Arcatia has stated that before any thought can occur, first there must be a chemical change in the brain. So if before any decision is made, we first need a chemical change, then it is not really a decision, now is it? It is merely a response to that chemical change, for which we have no control over.
On several occasions keiths has ducked and dodged away from this problem. Arcatia now seems to want to run away from it, as has every other materialist here on this forum. About the best you can hope for is some kind of obfuscated rant about what is meaning, what is will, how do we know we know, what’s the epistemological nature of the epistemology…and on, and on the deflections to anything that could be considered an answer go. Generally people here pretend that if you stick the suffix “sian” at the end of any name, you have said something profound.
So it deserves it own thread. Let the bullshit answers speak for themselves. In the end we will see if anyone actually tries to address it. Its the toughest question for materialists to wiggle out of in my opinion.
Alan,
Nothing about determinism precludes the evaluation of alternatives and the making of decisions. It’s just that under determinism, the evaluation and the decisions proceed deterministically — of course.
“Arcatia now seems to want to run away from it, as has every other materialist here on this forum.”
Well, if you are going to intentionally misrepresent what people say, how are we going to have an honest discussion?
I apologize to TSZ if this violates the rules, but Phoodoo and I have already been over this. I have never made a claim one way or the other about free will. All I have said is that I cannot envision any experiment that could demonstrate its existance or non-existance. Phoodoo claims that free will exists in spite of absolutely no evidence to support it. I don’t make a claim about free will because there is absolutely no evidence to draw a reasonable conclusion. So, who amongst us is running away?
References please.
keiths:
Alan:
Here’s that bit:
I don’t see anything in that excerpt that would indicate disagreement with your sentence:
Could you be more specific?
Alan,
Yes.
Of course. A professor who thought that learning was impossible would be an odd bird, indeed. The question is whether you have any reason to think he would disagree with your statement.
I haven’t seen any.
Saying that changes nothing. If you believe that a chemical change causes a decision, then it is not a decision, it is obligatory that that is what you will chose.
petrushka,
Feedback isn’t at all incompatible with determinism.
keiths,
Well, then you can’t read keiths. He is saying, the molecules make the choice, not the choice makes the molecules.
Acartia,
I didn’t say you made a claim about free will directly Arcatia. I said exactly what you said, that a chemical changes happens before a thought can occur.
Thus, chemicals first, we react second. I am not particularly interested if you believe in free will (you could be a person full of contradictions), I am stating what your sentence necessitates.
I didn’t say it was. I agree that physics is deterministic.
But we live in and are conscious of a system that changes its configuration as a result of feedback. If Jerry wants to espouse philosophical determinism, I have nothing to say about that.
But if he is advocating changes in political and public policy, he needs to come home to evolution and acknowledge the role of selection and feedback.
“Holding someone morally responsible” is a archaic way of talking, but it is not necessarily a wrong approach to managing a society.
Its not a problem at all for materialists. Its exactly what they claim to believe.
petrushka,
Feedback from where? From inside the mind, or external?
I don’t believe you are accurately portraying his position, but if you are, I disagree with it.
On a materialist view, a specific spatiotemporal pattern of chemical or physical reactions ARE thoughts. They do not “give rise to” thoughts, or have to occur for thoughts to occur, they are identical with thoughts. In so far as that pattern of physical and chemical change occurs, a thought is occuring. The two are inseperable.
No, the decision being made IS some pattern of chemical and physical changes. One does not come before the other, it is the very same thing.
Yes, it really is.
This is too muddled, no wonder you are confused.
There’s your surroundings, your senses, your brain and then your central nervous system connected to your brain and your muscles. Some kind of information comes from the environment, hits your senses, gets send to your brain where it causes a certain pattern of chemical reactions, the result of which is that a signal is sent to your muscles so you act in a certain way. That thing that takes place in your brain, that’s the decision. What your body does, whether it moves or not, whether you speak or remain quiet, that’s your reaction to the environmental input
It doesn’t matter that it’s all just atoms reacting to each other through fundamental forces, it is still a decision you make on how to react. Because YOU are your body and brain. Yes, it’s made of atoms, yes those atoms obey the laws of physics. But they’re the atoms we call YOU, so YOU are making a decision. So decisions clearly exist and can be explained on a materialist view.
