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Is religious fundamentalism a disease of the mind?
Topic Started: Apr 7 2007, 12:38 AM (5,010 Views)
Moonbat
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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.


Gibberish.

The questions over whether the the real world as revealed by science is compatible with free will is an interesting question, people who think it is are called "compatibilists" people who think it's not are called "incompatibilists". It's a real question and both sides are interested in finding real answers.

The question over whether reality is fundamentally probabilistic or deterministic is a real question, a hugely significant one at that, given that the original challenge to freewill originated through Laplacian determinism, the loss of Laplacian determinism inherent to certain interpretations of quantum theory would seem to have some relevence to this discussion.

Just because you don't understand something does not make it mental masturbation.
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Dewey
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I may have just found a new sig line. ^_^
"By nature, i prefer brevity." - John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, p. 685.

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Moonbat
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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 limits of predictability are significant - if you know the momentum of a particle exactly you don't know anything about where it is in the universe. Anything at all. It could be anywhere. If you know the position of a particle exactly then you don't know anything about it's momentum, you have no idea where it will be the next instant.

Furthermore it seems trivially obvious that human beings _are_ predictable to a certain degree, if any degree of predictability negates your concept of free will, then only true randomness constitutes free will. But of course a cosmic dice that is flipped and causes people to make decisions doesn't constitute free will either. That's because our concept of free-will is nonsensical. It is not simply wrong, it could never have been right.

If one takes the orthodox interpretation of quantum mechanics then your statement "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. " is wrong. The variables do not determine the result they only determine the probabilities assignied to every possible result. They determine the overall frequencies of the various results if the same set up is repeated numerous times. (the more i think about it the more i think that interpretation sucks but... that's another matter).

Now i don't think this helps us salvage the classic idea of free will, the idea that allows us to justify blame at a philosophical level (or allows theists to claim all the evil in the world is not God's fault because man has 'free will'). If a decision is made by some quantum dice, and we call that indeterminism "free will" then surely that means an electron fired through a double slit is "free" to "choose", yet this is a very strange kind of a thing to say.

I've always gone down the path of the hard incompatibilists and said "so forget about free will" however the compatibilists may well be able to create a concept that whilst different to the classical concept and (still i think unable to fill its role in the fundamentals of ethics), will be able to match some significant aspects of our psychological view of free will.
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Axtremus
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ivorythumper
Apr 15 2007, 02:37 AM
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.

Yes, and I'm arguing that the "results" of that mechanism are such that you can observe and can't tell that there's any difference from the results you'd expect to have arisen from "free will" as you understand "free will" to be. And with that, I can stake a claim that "free will" really is no more than a "result" (or even just a "side effect" or mere "phenomenon") of that mechanism.

Cool? :)
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ivorythumper
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Moonbat
Apr 15 2007, 06:47 AM
Quote:
 

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 limits of predictability are significant - if you know the momentum of a particle exactly you don't know anything about where it is in the universe. Anything at all. It could be anywhere. If you know the position of a particle exactly then you don't know anything about it's momentum, you have no idea where it will be the next instant.
That of course raises the question as to why on a macrolevel things are so constant, including the relative constancy of individual human action.


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Furthermore it seems trivially obvious that human beings _are_ predictable to a certain degree, if any degree of predictability negates your concept of free will, then only true randomness constitutes free will. But of course a cosmic dice that is flipped and causes people to make decisions doesn't constitute free will either. That's because our concept of free-will is nonsensical. It is not simply wrong, it could never have been right.

In philosophical anthropology that was not a problem because of the notion of *habitus*. In a purely mechanical system this is still not too problematic because of "memory tracks" that are reinforced through repetition. As such predictability does nothing for or against the argument of free will. In a world of classical free will, temperament, habit, relationals patterns, efforts at self mastery, character, and other things would support predictability without negating freedom.

