[Oldmanmatt]

So...
What do we think of free will then?
Does it exist?
(and why are we always firing at him?)

[psychomansam]

So...
What do we think of free will then?
Does it exist?
(and why are we always firing at him?)

I'll assume for materialist determinism here for now:
2.0
If I am my brain and my brain is a deterministic computing system that converts inputs to outputs, do I have free will?
You could choose to answer that either yes or no without being wrong. To me the confusion, the stasis, is 'I am my brain'. What do we mean by this? What am I? If my self-awareness/consciousness is merely a part of the operating system of the brain (computing system), then does that consciousness have free will? It is the core, the highest level of this computing system, using complex methods of analyzing inputs, considering against past stored data and projected future outcomes and finally creating outputs. Does it have free will? The answer has to be yes, in as much as it is free to make these decisions, and no, in that these decisions, complex as they are, are deterministic.
The stasis then has moved from 'i am my brain' to the very concept of 'free will'. I contend that it is a simplistic and ultimately flawed concept. As (theoretically speaking) God is neither just nor unjust, but is simply not just (the term just isn't applicable), so human will is neither free nor unfree, but is simply not free -- the term of freedom is simply not applicable to human will in a deterministic system.
2.1
An element of randomness, i.e. quantum theory, in an otherwise determinist system has no effect on the above conclusion.
3.0
I would advise not looking for 'responsibility'. It is a difficult term. In a deterministic system, no one is a causal agent and no one has moral responsibility, but it could still be said that people are responsible for their actions. Is a tree responsible for its shadow? Is a cloud responsible for the rain? I think the term is moralistic, confusing, vague and unhelpful.
4.0 (some thoughts on societal implications of a lack of free will)
The determinist ideal with punishment wouldn't be to necessarily remove it, but would be to take a step back and reassess the the correct way to treat those who do wrong. According to determinism, it's entirely unfair to blame someone as being the causal agent of their wrongful actions. This means that it's inhumane and unfair to try and punish wrongdoers retributively. It would be just the same as punishing someone for catching a disease. So what do we do when someone has a disease? We apply the best possible cure, perhaps quarantining them until they're safe for society. This is then the same way we should treat wrongdoers.
The question is: what is the best possible cure? My suggestion would be that the current criminal justice system here and moreso in other countries (the USA are a suitable dire warning) is unsatisfactory. Reoffence rates are very high. The cure isn't working. So whatever the best possible cure is, we haven't got it yet. Further to this, I argue that a good part of the reason for this is the current non-determinist thinking of governing powers and particularly of the public on how the criminal justice system should operate. This thinking leads people to follow a retributive system of punishment which determinism reveals as unjust and inhumane. I suspect that criminals instinctually detect this and that it is a partial cause of the resentment criminals feel towards society when imprisoned.
So again, we've not found it yet, but what could be the best possible cure? As a determinist, while I think the retributive motive behind the current system of punishment is wrong, I think there are already good motives added to this, such as quarantine, reform, re-education, rehabilitation. The issue is that we need to focus fully on these issues rather than using them as an afterthought to punishment. Truly attempting a system based on correction rather than on retribution could then lead us to a healthier more cohesive society. This would perhaps be the ideal system.
In the meantime, with a poorly educated population with indeterminist beliefs, we currently still need deterrence, the lowest common denominator, the most basic and blunt form of prevention. This is used as an excuse for continuing indefinitely with the current system. I reject this claim. Punishment may work as prevention, as deterrence, but it is still unfair and inhumane once applied. It is a way of kicking the weak when they're down, of harming the sick, and of failing the people who most need help from society. Ideally, eventually, deterrence would not need to be a factor in our treatment of wrongdoers.

(taken from my comment on the subject on a forum the other day)

[Oldmanmatt]

Hmm, good one.
But to be read later in more peaceful surroundings.
Thanks Sam.

[slackline]

This was a good read on whether we have free will or not...



Excrepts from a lecture of his...

[Stabbsy]

I find the new atheism thing pretty tedious. Surely any scientist worth the name would not be ramming the lack of proof down every believers throat, but might be more interested in studying these people, to find out where our self-evident need for a higher power stems from?

Good point JB, Dawkins makes an attempt to answer this in "The God Delusion". It wasn't entirely satisfactory for me, but it's an interesting start. I probably can't summarise it very well, but it uses the idea of "memes" (effectively "cultural" genes that get passed down as part of a society). He suggested a number of possible reasons why this meme could develop in the first place, some of which were quite plausible.

