No, it doesn't work that way. Our past selves helped determine our current selves. Our current selves help determine our future selves. I didn't say we determine our *current* self, I said we help determine the future.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:But to argue that determinism is NECESSARY for there to be free will. That's something I've never seen before.
quote:And it doesn't seem like Aris is providing any real justification for the position. Aris, a choice in the present does determine the future, yes. But in virtue of what is it actually a "choice"?
It's the imagining of possible scenarios, the conscious selection among those options by your preferred criteria, and the following of the course of action which was thus selected.
Imagination, Judgment, Selection - in what way would it *not* be defined as choice?
quote: You call it a choice because you feel there were other choices that could have been made,
No I'm calling it a choice because it's the conscious deliberate selection of one path among several.
quote:And if the behavior initiated was itself the result of a causal deterministic chain, how was it really a choice? In what way was it free?
I said you are free, I didn't say you were self-created. A person doesn't choose to be born.
We can see in what ways it is free will, by thinking of the many ways in which it would NOT be free.
It wouldn't be free will if I couldn't imagine between different alternate courses of action. (a rock can't imagine falling or not falling).
It wouldn't be free will if my action was a non-deliberate action (like your heart beating) instead of the product of deliberation.
It wouldn't be free will if I could imagine alternate course of actions, but had no power to act upon them (if I'm dropped out of a plane, I can imagine flying, but can't do it, so gravity wins, and my free will is nullified - I have to drop whether I want to or not).
Hence the existence of free vs unfree actions in meaningful terms.
quote:What I'm saying is that whether physical causal determinism is true, or whether the universe is non-deterministic (as quantum mechanics is pointing towards)
"Many-worlds" is a deterministic interpretation of quantum mechanics.
Posted by mr_porteiro_head (Member # 4644) on :
quote:"Many-worlds" is a deterministic interpretation of quantum mechanics.
That makes sense, and explains why I dislike the many worlds interpretation so much.
Posted by Strider (Member # 1807) on :
Aris, I think defining terms would help this conversation a lot. For instance, you talk about your current choice "determining" the future, but this use of the term determine, is not the same as the concept of metaphysical determinism.
Similarly, you seem to define free will by an action that is consciously chosen, when other alternatives existed, and which is not constrained by some sort of other factors. But as I was trying to point out above, just because you have the subjective experience of choosing, just because an action came about as the result of a conscious process, does not in itself make the final choice a result of "free will". It may be "free" in the sense that you are defining, but where did you get your definition? What is this "will" of which you speak? Who does it belong to? Why are conscious decisions more free than unconscious ones? Why would the inability for me to imagine another course of action make my action less free?
If the process of conscious deliberation is as much a part of the deterministic algorithm that is the universe, why should the result of that process be labeled free will?
On a related note, as mph points out, I think it's a bit early to jump on the determinism bandwagon based off one interpretation of quantum mechanics. But more importantly, indeterminacy at the quantum level doesn't necessarily mean there is indeterminacy at the neurophysiological level. You'd have to show that that indeterminacy has causal consequences all the way up to the level of choice.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:For instance, you talk about your current choice "determining" the future, but this use of the term determine, is not the same as the concept of metaphysical determinism.
I don't understand what you mean by "metaphysical determinism". What I mean by determinism is that the future state of the universe is calculable from the present state of the universe.
Our present personalities, minds, preferences have meaning to the extent that their present state is taken in consideration during this calculation of the future.
To the extent that the future (as a whole) is NOT determinate by the present (as a whole), this reduces the extent that our present selves can help direct the future.
Therefore the more determined the future, the more our current selves affect it, the more influence our selves have. The *less* determined the future, the *less* we affect it.
Imagine a function for the state of Universe: Universe(t+1) = Constant * Universe(t) + Random.
If (Random is always 0), it's a determinist universe. If (Random is indeterminately selected) then it's a non-determinist universe.
You seem to think that your free will increases if the *random* factor increases. But that doesn't make sense, because your current self is enclosed in the *other* half of the equation, in "Universe(t)", not in the "Random" factor.
quote:You'd have to show that that indeterminacy has causal consequences all the way up to the level of choice.
Why would you *want* some sort of randomness in your decision process which has nothing to do with your present state of your mind, either in your preferences, or your virtues, or your memories, or your likings and dislikings?
What sort of free will do you seek, that would choose stuff using an algorithm that has nothing to do with who you currently are?
If two people want to choose between two movies to watch, "Starwars" or "Lord of the Rings" -- and Alice chooses Starwars, because she likes robots and laser battles, while Bob just flicks a coin heads-or-tails and ends up seeing Starwars too, but only as a matter of indeterminate chance, do you think that Bob executed *more* free will than Alice, just because Bobs's choice was less deterministic and less predictable, while Alice's choice could have been determined by the state of who she was?
The way I see it the fact that Alice actually had her likings *affect* her choice means she exercised more free will.
What sort of definition of "free will" do you seek, that makes choices happen that have nothing to do with who are and what you want? ("who you are" and "what you want" is enclosed in the current state of the universe)
Posted by Strider (Member # 1807) on :
Aris, you're putting a whole lot of baggage into what I'm saying that I don't have.
quote:You seem to think that your free will increases if the *random* factor increases. But that doesn't make sense, because your current self is enclosed in the *other* half of the equation, in "Universe(t)", not in the "Random" factor.
I think no such thing, and said no such thing. What is this in reference to?
quote:Why would you *want* some sort of randomness in your decision process which has nothing to do with your present state of your mind, either in your preferences, or your virtues, or your memories, or your likings and dislikings?
I don't *want* any such thing. What I want or don't want is not relevant to whether there is some sort of indeterminacy in the universe or in human action. And as I've pointed out, indeterminacy doesn't give an agent free will anyway.
quote:What sort of definition of "free will" do you seek, that makes choices happen that have nothing to do with who are and what you want? ("who you are" and "what you want" is enclosed in the current state of the universe)
I don't seek any sort of definition of free will. I don't think free will exists. I AM terribly interested in the causes of human behavior, and how we should interact with each other, and what kinds of systems we should set up in society given our understanding of human cognition and behavior. But I generally think that the free will debate is a red herring, in that it's not actually addressing what I feel is important about human agency.
I'm just disputing the notion that because something is consciously chosen or determined rather than random, that this is what free will is.
Posted by Strider (Member # 1807) on :
Some of my other questions that you reference have to do with questioning the nature of the self. For free will to exist, there has to be an agent that possesses it. I'm questioning the unified nature of this self, and whether there is actually an agent that is making a choice. I'm not necessarily arguing against the notion, but it seems to me that you have to defend the notion of the self as having a real ontological nature before you can defend free will. Otherwise, as others have pointed out, you can just point to quarks and forget about the person, the choice, and any will whatsoever.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
I never thought I'd run across a discussion too theoretical and wordy for me...I was wrong.
Posted by Frisco (Member # 3765) on :
I'd be interested to see something like what Rabbit posted (or Gattaca Hollywood-ized) come about, because I'd like to see just how much of our innate predisposition gets overridden by our experiences.
Also, they need a new premise for Law & Order episodes.
"My parents made me this way, I had no choice!"
Posted by Geraine (Member # 9913) on :
quote:Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_:
quote:...but if you were going to alter them to fit what YOU want them to be, well that is just selfish and wrong.
No, it's just parenting. We make all kinds of moral and defining decisions for our children every day, and who else's judgement are you going to use but your own?
It is one thing to have them genetically or surgically altered...but to eat different foods?
So if it was your dream to have a musical prodigy as a child and you knew that dieting / popping certain pills and listening to Yo Yo Ma every day for an hour would make your child that prodigy, you wouldn't consider that selfish in any way?
I'm not saying there is anything wrong with helping your children have an appreciation for music, but unfortunately there are many parents that make it their mission to make their children enjoy a certain activity, their child's wants and needs be damned.
I grew up in a house where my parents were indifferent about music. My father's parents however are classical music nuts. Growing up the only music I ever listened to was classical, as it was the only music that interested me. I began playing the cello at an early age, and by the age of 14 I was already playing with a city orchestra here in Las Vegas.
I have since stopped playing, but never once do I feel like my grandparents forced me to play the cello. (I regret it, and I need to start playing again) If a parent raises their child like this, I have no problems with it.
It just comes down to how the parent uses the knowledge. Look at parents of some child stars for example. Do I think Lindsay Lohan's parents had her best interests at heart when she was young? Not at all. I think they saw their daughter's talent and only wanted to cash in on her success.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
I take your point Geraine, but I feel there are miles of difference between "eating a lot of broccoli" (or popping a vitamin for that matter) with the hope of your child later developing skills and ignoring your children's wants, pressuring and using them. When they are in the womb, they don't really have the ability to be pressured or exploited.
