Morality and Subjectivity

[Leela]

I seem to recall seeing some stuff suggesting that chaos theory could be linked to an explanation of free will, but since I’ve not actually read anything specific about the connection, I can’t really comment. For now, I think it’s probably enough to say that we experience what we consider to be free will.

I don’t know whether or not free will is an illusion - in that, our decisions are directed by the physical/chemical functioning of the brain, and we experience the results as “making a decision” to act. What I have observed is that many animals are self-directed, and certainly appear to be making choices between various alternatives. It may be that they are simply following desires or instincts; but I think we humans are probably doing much the same, only our more sophisticated brains afford us a greater range of desires, interests, and preferences, thus a greater selection of possible alternatives, and allow us to consider things like long-term consequences…

I agree, Sair. Free will is not an issue for nonbelievers the way that tonyrey is obsessed with trying to make it. Not believing in some extra-added ingredient that makes us free to choose does not leave us without the ability to choose.

As you say, we have a wide range of preferences and we do what we prefer to do. What we don’t have is some power to choose to prefer what we don’t prefer. How would we ever prefer to choose to do what we prefer not to do? It’s just silly.

Best,
Leela

 

[tonyrey]

I agree, Sair. Free will is not an issue for nonbelievers the way that tonyrey is obsessed with trying to make it.

The fact that you describe me as “obsessed” shows that it touches a raw nerve! I could equally well described you as obsessed with the determination to evade the issue…

Not believing in some extra-added ingredient that makes us free to choose does not leave us without the ability to choose.

Not an “extra-added ingredient” but a fact recognised in every law court throughout the world. Please explain how you choose to act in one way rather than another. What is the mechanism by which you make your choice? Is it located in the brain? If so where?

As you say, we have a wide range of preferences and we do what we prefer to do.

And why precisely do we prefer to do something? Because that is the way we have been programmed? If you have no other explanation you have to abandon the idea that you choose your preferences - or anything else for that matter.

What we don’t have is some power to choose to prefer what we don’t prefer. How would we ever prefer to choose to do what we prefer not to do? It’s just silly.

Silly in your eyes but not silly in the eyes of a judge or jury. It is your formulation that is silly. We don’t prefer to choose. We choose to do what we prefer not to do. Why? Because we have the power of self-control. Or do you deny that we have willpower? That we can control ourselves? If you don’t what enables us to do so?

 

[Leela]

The fact that you describe me as “obsessed” shows that it touches a raw nerve! I could equally well described you as obsessed with the determination to evade the issue…

I’m not evading an issue. You haven’t convinced me that there is any issue at all.

Not an “extra-added ingredient” but a fact recognised in every law court throughout the world. Please explain how you choose to act in one way rather than another. What is the mechanism by which you make your choice? Is it located in the brain? If so where?

Why do you think that I need to suggest a mechanism for choice-making to think that we make choices?

And why precisely do we prefer to do something?

We give lots of different explanations for our choices depending on the situation.

Because that is the way we have been programmed?

We are not computers. (Unless you believe in some sort of intelligent design.)

If you have no other explanation you have to abandon the idea that you choose your preferences - or anything else for that matter.

You keep saying that if I can’t suggest a mechanism for making choices then I have to abandon the idea that I make choices at all. I can’t see how one follows from the other. If I don’t know how a car works do I have to abandon the idea that cars work?

Silly in your eyes but not silly in the eyes of a judge or jury. It is your formulation that is silly.

I never heard of free will being debated in any court room.

We don’t prefer to choose. We choose to do what we prefer not to do. Why? Because we have the power of self-control. Or do you deny that we have willpower? That we can control ourselves? If you don’t what enables us to do so?

Can you give me an example of when you chose to do something that you preferred not to do? Such examples are situations where we have conflicting preferences and our stronger preferences become apparent in the choices we make.

 

[tonyrey]

I’m not evading an issue. You haven’t convinced me that there is any issue at all.

Then you are unaware of an issue that has been discussed for more than two thousand years…

Why do you think that I need to suggest a mechanism for choice-making to think that we make choices?

If the mind is the result of brain activity, i.e. a biological machine, there must be a mechanism for choice-making…

We give lots of different explanations for our choices depending on the situation.

We give reasons for our choices but, generally speaking, not explanations of what enables us to make choices.

We are not computers. (Unless you believe in some sort of intelligent design.)

Isn’t the brain - from which you believe the mind has emerged - a biological computer?

You keep saying that if I can’t suggest a mechanism for making choices then I have to abandon the idea that I make choices at all. I can’t see how one follows from the other. If I don’t know how a car works do I have to abandon the idea that cars work?

No. There are people who can explain to you how cars work…

I never heard of free will being debated in any court room.

Free will is not debated in court because it is a legal presumption - like that of innocence. The fact that mitigating circumstances are taken into account implies that a person is normally capable of self-control.

Can you give me an example of when you chose to do something that you preferred not to do?

I have often chosen to get up when I preferred to stay in bed!

Such examples are situations where we have conflicting preferences and our stronger preferences become apparent in the choices we make.

In that case we don’t make the choices. It is the relative strength of the preferences which determines which choice is made.

 

[Touchstone]

If the mind is the result of brain activity, i.e. a biological machine, there must be a mechanism for choice-making…

Yes, but so what? The implication here seems to be that one should deny observations for that which one doesn’t have exhaustive explanations, which is to say, all claims should be denied and soplipsism embraced.

If that’s not the case, then “black box empiricism” is wholly sufficient for our purposes here. Humans appear to have agency, as evidenced by their own sense of possible live choices available at various decision points, and also by their unpredictability and ostensible initiative when observed by others.

That’s all.

What is ironic about this is exchange is that it is the materialist that can point to some mechanism and and model that accounts for cognition in concrete, physical terms. Perversely, this is seen as a fault by those who embrace superstitious ideas of some “supernatural agency” – a posit totally devoid of substantiation, mechanism and grounding in reality. It’s as if those who REALLY BELIEVE IN SANTA took to scoff those who were asked to explain how and why the Santa meme worked with kids, and said they weren’t sure where it all got started as a tradition, etc…

There is no tension in saying that like all the other phenomena we see in nature, we reasonably expect that this one – human cognition – has mechanistic explanations that describe and account for it, and acknowledging that our knowledge of those processes is limited at best at this point. A hundred years ago we didn’t know about DNA, and a supernaturalist could have similarly mused that heredity was obviously miraculous and supernatural, as if it weren’t, then one must explain how it happens naturally!

