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James S Saint
Joined: 14 Oct 2009
Posts: 668
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Post: #61  Posted: Mon Dec 28, 2009 3:18 pm Post subject: |
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| Meleagar wrote: |
The sky is green.
The sky is purple.
There is no sky.
If I exist in a deterministic framework, determinism just produced an untrue statement. |
So you believe that if YOU say something stupid then reality is stupid?
How does determinism equate to things YOU say? |
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Algol
Joined: 20 Dec 2009
Posts: 92
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| Post: #62 Posted: Mon Dec 28, 2009 4:31 pm Post subject: |
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I think we need a definition of "determinism". A determinist is someone (at least what I thought) who believes life follows an inalterable path (like the planets or a comet) and regardless of one's free will, what will be will be. By the above logic, there is no free will, because all your decisions are set to the given path your life is already on course to follow. Arbitrarily, Einstein was a determinist who believed he was destined to accomplish all that he had, regardless of what he willed.
(Sorry for the late pointlessness of my comment, but this conversation is as confusing as anything can get. The points made by everyone need to be clarified one by one for anyone to make sense of what's been and being said) |
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Alun
Joined: 11 Jul 2009
Posts: 883
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| Post: #63 Posted: Mon Dec 28, 2009 5:21 pm Post subject: |
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| Meleagar wrote: |
| Your assumption that you can discern true statements is not just one assumption; it is a shorthand version of including countless assumptions. You are assuming, in each case of truth discernment, a favorable chain of causal events that includs hundreds of trillions of favorable sequences of physical materials going back billions of years and resulting in what is effectively a happenstance coincidence of an entity with illusionary deliberacy producing a statement, that entity believing that statement to be true; that statement actually being true, and the entity receiving the information happens to interpret it very close to the way it was meant, and that receiving entity also believing that statement to be true. |
Erm. The axiomatic materialist assumption need only be that we have inductive access to reality via phenomena. Or, if you insist, that our biological programs access the external material via interpretation of sensory data. This is not countless assumptions, it is just an assumption that material causes phenomena and that material is generally regular in behavior.
| Meleagar wrote: |
| Or, actual acausal, transcendent free will agents deliberately discern true statements as they are made. |
You still haven't explained what it means for an acausal thing to deliberate about something. I'm also curious as to how you're going to define 'transcendent free will' without reference to infinite, which is naturally quite a bit larger than the number of variables concluded (not assumed) by materialistic inquiry.
| Meleagar wrote: |
| You see, your premise of causality requires that you include far more necessary, unseen agents and events than my premise of free will deliberacy. |
The only assumption for most materialism is the general validity of empirical interpretation, including pure reason. Materialism does not require us to assume that trillions of subatomic particles are behaving in a certain way; it requires us to assume only that what we sense is not out of the ordinary.
| Meleagar wrote: |
| If I exist in a deterministic framework, determinism just produced an untrue statement. |
How is this relevant? Assuming determinism is true, and your brain behaves strictly according to some causal chain, why would that mean your brain only produced statements that correspond to reality?
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James S Saint
Joined: 14 Oct 2009
Posts: 668
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| Post: #64 Posted: Mon Dec 28, 2009 5:50 pm Post subject: |
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| Algol wrote: |
I think we need a definition of "determinism". A determinist is someone (at least what I thought) who believes life follows an inalterable path (like the planets or a comet) and regardless of one's free will, what will be will be. By the above logic, there is no free will, because all your decisions are set to the given path your life is already on course to follow. Arbitrarily, Einstein was a determinist who believed he was destined to accomplish all that he had, regardless of what he willed.
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| Quote: |
determinism [dɪˈtɜːmɪˌnɪz&# 601;m]
n
1. (Philosophy) the philosophical doctrine that all events including human actions and choices are fully determined by preceding events and states of affairs, and so that freedom of choice is illusory Also called necessitarianism Compare free will [1b]
2. (Philosophy) the scientific doctrine that all occurrences in nature take place in accordance with natural laws
3. (Physics / General Physics) the principle in classical mechanics that the values of dynamic variables of a system and of the forces acting on the system at a given time, completely determine the values of the variables at any later time |
Determinism and "Absolute Cause-Effect" are the same.
