DRFseven

And, in practice, intuitive opinions often turn out to be wrong.

joedad

Well, FWIW, I certainly think that a religious predisposition is hardwired in more people than not. Most people don't consciously choose to be religious. So there must certainly be a physical basis for the preponderance of religion over human history, and I most certainly think this is analogous to a child still thinkng that Santa is real. I only wish I could identify the physical mechanism(s), and apply some science toward illuminating that understanding. The cultural/societal mechanisms seem easy enough to identify, once again, using the Santa example.

Maybe there is a real difference in the brain structure/workings of persons who think gods are real and people who think not. Maybe there is a way to examine the brain of a child to see how it has changed, if at all, when non belief in Santa has become strong.

joe

[ August 11, 2002: Message edited by: joedad ]</p>

DRFseven

I think so, too, but I think it's more like a predisposition toward security-seeking behaviors, fear of authority, etc., that happens to result in religious affiliation due to the fact that religion is handy (it's already here, complete with anxiety-reducing rituals, etc.).

A deep fascination for me, too. I think the code will be cracked eventually; it's one of those cases in which interpretations of any studies on that subject are not made public, because it would step on too many toes and cause too much ruckus.

I think there are too many dissimilarities in the dynamics of the Santa Claus model as opposed to the god model. A big factor is that trusted others, such as parents, disclose that THEY are, in fact, Santa, at the same time that many of the child's peers are reporting that they no longer believe and that believing in Santa is babyish (and being thought babyish is to be avoided at all costs). Many children will secretly still believe for a year or two after publicly announcing their disbelief; sometimes they'll slip up and say something that illustrates their belief and then become embarrassed. Religious believers never encounter the majority of society renouncing their beliefs; instead they are positively reinforced for believing. At a time when they might begin to question (and I think most do periodically question, or at least question their right to question), those beliefs are bolstered by society in general, and, most often, by their significant people. I remember the near-universal belief in the veracity of religious feelings being a hook for me. I kept coming back to that and thinking, "How can it be that all these people believe in a lie; wouldn't a society filled with delusional people fall apart?" I came to the conclusion that, no, it wouldn't necessarily fall apart if what caused that delusion was a part of some traits that tend to support stability in a society.

[ August 11, 2002: Message edited by: DRFseven ]</p>

ManM

DRFseven,
You are proposing a difference between the mind and the mind's experience of itself. We feel like we have a soul, but science tells us we are a machine. Therefore the soul must be subject to the machine? I'm not sure your conclusion follows. The mechanism informs the soul, but the soul also can change the mechanism (placebo effect?). In reality, the soul and the mechanism are one and the same. We are only making a semantic differentiation, and I think that is the point of our confusion. I'm not willing to grant a soul, conscious *I*, or any other such ghost really exists separate to the machine. Sure we can talk about a soul, but I do not want to cross the boundary into a real spirit/body dualism. Your conscious *I* is not informed by the state of your body. Rather it is the manifestation of the state of your body. Likewise it could be said that the state of your body is a manifestation of your soul. The glass is half empty or half full. There is no real difference.

Which could be internally-generated... Which we would experience as thinking... As you said yourself, "Absolutely, ManM. Much of the stimuli is from thoughts (memory)., both conscious and subconscious."

Or if your body-state directs itself. I don't think you disagree with the fact that our body-state can direct itself. It seems that the problem is your insistence that our soul is not our body-state. Since we are really our soul, we are then subject to the body-state. Let me just invite you to consider that there really is no difference between soul and body. There is a one to one relationship between the two, and so it isn't really wrong to say that the soul is subject to the body (or visa versa). But that is a misleading statement when you are talking about a real difference between soul and body as if they were two separate entities.

I am well aware that we assign primary and secondary qualities to things. I asked how we justify doing so given that we perceive primary and secondary qualities with the exact same process. You answered by telling me that we assign primary and secondary qualities to things... But anyway, I'm not sure that tangent is relevant to the elves.

All I'm saying that it is possible for you to change reasoning schemes by the power of your own thought.

I'm sorry, but I don't see the conflict here. The common meaning of freedom I'm familiar with is simply self-determination. The neural mechanism can reconfigure itself. As I mentioned before, freedom from causality is opposed to the freedom of self-determination. Both of us agree that we are not free from causality. I am only defending self-determination.

I said our primary beliefs were assumptions that could be changed. If they were free of causality they could not be changed. I think those elves might be working some mischief on you.