That’s foolishness, and a transparent attempt to burden the other with a burden for explanation that doesn’t obtain. We observe choice. Whatever the mechanism is, we infer there is a mechnamism and governing set of processes at work by inference – that’s how the rest of reality works, so far as we are aware. Even simple things like friction are notoriously hard to explain and model, even now, but we don’t get tripped up by the goofy notion that since the exhaustive model of how friction works is still ahead of us, friction doesn’t obtain, or that it is somehow ‘magic’.

We give reasons for our choices but, generally speaking, not explanations of what enables us to make choices.

Again, a materialist can give an account that is by no means comprehensive or even robust, but just embarrasses a supernaturalist account, which is by rights no account at all, offering nothing that can be checked, modeled, verified or substantiated.

But the hypocrisy at work, here, as risible as that is, is a red herring. Saying that, as a theist, you simply “accept it as a fundamental reality” means you have accepted the worst-case scenario in terms of reasoning. You have punted, abdicated, switched your mind off to probing it further. That’s fine, that’s your right. But you are approaching this from the most irrational position possible – hand waving as a means of opting out of the question, pushing the problem towards magic where it is beyond the reach of analysis and assessment.

None of that has any bearing the matter that got this going. If you think it does, maybe you can point out what relevance this kind of response has to the subject being discussed here:

tonyrey:

Please explain how you choose to act in one way rather than another. What is the mechanism by which you make your choice? Is it located in the brain? If so where?

Don’t get me wrong. That’s a deep and fascinating question, but it’s not relevant for the objective/subjective distinctions at work here re: morality. And you should welcome that realization, for as you know, you offer the weakest of all non-answers to these very questions to be had. Whatever struggles you can put Leela through here, as a diversion, she will be well ahead of your hand-waving on this, even so. Perhaps she’s just too polite to point that out, but you underestimate your readers if you think “prove precisely how free will obtains” is a requirement for any of the questions in play here, not to mention how the sword you wield here does much more damage to your own beliefs than it can to Leela’s or mine.

-TS

 

[Touchstone]

Isn’t the brain - from which you believe the mind has emerged - a biological computer?

I can see why Leela would answer this with a ‘no’ – ‘computer’ is d@mning the brain with faint praise given how puny and clunky even the best of our computers are by comparison. But insofar as the brain is a biological machine, just one that is so much more massively parallelized and scaled beyond anything we have yet built, it’s very much a “biological computer”, so far as we can tell.

No. There are people who can explain to you how cars work…

But it doesn’t matter if there are or if there aren’t. At all. The phenomena remain what they are. If a car was left in jungle somewhere for a primitive tribe to find and experiment with, perhaps no one in the society would have a clue about the major systems and how they work. And yet, with the keys left in the ignition, through experimentation, it would work when the turned the wheel just as if it would if a Mercedes Engineer were turning the wheel.

This is a crucial point because all explanations bottom out at some point. If you want to play games, I think it won’t take long to find that there is no one who really, fully understands who a car works. Try me if you think you understand how cars really work.

The point being that it’s sophistry to dismiss manifest behavior and phenomena on the grounds that some exhaustive explanation for the internals and dynamics of that phenomena doesn’t come attached to it. That is always the case, and just dependent on the levels of explanation one wants to demand. And of course, it bears repeating that theists bail out first thing, here, and don’t even bother to give it a sporting effort that the naturalist gives…

Free will is not debated in court because it is a legal presumption - like that of innocence. The fact that mitigating circumstances are taken into account implies that a person is normally capable of self-control.

I have often chosen to get up when I preferred to stay in bed!

Well who dragged you out of your bed, against your will, in those cases? It can’t have been you, because your will was to stay in bed, as you’ve just said. Now you have a severe contradiction at work. Or are you noting that while your determining preference was to fulfill your job and other responsibilities that required getting going, you had a conflicting, but subordinated preference to stay in bed?

If so, I think that is a non-responsive response to Leela’s question. Maybe, given your responses here, it needs to be asked in a more lawyerly fashion: Do you recall cases where you governing preferences caused you to take actions which were contrary to your governing preferences?

In that case we don’t make the choices. It is the relative strength of the preferences which determines which choice is made.

Ahh, well then it seems you really did prefer to get out of bed, after all, yes? If not, again I ask: who dragged you out, injected those choices that weren’t really yours into your head?

-TS

 

[tonyrey]

If the mind is the result of brain activity, i.e. a biological machine, there must be a mechanism for choice-making…

1. You seem to have two sets of rules. If a theist cannot answer a question it is a weakness but for an atheist it is a strength!
2. It is a non sequitur that solipsism is the alternative.

If that’s not the case, then “black box empiricism” is wholly sufficient for our purposes here.

Your starting point of “black box empiricism” overlooks its foundation…

What is ironic about this is exchange is that it is the materialist that can point to some mechanism and model that accounts for cognition in concrete, physical terms. Perversely, this is seen as a fault by those who embrace superstitious ideas of some “supernatural agency” – a posit totally devoid of substantiation, mechanism and grounding in reality.

It doesn’t matter how defective and inadequate concrete, physical terms are! Materialism amounts to “subnatural agency”!

It’s as if those who REALLY BELIEVE IN SANTA took to scoff those who were asked to explain how and why the Santa meme worked with kids, and said they weren’t sure where it all got started as a tradition, etc…

Exactly the same analogy can be applied to those who really believe in PHYSICAL ENERGY as the supreme POWER!

There is no tension in saying that like all the other phenomena we see in nature, we reasonably expect that this one – human cognition – has mechanistic explanations that describe and account for it, and acknowledging that our knowledge of those processes is limited at best at this point. A hundred years ago we didn’t know about DNA, and a supernaturalist could have similarly mused that heredity was obviously miraculous and supernatural, as if it weren’t, then one must explain how it happens naturally!

Naturalists have had false explanations in abundance… ironically DNA is an outstanding example of yet another unsolved problem.

Even simple things like friction are notoriously hard to explain and model, even now, but we don’t get tripped up by the goofy notion that since the exhaustive model of how friction works is still ahead of us, friction doesn’t obtain, or that it is somehow ‘magic’.