And as Alun said, I don't see what that has to do with making irrational statements, but Meleager seems to think that it does. |
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Scott
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| Post: #65 Posted: Mon Dec 28, 2009 10:49 pm Post subject: |
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| Meleagar wrote: |
| Your assumption that you can discern true statements is not just one assumption; it is a shorthand version of including countless assumptions. You are assuming, in each case of truth discernment, a favorable chain of causal events that includs hundreds of trillions of favorable sequences of physical materials going back billions of years and resulting in what is effectively a happenstance coincidence of an entity with illusionary deliberacy producing a statement, that entity believing that statement to be true; that statement actually being true, and the entity receiving the information happens to interpret it very close to the way it was meant, and that receiving entity also believing that statement to be true. |
Meleagar, I don't recall saying anything about all my beliefs being true or about all of every person's beliefs and observations being true and accurate.
The issue is whether empirical evidence is reliable or not, i.e. epistemological skepticism vs. non-skepticism. For instance, if I put my hand on the lit stove is my knowledge that it will burn me and cause me pain more likely correct than not? I think it is, and every time I put my hand on a lit stove I confirm that. The epistemological skeptic doubts that, which I agree makes any other debate pointless. There's a full spectrum from saying that empirical evidence is meaningless and saying it is infallible. Empirical evidence could be fallible while still being relatively reliable, in that a proposition supported by empirical evidence is more likely to be true than a proposition without empirical evidence or with empirical evidence against it.
Again, what you are making is not an argument against materialism anymore than it is an argument against the statement, "the sky is blue." Indeed, we cannot debate whether the sky is blue or not without first making assumptions that overcome epistemological skepticism or else all arguments for anything fail.
Moving on, I never proposed a strictly materialist assumption. I wrote, "Can't we just as easily assume that--regardless of the existence or non-existence of dualistic immaterial substances and phenomenon--our brains accurately interpret stimuli, and thus that empirical evidence and logic are at least relatively reliable, as opposed to assuming that we have some sort of soul or that there's some other sort of divine intervention assuring the accuracy of our brain's material observations?" I didn't say anything about assuming the non-existence of dualistic immaterial substances and phenomenon such as souls, divine interventions and "acausal, transcendent free will agents."
If reality is dualistic and our physical bodies are useless without undetectable souls or 'transcendent free will agents,' it is still theoretically possible that those souls or 'transcendent free will agents' do not discern truth or observations accurately and that they believe things that are false. If reality is monistic and strictly material or physical, then indeed the epistemological skeptic could still be correct. We could be living in the Matrix, the sky may not exist and hot stoves may not actually burn me when I feel pain.
One could be an epistemological skeptic and foolishly touch hot stoves. Or one could assume that empirical evidence is at least somewhat reliable, and thus believe that it is at least more likely than not that the lit stove exists and that it will hurt to touch. As I see it, Occam's razor instructs us to not make any needless assumptions about whether or not there is or is not a soul or other immaterial dualistic substances. Such an assumption would be extra.
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Regarding chance, I do not believe that my empirical evidence is accurate by chance.
For example, I do not think that chance is the reason why, when I appear to touch a hot stove that appears to exist, I feel pain and that by chance I have happened to feel pain every time this has happened. It could in some epistemologically skeptical sense be the case that touching the lit stove is not causally correlated to me feeling pain but that I have happened to feel pain in the past as the result of chance. But that's not the only explanation.
In analogy, let's say I roll a six-sided die over and over again, and every time I roll a six you hit me. It would seem that you are hitting me because I roll a six. It could be that every time I roll a die you also secretly roll one of your own and hit me if your die lands on three. And it could be the case that by chance every time I rolled a six you happened to roll a three. Inductive reasoning says that every time I roll a six and get hit, the likelihood of the second scenario is less. This is the basis of the scientific method. But the epistemological skeptic seems to doubt the validity of the inductive reasoning itself, and there's no way to convince him otherwise without using the axioms he doubts. To him, the second scenario (chance) is just as likely as the first scenario (causality/correlation) because he doesn't believe the inductive reasoning that leads one to conclude the second scenario to be more likely the case.
