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Is religious fundamentalism a disease of the mind?
Topic Started: Apr 7 2007, 12:38 AM (5,012 Views)
ivorythumper
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Jeffrey
Apr 13 2007, 07:48 PM
IT: "If free will is reducible to chemicals then it is not free. It just seems to be free but actually the chemicals govern us. You'd have to show some mechanism by which we are not automata. This is hardly my issue, it is a common concern in neuroscience and ethics."

Obviously, free will works with the laws of nature, not by some magic process against them.


You are assuming free will, Jeff, not proving it. You keep asserting it, but fail to give any mechanism other than electrochemical activity, which we commonly understand to follow immutable laws and patterns. So the logical assumption must be that what is conventionally called "free will" is likewise chemicals following immutable laws and patterns like any other set of chemicals. How do you escape that?

The problem with your positivistic view of natural ethics is that you fail to account for the that established fact that the "laws of nature" must now be considered electrochemically, which you fail to do. You just do a bit of handwaving, invoke "free will" and hope that no one notices the intellectual legerdemain.

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The chemicals do not "govern us" as if they are some alien force imposed from the outside.  They are the way by which our will dictates what our body is to do. 

Of course not alien from the outside, they are intrinsic and the very material stuff of us biomachines. Nothing alien about them, for without the atoms and molecules and electrochemical reactions we simply would not be. If anything, they govern us from within.

Again, a bit of handwaving, invoke "will" and PRESTO! chemicals are not doing what chemicals do because you say so?

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We are "not free" when people tie us up, or blackmail us, or we live in a society where the government tells us what livelihood to follow.  We do not become "not free" when we start to understand what electrical and chemical impulses are behind dreaming, memory, willpower, love and so forth.  This is a misuse of the term "free". 

Here you acknowledge electrical and chemical impulses are behind all these things, yet you can't bring yourself to say that they are also behind WILL? Why the aversion, Jeff? Why not simply admit that our "will" is really the product of electrochemical activity?
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We are not automata, because automata (e.g. a car) do not have the electrical and chemical impulses that allow our brains to control our bodies when we will it. 

A car is not an automaton, it is a machine that requires an operator. An automaton is a self operating machine. From the Gk. αὐτόματος,, "self acting". Given what we know about the human being (and all forms of life) we are automata, or biomachines. We just happen to have different chemicals that give us self awareness, the ability to create ratios between things (hence rationality), and a few other faculties.

Given that we can no longer hold the notion of immutable and stable human nature, it is more accurate and less emotionally loaded to consider us as self aware biomachines or automata. Sloppy language leads to sloppy thinking, and we certainly wouldn't want to try to erect an ethical structure on sloppy thinking, would we?

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Love does not become not-love, because it is caused by serotonin (or whatever set of chemicals it is).  It is still the exact same thing.  We just know more about it, and why we have it. 
"Love" is of course defined in many ways. All that is really being said, regardless of the chosen definition (agape, eros, altruism, benevolence, charity, friendship, etc) is that some sequence of chemicals produces some particular effect. The semantics of love/not love are not important, Jeff, other than for sentimentality (obviously another neurochemical process).

It is ONLY because of those chemicals, and ONLY through those chemicals, that we experience the various physical sensation we call love. Without those chemicals there is no love. Why then is love not reducible to chemicals? What else is there? (you surely don't think that love is anything other than a physical thing, do you?).

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You come up with imaginary examples of using such knowledge to cause harm, but of course one could come up with much better stories about using such knowledge to increase human well being. 

I don't think the Tuskegee Experiment is an imaginary example. Nor is chemical castration. You must have missed the part where I noted that science and medicine has done lots of neat things. I have no problem with anyone using knowledge to increase human well being, but all those finer points about what that entails makes for extreme difficulties and vast potential for abuse and massive damage. In short, I just don't trust scientists to tinker with the human biomachines on the level of neurochemistry to build a better machine. Do you?

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"You'll have to let us know if you expect to be able to build anew a convincing theory of ethics that is not enmeshed in that whole outmoded worldview."