[Johnny Brown]

Hmmm, Dawkins invented memes didn't he? No wonder he's plumped for them then...

Its certainly an interesting area, I'm fairly sure every society discovered on earth have both concepts of higher powers and creation myths. That would suggest to me that such beliefs have obviously evolved for a very powerful reason. Whether our subconscious can catch up with the age of reason to be entirely happy without such beliefs is another question, though I suspect for many science might as well be a belief rather than a tool.

Been reading a fairly good book recently - The spell of the sensuous - which attempts to unravel what, very different, experience we might have of reality before the invention of the written word and the consequent ability to analyse our own thoughts. Humans evolved

[slackline]

Others had the notion first, notably the great Luca Cavalli-Sforza & colleague, Dawkins gave it a catchy name though.

[psychomansam]

Excrepts from a lecture of his...

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=eS5Q-9uNCLU#]Daniel Dennett - Freedom Evolves - a Dangerous Idea Part 1[

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=6j6ayeTbOW4#]Daniel Dennett - Freedom Evolves - a Dangerous Idea Part 2

Disclaimer: I haven't watched those videos yet, but here's a comment I wrote yesterday when someone on Facepoop linked me to a 10 minute summary of his position.

I think the way he describes evolution as us adapting to be able to produce better futures for ourselves is interesting and perhaps has value as an argument against fatalism.
That said, this doesn't give us any free will in the traditional sense, and while he admits this to a point, his claim that we could still retain moral responsibility seems totally unfounded.
According to his description, humans are just complex organisms which have evolved to adapt dynamically to situations so as to ensure a better future. Sounds good, but this doesn't insure free will in any greater sense than animals. I agree with the physicalism/materialism of his argument, but not his conclusions.
Even if he adds that reflective/analytical/self-aware/higher thinking raises us above the animals, it still doesn't allow for free will in a sense that could allow moral responsibility.
So I think it's a useful perspective on the science of why we have evolved with the abiliites we have, and it adds another colour to current compatibilist arguments, but it doesn't add anything of note, and certainly doesn't produce moral responsibility.
I'm not saying people aren't responsible in some way for their actions. A tree is responsible for the dead leaves on the ground in Autumn and a cat is responsible for crapping on the sofa, but neither have moral responsibility, and by the arguments here, neither can a human

[Stubbs]

I find the new atheism thing pretty tedious. Surely any scientist worth the name would not be ramming the lack of proof down every believers throat, but might be more interested in studying these people, to find out where our self-evident need for a higher power stems from?

There's a few issues in 'new atheism', the most pressing one in my opinion is that the government are funding academys where it's ok to teach people the world is only as old as the bible says it is,  that dinosaurs were missed off the arc and that's why they're not around now, and that it's a silly idea that we came from monkeys.  Sure most of us were forced into (or went readily) into RE at school, and we heard some great stories, but when we went to the science room we left the RE behind.

I'm sure there will be some neuroscientists out there who are interesting in studying people's requirement for a higher power, but who would you use as a control group? Most of the world has been brought up with some sort of god figure from an early age; how would you differentiate between nature and nurture?

[psychomansam]

I find the new atheism thing pretty tedious. Surely any scientist worth the name would not be ramming the lack of proof down every believers throat, but might be more interested in studying these people, to find out where our self-evident need for a higher power stems from?

Good point JB, Dawkins makes an attempt to answer this in "The God Delusion". It wasn't entirely satisfactory for me, but it's an interesting start. I probably can't summarise it very well, but it uses the idea of "memes" (effectively "cultural" genes that get passed down as part of a society). He suggested a number of possible reasons why this meme could develop in the first place, some of which were quite plausible.

Should probably read that at some point eh. Maybe in font at easter, with luck!

(1) Currently, I see free will, morality, self, and meaning as being somewhat fantastical. They're nice working models for the world, but they are, at their core, somewhat rationally void. If that argument were to hold, then it hardly seems surprising to hold the argument that (2) the working model of the world around us needs something else to fill in the gaps. God closes all the necessary holes.
There's tons of more or less similar versions of (2) and I think they're valuable, but still incomplete. I think (1) helps add to this. If meaning is already a mere socially created necessity with no solid essence to it, it's not hard to see how we could end up chasing tails, ghosts or geese in a continual 'search for (essential) meaning'.

[psychomansam]

I'm sure there will be some neuroscientists out there who are interesting in studying people's requirement for a higher power, but who would you use as a control group? Most of the world has been brought up with some sort of god figure from an early age; how would you differentiate between nature and nurture?

Does Dawkins have kids?

