Do humans have "free will" at all or is the Universe (including human action/choices) entirely deterministic?

No. Our decisions are all a product of something. There’s nothing “free” about our “will”. We have certain dispositions as biological organisms, and the culture imposes certain values on us.

Myself, i have no reason to believe we have free will.

I think all animals, including humans, act on their momentary preference. for example, if a child prefers not to be bullied more than s/he prefers not to try a cigartte, s/he will try the cigarette. Animals never seem to do anything that doesn’t happen to be their highest priority preference over other preferences they may have in a given moment.

This highest priority preference is what libertarians (people who believe in “free will”) refer to as their “choice.” But this sensation seems to be more-so of an illusion as no choice is ever actually made. Rather, this “choice” occurs to them as a conclusion in much the same way that the answer to the simple mathematical question 4 + 6 is arrived at as a conclusion.

There doesn’t seem to be a choice in the matter. Our brains seem to function as logic calculators. Basing conclusions on the evidence the brain has taken in historically and happens to be aware of in the moment.

I choose not to go into detail on this question yet again.. oh crap.. how did I do that? xD

@NaturalMineralWater You didn’t choose anything. The choice was already made by your disposition to disliking this topic.

Sigh. Dictionaries must be going out of style.

Um, not really. What is it you think I should look up…?

For the record, I wish you would go into it, @NaturalMineralWatter. I’m interested. Or was there a link to where you discussed this before?

I believe in a combination of pre-destination and free-will….

There are some things that are meant to happen in our lives and we will end up there, but HOW we get there (and who we are when we reach those points) is capable of changing because we reach points where we are able to make decisions.

I generally use the idea of Chaos Theory being an open field and Pre-Destination being a carved out route in the ground. I combine the two. You are on a set path under ground, but sometimes you reach open spaces and forks in the path where there are choices that can be made. All of them might eventually reach the same place, but what you have to go through on each path will be different.

Denying freewill divorces us from responsibility to our own actions. And I do believe in freewill. Certainly biological and cultural factors influence the choices we make, but an influenced choice is not the same as no choice.

@hitomi I don’t see how a single view can encompass both freewill and determinism. Those are pretty much mutually exclusive terms. And to state that a person is on a path that periodically branches allowing for choices drastically understates the number of choices we make every day. They may not always be big choices, but each one changes the course of path we take, no matter how small. Either you’re making choices or the choices you make are merely an illusion and everything was predetermined.

for example: for your scenerio to work a series of choices would have to lead to a specific event or sequence of events. However with true freewill there would be no guarantee that the choices made would ever lead to the ‘inevitable’ moments. In order for the predetermined moments to happen, freewill would have to be curtailed to ensure that the ‘right’ path was taken. And the thing with freewill is, once it is directed by determinism it can no longer be freewill.

@fundervogel I am sad that you have such limited scope that you can’t comprehend that SOME things are meant to happen, but there is still choice thrown in to the scale. My explanation was MEANT to be the most general and SIMPLE imagining of my view. Like The Allegory of the Cave it doesn’t cover EVERYTHING it is a simple way of describing a very complex concept.
I was trying to SUMMARIZE an IDEA, not say that it is LITERALLY how life happens. I obviously wasn’t accounting for all of the little actions, and I do believe in the power of the smallest decision, but I believe that rather than determining where we end up, it is more like they determine who we are when we get there and how long it takes us to get there.

I believe in neither. Quantum theory seems to indicate some underlying, fundamental randomness to the universe. But this in no way suggests that the macroscopic, arbitrarily defined structures we call living beings have any deeper level of will or consciousness than a rock. Insofar as we do choose to recognize the boundary between living and not living, however, we are stating that there is a non-deterministic relationship between the two, and so there is free will. In short, there is no fundamental free will, but it is a useful model that accompanies the equally convenient concepts of self, other, and life.

@hitomi
Please be respectful, I questioned you’re views not your character or intelligence.

If some things are meant to happen (ie predetermined) but there is still freewill, then there must also be the possibility that things that are meant to happen, won’t happen. And if there is that possibility then there can not be predetermination.

That is the problem I see in your view. Can you justify the existence of both in such a way that invalidates my issue with it?

Yes, we do.

@fundevogel I didn’t mean to sound disrespectful

What I am saying is that some things WILL happen no matter what…I don’t think that there are a LOT of things that fit this, but, for instance, I believe that we are meant to meet some people in our lives. No matter what, no matter what choices we make in the mean time, you are meant to meet certain people and that will effect you. Who you are when you get there and what you have been through before then are determined by the choices that you make along the way, but all roads lead there.

Death is the simplest example of what I am trying to convey. We are all going to die, we are all going to reach that point, but you make choices along the way that determine when you get there and who you are when it happens….Obviously death isn’t the IDEAL example because it’s inevitable for EVERYONE, but it’s the same idea.

@Jiminez: You said, “You didn’t choose anything. The choice was already made by your disposition to disliking this topic.”

IMO, just because you have a predisposition to a topic doesn’t mean you don’t have free will. NaturalMineralWater still had the capability to engage in the conversation. What he did was based on his predisposition, but what he could have done is based on the idea of free will. I think the underlying argument for you is that you cannot control your predispositions. I however disagree. I think we have an uncanny ability to control our minds to the point where within the laws of physics and our world, we can do whatever we want.

@critter1982; we have the ability to control our minds? So, are we somehow separate from our minds?