Remove the 'without cause' part, and you got it right. We can pick something to believe and that belief can provide the reasoning for other opinions. We can (and do) order and interpret our experience. This isn't free of causality, but rather is stimulated by it.

I think you are driving things to an extreme here. There are several options on the table: freedom from causality, self-determination, and external-determination. One extreme removes experience from the equation; the other removes our humanity. In attacking freedom from causality I think you have gone too far in the other direction. I'm supporting the middle ground, where the effects of the external environment and internal processes are mixed. They both have an influence. You could not believe in elves if you had no knowledge of elves. But once the experience is there, nothing stands in the way for you to change your belief. You might not change your belief, but that does not mean you are physically and mentally unable to change.

excreationist,
We are destined to do what we do. But we don't observe ourselves walking the path (as DRF7 claims); we walk the path. That puts part of our destiny in our own hands. As I said before, we are not free of our self-determination. That being said, I hesitate to agree that our choices were inevitable given the initial conditions for the reasons which Jobar pointed out. Given a few physics experiments, determinism isn't the fad among scientists anymore. But all in all, I think we are in somewhat of an agreement on this matter.

DRFseven

Yes, I said it and meant it, but, as I'm sure you know, your thoughts are preverbal articulations of strung-together memories of experiences. So internal stimuli is "stored" external experience. We learn facts through the process of living and recall them when we think. In addtion, during the process of thinking, external information is constantly entering which impacts the processing function.

No, I don't disagree, as long as we stipulate that the body-state reflects the impact of a sum total of experience, including biological as well as external. The body-state is in some condition at any given moment and that condition is a culmination of antecedents.

Well, it's certainly not synonymous with body-state because the body-state is physical. The conscous *I* (or the soul), although a product of the body-state, is not aware of the body-state. I think it's more that consciousness is something the body DOES rather than it being something the body IS.

But only if my own thoughts were set up by my life for me to change reasoning schemes. There has to be a way for me to think that changing reasoning schemes would be appropriate and for me to desire to do so. This means that physiologically, there has to be something for my body-state to react to or else a change won't occur. So I don't think elves exist because magical beings that can materialize out of thin air and do tricks aren't in my worldview, so when a child asks if elves are real, that buzzer goes off (I feel it) and I say no. Then, on the way home from the store, an elf suddenly appears in the seat next to me, munching Lucky Charms and grinning. After a few moments of stunned silence and some questions, my worldview shifts; now elves are a part of it! This is an example of how someone "chooses" to believe something is true.

But there's really no middle ground. Ability to change depends entirely on experience, just as the thoughts about what is to be changed do. Yes, I can say *I* choose something, as long as it's understood that I choose as a reflection of all my previous events.

excreationist

ManM:

We are destined to do what we do. But we don't observe ourselves walking the path (as DRF7 claims); we walk the path. That puts part of our destiny in our own hands.

Though I believe that the activity of our brain is purely a result of physical matter going about its activities... (i.e. no ghosts, etc, involved)
I think the conscious part of us just uses information to weigh up our decisions and to set other processes in motion according to hard-wired rules... it is like a central executive and it relies on advisors to do all the research for it including getting them to work out how desirable (+ or -) the options or stimuli are.

As I said before, we are not free of our self-determination.

What do you mean? Do you mean that we truly have free will?

That being said, I hesitate to agree that our choices were inevitable given the initial conditions for the reasons which Jobar pointed out.

Yeah... I guess I was assuming deterministic-type physics there... but I think physics is still fairly deterministic on a larger scale (e.g. on the scale of neurons). I don't know much about quantum physics but I think it might partly work a bit like a dice being thrown or a coin being tossed... on a small scale, it is highly unpredictable, but on a large scale, a pattern tends to emerge. e.g. about 50% of coin tosses come up heads - although it is (theoretically) *possible* that you could toss a coin a million times and always come up tails. It would be a 1 in 2^1,000,000 chance though. In a Newtonian universe, coin-tossing would actually be deterministic, but appear to us to be random... and that's what the field of "chaos theory" is about I think... somewhat complex systems that appear unpredictable or random to humans although they are based on deterministic maths...