Meleagar seems to making this claim of epistemological skepticism. He refuses to accept inductive reasoning, thus conflating inducted conclusions with propositions that may be true by chance. However, he is willing to accept the axiom that inductive reasoning is relatively reliable (e.g. that the first scenario of die rolling is more likely than the second scenario) if he also accepts that reality is dualistic and that some immaterial soul-like being exists that is able to discern accurate observations from false ones. However, assuming the latter condition to be true as opposed to making no assumption regarding its truth and only assuming that inductive reasoning is valid though fallible (i.e. at least relatively reliable) regardless of whether the world is materialist or dualist would provide the same confidence with less assumptions.
In other words, any of these three descriptions could be case:
1. The material brain coexists with some immaterial being who feels pain when my body really touches a lit stove.
2. Only the brain exists and it feels pain as a result of a nervous system in a causally material world in which really feeling a hot stove starts a materially causal chain that leads to the brain recognizing the stove's heat against the skin and categorizing it as painful.
3. I feel pain sometimes, and I seem to be touching a hot stove sometimes, but the two happened together by chance but are not actually causally correlated and the stove may not really exist.
I assume the third one to most likely not be the case to avoid epistemological skeptism, which we must assume to make discussion, observation and the consideration of empirical evidence anything but pointless. So I at least assume that more likely than not 1 or 2 is the case. To avoid epistemological skeptism, I do not have to assume that 1 is accurate and 2 is false. For the same reason, I do not have to assume that 2 is accurate and 1 is false.
Meleagar has provided no argument that 1 is the case. He has only made an argument for epistemological skeptism as a way to render debate pointless unless we accept that 1 is the case. This is a red herring fallacy because it is written as if the failure of arguments against epistemological skeptism confirmed his assumptions that materialism is incorrect. However, his argument disproves materialism no more than it disproves that the sky is blue or that a lit stove is hot. This thread could have just as easily been entitled 'why the theory of gravity fails.' The title actually given and the repeated claims that materialism fails portrays an argument for epistemological skeptism as an argument against materialism and portrays the weakness of arguments against epistemological skeptism as if it were weakness in arguments for materialism.
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With all that said, Meleagar, I think you write well and clearly. And I appreciate and thank you for discussing your ideas with us, and I look forward to continuing the discussion.  I say this because I don't want you to feel like I'm attacking you personally in the replies I posted in this thread.
Thanks again!
Scott
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Belinda
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| Post: #66 Posted: Tue Dec 29, 2009 8:10 am Post subject: |
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Meleagar #49
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| Belinda: Idealistic free will is neither random nor caused; it is deliberate. Your declaration that it must be either wholly caused or wholly incapable of causing effects is unsupported and, in any event, creates the problem of infinite regress, if all events must have been caused or else they can generate no effects. |
The buck stops at absolute natural law.
Absolute natural law is the one and only thing/substance that is the cause of itself.Some people call it 'God'.
I will refer to it as neutrally as possible as the Great What is the Case
Meleagar, I think you still think of determinism as limited to linear cause and effect. This is our lame little approach to the great What Is, but now and again we see apparent laws in science. The great What Is the Caseis the sum total of all the minor linear causal chains.
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Meleagar to Alun
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| Influence and relation is not cause, so your question is a non-sequiter. |
The lucrative advertising industry has proved otherwise
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Meleagar wrote
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Actually, I'm just pointing out that you could be wrong, because that's all that is required for determinism to fail. If we postulate determinism, it can produce not only untrue statements (it does), but also faulty systems of thought, false beliefs and untrue ideas (it does), and it can produce untrue physical sensations (it does) and faulty physical interpretations (it does), then any system of analysis or evaluation of those systems, ideas, beliefs and statements can also be false.