No building "anew" is needed.  There is a sufficiently high degree of commonality of life and method of discussion from Greek and Enlighenment writers to the present, that modern 20th century writers basically elaborate on the same basic issues they did.  It doesn't matter that Aristotle thought heavier objects fell faster than light objects, since his ethical reflections concerned how people live together in society and improve themselves, a situation we currently also face, being a social species that lives in groups and seeks stimulation.  I did not cite writers of the past as an argument from authority, but to document that your weird history of ideas was simply bad intellectual history.

So what exactly are you taking from the Greeks? That we are social beings? That we are disposed to seeking the truth? That we are inclined to acquire things we find good? That we like pleasure and have aversions to pain? That we want to propagate and are inclined to self preservation?

Or is it something else? It better be something else, since you are sounding like a closet natural law theorist. :lol:
The dogma lives loudly within me.
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Jeffrey
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IT: "It is ONLY because of those chemicals, and ONLY through those chemicals, that we experience the various physical sensation we call love. Without those chemicals there is no love. Why then is love not reducible to chemicals? What else is there? (you surely don't think that love is anything other than a physical thing, do you?)."

I wouldn't use the term "reducible", I would use the term "explained by" or "constituted by". There is no reduction. But yes, as I have said 15 or so times, love, free will, well-being etc. are all purely physical processes (both chemical and electrical, based on our current understanding), and without these physical processes, these things do not exist. You seem to think that "Free will is a chemical and electrical process" is a contradiction of terms, and that free will cannot be a physical process, by virtue of the meaning of the term. If so, please explain what you think free will could possibly be, other than magic.


Edit: Strictly speaking, I am a functionalist in the philosophy of mind. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functionalism...osophy_of_mind)

Some places above I seem to have lapsed into a one-to-one identity theory, whereby "choice" or "love" or "consciousness" is identified with a certain chemical process. But non-mammelian creatures (robots, for example) could have mental states (e.g. "self-awareness"), and some of the mental states in question (e.g. romantic love) involve intentional states towards others outside the brain, so I should broaden my definition a bit. None of this changes any of my dispute with IT. Functionalism is still a purely materialist approach to mental states, and would still have the same alleged "problems" IT is concerned about.

Also, a bit more on ethical naturalism. Above someone (Larry?) thought it was wrong to claim there were moral facts in nature (which the poster viewed as an amoral realm of animals eating one another or something). But natural simply means in this context a fact that can be discovered by science in the material world. Human well-being is the most obvious of these facts, and one of the main goals of morality is to increase this. It is usually not hard by observation to see if an action helps or hurts human well-being over all, and this would be the sort of natural, observable fact that makes an action morally right or morally wrong. Very simple, really.
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Larry
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Mmmmmmm, pie!
Never mind.
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ivorythumper
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Jeffrey
Apr 13 2007, 10:11 PM
IT: "It is ONLY because of those chemicals, and ONLY through those chemicals, that we experience the various physical sensation we call love. Without those chemicals there is no love. Why then is love not reducible to chemicals? What else is there? (you surely don't think that love is anything other than a physical thing, do you?)."

I wouldn't use the term "reducible", I would use the term "explained by" or "constituted by".  There is no reduction.  But yes, as I have said 15 or so times, love, free will, well-being etc. are all purely physical processes (both chemical and electrical, based on our current understanding), and without these physical processes, these things do not exist. 

OK, so we are in substantial agreement that free will is some sort of neurochemical process.

You want the biomachine to be "free" of the actions of these chemicals. Perhaps you can give me some other examples of how the biomachine can be unaffected by the operation of the chemicals that constitute its own biomachine: for instance, can we decide that amino acids not form proteins? Or that erythrocytes not deliver oxygen? Or that adrenaline not increase the supplies of oxygen and glucose to the brain and muscles?

Unless you can show *how* the biomachine is "free" and unaffected by the very chemicals that make it operate, we must assume that it is the idea of "free will" that is wrong, not physics.


Quote:
 

You seem to think that "Free will is a chemical and electrical process" is a contradiction of terms, and that free will cannot be a physical process, by virtue of the meaning of the term.  If so, please explain what you think free will could possibly be, other than magic.