Significantly, friction is a physical characteristic - but then you take it for granted that everything has a physical foundation! I’m still interested to know why you exempt materialism from the charge of “magic” and a “goofy notion” . After all, no one has ever explained how matter became purposeful - but that’s supposed to be one of the its strengths …

We give reasons for our choices but, generally speaking, not explanations of what enables us to make choices.

Again, a materialist can give an account that is by no means comprehensive or even robust, but just embarrasses a supernaturalist account, which is by rights no account at all, offering nothing that can be checked, modeled, verified or substantiated.

Instead of stating “can give an account” why don’t you actually do so? BTW how do you check, model, verify or substantiate your thoughts and decisions? Under a microscope?

But the hypocrisy at work, here, as risible as that is, is a red herring. Saying that, as a theist, you simply “accept it as a fundamental reality” means you have accepted the worst-case scenario in terms of reasoning. You have punted, abdicated, switched your mind off to probing it further… But you are approaching this from the most irrational position possible – hand waving as a means of opting out of the question, pushing the problem towards magic where it is beyond the reach of analysis and assessment.

All these fine words boil down to nothing! You have not advanced one solid argument. I wonder why you think you are devoid of hypocrisy and I am guilty of it. That is a serious allegation which you need to justify or withdraw if you have an ounce of decency. If you think that is an acceptable part of a rational discussion you need to think again… Your hostility to theism has led to an irrational, unprovoked outburst of invective which merely brings a certain class of atheists into disrepute. It makes others wonder how “rational” you really are…

Please explain how you choose to act in one way rather than another. What is the mechanism by which you make your choice? Is it located in the brain? If so where?

Whatever struggles you can put Leela through here, as a diversion, she will be well ahead of your hand-waving on this, even so.

Your chivalrous defence of the lady implies that I should not pose questions related to her remark about my alleged obsession with free will. It would be far more to the point if you deal with the topic than introduce irrelevant comments.

Perhaps she’s just too polite to point that out, but you underestimate your readers if you think “prove precisely how free will obtains” is a requirement for any of the questions in play here, not to mention how the sword you wield here does much more damage to your own beliefs than it can to Leela’s or mine.

It’s significant that you raise the issue of “more damage to your own beliefs than it can to Leela’s or mine”. It should be a question of taking our discussion to its logical or most reasonable conclusion rather than considering whether it conflicts with our preconceptions…

 

[tonyrey]

Isn’t the brain - from which you believe the mind has emerged - a biological computer?

For all its massively parallelized and scaled structure it remains a machine subject to physical laws…

No. There are people who can explain to you how cars work…

But it doesn’t matter if there are or if there aren’t. At all. The phenomena remain what they are. If a car was left in jungle somewhere for a primitive tribe to find and experiment with, perhaps no one in the society would have a clue about the major systems and how they work. And yet, with the keys left in the ignition, through experimentation, it would work when the turned the wheel just as if it would if a Mercedes Engineer were turning the wheel.

So what?

This is a crucial point because all explanations bottom out at some point. If you want to play games, I think it won’t take long to find that there is no one who really, fully understands who a car works. Try me if you think you understand how cars really work.

I understand them well enough to know that an intelligent mind was responsible for their construction rather than purposeless processes…

The point being that it’s sophistry to dismiss manifest behavior and phenomena on the grounds that some exhaustive explanation for the internals and dynamics of that phenomena doesn’t come attached to it. That is always the case, and just dependent on the levels of explanation one wants to demand. And of course, it bears repeating that theists bail out first thing, here, and don’t even bother to give it a sporting effort that the naturalist gives…

You are betraying your ignorance of psychology and theology - which of course you dismiss without a second thought. Do you really believe biological evolution can explain all human activity? Atheists bail out at the first hint of anything immaterial…

Free will is not debated in court because it is a legal presumption - like that of innocence. The fact that mitigating circumstances are taken into account implies that a person is normally capable of self-control.

Understandably, you have made no comment!

                           I have often chosen to get up when I preferred to stay in bed!

Well who dragged you out of your bed, against your will, in those cases?

I did not state **“against” **my will. I used my willpower if you must know.

It can’t have been you, because your will was to stay in bed, as you’ve just said.

False! My **inclination **was to stay in bed.

Now you have a severe contradiction at work. Or are you noting that while your determining preference was to fulfill your job and other responsibilities that required getting going, you had a conflicting, but subordinated preference to stay in bed?

You are concocting an absurd argument by misrepresenting my statement. Try again!

If so, I think that is a non-responsive response to Leela’s question. Maybe, given your responses here, it needs to be asked in a more lawyerly fashion: Do you recall cases where you governing preferences caused you to take actions which were contrary to your governing preferences?

A leading question which distorts the facts! Reread my previous statements.

In that case we

don’t make the choices. It is the relative strength of the preferences which determines which choice is made.Ah, well then it seems you really did prefer to get out of bed, after all, yes? If not, again I ask: who dragged you out, injected those choices that weren’t really yours into your head?

You always leave “we” out of your materialist equation which maintains that it is the relative strength of the preferences which determines which choice is made. You cannot accept the reality that we are the ultimate cause of our decisions, that the buck stops with us, not some part of our brain or other physical cause. Have you never forced yourself to get out of bed by making a mental effort to do so? Or do you always take the line of least resistance?! What precisely do you understand by the term “self-control”?

 

[Touchstone]

1. You seem to have two sets of rules. If a theist cannot answer a question it is a weakness but for an atheist it is a strength!
2. It is a non sequitur that solipsism is the alternative.

No. Weakness is weakness. But a materialist has a paradigm that recognizes weakness as weakness, and identifies unknowns as unknowns. Saying that “free will is supernatural” tries to paint “strength” over its weakness, a weakness more acute than the admittedly nascent models of cognition under materialist understandings.

Your starting point of “black box empiricism” overlooks its foundation…

Yes, but every phenomenon does. And must. Unless one has ultimate explanations, all phenomena are apprehended without knowledge of their (ultimate) foundations. This why the objection here on my part is important – if one demands an “ultimate explanation”, or even an elementary explanation beyond just the ramifications of the experience, one just nullifies the utility of that experience. I understand the goal – if somehow Leela concedes that she must justify the mechanics and dynamics of free will in order to deliver judgment on choice and agency as part of a moral framework, you’ve succeeded in discrediting her analysis through sophistry. She’s not bought into that proposition, but it’s seems quite clear that’s what you’re offering here.