In causal determinism, there is no recourse outside of the faulty process of cause and effect. It's like error checking a textbook from Smith Publishing because one knows Smith Publishing to produce a large number of errors; but the only thing one has to check the textbook against is another book published by Smith Publishing. |
The criterion that is most often used to justify beliefs is reason. Smith Publishing is an analogy that illustrates the idea of a criterion. I bet Meleagar uses a criterion that is better than Smith Publishing, but what criterion do you use, Meleagar, that is better than reason?
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Algol wrote
| Quote: |
I think we need a definition of "determinism". A determinist is someone (at least what I thought) who believes life follows an inalterable path (like the planets or a comet) and regardless of one's free will, what will be will be. By the above logic, there is no free will, because all your decisions are set to the given path your life is already on course to follow. Arbitrarily, Einstein was a determinist who believed he was destined to accomplish all that he had, regardless of what he willed.
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As an intro to determinism I'd agree but Meleagar has not yet said whether or not Free Will can veto one's comet-like path, or whether Free Will absolutelycan originate some choices.Meleagar has said that deliberations free us from being like comets and I agree. But what I think is important is that deliberations are not a function of Free Willy stuff but are a function of reason and compassion.
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Meleagar
Joined: 16 Nov 2009
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| Post: #67 Posted: Tue Dec 29, 2009 12:45 pm Post subject: |
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| Scott wrote: |
Meleagar, I don't recall saying anything about all my beliefs being true or about all of every person's beliefs and observations being true and accurate. |
Non-sequitur. Having a basis where one can discern true statements doesn't mean that one always does, or even does most of the time.
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| The issue is whether empirical evidence is reliable or not, i.e. |
That might be your issue; it isn't mine. I'm not discounting empirical evidence as non-reliable; I'm challenging your basis for being able to properly observe and interpret it. Your premise requires countless necessary assumptive statements that are underivable from your premise in order for empirical evidence to be reliable; my premise directly implicates it.
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| For instance, if I put my hand on the lit stove is my knowledge that it will burn me and cause me pain more likely correct than not? I think it is, and every time I put my hand on a lit stove I confirm that. The epistemological skeptic doubts that, which I agree makes any other debate pointless. |
It also makes it debate pointless if one is a material solipsist where the best they can say is that the stove is actually hot in their experience. I'm not challenging how you experience things; I'm challenging your basis for objectifying that experiential information.
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| Again, what you are making is not an argument against materialism anymore than it is an argument against the statement, "the sky is blue." Indeed, we cannot debate whether the sky is blue or not without first making assumptions that overcome epistemological skepticism or else all arguments for anything fail. |
Again, you are not understanding the nature of my argument. I'm not arguing that evidence isn't reliable, I'm arguing that you have abandoned the only premise that directly leads to the conclusion that evidence can be held as reliable; you said yourself that you must just make the assumption that it just is because you can't logically get from your premise to the conclusion that empirical evidence is reliable in making true statements about objective reality.
But that assumption is more than just the assumption that empirical evidence is reliable; it is the assumption that you, as an entity, can properly observe and interpret and communicate it, that the universe is available to logic, and that others are share that particular arrangement of perception and interpretation. It assumes that billions of years of causal interactions can by chance or necessity produce such a correspondence - and that's not just "one" assumption, it's hundreds of trillions of assumptions wrapped up in exponential-hidden semantics.
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| I never proposed a strictly materialist assumption. I wrote, "Can't we just as easily assume that--regardless of the existence or non-existence of dualistic immaterial substances and phenomenon--our brains accurately interpret stimuli, and thus that empirical evidence and logic are at least relatively reliable, as opposed to assuming that we have some sort of soul or that there's some other sort of divine intervention assuring the accuracy of our brain's material observations?" |
You can make all the assumptions you want; you can assume a favorable "just so" quantum fluctuation for every event required to lead to and generate a happenstance creation of illusionary free will determinations of truth and correspondences to the actual.
Unfortunately, you are assuming a supertanker full of events and agents and calling it comparable to the simple assumption (and I'm just calling it an assumption here for the sake of the argument) of an actual free will agency. The actual free will agency doesn't require billiions of years of convenient hapenstance events necessary to generate the illusionary appearance of a free will agent and the illusionary appearance that deliberate agents are freely discerning true statements in a debate that happen to actually correspond to real things.