That is not even what I seem to think. I've already accepted your assertion that we are soulless biomachines. So to correct your misstatements:
"You seem to think that "Free will is a chemical and electrical process" is a contradiction of terms, and that free will cannot beis a physical process, by virtue of the meaning of the term. If so, please explain what you think free will could possibly be, other than magic. Since it is a physical process, and as far as we can tell all matter follows physical laws, there is no free will. It is only free in the sense that if you jump off a roof you are free to free fall because gravity controls what happens.

I should not have to point out to you that is not an argument to say "it must be this because that is what we call it, what else could it be"?

You are also again assuming the existence of "free will" in asking me what it could possibly be. I have already accepted your definition that the human being is a soulless biomachine -- a TRUE automaton constantly processing the chemicals that govern its operations. (Unless you can show me how *we* govern chemistry without recourse to the tautology of "free will").

So there is no necessary answer to what free will need be, since it seems that it need not be. In a completely material universe, that is the most elegant and simple solution. Entia non sunt multiplicanda and all that....

But for fun, some classical thinkers would have handled the matter through connatural, or adamic knowledge. That of course is not unlike what Gebser would consider "magical consciousness" wherein there was a polar tension between the subject and object (in your case between your "Will" and the atoms, molecules, chemicals and electrical activity that constitute it) such that there was an integral relationship of mutual cause and effect between the two. But I doubt you want to go there to resolve the issue.
The dogma lives loudly within me.
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Moonbat
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I think your usage of "free will" is different to each other. Ivory you (i think) are appealing to the classical theological concept. Which i agree with you, is totally bunk.

Jeffery is (i think) appealing to a compatibilist view of free will whereby the emphasis is not on ultimate mechanistic origins but simply relates to us, or put another way it refers to the subset of eletrochemical processes in the brain involved in decision making and whether that subset is able to influence the behaviour of the body in accordance to the expectations of behaviour also present in the brain.

(The ultimate origins of these expectations and decisions, whether they are determined or not, that all becomes irrelevent to the compatibilist).

i.e.

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A common strategy employed by "classical compatibilists", such as Thomas Hobbes, is to claim that a person acts freely only when the person willed the act and the person could have done otherwise, if the person had decided to. Hobbes sometimes attributes such compatibilist freedom to the person and not to some abstract notion of will, asserting, for example, that "no liberty can be inferred to the will, desire, or inclination, but the liberty of the man; which consisteth in this, that he finds no stop, in doing what he has the will, desire, or inclination to doe."[9] In articulating this crucial proviso, David Hume writes, "this hypothetical liberty is universally allowed to belong to every one who is not a prisoner and in chains".[10] To illustrate their position, compatibilists point to clear-cut cases of someone's free will being denied, through rape, murder, theft, or other forms of constraint. In these cases, free will is lacking not because the past is causally determining the future, but because the aggressor is overriding the victim's desires and preferences about his own actions. The aggressor is coercing the victim and, according to compatibilists, this is what overrides free will. Thus, they argue that determinism does not matter; what matters is that individuals' choices are the results of their own desires and preferences, and are not overridden by some external (or internal) force


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_will#Determinism

Even though you're using the same words i don't think you are talking about the same thing.
Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem
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bachophile
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HOLY CARP!!!
been out if this thread for a while, and then u go and read the last posts and u see u havent missed anything.

just like...days of our lives....

:yawn:
"I don't know much about classical music. For years I thought the Goldberg Variations were something Mr. and Mrs. Goldberg did on their wedding night." Woody Allen
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Jeffrey
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Moonbat - Yes, I did say above that IT's Contra-Causal conception of free will was not compatible with modern science. Your gloss is correct, I am what would be called a "compatibilist" in the traditional terminilogy of these things. It's not that we are using the same word to mean different things, we are discussing (if that is the right phrase) what "free will" or "choice" or "reason" are.
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Axtremus
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HOLY CARP!!!
ivorythumper,

