According to Robert Sapolsky, human free will does not exist

[BSilvEsq]

I can't argue in court that as the bank robbery last week is in the immutable past, I therefore had no choice but to commit that robbery. (Well, I could, but only if I wanted to plead insanity).

You are 100% correct about that. Well, actually, you can argue a determinism / lack of free will defense, but the Judge will disagree as a legal matter without regard to whether you are factually correct.

Interestingly, although lack of free will has been used mainly with respect to the defense of insanity (as you suggest), the defense of lack of free will also has been asserted and rejected in other legal contexts. When that has occurred, Courts have acknowledge their inability to resolve ultimate questions of determinism or free will, and have elected to treat defendants "as if" they had free will without regard to whether that is, in fact, accurate, on account of the ramifications of electing otherwise.

In 2005, Michelle Cotton wrote a very thoughtful and well researched article, titled “A Foolish Consistency: Keeping Determinism Out of the Criminal Law.” The article was published in Volume 15 of the Public Interest Law Journal, a publication of Boston University. The article begins with the following statement: “The criminal law is said to be founded on the idea that persons can be held responsible for their actions because they have freely chosen them, rather than had them determined by forces beyond their control.” The article reflects a pragmatic resistance, if not animosity, within American jurisprudence to the notion that human conduct is the product of determinism and not free will. Inasmuch as freedom of thought and expression lies at the core of the United States Constitution, it is unsurprising that American jurisprudence would be built on a view that people are personally responsible for their actions and reject the view that our actions are directed by forces beyond our control.

Consistent with Cotton's observations, Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote in 1881 that criminal responsibility must be based on volitional action, and that the lack of free will, for whatever reason, would be problematic for criminal law. As a Law Review article published more than a century later states: “Oliver Wendell Holmes held that if an offender were hereditarily or environmentally determined to offend, then her free will would be reduced, and her responsibility for criminal acts would be correspondingly diminished.” J. G. Moore, “Criminal Responsibility and Causal Determinism,” 9 Wash. U. Jur. Rev. 43, at p.43 (2016, corrected 2016) (citing Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., :The Common Law,” at 31 (American Bar Association, 2009) (1881)).

Employing the same line of reasoning as Justice Holmes, Clarence Darrow regularly relied upon a form of deterministic argument to defend his clients. In a famous case involving two youths known as “Leopold and Loeb,” Darrow incorporated Determinism into his defense of his clients’ alleged cold-blooded and premeditated murder of a young boy. Among other things, Darrow argued in his closing statement to the jury on August 22, 1924, as follows:

Why did they kill little Bobby Franks? Not for money, not for spite; not for hate. They killed him as they might kill a spider or a fly, for the experience. They killed him because they were made that way. Because somewhere in the infinite processes that go to the making up of the boy or the man something slipped, and those unfortunate lads sit here hated, despised, outcasts, with the community shouting for their blood.

. . .

I know, Your Honor, that every atom of life in all this universe is bound up together. I know that a pebble cannot be thrown into the ocean without disturbing every drop of water in the sea. I know that every life is inextricably mixed and woven with every other life. I know that every influence, conscious and unconscious, acts and reacts on every living organism, and that no one can fix the blame. I know that all life is a series of infinite chances, which sometimes result one way and sometimes another. I have not the infinite wisdom that can fathom it, neither has any other human brain. But I do know that if back of it is a power that made it, that power alone can tell, and if there is no power then it is an infinite chance which man cannot solve.

Twenty-two years earlier, in 1902, Darrow gave a speech to the inmates at the Cook County jail in Chicago. In his speech, Darrow asserted, among other things, the following:

The reason I talk to you on the question of crime, its cause and cure, is because I really do not in the least believe in crime. There is no such thing as a crime as the word is generally understood. I do not believe there is any sort of distinction between the real moral condition of the people in and out of jail. One is just as good as the other. The people here can no more help being here than the people outside can avoid being outside. I do not believe that people are in jail because they deserve to be. They are in jail simply because they cannot avoid it on account of circumstances which are entirely beyond their control and for which they are in no way responsible.

. . .

Let us see whether there is any connection between the crimes of the respectable classes and your presence in the jail. Many of you people are in jail because you have really committed burglary. Many of you, because you have stolen something; in the meaning of the law, you have taken some other person’s property. Some of you have entered a store and carried off a pair of shoes because you did not have the price. Possibly some of you have committed murder. I cannot tell what all of you did. There are a great many people here who have done some of these things who really do not know themselves why they did them. I think I know why you did them — every one of you; you did these things because you were bound to do them. It looked to you at the time as if you had a chance to do them or not, as you saw fit, but still after all you had no choice. There may be people here who had some money in their pockets and who still went out and got some more money in a way society forbids. Now you may not yourselves see exactly why it was you did this thing, but if you look at the question deeply enough and carefully enough you would see that there were circumstances that drove you to do exactly the thing which you did. You could not help it any more than we outside can help taking the positions that we take.