If you can tell me why Leela, or I or anyone would need to follow your rabbit trail here in order to answer the questions that started this, that would be good.

It doesn’t matter how defective and inadequate concrete, physical terms are! Materialism amounts to “subnatural agency”!

In terms of phenomena, yes. The whole point of what I wrote is that that idea is a red herring, here. Once could even accept theistic/supernatural notions of agency, as flimsy as they come, and it wouldn’t change the basis for judgment on the questions at hand here. It’s one thing to change the subject, it’s another to change the subject in such a way as to make that diversion a predicate for returning to the subject at hand.

Naturalists have had false explanations in abundance… ironically DNA is an outstanding example of yet another unsolved problem.

That’s how knowledge works in the real world. It’s not just “consulting one’s gut”, deifying that as “pure reason”, positing a fantasy, and calling it good. Real knowledge is difficult, hard one. It’s always incomplete, never ultimate, always tentative to some degree, and subject to revision and even otherthrow. What you seem to think is a flaw, is a strength, and the very thing that indicts magical thinking, a paradigm which convenient avoids any and all of the burdens of real-world explanations.

Significantly, friction is a physical characteristic - but then you take it for granted that everything has a physical foundation! I’m still interested to know why you exempt materialism from the charge of “magic” and a “goofy notion”.

Because it’s grounded in objective, empirical epistemology. It’s not given to countenancing personal and subjective fancies, no matter how infallible their own personal intuitions and conjectures are. Think about all the magic that has been debunked over all these years. It is science and objective, critical analysis that substantiates the charge.

After all, no one has ever explained how matter became purposeful - but that’s supposed to be one of the its strengths …

No explanation is every exhaustive or ultimate. So if that’s what you are looking for, you really are confining yourself to solipsism – you can now, in an ultimate sense, that you exist, and that’s it. That’s all that meets your criteria. For the rest of reality, we prove out models through performance and testing. They will never be ultimate or complete. But they do perform, to some degree, and generally, our models improve over time with more experience and work on developing those models.

And that is a strength, a profound strength. This is the enterprise of knowledge, knowledge as opposed to superstition.

-TS

 

[Touchstone]

Instead of stating “can give an account” why don’t you actually do so? BTW how do you check, model, verify or substantiate your thoughts and decisions? Under a microscope?

I think we’ve been around and around on that, ad nauseum, now. What’s pertinent here is why you should think that at all relevant to the questions and issues in play when you decided that “the foundations of free will” were necessary to be verified before going any further. Quo warranto here, for this line of questions from you?

In the absence of some warrant for that, it just looks like sophistry.

All these fine words boil down to nothing! You have not advanced one solid argument. I wonder why you think you are devoid of hypocrisy and I am guilty of it.

It’s simple. You are asking for explanations that 1) are not relevant or probitive to the issues you launched them into, and 2), they are questions which you are utterly unable to answer yourself, in the same context. For whatever weakness we might find in materialist explanations, you FAIL completely by comparison, a “could not answer at all” on this.

So I see you demanding what you can’t even begin to provide in your own case, made problematic by the fact that it’s not pertinent in the first place. As past threads have shown, whatever Leela or I might muster by way of real explanations and knowledge gleaned from the real world on the question of cognition and agency, you remain empty-handed, in the starting blocks.

That’s pure hypocrisy, as I see it, a complete failure to understand and acknowledge the poverty of one’s own position while demanding an unreasonable depth and fullness of a better, credible, real-world explanation from someone else.

That is a serious allegation which you need to justify or withdraw if you have an ounce of decency.

No, I meant what I said, and I think the hypocrisy is quite clearly demonstrated here. Seriously, try putting yourself in Leela’s shoes and consider being asked what you asked in this context. Do you suppose you have to provide an exhaustive, real explanation for the mechanism at work for Choice A over Choice B, in order to develop a moral framework? You should hope not, as you’d be in a hopeless position, unable to meet your own demands.

If you think that is an acceptable part of a rational discussion you need to think again… Your hostility to theism has led to an irrational, unprovoked outburst of invective which merely brings a certain class of atheists into disrepute. It makes others wonder how “rational” you really are…

I’m fine with everybody else judging that for themselves. I think if you will look at what I’ve said, you can see how hypocritical this whole line of argumentation has been from you.

Your chivalrous defence of the lady implies that I should not pose questions related to her remark about my alleged obsession with free will. It would be far more to the point if you deal with the topic than introduce irrelevant comments.

There’s nothing problematic about chivalry here, but that just trivializes my point, frankly. My words would have the same merit if you were talking to “Leonard” rather than Leela (assuming Leela is a female, which seems reasonable but not certain, anyway).

You can focus on free will all you’d like. But here, the mechanics issue is a red herring, and clearly so.

It’s significant that you raise the issue of “more damage to your own beliefs than it can to Leela’s or mine”. It should be a question of taking our discussion to its logical or most reasonable conclusion rather than considering whether it conflicts with our preconceptions…

If you really believed your questions had merit, that it really mattered that one had the full answers you demand, you’d have to abandon your whole paradigm. You can’t ask those things in good faith and accept the beliefs you claim to accept, because you score a ZERO on that part of the quiz yourself. You can’t proceed with your own beliefs, based on what you’re asking for here. And everyone paying attention can see this is the case.

-TS

 

[Touchstone]

So what?

I understand them well enough to know that an intelligent mind was responsible for their construction rather than purposeless processes…

But you don’t, and it’s easy to show that you don’t – just show your model, and we will test it. It’s nothing but subjective assertion here you are trying to counterfeit as knowledge. If you are being straight in using the term “know”, then demonstrate!

You won’t because you can’t. You know it, I know it. It’s just counterfeit, Orwellian language, trading on the good currency of the term ‘knowledge’ to put a shine on superstition.

If I were to stoop to this kind of disingenuous argumentation, I’d return the volley by saying:

I know perfectly how free will works as a material process. Just trust me. Don’t ask for an explanation or demonstration, because you won’t get it. Just trust me, I know.

Would you accept that from me? If you were to accept from others what you expect them to accept from you, you must!

You are betraying your ignorance of psychology and theology - which of course you dismiss without a second thought. Do you really believe biological evolution can explain all human activity? Atheists bail out at the first hint of anything immaterial…

It just isn’t needed. We have no basis for appealing to any of those notions, any more than had a basis for thinking heritable traits were delivered from parent to offspring by “trait pixies” or “gene spirits”.