Help me out a bit here... Is it your thesis that "physical processes" cannot give rise to "free will" because "physical processes" are "deterministic"? Such that given the same set of stimuli, two "biomachines" of identical content and identical configuration MUST react the same way and will always lead to the same "decision" or the same "choice" to be made by these two "biomachines"?
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Jeffrey
Senior Carp
Another point on compatiblism/free will. I take IT's point to be that if choice and free will is simply a series of chemical and electrical reactions, and if these chemical and electrical reactions are set in a deterministic universe, then we don't really have "free" will, since our responses to events are fixed, and we "could not have done otherwise". I think this is a bad argument, since it equates "free" with "magical", but I will approach the issue from another direction:

If we assume that there is a God and that this God is omniscient, and has foreknowledge, this God knows, for 100% certain, what we will do in the future. In this case we also "cannot do otherwise" than what God knows, right now, we will do in the future. If science is a problem for genuinely free will (as IT conceives of it) then so is God's foreknowledge.

Just to be clear, I think both of these arguments are equally bad, neither science and the laws of nature, nor God's alleged foreknowledge, undermine the genuineness of free will. But if the one argument works, so does the other, for similar reasons.
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Daniel\
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Fulla-Carp
I'm calling it. The No's have it. :ph43r:

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ivorythumper
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Jeffrey
Apr 14 2007, 06:21 AM
Moonbat - Yes, I did say above that IT's Contra-Causal conception of free will was not compatible with modern science. Your gloss is correct, I am what would be called a "compatibilist" in the traditional terminilogy of these things. It's not that we are using the same word to mean different things, we are discussing (if that is the right phrase) what "free will" or "choice" or "reason" are.

Jeffrey: Since you told me that we are soulless biomachines, I've come to understand that there is no such thing as "free will" -- from naturalism, contracausality, spirituality, anything.

So it is a silly argument to say "that IT's Contra-Causal conception of free will was not compatible with modern science." since I hold that the concept of free will must now be understood to be incorrect, not the chemistry that gives us the appearence of free will.

I have no problem with "reason" being the processing of ratios between two things -- that is something an AI computer can potentially do, but "free will"? A whole other problem if your think it is any thing more than weirdly complex and not understood algorithms produced by the neurochemicals.
The dogma lives loudly within me.
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ivorythumper
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Axtremus
Apr 14 2007, 06:28 AM
ivorythumper,

Help me out a bit here... Is it your thesis that "physical processes" cannot give rise to "free will" because "physical processes" are "deterministic"? Such that given the same set of stimuli, two "biomachines" of identical content and identical configuration MUST react the same way and will always lead to the same "decision" or the same "choice" to be made by these two "biomachines"?

I suppose that might be the case, though we have yet to find two completely identical biomachines. However, the evidence of identical twins separated at birth and growing up in different circumstances that wind up developing eerily similar tastes, skills, avocations, professions, life patterns, etc certainly would support that intuition.
The dogma lives loudly within me.
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ivorythumper
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Jeffrey
Apr 14 2007, 07:33 AM
Another point on compatiblism/free will. I take IT's point to be that if choice and free will is simply a series of chemical and electrical reactions, and if these chemical and electrical reactions are set in a deterministic universe, then we don't really have "free" will, since our responses to events are fixed, and we "could not have done otherwise". I think this is a bad argument, since it equates "free" with "magical", but I will approach the issue from another direction:

If we assume that there is a God and that this God is omniscient, and has foreknowledge, this God knows, for 100% certain, what we will do in the future. In this case we also "cannot do otherwise" than what God knows, right now, we will do in the future. If science is a problem for genuinely free will (as IT conceives of it) then so is God's foreknowledge.

Just to be clear, I think both of these arguments are equally bad, neither science and the laws of nature, nor God's alleged foreknowledge, undermine the genuineness of free will. But if the one argument works, so does the other, for similar reasons.

You keep using magic and magical in an unfamiliar way. Please define your meaning, since it is not magical that a billiard ball drop to the floor when you release it.