. . .

There is one way to cure all these offenses, and that is to give the people a chance to live. There is no other way, and there never was any other way since the world began, and the world is so blind and stupid that it will not see. If every man and woman and child in the world had a chance to make a decent, fair, honest living, there would be no jails, and no lawyers and no courts. There might be some persons here or there with some peculiar formation of their brain, like Rockefeller, who would do these things simply to be doing them; but they would be very, very few, and those should be sent to a hospital and treated, and not sent to jail, and they would entirely disappear in the second generation, or at least in the third generation.

Following Darrow’s lead, a few years after the Leopold and Loeb trial, a sociology professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School wrote an article titled “A Deterministic View of Criminal Responsibility,” which was published in the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology. The conclusion of the article is as follows:

Neither determinism nor libertarianism, in the opinion of the present writer, can ever have more than a pragmatic justification. Nor will the last word ever be said on the subject, for probably there will always be those who emphasize the uniqueness of the individual's inner experience, and these tough-minded and extroverted persons who fasten their attention upon the regularities of human conduct. The present paper is therefore simply an attempt to show the relative superiority of determinism for (1) the understanding of the facts of human experience, even those brought forward as proofs of libertarianism, and (2) the control of human behavior.

Willard Waller, “Deterministic View of Criminal Responsibility, A, 20 Am. Inst. Crim. L. & Criminology,” at 88 (1929-1930).

More recently, J.G. Moore (a philosopher and law student) published a thesis article (for his law degree) examining the relationship between Determinism and criminal law. Among other things, Moore examined the writings of Peter Van Inwagen, who is one of the most significant modern advocates of Hard Determinism (i.e., Determinism is true, and Determinism rules out the existence of Free Will). In that connection, Moore wrote:

If causal determinism is true, then decisions and actions of agents are the consequence of events that happened before they were born, together with the laws of nature. However, it is not up to them what happened before they were born, or what the laws of nature are. Therefore, the decisions and actions of agents are not up to them.

J. G. Moore, “Criminal Responsibility and Causal Determinism,” 9 Wash. U. Jur. Rev. 43, at p.52 (2016, corrected 2016) (citing Peter Van Inwagen, “An Essay on Free Will,” at 16 (1983)).

Consistent with the foregoing, the U.S. Supreme Court wrote in Steward Machine Co. v. Davis, 301 U.S. 548, 590:

The outcome of such a doctrine is the acceptance of a philosophical determinism by which choice becomes impossible. Till now the law has been guided by a robust common sense which assumes the freedom of the will as a working hypothesis in the solution of its problems. The wisdom of the hypothesis has illustration in this case.

See also:

There is no alternative in our efforts to reconcile the competing goals of the juvenile justice system but to enter reluctantly into a brief discussion of the age-old philosophical controversy about free will and determinism. 10 Neither this Court nor anyone [**411] else in the world will ever definitively answer the question of whether mankind is determined or is possessed of free will. The philosophy of the law has generally accepted that at times people are determined while at other times they have free will. Pragmatically our legal tradition has answered the question by rules which recognize that men are guided entirely neither by external forces nor by free will; every person is influenced by both but is never totally controlled by either.

State ex rel. H. v. Dostert, 165 W. Va. 448, 461-463

For many centuries there has been a philosophic debate between the respective proponents of determinism and free will, but it should be quite obvious that if there were no ree will, there could be no reason for courts since in that event neither plaintiff nor defendant could have done anything to avoid what was already destined to take place. If there were no free will, every criminal penalty would be unjust, and thus even Adolf Eichmann would have to be a subject of sympathy instead of one of eternal loathing.

