"God"

[Touchstone]

That is all the more reason for not regarding this universe as a closed system in which everything is explained by physical laws. It is a fact that the power of reason is one of the most outstanding features of our universe because we are the only beings who are aware that the universe exists. There may be other rational beings but that would not alter the significance of the power of reason in the slightest.

Well, it’s certainly outstanding to us (and any sentient alien life), I’ll grant. But again, that’s an ego-centric – er, anthropocentric – view. The universe as a whole doesn’t care, can’t care, if it’s impersonal.

I think it’s a colossal problem! For one thing unlike any other living organism we are aware of the future. For another the success of science shows that our ability to predict future events is very advanced. Even the random element in the course of events can be assessed mathematically, e.g. by using the Poisson distribution. In addition if you believe the mind is (or is the result of) neural activity neuroscientists should be able to predict human behaviour accurately.

In principle, perhaps, but not even in principle if our brains have stochastic features – randomness worked in some ways at low levels. In AI software development, for example, a lot of times “close calls” between choices are reduced to a “roll of the dice”, making the agent perfectly unpredictable for that action. And of course, as actions chain up causally, just a few randomized events branches the worlds out in starkly different directions.

It’s unknown how much randomness affects our choices right now, but to the extent it does, we are “free”, free from forward looking deterministic predictions on particulars, anyway.

If we are biological machines all our activities are predictable in principle. To cap all that social science also accounts for much human behaviour. So the future is not as obscure as you imply. Without belief in spiritual reality or free will it is inevitable that people will become progressively more fatalistic when they are confronted with mechanistic explanations of every aspect of their lives down to the very last detail… The “efficacious illusion” will no longer be confined to a small elite and it will cease to be efficacious!

Fatalism is a choice, just like hope, and the desire for virtue and progress. So long as the future remains unkown for us, the ‘determinedness’ of that future is a moot issue; if you can’t know you aren’t one to have the desire to hope, to strive, to struggle for what’s good, you may be just that, and that’s all you need to proceed. Paradoxically, if you are one that doesn’t have the constitution, by the outworkings of nature, to desire hope and achievement and creativity and love even and especially in light of any knowledge that we are likely highly determined, you are doomed to fatalism, looking back in retrospect.

That means that you are the one here, if determinism obtains, that will fall under the wheels of fatalism and nihilism, if knowledge of determinism should obtain. This explains why you insist that fatalism is entailed by such knowledge – for you, perhaps it is. Maybe that’s your destiny! Weird, huh?

I think you will find that the evidence is that such is not entailed for a great many others, though, who through the workings of nature, have constitutions that can behold the science of determinism, shrug, and get back to work building a happy and successful future.

-TS

 

[tonyrey]

That is all the more reason for** not**

regarding this universe as a closed system in which everything is explained by physical laws. It is a undeniable fact that the power of reason is one of the most outstanding features of our universe. We are the only known beings who are aware that the universe exists. There may be other rational beings but that would not alter the significance of the power of reason in the slightest.Well, it’s certainly outstanding to us (and any sentient alien life), I’ll grant. But again, that’s an ego-centric – er, anthropocentric – view. The universe as a whole doesn’t care, can’t care, if it’s impersonal.
It’s a ratiocentric point of view shared by every rational person throughout the universe. The impersonality of the intelligible universe merely serves to highlight the inadequacy of the “non-intelligent origin of persons” theory.

I think it’s a colossal problem! For one thing unlike any other living organism we are aware of the future. In addition if you believe the mind is (or is the result of) neural activity neuroscientists should be able to predict human behaviour accurately.

In principle, perhaps, but not even in principle if our brains have stochastic features – randomness worked in some ways at low levels. In AI software development, for example, a lot of times “close calls” between choices are reduced to a “roll of the dice”, making the agent perfectly unpredictable for that action. And of course, as actions chain up causally, just a few randomized events branches the worlds out in starkly different directions.

You are neglecting our awareness and insight which enable us to behave consistently by taking randomness into account. The notion that human choices are comparable to rolls of the dice is certainly consistent with your idea that rationality and free will are efficacious illusions.

It’s unknown how much randomness affects our choices right now, but to the extent it does, we are “free”, free from forward looking deterministic predictions on particulars, anyway.

Being affected by randomness is not genuine freedom. It is simply a form of ignorance which would limit our freedom if we allowed it to interfere with our choices. It would certainly not diminish our responsibility in a court of law. “I plead guilty, My Lord, because randomness affected my choices!”

If we are biological machines all our activities are predictable in principle. So the future is not as obscure as you imply. Without belief in spiritual reality or free will it is inevitable that people will become progressively more fatalistic when they are confronted with mechanistic explanations of every aspect of their lives down to the very last detail… The “efficacious illusion” will no longer be confined to a small elite and it will cease to be efficacious!

Fatalism is a choice, just like hope, and the desire for virtue and progress. How can beliefs, hopes and desires be choices if they are caused by physical events?

So long as the future remains unknown for us, the ‘determinedness’ of that future is a moot issue; if you can’t know you aren’t one to have the desire to hope, to strive, to struggle for what’s good, you may be just that, and that’s all you need to proceed.

If the future remains as unknown as you claim you have no basis for hope or anything else! And to struggle for good when you believe it is an illusion hardly makes sense…

With modern media it is impossible for people not to be strongly influenced by scientific discoveries which are interpreted as further evidence that human beings areno more than advanced apes whose behaviour is determined by physical laws.

Paradoxically, if you are one that doesn’t have the constitution, by the outworkings of nature, to desire hope and achievement and creativity and love even and especially in light of any knowledge that we are likely highly determined, you are doomed to fatalism, looking back in retrospect.

You are assuming that your beliefs and desires for hope, achievement, creativity and love are determined simply because you have them and have no control over yourself! So in fact you are succumbing to fatalism. There is also a serious drawback. You cannot assume you will continue to have a positive outlook because future events may well force you to change to a negative outlook - given that you deny we have free will…

That means that you are the one here, if determinism obtains, that will fall under the wheels of fatalism and nihilism., if knowledge of determinism should obtain. This explains why you insist that fatalism is entailed by such knowledge – for you, perhaps it is. Maybe that’s your destiny! Weird, huh?