Your argument from God is not based at all on how classical (Catholic) theology considers God in relation to free will, nor does it consider the relationship between act and potency, time and eternity, spirit and matter, and a whole host of other considerations. Unless you are dealing with the question in its entirity, you are setting up a straw man that you think you can knock down easily.

We have company coming in town, and then I travel next week, so I'll be scarce.
The dogma lives loudly within me.
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AlbertaCrude
Bull-Carp
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We have company coming in town, and then I travel next week, so I'll be scarce


Was that predestined or of free will?
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Jeffrey
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Have a safe trip, Steve. I know my well-wishes do not change the pre-determined facts of the trip, but my chemicals impell me to wish you well anyway. (Yes, this is a joke). :)
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TomK
HOLY CARP!!!
Jeffrey
Apr 14 2007, 03:38 PM
Have a safe trip, Steve.  I know my well-wishes do not change the pre-determined facts of the trip, but my chemicals impell me to wish you well anyway.  (Yes, this is a joke).  :)

Jeffery told a joke.

:slap: :thumb: :bigkiss: :smokin: :bigkiss: :cloak: :hat: :popcorn: :basketball:
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Jeffrey
Senior Carp
You will also surely like the following book, written by an analytically trained contemporary philosopher:

http://www.amazon.com/Only-Promise-Happine...76583521&sr=1-1
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TomK
HOLY CARP!!!
Jeffrey
Apr 14 2007, 04:47 PM
You will also surely like the following book, written by an analytically trained contemporary philosopher:

http://www.amazon.com/Only-Promise-Happine...76583521&sr=1-1

I'd like you to recommend a book on why some Jews are the funniest people on earth and why some do such a fantastic job in the other direction. :cool:
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ivorythumper
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Jeffrey
Apr 14 2007, 12:38 PM
Have a safe trip, Steve. I know my well-wishes do not change the pre-determined facts of the trip, but my chemicals impell me to wish you well anyway. (Yes, this is a joke). :)

If you suddenly start acting with benevolence toward me, I might have to rethink your assertion that we are soulless biomachines. :lol:
The dogma lives loudly within me.
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Axtremus
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HOLY CARP!!!
Jeffrey
Apr 14 2007, 10:33 AM
If we assume that there is a God and that this God is omniscient, and has foreknowledge, this God knows, for 100% certain, what we will do in the future. In this case we also "cannot do otherwise" than what God knows, right now, we will do in the future. If science is a problem for genuinely free will (as IT conceives of it) then so is God's foreknowledge.

Just to be clear, I think both of these arguments are equally bad, neither science and the laws of nature, nor God's alleged foreknowledge, undermine the genuineness of free will. But if the one argument works, so does the other, for similar reasons.

I argued with a study group this exact point at a Bible Camp just a few years ago... this point about "foreknowledge/omniscience" being inconsistent with "free will." ;) [And unlike ivorythumper, I don't think there's any "other consideration" needed to argue this point, it can stand alone just fine.]

I was tempted but chose not bring it up this time because I'd like to see if the "science and laws and nature undermine the genuineness of free will" argument can stand on its own (as opposed to an argument that's simply "not worse than" the "God's alleged foreknowledge undermines the genuineness of free will" argument.

:)
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Axtremus
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HOLY CARP!!!
ivorythumper
Apr 14 2007, 02:28 PM
Axtremus
Apr 14 2007, 06:28 AM
ivorythumper,

Help me out a bit here... Is it your thesis that "physical processes" cannot give rise to "free will" because "physical processes" are "deterministic"? Such that given the same set of stimuli, two "biomachines" of identical content and identical configuration MUST react the same way and will always lead to the same "decision" or the same "choice" to be made by these two "biomachines"?

I suppose that might be the case, though we have yet to find two completely identical biomachines. However, the evidence of identical twins separated at birth and growing up in different circumstances that wind up developing eerily similar tastes, skills, avocations, professions, life patterns, etc certainly would support that intuition.