[Oldmanmatt]

Sam,
"Just complex"?
I would posit that we do have free will and with it responsibility.
And for me the the critical point is that word "complex", not "complicated".
I looked at Haggards experiments and I felt this was simply tinkering with the interface, not a disproval of free will.
Complex emergent behaviour.
When the system becomes sufficiently complex, I would posit that deterministic process in parallel gives rise to emergent free will.
The deterministic process gives rise to a bouquet of options, from which we select a course of action and herein lies the choice.
Did Mozart really have no choice but to write the music he did?
Art, particularly modern, impressionistic and abstract art; why?
Even within the world of theoretical physics, many (Smolin, for one) are starting to wonder if the great unifying theory is in fact a higher level, course grained; emergent product of complex interactions at the quantum level.
And, heresy of heresy, may be independent of the quantum interactions...
Don't quote me (or lynch me), I build ships not philosophies.

[miso soup]

I thought the New Atheism thing was brilliant when it first appeared with the ads on buses and everything.  Whilst I agree with the fundamental liberal idea that people can engage in whatever crazy mumbo-jumbo makes them happy so long as it doesn't impinge on anyone else's life it seemed like the attitude of tolerance had led to a situation where you couldn't publicly point out that religion was clearly a load of crap without being branded intolerant.

Recently it does seem to have gone a bit too far what with Hitchens supporting dubious military actions, Sam Harris apologising for Israel and Dawkins just being a bit of a dick.  General opposition to religion seems to have morphed into more specific Islamophobia and been co-opted by Western powers to justify their own ends.  Like they can't sell Christians versus Muslims anymore so how about Science versus Muslims?  It's worrying, but a lot of necessary and generally positive cultural forces have come with unpleasant extremes.  I do enjoy stuff like the Stephen Fry thing above, Hitchens versus Blair was also classic.



This pretty much covers the full spectrum from refreshing common sense to dangerous fundamentalism.  It was good enough for me to watch all of it.

[Oldmanmatt]

2012-01-27-07-32-37_A06C3304-7D13-4337-AF5A-1EBE287A0280 by oldmanmatt, on Flickr

For me, that's the difference.
An atheist may be strident.
They might even refuse to understand the view point of the religious.
They might campaign to stop the religious teaching children religious doctrine as fact in public schools.
But they won't be rushing out to slaughter the infidels any time soon.

[slackline]

Disclaimer: I haven't watched those videos yet, but here's a comment I wrote yesterday when someone on Facepoop linked me to a 10 minute summary of his position.

I think the way he describes evolution as us adapting to be able to produce better futures for ourselves is interesting and perhaps has value as an argument against fatalism.
That said, this doesn't give us any free will in the traditional sense, and while he admits this to a point, his claim that we could still retain moral responsibility seems totally unfounded.
According to his description, humans are just complex organisms which have evolved to adapt dynamically to situations so as to ensure a better future. Sounds good, but this doesn't insure free will in any greater sense than animals. I agree with the physicalism/materialism of his argument, but not his conclusions.
Even if he adds that reflective/analytical/self-aware/higher thinking raises us above the animals, it still doesn't allow for free will in a sense that could allow moral responsibility.
So I think it's a useful perspective on the science of why we have evolved with the abiliites we have, and it adds another colour to current compatibilist arguments, but it doesn't add anything of note, and certainly doesn't produce moral responsibility.
I'm not saying people aren't responsible in some way for their actions. A tree is responsible for the dead leaves on the ground in Autumn and a cat is responsible for crapping on the sofa, but neither have moral responsibility, and by the arguments here, neither can a human

I think its confusing to equate free will (i.e. the ability to choose what you do) with a responsibility to therefore act "morally" when asking the question of whether "Do we have free will?".

One is fairly immutable, you can either have free will or you don't, whereas morals change with time and what the individuals within a society deem to be acceptable under their collective morals.

Clearly most societies have decided that we do have free will, otherwise people would be able to use the "God told me to do it" / "I was born as a serial killer" argument in defense of things that are, at the time, deemed to be immoral.

A contrived example might go along the lines of....

A person chooses, of their own free will to enslave someone.

That was a decision made by the enslaver of their own free will (albeit against the free will of the enslaved).

Society 200 years ago (say in the UK or US) wouldn't have had a moral issue with this.

Society today (in the UK or US & many other countries) would have a moral issue with this.

Just because society has changed doesn't mean that the act is any more or less one of free will.