Goldberg v. R. Grier Miller & Sons, Inc., 408 Pa. 1, 6-7

Legal insanity is a complete defense for criminal acts committed during such period of insanity. Code Ann. §§ 26-702, 26-703. However, psychiatrists and lawyers disagree as to the correct basis for criminal responsibility. Lawyers assert that an individual has the option to make a choice to obey the law or to disobey the law, that is -- he has a "free will." Psychiatrists advance the theory of pre-determined choice of the individual -- called "determinism." Guttmacher & Weihofen, Psychiatry and the Law 402; 45 ALR2d 1447, § 2 (a). From this basic disagreement, we advance to the critical discord in the choice of words when formulating a criminal responsibility (insanity) test. Psychiatrists properly complain that the words chosen by lawyers and legislatures for insanity statutes have no basis in [*202] psychiatric theory or fact. Thus, they argue that "[t]he psychiatrist's job is to match the defendant's mental state to the formula and to report his opinion to the jury . . ." Davison, Forensic Psychiatry 3. In other words, the psychiatrist determines the question of a defendant's sanity using psychiatric criteria and then translates it into whatever legal language is required by statute. Dr. Zilboorg, a noted forensic psychiatrist is quoted as saying: "To force a psychiatrist to talk in terms of the ability to distinguish between right and wrong and of legal responsibility is -- let us admit it openly and frankly -- to force him to violate his Hippocratic Oath . . . to force him to perjure himself for the sake of justice." Guttmacher & Weihofen, Psychiatry and the Law 406.

Shirley v. State, 149 Ga. App. 194, 201-202

The criminal law exists for the protection of society. Without undue harm to the interests of the society it protects, it can exclude from its moral judgments those whose powers of intellect or will are so far impaired that they have no substantial control of their conduct. It can afford, too, elimination of the last vestiges of the notion of punishment for [**26] punishment's sake and a further implementation of the principles of rehabilitation, deterrence and, whereever necessary, the ultimate isolation from society of those individuals who have no capacity for the adjustments necessary to conform their conduct as active members of a free society to the requirements of the law. The law may not serve its purpose, however, should it embrace the doctrines of determinism. Should the law extend its rule of immunity from its sanctions to all those persons for whose deviant conduct there may be some psychiatric explanation, the processes of the law would break down and society would be forced to find other substitutes for its protection. The law must proceed upon the assumption that man, generally, has a qualified freedom of will, and that any individual who has a substantial capacity for choice should be subject to its sanctions. At least, we must proceed upon that assumption until there have been devised more symmetrical solutions to the many faceted problems of society's treatment of persons charged with commission of crimes.

United States v. Chandler, 393 F.2d 920, 929

 

[steve_bank]

Bsilv

As to the impossible becoming possible over generations you are preaching to the choir, I was an engineer.

You are using an old argument on the forum. And I believe a false equivalence. Determinism on a cosmic scale is nit addressable by science.

Some concepts are impossible. Since the 1980s working fusion reactors have been 20 years away.

You may be aware of the successes like QM and relativity, but there is a long harlotry of failures as well.

Over history there were attempts to build forms of a perpetual motion machine through the 19th century. That it is not possible is now part of fundamental theory.

You can speculate on determinism and think as if it were true, but there is no way to test it. That leaves it in philosophy not science.

Same with a belief in Jesus. You can think as if he is real but there is no way to prove it.

A belief in determinism or Jesus can affect how you make a personal choice. As can any philosophical or religious belief.

My imaginary cat Arnold often influences my choices ....

 

[BSilvEsq]

Bsilv

As to the impossible becoming possible over generations you are preaching to the choir, I was an engineer.

. . . Determinism on a cosmic scale is nit addressable by science.

. . .

You can speculate on determinism and think as if it were true, but there is no way to test it. That leaves it in philosophy not science.

Same with a belief in Jesus. You can think as if he is real but there is no way to prove it.

A belief in determinism or Jesus can affect how you make a personal choice. As can any philosophical or religious belief.

My imaginary cat Arnold often influences my choices ....

Steve, as I have said to some others, we are in violent agreement. I agree with the salient points of what you have just written, and I never suggested, or intended to suggest, otherwise in any of my many posts. I don't, however, know about Arnold's powers, but I am willing to take your word on that. I also wonder if your imaginary cat is alive or dead.

 

[pood]

Of course there is only one future (putting aside, as mentioned earlier, stuff like the quantum multiverse, to which we have no access anyway).

And?

How does that invalidate free will?

It really doesn't.

Almost everyone agrees that there is only one past. But very few people are of the opinion that this implies that our freedom didn't and couldn't exist in the past.

I chose to have coffee rather than tea yesterday. That's an immutable and unchangeable fact; It will never be true that I chose tea yesterday, and we are all comfortable with the immutability of this history, and most people, including all non-philosophers, are comfortable with the fact that it was a choice.

Put the same exact data into the future, and assume that the future is as immutable as the past, and suddenly a bunch of people lose their minds, and insist that choice cannot possibly be a real thing. Why not? Nothing has changed.

Exactly the point I’ve made on a number of occasions. Excellent post.

 

[bilby]

ETA: For clarity, this is a response to this long post from BSilvEsq, which for brevity I did not quote; the subsequent posts in this thread were made while I was composing the below:

----------------------



I think you missed my point.