The reason I brought this up, ivorythumper, is that I do not believe that, whether in biomachine or in any other system, physical processes are "deterministic" in a strict/absolute sense. Quantum mechanic is "probabilistic" rather than "deterministic." It is not guaranteed that two identical systems (if such identical pair actually exists) would react to the exact same stimuli (or just evolve on their own) in identical ways. Couple that with Chaos Theory, and even what started as the smallest discrepancies (due to the probabilistic nature of the underlying physics) in a very small part of a system can lead to vastly different outcomes down the line.

Hence even as biomachines whose behavior reflects the outcomes of sequences of electrochemical reactions, two "identical biomachines" subject to the exact same "stimuli" can "make" vastly different "decisions" or "choices."

Can this pass for "free will"?
I am willing to say "yes."

What say you?
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Larry
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Mmmmmmm, pie!
Once I start seeing words like "compatiblism" and "probabilistic" I know I'm reading the words of people who are more interested in mental masturbation than in finding answers.
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ivorythumper
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Axtremus
Apr 14 2007, 09:57 PM

The reason I brought this up, ivorythumper, is that I do not believe that, whether in biomachine or in any other system, physical processes are "deterministic" in a strict/absolute sense. Quantum mechanic is "probabilistic" rather than "deterministic." It is not guaranteed that two identical systems (if such identical pair actually exists) would react to the exact same stimuli (or just evolve on their own) in identical ways. Couple that with Chaos Theory, and even what started as the smallest discrepancies (due to the probabilistic nature of the underlying physics) in a very small part of a system can lead to vastly different outcomes down the line.

Hence even as biomachines whose behavior reflects the outcomes of sequences of electrochemical reactions, two "identical biomachines" subject to the exact same "stimuli" can "make" vastly different "decisions" or "choices."

Can this pass for "free will"?
I am willing to say "yes."

What say you?

Is probabilistic a shorthand for "we can pretty much determine it, but still haven't figured out quite how it works"?

I can't let you off the hook that easily for deciding that even if two "identical" biomachines are given "exactly the same stimuli" produce two vastly different outcomes that it is not deterministic (a rather strange term -- who determined that one?). We simply do not have the ability to measure the exactitude of identicality, either for the object or the subject, to decide this -- it can only be an approximation.

And besides, strictly speaking you are still talking about this process giving the result that we call "free will" -- the minute variations in stimulus or in the operation of the biomachine that yield vastly different results are indeed better explained through something objectively verifiable such as chaos theory than through recourse to some notion of "free will" that carries with it all sorts of suppositions and intellectual baggage from outmoded understandings of philosophical anthropology, ontology, cosmology, etc.

If your going to be a materialist, be a materialist.

The dogma lives loudly within me.
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Axtremus
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HOLY CARP!!!
ivorythumper
 

If your going to be a materialist, be a materialist.

I've just argued that the notion of "free will" can be accommodated within the laws of physics (using quantum mechanics and chaos theory) as we understand them today, and therefore viewing humans as "biomachines" does not strip them of "free will." That's not "materialist" enough for you? :huh:
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ivorythumper
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Axtremus
Apr 14 2007, 10:56 PM
ivorythumper
 

If your going to be a materialist, be a materialist.

I've just argued that the notion of "free will" can be accommodated within the laws of physics (using quantum mechanics and chaos theory) as we understand them today, and therefore viewing humans as "biomachines" does not strip them of "free will." That's not "materialist" enough for you? :huh:

You did not argue that the notion of "free will" can be accommodated within the laws of physics, you simply stated it. Reread your post two above -- you are not explaining how the will is "free"; you are simply explaining how we can account for differentiation in results *assuming* identicality and exactly the same stimuli (which in itself is a massive and impractical assumption).

Even assuming chaos and quantum, you still haven't explained how the will as a neurochemical process is "free" -- quantum machanics still yield a very high degree of predictability; chaos theory is still deterministic.

Yet even more are you begging the question in that even if we assume that the human biomachine had some sort of randomizer that allowed for vastly different results, the action is still a "result" of biochemical activity -- it can be nothing other than a result AND THAT PRECISE RESULT given whatever particular variables of stimulus, energy, matter, space, time, etc and whatever that randomized factor is.
The dogma lives loudly within me.
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