Thats not to say that I don't think that we as humans with free will don't have a responsibility to act morally because we do.  But if you want to ask (and attempt to answer) the very specific question of whether we have free will or not, then you should focus on that, and not the consequences of the acts therefore carried out under said freedom.

I do realise that the range of actions each of us consider on a daily basis to execute are heavily influenced by the current morals of society, and most of us choose of our own free will to act in a moral way, but some choose, of their own free will, to act immorally and society then holds them accountable for their actions, hence why we have courts, justice and prisons.

I'd also suggest that we aren't that far removed from animals really, its just we've got a complex language and writing to help us share ideas (and we don't understand other animals languages).  Still entrenched in tribalism (be it religious or national pride), still have sexual competition, nepotism, urge to reproduce, cuckoldry etc. etc. there are endless parallels to be drawn with other species and general rules of 'animal' behaviour.  Yes humans are unique (bipeadlism, opposable thumbs, and disproportionately large brains being what has made us so successful at controlling our environment) but so is every other species they all have a niche for themselves.

 

[psychomansam]

I think its confusing to equate free will (i.e. the ability to choose what you do) with a responsibility to therefore act "morally" when asking the question of whether "Do we have free will?".

One is fairly immutable, you can either have free will or you don't, whereas morals change with time and what the individuals within a society deem to be acceptable under their collective morals.

Clearly most societies have decided that we do have free will, otherwise people would be able to use the "God told me to do it" / "I was born as a serial killer" argument in defense of things that are, at the time, deemed to be immoral.

According to incompatibilists, determinism necessarily implies a complete lack of free will.
Compatibilists, who believe free will is compatible with determinism, are forced to argue against this. They come up with various arguments, such as 'will is free if not restrained or coerced' and 'will is free when we can make a decision that we identify with as being our choice'. An incompatibilist can reply, well that gives you something you might call free will, but it's not really free. So we have to work out what free will is.
How can we approach the problem? Well one of the major issues at stake societally, is that if we don't have free will, then no-one can be held morally responsible for their actions. All systems of morality would be invalidated. We can take this issue to be something of a criteria for free will then. The incompatibilist can claim that free will is only really free if it allows people to be morally responsible. The compatibilist is then forced to attain this goal.
Cultural systems of, and changes in, morality aren't a problem for this as the specific moral code isn't relevant

Another method of defining free will is to say that a person 'could have done other than they did' when they were given a choice. It's a nice one to think about, because at first it seems intuitively obvious that a person can, but then as you consider determinism, it seems intuitively reasonable to say a person couldn't ever have done other than they did.

All societies assume and act generally, but not entirely, as if persons have free will. That doesn't mean society is right, or that the beliefs of the masses should carry any particular weight. I contend that free will is a useful working model for understanding the world, but is basically fictional. For most of human history it's been an adequate working model to follow our intuitons that the earth is the center of the universe and is flat.

For your final comments about excuses, have a look a 4.0 in my previous post. To be incredibly trite, consider this: We don't think an dangerously infectious person is to blame for being infectious, but we still don't let them wander around infecting people.
Incompatibilism may excuse a murderer from moral blame, but it will still see them as a dangerous criminal and act accordingly to remove the danger.

[slackline]

Dawkins' ancestors

[slackline]

Dawkins' ancestors

Found the context to that piss-take.

[Jaspersharpe]

Dawkins' ancestors

That's class! The Torygraph article is a total disgrace.

[psychomansam]

Genius

[Pantontino]

Dawkins' ancestors

That's class! The Torygraph article is a total disgrace.

Last week I made the mistake of buying a copy of the Telegraph (there were no other broad sheet papers left in my local shop) and came across this article:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/9082059/For-once-Richard-Dawkins-is-lost-for-words.html

How desperate are these people!? Isn't the Telegraph supposed to be a proper newspaper? - they cheapen themselves with this sort of Fox News bullshit.

Pathetic really, but I suppose the editor is happy, because it gets the stats up when everyone starts arguing about it in the comments section.

All its done for me is make me think twice about buying the Telegraph again. Well done Stephen Pollard, what a shining example of the journalistic profession you are!

[Jaspersharpe]

It used to be a proper newspaper.

[Stubbs]

TBH Dawkins didn't do himself any favours with that appearance, he seemed quite unprepared and didn't really get his point across, but yeah that article is ridiculous.  There's also a link to the Baroness Warsi speech there which I'm not going to link to!

[Oldmanmatt]

How do rational people believe that debating an issue, scoring points for erudition or semantic wit, in anyway changes the fundamental argument of evidence against belief?

Oh yes...

They're not rational.

They are, in fact and by their own confession; irrational.