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| I didn't say anything about assuming the non-existence of dualistic immaterial substances and phenomenon such as souls, divine interventions and "acausal, transcendent free will agents." |
My point is that it is far more efficient, and that it is necessary, to have such an agent, in order to avoid piling unbelievable assumption onto unbelievable assumption just to get the same illusionary effect through countless coincidental contrivances.
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| If reality is dualistic and our physical bodies are useless without undetectable souls or 'transcendent free will agents,' |
Who has made this case? Not I.
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| ... it is still theoretically possible that those souls or 'transcendent free will agents' do not discern truth or observations accurately and that they believe things that are false. |
First, could you refer me to where I've made a case about "what free will agency is" from which your above rebuttal is drawn? Or are you just assuming what my case might be for free will agency? As far as I can tell, the only way to "know" that free will agents can discern truths erroneously or believe false things is if we posit that all humans have free will; I have not posited that.
Second, it is irreleveant; the argument is about having the basis, the capacity for deliberately making or discerning true statements. Materialist determinism can only generate true statements by chance as far as I can tell, because under determinism the word "deliberate" is just another way of saying "necessity and chance". We know humans don't produce true statements by necessity; all that is left is chance.
This means that the determinist must make a pretty enormous set of assumptions if physical materials over billions of years are going to generate fully corresponding true statements and discernments in any argument by chance.
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| One could be an epistemological skeptic and foolishly touch hot stoves. Or one could assume that empirical evidence is at least somewhat reliable, and thus believe that it is at least more likely than not that the lit stove exists and that it will hurt to touch. |
As I've written above, that physical evidence is reliable to you in your experience is not your only assumption by a long shot; you are ignoring both the huge set of assumptions that entails from a materialist/determinist perspective, and the huge set of assumptions necessary for your experience-based discernments to correspond to that of others.
Even though you lump all those assumptions up in a tidy phrase that makes them appear to be a single assumption, that weight of necessary assumption is one of the major reasons that materialist determinism fails; the fact that such assumptions must be made because your premise cannot be rationally connected to what is assumed, and in fact directly implicates something else entirely, is another.
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| As I see it, Occam's razor instructs us to not make any needless assumptions about whether or not there is or is not a soul or other immaterial dualistic substances. Such an assumption would be extra. |
Incorrect. Occam's Razor has nothing whatsoever to do with "a soul or other other immaterial dualistic substances" per se; it has to do with an efficiency of assumptions, or not adding unnecessary entities (events, processes, things, laws, etc.) whether material or otherwise. Acausal free will is a necessary "assumption" in the pursuit of meaningful debates where humans are able (have the basis and capacity) to deliberately make and discern true statements.
Even though one could torture an assumed history of the universe into producing a debate that appeared to be between deliberate entities making and discerning actually true statments, under determinist materialism it is still just an illusion, because self is an illusion, free will choices is an illusion, and the capacity to independently, objectively evaluate evidence and argument is an illusion; they might be illusions that actually work, but they can only be illusions. By "illusion" I mean they would not be what they appear to be, which is uncoerced entities making free, objective discernments that deliberately correspond to reality.
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| For example, I do not think that chance is the reason why, when I appear to touch a hot stove that appears to exist, I feel pain and that by chance I have happened to feel pain every time this has happened. It could in some epistemologically skeptical sense be the case that touching the lit stove is not causally correlated to me feeling pain but that I have happened to feel pain in the past as the result of chance. But that's not the only explanation. |
There are two forces you have to work with; chance and necessity. Is it your claim that you produce true statements by necessity? If not chance or necessity or a combination of the two, what then produces both the sensation of a hot stove or the issuance of a purportedly "true" statement?
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| Meleagar seems to making this claim of epistemological skepticism. He refuses to accept inductive reasoning, thus conflating inducted conclusions with propositions that may be true by chance. |
Untrue. I don't "refuse to accept inductive reasoning", I'm arguing that you've abandoned the necessary basis that allows inductive reasoning to be held as valid in the first place; also, inductive reasoning is an logical progression based on observed facts according to an interpretive hueristic; materialism and determinism are not necessary "conclusions" that one must reach by examining physical evidence, they are a hueristic one applies when examining facts and interpreting evidence thereof.