Jobar's post, from page 4(?):
Perhaps quantum entanglement, where particles are "entangled" and affect each other at great distances affects the "random" behaviour of particles... but I don't really mind if ultimately physics uses lots of coin tosses... in fact it probably makes me feel more in charge of my future if it is semi-random rather than totally inevitable... the little random quantum noise(?) would create a "butterfly effect" where the flapping wings of a butterfly can start a tornado on the other side of the world due its effect on the weather system. Most noise wouldn't result in a very dramatic change though... BTW, Run Lola Run is kind of about the same idea where little changes in timing magnify over time...

Given a few physics experiments, determinism isn't the fad among scientists anymore.

The brain would still be fairly deterministic on a minute-to-minute neuronal level... quantum physics-type random would affect the future external environment but it wouldn't affect our neurons in big ways very often... anyway my point was that I think our consciousness, memories and intelligence rely solely on physical processes and systems. You were saying that this means that it was therefore deterministic. I was just assuming you were right. If we aren't deterministic then we are partly at the mercy of random quantum fluctuations.

But all in all, I think we are in somewhat of an agreement on this matter.

I thought you believed in true free-will and spiritual things like ghosts/God, etc... also, in the central executive idea, "we" do practically nothing except oversee everything so that we can make very straightforward decisions that have been virtually spelt out to us by our advisors. "We" would oversee our working memory, which is a pool of short-term memory that is all together so that different things can be associated with each other... e.g. the sound "red" can be associated with the colour sensation... the written word "red" can be associated with both the sound "red" and the colour sensation, etc.

DRFseven

In a literal sense, I say we DO observe ourselves ("Here I am, walking down this path; my feet look cute in these green shoes."). While walking the "path of life", we are unaware of the complex communication going on between our bodies and our environment that results in "us" being ourselves. So, yes, WE walk the path, having been transmogrified every step of the way by what we've just experienced; a continuous new "us" each moment.

I read a book about the nature of time once and I remember a vivid description of the author's suggestion on how to picture the human in time. In this model, the human is like an extrusion of Play-Doh out of a cosmic Fun Factory, almost invisible on one end, getting gradually bigger as the individual reaches adult-size, then changing shape and abruptly getting small and dissolving into invisibility again. At any "now" point, a cross-section would reveal the human "now." This model doesn't depict attitudes and behavior, but, if you could see them, they'd be in the cross-sections of "now", too. If the attitudes had a shape, there would be some coherence to it, but it still would be constantly shape-shifting; it would never remain motionless.

DRFseven

and...

I really like the way you've explained it. My interest in the subject is mainly in psychological determinism (the mechanism of choice), though, by this I don't mean to imply that the subject of scientific determinism is uninteresting. It is impossible to speak of attitudes, beliefs, choices, divorced from the context of experience. We've known this through behavioral evidence for a long time; now we're beginning to see how the physical mechanism of choice is accomplished.

Hey; I recommended that movie to you, once; glad you saw it. I enjoyed that film; it was slightly mesmerizing to me.

ManM

I am going to put this as clearly and concisely as I can in hopes of resolving this debate.

1) We are determined by experience.
2) We generate some of that experience ourselves.
3) It follows that we play a part in our determination.

We all agree on #1. Biology and neural network theory supports #2. That leaves us with #3.

DRFseven, you obviously don't like #2. The mechanism may generate its own experience, but we are not the mechanism? We are a soul that is a slave to the mechanism? When someone believes in the primacy of the soul they are immediately challenged by the fact that mind altering drugs work. Likewise, you are challenged by the fact that faith works (talking cure, placebo effect). Both of these interactions are explained quite well by the idea that our body and soul are not two different things. You are going to have a hard time convincing me that #2 is wrong.

Excreationist, I don't think you have written anything which contradicts #1 or #2, and so you might have to acknowledge #3. Now we may disagree about God and other things, but I think we have the common ground to resolve this debate. I do not believe that we have a supernatural component.

If we conclude that #3 is the case, the elves lose their punch.

DRFseven

You are playing around with ways to make it sound as if we can consciously and freely choose between alternatives. Do "we" beat or do our hearts beat? You could say we beat and be technically correct because our hearts are a part of us.So is our nervous system, so, of course, when it arrives at a course of action, we choose that action, meaning someone else did not. But none of this implies freedom; quite the opposite, it means that there is a mechanism by which determination between alternatives is made, and we are bound to that mechanism.

Do you think that our attitudes from which our choices are determined are reached through experience? Is motivation achieved through experience as well?

[ August 14, 2002: Message edited by: DRFseven ]</p>