As to Lohan...I don't have the info to judge, because I never had the interest to pick any up.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
Oh man, let's go down the list of the "make your child X" pills
- any intelligence increases absolutely not associated with autistic spectrum disorders
- no fatty
- no heart disease
- no anxiety or depression issues
- anything that reduces lifetime incidence of strokes, cancer, diabeeetus, etc
- prolonged lifespan
- no tremor, enhanced manual dexterity
- personality typing associated with 'can get and keep a job' or whatever, go nuts
- no seriously let's go flat out gattica here
Posted by Strider (Member # 1807) on :
Aris, I think maybe I haven't explicitly stated a line of reasoning that I think helps clear up part of what I'm arguing.
You are arguing that a deterministic world is necessary for the existence of free will. That free will lies in the choices we each make that determine our future (again, noting here the way you are using the word determine is different from the idea of determinism).
But I'm saying that if physical determinism is true, then even your thoughts (which are underlied by physical causal processes) and the act of weighing alternatives and choosing is all part of the deterministic process. It's almost like you're saying that the action itself is determined, but the thought process is some sort of black box with free will inside it, and action pops out. But what if your subjective sense of thinking and choosing is just epiphenomenal? It's all just along for the ride. It seems to me that your arguments so far don't address this.
Posted by Teshi (Member # 5024) on :
I would not, provided the child was going to be within the bounderies of normal or plus normal intelligence and normal physicality.
I don't actually believe that the time spent in the womb, aside from massive issues like alcholism and drugs or very poor diet (and I generally have a good diet) really makes that much of difference to a child's intelligence or athleticism.
I'd rather focus my efforts on raising them to be intelligent and active. I feel that most human babies have the potential to be of value (and seen as intelligent and productive) in the world, provided the environment in which they grow up is rich (not in the money sense!) and safe.
There are obvious standouts who despite a normal childhood and youngadulthood are psychopathic, but that's a tiny tiny minority.
I like diversity. I like knowing kids who are crap at some things but amazing at others. I often find the kids labelled as "less intelligent" have merely something else to give.
Posted by Raymond Arnold (Member # 11712) on :
quote:I don't actually believe that the time spent in the womb, aside from massive issues like alcholism and drugs or very poor diet (and I generally have a good diet) really makes that much of difference to a child's intelligence or athleticism.
What makes you think this? I haven't read the evidence one way or another so I'm just willing to take this as an interesting thought experiment. But Rabbit started by saying "there is growing body of evidence that..." People's personalities and other traits come from somewhere. It could just be genes and parenting, but I see no reason it couldn't also be events in the womb.
quote:I would not, provided the child was going to be within the bounderies of normal or plus normal intelligence and normal physicality.
What if everyone else is doing it, so "normal" is at a higher standard?
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:Originally posted by Strider: I don't seek any sort of definition of free will. I don't think free will exists.
We have different understandings of what it means to have 'free will', but I think that free will can be said to exist for all *meaningful* definitions of free will.
What I mean by 'meaningful': Let's say that we dispute whether a thing such as a "unicorn" exists. Let's say that we define unicorn as a horse-shaped animal with a single horn on his forehead and friendly towards young human maidens.
If we search the whole universe, we'll either detect such an animal or we won't. More to the point, we can imagine the *opposite* scenario. So there's an actual difference between the two hypothetical worlds: The Unicorn world, and the No-Unicorn world. We can make stories about the other world, whichever world we're in.
But let's say you state "free will" (according to whichever definition you prefer) doesn't exist. Before deciding whether that statement is true or false, you need determine whether that statement is *meaningful* -- and you can show it to be meaningful if you can imagine a world with free will, and a world without free will, and tell me how they differ.
According to *my* definition of free will, I can imagine a different world where I would have none. Here's what it would seem like to me: I'd see myself taking actions that have nothing to do with my preferences. Though I prefer chocolate, I might see myself buy and eat vanilla icecream. I'd feel I had no more control over the actions of my hands and legs, than I'd have over the beating of my heart.
This hypothetical universe doesn't coincide with the one I currently exist in, so I can meaningfully say: "Free will exists".
For you to say "Free will does NOT exist", and that statement to be meaningful you need be able to imagine a universe in which free will (according to your definition) does exist. How would such a universe differ from our own?
quote:Some of my other questions that you reference have to do with questioning the nature of the self. For free will to exist, there has to be an agent that possesses it. I'm questioning the unified nature of this self, and whether there is actually an agent that is making a choice.
I don't think that's a requirement. I don't believe in a unified self either. We're fragments of memories and desires and habits. But a cloud can have a specific velocity as a *whole* even though its composed of a trillion atoms all moving chaotically around.
As a whole, we have free will. Now each individual neuron of our brain doesn't. An individual neuron doesn't have any will at all: as a whole we do.
quote:I'm not necessarily arguing against the notion, but it seems to me that you have to defend the notion of the self as having a real ontological nature before you can defend free will. Otherwise, as others have pointed out, you can just point to quarks and forget about the person, the choice, and any will whatsoever.
I am those quarks. My will and my choices are made of those quarks, much as my hand is made of my fingers, and yet that doesn't mean my hand is non-existent just because I can point to the fingers or the many bones beneath.
quote:But what if your subjective sense of thinking and choosing is just epiphenomenal? It's all just along for the ride. It seems to me that your arguments so far don't address this.
I don't think epiphenomenalism is a defensible position either. Our subjective sense of thinking and choosing is actively causing us right now to discuss this subjective sense of thinking and choosing. If it's just a passenger, how come it's holding the wheel? At worst, it's the passenger of a taxi who has chosen the direction.
Posted by scifibum (Member # 7625) on :
quote:For you to say "Free will does NOT exist", and that statement to be meaningful you need be able to imagine a universe in which free will (according to your definition) does exist. How would such a universe differ from our own?
I don't really agree with this, Aris.
Some definitions of "free will" seem to be anti-definitions. Some people seem to think "free will" is the absence of some definable physical mechanism (or many such mechanisms) for conscious choices. Pinning it down to something that can be described/measured/defined seems antithetical. There is no way to describe how this WOULD work if it existed*, yet saying this kind of "free will" doesn't exist seems fair to me.
*I keep asking people when the subject comes up, and nobody bites. If it's not a matter of cause & effect, and yet it is something rather than nothing, then what is it? How does it work? How, ultimately, can it be different from a deterministic version of subjective experience and choice? I'd actually like for someone to point me to a good argument along these lines. [I agree totally with the "you are physics" argument linked earlier.]
Posted by Strider (Member # 1807) on :
quote:For you to say "Free will does NOT exist", and that statement to be meaningful you need be able to imagine a universe in which free will (according to your definition) does exist. How would such a universe differ from our own?
I don't think that's a fair statement at all. Philosophical hypotheticals are interesting, but I tend to agree with Dan Dennett when he calls them intuition pumps. Just because we can imagine something, doesn't make it so. Just because you can imagine a world where you have the opposite of your definition of free will, doesn't mean that hypothetical world is actually possible. Just because we can imagine Swampman, an atom for atom replica of a human, but who lacks subjective experience, doesn't mean Swampman is actually possible. But that hasn't stopped countless philosophers from positing that there has to be something more than the physical, something more than function, to account for consciousness.
You've also set the question up in such a way to force me into your conclusion. But part of my argument is that the concept of free will itself is meaningless, which is why I don't think we have it. It seems to me, that for there to be something called free will, it would have to not be causally determined, to make it free, and yet at the same time not be random, to make it willed. This is nonsensical, and so I argue that the our historic notions of free will are nonsensical. A holdover from a time of souls and a theory of persons that does not match the reality...thou art physics right? I read that link, and while I have some quibbles with it, I think it's important to note he doesn't really talk about free will much. He just constrains human agency within physics, while giving it its own ontological nature. That's fine...but where does free will come into the picture?
If you want to take the words "free will", and define them as XYZ, that's fine. I might even agree with your definition. But that doesn't change the fact that we've now redefined the phrase free will from a nonsensical phrase, to one which can have meaning, in virtue of that redefinition. And again, I tend to think the argument is a bit of red herring. Okay, free will...so what? Do we treat someone differently whether an action they committed was one that stemmed from free will? If so, why? I'm less concerned with whether you want to call something free will or not, and more concerned with how our understanding of human behavior affects the ways we interact with each other and the systems we set up in society.
quote:As a whole, we have free will. Now each individual neuron of our brain doesn't. An individual neuron doesn't have any will at all: as a whole we do.