I reject your heuristic because your heuristic itself undermines the legitimacy of inductive reasoning. When your method of interpreting facts reaches a conclusion that invalidates your method as meaningful, then your method is wrong. You avoid this by just "assuming" that materialism/determinism can produce as an illusion that which you must have in some form for your argument to be meaningful and escape self-referential nihilism.
It's fine to use materialism/determinism as a heuristic for one's induction process, but if by using induction one necessarily runs into materialist solipsism or epistemological skepticism and the only way out of it is to jump aboard a supertanker of assumption, the logical thing to conclude is that materialism/determinism, while an excellent heuristic for some things, fails in explaining or describing free will.
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| Meleagar has provided no argument that 1 is the case. |
Not really. I've presented an argument that #2 is not the case. The thread is about the failure of #2, not the success of #1, the difference being that I haven't presented an argument about what "free will" is and what it means.
Also, you keep phrasing your "assumptions" in a way that hides a boatload of assumptions as if they are all just one assumption. Note your choice about you, as the brain, experiencing a feeling of pain; why should the brain produce experience at all? If all that is required of the event is that the brain process input and generate reactive output, why should there be a "you", as an experiencer, involved at all? Why is it not just a functional process that produces no mental "experience" whatsoever? Does a computer have to feel and experience anything as a subjective, conscious entity in order to produces correct correlational output?
So, you are not just a "brain" receiving input and producing correlational output; you are a brain that receives input and produces not only correlational reactive output, but also generates a complicated, masterful illusion of seperate self, free will decision, and capacity to discern truths about the event as ad hoc "extras" after the effects have already been computed and the reactive course set upon.
You offer no inferential explanation for the generation of this masterful illusion from your premise; you simply assume that not only can it be accomplished physically, but that you get to invoke it simply because it is necessary philosophically and not because it can actually be logically inferred from your premise.
As I said before, those presence of those qualites and agency as illusionary effects necessarily implies billions of years of "just so" sequences of events that bloat your side of Occam's Razor to unbelievable proportions; and you do it, from your perspective, apparently, only to avoid adding one entity that seems to be the case anyway (by direct experience) and must be the case logically to avoid material solipsism or epistemological skepticism.
But what you don't seem to understand is that from a free will premise, the transcendent free will agent is not an "additional" entity; it's an intrinsic part of the premise.
You're the one that must account for the generation of an apparent free will agent, apparent correlations of truth, and apparent individual, conscious experience that one must have for arguments to have meaning, all derived from apparently inhospitable forces of natural law, unliving physical materials and chance, and then assume the product of those thnigs have real meaning even though you cannot explain them from your premise.
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| However, his argument disproves materialism no more than it disproves that the sky is blue or that a lit stove is hot. |
I'm not trying to disprove materialist determinism, I'm revealing how it fails as a premise which might allow meaningful logical debate.[/i]
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OTavern
Joined: 27 Jan 2008
Posts: 413
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| Post: #68 Posted: Tue Dec 29, 2009 1:56 pm Post subject: |
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| Belinda wrote: |
The arguments for Free Will fail for the reason that Descartes's argument for two substances fail. The failure is due to the impossibility that a substance that is not bound to causality will meld with a substance that is bound to causality.
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This claim is simply false and the development of computers that interact through input devices essentially debunks this alleged impossibility. The electrical circuitry that forms the "causal substance" or physical entity that we know of as a computer is essentially bound to causality. It requires electrical impulses of certain kinds to create effects. However, overtop of this physical "substance" exists machine language coding that essentially operates the binary open/close gateways embedded into the physical substance. Overtop of this machine language exists system and program coding that essentially allow the physical system that is bound to causality to be "open" to input from external sources. The human beings that "operate" computers are not "part" of the system - not physically integrated into the computer and operate externally and autonomously away from the computer. However, these two systems impinge upon each other because the "causal" system of the computer has an essentially "open architecture" that is "receptive" to input from an external source.