As you know, I’m aware of the ideas out there, across theological and scientific disciplines. It’s not ignorance, I don’t think, but a marked lack of credulity for theological assertion, devoid of demonstration or support. As soon as one looks to warrant and evidential performance, theology turns into a cypher. Not because I’m not familiar with it, but because it’s impotent on those grounds.

               I did not state **"against" **my will. I used my **willpower** if you must know.:)

False! My **inclination **was to stay in bed.
You are concocting an absurd argument by misrepresenting my statement. Try again!

I’ve erased what flows naturally, symmetrically in response to this, as I don’t want to use that ploy, even to demonstrate your methods to you. Just be glad others treat you with more good will dialectically than you are treating others.

You always leave “we” out of your materialist equation which maintains that it is the relative strength of the preferences which determines which choice is made. You cannot accept the reality that we are the ultimate cause of our decisions, that the buck stops with us, not some part of our brain or other physical cause. Have you never forced yourself to get out of bed by making a mental effort to do so? Or do you always take the line of least resistance?! What precisely do you understand by the term “self-control”?

Self-control means suppressing immediate/short-term desires and goals that conflict with more important/overarching goals. That doesn’t mean those goals are “magical” or “supernatural”, but just that because our various interests often conflict, in order to pursue goals we determine to be strategic, we must govern and limit our indulgence in tactical interests that come up in conflict with them. If may have a desire to own lots of fancy tech gadgets, but I also have a more important, strategic goal of saving money to send my kids to college. These regularly conflict, and self control (deferring on impulse buys of gadgets) is how overarching goals are realized.

-TS

 

[tonyrey]

1. You seem to have two sets of rules. If a theist cannot answer a question it is a weakness but for an atheist it is a strength!

On the contrary. We have direct experience of free will, consciousness, reasoning and planning, far more immediate, direct and convincing than any materialist explanation. They are the foundations of all our knowledge whether you like it or not.

It is a non sequitur that solipsism is the alternative.

You cannot dispute that!

Your starting point of “black box empiricism” overlooks its foundation…

Yes, but every phenomenon does… if one demands an “ultimate explanation”, or even an elementary explanation beyond just the ramifications of the experience, one just nullifies the utility of that experience.

Theism is far closer to an ultimate explanation than materialism because persons are the highest known form of reality. You cannot nullify the utility of your own power of reasoning or the rational nature of the universe.

If you can tell me why Leela, or I or anyone would need to follow your rabbit trail here in order to answer the questions that started this, that would be good.

Disparaging remarks do not alter the facts. My so-called “rabbit trail” is your trick of evading the issue of free will. Too bad!

It doesn’t matter how defective and inadequate concrete, physical terms are! Materialism amounts to “subnatural agency”!

It’s one thing to change the subject, it’s another to change the subject in such a way as to make that diversion a predicate for returning to the subject at hand.

People often accuse others of their own defects. Why can’t you concentrate on the topic instead of introducing red herrings? Do you accept or reject the reality of your own power of agency without having to resort to physical explanations?

Naturalists have had false explanations in abundance… ironically DNA is an outstanding example of yet another unsolved problem.

That’s how knowledge works in the real world. It’s always incomplete, never ultimate, always tentative to some degree, and subject to revision and even otherthrow.

You think the “real world” is found in what you can see, touch, hear, see, smell and taste. Nothing more! Your travesty of philosophical and theological analysis and synthesis reveals your ignorance. Alas! Your “real-world explanations” are restricted to the least important aspect of reality. My goodness! If you tried to live in accordance with your materialist principles you would soon realise the error of your one-dimensional outlook on life. I wonder how you deal with personal relations and responsibility.

Significantly, friction is a physical characteristic - but then you take it for granted that everything has a physical foundation! I’m still interested to know why you exempt materialism from the charge of “magic” and a “goofy notion”.

Because it’s grounded in objective, empirical epistemology. It’s not given to countenancing personal and subjective fancies, no matter how infallible their own personal intuitions and conjectures are.

So at one fell swoop you reject the reality of personal experience! Objects before persons at any price. BTW What is objective, empirical epistemology “grounded in”?

Think about all the magic that has been debunked over all these years. It is science and objective, critical analysis that substantiates the charge.

So the aim is to debunk the belief in persons as rational, autonomous, responsible entities as opposed to biological machines which happen to exist for no reason or purpose whatsoever. Have you ever subjected materialism to objective, critical analysis? What are the criteria you use? Are they tangible?

QUOTE] After all, no one has ever explained how matter became purposeful - but that’s supposed to be one of the its strengths …

.
No explanation is every exhaustive or ultimate. So if that’s what you are looking for, you really are confining yourself to solipsism – you can now, in an ultimate sense, that you exist, and that’s it.
The same old non sequitur. Has it not occurred to you that belief in the reality of your mind does not lead inexorably to the belief that you are the sole reality? Why should it? The consistency of our perceptions tells us otherwise… The irritating question of the origin of purpose remains unanswered…

That’s all that meets your criteria. For the rest of reality, we prove out models through performance and testing. They will never be ultimate or complete. But they do perform, to some degree, and generally, our models improve over time with more experience and work on developing those models.

Do you exclude the activity of yourself and others from performance and testing? Or do you do it by solely physical methods? I fear there is something lacking here…

And that is a strength, a profound strength. This is the enterprise of knowledge, knowledge as opposed to superstition.

This is beginning to sound like an manifesto rather a reasoned argument. Suppose I say materialism is a form of superstition. What do you respond to that? Remember that we have no knowledge of ultimate reality…

 

[tonyrey]

I understand them well enough to know that an intelligent mind was responsible for their construction rather than purposeless processes….
But you don’t, and it’s easy to show that you don’t – just show your model, and we will test it. It’s nothing but subjective assertion here you are trying to counterfeit as knowledge. If you are being straight in using the term “know”, then demonstrate!

The model for the construction of any complex machine is not to be found in unreasoning, purposeless processes but in the activity of a rational mind which has insight into physical laws, formulates a goal to be achieved, devises a means of attaining that goal, creates the required parts and assembles them into a cohesive entity.

You won’t because you can’t. You know it, I know it. It’s just counterfeit, Orwellian language, trading on the good currency of the term ‘knowledge’ to put a shine on superstition.