Seems to me you are conveniently defining the "whole" as the person. But why? Why can't a group of people be considered a whole? A city. A country. The planet. As a whole, these entities are causally constrained by physics and determine the future. What is special about persons? I think there IS something special about persons. But that's because I think there is something special about how consciousness can arise from purely physical processes. And since as far as I know no philosophers or neuroscientists or psychologists have figured out yet how this all happens, I think it's a bit early to wave your hands and say, "well, obviously neurons don't have free will, but WE do."
quote:I don't think epiphenomenalism is a defensible position either. Our subjective sense of thinking and choosing is actively causing us right now to discuss this subjective sense of thinking and choosing. If it's just a passenger, how come it's holding the wheel? At worst, it's the passenger of a taxi who has chosen the direction.
While I'm personally no longer an epiphenomenalist, there are enough bigwigs who are that I think flat out stating it's not defensible does not really serve as a knock down argument. You're saying, "i can't believe thoughts are just along for the ride, because how could you possibly have a thought where you think about thoughts being along for the ride!" It's confusing yes, but that's not an argument against it. If the causal process of thought is led to a recursive pattern of thinking about thought, this kind of stuff can happen, even in an epiphenomenalist world. Again though, if you want to argue against epiphenomenalism, it seems to me you have to have a real theory of consciousness and persons, an emergent theory, which is tricky business. Because otherwise you left with eliminative materialism, or reductionism of some sort where you'd be hard pressed to defend thought and consciousness as actually having causal power in the universe. Or if you have some other alternative, write it up and publish it and the nobel prize is yours! Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
Epiphenomenalism is so far removed from the personal subjective experience of consciousness that it impossible to truly sincerely believe and remain sane. One can believe it the abstract, about other people, but not in the concrete about ones self. Too much of human life requires conscious effort. If one truly sincerely believed that their own consciousness was merely an irrelevant epiphenomenon, it would be impossible to continue to exert the conscious effort necessary for much of what we do.
Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
quote:But to argue that determinism is NECESSARY for there to be free will. That's something I've never seen before.
I've argued that position on this forum before... Lack of determinism means your choices are random, and "choosing" randomly isn't really a choice at all (I wouldn't say a flipped coin "freely" chooses to be heads or tails for instance, and it wouldn't be any different for the human equivalent of that coin.) In order for something to be a choice it must be determined by you and your reasons for making that choice. Someone who knew you and your reasons perfectly could predict any choice you'd make.
And I think that's typically what is meant by the concept of "freely choose". It doesn't mean random; it means determined by you.
Posted by Strider (Member # 1807) on :
Tres, that's fine, but doesn't really address where the conversation has gone since then. Determinism on it's own does not get you free will, you need to make a further argument about the nature of persons and decisions and choice and will, about how decisions are made, who is making those decisions, and in what sense they can be free. I haven't seen this done in this thread. Or in the Though art physics link that everyone seems to like. Just saying that we need determinism, otherwise choices are random, doesn't get us there.
Rabbit, tell that to all the people who subscribe to epiphenomenalism. I don't think we should be making proclamations about about issues in cognitive science based on feeling. Or any science. What we feel about how the universe works has no bearing on quantum mechanics. If you intuitively feel that epiphenomenalism can't be right, then okay, set out to show the reasons why. I agree that epiphenomenalism isn't exactly satisfying, but if we want to say that consciousness has causal influence in the world, then we need a theory of consciousness. How did consciousness arise? Why? What was its function? If higher order emergent processes have causal influence we need to explain how this is so.
Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
You are right - and I agree with you that, in addition to determinism another key element is that for free will to exist, there has to be an agent that possesses it. In order for something to be determined by you, there must be a you.
The trouble is that you are approaching it from a materialist perspective (which I disagree with). Under the materialist perspective, it's going to be difficult to pin down the existence of any "agents" at all. And if there's no such thing as an agent, then the whole question becomes moot - it's not so much that free will doesn't exist, as it is that the concept of free will doesn't even mean anything. It only begins to mean something when you exist, as an agent who could potentially exercise free will.
I think you'll have to determine what makes something an agent and what constitutes subjective experience under a materialist view - and only then can you clearly define what free will is.
Posted by Strider (Member # 1807) on :
quote:Originally posted by Tresopax: You are right - and I agree with you that, in addition to determinism another key element is that for free will to exist, there has to be an agent that possesses it. In order for something to be determined by you, there must be a you.
The trouble is that you are approaching it from a materialist perspective (which I disagree with). Under the materialist perspective, it's going to be difficult to pin down the existence of any "agents" at all. And if there's no such thing as an agent, then the whole question becomes moot - it's not so much that free will doesn't exist, as it is that the concept of free will doesn't even mean anything. It only begins to mean something when you exist, as an agent who could potentially exercise free will.
I think you'll have to determine what makes something an agent and what constitutes subjective experience under a materialist view - and only then can you clearly define what free will is.
I pretty much agree with your entire post. And is basically what I have been arguing above.
I wouldn't actually say I'm coming at things from a materialistic perspective, nor physicalistic...probably naturalistic would fit best, since I come at things from a process framework rather than a substance framework. But replace "materialistic" in your sentence with "non dualistic" and we can move on.
Anyway, I agree belief in some sort of soul makes things to a certain degree easier in the free will debate, but has its own host of baggage that I personally reject.
As an addendum, these types of issues are precisely what I'm going to grad school for, so check back with me in a few years and I'll let you know how it's all coming. Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:Why can't a group of people be considered a whole?
I don't know what you're trying to say. We were talking about thinking, will, and consciousness. I'm aware of my own thinking, will, and consciousness, and the evidence suggests other people experience similar awareness.
quote:I don't think that's a fair statement at all. Philosophical hypotheticals are interesting, but I tend to agree with Dan Dennett when he calls them intuition pumps. Just because we can imagine something, doesn't make it so. Just because you can imagine a world where you have the opposite of your definition of free will, doesn't mean that hypothetical world is actually possible. Just because we can imagine Swampman, an atom for atom replica of a human, but who lacks subjective experience, doesn't mean Swampman is actually possible. But that hasn't stopped countless philosophers from positing that there has to be something more than the physical, something more than function, to account for consciousness.
I don't know how you can have misunderstood me so much.
When I asked about the hypothetical no-free-will world, I didn't say it would prove it possible -- I said it would prove someone's definition of free will *meaningful*.
If you talk about a concept, but you can't imagine a single difference between a universe that has it, and a universe that doesn't have it, then it's not an actually meaningful concept, it's a confusion of worlds.
quote:But part of my argument is that the concept of free will itself is meaningless, which is why I don't think we have it.
If it's meaningless, then it doesn't make sense to say we lack it anymore than it makes sense to say we have it. I have legs, I lack wings, I have a mind, I lack telepathy, but I NEITHER have NOR lack "xyzzyness", because xyzzyness is a meaningless concept.
For all *meaningful* definitions of free will, I believe we have it. Meaningless definitions of free will are confusions that should be dissolved away.
quote:In order for something to be determined by you, there must be a you.
My "me" doesn't need to be eternal, persistent, indivisible or uncopiable; qualities that are traditionally given to the mythical "soul". I am cognitive processes that loosely consider themselves a self and bear the illusion of persistence and continuity. But at this moment this me exists, and my will exists, and my consciousness exists (and NO, I don't know the exact way that they arise from the level of neurons), even if they all exist grouped together by the fuzzy arbitrary concepts of my brain's operating system.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote: If one truly sincerely believed that their own consciousness was merely an irrelevant epiphenomenon, it would be impossible to continue to exert the conscious effort necessary for much of what we do.
I'm not sure I agree. I think it's entirely possible to believe that ones own consciousness is epiphenomenal and yet be incapable of actually failing to experience consciousness. It's a biological limitation of our brain. In the same way, we can totally believe that we're a mass of molecules mostly separated by empty space and yet be completely unable to, for example, walk through a wall or scrunch under a door.
Posted by Strider (Member # 1807) on :
Tom, I think Rabbit was more likely referring to the idea that epiphenomenalists would fall into some sort of existential despair and never leave their bedrooms. But Rabbit can correct me if I'm wrong. Again, I think this isn't accurate at all (at least not universally so), as evidenced by the fact that many people don't believe in free will (which is essentially epiphenomenalism), and yet live positive meaningful lives.
On the other hand I once convinced a friend of mine that free will doesn't exist, and she spent the rest of the night sobbing.
On a third hand, I think that reaction isn't necessary, and that lack of free will doesn't actually take away any meaning from our lives. In fact, my views on human agency and personhood, I think, make me very empathetic towards others, and lead me to take active interest in helping others through charity and volunteering and being involved in a political process that creates systems that benefit those less fortunate. But arguing for this takes even more work than arguing against free will.
[ July 07, 2011, 12:00 AM: Message edited by: Strider ]
Posted by Strider (Member # 1807) on :
quote:Originally posted by Aris Katsaris:
quote:Why can't a group of people be considered a whole?
I don't know what you're trying to say. We were talking about thinking, will, and consciousness. I'm aware of my own thinking, will, and consciousness, and the evidence suggests other people experience similar awareness.
You talked about us "as a whole" having free will. That individuals neurons don't, but WE do. What are WE? You have not offered an explanation. We are systems, processes, that have a cause and effect relationship with and in the universe. What is it about the input/output, the interaction, of this system that allows it to have a will, and not other systems? Neurons don't have a will as you say. Why not? What about atoms? What about organizations of people? I'm asking why the causal interactive role we as system play is in some way willed, while other systems lack this will. They also interact with the environment, have input and output and have a deterministic causal effect on the universe.
I agree that if there is an answer to this question, it lies in consciousness. But what is consciousness? How does it arise? What is the self? What does it mean to be an agent? Does thought (or subjective experience or qualia or consciousness) have causal power in the universe? You can't meaningfully talk about will, free or otherwise, without addressing these questions. I was using those questions as a way to prod you to the fact that you implicitly agree with this, but seem to wave you hands at the idea that you need to explicitly address it.
quote:If it's meaningless, then it doesn't make sense to say we lack it anymore than it makes sense to say we have it. I have legs, I lack wings, I have a mind, I lack telepathy, but I NEITHER have NOR lack "xyzzyness", because xyzzyness is a meaningless concept.
Yes, I agree. And said so above.
quote:For all *meaningful* definitions of free will, I believe we have it.
No, to be accurate, for *your meaningful* definition of free will, you believe we have it. And again, that's fine. If you want to adjust the definition of free will to a useful and meaningful phrase based on your understanding of physics which serves a purpose for you, and aren't to bent out of shape about issues surrounding agency and persons and the problematic nature of who the "we" is that has free will, great. But I think it's important to acknowledge you're doing so. You've left behind historic notions of the self as some sort of unified immutable thing or eternal soul, but you've also decided to ignore what that means for the idea of free will in general. You've kept a phrase that was meaningless and adjusted its definition so that it can be used in meaningful social interaction with other humans, and possibly allow for certain systems to be set up (justice system maybe?) that depend on certain notions of responsibility that depend on the idea of free choice existing. I'm guessing here, you haven't explicitly stated why you feel the idea of having free will to be important. This is fine, ideas need labels. But it does lead to confusions when trying to get everyone to use the same words in any meaningful way.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:I NEITHER have NOR lack "xyzzyness", because xyzzyness is a meaningless concept.
I'd sure like to see anyone beat Colossal Cave Adventure without xyzzyness (or, for that matter, gumption)
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Tom, I think Rabbit was more likely referring to the idea that epiphenomenalists would fall into some sort of existential despair and never leave their bedrooms. But Rabbit can correct me if I'm wrong.
You are wrong.
It's impossible to draw accurate comparisons between the study of the physical laws of the universe and study of consciousness because our only evidence for the existence of consciousness is our own subjective experience of it. You can't study something that you can't observe. We can't divorce the study of consciousness from our subjective experience of it or we aren't studying consciousness.
I did not say epiphenomenalism could not be true, I said one could not sincerely believe it to be true about ones self. Belief itself is an aspect of consciousness. When I believe something sincerely, it is consistent with my conscious choices and the actions associated with those choices. If it is not, I don't believe it sincerely. It doesn't really matter which is the cause and which is the effect, beliefs are not sincere unless they are consistent with the actions we consciously choose. No person who continues to exert conscious effort to accomplish things truly and sincerely believes that their own conscious effort is merely an epiphenomenon.
I know what happens when I stop exerting conscious effort. Take something as simple as my planning to stop at the grocery on my way home from work. If I allow my consciousness to wander, I end up at home without the groceries. There is no question that I can act without making conscious effort. There are plenty of things I do without consciously thinking about them. But at the same time there are many things which I am incapable of doing without conscious effort: solving a math problem, formulating an argument, following a diet, grading papers, writing code, following a recipe, navigating in new territory, planning a party, all these and thousands more.
Perhaps it is only an illusion that my conscious effort matters in accomplishing these things, but if it is, its an illusion that is essential to sanity. Unless I sincerely believed that making a conscious effort mattered, there are thousands of things I would stop making the effort to do.
[ July 07, 2011, 04:09 AM: Message edited by: The Rabbit ]
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:But I think it's important to acknowledge you're doing so. You've left behind historic notions of the self as some sort of unified immutable thing or eternal soul,
Yes, I acknowledge that I've left behind *those* notions. I don't see why for me to believe I have free will (a statement about the *now*), I need believe anything about e.g. the eternity or the immutability of my existence in the past or the future.
I'm NOT self-created -- physical processes (e.g. my parents) produced me. I'm NOT eternal -- physical processes (e.g. a truck, or the Sun going nova) one day will dissolve me. I'm NOT immutable -- physical processes (e.g. the pattern of my thoughts) change me every second. But physical processes *now* also bestow me with a free will *now*, I for all definitions of free will that I know of which are meaningful.
quote:But what is consciousness? How does it arise?
I do not know. Unlike free will, consciousness is still an unsolved question for me.
I have some small thoughts mind you; but they're half-formed, and yet unworthy of sharing fully. Some of those seeds, in case they inspire anyone else: - the mind as a qualia-processing self-altering machine: Mind1(qualia) -> Mind2 - qualia as the derivative of the Mind function, qualia = dMind = lim(Mind2-Mind1)/(t2-t1) - consciousness not "on top" of the physical universe, but *across* it, a slice of the universe along the time dimensions; affecting our minds to the extent that we perceive the pattern of our self-change.
But again, all the above point may just be nonsense -- as I said, it's just free will that I believe solved, not consciousness.
quote:Yes, I agree. And said so above.
You keep saying both things -- that the concept of free will is meaningless, and that we lack free will.
If the concept as you define it is meaningless, then don't claim we lack it - because you thus bestow it with meaning in its absence; which caused your friend to sob unnecessarily.
quote:Does thought (or subjective experience or qualia or consciousness) have causal power in the universe?
It's very strange for discussions about subjective experience to be coincidentally produced by subjective-experience-having creatures without the two (the subjective experiences, and the discussion about subjective experiences) being connected to each other, so I'd say "yes, it has causal power".
Posted by Strider (Member # 1807) on :
quote:No person who continues to exert conscious effort to accomplish things truly and sincerely believes that their own conscious effort is merely an epiphenomenon.
You state that as a truism Rabbit, but what is your evidence for the statement?
quote:I know what happens when I stop exerting conscious effort.
See, I here this sort of thing a lot. But it doesn't seem to me that the implication of epiphenomenalism is that we don't need to exert conscious effort anymore. Or that the implication of lack of free will means to stop trying. If you stop exerting conscious effort in your actions you are still conscious. Is there ever a moment where you are awake when you're unconscious? So the act of not exerting conscious effort would itself be a mental state that is along for the ride of the underlying physical states. And it would be determined by the laws of physics and cause and effect interactions over time the same as all other actions in the universe.
I agree this line of thinking leads to confusing places when considering the idea of mental effort. But why should we expect a lack of confusion when discussing consciousness? Again, I don't subscribe to epiphenomenalism, but I think you're making some unwarranted statements about it. Yes, you couldn't do math without conscious effort. But the implication of epiphenomenalism is that consciousness, however it comes about, is a byproduct of the underlying neurophysiological states that ARE necessary for doing that math problem. For that math problem to be done, a certain conscious state must go along with the neurophysiological behavior.
quote:Unless I sincerely believed that making a conscious effort mattered, there are thousands of things I would stop making the effort to do.
Isn't that basically what I said above and what you said I was wrong about?
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
Strider, How do you define a "sincere" belief? I have defined a sincere belief to be a mental state that is consistent with the actions associated with ones conscious choices. If you accept this definition, then it follows logically that a person who sincerely believed that their own consciousness was epiphenominal would not exert mental effort to influence the physical world, as that would be inconsistent with their sincerely held belief.
Suppose a epiphenonminalist, who has been pondering the nature of consciousness, suddenly realizes he is standing in the aisle of a grocery story and asks "Why am I here?". If he sincerely believes that conscious thought has no influence on the physical world, he would would not scratch his head trying to remember and then think "Ah, I came here because I want to buy chocolate" because the mental state of "I am here because I desired something" is inconsistent with the mental state of sincere belief in epiphenominalism.
Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
quote:On the other hand I once convinced a friend of mine that free will doesn't exist, and she spent the rest of the night sobbing.
On a third hand, I think that reaction isn't necessary, and that lack of free will doesn't actually take away any meaning from our lives.
Actually, if there's no free will then that reaction was completely necessary - it was decided by the prior state of the universe, and your friend had no choice to do otherwise.
...
As I see it, logical problems like the free will problem offer us two options. If assumptions A, B, and C lead us to conclude that there is no free will, then we can either accept that there is no free will or reject one of those three assumptions. We must do one or the other, depending on whether we are more confident of the assumptions or more confident of the conclusion.
Free will belongs in a very small set of propositions that we should have the highest confidence in, because if it were false it would lead to absurdity. It would mean we can't hold anyone morally or ethically responsible for anything, since they didn't really make any free choices for their own behavior. It would render the concepts of "best option" or "what we should do" meaningless, because we wouldn't actually have options. In other words, in order to live our lives in a way consistent with disbelief in free will, we'd have to act and think in ways that we've known are absurd since we were small children, and which would probably end up hurting us significantly. Even those who flatly reject that free will exists nevertheless end up acting and speaking in ways that show they go about making free choices in their daily lives.
So what I wonder is.... what are those assumptions A, B, and C that we are so confident in that, rather than rejecting any of those assumptions, we'd even be willing to reject a conclusion as seemingly clear as free will? Why not reject A, B, or C, and believe in free will - that seems like it would better allow us to live in a way that is consistent with our philosophy?
The way around that is if you separate the notions of making a choice and having multiple options in practical life from the concept of free will. But that seems to me to be simply redefining free will into something that doesn't have any practical significance... if we act in just the same way regardless of whether or not there is free will, and we are able to make choices and have options even without free will, then what is this thing we are arguing about?
Posted by Raymond Arnold (Member # 11712) on :
quote:because if it were false it would lead to absurdity. It would mean we can't hold anyone morally or ethically responsible for anything, since they didn't really make any free choices for their own behavior.
Haven't we been through why this is completely not true before?
Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
Probably, but any way you'd argue that is going to come down to separating ethic questions from free will, which again leads to the question of why we are arguing about free will if questions of practical life are answered just the same whether we have it or not.
Sidenote: It's frustrating when folks argue that we don't have free will but should act like we do, or that there isn't really a self but we should act like there is, or that there isn't an objective good but we should behave as if there were, and so on... and then wonder why philosophy is seen as so unuseful by most people.
Posted by Raymond Arnold (Member # 11712) on :
quote:Probably, but any way you'd argue that is going to come down to separating ethic questions from free will, which again leads to the question of why we are arguing about free will if questions of practical life are answered just the same whether we have it or not.
We (rather, I) am arguing about free will because arguing about free will is fun and produces a (usually false) sensation that I am exploring deep, important issues. I enjoy that sort of thing due to my genetics, my upbringing, and possibly (he said, pretending briefly to keep the thread on topic) due to conditions in my mothers womb during my early development.
I am a self aware entity that has preferences about what sort of experiences I have. There are processes I undergo, some of which relate to conscious thoughts and feelings. I have found that behaving morally produces a better world that I prefer to live in. This knowledge is one of the things that influence my actions.
It's important for morality to be detached from free will. Free will-based moralities tend to be about vengeance and pushiment, instead of producing the best results possible. Sometimes that results in the same morals that a free-will based morality would, but sometimes it doesn't.
So it's also not true that "we have no free will, but we should act like we do." You can build an accurate worldview off of untrue things through trial and error, but chances are you're going to get attached to unnecessary and possibly dangerous beliefs.
Posted by Raymond Arnold (Member # 11712) on :
I should clarify my stance a bit:
The point of Thou Art Physics is that we experience sensation, evaluate decisions, and take actions based on evaluations. To free-will-proponents, it says "there is nothing magical or special or suprising about this." To determinists (well, to me, anyway), it mostly provides language to better communicate with free will proponents.
Posted by Strider (Member # 1807) on :
quote:I have defined a sincere belief to be a mental state that is consistent with the actions associated with ones conscious choices. If you accept this definition, then it follows logically that a person who sincerely believed that their own consciousness was epiphenominal would not exert mental effort to influence the physical world, as that would be inconsistent with their sincerely held belief.
Rabbit, I think this only works if the assumption that the brain is a perfectly logical computational device is true. Which is almost certainly not the case. Why can't there be inconsistencies and conflicting processes?
Remember, if someone is an epiphenomenalist, they also don't believe in free will or souls. The consciously experiencing person has no more control over their thoughts than they do their behaviors. They would or would not exert mental effort to influence the physical world due solely to their neurophysiology, due to their brain processes. The experience of mental effort would either be there or not based on that underlying pattern of neuronal firing. A momentary insight, or either a pervasive conscious belief about the nature of mental states being epiphenomenal in know way guarantees that the core processes that underlie behavior will cease, and the accompanying mental states along with them.
You seem to be arguing from the standpoint of presupposing that epiphenomenalism is wrong and that we have free will and a soul. In this situation, someone who believed in epiphenomenalism would use their agency to not exert mental effort. But that's not a necessary result if you accept all the implications of epiphenomenalism.
Posted by Strider (Member # 1807) on :
quote:It would mean we can't hold anyone morally or ethically responsible for anything, since they didn't really make any free choices for their own behavior. It would render the concepts of "best option" or "what we should do" meaningless, because we wouldn't actually have options.
I don't think this is the case at all Tres. More precisely, it would mean we would be required to have a conversation about the notion of responsibility, and what role it plays in society and human interactions.
It only renders notions of "should" or "ought" meaningless in a limited sense. Since yes, only one behavior happens, and though we have the conscious experiencing of choosing, it wasn't really a real choice. BUT that only works when we take a narrow view of what it means to say someone "should do something" or "should have done something else".
If we're talking about is a normative statement about what is the right way to act, and we understand that behavior/neurophysiology can change through interaction, then we can say meaningful statements about how we can interact with others so they become the kinds of people who act in ways where they do "pick the best option" or "do what they should do" or "act ethically".
quote:but any way you'd argue that is going to come down to separating ethic questions from free will, which again leads to the question of why we are arguing about free will if questions of practical life are answered just the same whether we have it or not.
Raymond covered in part what I would have said in response to this. I'll also note I've mentioned a few times in this thread that I'm less concerned with free will and more concerned with agency and cognition.
But it's also worth noting that while for me, whether we have it or not does not affect how I believe we should behave based on my ethical system, naive notions of free will and human agency DO very much affect the way people react to and interact with other people, both personally, and at the policy level.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Free will-based moralities tend to be about vengeance and pushiment, instead of producing the best results possible.
You've made a rather sweeping statement there that I doubt is defensible. While moral accountability is one of the ethical questions commonly associated with the discussion of free will, it is hardly the only one. Even if it were, "moral accountability" concerns far more than vengence and punishment.
If conscious deliberation can not influence whether or not we make moral choices -- then what is the point of any thinking about morality and ethics? If consciousness is truly epiphenominal meaning that conscious thought does not influence the physical world -- then ethical and moral debates are pointless mental gymnastics.
We can disagree about whether being able to make real choices based on our conscious consideration of facts and ideas constitutes free will, but we have to assume that our own conscious effort have real consequences. The alternative is insanity.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:Originally posted by Raymond Arnold: I should clarify my stance a bit:
The point of Thou Art Physics is that we experience sensation, evaluate decisions, and take actions based on evaluations. To free-will-proponents, it says "there is nothing magical or special or suprising about this." To determinists (well, to me, anyway), it mostly provides language to better communicate with free will proponents.
The point of Thou Art Physics, is that free will isn't opposed to determinism.
People who see it opposed to determinism see it so because they have the false intuition that physics binds them against some actual inner self, rather than defines that very self.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Rabbit, I think this only works if the assumption that the brain is a perfectly logical computational device is true. Which is almost certainly not the case. Why can't there be inconsistencies and conflicting processes?
Certainly people do not behave rationally. People are inconsistent and think all kinds of conflicting things. That's irrelevant to my argument. At the bottom of all those conflicting ideas and desires, there is a foundation of beliefs and desires that are most strongly correlated with our conscious choices. Those are, by my definition what we sincerely believe.