I agree with @fundevogel that there is no compatible perspective. Either we have free will or else we don’t. You can’t have your cake and eat it too. Obviously, though I side with determinism. (high-5 @Jiminez)

@fundevogel said: “Denying freewill divorces us from responsibility to our own actions”—I would caution that the queston is not whether we lose features we’re used to by accepting a new position over another. The question is whether one position makes more sense than the other. Yes, determinism helps us to realize that the principals of responsibility that we currently uphold globally are outdated. Accepting determinism means upgrading from the archaic practice known as “the blame game.”

@hitomi, yours is the compatiblist position explained pretty well. Still though, I think your death example actually defeats your argument by demonstrating that we are ultimately slaves to the going-ons of our physical bodies.

@Jayne I think you’re a determinist. You tried to say that you are neither, but your argument only ended up siding with a hard determinist perspective. That’s how it reads to me anyway. Maybe you need show more clearly how it is you came to that perspective? also, your last criticism above this ^ is great. :)

@DrBill, your opinion is wrong. lol. just buggin ya. thanks for sharing your viewpoint!

@critter1982 said: “within the laws of physics and our world, we can do whatever we want.”—I almost perfectly agree but I think you’re neglecting that it’s not merely that we can do whatever we prefer.. rather that we always do whatever we prefer. Forcibly. For example, try to hold yourself still right now indefinitely. If you have free will you ought to be able to hold yourself there.. forever.

But you won’t. Why? Because after a few seconds you will prefer to do something else. Regardless of your goal and intention to stay there forever and prove me wrong, you simply will not. Either you’ll get an itch.. or hunger.. or just sheer boredom… whatever it is, your memory of “better things to do” will force you to do something besides sit there staring. We’ve been deceived to think that we choose things when really we are slaves to the conclusions of our brains about what we ought to do with ourselves.

Also consider the fact that IF you could truly do whatever you wanted then you ought to be able to grab a sheet of paper and a pen (or a text editor on your computer) and write down every person’s name in your classes from grade 1–4. (assuming you had city-sized classes, this should prove quite impossible for you)

You’ll notice though, that the only names you write down are the ones you happen to remember. Our ability to act is limited first by obvious physics (i can’t jump over a tall building) but also by the limitations of our individual brains.

@ninjacolin; I used to be a determinist; the only reason I no longer believe in strict determinism is because of the randomness that quantum theory seems to suggest. My philosophy is best described as reductionist. That is, I believe that the entirety of the universe can be described in terms of the laws of physics, with no recourse or special place for humanity or free will; if classical physics such as Newton described had not been debunked, I would still be a determinist, yes.

@ninjacolin I used death as a final example to capture the idea, I don’t think it conflicts in any way with my overall view…Death comes at the end of life, the things that I am talking about happen DURING life.

@Jayne I don’t believe quantum theory suggests the sort of randomness you are relying on for this explanation. quantum theory stuff, which i admit that i don’t fully understand, seems to work a certain way that we, as observers, are uncertain about. But it certainly seems to do whatever odd stuff it does with certainty within itself.

We don’t know what the particles are up to but the particles certainly seem to have it figured out for us.

@hitomi, determinism does not suggest that you don’t act according to your preferences. It suggests that your preferences are determined by a calculator called You Brain.

Using your cave illustration.. the cave is your brain. When a fork in the road comes up, one path always appears darker and stinkier and has scary noises coming from it while the other path always seems to have some sunlight and pleasant smells and noises of cute birdies.

Ultimately, you can see both paths, you can even go in for a closer look at the scary path.. but when you do the smells and sounds get stinkier and scarier! In the end, you NEVER take the scary path because the cave, your brain, always magically forces you not to.

@ninjacolin; Yes, the microscopic world does deal with uncertainty within itself; the fact that the observer appears to be irrelevant- or as irrelevant as any other outside influence- is a strong argument for my previous assertion that quantum uncertainty is not a scientific justification for free will. Basically, this mention of chaos, which is entirely undecided among physicists, is simply a caveat to my reductionist beliefs, and is not really relevant to the discussion. On the question of free-will, I am ambivalent in my conviction that it is meaningless.

@hitomi
I agree about death, but as you noted, this is true of every living thing (with the possible exception of certain jellyfish). I don’t think something that is predetermined for everything from man to amoeba is a good example of predetermination, just mechanics.

As for meeting certain people. Certainly everyone meets people that are pivotal in their lives, but to think that because they were pivotal in your life that they and only they could have filled that pivotal role in your life is a fallacy, Retrospective Determinism to be specific. Of course you will meet people that will be wonderful or horrible and change your life, but it doesn’t need to predetermined to be a specific person. We’re social creatures, we seek these people and interactions out.

@ninjacolin
No, you didn’t ask about the social merits of either view, but it isn’t an unreasonable tangent.

But here is my reasoning. Determinism crumbles for me, before my philosophy actually comes to determination. I see no evidence to suggest a higher power or natural justice. What I see is a chaos of controlled and uncontrolled factors ricocheting off each other like a barrel of super balls in an earthquake. This lack of any discernable purpose or governing force begs me ask the question:

If I have no reason believe in a governing god or an over all purpose to life how could a purposeful predetermination arise from an unstructured, ungoverned world?

And further I asked myself, could any of the things that could seem predetermined have arisen by some other means? Or, could something else have just as easily happened? The answer to both was an undramatic yes. And in this light I had no satisfactory reason to assume the existence of predestination.

Back to the moral/social angle, I don’t understand this statement you made:

determinism helps us to realize that the principals of responsibility that we currently uphold globally are outdated. Accepting determinism means upgrading from the archaic practice known as “the blame game.”

How can being set on a path you have no choice but to follow encourage any sort of moral enlightenment? How does it show we’re globally outdated? The only way I could see that determinism would eliminate “the blame game” is through the total and uniform elimination of personal responsibility for any and all actions. That’s hardly a good thing.

@fundevogel first of all I will attempt to show you that you only see evidence of a “natural justice” as you call it. it’s called Physics. Even your illustration of superballs in an earthquake relies on our mutual understanding of the general unbreakable laws of physics that govern the universe. The Laws of Physics represent the governing god. Everything must obey those laws. They cannot be challenged. They are structured and they govern everything going back into history giving us our sun and moon and earth and orbit and atmosphere and colors and seasons and scenery and ages of life and all history as we know it right up to your birth, the creation of the internet and your reading this text today.

About Determinism (just for some background)
Determinism does not suffer the “retrospective determinism” fallacy that you cited earlier. Determinism is greater than any one person’s decisions. Determinism speaks to every single particle in the universe acting and reacting as they must against the influences of other particles that either come into contact with them or fail to. The idea is that if you rewound the hands of time.. you would be rewinding everything in and about the universe and “reality” as we know it. Every single particle even in galaxies on the other side of the universe. Even whatever is outside of our universe.. and THEN playing the tape back.. the result of which would give us the exact same results as we see today because the laws of Physics cannot be broken.

@fundevogel said: “could something else have just as easily happened?”

the answer would be no. not if every single particle and effect in the universe was rewound. we have no reason to believe that there would be any new, random occurrences on playback.

The moral/social angle
@fundevogel said: “Back to the moral/social angle [...] How can being set on a path you have no choice but to follow encourage any sort of moral enlightenment?”

That’s inaccurate, I’m not saying that being on a set path encourages anything.
I’m saying that realizing that the universe works differently than we thought it does would force us to make needed changes in our behavior to compensate for the realities we’ve been ignoring. It’s just like a child who learns that touching a hot element hurts. Now that he knows that, he can be more careful as he reaches for the cookie jar. Like all new and pertinent information acknowledging determinism would simply promote progress.

@fundevogel said: “How does it show we’re globally outdated?”

Well, if we play the blame game and IF the blame game isn’t actually pertinent, then we’re wasting our time with it.

That there’s nothing to fear
@fundevogel said: “The only way I could see that determinism would eliminate “the blame game” is through the total and uniform elimination of personal responsibility for any and all actions. That’s hardly a good thing.”

From a libertarian point of view, it’s understandably a scary thing. But after much careful observation, I’ve come to realize that there’s nothing to fear. It just so happens that all life tends towards whatever makes sense. This applies even to animals and even to humans: We all tend toward whatever makes the most sense to us. We tend toward good logic.

If you drop a rock off a cliff, it won’t go up in the air without good reason. Animal minds seem to function in just the same way. We tend to conclude whatever seems to have good reason for it and we ALWAYS seem to act on those conclusions. Yes, our reasoning may be wrong.. but once (if) we notice this, we correct ourselves.

So, if a group of humans can choose between life in pleasure and life in pain, we will tend towards the life of pleasure AS LONG AS it makes sense to us. We are highly susceptible to good arguments. We are highly susceptible to common sense. All animals are. This seems to be the way of things.

i suppose that’s exactly what video taping is. It’s the documentation of the effect the universe had on the particles in the frame over a period of time. when you rewind a video, you’re actually rewinding all the particles and effects as they occurred in the moment caught in the video.

@ninjacolin

part 1: On the Laws of Science

ah, I should have known, you were coming at this from a physics angle. If had realized this earlier I would have addressed you differently. And I wasn’t applying retrospective determinism to determinism as a theory, but the specific example that was being used to support it, which was the definition of retrospective determinism.

Your example of turning back time to demonstrate determinism describes what determinism is, but it does not prove any useful justification of determinism. Because we can’t actually turn back time, thus any speculation about what would happen if we were to do it is just speculation. Video taping does hold either because the action of recording action is not the same as playing back recorded action. Neither disproves my assertion that sometimes alternate outcomes are just as plausible as actual outcomes.

In attempting to create a testable facsimile of the course of the universe we could go back to my super balls in a barrel, since we both like it as a microcosm. But for the sake of observation let’s make the barrel a glass tube of barrel-ish proportions. It has a top and a bottom. The top has a hole with a vertical tube leading out of it. A small rod intersects the bottom of the feeder tube and prevents the super balls stacked in the tube from falling before it is removed. The mechanism which removes the rod is uniformly repeating. The super balls are identical.

To test the course a single universe will take we have created a tiny observable world. We remove the rod and record the action that follows until all energy is potential. Then we do it again, and again and again. If determinism is a purely structural and undeniable function of scientific law the super balls, when set in motion in the exact same situation, will follow the exact same course, responding in the same ways to the same situations. However, that won’t be the case, even though the super balls engage the barrel in the exact same way each time according the exact same scientific laws, the outcome varies. This is because, even with the laws of physics and chemistry and so on in place those laws don’t necessarily favor one action over another. At the first moment no particular action is favored by natural laws differences will be introduced and the following actions and interactions are now different than they were in the first super ball drop. The super balls will never violate the laws you see as driving determinism, but they can not all arrive at a predetermined outcome either, even when they are started on the exact same course.

@ninjacolin

Part 2: Morality and Social Benefits/Repercussions

“I’m not saying that being on a set path encourages anything. I’m saying that realizing that the universe works differently than we thought it does would force us to make needed changes in our behavior to compensate for the realities we’ve been ignoring.”

Understanding that the world works differently than we may have thought is not a situation exclusive to determinism and making changes in behavior implies freewill. You could argue that those changes were predetermined based on the how you would respond to this information, however at this point behavior is no longer purely driven by your biological and molecular systems. You’ve learned something, that’s nurture, not nature and experience based decision making comes into play. You could even go so far as to say that the experiences you have and the decision making it drives is ultimately running a course determined by the path physical laws have set you on. Except that the super ball experiment demonstrates that even in a perfectly exact world different situations and interactions occur which would lead to different life experiences and consequently different experience based decisions. You may or not think that experienced based decision making constitutes freewill, but either way the outcome can not be predetermined.

“Well, if we play the blame game and IF the blame game isn’t actually pertinent, then we’re wasting our time with it.”

Fair enough, but you don’t need a deterministic perspective to realize it’s a waste of time. And in a deterministic world, if someone were engaging in the blame game, wouldn’t it be inevitable? And if the world is deterministic, it is whether or not I believe it, that teaches me nothing.

@ninjacolin

part 2 continued

me: The only way I could see that determinism would eliminate “the blame game” is through the total and uniform elimination of personal responsibility for any and all actions. That’s hardly a good thing.

ninjacolin: From a libertarian point of view, it’s understandably a scary thing. But after much careful observation, I’ve come to realize that there’s nothing to fear. It just so happens that all life tends towards whatever makes sense. This applies even to animals and even to humans: We all tend toward whatever makes the most sense to us. We tend toward good logic.

People behave in a socially cooperative and responsible ways because of the culture in place. The same is true of apes. Our evolution and theirs supported the development of community living with cooperation. When you remove societal socialization, interaction and pressure, people (and apes) lose the ability, or never gain the ability to behave with social conscious. Technically I suppose it would no longer be the ‘logical’ course of action you describe. But the idea of losing a pillar (personal responsibility) on which societal behavioral standards are based does frighten me.

Could you break down how you see punishment on either and a parental or societal scale working in a society without personal responsibility? How can you punish someone for an action they had not choice but to commit? And if you do punish them, despite the inevitability of their actions, what does it accomplish? How is punishing someone for something they couldn’t help but do or be any different than punishing someone for being lefthanded? Without freewill punishment can’t be justified as promoting moral behavior. It seems like a paradox to me.

We tend to conclude whatever seems to have good reason for it and we ALWAYS seem to act on those conclusions. Yes, our reasoning may be wrong.. but once (if) we notice this, we correct ourselves.

I mostly agree with the first statement, however….you have to understand the our logic, instincts and feelings are not invulnerable to the physical restrictions set in place be having them happen in our brains. Brains are physical things, they are programed by nature and what we learn to react in certain ways. So even if we can, from a purely logical stand point, know that the behaviors we are driven to take are illogical are brain is still wired to to do those illogical things. It’s not easy to beat, physiological and chemical predispositions. That’s what Psychopharmacology is for.

So, if a group of humans can choose between life in pleasure and life in pain, we will tend towards the life of pleasure AS LONG AS it makes sense to us. We are highly susceptible to good arguments. We are highly susceptible to common sense. All animals are. This seems to be the way of things.

that sounds like freewill to me.

concessions and the like
cool about the reverse determinism fallacy, just had to be sure.

Physics
Physics yes but firstly from personal experience. the argument comes from thinking about how we think and from taking note of what’s going on.

The videotape example.. hmm.. i know what you mean but no i think it might actually contain all the proof we need. Imagine examining a 10 second National Geographic video of a rock plunging into a still pond in a Rain-forest at dusk. (sorry, i figure i may as well try to make the image pleasant) We can observe the early drop and notice what particles are where and doing what. If there is something below the rock to catch it we know the rock won’t hit the water, if there is nothing below it then it will plunk into the water. The exact placement and velocity of all relevant objects and particles in that scene early in the drop makes the following events predictable. so that when you watch it over second by second we aren’t freaked out by impossible results because the results are sensible.

Considering human actions and reactions in a video is similar. The things people choose to interact with and how they depend on the world around them makes even their actions predictable. If a man in a movie says: “I’m going to put my gun on the table” and he places it there instead of on a chair, we understand why because we know the end of the film and we understand all his motivations for all his actions. Watching a movie, I submit, is exactly like being god of a universe able to see the past and the future and the way people think knowing their motivations, observing the physical actions of particles upon particles. We see how the things heard and seen by different bodies coerces the action of the particles made up of those bodies.

The rock falling into the water of the pond doesn’t turn into an elephant all of a sudden. And the superballs in the experiment don’t bounce any different way no matter how many times you rewind the tape. And the results of each balls’ movements are always obvious and sensible in the video of the facsimile. They cannot be understood to do anything but what future frames of the video will reveal they certainly would, second by second we have evidence of how given velocities and masses will coerce the actions of the balls around them. Any other actions besides what we see happen are perceptibly impossible given the evidence every second.

The laws of physics that govern the universe are never broken.

Rewinding all time would mean rewinding things so that ALL things of the universe are what they were 10 seconds ago. A video demonstrates exactly what would happen if all things were brought back to exactly equal, not even a micron off or an atom out of place. I think it’s more than just a metaphor and I don’t see why you wouldn’t be convinced of that also.

This certainty about the universe allows us to have 15000 planes in the air every minute of the day on this planet. which is more than the amount of balls I was imagining. The balls were simplified also because they can’t break down or have user errors. Their course is even more true than that of planes.

(the morality stuff is secondary to this, i’ll get to it in a bit)

Part 2: Morality and Social Benefits/Repercussions
wow these are long, huh? haha. enjoy!

“Understanding that the world works differently than we may have thought is not a situation exclusive to determinism”

that’s right.

” and making changes in behavior implies freewill.”

no, in a deterministic universe changes in behavior happen when a more sensible option is recognized.. as i said, animals are FORCED always to take the most sensible option they are able to perceive in a given moment. They cannot choose against it. For example a population of people who come to realize that there is clean water nearby on the west will stop taking an excessively long trip to the east for less clean water. and if an evil gang of thugs threatened that group of people for using the clean water.. the group would rethink again.. if they felt they could win, maybe they would go to war.. if they thought it was not a good idea to fight, they would resort to the far water to the east. always, the most perceptibly sensible option is taken

“at this point behavior is no longer purely driven by your biological and molecular systems. You’ve learned something, that’s nurture, not nature and experience based decision making comes into play.”

Your environment is made up of what you observe in the present as well as what you remember from the past. Your previous influences are what make it possible for you to choose to speak in English, for example. Your experience and knowledge are a part of your environment and necessarily influence your present decisions.

Consider why a baby in a crib with a buffet of food beside him would starve because it lacks the experience needed to know why and how to get out of the crib as well as the experience of having gained enough muscle to be able to fulfill the task.

The way information (literally photons hitting your eyes and soundwaves rattling your ear drums..) hits your brain via your 5 sense affects the things you will do with your physical self. There is no way to separate Nurture from Nature. Nurture IS your nature. It is because of the body of atoms you call Mom that you can be fed when you are baby and it is because of the sound waves of her voice that teach you how to speak her language. The mass of atoms called “mom” forces the mass of atoms called “you” to do certain things (like wear embarrassing clothes to school at age 8) which in turn influence other bodies of atoms to interact with you in certain ways (perhaps being bullied or admired).

“You may or not think that experienced based decision making constitutes freewill, but either way the outcome can not be predetermined.”

careful here.. the point of understanding determinism is not to learn how to predict the future exactly. it’s more about learning the value of the past as it applies to your desired present.

“in a deterministic world, if someone were engaging in the blame game, wouldn’t it be inevitable?”
inevitable that it happened as a result of their belief in free will, yes. this is why you would want these people to learn how the universe actually works so that they can necessarily cease to make clouded judgments through that false veil of “free will.” new information received and understood will always breed new conclusions. sharing a good idea, like determinism if that’s what it is, becomes simply another rational thing to do with a view towards social progress.

“And if the world is deterministic, it is whether or not I believe it”

yup. it’s the understanding that free will is a myth and that the universe and all animals function without free will that will affect a person’s thinking.

“Could you break down how you see punishment on either and a parental or societal scale working in a society without personal responsibility? How can you punish someone for an action they had not choice but to commit? And if you do punish them, despite the inevitability of their actions, what does it accomplish? How is punishing someone for something they couldn’t help but do or be any different than punishing someone for being lefthanded? Without freewill punishment can’t be justified as promoting moral behavior. It seems like a paradox to me.”

this is a perfect understanding of how differently we have to think when we switch from the concept of free will to determinism. your questions are bang on.

the idea of punishment needs to be cleaned up. Determinism tells us that all animals act according to their PERCEIVED best actions. so we can know that someone who dissents from the ways of society is someone who is simply convinced otherwise. they are not a bad person. they are literally just someone who is not influenced to believe that they ought to act any differently in the types of cases they cause troubles in. The solution for violators of good practices, therefore, is education. Education so that they can learn why their actions are not wise. The only way to get someone to stop acting a certain way is to Convince them that those actions are undesirable. If they are convinced, then they will not act that way because all animals act according to the best of their available knowledge.

“you have to understand that our logic, instincts and feelings are not invulnerable to the physical restrictions set in place be having them happen in our brains…. It’s not easy to beat, physiological and chemical predispositions. That’s what Psychopharmacology is for.”

right. our actions are the result of our beliefs about our preferences in a given moment. All beliefs are conclusions formed about our memories of the evidence we’ve taken in through our senses. and lastly, the logical merit of all conclusions is subject to the limitations of our individual brains.

Reading your comments I ran into one problem repeatedly: you flip flip between a single set course determinism and a more lenient determinism with an unfixed course based on cause and effect. I think noted your flipping a few times in my response.

I can’t apply the same arguments to two separate theories so please pick one and tell me which you’re arguing.

Physics!

Imagine examining a 10 second National Geographic video of a rock plunging into a still pond in a Rain-forest at dusk. (sorry, i figure i may as well try to make the image pleasant) We can observe the early drop and notice what particles are where and doing what. If there is something below the rock to catch it we know the rock won’t hit the water, if there is nothing below it then it will plunk into the water. The exact placement and velocity of all relevant objects and particles in that scene early in the drop makes the following events predictable. so that when you watch it over second by second we aren’t freaked out by impossible results because the results are sensible.

You can’t use a video recording as an example and then site the event recorded on it as a timeline we can move forward and back on. We aren’t seeing a rock run through its timeline over and over. We are seeing the magnetic traces on the tape run over and over. This is a physical repeatable action, but not of the rock. There is no rock. And since there is no rock it is not subject to the laws of physics. And this isn’t an identically repeatable action of magnetic interpretation either, each time it is done unnoticeable changes occur. This is because it is a physical process that generates wear and tear. Each time you run a tape it is degraded in imperceivebly small ways ensuring that the tape is not running back and forth on a static timeline, a similar timeline, but not the same. If it is done enough your tape will become unwatchable.

If you want to use the behavior of the rock you can only reference a rock, not an image of a rock. An image of rock behaves the way it does for very different reasons than a rock does.

If a man in a movie says: “I’m going to put my gun on the table” and he places it there instead of on a chair, we understand why because we know the end of the film and we understand all his motivations for all his actions. Watching a movie, I submit, is exactly like being god of a universe able to see the past and the future and the way people think knowing their motivations, observing the physical actions of particles upon particles.

I don’t think the movie analogy is particularly helpful. Movies are generally linear. Stories are generally linear. And life is linear. However just because a single course of action was followed, doesn’t mean that it was the only one that could have been followed. Movies don’t just spontaneously come together, whole and complete, preordained. They are a product of much writing, re-writing and throwing large chunks away and starting over. An author often has to start down a lot of different paths to arrive at the final one. Just because in life we don’t have the luxury of rewriting doesn’t mean that it was the only thing that could have happened. It just means if they ever make a bio pic of your life they’ll do the clean up for you.

And the superballs in the experiment don’t bounce any different way no matter how many times you rewind the tape. And the results of each balls’ movements are always obvious and sensible in the video of the facsimile.

My bouncing balls aren’t taped. Scientists can’t run a trial experiment once and then play the tape over and over again to present their studies. I’m surprised you would suggest it. A magnetic signal, as I said before, is not a repetition of an event, it is an entirely different event. This would be like submitting a true crime dramatization as evidence in a murder trial. Nope, no tape. I’m doing the super ball test a 50 times, if it repeats itself perfectly even once I’ll be boondoggled.

This certainty about the universe allows us to have 15000 planes in the air every minute of the day on this planet. which is more than the amount of balls I was imagining. The balls were simplified also because they can’t break down or have user errors. Their course is even more true than that of planes.

Planes don’t crash into each other because they coordinate flight plans, not because physics won’t allow it. If that were the case we wouldn’t need flight plans. I don’t see the comparison between super balls and planes as very helpful, as you note the role of the pilot is significant, significant enough that I think the super ball’s lack of pilot makes a poor comparision. However I would like to know, if the course of action is already set, how could the course of the super balls be “even more true than that of planes.” With the exact determinism you advocate there should no be room for degrees of true-ness, just absolute truth. Even pilot error should be incorporated into exact determinism or it isn’t exact determinism.

Behavior!

Your experience and knowledge are a part of your environment and necessarily influence your present decisions.

I can’t argue that people rely on past experience to make decisions, predicatible decisions even. And I didn’t. What I was arguing was that true and complete single path determinism is not possible because, some times one action is not favored over another. Amounting to physics rolling a dice or flipping a coin. And when it comes to experience based decisions this means that experiences won’t necessarily be the same and thus different experiences would to different, but still completely reasonable decisions.

the point of understanding determinism is not to learn how to predict the future exactly. it’s more about learning the value of the past as it applies to your desired present.

I don’t think you’re trying to predict the future. What I’m arguing against is the idea of a single linear, predetermined timeline. If that’s not what your describing with determinism, please set me straight on exactly what it is you mean. Because so far your arguments have undeniably favored a single set path, not simple cause and effect.

inevitable that it happened as a result of their belief in free will, yes. this is why you would want these people to learn how the universe actually works so that they can necessarily cease to make clouded judgments through that false veil of “free will.” new information received and understood will always breed new conclusions. sharing a good idea, like determinism if that’s what it is, becomes simply another rational thing to do with a view towards social progress.

How can logically making decisions based on past experience and rationale not be free will? There is an active process of evaluating options and choosing the most preferable one. That is the definition of choice. You seem to think that free will is negated except perhaps in the presence of complete ignorance, where no choice could be seen as preferable to another. Evaluation does not negate freewill, it just facilitates better decision making.

And in the absence of freewill there could no true decision making because there would only ever be one choice.

the idea of punishment needs to be cleaned up. Determinism tells us that all animals act according to their PERCEIVED best actions. so we can know that someone who dissents from the ways of society is someone who is simply convinced otherwise. they are not a bad person. they are literally just someone who is not influenced to believe that they ought to act any differently in the types of cases they cause troubles in. The solution for violators of good practices, therefore, is education. Education so that they can learn why their actions are not wise. The only way to get someone to stop acting a certain way is to Convince them that those actions are undesirable. If they are convinced, then they will not act that way because all animals act according to the best of their available knowledge.

Most of the time you seem to arguing single set path determinism, but some of the time you argue a non set course cause and effect based determinism. You explanation of your approach to punishment only makes sense with the second type of determinism. Please outline what kind of determinism you favor and stick to it.

You missed what I had actually been getting at

#1
your previous statement [ it’s the understanding that free will is a myth and that the universe and all animals function without free will that will affect a person’s thinking. ] doesn’t follow the course our discussion

Recap:

ninjacolin: determinism helps us to realize that the principals of responsibility that we currently uphold globally are outdated. Accepting determinism means upgrading from the archaic practice known as “the blame game.”

me: How does it show we’re globally outdated?

ninjacolin: Well, if we play the blame game and IF the blame game isn’t actually pertinent, then we’re wasting our time with it.

me: And in a deterministic world, if someone were engaging in the blame game, wouldn’t it be inevitable? And if the world is deterministic, it is whether or not I believe it, that teaches me nothing.

ninjacolin: [ here you inserted a truncated version of my quote “And if the world is deterministic, it is whether or not I believe it” and replied: ] yup. it’s the understanding that free will is a myth and that the universe and all animals function without free will that will affect a person’s thinking.