There are good arguments against materialism phoodoo (which is why I don’t espouse philosophical materialism) that one aint among them.
phoodoo,
You’re still seeing the mind as separate from the body, being dragged along by physics. There is no ‘you’ apart from the body. The decisions that your body makes — physically — are your decisions.
When you complain that they are ‘obligatory’, you are complaining that you are subject to your own choices. Well, duh.
keiths:
petrushka:
Then I’m not seeing what you’re getting at here:
What gives you the impression that he thinks feedback is unimportant?
Glen,
If the laws of physics are deterministic, then “what you get” is completely determined by the laws of physics together with the state of the universe. That is, the “quora, stochastic processes, strengths of signals, and the chemicals in your blood” that you mention are all determined.
Quantum indeterminacy casts doubt on this picture, but it doesn’t rescue libertarian free will. Random inputs are no more an expression of free will than deterministic inputs are.
Rumraket,
Sounds like a good topic for an OP.
Fair enough. Are you disagreeing with the observations that a chemical reaction precedes thoughts? If you do, please provide some evidence.
The evidence we have is that chemical and physical changes to the brain can change behaviour. Make us react (decide) in ways that we normally wouldn’t. Direct stimulation of the brain can cause movement in our bodies even if we don’t want them. They can trigger emotional responses, smells and visions. All of this through purely physical (chemical) means.
If purely physical changes in the brain can do all this, where is the evidence that there is something above (outside) the physical brain that is responsible for behaviour and decisions.
Perhaps the fact that he deplores existing feedback mechanisms without discussing the need to invent alternatives. If you have paid attention to my comments here, you know that I have tried to engage him on this. I get no response from him or from his followers.
If you disagree with the death penalty, fine. If you think prisons are counterproductive, fine. What are the alternatives that aren’t being tried?
I don’t see that the philosophical discussion of determinism adds anything useful. We are already experimenting with all kinds of ways to prevent lawbreaking and such. And with ways to deal with lawbreakers.
keiths:
petrushka:
You’re not reading him accurately. He’s fine with punishment as feedback, but not with punishment as retribution. From that same essay:
With regards to how a decision actually takes place at the neuronal level, watch this:
The Origin of the Brain at 6:12 into the video.
Jerry has written extensively about this, and I realize he opposes retribution.
What I object to is his failure to discuss alternatives to punishment. I would like for him to open up the discussion to include things that are known about behavior.
Poverty and lack of education are correlated with crime, but are not the cause.
Do I know how to fix things? No. But I think I have a more productive way of talking about causes and solutions. I am not the inventor of my ideas, and they aren’t secret. They are actually rather widely known and discussed. So why are they ignored on sites where evolutionary thinking is promoted?
There’s a question on the table whether agent causation is the best way of understanding the difference between voluntary and involuntary actions.
I don’t doubt that we need the distinction itself — put crudely, the difference between winking and blinking — but it’s hard to see how agent causation helps clarify or explain matters.
Physiology has long used the terms voluntary and involuntary.
https://www.boundless.com/physiology/textbooks/boundless-anatomy-and-physiology-textbook/autonomic-nervous-system-14/introduction-to-the-autonomic-nervous-system-140/comparing-the-somatic-and-autonomic-nervous-systems-741-7138/
Quite frankly, outmoded ways of talking about the nervous system are still dominant in public discourse.
I would not argue that we have some magical new vocabulary or new knowledge that explains everything, but I would argue that the old ways are non productive.
The terms free will and determinism are not even wrong. Personally, I think we should approach human learning from the same perspective we approach AI learning. I think eventually we will.
Nice statement of the identity theory, Rumraket.
As I see it, a naturalistic explanation of the distinction between voluntary actions and involuntary actions (which we see throughout the animal world), together with a naturalistic explanation of the human capacity to act with regard to reasonableness, gives us everything that we need in our understanding of freedom, deliberation and choice without invoking agent causation.
And that’s true independent of whether causation is determinate or indeterminate, or whatever causation turns out to be.
Somewhere in my reading in psychology (45 years ago now) I encountered the notion that consciousness is a sense, not categorically different from senses like vision or hearing or smell.
Consciousness is the perception of certain brain functions. Not all brain functions are “visible” to consciousness. Recent work suggests that decision making is among those brain functions that occur out of “sight”.