If this is true with computers, why can this not also be true with an exponentially more complex system that is the human body? The physical system including the cellular structure, organs, etc. are tied into a nervous system (akin to the electrical circuitry of the computer) which in turn is aligned with the sensory systems (akin to the operating system of the computer) which in turn are aligned to the various programming codes (akin to the intelligent, emotive, appetite faculties) that allow external inputs into the "system." There is no justification to believe that this entire human "physical" system (cause-effect) could not have been so constructed as to allow input from an essentially "outside" system, i.e., a "grounds-consequents" system that we refer to as reason. (See my post #40 http://onlinephilosophyclub.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=3152&start=39
A computer operator is not "part of the causal structure" of the machine. However, the causal structure of the machine is "open" to input from the operator that alters how the machine responds. There is no causally necessary connection between the machine and the operator because the machine can 'do its own thing" and so can the operator, but when they interact they can affect each other in somewhat of a determined (but not necessary) way.
Human beings, using reason, may similarly affect the physical body in a determined, but not causally necessary way.
This very possibility of an essentially causal system (material cause - effect cosmos) being so constructed as to allow an essentially "foreign" system (grounds-consequents) of reason to impinge upon it seems to argue strongly that the cosmos was designed as an "open architecture" system to allow input from a knowledge based entity. The evolution of the material realm within the cosmos has brought into existence a kind of entity - human beings - that essentially impact the causal order in "non-caused" ways, i.e., because of the grounds consequents nature of reason.
Human beings are not "caused" to know truth. Truth must be acquired by a process of reasoning - this is not a cause and effect system. A pain is caused, but a clear understanding is not. Certainly there are "conditions" that must be present, but having all the sensory inputs is not the same as "grasping the truth." As CS Lewis points out (Miracles Ch. 3) a knowledge of light is not the same as having keen eyesight. All the possible evolutionary improvements of a system to sensory input do not necessarily lead to clearer insight or knowledge of the truth. Having all the perfections of the physical causal system does not lead us to think that knowledge of that system is thereby improved. In fact, why would a causal system "go outside of itself" to have knowledge of itself unless the system itself were brought about by something "outside" of it?
Computers exist because an outside intelligent entity programmed these essentially causally determined machines to be "open" to input via layers of "add-on" features. The same question could be asked of human physical bodies. Why would an essentially causal(cause -effect) derived system find itself "open" to an essentially foreign (grounds-consequents) system of "knowledge" for input and change? |
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Meleagar
Joined: 16 Nov 2009
Posts: 1302
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| Post: #69 Posted: Tue Dec 29, 2009 2:21 pm Post subject: |
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| Belinda wrote: |
The buck stops at absolute natural law. |
Well, if you say so.
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| Meleagar, I think you still think of determinism as limited to linear cause and effect. |
It doesn't matter if it is linear or not. It fails as a premise because one can only assume that the premise "somehow" creates the illusion of what idealist free will postulates as existent, but offers no physical avenue or logical inference to support it. Determinism is an abandonment of a premise that is necessary for meaningful argument and the determinist knows this or else they have no reason to make ad hoc compatibalist arguments; they have to somehow "tack on" some kind of actual truth discernment capability and some kind of meaningful free will or else they know their philosophy fails to produce any coherent argument and lapses into material solipsism.
They accomplish this by simply asserting that determinism **can** produce those things. I might as well say nihilism **can** produce those things, or that the Bible **can** explain why I have a birthmark on my side; as long as I don't actually have to show how it can, I can make any such claim I wish.
If your premise doesn't logically indicate a capacity to have free will entities discerning truthful statements, asserting that it can because we are and we do is affirming the consequent and a logical fallacy.
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| The lucrative advertising industry has proved otherwise |
Not in my case. But then, I have free will.
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| The criterion that is most often used to justify beliefs is reason. Smith Publishing is an analogy that illustrates the idea of a criterion. I bet Meleagar uses a criterion that is better than Smith Publishing, but what criterion do you use, Meleagar, that is better than reason? |
I don't have to justify my beliefs. Because I am a free agent, I choose or invent them as I wish.