The difference between us is that you entertain the possibility that determinism is true and I don’t. I am convinced that it is self-refuting - which is a good topic for another thread - that we have the power of self-determination and shape our own destiny. If determinism were true your belief about my destiny would be determined and there would not be the slightest reason to believe it is true… It could depend on what you had for breakfast!

I think you will find that the evidence is that such is not entailed for a great many others, though, who through the workings of nature, have constitutions that can behold the science of determinism, shrug, and get back to work building a happy and successful future.

In other words they don’t really believe it is true and, like you, behave as if they can think for themselves, control themselves and change their environment. The best test of any philosophical theory is whether it works in practice and corresponds to daily life…

 

[tonyrey]

I don’t know the limits, but I have the intuition that there must be some, just because the processes are constrained by physical law.

Your belief in the value of intuition weakens your theory that the mind is mechanistic. The unknown limits to emergence weaken your theory that mindless matter accounts for the mind.

If by “superior” we mean “performs better”, you’ve got that wrong as a rule.

Brute search operates within a designed system and the results are evaluated by intelligence - which also selects the best results.

“Superior” as you use it is an expression of vanity.

“Superior” is an objective description which reflects your own belief in higher levels of reality. You don’t put intelligence on a par with processes which lack intelligence.

Remember David and Goliath?!

Sure!

Intelligence conquers brute force.

We can’t see “beyond” the Big Bang, but what we can see of its aftermath looks perfectly impersonal, and we see the personal emerging out of that.

You are assuming that temporal precedence implies ontological precedence. We can see none of the most important things in life: truth, goodness, freedom and love. We cannot see persons, intelligence, consciousness, feelings or decisions but that does not mean they don’t exist. Observability is a physicalist criterion of reality which cannot be consistently maintained.

Emergent properties are difficult because they are latent, secondary, and manifest through aggregation, recombination and configuration. But that just means they are “expert mode” puzzles for science to work on.

Latency means that there is hidden potential which need not be there. Can you give any reason why or how it is there?

“obviously a Creator!” on the other hand, is the apotheosis of superstitious response.
There cannot be a more anti-scientific reaction than that.

Thank God for that! I don’t subscribe to scientism…… Can you refer to a source of order and creative energy in the universe? To ascribe it to matter is undoubtedly “the apotheosis of superstitious response”. We know for a fact that intelligence is a creative source which produces order. It is a simpler and more adequate explanation than matter.

This is what the knowledge-hungry rational mind resists strongly.

A genuinely rational mind is not satisfied with physical facts and scientific explanation. There is far more in life than what you can see and touch, weigh and measure…

As far as we know there is only one universe yet that does not preclude probability assessments of rival theories.

It does preclude that. If you doubt that, show me a probability assessment that factors out the possible explanations. Seriously, one cannot inquire into such things with a serious mind and rely on the casual intuition of what is “more likely” or “less likely”.

Do you believe all cosmological theories are equally satisfactory? If so you are implicitly assessing their objective probability:
Are Cosmological Theories Compatible With All Possible Evidence? A Missing Epistemological Link - Dr. Nick Bostrom
209.85.229.132/search?q=cache:nEDTcqUnRjkJ:www.anthropic-principle.com/preprints/cos/Are%2520Cosmological%2520Theories%2520Compatible%2520With%2520All%2520Possible%2520Evidence.doc+probability+of+cosmological+theories&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk

As Hume remarked , “the cause ought only to be proportioned to the effect”. So the onus is to prove that impersonal forces produce persons.

Agreed, and that is the nature of the ongoing enterprise, and it proceeds apace. Natural models for the emergence of life, persons and mind are far from complete, but are substantial and coherent, nonetheless.

That is a question of opinion. If they result in the need for efficacious illusions they certainly become unsubstantial and incoherent.

Why do you restrict observations to those which are physical when considering the origin of reality as a whole?

That’s the only way “observe” obtains meaning, so far as I’m aware. How might we go and collect “non-physical measurements” together, or write down the “supernatural observations” we have witnessed together?

Don’t you observe your thoughts, feelings and decisions? Is reality necessarily measurable? You are omitting observations of our mental processes and also overlooking the possibility of spiritual energy - which is the simplest and most direct explanation of consciousness, creativity, rationality, free will and love. The power of the mind is not something that can be ignored or dismissed outright…

Again, this is a vacuous rendering of “simplest” as a matter of explanation.
It’s not an explanation at all. Is “lightning is the manifest wrath of the gods” a simple explanation? No, because it is completely unanchored, relying on agents and entities that are unknown, unavailable and perfectly indistinguishable from “imaginary”. The “simple” part is artificial, unaccountable to the obligations real explanations have, to referring to referents and agents that are known or observed to be real, and to exist.

By rejecting the “simple” part you reduce the mind to what Hume’s bundle of perceptions - which eliminates any obligations, whether intellectual, moral or social! The only agents left are electrical currents.

So, too with your superstitions about the mind.

So, too with your superstition about matter since superstition is "a belief or practice resulting from ignorance, fear of the unknown,** trust in magic or** chance, or a false conception of causation.

 

[tonyrey]

Touchstone;5883738:

It’s a ratiocentric

point of view shared by every rational person throughout the universe.
I apologise for the typo errors in this post. I find them extremely distasteful. I transfer what I have written from Wordpad and they usually disappear. Please ignore them…

 

[Touchstone]

tonyrey:
It’s a ratiocentric point of view shared by every rational person throughout the universe. The impersonality of the intelligible universe merely serves to highlight the inadequacy of the “non-intelligent origin of persons” theory.
You’ll note my use of “anthropocentric” – that covers all the sentience we’re aware of. But you have me confused: “inadequacy” for what purpose? It sounds like your bar is “that doesn’t make me happy”. The facts are what they are, regardless, though, right? Your way or mine (or some other), the way things are doesn’t depend on its adequacy in pleasing us.

You are neglecting our awareness and insight which enable us to behave consistently by taking randomness into account. The notion that human choices are comparable to rolls of the dice is certainly consistent with your idea that rationality and free will are efficacious illusions.

Choices may well include random features, but they are not randomness themselves. Our choices stem in any case from strong outside influences in predictable ways – not random at all. But the universe is “spiced” with randomness all through it, and probabilistic outcomes are the most fundamental building blocks of macro events for us. Our thoughts, like the world around us, appear to have high degrees of regularity, but also enough chance built in on the margins to make “crystal balls” a non-starter.