Really? Explain what is counterfeit about my explanation and why it is superstition…

If I were to stoop to this kind of disingenuous argumentation, I’d return the volley by saying:**I know perfectly how free will works as a material process. Just trust me. Don’t ask for an explanation or demonstration, because you won’t get it. Just trust me, I know. **Would you accept that from me? If you were to accept from others what you expect them to accept from you, you must!

You are failing to distinguish direct experience of free will - in which you have direct experience of choosing between alternatives and using your willpower when necessary to compel yourself to act - with understanding the nature of willpower. Materialists have not the slightest inkling of its physical operation and more often than not reject free will or simply admit their ignorance.

You are betraying your ignorance of psychology and theology - which of course you dismiss without a second thought. Do you really believe biological evolution can explain all human activity? Atheists bail out at the first hint of anything immaterial…

It just isn’t needed. We have no basis for appealing to any of those notions, any more than had a basis for thinking heritable traits were delivered from parent to offspring by “trait pixies” or “gene spirits”.

So you do believe biological evolution can in principle explain all human activity? Can it explain the purposeful activity of even one simple cell?

As you know, I’m aware of the ideas out there, across theological and scientific disciplines. Not because I’m not familiar with it, but because it’s impotent on those grounds.

Can you produce just one example of theological reasoning which consists of more than three propositions?

I did not state **“against” **

my will. I used my willpower if you must know. My **inclination **was to stay in bed. I’ve erased what flows naturally, symmetrically in response to this, as I don’t want to use that ploy, even to demonstrate your methods to you. Just be glad others treat you with more good will dialectically than you are treating others.

A facile response which convinces no one… Try refuting the argument rationally without subterfuges…

QUOTE] You always leave “we” out of your materialist equation which maintains that it is the relative strength of the preferences which determines which choice is made. You cannot accept the reality that we are the ultimate cause of our decisions, that the buck stops with us, not some part of our brain or other physical cause.

Unanswered!

Have you never forced yourself to get out of bed by making a mental effort to do so? What precisely do you understand by the term “self-control”?

Self-control means suppressing immediate/short-term desires and goals that conflict with more important/overarching goals.

What does the suppressing? You must admit this is hardly a scientific statement.

That doesn’t mean those goals are “magical” or “supernatural”, but just that because our various interests often conflict, in order to pursue goals we determine to be strategic, we must govern and limit our indulgence in tactical interests that come up in conflict with them.

You constantly use “we” as if the term refers to controlling agents. How do **we **come into the picture of conflicting interests? Surely “conflicting interests” is a sufficient explanation for the materialist… The “we” is superfluous.

I may have a desire to own lots of fancy tech gadgets, but I also have a more important, strategic goal of saving money to send my kids to college. These regularly conflict, and self control (deferring on impulse buys of gadgets) is how overarching goals are realized.

The poor old self always has to make an appearance, no matter how hard you try. It doesn’t seem worth denying that it exists - although in a world of conflicting sets of atomic particles how can it exist? Even if we go up to the highest level recognised by the materialist - that of a biological machine with desires, impulses and goals - the elusive arbitrator, director, controller, call it what you will, is still conspicuous by its absence. Much as I try I cannot find a solution from your point of view and, despite what you say, I always attempt to be the devil’s advocate… especially when it is a matter of the utmost importance like free will. It is directly linked to the OP because without free will morality disappears and even subjectivity has a precarious foothold if our mental experiences are generated by bioelectrical impulses. According to Occam’s Razor all subjects should be replaced by objects! How about that for an economical view of reality?

 

[Leela]

Suppose I say materialism is a form of superstition. What do you respond to that? Remember that we have no knowledge of ultimate reality…

I would doubt your premise that there is some “ultimate reality” out there to be known that we are out of touch with. But most of all this is neither here nor there.

You are primarily arguing against the deficiencies of a reductionist version of materialism as metaphysics. I think you, me, and TS are in agreement about the deficiencies of a “sense data” empiricism. We experience more than smells, tastes, sounds, etc. We also experience relations among the sensory data, we experience ideas and values, and we experience a sense of our own agency. Why would we have to deny the reality of any of these experiences? You keep saying that to be consistent we are forced to deny the ability to choose, but what you are demanding is that we be consistent with your particular mischaracterization of our positions.

Secondly, implicit in your critiques of our position is that your belief in Catholicism somehow makes you immune from your own critiques. How so? If an explanation of a mechanism is required, what mechanism explains free will in your philosophy? All you are saying in response to your own questions amounts to a claim that “The Thing That Explains The Things For Which There Is No Known Explanation” must by definition explain free will. Catholicism accounts for free will simply by asserting that we have free will.

Third, while this free will problem has indeed been around for thousands of years, I still see it as a nonissue. It comes from the philosophical tradition of extreme skepticism which demands that we justify beliefs that we have never been given any reason to doubt. Pierce pointed out that we don’t need to play this game of responding to fake doubt. Doubt, as much as belief, requires justification. Until you convince me that it is reasonable to doubt that I make choices based on my preferences I will not feel inclined to justify that I actually do. You keep trying to scare me with this philosophical boogie man that I haven’t been convinced exists.

Best,
Leela

 

[tonyrey]

I would doubt your premise that there is some “ultimate reality” out there to be known that we are out of touch with. But most of all this is neither here nor there.

“most of” is the key phrase. Forget about “ultimate reality”. Let us stick to the fact that we don’t know how **everything **originated. That in itself is enough to dispose of any dogmatic attitude on the part of anyone - including materialists… So you are not even entitled to doubt that there is anything but matter! You just don’t know!

You are primarily arguing against the deficiencies of a reductionist version of materialism as metaphysics. I think you, me, and TS are in agreement about the deficiencies of a “sense data” empiricism.

I’m not so sure about TS, judging from what he has written in the past…

We experience more than smells, tastes, sounds, etc. We also experience relations among the sensory data, we experience ideas and values, and we experience a sense of our own agency. Why would we have to deny the reality of any of these experiences?

You don’t deny them but neither can you account for them.

You keep saying that to be consistent we are forced to deny the ability to choose, but what you are demanding is that we be consistent with your particular mischaracterization of our positions.

