Paul Dernavich

Matt:

I have not read your book; perhaps I will because this issue is fascinating and essential. Your short piece seems to be clear and logical - until you reveal your belief in “complete” determinism, which means that you don’t believe in clear or logical thoughts, only thoughts that you either have or don’t have. And all of the other good ideas in your conclusions - the potential for human dignity, the power of rational thinking, an admiration for the structure of the universe - are similarly negated, because they all require more of a degree of free and independent thought than determinism can possibly allow. I’d like you to be able to reconcile these two thoughts - reason and determinism - or at least forward this email to the universe who made you think them, and maybe we can address these contradictions.

Paul Dernavich

Matt Young

Free will is a good approximation to human thought. It is the only approximation we have, so we have to use it. Compartmentalization, if you like, but not unhealthy. Dignity, emotions, indeed, consciousness are probably only epiphenomena, but that does not make them less real. If I think I feel pain, then I feel pain; if I think I'm in love, then I'm in love. Likewise, thoughts can be logical or illogical, clear or unclear, whether or not they are at some deep level determined.

The Skeptical Inquirer piece did not allow enough space for my argument in favor of determinism, which details a thought experiment involving a quantum-mechanical particle in a bowl. You may find the argument in my book. I have discussed it with a number of physicists, and they agree it is plausible, even convincing. I do not deny quantum mechanics, but rather suggest that there may be a theory that underlies quantum mechanics and is deterministic. If you accept my argument and still argue in favor of free will, then you may have to argue that something nonphysical underlies our minds.

The gently mocking tone of your letter suggests that you may reject my last step, at least in part, because you don't like the consequences -- what is sometimes called the genetic fallacy. I don't like a lot of the conclusions I drew; I'd much prefer blissful immortality at the right hand of God. But there is no evidence for either God or immortality, so I reject those concepts. As for free will, all I can do is behave as if I had it.

My wife asks me, if I do not believe in free will, then why do I hate shmucks? I answer, I can't help it. Why do I believe in determinism? Can't help it.

Paul Dernavich

Matt:

If I gently mock, it is due to the way you reached your conclusions and not necessarily the conclusions themselves. I am curious about the experiment from your book (maybe when my Christmas shopping is all done, of course). But your intent seems to be to try and frame an airtight argument based only on observable evidence, and I think you have exceeded the limits of what that scope would allow. When you say to me that we must act as if we have free will even though it is an illusion, and you write that there is no justification for unethical behaviors, you are arguing against your basic assumptions. You must agree that if the universe is strictly deterministic than there is plainly no such thing as an unethical behavior. There are only, as you say, things our minds are programmed to think or not think. To act as if we had true free will, and to hold anyone accountable to any sort of ethical standard, is acting in ways directly counter to your evidence, and I thought that was something that only mystics and mythologists did.

-Paul

Matt Young

Pain may be an epiphenomenon, but it is nonetheless real to the person in pain. To inflict pain without reason is unethical.

I have argued that free will is an approximation, not exactly an illusion. Maybe we can try this from the point of view of self-organizing systems (I don't know; I'm improvising!). At any rate, you may think of reality as consisting of layers more or less isolated from each other: atoms; molecules; condensed matter (solids, liquids); and so on. One or two water molecules are not wet. 100 water molecules may not be wet. But a glassful of water molecules is wet (at room temperature). Wetness is therefore not a property of water molecules or even of a few water molecules, but rather of a comparatively large ensemble of water molecules. That is, at the molecular level, water is not wet; it is wet only in the condensed-matter approximation. Wetness is an emergent property of water, and it appears only in the condensed-matter approximation. It does not exist apart from the water.

Likewise, maybe ethics is an emergent property that exists only at the societal level in the free will approximation. It certainly does not exist in a vacuum, and there is certainly no universal code, in case that's what you thought I meant.

Specifically, an isolated person may not (perhaps cannot) display the property of ethics. Ethics is an emergent property that appears only in an ensemble of people - that is, it appears only at the societal approximation. I call it an approximation because it is an approximation to describe an ensemble of people as a society, just as it is an approximation to describe an ensemble of water molecules as a liquid.