I cannot escape blame for past events simply because they are in the past, and thus immutable; So if an event is in the future, I cannot escape responsibility for it even if the future too were immutable.

That is, the mutability of history has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with whether or not people are responsible for their actions. People ARE responsible for their actions, because they had, have. and will have, choices. And that's true even of past choices, which we all agree are fixed and unchangeable.

We cannot have done otherwise, but that in no way implies that we could not have done otherwise.

"If only I hadn't chosen to eat an entire chocolate cake in one sitting" is not a claim that the past is mutable, but a recognition that things could have been otherwise.

It is absurd to suggest that there was no choice in the past; It is equally absurd to suggest that there is no choice in the future, and whether or not determinism is true has EXACTLY no bearing whatsoever on that. It is entirely irrelevant. Free will is compatible with determinism, because the two are unrelated concepts.

 

[Jarhyn]

Meaningless. For instance, what does ''noise overcoming signal'' even mean in relation to compatibilism

Wow, you are tetchy tonight!

Go ahead and study what "noise vs signal" is, with respect to software engineering and semiconductor mechanics, then come back please.

When put in the context of "an object is freely traveling on a trajectory until acted upon by an outside source", it SHOULD be kind of obvious.

 

[Jarhyn]

ETA: For clarity, this is a response to this long post from BSilvEsq, which for brevity I did not quote; the subsequent posts in this thread were made while I was composing the below:

----------------------



I think you missed my point.

I cannot escape blame for past events simply because they are in the past, and thus immutable; So if an event is in the future, I cannot escape responsibility for it even if the future too were immutable.

That is, the mutability of history has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with whether or not people are responsible for their actions. People ARE responsible for their actions, because they had, have. and will have, choices. And that's true even of past choices, which we all agree are fixed and unchangeable.

We cannot have done otherwise, but that in no way implies that we could not have done otherwise.

"If only I hadn't chosen to eat an entire chocolate cake in one sitting" is not a claim that the past is mutable, but a recognition that things could have been otherwise.

It is absurd to suggest that there was no choice in the past; It is equally absurd to suggest that there is no choice in the future, and whether or not determinism is true has EXACTLY no bearing whatsoever on that. It is entirely irrelevant. Free will is compatible with determinism, because the two are unrelated concepts.

I would argue the concepts aren't unrelated. One requires the other. If someone were able to go back and make a different decision in the past, that would muck up responsibility pretty bad. It means that regardless of what you wanted now, someone later could take it away and decide for you otherwise.

 

[pood]

Couldn’t help but notice the irony of this post by Jerry Coyne, about Hitler’s penis.

Recall that this thread began with a claim by a biologist that we are genetically determined.

But in the above post, Coyne approvingly quotes biologists rejecting genetic determinism.

Yet Coyne himself is a hard determinist.

Go figger, I guess.

 

[BSilvEsq]

It is absurd to suggest that there was no choice in the past; It is equally absurd to suggest that there is no choice in the future

Therein lies the issue.

The fact that a proposition flies in the face of your foundational belief does not make it absurd.

I am not the first person to advance the possibility of a form of Determinism that is akin to what Jarhyn calls Radical Fatalism -- a possibility that is neither provable nor falsifiable.

The fact that a belief in a possibility that is neither provable not falsifiable (as a possibility and not necessarily as the reality of the situation, which is both unknown and unknowable) may be a view held by a minority of people, only a handful of people, only one person, or even nobody, does not make it absurd. Otherwise, many religions would be properly branded absurd, and many scientific theories currently held dear by many people would properly have been branded absurd in prior millennia.

Unless absurdity is a subjective condition, the contention that anything unprovable and unfalsifiable is absurd is itself an absurdity. In fact, I would submit that the contention that anything unprovable and unfalsifiable is absurd is an absurdity without regard to whether absurdity is subjective or objective.

 

[pood]

It is absurd to suggest that there was no choice in the past; It is equally absurd to suggest that there is no choice in the future

Therein lies the issue.

The fact that a proposition flies in the face of your foundational belief does not make it absurd.

I imagine BSilv has me on ignore, which is fine by me. But for the record:

bilby is not expressing a “foundational belief,” He is dealing in logic.

The logic, specifically, is modal.

I have repeatedly talked about the structure of this logic wrt past, present and future events and actions.

 

[BSilvEsq]

It is absurd to suggest that there was no choice in the past; It is equally absurd to suggest that there is no choice in the future

Therein lies the issue.

The fact that a proposition flies in the face of your foundational belief does not make it absurd.

I imagine BSilv has me on ignore, which is fine by me. But for the record:

bilby is not expressing a “foundational belief,” He is dealing in logic.