Is it a mischaracterization to note a conflict between two types of causality? I have clearly pointed out that you cannot have it both ways. If the superior strength of one particular desire causes our decision we do not cause it - unless you identify “we” with the strongest desire! Please explain how I am mistaken on this precise point…

Secondly, implicit in your critiques of our position is that your belief in Catholicism somehow makes you immune from your own critiques.

I don’t know where on earth you find Catholicism in my critiques! I am dealing with the question from a strictly philosophical point of view. I’m afraid you are deviating from the issue at stake… My argument is quite simply that we are forced to choose between the self as the agent and the strongest particular desire. Can you explain how Catholicism comes into that dilemma?

If an explanation of a mechanism is required, what mechanism explains free will in your philosophy?

That’s better! Now you have reverted to philosophy rather than religion…
Since my interpretation of a person is not mechanistic - unlike that of materialists - I do not have to explain the mechanism of free will. On several occasions I have made it clear that we have to choose between persons and particles as the explanation of consciousness, rationality, free will, emotion and purposeful activity. We can split an atom but not a person!

All you are saying in response to your own questions amounts to a claim that “The Thing That Explains The Things For Which There Is No Known Explanation” must by definition explain free will.

The materialists’ claim is that matter is “The Thing That Explains The Things For Which There Is No Known Explanation”. Can you detect any significant difference between the two positions?

Catholicism accounts for free will simply by asserting that we have free will.

A more accurate statement would be that libertarians believe in free will rather than physical determinism. Catholicism is but one subsection of libertarianism - which includes atheists in its ranks!

Third, while this free will problem has indeed been around for thousands of years, I still see it as a nonissue. It comes from the philosophical tradition of extreme skepticism which demands that we justify beliefs that we have never been given any reason to doubt. Pierce pointed out that we don’t need to play this game of responding to fake doubt. Doubt, as much as belief, requires justification.

Try telling that to an atheist!

Until you convince me that it is reasonable to doubt that I make choices based on my preferences I will not feel inclined to justify that I actually do. You keep trying to scare me with this philosophical boogie man that I haven’t been convinced exists.

I’m afraid(!) you are attributing to me motives which don’t exist! You can refuse to face the facts but that is your problem, not mine. If you wish to pretend that the issue of free will is a “philosophical boogie man” you are entitled to do so. When a person’s mind is closed the discussion comes to an end…

 

[tonyrey]

Sair;6062794:

I seem to recall seeing some stuff suggesting that chaos theory could be linked to an explanation of free will…

Indeterminism gives scope for free will but it does not explain willpower - which we use when we force ourselves to do something which is contrary to our instincts, desires and habits simply because we believe it is the right thing to do…

I don’t know whether or not free will is an illusion - in that, our decisions are directed by the physical/chemical functioning of the brain, and we experience the results as “making a decision” to act… I think the differences between humans and other animals (well, mammals, certainly) are of degree rather than kind.

If we are simply following our desires, instincts, interests and preferences we are not responsible for making them. They are being made for us not **by **us! We are just the amphitheatre in which the conflict occurs…

Your mention of the “ought implies can” connection reminded me of the “is-ought” problem often encountered in ethical philosophy. I must admit that I don’t have a great deal of time for the notion that one can’t infer an “ought” from an “is” - what else do we have to infer what we ought to do, than the way things actually are? We humans are, by nature, social animals - whilst this may not confer obligation as a matter of logical necessity, I think there is a case to be made that it is certainly reasonable to suppose that we ought to do what we can to pursue harmonious relations with our fellows, rather than behaving in ways that are likely to result in ostracism or outright hostility. Sure, there are many shades of grey between harmony and hostility, but that is why the complex human brain has evolved (or so the theory goes) - the need for understanding other people and negotiating relationships.

To attribute all human activity to the evolution of our complex brain certainly disposes of free will - and responsibility into the bargain! We can’t have one without the other. I believe we can and do infer an “ought” from an “is” but that is different from inferring “ought” from “can”. The first “ought” refers to the moral obligation whereas the second “ought” refers to the person who is faced with the moral obligation.

I think “experience” has two aspects. It is subjective because only the subject is directly aware of it. It is objective because it is real. It exists in the mind but that does not make it less real than material objects.
{/QUOTE] The article I linked to in another post explained the reality of subjective experience by means of the example of a headache - it could be said (perhaps even literally) that the headache exists only in the patient’s mind, but it is no less real in terms of its effects upon the person. I think the same is true of any experience, that while it is not an object existing independently of the individual consciousness, it has effects that can change the mind in question, affect the body, and also aspects of the world outside the body. This is again part of the difference between metaphysical and epistemological objectivity - we can’t directly participate in another person’s experience (as the article mentioned, you can’t have someone else’s headache for them!) but because of common elements in experiences that we can recognise and relate to, we are able to speak of such things as ‘objects’.

You have summed it up very neatly indeed! Our thoughts, feelings and decisions are factors to be reckoned with in any reasonable view of reality. Being subjective does not make them less reliable or significant. Our senses may sometimes deceive us, our feelings may be ambiguous but our thoughts and decisions are normally trustworthy. We know what we are thinking and what we decide more certainly than anything else in the entire universe!

 

[Leela]

“most of” is the key phrase. Forget about “ultimate reality”. Let us stick to the fact that we don’t know how **everything **originated. That in itself is enough to dispose of any dogmatic attitude on the part of anyone - including materialists… So you are not even entitled to doubt that there is anything but matter! You just don’t know!

Neither TS nor I have made any dogmatic claims that I can recall.

You don’t deny them but neither can you account for them.

Here again you are assuming that I am taking some reductionist materialist view that for anything to be considered real it must be accounted for in terms of physical laws in terms of matter and energy. It is enough that we experience these these to be convinced that they are real.

Is it a mischaracterization to note a conflict between two types of causality? I have clearly pointed out that you cannot have it both ways. If the superior strength of one particular desire causes our decision we do not cause it - unless you identify “we” with the strongest desire! Please explain how I am mistaken on this precise point…

The mischaracterization is that you keep insisting that I am committed to determinism through physical laws, so therefore I can’t also believe in agency. Such a view would be contradictory, but I am not committed to physical determinism.

Now this bit saying that our actions are forced by the fact that one preference is stronger than another preference doesn’t add anything to merely saying that we do what we most prefer to do within the options available to us. It is no problem for my position in hold that we cannot will ourselves to prefer what we don’t prefer since that isn’t what any one means by free will. Do you have the ability to will yourself to prefer what you don’t prefer? Is that the sort of free will you have? Can you demonstrate such agency by willing yourself to prefer chocolate if you already prefer vanilla or vice versa? (Of course I can willingly choose vanilla on occasion if I generally prefer chocolate if based on the circumstances of a specific instance I happen to prefer vanilla.)