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| As an intro to determinism I'd agree but Meleagar has not yet said whether or not Free Will can veto one's comet-like path, or whether Free Will absolutelycan originate some choices. |
Yes, I have answered that question. Free will is the acausal first cause for everything one experiences;, if that entity has free will.
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| Meleagar has said that deliberations free us from being like comets and I agree. |
I never said the above; "deliberations" is not the same as "deliberacy".
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James S Saint
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| Post: #70 Posted: Tue Dec 29, 2009 4:16 pm Post subject: |
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| Meleagar wrote: |
| I never said the above; "deliberations" is not the same as "deliberacy". |
Well, since "deliberacy" isn't a word in English, what is your definition for it? |
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Meleagar
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| Post: #71 Posted: Tue Dec 29, 2009 4:26 pm Post subject: |
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| James S Saint wrote: |
| Meleagar wrote: |
| I never said the above; "deliberations" is not the same as "deliberacy". |
Well, since "deliberacy" isn't a word in English, what is your definition for it? |
Free will agency; locus of intentionality.
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James S Saint
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| Post: #72 Posted: Tue Dec 29, 2009 5:16 pm Post subject: |
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| Meleagar wrote: |
| James S Saint wrote: |
| Meleagar wrote: |
| I never said the above; "deliberations" is not the same as "deliberacy". |
Well, since "deliberacy" isn't a word in English, what is your definition for it? |
Free will agency; locus of intentionality. |
So deliberacy is "Free will" and Free will is "deliberacy". And both are "intentionality".
Now, what do you mean by it? What is its definition (what is it entirely exclusive of)? |
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Meleagar
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James S Saint
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| Post: #74 Posted: Tue Dec 29, 2009 6:19 pm Post subject: |
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| Meleagar wrote: |
| Free will is the acausal creative demiurge. |
So you are equating "Free will" to the uncaused action of creating (i.e. God).
But then you say that "some people" have God and some do not, but might think that they do.
Of course the problem would be that there can only be one God, by definition of "God" (cap G). So maybe you are talking about the "Holy Spirit"? And saying that some people have the Holy Spirit and some do not? I could go along with that (hesitantly).
But now, the Holy Spirit is exceedingly logical and determining, so what does that have to do with anything being discussed? |
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Belinda
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| Post: #75 Posted: Wed Dec 30, 2009 4:52 am Post subject: |
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OTavern wrote
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| The human beings that "operate" computers are not "part" of the system - not physically integrated into the computer and operate externally and autonomously away from the computer. However, these two systems impinge upon each other because the "causal" system of the computer has an essentially "open architecture" that is "receptive" to input from an external source. |
The computer is a tool as much as the stick that a chimpanzee uses to lift ants out of an anthill.It is a clever way to extend the animal's powers. The animal uses a tool for reasons of its powers of reason, its ability to use its hands, its need for food etc, and the availablity of the tool material and the food source.The effect of successful tool making and using is that the tool does the job planned for it. To sum up, the tool is an extension of the animal and the combination 'tooled animal' is as much caused as the combination 'sighted animal'.
Your analogy of the computer and the human fails because the supposed 'Free Will' is presumed to be a ghost mind in the machine body. Another ghost controls the ghost and another ghost controls the ghost that controls the ghost and so on.
Or a free-will mannikin that dwells within the human body. Who then controls the mannikin? Why, another mannikin!
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Meleagar wrote
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| I don't have to justify my beliefs. Because I am a free agent, I choose or invent them as I wish. |
You do choose your beliefs yes, but your choice is influenced by your culture. The very fact that you are writing to this forum proves that you have been influenced by the stimulus from other writers to this forum. You could also choose to not write to this forum, you are as free as that. You could also choose to put on your left shoe before you put on your right shoe or vice versa, or just to fool the necessity of choosing you could go barefoot.However, if you go to work barefoot you will be looked at askance, you possibly dont like being looked at askance, so you are influenced by others.
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