Being affected by randomness is not genuine freedom. It is simply a form of ignorance which would limit our freedom if we allowed it to interfere with our choices. It would certainly not diminish our responsibility in a court of law. “I plead guilty, My Lord, because randomness affected my choices!”

Yeah, the way it works in a compatibilist view, one that acknowledges the influences of determinism and causality, is that if the choices are determined, the consequences are, as well (see Mackie, for example). But the real back-breaker here is the idea, if you have it, that there is something besides law and chance to appeal to. What? This is a really interesting chase, as if you say “my choices are free” in some non-law, non-chance way, I will wonder what tips your choice one way or another. Cause and no-cause (law and chance) exhaust the possibilities as far as I can tell. What else is there?

If you say “non-random mind, unaffected by external causes”, I will say it is random, as that’s precisely what random means – no discernible purpose, plan or pattern. If you say you have a purpose, the automatic question is this “whence this purpose”. And the regress cycles anew.

How can beliefs, hopes and desires be choices if they are caused by physical events?

Because we aren’t aware of all the determining factors. From our perspective, the choosing process inscrutable, and that’s all it takes to make “free” meaningful in that context.

If the future remains as unknown as you claim you have no basis for hope or anything else! And to struggle for good when you believe it is an illusion hardly makes sense…

I don’t think good is an illusion at all. When a hungry child is fed, it is good, and the “determinedness” of that one way or another doesn’t diminish its goodness. You are confusing the values with the lines of control and causation over events, here.

You are assuming that your beliefs and desires for hope, achievement, creativity and love are determined simply because you have them and have no control over yourself!

Again, not assuming that, concluding that, and not simply because I have them. I have empathy, for example, because it’s a basic instinct, something that comes standard with my physiology. I didn’t ask to be born, or request to be a human. But here I am. These are the cards I was dealt, and I didn’t get to choose them. I have empathy, and a deep connection to other humans, because I am a social animal, a human. I’m sure, from looking around, that there are ways I could have been abused as a child, or suffered circumstances that disrupted and disabled a keen sense of empathy that comes naturally to me.

So in fact you are succumbing to fatalism. There is also a serious drawback. You cannot assume you will continue to have a positive outlook because future events may well force you to change to a negative outlook - given that you deny we have free will…

I don’t assume I have such control of the future. Look around, read some books. Many people do maintain such a disposition throughout their lives, but many do not. I certainly didn’t expect to be an atheist now ten years ago.

I don’t deny we have free will. I just understand that “free” in an unbounded, unattached sense is incoherent, meaningless. We have a very effective veil over deeper dynamics and causes in our mind that make our free will effective for living. When I’m sitting at a blackjack table, deciding whether I should hit or not, the cards are what they are, even though I can’t see them. Already. My ignorance of the facts that remain unkown is what makes the choice a choice. Think about it. If all the cards were laid out, face up, there’d be no choice, no freedom, save for “do I want to lose on purpose”. Winning or losing is fully determined in that case – the dealer doesn’t even need me around.

Not knowing the crucial particulars makes all the difference.

 

[Touchstone]

tonyrey:

The difference between us is that you entertain the possibility that determinism is true and I don’t. I am convinced that it is self-refuting - which is a good topic for another thread - that we have the power of self-determination and shape our own destiny. If determinism were true your belief about my destiny would be determined and there would not be the slightest reason to believe it is true… It could depend on what you had for breakfast!

Facts are not, and cannot be self-refuting. That’s an outcome for an argument. Outcomes are either determined fully, somewhat, or not at all, and that is an aspect of reality, totally non-contingent upon any arguments made for it. In a universe where there is no chance at all (not my view), a “hard determinist” universe, we can have the very same kind of rationality, and the very same sense of our own autonomy.

Reality is deniable, but not refutable.

In other words they don’t really believe it is true and, like you, behave as if they can think for themselves, control themselves and change their environment. The best test of any philosophical theory is whether it works in practice and corresponds to daily life…

Yes, those are good points to evaluate, but the evidence and witness of the world around us is important to include as well, and that’s where mystical philosophies really fall down hard. Even outside of the evidential analysis, the dualist model doesn’t cohere in everyday life. Where does choice come from in your view? You have no idea, no idea about this basic fact of everyday life, this process that you invoked a thousand times a day, and it’s a complete, utter mystery to you – not as just an unknown, but as tangle of incoherence.

-TS

 

[brandymmiller]

But why should I become a Muslim and praise this God Himself in a very certain manner?

Because praising God is showing Him gratitude, and gratitude is good for you.

 

[tonyrey]

tonyrey

In other words you believe in objective truth - which is an intangible aspect of reality.

In a universe where there is no chance at all (not my view), a “hard determinist” universe, we can have the very same kind of rationality, and the very same sense of our own autonomy.

I disagree. If all our thoughts were determined by physical events they would lead to conclusions which are more likely to be false than true. There are an immense number of ways of being wrong but only one way of being right. This is illustrated by the fallibility of instincts which are restricted to a very limited range of circumstances and very often lead to disaster. Thoughts are in a far more precarious situation because they are concerned not just with physical survival but many other subjects which have no bearing on survival. If our brains were our only source and instrument of knowledge our interpretation of reality would be completely mechanistic and automatic. Differences of opinion would depend entirely on differences of heredity and environment, none of which guarantee success. They would lead to greater chances of survival but survival alone does not explain all human accomplishments. In fact the success of science prejudices our chances of survival! But it also demonstrates our insight, mental independence and flexibility of thought - which are quite beyond the scope of any bio-electrical machine.

In other words they don’t really believe it is true and, like you, behave as if they can think for themselves, control themselves and change their environment. The best test of any philosophical theory is whether it works in practice and corresponds to daily life…

Yes, those are good points to evaluate, but the evidence and witness of the world around us is important to include as well, and that’s where mystical philosophies really fall down hard. Even outside of the evidential analysis, the dualist model doesn’t cohere in everyday life. Where does choice come from in your view? You have no idea, no idea about this basic fact of everyday life, this process that you invoked a thousand times a day, and it’s a complete, utter mystery to you – not as just an unknown, but as tangle of incoherence.

Choice certainly does not come from a collection of electrical impulses. In fact it is reduced by materialism to a mechanical event which amounts to flicking a switch in the brain. What flicks the switch? A biochemical state which has no awareness of, or insight into, its activity. Choice therefore becomes an illusion in the materialist’s scheme of things. It is undoubtedly a mystery but then so is the existence of matter, atomic particles and the quanta of physical energy. Your rejection of dualism implies that you have insight into the nature of reality - which is obviously absurd. The dualist model is the very basis of everyday life because we regard persons as free, autonomous, responsible beings with a right to life and self-determination. You opt for particles but the vast majority opt for persons. Try standing up in court and saying “I’m not guilty, members of the jury, because you have no idea, no idea about this basic fact of everyday life which you call “choice”. It is merely a process you invoke a thousand times a day, and it’s a complete, utter mystery to you – not as just an unknown, but as a tangle of incoherence”!

 

[tonyrey]

You’ll note my use of “anthropocentric” – that covers all the sentience we’re aware of.
I specified ratiocentric because is no reason to believe we are the only rational beings in the universe. The fact that the universe is orderly and intelligible reinforces the belief that rationality is a primary factor of reality.

…“inadequacy” for what purpose?

To explain the facts. It is impossible to deny that persons are prima facie unlikely to be the products of particles.

Our thoughts, like the world around us, appear to have high degrees of regularity, but also enough chance built in on the margins to make “crystal balls” a non-starter.

Those high degrees of regularity exclude the possibility of choice.

Yeah, the way it works in a compatibilist view, one that acknowledges the influences of determinism and causality, is that if the choices are determined, the consequences are, as well.

They are determined but there are two forms of determinism: rational and non-rational. A conscious, purposeful decision or a non-conscious, purposeless cause.

Cause and no-cause (law and chance) exhaust the possibilities as far as I can tell. What else is there?

Entities we refer to as persons! The beings you accept as the highest form of known reality.

You have a purpose, the automatic question is this “whence this purpose”. And the regress cycles anew.

There is no need for a regress if one accepts the mind as the ultimate reality which is creative, conscious, rational and purposeful. Since existence is infinitely valuable the purpose of existence is simply to exist, to explore and enjoy the inexhaustible possibilities of existence!

And to struggle for good when you believe it is an illusion hardly makes sense…

I don’t think good is an illusion at all. When a hungry child is fed, it is good, and the “determinedness” of that one way or another doesn’t diminish its goodness.

You are accepting goodness as an objective reality, a view which is inconsistent with the ultimacy of atomic particles - which are indifferent to what happens to animals and human beings. Reality ceases to be amoral if goodness is more than a human concept.

I didn’t ask to be born, or request to be a human.

You didn’t ask to be born or request to be a human but what does that mean? That you are thrust into existence without having any choice in the matter? How could you choose to exist if you didn’t exist?! Now that you exist at least you have a choice: to exist or not to exist… The gift of life is potentially valuable and not to be regarded as a misfortune unless one is a pessimist like Schopenhauer - but I am sure you are not. .

I have empathy, and a deep connection to other humans, because I am a social animal, a human. I’m sure, from looking around, that there are ways I could have been abused as a child, or suffered circumstances that disrupted and disabled a keen sense of empathy that comes naturally to me.

Even though empathy is a basic instinct it is not coercive. The immense amount of unnecessary suffering in the world is ample proof of that. Not all of it can be attributed to a lack of empathy caused by circumstances - unless you deny that we are ever responsible for what we do or fail to do. If you do you belong once again to a very small minority who reject the concepts of innocence and guilt. Everything is permissible for those who believe we are incapable of self-control…

You cannot assume you will continue to have a positive outlook because future events may well force you to change to a negative outlook - given that you deny we have free will…

I don’t assume I have such control of the future. Many people do maintain such a disposition throughout their lives, but many do not. I certainly didn’t expect to be an atheist now ten years ago.

Ignorance of the future does not entail total lack of self-control or control of events. You became an atheist not because you were compelled to do so but because you used your power of reason and concluded that it was more rational than being a theist. If you were compelled then it was not a rational decision. In fact it was not a decision at all in the usual sense of the term. A decision is generally regarded as the expression and implementation of a person’s considered judgement, not as the result of neuronal activity. You may disagree with this view but the onus is again on you to justify your position.

Not knowing the crucial particulars makes all the difference.

You are arguing that it is necessary to be ignorant in order to make a choice a genuine choice. Yet you have conceded that it is still a choice even if you want to lose on purpose. You can equally well choose to win on purpose. And that is the situation we are often in. We have to choose whether to help hungry children or ignore their plight. Our choice is not influenced by thoughts about the future. Even if we are mistaken and our choice to help them comes to nothing it is still a free choice we have made. Why do we choose to help them? Because we know that it is good to help them and evil not to help them if we are capable of doing so. Our knowledge does not compel us to make that choice. We cannot understand how we are free to choose but the absence of an explanation, as you have often observed, does not imply that it is a false belief. Since the freedom to choose what to think is a necessary condition of rationality it is obviously a more acceptable belief than mental determinism.

 

[Touchstone]

I specified ratiocentric because is no reason to believe we are the only rational beings in the universe. The fact that the universe is orderly and intelligible reinforces the belief that rationality is a primary factor of reality.

OK, we’re definitely going around in circles now. Too much deja vu here, so I’ll answer here, but with a mind to winding things down. If you have new directions to sail on this, I’m interested, but this now a tired rut we’re in.

On rationality, there’s two factors at work. First, that our universe would be law-based in some sense that is comprehensible. Other possible universes, cosmologically speaking, are completely chaotic. The second factor is the emergence of some being that is able to actual do the the comprehending. But this is an anthropic principle artifact: if the universe weren’t not comprehensible, we wouldn’t be here to comprehend it (and talk about it). For all universes where minds exist that comprehend, there is a transcendental predicate of a universe that supports that. That’s a “factor of reality”, but a transcendental one, only.

To explain the facts. It is impossible to deny that persons are prima facie unlikely to be the products of particles.

I think the prima facie analysis is “we don’t have a way to know”. Any intuitions you are basing that on aren’t worthy of the use of the term “unlikely”. There’s no way to know that by intuition or “common sense”. On the face of it, the rational mind shrugs. Don’t know, and can’t say by a such superficial methods.

They are determined but there are two forms of determinism: rational and non-rational. A conscious, purposeful decision or a non-conscious, purposeless cause.

There’s not even two. Determinism either obtains or does not. If we say a cause is due to a “conscious choice”, what determined that choice? Either something or nothing. If it’s nothing, it’s not determinism, by definition. If it’s “something”, then it’s determinism, but by definition, determined, having nothing ultimately to do with choice.

You seem to have this mystical third category you posit, that a cause can be “uncaused” (not the result of determinism itself) and yet “caused by purpose”. I suggest that is a convenient but glaring contradiction in your views about causality and effects.

Entities we refer to as persons! The beings you accept as the highest form of known reality.

Now you are mixing your categories. You see persons as “third category” to “caused and uncaused”? Not the use of “un-” there as a prefix – it’s a simple negation, exhausting all the possibilities. But you maintain that a “person” is something that transcends “caused” and “uncaused” - and is described by neither?

There is no need for a regress if one accepts the mind as the ultimate reality which is creative, conscious, rational and purposeful. Since existence is infinitely valuable the purpose of existence is simply to exist, to explore and enjoy the inexhaustible possibilities of existence!

That doesn’t escape the regress at all. Why is existence infinitely valuable? Whence this valuation? If you say “It just is!”, I will consider that a concession to my point, an admission that the regress just gets put to stop arbitrarily.

You are accepting goodness as an objective reality, a view which is inconsistent with the ultimacy of atomic particles - which are indifferent to what happens to animals and human beings. Reality ceases to be amoral if goodness is more than a human concept.

Levels of description error, once again. Particles themselves aren’t conscious, or moral, but some very complex collections of particles certainly are. Again, the naïve reductionism at the expense of your understanding phenomena at higher levels of description. No water molecule is a hurricane unto itself, right? Prima Facie, hurricane’s don’t happen, don’t exist!!!

-TS

 

[Touchstone]

You didn’t ask to be born or request to be a human but what does that mean? That you are thrust into existence without having any choice in the matter? How could you choose to exist if you didn’t exist?! Now that you exist at least you have a choice: to exist or not to exist… The gift of life is potentially valuable and not to be regarded as a misfortune unless one is a pessimist like Schopenhauer - but I am sure you are not.

I exist, and have the drive to live and thrive. These are brute facts for me, and, observing a lot of other people in my 40-some years now, these are the existential facts for a whole lot of people. Life is good, even when it’s bad, and every moment is precious, just because I have this drive to live innate in my physiology. The spider I just killed in the bathroom for my wife had the very same drive – it did it’s best to evade the magazine in my hand, unsuccessfully, but not for lack of trying!

But to suppose there must be some cosmic, personal “why” for these brute facts is to give the game of reasoning away from the very start. It’s fine to contemplate as a possibility, a competing hypothesis. But it’s just completely bogus, intellectually (emotionally is a different matter) to take that as a given, or as the cosmic validation of some intuition you may have on the matter. This is how the mind gets to marching in the wrong direction from the very first step.

Even though empathy is a basic instinct it is not coercive. The immense amount of unnecessary suffering in the world is ample proof of that. Not all of it can be attributed to a lack of empathy caused by circumstances - unless you deny that we are ever responsible for what we do or fail to do. If you do you belong once again to a very small minority who reject the concepts of innocence and guilt. Everything is permissible for those who believe we are incapable of self-control…

It’s moot question even then. If someone is incapable of controlling his own murderous urges, and acts out on them, even by some deterministic cause, we still imprison, restrain, execute, or otherwise remove him from a position where he can be a threat. The “free will-ness” is irrelevant at that point. It’s a practical necessity.

I don’t think empathy is coercive either as a feature of psychology. Man has a empathic disposition, but is also intensely self-interested, and also aggressive, opportunistic. These are urges and dispositions that compete and interact in very complex and sometimes (for what we understand now) inscrutable ways.

Ignorance of the future does not entail total lack of self-control or control of events. You became an atheist not because you were compelled to do so but because you used your power of reason and concluded that it was more rational than being a theist. If you were compelled then it was not a rational decision.

At this point, I give up in trying to understand what you mean by “rational decision”. Let’s suppose it is in my genes (this is not how human physiology/psychology works, but suppose for the moment) that I am to “rational” with the same determinism that my eyes are blue. if that’s the case, being “rational” isn’t my choice, any more than the color of my irises.

Now, since I’m “destined to be rational”, what do I do? Well, I don’t buy the claims of God’s existence, because to do so would not be rational! So I’m forced as it were, by my biology, to be an agnostic/atheist. My powers of reason were the VERY THING that compelled me to it. To decide any other way would have been to “change my own eye color”.

On your end, though, it seems you use “rational choice” as interchangeable with “random number generator”, where “rational” just means “unpredictable”.

-TS

 

[Touchstone]

In fact it was not a decision at all in the usual sense of the term. A decision is generally regarded as the expression and implementation of a person’s considered judgement, not as the result of neuronal activity. You may disagree with this view but the onus is again on you to justify your position.

Well, we know neuronal activity is implicated. You can watch it happen. You can destroythe neurons and watch judgment stop happening. Just by parsimony, nothing more is needed. The mystical claims of some “immaterial mind” are just superfluous to a economical, monist understanding. Judgment is neuronal activity, as best we can tell.
You are arguing that it is necessary to be ignorant in order to make a choice a genuine choice. Yet you have conceded that it is still a choice even if you want to lose on purpose.
It’s no different, it’s just a predicate. Deciding if I want to play blackjack at all will determine the availability of choices about hitting or standing on hands I’m dealt. I don’t decide on those questions if I’m not at that table playing. That’s all that meant.

You can equally well choose to win on purpose.

You can choose to try, yes, but the outcomes are not fully in your (or my) control. Winning is not just a matter of unilateral selection.

And that is the situation we are often in. We have to choose whether to help hungry children or ignore their plight. Our choice is not influenced by thoughts about the future.

It’s not??? I believe in my case, it’s heavily influence by thoughts about the future. What do I desire for this child? What kind of world do I want this one to become? What kinds of worlds do each of my possible choices for action (or inaction) lead to?

These are thoughts about the future, and they weigh heavily on my choices on those questions?

Even if we are mistaken and our choice to help them comes to nothing it is still a free choice we have made. Why do we choose to help them? Because we know that it is good to help them and evil not to help them if we are capable of doing so. Our knowledge does not compel us to make that choice. We cannot understand how we are free to choose but the absence of an explanation, as you have often observed, does not imply that it is a false belief. Since the freedom to choose what to think is a necessary condition of rationality it is obviously a more acceptable belief than mental determinism.

The absence of an explanation doesn’t falsify the hypothesis, agreed. But that doesn’t mean we are justified in thinking anything we’d like to plug into our “unknowns”, if we take our epistemology seriously. Here, you are committed to the worst kind of hypothesis, the unfalsifiable hypothesis. If there’s something more than just neurons and other brain/body parts involved, I’m correctable by the discovery of those other factors in a positive way. But as you’ve made clear here, there is no falsifying your idea of the immaterial mind. It’s simply not possible IN PRINCIPLE for you. And this it will ever be thus, and the evidence and reality around us do not even need to be consulted further.

-TS

 

[tonyrey]

I specified ratiocentric because is no reason to believe we are the only rational beings in the universe. The fact that the universe is orderly and intelligible reinforces the belief that rationality is a primary factor of reality.

You are taking it for granted that the rational being **has to emerge - which is the issue at stake until the theory of emergence is verified. The fact that there are two **factors reinforces the view that rationality is fundamental.

But this is an anthropic principle artifact: if the universe weren’t not comprehensible, we wouldn’t be here to comprehend it (and talk about it). For all universes where minds exist that comprehend, there is a transcendental predicate of a universe that supports that. That’s a “factor of reality”, but a transcendental one, only.

The comprehensibility of the universe in itself is evidence that it is more likely to have a rational foundation. There are countless possible comprehensible universes but a far more limited number of comprehensible ones - and still fewer which contain minds which comprehend them.

To explain the facts. It is impossible to deny that persons are prima facie unlikely to be the products of particles.

I think the prima facie analysis is “we don’t have a way to know”. Any intuitions you are basing that on aren’t worthy of the use of the term “unlikely”. There’s no way to know that by intuition or “common sense”. On the face of it, the rational mind shrugs. Don’t know, and can’t say by a such superficial methods.

Let’s put it to the test. You observe a strange being with a strange power on a strange planet which lacks that strange power. Would you jump to the conclusion that the strange being and the strange power have been produced by the strange planet?

They are determined but there are two forms of determinism: rational and non-rational. A conscious, purposeful decision or a non-conscious, purposeless cause.

There’s not even two. Determinism either obtains or does not. If we say a cause is due to a “conscious choice”, what determined that choice? Either something or nothing. If it’s nothing, it’s not determinism, by definition. If it’s “something”, then it’s determinism, but by definition, determined, having nothing ultimately to do with choice.

You are neglecting self-determinism which has everything to do with a rational choice.

You seem to have this mystical third category you posit, that a cause can be “uncaused” (not the result of determinism itself) and yet “caused by purpose”. I suggest that is a convenient but glaring contradiction in your views about causality and effects.

Far from being a glaring contradiction it is the universal presupposition in every court of law that a person is the cause of his/her behaviour. Your mechanistic view of causality is not reflected in the civilised view that we are capable of premeditation and are responsible for what we do.

Entities we refer to as persons! The beings you accept as the highest form of known reality.

Now you are mixing your categories. You see persons as “third category” to “caused and uncaused”? Not the use of “un-” there as a prefix – it’s a simple negation, exhausting all the possibilities. But you maintain that a “person” is something that transcends “caused” and “uncaused” - and is described by neither?

I am not alone in that view which is shared by the vast majority of civilised persons. Once again you are neglecting the possibility of an action being determined by the self. Your categories of causality are arbitrarily restricted to purposeless objects.

There is no need for a regress if one accepts the mind as the ultimate reality which is creative, conscious, rational and purposeful. Since existence is infinitely valuable the purpose of existence is simply to exist, to explore and enjoy the inexhaustible possibilities of existence!

That doesn’t escape the regress at all. Why is existence infinitely valuable? Whence this valuation?

Existence is infinitely valuable because it is an infinite source of opportunities for activity. If you deny that opportunities for activity are valuable you are contradicting the value of your own rational activity and thereby refuting the value of every assertion you make.

If you say “It just is!”, I will consider that a concession to my point, an admission that the regress just gets put to stop arbitrarily.

You have stated that life is valuable because of what it offers and now you question its value. Don’t you think you are being inconsistent?

You are accepting goodness as an objective reality, a view which is inconsistent with the ultimacy of atomic particles - which are indifferent to what happens to animals and human beings. Reality ceases to be amoral if is more than a human concept.

Levels of description error, once again. Particles themselves aren’t conscious, or moral, but some very complex collections of particles certainly are. Again, the naïve reductionism at the expense of your understanding phenomena at higher levels of description. No water molecule is a hurricane unto itself, right? Prima Facie, hurricane’s don’t happen, don’t exist!!!

A very unconvincing analogy - given that it is concerned solely with physical phenomena. And you are assuming that persons are collections of particles, with extreme complexity as the only explanation of consciousness, rationality, autonomy, value and purpose. Why did the increase in complexity occur?

 

[tonyrey]

I exist, and have the drive to live and thrive. These are brute facts for me, and, observing a lot of other people in my 40-some years now, these are the existential facts for a whole lot of people. Life is good, even when it’s bad, and every moment is precious, just because I have this drive to live innate in my physiology.

Life is good not only because you have the drive to live but also because you enjoy many different activities and fulfil your potential.

But to suppose there must be some cosmic, personal “why” for these brute facts is to give the game of reasoning away from the very start. It’s fine to contemplate as a possibility, a competing hypothesis. But it’s just completely bogus, intellectually (emotionally is a different matter) to take that as a given, or as the cosmic validation of some intuition you may have on the matter. This is how the mind gets to marching in the wrong direction from the very first step.

Is it not intellectually bogus to accept the answers to “Why?” in every aspect of your daily life and yet ignore it with regard to the origin of everything you treasure and enjoy? Can you explain how you derive “Why?” from “How”?

Even though empathy is a basic instinct it is not coercive. The immense amount of unnecessary suffering in the world is ample proof of that. Not all of it can be attributed to a lack of empathy caused by circumstances - unless you deny that we are ever responsible for what we do or fail to do. If you do you belong once again to a very small minority who reject the concepts of innocence and guilt. Everything is permissible for those who believe we are incapable of self-control…

It’s moot question even then. If someone is incapable of controlling his own murderous urges, and acts out on them, even by some deterministic cause, we still imprison, restrain, execute, or otherwise remove him from a position where he can be a threat. The “free will-ness” is irrelevant at that point. It’s a practical necessity.

Not at all. There are many undetected crimes which disprove your point. The fact remains that is permissible for those who believe we are incapable of self-control - regardless of whether they are caught. My point is that the onus is on you to establish that we are indeed incapable of self-control.

I don’t think empathy is coercive either as a feature of psychology. Man has a empathic disposition, but is also intensely self-interested, and also aggressive, opportunistic. These are urges and dispositions that compete and interact in very complex and sometimes (for what we understand now) inscrutable ways.

Do you regard your mental life as no more than a battleground between different urges and dispositions? An irrational state of affairs in fact…

Ignorance of the future does not entail total lack of self-control or control of events. You became an atheist not because you were compelled to do so but because you used your power of reason and concluded that it was more rational than being a theist. If you were compelled then it was not a rational decision.

At this point, I give up in trying to understand what you mean by “rational decision”. Let’s suppose it is in my genes (this is not how human physiology/psychology works, but suppose for the moment) that I am to “rational” with the same determinism that my eyes are blue. if that’s the case, being “rational” isn’t my choice, any more than the color of my irises.

According to this theory rational decisions are equivalent to electrical switches in the brain which are operated by non-rational processes. It follows inexorably that rational decisions are irrational. Even if we are aware of the fact there is nothing we can do about it. We are helpless in the face of the knowledge that we are making irrational decisions. Doesn’t that strike you as rather odd - and at odds with our conception of ourselves as rational beings? If you believe we are basically irrational it is absurd to become involved in rational discussions!

Now, since I’m “destined to be rational”, what do I do?

You are not destined to be rational at all! You can choose to behave irrationally!

Well, I don’t buy the claims of God’s existence, because to do so would not be rational!

And it is rational to believe in that which is irrational?!

So I’m forced as it were, by my biology, to be an agnostic/atheist.

You are not forced to be anything, according to the majority of civilised human beings.
You choose what to believe by exercising your power of reason.

My powers of reason were the VERY THING that compelled me to it. To decide any other way would have been to “change my own eye color”.

You regard reason as coercive but not empathy. Why the difference? It suggests that you regard reason as operating at a higher level than your instincts and emotions - which is in fact true. But your concept of reason is that it is a purely mechanical process whereas there is plenty of evidence that it is a creative power which is flexible and to some extent intuitive.

On your end, though, it seems you use “rational choice” as interchangeable with “random number generator”, where “rational” just means “unpredictable”.

On the contrary the truth makes us free but we have to be free to arrive at the truth! We can predict what a rational person will decide in most ordinary situations, such as not walking in front of a bus. We can also predict that a person who is suicidal may well choose to do so. That is not necessarily irrational but often the logical conclusion of his state of mind. The unpredictability of our behaviour is due partly to our power to whether to be rational or irrational.

 

[tonyrey]

-------------------------------------------CORRECTION --------------------------------

On rationality, there’s two factors at work. First, that our universe would be law-based in some sense that is comprehensible. Other possible universes, cosmologically speaking, are completely chaotic. The second factor is the emergence of some being that is able to actual do the the comprehending. But this is an anthropic principle artifact: if the universe weren’t not comprehensible, we wouldn’t be here to comprehend it (and talk about it). For all universes where minds exist that comprehend, there is a transcendental predicate of a universe that supports that. That’s a “factor of reality”, but a transcendental one, only.

1. The number of possible universes which are incomprehensible is countless.
2. The number of possible universes which are comprehensible is far fewer.
3. The number of possible universes which are comprehensible and which have
   minds which comprehend them is still fewer.
4. It is unscientific to accept our comprehensible** and **comprehended universe as a
   brute fact without any explanation of these characteristics…

There are immensely more ways of being chaotic and unintelligible than orderly and intelligible… let alone the number of ways of having order, intelligibility and intellectual insight!

 

[tonyrey]

tonyrey

“implicated” is the significant word. The only verifiable conclusion is that neuronal activity is **correlated **with judgment. You cannot watch a decision being made. You can watch only the **result **of the decision being made. If you think you can **equate **a thought, feeling or decision with electrical activity the onus is on you to prove it.

You can destroy the neurons and watch judgment stop happening.

All we know is that physical activity ceases and the mind is prevented from receiving sense data.

By parsimony, nothing more is needed. The mystical claims of some “immaterial mind” are just superfluous to a economical, monist understanding. Judgment is neuronal activity, as best we can tell.

A multitude of non-conscious neurons is less economical than one conscious mind? An entity with intangible thoughts, feelings and decisions is a less adequate explanation than electrical impulses that can be measured? Only a superficial mind believes the mind is superfluous! Your mind encompasses matter in more ways than one…

You can choose to try, yes, but the outcomes are not fully in your (or my) control.

The question is not whether the outcomes are fully under our control but whether they are under our control at all.

I believe in my case, it’s heavily influenced by thoughts about the future. What do I desire for this child? What kind of world do I want this one to become? What kinds of worlds do each of my possible choices for action (or inaction) lead to?

I’m referring to our choice of the principle: whether to help hungry children or not. That in itself has no reference to the past, present or future. We consider and compare different possibilities at a theoretical level especially when they concern moral issues. In our mind’s eye we contemplate different kinds of world in order to decide which is better. And only then do we go on to the details of implementation.

Our knowledge does not compel us to make that choice. We cannot understand how we are free to choose but the absence of an explanation, as you have often observed, does not imply that it is a false belief. Since the freedom to choose what to think is a necessary condition of rationality it is obviously a more acceptable belief than mental determinism.

Here, you are committed to the worst kind of hypothesis, the unfalsifiable hypothesis.

How would you falsify the hypothesis that organs like the brain and nervous system account for every single human idea, emotion, value, choice, decision, goal, ideal and aspiration?

If there’s something more than just neurons and other brain/body parts involved, I’m correctable by the discovery of those other factors in a positive way.

You have only to look within yourself… If you find nothing then you are justified in being a materialist.

But as you’ve made clear here, there is no falsifying your idea of the immaterial mind. It’s simply not possible IN PRINCIPLE for you. And this it will ever be thus, and the evidence and reality around us do not even need to be consulted further.

There is no way of falsifying IN PRINCIPLE your person=neuronal activity theory. How do you propose to establish it beyond all reasonable doubt, especially when it conflicts with universally accepted beliefs in human rights, obligations, freedom and responsibility?

 

[Touchstone]

You are taking it for granted that the rational being **has to emerge - which is the issue at stake until the theory of emergence is verified. The fact that there are two **factors reinforces the view that rationality is fundamental.

No, it doesn’t. If rationality is fundamental – you understand that word, yes? – then all of them should be rational, comprehensible universes. You’ve got the implications precisely reversed. In this case, where so many other universes are not like that, rationality and comprehensibilty would be incidental – it clearly cannot be a fundamental aspect of universes if so many permutations lack that structure.

The comprehensibility of the universe in itself is evidence that it is more likely to have a rational foundation. There are countless possible comprehensible universes but a far more limited number of comprehensible ones - and still fewer which contain minds which comprehend them.

This is the point I made just above to your previous paragraph. If you win the lottery, does that make you suspect it was rigged in your favor? By your measure, here, it would, it must. You have conflated incidence with necessity. It might be that your winning lottery ticket was a matter of chance, and your winning would not be an indicator that there was a “lottery design” in your favor. You have noted that you have an intelligent mind comprehending an intelligible universe, and concluded that the lottery was rigged in your favor. You don’t know the odds, you can’t see the metaphysics, you don’t know scratch about the real dynamics that obtain, but yet, a hunch is enough.

Let’s put it to the test. You observe a strange being with a strange power on a strange planet which lacks that strange power. Would you jump to the conclusion that the strange being and the strange power have been produced by the strange planet?

I don’t think I’d jump to any conclusion from that. From what you’ve provided, I have no basis to conclude anything at all.

You are neglecting self-determinism which has everything to do with a rational choice.
Far from being a glaring contradiction it is the universal presupposition in every court of law that a person is the cause of his/her behaviour. Your mechanistic view of causality is not reflected in the civilised view that we are capable of premeditation and are responsible for what we do.

Well, what yields choice A over choice B (and all other choices) as the result of premeditation? What differentiates “premeditation” from a random number generator, in other words? They appear to synonyms for the same “black box” in your answers, here.

I am not alone in that view which is shared by the vast majority of civilised persons. Once again you are neglecting the possibility of an action being determined by the self. Your categories of causality are arbitrarily restricted to purposeless objects.

I’ve asked, repeatedly now, what did I miss? I you say “purposeful objects” are a third class of cause, then how does that “third way” distinguish itself from a deterministic or random, or hybrid cause (law + chance)? The computers in the next room to me right now are running a big sumulation I started this morning, which will take all day. They have a purpose I have given them, programs I installed and kicked off to run the simulation. But their purpose is subordinate to mine – they have no say in the matter, or any consciousness to say anything at all. But the operate toward an end, a purpose, deterministically.

I point that out by way of illustrating that “purpose” itself doesn’t detach a thing from causal influences for that purpose, necessarily. So if you say you have “uncaused purpose”, whence that purpose, again?

-TS

 

[Touchstone]

Existence is infinitely valuable because it is an infinite source of opportunities for activity

 

[Fran65]

Just a tiny point, superstition is the irrational belief in the magical affects of specific action such as the idea of touching wood protecting from future harm. There is a big difference, often misunderstood between *faith in God *and superstition. I blame Richard Dawkins et al, for much of the confusion regarding faith and religion amongst those who follow atheism or who call themselves agnostic. In fact those with Christian and Abrahamic faith are specifically warned against magic and superstition.

Frances

 

[Touchstone]

Just a tiny point, superstition is the irrational belief in the magical affects of specific action such as the idea of touching wood protecting from future harm.

I agree.

There is a big difference, often misunderstood between *faith in God *and superstition. I blame Richard Dawkins et al, for much of the confusion regarding faith and religion amongst those who follow atheism or who call themselves agnostic. In fact those with Christian and Abrahamic faith are specifically warned against magic and superstition.

Frances

As a long-time Christian, I can totally understand that reaction. I was patently superstitious, and proudly so, but my superstition was the good kind of superstition, so it got an exemption: everything else was considered “superstitious”, but Christian superstitions were given the benefit of a double standard – Christian superstition is given a pass, and called “faith”.

The roots of this are ancient. If you read back in Exodus, and Numbers, and I think 1 Samuel, you encounter the curious practice of divination (or more precisely, I think the term may be “cleromancy”) by use of special stones associated with the priestly breastplate called *Urim *and Thummim. This was a bit of superstition that fascinated Joseph Smith Jr., by the way from his reading of the Bible, and he eventual deployed his own Urim and Thummim as divination tools in service of translating the Book of Mormon from its “reformed Egyptian” into (oddly) King James style English.

But anyway, the Urim and Thummim are examples from the Bible of precisely the kind of “touching wood” superstition you are decrying here. But those “device-driven” superstitions are simply older more primitive manifestations of superstitious thinking.

When Jesus cast the demons into the Gadarene swine, how did the villagers react? They were afraid, and pleaded with Jesus to leave! The poor demon-possessed fellows were a problem, to be sure, but now they had a sorcerer in their midst.

And right up to today. When you pray for your child to just please get a hit in the baseball game so his fragile, developing esteem won’t suffer yet another painful blow, you are indulging your superstitions. It’s well-meaning, but it’s irrational, and relies on belief in magic – your potential for availing yourself of supernatural or miraculous intervention in the natural order of events. There’s no “wood-knocking” – that’s an archaic kind of reliance on mnemonics for such actions. The “spell” needs no such device. But at its root, prayer is irrational invocation of actions with supernatural ends and effects. Every Christian’s a witch or a warlock in that respect.

I realize that’s an uncomfortable thing to read, but if you step outside the “dugout” for your “theological team” for jsut a moment, you will see that Christian superstistions are fully qualified as superstitions in the same sense as the superstitions it decries as “bad superstitions” (witchcraft, divination, etc.). Chrisitanity just presumes its authority to “authorize” it’s own superstitions as “good” while condemning the very same kinds of irrationality that don’t comport with its theological goals.

It’s said that the victors get to write the history. In terms of superstition, the “recognized magisterium” gets to assign labels like “superstition”. And Christianity applies a clearly hypocritical double-standard, embracing and even exalting its superstitions (see the eucharist/transubstantiation) will condemning the very same responses by others that have objects and aspiration that don’t affirm their doctrines. “Superstition and magic”, then, for Christianity, are really “superstition and magic that is not exempted as good or holy by the Church”.

-TS