The logic, specifically, is modal.

I have repeatedly talked about the structure of this logic wrt past, present and future events and actions.

I don't have you on ignore.

I simply find it to be a waste of time to engage with someone who repeatedly asserts the same thing, and also tends to be insulting, without attempting to engage and refine the analysis in a mature manner.

One last time, and I truly do welcome a serious response, it is not a logical fallacy -- modal or otherwise -- to assume as a foundational premise that the universe is governed by forces that result in what Jarhyn calls Radical Fatalism. Plainly, if that were true, this post would have been fated to be written at this moment and in this manner long before I was born, and the fact that someone could have such a belief would, itself, be a fated act of the universe, as would everything and anything. Such a proposition, which is not a conclusion of a logical argument, but a foundational assumption, cannot be illogical. Nor can a foundational premise be proved to be factually incorrect according to Godel's incompleteness theorems, among other reasons.

Your repeated reference to a modal fallacy is based on your consistently treating as an argument or conclusion a proposition that has been asserted as a hypothetical foundation premise.

If you are willing to address this point, I would be pleased to engage.

 

[bilby]

it is not a logical fallacy -- modal or otherwise -- to assume as a foundational premise that the universe is governed by forces that result in what Jarhyn calls Radical Fatalism. Plainly, if that were true, this post would have been fated to be written at this moment and in this manner long before I was born, and the fact that someone could have such a belief would, itself, be a fated act of the universe, as would everything and anything. Such a proposition, which is not a conclusion of a logical argument, but a foundational assumption, cannot be illogical.

No, but it can be useless. This is not more useful than solipsism, with which it bears a marked similarity.

The solipsist says "Only I exist, all else is illusion". The radical fatalist says "Only the starting conditions of the universe matter, all else is immutable". The person who is sick of both of their shit says "So fucking what?".

Where does any of this conjecture lead? Nowhere. What evidence could ever, even in principle, support it? None at all.

So why are we interested? Does radical fatalism (or for that matter solipsism) guide our ethics or morals? Does it lead to understanding of anything? Does it provide any kind of basis for any kind of more detailed analysis of anything at all?

How do I know that the universe is radically fatalistic, and not merely a figment of my imagination?

 

[BSilvEsq]

it is not a logical fallacy -- modal or otherwise -- to assume as a foundational premise that the universe is governed by forces that result in what Jarhyn calls Radical Fatalism. Plainly, if that were true, this post would have been fated to be written at this moment and in this manner long before I was born, and the fact that someone could have such a belief would, itself, be a fated act of the universe, as would everything and anything. Such a proposition, which is not a conclusion of a logical argument, but a foundational assumption, cannot be illogical.

No, but it can be useless. This is not more useful than solipsism, with which it bears a marked similarity.

The solipsist says "Only I exist, all else is illusion". The radical fatalist says "Only the starting conditions of the universe matter, all else is immutable". The person who is sick of both of their shit says "So fucking what?".

Where does any of this conjecture lead? Nowhere. What evidence could ever, even in principle, support it? None at all.

So why are we interested? Does radical fatalism (or for that matter solipsism) guide our ethics or morals? Does it lead to understanding of anything? Does it provide any kind of basis for any kind of more detailed analysis of anything at all?

How do I know that the universe is radically fatalistic, and not merely a figment of my imagination?

Solipsism also is possibly correct. The universe could me be, you, or someone else. Or nobody at all.

As I have written to others, if you find a concept to be useless, you need not engage.

Science is, itself, a paradigm that has no more or less claim to reality than does Solipsism, Radical Fatalism, Theism, Atheism. A principle of the paradigm of science is that a proposition that is not falsifiable does not qualify as being scientific. I accept that principle of science and do not claim that the paradigm about which I have written is scientific.

A foundational premise of science is that there is, in fact, an objectively real universe and that the universe and its component parts and mechanisms are observable and testable (at least in theory, if not in fact). That premise is not falsifiable, so science, itself, is not scientific. Legitimate scientists who understand the philosophy of science have no problem acknowledging that. They do not waste time debating the logic or validity of the premise because they understand it to be a foundational premise that is not, itself, subject to logical proof.

I took a course in theology in college. It was taught by a minister. He had an unshakable faith in God. He also freely acknowledged that his faith was a personal matter that could neither be proved or falsified. He had no problem acknowledging that his faith was a paradigm that had no greater or lesser claim to truth than any other paradigm that was impervious to proof or falsification.

You wrote:

Where does any of this conjecture lead? Nowhere.

You also describe the philosophical discussion as

useless.

I disagree.