Quote:
 



If one takes the orthodox interpretation of quantum mechanics then your statement "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. " is wrong. The variables do not determine the result they only determine the probabilities assignied to every possible result. They determine the overall frequencies of the various results if the same set up is repeated numerous times. (the more i think about it the more i think that interpretation sucks but... that's another matter).

Are you saying the variables don't *affect* the result (even if we are not sure to what degree or in what way)?

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Now i don't think this helps us salvage the classic idea of free will, the idea that allows us to justify blame at a philosophical level (or allows theists to claim all the evil in the world is not God's fault because man has 'free will'). If a decision is made by some quantum dice, and we call that indeterminism "free will" then surely that means an electron fired through a double slit is "free" to "choose", yet this is a very strange kind of a thing to say.

I don't think you have a real grasp of what (Catholic) theists mean by evil and free will and God. That would be whole other discussion, but the notion that evil is God's fault makes no sense from that system.

* God is not "good" God is goodness itself
* (divine) goodness is a quality of perfection
* evil is a privation of the good
* moral evil is choosing lesser goods over greater goods
* the ability to choose ("free will") is necessary for love
* that however allows for humans to choose to NOT love, to choose lesser goods, and thereby to do "evil" acts
* it is not therefore "God's fault" since he gave humanity the capacity to choose good not to do evil (and evil acts are certainly explicitly against the divine command) but to choose love.

But that, of course, is a whole other discussion that is not worth discussing since it is predicated on an outmoded, premodern understanding of the question. ;)

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I've always gone down the path of the hard incompatibilists and said "so forget about free will" however the compatibilists may well be able to create a concept that whilst different to the classical concept and (still i think unable to fill its role in the fundamentals of ethics), will be able to match some significant aspects of our psychological view of free will.

From strict materialism, I agree with you. Free will is an illusion, much loke us thinking the sun revolved around the earth. Science has proven that is not the case, and I predict that science will one day prove that free will can be shown to be just as false.
The dogma lives loudly within me.
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Jeffrey
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Ax - The reason I used the analogy with the alleged problem with Divine Foreknowlege and free will, is that the proper answer is the same. Divine Foreknowledge does not undermine free will, because what God knows is what our free will will choose. The argument is at bottom a form of verbal sophistry playing on different senses of "can't do otherwise". There is no incompatibility, the theist who believes god has foreknowledge and that we choose freely has no contradiction, because what god knows is precisely the result of our free choice. We both can do otherwise, and God knows what we will, freely, choose (under this hypothesis, I do not claim this view is true, just that it is not self-contradictory).

The same is true of the alleged challenge of science to "free will". We needn't take Moonbat's position that because of science there is no "free will" (he grants far too much to IT on this issue, and seems subject to the same philosophical lapse). It is more accurate to say that science reveals what free will (I prefer "choice", but not a lot hangs on this) really is. Again, only a magical conception of free will requires it to act against rather than within the laws of nature, and the history of western philosophy on this topic is not (as IT would have it) a unanimous endorsement of the Contra-Causal conception of what free will is. To what extent and in what way the laws of nature are billard-ball (Laplacian) deterministic or not (and it appears not), is for science to discover, not for a priori armchair philosophizing to determine. In either case, choice or free will is what science discovers it to be. We all "choose" to post in the CR. This is how the word "choice" is used. No scientific discovery can debunk that, since otherwise the words have no meaning, and our radical doctrine ("we have no choice") is incoherent.. It is nonsense to say, "Science has discovered that we do not really choose to post on CR, since the world is deterministic." This is simply a confusing misuse of words.
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ivorythumper
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Axtremus
Apr 15 2007, 06:49 AM
ivorythumper
Apr 15 2007, 02:37 AM
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.

Yes, and I'm arguing that the "results" of that mechanism are such that you can observe and can't tell that there's any difference from the results you'd expect to have arisen from "free will" as you understand "free will" to be. And with that, I can stake a claim that "free will" really is no more than a "result" (or even just a "side effect" or mere "phenomenon") of that mechanism.

Cool? :)

Sure, if it works for you -- but why call it "free will"? :shrug:

Let me ask you a hypothetical:

Let us suppose that science discovers the sequence of neurochemical activity that produces bigotry and hatred, as well as a chemical antidote that not only eradicates these things but actually produces the feelings associated with human dignity for all of our fellow biomachines. It is tasteless, odorless, invisible, and has no known side effects. This chemical antidote could easily be dropped from the air like crop dusting, and none of the world's population would need to know.

If it were in your power would you allow for the chemical to be delivered across the globe?
The dogma lives loudly within me.
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ivorythumper
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Once again, Jeff, you use "magical" without defining it.
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what God knows is what our free will will choose.
At least from classical Catholic theology, that is not accurate.
The dogma lives loudly within me.
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Larry
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Just because you don't understand something does not make it mental masturbation.


Oh I understand what you're saying just fine. It's just that you do this stuff because you're egotistical, and want to impress us with what a "lofty thinking genius" you are.

I've read your stuff for several years. You're no genius, Scooter. Just another educated above his intelligence guy who has learned a lot about a few things and thinks that makes him smarter than everyone else, completely oblivious to just how lacking he really is.
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Moonbat
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That of course raises the question as to why on a macrolevel things are so constant, including the relative constancy of individual human action.


Well if you look at the uncertainty relation between position and momentum then the accuracy needed is far too high for a macroscopic object like a tennis ball to be of much significance. It's significant for an electon that the tenis ball is composed of, but not the centre of mass of the collective mass of all the electrons.

You can kind of understand this because the uncertainty will cancel out, if i have one electron in a range from say position 1 to position 2, then i can't say much if i have a billion billion billion lectrn in the range of position 1 to position 2 then i can say with a large degree of statistical certainty that the average position is at 1.5. (assuming there is a uniform distribution between position 1 and position 2).

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In philosophical anthropology that was not a problem because of the notion of *habitus*. In a purely mechanical system this is still not too problematic because of "memory tracks" that are reinforced through repetition. As such predictability does nothing for or against the argument of free will. In a world of classical free will, temperament, habit, relationals patterns, efforts at self mastery, character, and other things would support predictability without negating freedom.


All science does is explain what temperament, habit, relational patterns, etc. etc. actually involve. Without science you are missing an explanation for what these words mean. The key is to realise that whatever we found, whatever the explanation we came up with was. Free will (in the sense you and I are using it)was always going to be screwed.

If i have a nature that i did not choose that then i'm not free in this strange classical sense because my nature is determining my actions. You may try and point at self-mastery or self-control but where does this impetus for self-control or self-mastery come from? If it comes from the soul, then i am determined by my soul. If i am my soul then i am determined by the properties my soul has. If my soul has no properties, no nature then it must be completely random, but even it is completely random then i'm still not free for i'm just at the will of some cosmic dice.

I see no possible defense of this classical concet of free will. It is not simply that science destroyed it, it is that science was _always_ going to destroy it. It's what Jeffrey points out as being necessarily magical. But he is letting it off too lightly as being mere magic. It's more than that, it's completely incoherent. It doesn't matter whether we are determined or not determined whether we are made of mystical souls or concrete atoms no matter what, it disintegrates into meaninglessness.

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Are you saying the variables don't *affect* the result (even if we are not sure to what degree or in what way


The variables determine the frequencies of outcomes. If i repeatedly set up my variables to be a certain way and then examine the outcome i will get a distribution of different outcomes. That distribution, the pattern of results, that is determined by the variables.

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But that, of course, is a whole other discussion that is not worth discussing since it is predicated on an outmoded, premodern understanding of the question.


I guess we can leave that discussion for some other day then.

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From strict materialism, I agree with you. Free will is an illusion, much loke us thinking the sun revolved around the earth. Science has proven that is not the case, and I predict that science will one day prove that free will can be shown to be just as false.


Well it all depends on what one means by "free will". The way we are using the term i think it is indeed nonsense, but i don't think Jeffrey is using it the same way. I think he's referring to the fact that we choose stuff in that we consider options and then pick one. The mechanics of that choice, what that algorithm entails are (i think) of no consequence to him.

Now i think you can do find very interesting things that relate to something a bit like our intuitive concept of free will, like the inherent unpredictability from our perspective of other human beings, and some intriguing parallels with some deep mathematical concepts.

However as something to tie the bedrock of ethics too... i don't think it works.
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Moonbat
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never mind
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Larry
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Oh go ahead and say it. You know you want to. Why fight the chemical reactions going on in your biomachinery?

All your lofty ponderings amount to the same thing as a blind man trying to explain the rainbow.
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Jeffrey
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IT: "classical Catholic theology, that is not accurate."

I assume the "classical" answer you refer to has something to do with God existing outside time itself, is that correct? I understand this to be Aquinas's position.

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TomK
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Larry
Apr 15 2007, 01:47 PM
I've read your stuff for several years. You're no genius, Scooter. Just another educated above his intelligence guy who has learned a lot about a few things and thinks that makes him smarter than everyone else, completely oblivious to just how lacking he really is.

I'll say this, Moon does tend to get great mileage out of concepts he doesn't totally grasp. :biggrin: On the other hand he does great quote boxes.
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ivorythumper
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Jeffrey
Apr 15 2007, 12:04 PM
IT: "classical Catholic theology, that is not accurate."

I assume the "classical" answer you refer to has something to do with God existing outside time itself, is that correct?  I understand this to be Aquinas's position.

Yes it does. Not just Aquinas, I think it safe to say he and the Church fathers got the notion from the implications of the "I AM".

BTW, i think you are loading the conversation with terms like "choice" -- perhaps it would be better to think of something more like "intentionalizing the biomachine". Maybe that will give us some clue as to how a closed system like the self aware biomachine can override the chemicals that constitute it. (Can you think of other chemical processes in the biomachine that can be overridden without destroying it?)
The dogma lives loudly within me.
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Moonbat
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Larry
Apr 15 2007, 06:25 PM
All your lofty ponderings amount to the same thing as a blind man trying to explain the rainbow.

Todays blind man can explain a rainbow, he can understand that the light is diffracting through a million raindrops causing all the myriad of wavelengths that pour out of that giant ball of fire in the sky, to ripple apart. He can grasp that mathematical beauty.

What he cannot do is experience the rainbow as we do, but that's because he doesn't understand enough about the brain. Its not enough to understand the rainbow since our experience of the rainbow is not simply due to the rainbow itself, it is due to all those rippling wavelenghts etching their pattern into the oscillating eletrical impulses that blaze like intertwining lightening storms in the brains of those who do experience the rainbow.

Tomorrows blind man may well be in a much better position. If todays lofty thinkers manage to succeed if they manage to tease out how the information leaks from the world into those physical enclaves called brains. Then perhaps we will be able to turn tomorrows blind man into a man who can see.

The search for comprehension, the lofty thinking, it is a powerfull thing Larry.
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TomK
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Moonbat
Apr 15 2007, 05:52 PM
Larry
Apr 15 2007, 06:25 PM
All your lofty ponderings amount to the same thing as a blind man trying to explain the rainbow.

Todays blind man can explain a rainbow, he can understand that the light is diffracting through a million raindrops causing all the myriad of wavelengths that pour out of that giant ball of fire in the sky, to ripple apart. He can grasp that mathematical beauty.

What he cannot do is experience the rainbow as we do, but that's because he doesn't understand enough about the brain. Its not enough to understand the rainbow since our experience of the rainbow is not simply due to the rainbow itself, it is due to all those rippling wavelenghts etching their pattern into the oscillating eletrical impulses that blaze like intertwining lightening storms in the brains of those who do experience the rainbow.


Wonderful post Moon.

A wonderful analogy between science and faith. :thumb:
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