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- We live and act in a deterministic universe with deterministic brains - Right and wrong are social constructions. In science, people use empiricism as a crit

- We live and act in a deterministic universe with deterministic brains - Right and wrong are social constructions. In science, people use empiricism as a criterion - Free will requires the existence of a supernatural "self" or actor. Good luck finding it.

javert 15y ago
You've made two grand mistakes. (1) You've stepped into and apparently completely ignored the exact fallacy pointed out by the grandparent of this comment. (2) You offered arbitrary assertions without evidence. You know what I think; if you want to counter it, give evidence. Shouting louder doesn't do you any good. To respond to your arbitrary assertions: - Yes, but not in the sense you mean. - No. Right and wrong must be discovered. - No. Depends on your definition of "free will," but in general, no.
- ristretto 15y ago
  - For an interesting take on (1) and (2) i would suggest reading this http://www.amazon.com/Incognito-Secret-Lives-David-Eagleman/dp/0307377334/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1313711503&sr=8-1 http://www.amazon.com/Incognito-Secret-Lives-David-Eagleman/... ; I think there's ample evidence there, too. - You need a tool to "discover" right and wrong, just like you need a metric tensor to measure length. That tool is empiricism. - If it's not the actor's will, whose is it?
  - javert 15y ago
    Thanks for an interesting and thoughtful response. :-) Unfortunately, my reading list is tooo long to add anything new anywhere near the front of the queue, unless it's something that is absolutely earth-shattering. I see that the book you suggest is rated highly on Amazon. But the first review that comes up for me (maybe it's the first one for you, too) is a June 5 review by a neuroscientist (supposedly) who discounts the book as being highly intellectually sloppy. I actually think we may agree on the second overall bullet point. Which is a lot closer than I thought we were. However, I think certain empiricist philosophers have been pretty mistaken. I'm not an expert in either analytic or continental philosophy, but wasn't Hume the famous empiricist who posed the "is-ought" dichotomy and rejected the possibility of finding any solution to it? Any Rand posed a solution to this problem, and I agree with her. I can provide further references up on request. On the third bullet point: I think "free will" is properly understood as a person's ability to choose whether or not to think about something. The more they think, the more refined their conclusions become. It's wrong to just claim that people are a product of their genes and environment, which implicitly ignores this thinking process. So to answer the question, the actor's "will" is the key factor here (if you want to use that word), but of course there is nothing supernatural going on.
    - ristretto 15y ago
      Eagleman's book is indeed biased and shallow, but not inaccurate, and has a good summary of clinical cases on the subject.
solemio 15y ago
1. Heisenberg would not agree. It's more accurate to say that the universe is ruled by probabality and the probability distributions are deterministic. Even leaving quantum mechanics aside, complexity of deterministic processes is often such that they are effectively random unless one knows the exact starting conditions and all the inputs. 2. generally agreed. social in the sense that good is what is beneficial for society. 3. Humans are essentially modulating the probabilities that occur naturally and to that extent free will is real. I'm tempted to say free will is as real as Heisenberg's uncertainty principle - but since I'm not sure, I'd say the probability of that is greater than 0.5 . Why ? Because biology comes from first principles and modern physics is ruled by probability. The first chemical forms would have to have taken it into account.
- ristretto 15y ago
  1. Yes i should have mentioned that about the universe; the pdfs are deterministic. I dont agree about "effectively random"; chaos != randomness. But, crucially, at the level of biological molecules that mediate most brain processes, quantum effects have little significance. 3. I disagree strongly with theidea that free will can arise from quantum uncertainty or randomness. That's not free will, that's random will. Unfortunately, great scientists have like R. Penrose advocate such things, but i believe most neuroscientists believe it to be hokum nowadays.
  - jerf 15y ago
    Randomness is relative to the knowledge of an observer. If you can not work out what a system is going to do in advance, it's random to you. If nobody in the universe can work out what a system is going to do in advance, even in principle (which can be established by complexity arguments and such), then it's as good as random, even if the universe is fully deterministic. "Absolute" randomness isn't a useful concept, it tends to come apart in your hand when examined. Even if the universe is deterministic, you aren't smart enough to make it not random for you, nor can you be.
    - ristretto 15y ago