As Steve Bank wrote in a prior post:

A belief in determinism or Jesus can affect how you make a personal choice. As can any philosophical or religious belief.

If nothing else, there is value in that. Indeed, I submit that is significant value. If you disagree, that is your prerogative, but it does not make the discussion useless or a dead end. The discussion has value in and of itself, and that value is amplified if it affects the way people live their lives. [And, yes, I fully appreciate that Steve used the word "choice" which isa free will concept].

 

[steve_bank]

Bsilv

As to the impossible becoming possible over generations you are preaching to the choir, I was an engineer.

. . . Determinism on a cosmic scale is nit addressable by science.

. . .

You can speculate on determinism and think as if it were true, but there is no way to test it. That leaves it in philosophy not science.

Same with a belief in Jesus. You can think as if he is real but there is no way to prove it.

A belief in determinism or Jesus can affect how you make a personal choice. As can any philosophical or religious belief.

My imaginary cat Arnold often influences my choices ....

Steve, as I have said to some others, we are in violent agreement. I agree with the salient points of what you have just written, and I never suggested, or intended to suggest, otherwise in any of my many posts. I don't, however, know about Arnold's powers, but I am willing to take your word on that. I also wonder if your imaginary cat is alive or dead.

My cat is imaginary, it can be wherever I want.

I don't think we are in agreement at all.

Determinism, Jesus, and Arnold are all beliefs a faith without any material foundations.

You are preaching your belief much as theists do. I am responding as I do with theists.

The Christian belief that a god YAHWEH created the Earth in seven days clashes with my belief that the universe has no beginning and end and no need for a god to create it. My belief clashes with Creationists.

I periodically clash with pood and pood with me.

Claiming you are being insulted is a cheap copout.

I say to you as I do to theists, what is your objective evidence.

You can be honest and say it is my belief and have no way to prove it. No problem with that. If you insist you know it is true then you get the responses you get,

Yiu can up you8r game or step back. The 'choice' is yours. Pun intended.

It is ok to say 'I do not know'. My view as stated regardless of which may be true life goes on, and we ake choices and decisions. Whetherr the choices are predetermined trougout time is not knowable

You are playing a game of pool. You break and the balls scatter around the table,. Are the positions predetermined? If you make a difficult combination shot is it predetermined?

 

[BSilvEsq]

You are preaching your belief much as theists do. I am responding as I do with theists.

You can be honest and say it is my belief and have no way to prove it. No problem with that. If you insist you know it is true then you get the responses you get,

I don't know how many times and how many ways I have to say this -- I am not advocating, much less preaching, that Radical Fatalism is an accurate statement about the operation of the universe. I have even acknowledged that there can be no possible proof of that fact -- just as you say, and I agree, there can be no proof of theism or many other paradigms. I also have expressly stated multiple times that I am inclined to believe in this paradigm, but that I have no proof of truth and do not know it is accurate, and that I respect all other beliefs that are tolerant of other beliefs.

A person can write about a belief without subscribing to it, much less believing it to be true. Many modern scholars have written books about Greek and Roman Mythology. I doubt that they believe in the truth of what we now call myths, but were one time thought to be true by large segments of the population. These scholars can examine the myths in depth, but are not preaching their truth or advocating that others believe them. Jewish scholars can study and write about Islam, and vice versa. Atheists also can write about theist religions. A theist can write about atheism. A person does not need to believe in the truth of a subject to be able to study it, write about it, and even defend it against criticisms if the defense is apt. Indeed, a person who lacks a belief or faith in a paradigm may have a better understanding of the paradigm than does someone who does have such faith. By the same token a person who has faith in a certain belief can critically evaluate it and acknowledge its flaws or at least the fact that the belief is not provable. I don't understand why you and others seem to have a difficulty understanding that I am examining a paradigm that you, yourself, acknowledge to be unprovable and unfalsifiable, and as to which I make no claim of truth.

The only thing I object to is others who assert, equally without proof, that scientific theories of how the universe operates have a claim to truth when science, itself, is a paradigm that rests on an underpinning of nonprovable foundational premises.

If you believe science has a claim to truth, so be it. I am incapable of accepting that claim as anything more than a religious belief. I do live my life "as if" science has a claim to truth (or, at least, sufficient truth to get me through the day), but I do not intellectually accept it as such.

And, it is an insult for anyone to brand any unfalsifiable belief to be absurd or illogical -- especially when the same people rest their laurels on an unfalsifiable belief to justify that assertion. It also is an insult to suggest, without expressly saying so, that I am being dishonest, when I could not be more open about the non-provable nature of my views.

 

[steve_bank]

Bsilv

You said you are Buddhist, believe in determinism, and inferred that Buddhist scholars link Buddhism to determinism, which I seriously doubt.