I’d happily agree that introspection is like that. Brains are good for being conscious of the affordances and solicitations in the animal’s environment — for detecting, tracking, and classifying the animal-specific salient patterns. And brains can be very good at that without requiring any good models for keeping track of their own workings.
What is required for moral and political agency is deliberation, or an ability to chose in light of reasons, and desire to act on the basis of reasons that one can ascribe to oneself. More more specifically, what is crucial is not “free will” but freedom.
On “determinism,” I think that there are hugely difficult questions about whether there are causes at all, at the ultimate level of physical reality (Russell thought not; Ladyman and Ross agree with him); whether causation is determinate or indeterminate (jury’s still out on that one until the physicists get their act together), and the difference between linear and nonlinear causation (a distinction of the utmost importance for understanding biological agency).
And however we parse out the difference between voluntary and involuntary action, we need to explain the neurophysiological conditions of voluntary action, and understand how the voluntary actions of rational animals are subject to constraints — norms of reasonableness — that non-rational animals don’t have.
Thinking — in my conceptual universe — is an activity like any other, just not involving the muscles. At least for people who don’t move their lips when talking to themselves. My wife say she can see me thinking.
Being conscious is observing some brain activities. If we are ever to build a conscious artificial intelligence, we would want to make some aspects of processing activity visible in the same way as other senses perceive.
We know by experiment that some non-human animals can imagine or rehearse actions. The likely utility of this is in anticipating results or consequences. This ability is not all or nothing. It likely arose in vertebrate evolution and reached its current peak in humans. Language seems to be key in thinking, although thinking is not unique to humans. We just do it better.
If someone can embed this, that would be nice.
petrushka,
That’s only half the story. He opposes retribution but not punishment in general.
That’s because you mistakenly believe that he “deplores” punishment and that this leaves a vacuum that must be filled:
You’re perceiving a vacuum where there is none.
Coyne, again:
You seem to be missing my point. We should change the way we reward and punish people. I agree with physical determinism, just not with the implications.
petrushka,
You are chastising Coyne for creating a vacuum and failing to fill it. Problem is, the vacuum doesn’t exist.
You misunderstood him and are criticizing him for something he didn’t do.
You misunderstand me. He harps on it as if it were important, then apparently says that our current ways of dealing with criminality do not need to change.
WTF?
Who gives a shit why we punish people? The important question is whether our methods are productive and are the best we can do. I don’t give half a shit whether someone feels good and has an orgasm when people are punished. I am not in charge of other people’s feelings.
What is important is whether our methods of dealing with criminals is the best thing for society. The best we can do.
I do not expect Coyne to have all the answers. I certainly don’t. But I would like to see him address the problem is a way that leads to inventive thinking.
Actually, elsewhere he says as much:
A bit more on free will
This is later than the OP linked to by Fox, so it may be that he’s changed his mind. No indication in at least this blogpost that he’s actually changed his mind, however.
This later bit does seem more reasonable than saying that retributive justice has got to go, but otherwise little or no changes are necessary by realizing that libertarian free will makes no scientific sense.
Glen Davidson
He’s written on this many times and does not always deal with alternatives.
He’s a bright person, though, and should know that punishment is always retributive, seldom useful, and mostly counterproductive. He should also know that poverty has not yielded to welfare and education (although that is not necessarily a reason for eliminating welfare or education).
Do I hold him accountable for not filling the vacuum? Partially.
I think if he’s going to discuss doing away with the basis of criminal justice, he needs to study the alternatives that have been tried or suggested, and present the evidence. I see no point in relabeling incarceration. What’s the point?
keiths:
petrushka:
No, your claim was unambiguous:
He doesn’t deplore punishment, and he makes that perfectly clear.
It was your mistake, petrushka, not his.
I’ve done a quick search on “deplore punishment” and can’t find where I used that phrase. In your petrushka quote I said “he deplores existing feedback mechanisms”.
What Coyne said was, “That mandates big changes in our criminal justice system: a scientific approach about which punishments are best for deterrence, reform, and keeping criminals from relapsing into crime. It rules out retributive justice, which simply doesn’t make sense.”
Instead of obsessing about nits, why not show some interest in what I’m actually trying to say?