#2

ninjacolin: We tend to conclude whatever seems to have good reason for it and we ALWAYS seem to act on those conclusions. Yes, our reasoning may be wrong.. but once (if) we notice this, we correct ourselves.

me: you have to understand that our logic, instincts and feelings are not invulnerable to the physical restrictions set in place be having them happen in our brains…. It’s not easy to beat, physiological and chemical predispositions. That’s what Psychopharmacology is for.

ninjacolin: right. our actions are the result of our beliefs about our preferences in a given moment. All beliefs are conclusions formed about our memories of the evidence we’ve taken in through our senses. and lastly, the logical merit of all conclusions is subject to the limitations of our individual brains.

Again you missed the point of my statement here.

I was simply showing circumstances under which people would not be able to make the most logical decision, even when they knew what the best, most logical decision was. Your assersion had been that people make the most logical decision. I was saying that is not always how the brain works. You failed to acknowledge, after I pointed it out, that knowing the best choice does not all was equal choosing the best choice. Addiction is a perfect example.

ok that’s it. Please set down what kind of determinism you’re arguing before diving in.

there’s definitely a lot of misunderstanding going on. i never flipflop at all as far as I can tell. there is ONLY cause and effect determinism. through everything i’ve said this is what is always implied. i apologize if perhaps i wrote it badly making it seem like something else.

@fundevogel said: “If you want to use the behavior of the rock you can only reference a rock, not an image of a rock. An image of rock behaves the way it does for very different reasons than a rock does.”

you’re misunderstanding the point of the video. video captures a moment in time giving us a 10 second explanation of how things get from one point to another. the value of this is that we get to see THAT rock at THAT moment of time and everything that happens to it in the 10 second period.

What happens by the end of the video is senseible to us. The rock doesn’t turn into a unicorn for example. Because that wouldn’t make sense. Video shows frame by frame how cause and effect is the only way that things change. A video represents all the atoms as they were a the start of the video and all the atoms as they were by the end of the video.

The result is second by second proof that the only things that unfold over time are the things that are possible based on the previous second.

Meaning, that if we COULD reload the superball experiment and run it again so that all the balls are in the exact same starting positions and all the atoms and particles of the balls and of the air and everything are in the exact same position (just like we can observe when you rewind a video) then yes, the experiment would run exactly the same each time it performed.

Determinism speaks to every single particle in the universe acting and reacting as they must against the influences of other particles that either come into contact with them or fail to. The idea is that if you rewound the hands of time.. you would be rewinding everything in and about the universe and “reality” as we know it. Every single particle even in galaxies on the other side of the universe. Even whatever is outside of our universe.. and THEN playing the tape back.. the result of which would give us the exact same results as we see today because the laws of Physics cannot be broken.

@fundevogel said: “could something else have just as easily happened?”

the answer would be no. not if every single particle and effect in the universe was rewound. we have no reason to believe that there would be any new, random occurrences on playback.

This post led me to believe you were arguing single path determinism. Because you were literally saying that the same things would always happen, no matter what. I said what about when one action is not favored over another (among alot of other things), you remained mum on the subject. If this post doesn’t describe single set path determinism how can you claim it will always play out the same?

oh my.. i’m confused as to what you are confused about. lol. :)

um.. there IS only one set path. meaning.. there was no way that we could not be having this very discussion today. having all this difficulty understanding eachother.

but that one set path is the result of the casue and effect physics.

does that make sense?

I fail to see how arguing simple cause and effect, where multiple effects can result for preceding events, can be the same as a single path with predetermined results. It sounds like two different arguments to me.

And apparently Stephen Hawkings has problems with determinism for other reasons.

I need to read more about this, but I found this article about a recent talk at USC with Stephen Hawkings:

As the lecture came to a close, the topic switched from the science of black holes to how scientific determinism, an idea defined by Hawking as the concept that “the laws of science determine the evolution of the universe.” Scientists have operated on this idea for centuries, but it doesn’t really work with black holes, since the information in each black hole is lost. Hawking challenged this thinking.

“If determinism breaks down with black holes, it could break down elsewhere,” Hawking said. “It could also mean our past is just a series of illusions, but without our past we lose our identity.”

The article is Here

There’s another article and a video of the lecture Here . He starts talking about determinism around 22 minutes in.

well, as far as we know, multiple effects cannot result from exactly similar preceding events. right?

i mean.. we have no examples of cars that turn into elephants upon a collision.. they always turn into crumpled cars, right?

There are a lot of ways cars can crumple colin. ;)

They sure list a hell of a long list of varying possible resulting side effects on my birth control pills. The most likely result would be that I continue getting my period every month which I’m banking on. But I could get a blood clot as well, or bigger boobs, or smaller boobs, weight loss, weight gain, depression or, if I’m really unlucky, a baby.

In arguing against determinism I’m not arguing against physics, or even predictability. I don’t disagree that past actions lead to present and future actions. All I’m saying is exactly what results from and action can not be simplified to a single exact result. I could go so far as to say that an action could eliminate or at least significantly reduce the likelihood of possible futures, ie:

if I miss I pill I’m probably not going let him fore go the condom, but there are still a variety of ways things could play out. we could take a rain check or alter our extracurricular activities, or take five seconds to dig out the condoms. We might say screw the condom, it was just one pill. Maybe I’ll spend a day fretting over how frickin’ long you have to wait for a pregnancy test to work. Or spend a day bowled over in pain from the morning after pill. Or whatever multiple things could happen that don’t involve elephants appearing out of nowhere.

well, i’m not saying that we can predict what will happen exactly.. all I’m saying is that only one particular outcome can come from one a particular scenario. do we agree on this?

in the case of your pills that would mean that based on your specific hormone levels and what brand you took and how much sex you had or didn’t have and what your stress levels are like and what your diet has been like… you would get a certain effect (or set of effects) on day D at minute M and second S.

I understand what you’re saying, but no I don’t agree. I respect the significance of particals bopping around setting off chemical reactions and maintaining total system energy. I’m not implying that all their subatomic action is irrelevant to the course the world takes. What I am saying is that a nearly infinite number variables can interact in more than one way. Especially if, as Hawkings points out, black holes can randomly pull variables out of the equation and introduce new variables, like elephants.

But I think we’re at a point that we both know where we stand and with nature of the problem neither can provide anything more definitive that we already have.

And even if we could travel through time to observe time we couldn’t really be sure who was right because of the observer effect. A paradox. I think I can be happy with my assumption and yours, knowing that at this juncture it is unknowable.

On a slightly lighter note, how would determinism work in concert with an Infinite Improbability Drive?

I have 2 criticisms to the notion of randomness you’ve suggested above as caused by black holes (or anything of the like)

first, let’s say black holes really CAN introduce random new variables into an equation. if if that was the case, i don’t think it would change the fact that your life decisions rely on the existence of those random particles. meaning, you still are innocent of all your actions. if randomly you decide one day to take a walk rather than stay home, you still haven’t exercised free will. rather, it’s a blackhole random interjection into your behaviour. Free will is still lacking on your part.

Secondly, and more importantly, black holes can’t pull in truly random information. if they can do anything “random” they can still only do so with the normal particles of the universe. black holes still only ever do what they can. they can’t do what they can’t. they never produce elephants. never as far as we know nor as far as we predict. whatever “Random” acts they do we have no reason to believe they do outside of a limited scope of possibility. Maybe one day we will find that they truly can produce anything we want them to, including elephants and unicorns. But as is to date, I don’t see that we have any reason to believe that.

infinite improbability drive.. :) that fictional idea actually confuses me pretty well. ha.

look colin, I can’t show that the actions I have taken could just as easily been something else because of the nature of time, you can’t test the consistency of events in time for the same reason. We’re going around in circles.

And that was a figurative elephant and you know it.

oh i was using the elephant figuratively too, promise. sorry if that seemed like a stab anyhow. it wasn’t meant that way at all as i’ve really enjoyed this conversation with ya. :)

the discussion doesn’t seem circular to me. I think you raised a new point with the black hole randomness thing and I feel that it appropriately closes off at determinism still. i feel that given the ideas you’ve shared the simplest explanation (occam’s razor and all that) for the universe including human action is that it is deterministic. the idea that everything else in the whole universe has no free will except for humans who miraculously have it while all other animals do not is too mythological for me to accept.

i think there’s a perfectly reasonable natural explanation for our actions in determinism that frees us for reliance on the free will delusion.

It’s a perspective thing. I don’t think the freewill only applies to people, but I am a person so it’s more natural for me to come at it from a persons perspective than a turtles or a fungus. I have no idea what the fungal experience of the world is. You know I don’t believe in god so it’s not like I think freewill is some special gift given to man over animals. It’s just what I see from where I stand.

The idea that freewill could be bestowed is pretty fantastical.

I know I’m insanely late for this conversation, but I wanted to point out the difference between chaos, and randomness.

A chaotic occurrence is one that cannot be easily predicted. The final outcome is vastly different depending on slightly varying input variables so we cannot easily, or even tractably, compute the outcome. However, the chaotic system is deterministic in that cause and effect holds throughout the system. If the exact same input to the chaotic system is given, the final outcome will always be a product of this system and thus will provide the same outcome.

In the case of crashing cars mentioned, yes, crashing cars have billions of outcomes. However, each outcome is determined by a different set of input variables. The outcome of the crash is highly sensitive to slight differences in the input. However, if the inputs were exactly the same, the outcome must be exactly the same because the systems are the same and abide by the same laws of physics.

A random occurrence cannot be predicted, very similarly to a chaotic system, however, a truly random occurrence does not depend on initial circumstances. The decay of a radioactive isotope is inherently random as well as a few other quantum effects. These random circumstances are non-deterministic, however, they do abide by the laws of physics.

When it comes to free will, the brain is a chaotic system. It is shaped by experience and it’s initial conditions. The configuration the brain is in at the moment a decision is made necessarily causes the resulting action. When the neural network of the brain is supplied with a stimulus, the architecture will output a result. This result is caused directly by the position of neurons, electrons, and neurotransmitters. The positions of these elements are dependent on previous conditions, etc, etc…..

In no part of this explanation is there room for a choice. The inputs necessarily lead to the outputs through cause and effect. One cannot choose to do something. The brain simply observes stimulus associated with objective reality, routes that stimulus through a network, which in turn causes an associated thought or action to occur.

We believe free will to exist subjectively because the system we define as ourselves appears to choose. If we deem a human brain to be a black box we observe that choices go in, and decisions come out. Objectively, free will cannot exist because the brain abides by cause and effect.

@fundevogel said: “The idea that freewill could be bestowed is pretty fantastical.”

yes! thats how i feel. a lot of evolutionists believe that humans somehow have free will and animals only have instincts which i think is laughable when you consider: at what point did we evolve the gene to defy the laws of physics? why would we believe that we evolved something so impossible as that? That all other animals only evolved brains that could abide by their “instincts” (i’ve begun to stop believing in instincts, by the way. it may just be as ridiculous as the idea of “free will”) and that they could not make “real” decisions but somehow we could and yet we come from the exact same deterministic dna as them.

@Shuttle128, no such thing as a late comer on Fluther. :) excellent post. Thank you for pointing.. er.. those points. Chaos vs randomness and the like.. great stuff!

Free Will swims within Novelty Theory.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53rgBc7HTrk&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ua95T1Co-BY&feature=related