You seed science has made that was once i impossible possible seeming to fer determinism could be proven true some day.

I am a bit slow witted and big words tend to confuse me, can you summarize what you believe and what you are trying show in straightforward paragraph?

If you are feeling distressed and insulted if I were Buddhist I'd say your discomfort is not caused by others on the thread. It is caused by your attachment to the your illusion of determinism.

If you would humor me and just answer the question yes or no. You break in a game of pool. Are the positions of the balls after the break predetermined?

 

[Jarhyn]

Solipsism also is possibly correct

It's observably not, under the logic of Occam's razor.

My expectation is that it's technically possible to rip someone open and describe to them the things they are feeling as their awareness of having felt that way forms, or even before, as if Deja Vu.

If this is the case, or if we can even say after the fact, we will show that our consciousness is observably the product of material interactions and that the simpler explanation of this reflection and description of the conscious experience in this manner, through side channel read rather than internal read, is the explanation that invalidates solipsism.

If you can point to something in your own head and say "this part doing this is the phenomena of me feeling this way about that thing", you've placed yourself inside the universe entirely.

You could keep doubting, or say "then what is in that brain is the whole universe and we are all parallel universes" or some pithy I'm-14-and-this-is-deep kinda shit, but frankly at that point you're really reaching.

"Why don't I experience other people's thoughts" is as simple as "because the thing expressing this question isn't connected so as to have those phenomena produce signal there."

Honestly I find it far more useful to ask the question "what would disprove solipsism for me" and go about attempting to find that.

For me, sufficient external description of the human experience through reading the neural states is something that does it, though long before AI was enabling it in realtime we expected this would be possible.

 

[Michael S. Pearl]

the descriptor free is appropriately applied whenever a person is able to do as he or she wishes without having any sense of being compelled or coerced to so act.

I don't believe you are suggesting this, but to be clear, does that mean that a person who is hypnotized is acting of their own free will when they do what they have been directed to do, so long as they do not understand themselves to be operating under the compulsion of a post hypnotic suggestion and believe they are acting freely?

Same question about a person who has a mental defect that creates a compulsion to act in a given manner without any self-awareness that they are compelled to do the act they feels as if they are doing freely?

Now, I know this is an extreme hypothetical, but would humans have Free Will if everything they do is, in fact, compelled by forces extrinsic to the human actors, but which forces are unknown to the actors who feel and/or believe they are acting of their own Free Will?

Unlike a person who has a sense of being compelled or coerced to act under duress (such as, for example, when ordered to do something at gun point), a person in the hypothetical situations posited above acts without having any sense of being compelled or coerced to act, but they are, in fact, acting under such a compulsion that is unknown to them and even unfelt by them. How does that square with the statement "that the descriptor free is appropriately applied whenever a person is able to do as he or she wishes without having any sense of being compelled or coerced to so act"?

This is a genuine question, and not an argument. I am trying to understand the ramifications of the statement that "the descriptor free is appropriately applied whenever a person is able to do as he or she wishes without having any sense of being compelled or coerced to so act."

That descriptor was, of course, a general and introductory, non-exhaustive remark about the experience - and, therefore, the characteristics - of what it is to be or feel free. The imagined hypnosis situation and (rather than "mental defect", let us just refer to) the dementia situation are the sorts of sample issues that can be used in the process of identifying and expressing the limits - the necessary conditions - with regards to the concept of being in any way free. As you can tell from the previous sentence, the term free does not necessarily mean without limits. All occurrences occur within contexts; all descriptions of occurrences refer to and occur within the concept of contexts; contexts clearly refers to states limited in some way; free is applicable within contexts; therefore, the fact of there being limits is not sufficient to preclude being free or use of the descriptor free.

Then again, someone might insist that free means absolutely without limits (or some such thing) and then correctly proclaim that there is no such free thing. The compatibilist correctly will deny that it is necessary to use the word free in that radical fashion, and the way forward is to be done without the term free and, instead, proceeding in terms of the characteristics which are represented by free. For instance, the compatibilist could note ever having had the sense, the experience of acting without being compelled, coerced, or controlled. If the incompatibilist has had a similar experience, then the incompatibilist understands (something about) what the compatibilist has in mind when using the word free.

Ah, but what if the subjective sense of ever acting without being compelled, coerced, or controlled is as erroneous as the hypnotized person and the dementia patient also thinking of themselves as not hypnotized and not affected by dementia?