More to the point, a society cannot allow its members to be constantly at each other's throats, whether or not they have free will. Therefore society drafts a code of rules we call ethics. The code has the practical effect of keeping people from inflicting harm on each other. You may find a discussion of the biological origin of ethics in my book, No Sense of Obligation: Science and Religion in an Impersonal Universe, which is available from the Infidels' bookstore.

Finally, a disclaimer: I do not think I have made an airtight argument; I do not think airtight arguments exist. I claim only that we should not believe in anything without evidence, and that the evidence for a creator does not exist. Along the way, I speculated that what we call free will is an approximation. If it is not, then where is the mechanism that gives us free will? Are we not biological systems, and are not biological systems governed by physics and chemistry? It is hard to see how we can have free will if the laws that govern us are deterministic. Quantum mechanics does not help us get out of this jam, by the way, if only because the wavefunction of a complex system evolves with minimal uncertainty. I discuss this issue, too, in my book.

Paul Dernavich

I understand all of that. Go back, though, and look at what you wrote - that we are deterministic biological systems comprised of layers of matter - and then look at your first statement, that causing pain without reason is unethical. I would conclude that what you mean by "unethical" is that it is another epiphenomenon: you personally don't react well to it. To suggest that it means anything else (such as a deviation from a moral standard) is to move biological systems from being descriptive (what humans do) to being prescriptive (what humans should do), and that is what is beyond the bounds of your discipline. Observing how measurable quantities react to physical processes cannot tell me whether I should turn the other cheek or not. Physics must appropriate metaphysics in order to make ethical claims.

Matt Young

I'm sorry, but you are misconstruing what I wrote. Physics does not make ethical claims. Neither does science. But science can look for the origin of ethics, and it can study ethics. I have suggested that it is an emergent property, like wetness, and also (in my book) that it has its origin in animal behavior. Whatever ethics is, society has defined certain ethical principles. One of the foremost of these, it seems to me, is that we should not unnecessarily inflict pain on each other. That is an ethical statement, not a scientific claim. I did not mean to imply that it was a scientific claim.

Paul Dernavich

Matt:

I was not trying to say that you were making an ethical claim by way of physics. I was trying to say that it is a logical inconsistency to derive any sort of moral "ought" from the disciplines of the physical sciences (not to mention being downright unconvincing in practice; if there is one thing I do know from the animal kingdom, it is that it is definitely all right to harm or kill another being from the same or different species). That is what I find so curious about naturalism. And yet, the naturalist biologists and physicists do it all of the time: uphold or assert at least some universal moral principles. It betrays a fundamental confusion. That was the point of my essay (Darwinian Dissonance) last year on this site.

excreationist

Just to but in....
What about this: in a society's code of ethics, certain behaviours that affect the society's well-being are discouraged or encouraged. This means that the society dishes out pleasure or pain on its members in an attempt to keep them in line.
Society and many of the members might desire for people to stick to their code of ethics, but it doesn't mean that people *ought* to do this (implying right and wrong from an objective perspective).

Steven Carr

Why do you want Matt to forward his thoughts to the universe who made him think them? Are you under the impression that Matt is not part of this universe?

I determine my thoughts. My thoughts are determined by the universe. These are contradictory statements if , and only if, I am not part of the universe.

Clearly, Paul's post was not determined by rational thought :-)

Steven Carr

Physics must indeed do that, and can make no ethical claims.

How do you get from the fact that somebody uttered the words 'Turn the other cheek' to the 'we ought to turn the other cheek'?

'Because God said so' is not a way of getting from the fact 'God said so' to an ought. That would be circular reasoning.

I should also point out that you have no evidence that non-material things are not subject to the law of cause and effect. If you believe that non-material things like 'love', 'hate', 'evil' etc exist and cause things to happen, then you are straight back to determinism. Unless you believe that your actions are not determined by your morals, desires, ethics, loves, sense of duty etc