You may think you want to loose weight more than anything in the world, but if you routinely choose to watch television and eat ice cream rather than go to the gym and eat vegetables, your desire to loose weight is not sincere. People do what they sincerely want to do. That is what I mean by a sincere desire.
Similarly, a sincere belief is one that is consistent with ones conscious choices. A belief that is inconsistent with ones conscious choices is, by my definition, not a sincerely held belief.
When I said that no one can sincerely believe that their own conscious thoughts are epiphenominal and remain sane, I meant that it would be impossible for a person to make conscious choices consistent with that belief and remain a functional human being. If you disagree, give me an example of a conscious choice that would be consistent with the sincere belief that conscious choice could not effect the physical world.
Posted by Strider (Member # 1807) on :
quote:We can disagree about whether being able to make real choices based on our conscious consideration of facts and ideas constitutes free will, but we have to assume that our own conscious effort have real consequences. The alternative is insanity.
Rabbit, no one as of yet has argued for epiphenomenalism on this thread. You're tilting at windmills here. But I do think you are making sweeping statements about the implications of epiphenomenalism that are not backed up by anything.
quote:If conscious deliberation can not influence whether or not we make moral choices -- then what is the point of any thinking about morality and ethics?
Please see my above post to you. You are asking the wrong question. You are setting up a false option for us to choose from. Either think about morality or don't. Whatever choice you make is the one you were determined to make. Whether you think about morality, or cheese, or sex, or bicycles, whether you stop thinking about something mid thought because you decide it's not worth thinking about because you have no free will and consciousness is epiphenomenal, it's all part of the deterministic process that we call you, which an epiphenomenalist would say is epiphenomenal. The underlying neurophysiological activity proceeds as a temporal process in whichever way it is determined to go, and that process has a conscious correlate that epiphenomenalists say has no causal influence because all the causal influence is at the lower levels.
Conscious deliberation itself under epiphenomenalism does not influence whether we make moral choices, but the underlying neurophysiological process that is the correlate of the conscious experience DOES have causal influence. You don't have a choice as to whether you consciously deliberate or not (at least not a real choice), it either happens or it doesn't, based on your neurophysiology.
Btw, I'm greatly amused at my defense of a theory I don't agree with it!
Posted by Strider (Member # 1807) on :
quote:When I said that no one can sincerely believe that their own conscious thoughts are epiphenominal and remain sane, I meant that it would be impossible for a person to make conscious choices consistent with that belief and remain a functional human being. If you disagree, give me an example of a conscious choice that would be consistent with the sincere belief that conscious choice could not effect the physical world.
I think I've addressed this in my last few posts to you. IF you accept epiphenomenalism, conscious choices are just the correlates of underlying neurophysiology. There really is no choice. No chooser. That's the point of epiphenomenalism. For the sake of argument you are accepting one aspect of epiphenomenalism, but not the whole thing, and it leads to this apparent contradiction.
also:
quote:At the bottom of all those conflicting ideas and desires, there is a foundation of beliefs and desires that are most strongly correlated with our conscious choices.
I'm not sure that there's warrant for this statement. It assumes that that beliefs and desires are explicit propositional statements of some sort, rather than dispositions towards certain types of behaviors. There is no reason to expect lack of contradictions, even if this foundational level of which you speak exists.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:I think I've addressed this in my last few posts to you. IF you accept epiphenomenalism, conscious choices are just the correlates of underlying neurophysiology. There really is no choice. No chooser. That's the point of epiphenomenalism. For the sake of argument you are accepting one aspect of epiphenomenalism, but not the whole thing, and it leads to this apparent contradiction.
That's irrelevant. All that is required for my statement is that conscious beings experience the sensations of choosing and exerting mental effort. From the epiphenominalist perspective, beliefs, ideas, and choices don't really exist, they are all just correlates of the underlying neurophysiology. None the less, some of the beliefs and ideas will be highly with the subjective experience of making a choice, and some will not. I define the sincerity of a belief to be the degree to which it is consistent with conscious choice. Consistency between mental states can exist whether or not those mental state influence the physical world, hence it is possible, by this definition, to judge certain beliefs to be more sincere than others even from the epiphenominalist perspective.
If you disagree, you need to at least provide some alternative definition of what constitutes a sincere belief. You seem to be claiming that from the epiphenominalist perspective, sincerity is meaningless. This only true to the extent that consciouness itself is meaningless from the epiphenominalist perspective. It is possible to say certain ideas and beliefs are more consistent with the conscious processes of a given choice than others regardless the relationship between the ideas, beliefs and choices to the physical neurological process.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote: All that is required for my statement is that conscious beings experience the sensations of choosing and exerting mental effort. From the epiphenominalist perspective, beliefs, ideas, and choices don't really exist, they are all just correlates of the underlying neurophysiology.
From the epiphenominalist perspective, conscious beings don't exist. You aren't thinking big enough.
quote: I define the sincerity of a belief to be the degree to which it is consistent with conscious choice.
Well, there's your problem.
But, seriously, to address your concern: I do indeed sincerely believe that I am a big mass of random molecules floating through mostly empty space, held together by what may as well be magic. And yet, despite the fact that I sincerely believe this, I do not think when I reach out for a pencil of all the incredible subatomic complexity involved in the act. It's a mental shorthand enforced by my own biology that, while convenient, also prevents me from being physically able to even conceive of the actual truth of the situation.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:I do indeed sincerely believe that I am a big mass of random molecules floating through mostly empty space, held together by what may as well be magic. And yet, despite the fact that I sincerely believe this, I do not think when I reach out for a pencil of all the incredible subatomic complexity involved in the act. It's a mental shorthand enforced by my own biology that, while convenient, also prevents me from being physically able to even conceive of the actual truth of the situation.
That analogy simply doesn't work for me as a chemist. For the first thing, I have spent a good portion of my life studying how the interaction of atomic and subatomic particles gives rise to the macroscopic properties of matter. There is no inconsistency in viewing the pencil on my desk as a solid object useful for writing and understanding that it is an incredibly complex assembly of subatomic particles creating an intricate force field in space. Its no more contradictory than saying that a novel is both a book and a collection of ordered letters. When I reach out to pick up a pencil, there is no need to consider its subatomic complexity. It would not change my behavior in any way. Sincerely believing that both pencil and hand are made of subatomic particles is not in any way inconsistent with choosing to reach out and pick up the the pencil. It is not inconsistent to view the object as a pencil and as a collection of subatomic particles. Both views are physically and objectively true and useful in certain applications.
But this is not the primary reason the analogy fails. Your belief about the nature of matter is a subjective opinion about objective facts. What you believe about the nature of the pencil can not change its nature. No matter how sincerely you believe that both your hand and the pencil are nearly entirely empty space, you won't be able to pass your hand through the pencil. The forces that keep your fingers from passing through the pencil are real whether you believe in them or not.
Epiphenominalism is a subjective belief about the nature of subjective experience. One of the key features of subjective experience is the sensation that what we think influences our actions and behavior. We experience the sensation of trying to accomplish something. We feel we have a choice to continue exerting ourselves or to give up. Our heartbeats whether we think about it or not, but we know that we don't of solve math problems or post on internet forums without and conscious effort and we "decide" whether we will make that conscious effort or not. Whether that decision is real or illusory, the subjective experience of it, at least in my case, involves consideration of my beliefs.
[ July 08, 2011, 09:49 AM: Message edited by: The Rabbit ]
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:From the epiphenominalist perspective, conscious beings don't exist. You aren't thinking big enough.
Belief only exists if consciousness exist. A belief in Epiphonominalism is a belief that belief itself is illusory. Can you call a belief sincere if you you believe it to be an illusion?
Posted by scifibum (Member # 7625) on :
quote:Belief only exists if consciousness exist. A belief in Epiphonominalism is a belief that belief itself is illusory. Can you call a belief sincere if you you believe it to be an illusion?
So you're pointing out a paradox, here? You seemed to be making an argument that not believing in one's own conscious agency would make one insane, but now you're saying one cannot hold that belief at all?
But to answer your question, yes, of course you can call that belief sincere. One's definition of "belief" in that case would include the understanding that the conscious experience of it was only a side effect of underlying physical events. But those physical events would correlate to the same outcome as a "sincere belief" in a non-epiphenomenalist world, so it amounts to the same concept.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:So you're pointing out a paradox, here? You seemed to be making an argument that not believing in one's own conscious agency would make one insane, but now you're saying one cannot hold that belief at all?
No, I was just rebutting Tom's argument.
quote:One's definition of "belief" in that case would include the understanding that the conscious experience of it was only a side effect of underlying physical events. But those physical events would correlate to the same outcome as a "sincere belief" in a non-epiphenomenalist world, so it amounts to the same concept.
If this makes sense to you, then your experience of consciousness is utterly different from mine. In my experience of consciousness, performing certain tasks requires mental exertion. Since my natural tendency is to avoid exerting myself unless I perceive some benefit for it, I must believe that mental effort has some real effect in order to make that effort. I'm not going to exert myself to solve some difficult mathematical problem unless I believe that this exertion is likely to increase my chances of finding the solution. If I truly believed that the sensation of exerting mental effort was an epiphenomenon that had no real influence on the outcome, I wouldn't do it. My response to every difficult problem would be, "I'll sleep on it. Either my neurons will come to a solution or they won't. Forcing my self to concentrate on the problem can't possibly help." After all, in my conscious experience I do occasionally come up with a solution to a problem by "sleeping on it".
But even though that occasionally works, I know very well that it usually doesn't. If my response to every problem was to sleep on it until a solution popped into my mind, I would cease to function rationally.
You can say "If you believed mental effort was an epiphenomena, you'd keep exerting effort because your neurons would make you do it." If this is what is happening, then, at least in my experience, my neurons make me do it by making me believe that it matters.
At the moment in which in which one consciously chooses to exert mental effort, one sincerely believes that the conscious effort matters.
Posted by Raymond Arnold (Member # 11712) on :
I don't actually fully understand what epiphenomenists believe, or if it's the same thing I'm about to describe. But from what I've read, a lot of decisions that we think of as conscious decisions are in fact made in the subconscious, and our conscious thought process is a "rationalization after the fact."
I don't know whether that's true or not. I'm not a neurologist and I was just reading a pop-sci article. But it sounds entirely plausible to me, and it does not strike me as at all contradictory to say:
"1) My conscious effort is a byproduct of things going on in my unconscious mind that I don't really control.
"2) If I want to get important math problems done, things need to be going on in my unconscious mind that result in me experiencing the sensation of mental exertion in my conscious mind.
"3) If I want those things to happen in my subconscious mind, one requirement is that I am the sort of person who is willing to undergo mental exertions."
If you want a ball to fall from the top of a tower to the bottom, the sound that the ball makes as it falls through the air is not what caused the ball to fall. But if you live in a world with air, it's not possible to drop the ball without producing that sound.
At the moment in which one consciously chooses to exert mental effort, one (may have, possibly) already subconsciously made that choice, and the conscious decision is just like the air whistling - an inevitable consequence of the ball dropping, not the event that threw the ball from the roof in the first place.
I experience the same "mental exertion requirement" that you describe. I find the above entirely plausible, whether or not it's true.
Posted by scifibum (Member # 7625) on :
The thing is, Rabbit, anyone who espouses epiphenomenalism presumably has the same mental sensations and relationship with motivation you are describing. They have simply concluded that it's illusory.
No one can opt out of the illusion (if it is an illusion).
I'm not sure why you think that deciding the sensation of choosing to exert mental effort is illusory would actually change the way that person develops and reacts to motivations. If the conscious experience is just a side effect, the physical processes are going to remain the same. If the physical processes result in a particular belief that relates to themselves, they aren't necessarily going to additionally break down.
Posted by Strider (Member # 1807) on :
quote:Belief only exists if consciousness exist. A belief in Epiphonominalism is a belief that belief itself is illusory.
Depends on how you define belief Rabbit. If you allow for implicit belief, which I would, then belief does not have to be a conscious propositional statement about the world. In fact, I would argue that no beliefs are at root this. What we call beliefs are the verbal expression of underlying dispositions towards the world. A disposition to act in a certain way, to accept or reject certain statements. You harbor a representation of the world that amounts to a belief. In this way, a human, or an animal, can act as if they believe a statement without actually ever having thought that particular statement. A belief, in the propositional sense, would then be a process taking place in the present.
Otherwise we'd have difficulty accounting for all the infinite number of beliefs that you have (that pink polka dotted 18 wheel trucks are dangerous to stand in front of) but which you have never thought consciously. And all the tangentially related beliefs that are altered by a new piece of knowledge which you never consciously think about.
A belief in epiphenomenalism wouldn't necessarily change how someone behaves in the world at all. Even if I'm wrong about the nature of beliefs, I still don't see how your statements are born out.
quote:I don't actually fully understand what epiphenomenists believe, or if it's the same thing I'm about to describe. But from what I've read, a lot of decisions that we think of as conscious decisions are in fact made in the subconscious, and our conscious thought process is a "rationalization after the fact."
Raymond, that's not entirely the same as epiphenomenalism, but I guess if you developed that line of thought in the right away, it could be an explanation of epiphenomenalism. The main thrust of the epiphenomenalist argument is that even if all decisions were made consciously, that there was even no such thing as unconscious or subconscious decision making, our conscious decisions, and at root our consciousness itself would be epiphenomenal. There is no causality in consciousness under this account, but rather, all the causality exists in the underlying physical stuff.
I personally think epiphenomenalism gets a bit murky when you try to account for specifics of where the causal power is. At lot of people will argue that all the causality lies in the neurons, and consciousness is the epiphenomena. But why single out the neurons? Wouldn't neurons have the same ontological problem of consciousness? Wouldn't we be forced to say that neurons aren't real either and that the real causal power is in the atoms, or the quarks, or the quantum wave function? What gets to be real and what doesn't? And if there's no causal power in anything besides the at root physical process, why would these other processes exist? Why would they emerge? And if they do have a real ontological existence, why stop at neurons? Why not grant consciousness causal power? Anyway...that's just one line of reasoning that I think pokes some holes in epiphenomalism, though I sometimes mix up the specific tenets of epiphenomalism and eliminative materialism, and that may be more relevant to the latter.
I found this paper by Dan Dennett. And while I don't agree with Dennett's compatabilist take on free will, I thought this paper addresses a lot of the questions surrounding determinism and free will in a really nice way.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:At the moment in which in which one consciously chooses to exert mental effort, one sincerely believes that the conscious effort matters.
I'm thinking that you might fundamentally misunderstand epiphenomenalism. An epiphenominalist would say that there is not only no such thing as a "conscious choice" in the way you mean, but that there is no such thing as a "one" in the way you mean. In other words: the self is a programmed bunch of responses. It perceives itself as a single unit capable of conscious decision, but those conscious decisions are themselves programmed responses being produced by other mechanisms. That it perceives its programmed reactions to be the product of some sort of consciousness is not -- as you seem to be asserting -- a paradox; it's simply the way it works.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
Tom,
I understand epiphenominalism extremely well, having studied and discussed with numerous of my academic colleagues. There is no need for the condescension. If an epiphenominalist would say there is no such thing as "conscious choice", then he can not mean it in the way that I do.
When I say "conscious choice", I mean the subjective experience of choosing something that often involves the rational process of weighing options. That subjective experience exists, I experience it. Epiphenominalists agree that conscious beings experience the sensation of "choosing", "reasoning", and "believing" -- they simply claim these phenomena are illusory.
From an academic, biochemical, objective perspective, I can imagine that's true. It could be. What I am saying is that whether its true or not, its not believable. Belief is a subjective phenomenon. Based on my own subjective experience of consciousness, I am compelled to believe my own thought processes matter. I could not function sanely if I did not. Perhaps others conscious experience is utterly different from mine. Maybe you don't experience consciousness at all which is why what I'm saying about the subjective experience of consciousness does not resonate with you. In fact, I'm beginning to suspect from that several people involved in this discussion are zombies.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:What I am saying is that whether its true or not, its not believable. Belief is a subjective phenomenon.
If you're saying that you are limited by your belief structures in such a way that you are not capable of believing that you have no non-physical consciousness, that's fine. But doubting that anyone else can is not, I submit, rational.
I think you're fixated on the idea that your thoughts matter, as noted above, and thus are missing the point. Of course your thoughts matter; your thoughts are part of the process by which the collective entity that is your "self" produces results. But those thoughts are themselves deterministic products of your physical brain.
You would not say of a computer program which controls an assembly line that it doesn't matter. Of course it matters. But neither would you say that the program has no physical existence, that it's just some vague "consciousness" that has somehow been manifested within the computer; it manifests in the concrete physical transfer of electrons through switches. In the same way, your thoughts definitely matter; they are essentially the language in which your high-level software is written. But, like computer programs, your thoughts manifest as physical objects with physical reality; they are not nebulous, non-existent qualia.
Now, I want to stress that I am not personally an epiphenominalist in the broadest sense, in that I absolutely believe that one's mental state is relevant to one's behavior. But I believe that one's mental state is really just the physical state of one's neural network, and that altering the physical state can produce a "mental state" that would be absolutely indistinguishable from a mental state reached by internal processes (and thus produce physical effects controlled by that mental state as if that mental state had been self-generated.) (Personally, I'm more comfortable thinking of this as a strictly materialist worldview, because epiphenominalism is so strongly associated with some ludicrous philosophies, but I see nothing preventing it from being considered a valid argument for epiphenomalism as well.)
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
My argument hangs entirely on the definition of sincere belief. What constitutes a sincere belief from the epiphenominalist perspective is far from self evident, but since people claim to believe in epiphenominalism, addressing the question is pretty much intrinisic to the discussion of epiphenominalism.
I have defined a "sincere belief" to be a mental state that is largely consistent with ones conscious choices. It is possible to assess the extent to which a persons conscious thought processes are internally consistent whether those process are illusory manifestation of neuronal activity or influence one another, so that definition provides a measure of "sincerity" which is applicable even from the epiphenominalist perspective. I will agree that from the that perspective, the sincerity of ones beliefs is not a particularly meaningful. But then, the whole point of epiphenominalism is that conscious process are not particularly meaningful.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
I don't see where you have demonstrated that an epiphenominalist is unable to sincerely (and thus consciously, for a given value of "consciously") hold a belief in epiphenomalism, though, even by your definition.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
I haven't been following this thread much...but just for fun I thought I'd stick my head in and give you guys an example of free will:
"Banana sandwich hat sale!"
I choose to say that nonsensical thing.
Posted by Strider (Member # 1807) on :
Well that logic is impeccable.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
Do I detect a hint of sarcasm?
Posted by Strider (Member # 1807) on :
I can't help it. My brain made me do it.
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
*rubs his temples suggestively* Or was it my brain that made you do it? *evil laugh*
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
There's a story by (I think) Ted Chiang, called "The algorithm for love", in which the protagonist becomes convinced that she is in fact a Turing machine, executing evolutionary algorithms, and that therefore her life is meaningless. I think this intuition drives a lot of the sometimes nearly hysterical resistance to physical determinism and reductionism; I also think it's wrong. Ted Chiang's protagonist is, unfortunately, executing the algorithms for being a whiny drama queen. It is not possible to be mistaken about the value of one's life due to ignorance of its nature: If it was valuable before you learned the truth about the underlying process, then it is still valuable afterwards, for your estimate of its value was not in fact derived from any wrong perception about the nature of consciousness; it was (and should remain) derived from your perception that by dog, you exist and life is good, and can be made even better.
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
KoM, this? Not Chiang, although I agree it has some similarities to his work.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
That's the one, yes. Mind bobbled on the author, apparently. I stand by the judgement of algorithms for being a whiny drama queen.
Posted by Raymond Arnold (Member # 11712) on :
At the end of the story it says:
quote:As well, the tone and central conflict of the story evoke Ted Chiang's excellent "Division by Zero." Chiang's work has had a huge influence on me, and as a gesture of respect, note that my protagonist's words to her husband right before the conception of their child echo the words spoken in similar circumstances by Chiang's protagonist in "The Story of Your Life."]
The story was interesting and I agree with KoM's assessment. I am curious how the story would likely play out in real life. For dramatic purposes, it made sense for the character to act out the whiny-drama-queen algorithm. But in real life:
a) Would developing dolls like that actually give you near-mindreading abilities? (this is plausible for not necessarily true.)
b) What percentage of people working on dolls like that would end up acting out the whiny-drama-queen algorithm, compared to those who just shrugged and rolled with the realization?
Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
quote:If it was valuable before you learned the truth about the underlying process, then it is still valuable afterwards, for your estimate of its value was not in fact derived from any wrong perception about the nature of consciousness; it was (and should remain) derived from your perception that by dog, you exist and life is good, and can be made even better.
And accordingly, if a set of assumptions exist which would require you to reject that perception that you exist or that your life is good, then you must reject those assumptions based on reductio ad absurdum.
For instance, if you know your life is good, and if you logically conclude that having no free will would entail life not being good, then you can rationally conclude you have free will.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:For instance, if you know your life is good, and if you logically conclude that having no free will would entail life not being good, then you can rationally conclude you have free will.
I think that's an epistemological failure, isn't it? Because it falls apart once you ask how you "know" your life is good.
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
quote: logically conclude that having no free will would entail life not being good
I'd also love to see this derived from premises that weren't shaky even for the person doing the premising.
Posted by Strider (Member # 1807) on :
quote: It is not possible to be mistaken about the value of one's life due to ignorance of its nature:
KOM, I think this works only if "value" is defined clearly. If you simply mean whether life is worth living and caring about, I agree, this shouldn't change whether you have a soul or not, or whether you have free will or not, or whether epiphenomenalism is true or not. But *should* and *is* aren't always the same. And I do think it is possible to be mistaken about the value of one's own life due to a mistaken undestanding of the nature of life.
quote:And accordingly, if a set of assumptions exist which would require you to reject that perception that you exist or that your life is good, then you must reject those assumptions based on reductio ad absurdum.
Tres, I don't see how this follows.
Same with this:
quote:For instance, if you know your life is good, and if you logically conclude that having no free will would entail life not being good, then you can rationally conclude you have free will.
I think Tom has the right of it. You're confusing epistemological issues with issues of mental states and content.
Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
It follows according to this logical progression:
Premise 1) If A then not B Premise 2) B is True Therefore Conclusion 3) A is False
A = There is no free will B = Life is good
The protagonist of the story that KoM brought up seems to accept (1). And I think KoM is correct to point out that (2) is true - that you can perceive that "you exist and life is good". I'd think the protagonist of the story should infer (3) rather than reject (2), since (2) is the premise that is easier to directly observe. Rejecting (1) would also solve it, but that depends on how good of a reason the protagonist has for assuming no free will would prevent a good and worthwhile life.
quote:
quote:logically conclude that having no free will would entail life not being good
I'd also love to see this derived from premises that weren't shaky even for the person doing the premising.
I'd actually like to see such a line of reasoning too, but I think we'd have to start by figuring out what a "good life" entails. I'm not sure how one would do that without relying on shaky premises.
Posted by Strider (Member # 1807) on :
Tres, I think you're missing the point we're making. You need to make a distinction between what a given individual *would* do in a given situation, what a given individual *should* do in a given situation, and whether either of those are universal statements.
Let's take your example:
quote:For instance, if you know your life is good, and if you logically conclude that having no free will would entail life not being good, then you can rationally conclude you have free will.
Someone might logically conclude that not having free will would entail life not being good. But they may have used faulty logic. Or their logic could have been based on false assumptions.
Similarly, it may be rational for someone to conclude that they have no free will, but that doesn't mean it's the truth. What is rational for a given person is based on their psychology, their neurophysiology, the current configuration of the system so to speak. Given a different configuration, a different psychology, a different history and set of circumstances, a different conclusion may be rationally reached.
What we want to do is figure out what conclusion is actually warranted. You even mention something along these lines. So maybe you're only making a statement about what might be rational for someone to conclude, but not what is actually correct or true.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
To me, the key is that that sentence needs to be rewritten this way:
If you believe your life is good, and you have rationally concluded that you would not be able to believe your life is good without free will, you can rationally conclude that you have free will.
I think, once you reword it, its weaknesses become obvious.
Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
quote:So maybe you're only making a statement about what might be rational for someone to conclude, but not what is actually correct or true.
That is what I was saying. I was basing my point on the situation and assumption set up by KoM in his earlier post.
Posted by Aris Katsaris (Member # 4596) on :
quote:Once when Hyakujo delivered some Zen lectures an old man attended them, unseen by the monks. At the end of each talk when the monks left so did he. But one day he remained after the had gone, and Hyakujo asked him: `Who are you?'
The old man replied: `I am not a human being, but I was a human being when the Kashapa Buddha preached in this world. I was a Zen master and lived on this mountain. At that time one of my students asked me whether the enlightened man is subject to the law of causation. I answered him: "The enlightened man is not subject to the law of causation." For this answer evidencing a clinging to absoluteness I became a fox for five hundred rebirths, and I am still a fox. Will you save me from this condition with your Zen words and let me get out of a fox's body? Now may I ask you: Is the enlightened man subject to the law of causation?'
Hyakujo said: `The enlightened man is one with the law of causation.'
At the words of Hyakujo the old man was enlightened.
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