The incompatibilist can/will assert that the compatibilist sense of free is actually an illusion, and the compatibilist can/will deny the illusion on at least two fronts. First, given that the experience of acting without being compelled, coerced, or controlled is (to put the matter in a simplified form for the sake of this discussion) reportedly eventually recognized as being had by all persons, then the illusion claim is akin to an assertion that all persons live within a persistently irremediable mass delusion. Second, such an unremitting and all-encompassing illusion/delusion means that absolutely all experience is illusion/delusion.

Well, here's the thing about this determinist internecine disagreement. If, as I have suggested, it is correct that all forms of determinism are variations on eternalism, then there is no such thing as control or compulsion with regards to what occurs. And then, after chuckling at the absurdity or uselessness (uselessness itself being a topic which would be relevant in later stages of such a discussion as this) of thinking that human being is a matter of thorough, unremitting illusion, the compatibilist can/will point out that, since the eternalism which accompanies all forms of determinism precludes the actuality of any and all compelling, coercing, and controlling, the notion of free (at least in the case of free-from) is compatible with the determinism notion - even if all being is illusory.

And, yet, humans also perceive occasions which seem far more rightly described in terms of compulsion, coercion, and the like, rather than in terms of illusion. Is the human perspective to be ignored? Or, is the human perspective to be investigated? If it is to be investigated, the experience of subjectivity must be taken into account. This presents a huge problem, because the personal subjective analysis tends to be quite cursory. And this is where matters such as the previously mentioned apparent shortcoming of thinking about free only as free-from comes into play.

The compatibilist free-from will sometimes be associated with free-to by a sort of elision of thought. Free-from would be necessary for free-to, but that does not mean that free-from is necessarily free-to, and maybe it is the idea/experience of free-to more than the free-from notion which is the source of the breach between the incompatibilist determinists and the compatibilist determinists.

 

[BSilvEsq]

Honestly I find it far more useful to ask the question "what would disprove solipsism for me" and go about attempting to find that.

Unless and until I learn otherwise, I understand solipsism to be non-falsifiable, which is why it is rejected by science, as a tenet of science is that a hypothesis will not be accepted as being even potentially scientific if it is incapable of falsification.

Thus, if I use science as the guidepost for accepting or rejecting philosophical hypotheses, I would reject solipsism.

As a practical matter, I do rely upon science for my daily life, and do not believe it is practical to subscribe to solipsism for paying the bills, putting food on the table, or getting me through the day safely.

Notwithstanding the foregoing, I do not rule out solipsism as a possibility because I know of no way to disprove it without incorporating a presumed rejection of solipsism in the analysis.

 

[pood]

It is absurd to suggest that there was no choice in the past; It is equally absurd to suggest that there is no choice in the future

Therein lies the issue.

The fact that a proposition flies in the face of your foundational belief does not make it absurd.

I imagine BSilv has me on ignore, which is fine by me. But for the record:

bilby is not expressing a “foundational belief,” He is dealing in logic.

The logic, specifically, is modal.

I have repeatedly talked about the structure of this logic wrt past, present and future events and actions.

I don't have you on ignore.

I simply find it to be a waste of time to engage with someone who repeatedly asserts the same thing, and also tends to be insulting, without attempting to engage and refine the analysis in a mature manner.

One last time, and I truly do welcome a serious response, it is not a logical fallacy -- modal or otherwise -- to assume as a foundational premise that the universe is governed by forces that result in what Jarhyn calls Radical Fatalism. Plainly, if that were true, this post would have been fated to be written at this moment and in this manner long before I was born, and the fact that someone could have such a belief would, itself, be a fated act of the universe, as would everything and anything. Such a proposition, which is not a conclusion of a logical argument, but a foundational assumption, cannot be illogical. Nor can a foundational premise be proved to be factually incorrect according to Godel's incompleteness theorems, among other reasons.

Your repeated reference to a modal fallacy is based on your consistently treating as an argument or conclusion a proposition that has been asserted as a hypothetical foundation premise.

If you are willing to address this point, I would be pleased to engage.

I can assert as a hypothetical foundational premise that the Flying Spaghetti Monster created the universe and after we die we get beer volcanoes. And?

I am simply pointing out that it is indeed a modal fallacy to confuse “will” with “must.”

Must means necessary. Is it necessary that I choose Coke over Pepsi, given antecedent circumstances? If so, that puts “choosing Coke” and “triangles have three sides” on the same modal status, which I submit is ludicrous.

To labor the point: There is only one history. If you could rise godlike above the universe and look down upon the whole history of it from start to finish, why would you think it had to be that way? Certainly it had to be some way, but why would you think it had to be that way?

Reiterating: What will be, must be, is a modal fallacy; what will be, will be, is a tautology.

So I ask again: what are we talking about?