javert 15y ago

You've made two grand mistakes. (1) You've stepped into and apparently completely ignored the exact fallacy pointed out by the grandparent of this comment. (2) You offered arbitrary assertions without evidence. You know what I think; if you want to counter it, give evidence. Shouting louder doesn't do you any good. To respond to your arbitrary assertions: - Yes, but not in the sense you mean. - No. Right and wrong must be discovered. - No. Depends on your definition of "free will," but in general, no.

ristretto 15y ago
- For an interesting take on (1) and (2) i would suggest reading this http://www.amazon.com/Incognito-Secret-Lives-David-Eagleman/dp/0307377334/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1313711503&sr=8-1 http://www.amazon.com/Incognito-Secret-Lives-David-Eagleman/... ; I think there's ample evidence there, too. - You need a tool to "discover" right and wrong, just like you need a metric tensor to measure length. That tool is empiricism. - If it's not the actor's will, whose is it?
- javert 15y ago
  Thanks for an interesting and thoughtful response. :-) Unfortunately, my reading list is tooo long to add anything new anywhere near the front of the queue, unless it's something that is absolutely earth-shattering. I see that the book you suggest is rated highly on Amazon. But the first review that comes up for me (maybe it's the first one for you, too) is a June 5 review by a neuroscientist (supposedly) who discounts the book as being highly intellectually sloppy. I actually think we may agree on the second overall bullet point. Which is a lot closer than I thought we were. However, I think certain empiricist philosophers have been pretty mistaken. I'm not an expert in either analytic or continental philosophy, but wasn't Hume the famous empiricist who posed the "is-ought" dichotomy and rejected the possibility of finding any solution to it? Any Rand posed a solution to this problem, and I agree with her. I can provide further references up on request. On the third bullet point: I think "free will" is properly understood as a person's ability to choose whether or not to think about something. The more they think, the more refined their conclusions become. It's wrong to just claim that people are a product of their genes and environment, which implicitly ignores this thinking process. So to answer the question, the actor's "will" is the key factor here (if you want to use that word), but of course there is nothing supernatural going on.
  - ristretto 15y ago
    Eagleman's book is indeed biased and shallow, but not inaccurate, and has a good summary of clinical cases on the subject.

solemio 15y ago

1. Heisenberg would not agree. It's more accurate to say that the universe is ruled by probabality and the probability distributions are deterministic. Even leaving quantum mechanics aside, complexity of deterministic processes is often such that they are effectively random unless one knows the exact starting conditions and all the inputs. 2. generally agreed. social in the sense that good is what is beneficial for society. 3. Humans are essentially modulating the probabilities that occur naturally and to that extent free will is real. I'm tempted to say free will is as real as Heisenberg's uncertainty principle - but since I'm not sure, I'd say the probability of that is greater than 0.5 . Why ? Because biology comes from first principles and modern physics is ruled by probability. The first chemical forms would have to have taken it into account.

ristretto 15y ago
1. Yes i should have mentioned that about the universe; the pdfs are deterministic. I dont agree about "effectively random"; chaos != randomness. But, crucially, at the level of biological molecules that mediate most brain processes, quantum effects have little significance. 3. I disagree strongly with theidea that free will can arise from quantum uncertainty or randomness. That's not free will, that's random will. Unfortunately, great scientists have like R. Penrose advocate such things, but i believe most neuroscientists believe it to be hokum nowadays.
- jerf 15y ago
  Randomness is relative to the knowledge of an observer. If you can not work out what a system is going to do in advance, it's random to you. If nobody in the universe can work out what a system is going to do in advance, even in principle (which can be established by complexity arguments and such), then it's as good as random, even if the universe is fully deterministic. "Absolute" randomness isn't a useful concept, it tends to come apart in your hand when examined. Even if the universe is deterministic, you aren't smart enough to make it not random for you, nor can you be.
  - ristretto 15y ago