I still say that Coyne misses the boat. The philosophical issue and the argument from physics are uninteresting. What is needed is an approach to crime that recognizes some of the development in behavioral psychology that have been ignored by politicians for the last 75 years or so.
You are saying that something can be both determinate and voluntary at the same time?
The distinction between voluntary and involuntary IS the distinction between deterministic and undeterministic.
Furthermore, what exactly is that naturalistic explanation? Is it the explanation that it must be naturalistic in nature? That sounds sort of like the modern neo-darwinistic synthesis-“We don’t know the causes, but we know they are natural whatever they are. “
This is bad, even for you keiths.
Why are you insisting on calling something a “choice” if the physical make-up of the molecules in your brain are causing the action? Where does the concept of “choice” come in?
Would you call it a “choice” for an object to be pulled towards a mass because of gravity? Is it a choice for water molecules to turn from liquid to gas under certain conditions?
I don’t know. I will say that I never really understood what compatibilism was supposed to be, because I never really understood what “free will” was supposed to be.
Ah, but that assumption is precisely one of the many assumptions in this terrain that I intend to deny! We have no reason to believe it and it doesn’t help explain what we want to explain.
As a first pass, the distinction between voluntary actions and involuntary actions would be explained in terms of the distinction between actions that involve cognitive mechanisms that integrates perceptual data with motor output and those actions that don’t involve those mechanisms.
The question is whether this takes voluntary actions off the table, so to speak, just because they can be explained in terms of subpersonal cognitive mechanisms. I don’t see why that would be the case.
I think there’s a widespread intuition that an action that seems to be expressive of my beliefs, desires, values and ideals would fail to be expressive of my beliefs, desires, values, and ideals just because we can also explain its subpersonal correlates at the level of my neurocomputational processes.
I have to say that that widespread intuition, which animates a good deal of yearning for agent causation and the corresponding dualism, simply doesn’t make any sense to me. It is animated more by a psychological need to be something more than an animal, than it is by any sound philosophical argument.
Put in a nutshell: whatever it is in other animals that allows them to make voluntary movements, that’s what we have, too. We make choices by virtue of the same cognitive mechanisms that chimpanzees and baboons make choices. (And if you don’t think they do, then you’re probably letting theology do the work of empirical psychology.)
The difference between us and other animals isn’t that we have something immaterial attached to us and they don’t, but that we’ve evolved normative practices for representing reasons and responding to them as reasons, e.g. in deliberation.
I think you’re allowing extremely simple cases to control your thinking about what a naturalistic explanation can be. That’s like saying it’s not physically possible to cook a gourmet meal because it doesn’t come in a microwaveable box.
petrushka,
As if we haven’t been talking about the feedback mechanism known as “punishment”.
Yes. As I said:
Petrushka, you made a mistake. Coyne made himself clear, but you failed to comprehend him. That’s on you, not him, and it needs to be corrected by you, not him. Just acknowledge your mistake and move on.
When you understand Coyne’s actual position, then you can decide whether you agree or disagree with him.
Who is muddled? You are saying that the chemical positions are the thoughts. What makes the chemicals adhere to any particular position at any particular time?
What causes the pattern? The pattern causes the pattern? If the chemical pattern can be changed, what can change it other than the chemical pattern?
You clearly haven’t thought this over, or if you have, you decided to skip the hard parts.
petrushka,
People who care about morality, which includes people on both sides of the retributive punishment question.
Someone who thinks that a criminal truly deserves to suffer for his crime, even when the punishment offers no other “benefit” to society, will be comfortable with retributive punishment, perhaps even seeing it as obligatory. Not so for those who see it as immoral to inflict suffering for its own sake.
The meaning of “productive” and “the best we can do” depend on the goals of the punishment. Retributivists will see them quite differently from non-retributivists.
No, punishment is retributive only when the suffering of the punishee is an end in itself. If the sole goal of the punishment is deterrence, for example, then it is not retributive.
LoL.
phoodoo,
If you’re weighing the alternatives, anticipating their consequences, and selecting one based on your evaluations, why wouldn’t you call that a choice?
phoodoo,
No, because there is no awareness of or consideration of alternatives in those cases.
phoodoo, to Rumraket:
We’ve been over this before, phoodoo. The brain and body are physical systems that evolve over time in a way that depends both on their internal state and their interactions with the environment. Computers do the same.
As Jeffrey Shallit points out: