Gurdur

In the absence of conclusive or even quasi-semi-conclusive proof, your belief remains nothing more than that.
And it is partly about this belief of yours, too.
*your*

You're = you are.
You are dishonestly misrepresenting what I wrote yet again.
Try again ?
And my critique was based on the factual statement that determinism for humans has not been proven either.
See above.
Again you misrepresent me.
I called your belief in 100% determinism of the human brain simplistic, not your entire belief, which may consist of components as yet unknown to me.

Oh, BTW, ever heard of the constant random firings of neurons ?
I doubt it.
Name the evidence !
BTW, I was professionally trained in a neuroscience - no need to worry about overloading my poor somewhat-indeterminist brain.

Gurdur

Obvious to you.
This does not constitute a proof.
Or you can consciously in many cases change the mental perspective making you sad - without any need for external chemicals or stimuli.
Or you can consciously in many cases change the mental perspective and make yourself less happy - without any need for external chemicals or stimuli.
We can change our mental perspectives without chemicals too.

Liquidrage

In the absence of conclusive or even quasi-semi-conclusive proof, your belief remains nothing more than that.
And it is partly about this belief of yours, too.

I never denied it wasn't a belief. Hence the bold font.

You are dishonestly misrepresenting what I wrote yet again.
Try again ?

No, I'm not.
Your quote:
Determinist appeals to neurology do not succeed, since evidence, for example, showing initiation of motor acts before awareness of the putative volitional nature of those motor acts only pushes back the question of free will into the so-called unconscious part of the mind, i.e. the non-ego part of consciousness, and moreover does not disprove or obviate whatsoever the fact of being able to change over time behavioural patterns (often without a change in external enviroment).

You didn't understand my point so I will say it another way. Determinism, Egyptology, fly-fishing, et al, have nothing to disprove in regard to free-will. Because free-will has never been proven to exist. "Free-will" is a concept.

Futhermore, if I wasn't clear then I am sorry. Or if I did mispresent your point then I am sorry. However, do not call my replies dishonest. For they are anything but.

Though I do not believe I did misrepresent your point.

*your*
You're = you are.


So relevant.

And my critique was based on the factual statement that determinism for humans has not been proven either

No kidding.

See above.

No kidding again.

Again you misrepresent me.
I called your belief in 100% determinism of the human brain simplistic, not your entire belief, which may consist of components as yet unknown to me.

Semantically you are correct.
What can I say. In context it's fine but if you want to bitch about it then my bad.

Oh, BTW, ever heard of the constant random firings of neurons?

Why is that relevant?
Randomness <> free-will.

And at what level are the random effects observed?
The atomic? Sub-atomic?
Even the quantum world makes perfect sense under determinism.

If you are using your own definition of free-will and claiming that the human brain can seemingly fire random neurons then sure. I'll by that.


I doubt it.

It was.

Name the evidence !

Namely every physics experiment ever performed.

Humans seem to be made up of the same *stuff* as everything else. And if everything else is deterministic why would humans be any different?

And as I've mentioned, the presence of additional chemicals to the brain can alter the choices made my an individual.


BTW, I was professionally trained in a neuroscience - no need to worry about overloading my poor somewhat-indeterminist brain.

Great appeal.
I guess every person professionally trained in a neuroscience must agree with you.
Oh oh! Here I go mispresenting you again.

Now explain to me how nuerology is relevant to free-will. What exactly can neurology do in this subject? Find the little "Free-will Next Left" sign deep inside the mind?

Liquidrage

I Can take this this two ways.

The first way:
No kidding again.

Free will does not equal the ability to change our mental perspectives.

Free-will is the ability to makes choices without constraint.

Sure, I can choose to be sad. My brain has the chemical makeup that allows it. And if I alter the chemical make-up in a certain way I loose my ability to choose it.

The second way:
Are you implying that the brain does not contain any chemicals?

[ June 11, 2002: Message edited by: Liquidrage ]</p>

tronvillain

As far as I can tell, determinism (strict or probablistic) is the only option, regardless of whether materialism is true. Of course, that has nothing to do with the existence of free will, since virtually any variety of it worth wanting would be compatible with determinism.

sotzo:
At the level of the chemical reactions themselves, there is no governing will, but at a higher level of description there is. What you are saying is comparable to "In other words one would not move from to point A to point B because one walked between the two points, but because biochemistry caused the motion.

madmax2976

Since natural laws don't exist as entities unto themselves, they don't "cause" anything to happen. This is just a popular metaphor we use to describe how things work. Our laws are descriptions of how we observe certain things function under certain conditions. Whether or not we can resolve/create any law descriptions that govern everything, under every condition remains to be seen. Emergent properties obviously exist in particular arrangements of matter and energy, so its difficult to say, but I highly doubt it.

If determinism just means something was caused by some preceding event, then determinism would seem to be true whether materialism is true or not. (I'm assuming events would still occur and cause things even under immaterialism) Thus determinism wouldn't be dependent upon materialism in any way and the question is moot.

<strong> This would seem to be the fallacy of composition. If all bricks are 6 inches wide and 3 inches thick, then a wall made of bricks is 6 inches wide and 3 inches thick. If metal, wires and plastic don't have the property of flight, then obviously planes can't fly. And...If our thoughts are caused by biochemical reactions in our brains, then we can't have consciousness and/or the ability to choose our actions.

There are a lot of conditions where this doesn't seem to hold up.

DRFseven

The neural correlate is a mechanism, Gurdur. You are proposing some kind of free thing. I am saying there is a process by which our brain functions to cause decisions. You are saying there is something else independent of this process. What is it?

How? How does any kind of freedom enter into concentration, emotion, mental perspectives? You can't start with automatic mechanism and get freedom.

The soft free will position is something no one is arguing. No one claims we don't make choices; what I am arguing about with you is that we don't get to decide what we want that choice to be.

Does it have to be explained? All together now - experience! Filed how? As coded memory by association. We known this behaviorally for a long time; between the S and the R is the M (actually, a lot of M's).

I don't have to wonder; I know. He was all about S/R and refused to admit there was an M at all. But if the Mediating Event causes the Response to be different from what it would have been without the Mediating Event, as it is in much of human cognition, then I'd say the M is pretty important, wouldn't you? We do what we do because of what we think about things that happen, not because of what happens.

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

phaedrus

excreationist

sotzo:
Just to re-answer your post.

Is it your view that determinism must follow if materialism is true?

I am defining determinism here as "a theory or doctrine that acts of the will, occurrences in nature, or social or psychological phenomena are causally determined by preceding events or natural laws".

It depends if quantum phenomena are deterministic or not. If they are truly random (though statistically semi-deterministic) then materialism isn't deterministic. Otherwise materialism is deterministic.

Under this view, thoughts/beliefs would amount to chemical reactions with no governing will.
So you're saying that determinism implies that we don't have free will or even a will at all. Well I think a "will" just means we have goals or plans - that we actively try to carry out. And we formulated those plans ourselves based on things we've learnt.

Did you read my response to AtlanticCitySlave? Basically he is quite mixed up. He says that compatibilism is a kind of non-deterministic materialism.

This is what I quoted in response to that:
<a href="http://web.syr.edu/~jddraege/compatibilism.htm" target="_blank">http://web.syr.edu/~jddraege/compatibilism.htm</a>
"Compatibilism – Free will and determinism can be true together. All human actions are causally determined, but some behavior is caused in a way that is compatible with free will while other behavior is not."

<a href="http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Olympus/2178/compat2.html" target="_blank">http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Olympus/2178/compat2.html</a>
"What the compatibilist is saying is that free will – real free will – is compatible with determinism."

So there are a lot of materialists that are compatibilists - who believe in determinism - as well as free will - so they believe not only that a governing will exists, but it is also free.

Well I think a governing will exists, but I don't think it is free. I think that in theory it has an inevitable outcome but in practise we can't predict what it would be since zillions of variables are involved in the decisions we make including the photons that are colliding into us and maybe even the gravity of distant planets. If we were to know the prediction of our behaviour we might change our behaviour.

Steven Carr

I think we can agree that at any time, the Universe can only exist in one state.

(State A)

Suppose that from state A, an instant later, only one state is possible for the Universe (state B).

This is determinism. From state A, only state B is possible.


But suppose determinism is not true.

From state A, either state B or state C or state D can be reached.

There is nothing about state A which says which of B , C or D can be reached. Either B, C or D just happen, and there is nothing in state A which determines which state does actually happen.

If B happens, then it was simply a brute fact that B rather than C or D happened, and you can examine state A all you like and never find a reason why that brute fact occurred.

This is randomness. The only alternative to determinism is randmoness.

This has nothing whatever to do with materialism.

If you think the state of the Universe (state A) includes non-material entities, this does not alter the fact that either one state can follow from state A, or more than one state can follow from state A.