I don’t know where on earth you find Catholicism in my critiques! I am dealing with the question from a strictly philosophical point of view. I’m afraid you are deviating from the issue at stake… My argument is quite simply that we are forced to choose between the self as the agent and the strongest particular desire. Can you explain how Catholicism comes to that dilemma?

Your error is in making a distinction between the self and a person’s values. We literally are a collection of value patterns. The self is a constantly evolving collection of patterns of preferences. (I’m not convinced of any extra added ingredient called a soul that will either suffer the torments of hell or the bliss of heaven. Such a thing is unnecessary to account for human agency.)

Since my interpretation of a person is not mechanistic - unlike that of materialists - I do not have to explain the mechanism of free will. On several occasions I have made it clear that we have to choose between persons and particles as the explanation of consciousness, rationality, free will, emotion and purposeful activity. We can split an atom but not a person!

I don’t tend to think in terms of mechanistic descriptions of people either. Who generally thinks of the others she relates to that way? It is true that such a view can be useful for treating ailments in the body, but the machine analogy is just one among an unlimited possiblity of descriptions of humanity. Your mistake is in thinking that we must choose one particular description of humanity and call it the essence of what humanity REALLY is. Why can’t humans REALLY be lots of things? Or why not drop the idea of trying to get in touch with The-One-True-Account-of-The-Way-Things-REALLY-Are? Can’t a human be both like a machine and also like a willful agent depending on the purpose our description serves at the time? You seem to think that we are forced to decide “which is it?” as if we absolutely must settle on one particular all-purpose metaphor.

The materialists’ claim is that matter is “The Thing That Explains The Things For Which There Is No Known Explanation”. Can you detect any significant difference between the two positions?

One difference is that materialist explanations have given us medicines to cure sick people. There are lots of others with reproduceable results that anyone can verify for themselves at any time.

Best,
Leela

 

[Sair]

What is ironic about this is exchange is that it is the materialist that can point to some mechanism and and model that accounts for cognition in concrete, physical terms. Perversely, this is seen as a fault by those who embrace superstitious ideas of some “supernatural agency” – a posit totally devoid of substantiation, mechanism and grounding in reality. It’s as if those who REALLY BELIEVE IN SANTA took to scoff those who were asked to explain how and why the Santa meme worked with kids, and said they weren’t sure where it all got started as a tradition, etc…

There is no tension in saying that like all the other phenomena we see in nature, we reasonably expect that this one – human cognition – has mechanistic explanations that describe and account for it, and acknowledging that our knowledge of those processes is limited at best at this point. A hundred years ago we didn’t know about DNA, and a supernaturalist could have similarly mused that heredity was obviously miraculous and supernatural, as if it weren’t, then one must explain how it happens naturally!

That’s a transparent attempt to burden the other with a burden for explanation that doesn’t obtain. We observe choice. Whatever the mechanism is, we infer there is a mechnamism and governing set of processes at work by inference – that’s how the rest of reality works, so far as we are aware. Even simple things like friction are notoriously hard to explain and model, even now, but we don’t get tripped up by the goofy notion that since the exhaustive model of how friction works is still ahead of us, friction doesn’t obtain, or that it is somehow ‘magic’.

Again, a materialist can give an account that is by no means comprehensive or even robust, but just embarrasses a supernaturalist account, which is by rights no account at all, offering nothing that can be checked, modeled, verified or substantiated.

But the hypocrisy at work, here, as risible as that is, is a red herring. Saying that, as a theist, you simply “accept it as a fundamental reality” means you have accepted the worst-case scenario in terms of reasoning. You have punted, abdicated, switched your mind off to probing it further. That’s fine, that’s your right. But you are approaching this from the most irrational position possible – hand waving as a means of opting out of the question, pushing the problem towards magic where it is beyond the reach of analysis and assessment.

Thanks, Touchstone. You’ve provided a great deal of clarity here, and have certainly brought to light a number of issues for me.

I have, from time to time, found myself in the position of having a feeling that something was missing, something was wrong with the supernaturalist arguments presented for things like consciousness, but not really knowing enough - either philosophically or scientifically - to articulate the problems. The fact is that naturalistic explanations - or at least the supposition that there are naturalistic explanations waiting to be found - resonate more strongly for me, now, based upon my own experience and research, than the claim that there is some supernatural phenomenon at work.

Indeed, and to be frank, the recourse to the supernatural frequently seems to me to be a form of intellectual cowardice - the unwillingness to admit that there is a natural, material explanation for observed phenomena, particularly when these phenomena are close to home, as consciousness obviously is. Clearly - at least to me - we have a strong attachment to the notion of superiority and specialness that comes with the assumption that we possess something more than a highly sophisticated animal brain, and it’s a hard notion to abandon - but I have since learned that letting go of supernaturalist ideas opens up whole vistas of potential knowledge and understanding, and gives an entirely new character to our concepts of morality (amongst other things).

I think that in the matter of morality, there is always tension between our selfish and our social preferences. The desire to fulfil personal, selfish preferences is circumscribed by our desire to maintain sound relationships with others. Thus the concept of free will becomes a perfectly natural requirement to navigate and perhaps compromise between potentially conflicting needs and desires.

 

[R_Daneel]

The mischaracterization is that you keep insisting that I am committed to determinism through physical laws, so therefore I can’t also believe in agency.

Hear, hear! That is the fundamental problem for the theists of Tony’s kind. They do not comprehend the concept of emerging attributes. To use a very simple example, the wetness of water cannot be reduced to the properties of hydrogen and oxygen - it is an emerging attribute. Of course they are not too stupid to bring up a “supernatural” explanation for wetness (a hypothetical god-of-wetness) - which they really should if they were consistent.

Materialism is not reductionism - and that is the stumbling block they are unable to understand. Their simplistic view that emergent attributes (social interactions, or consciousness, or free will - for example) must be explained in terms of particle interactions shows a complete ignorance of what scientific, materialistic view is all about. And no matter how hard we try to explain to them, they never even listen. Their loss. Personally, I have reduced my presence on these forums since it is completely futile to argue with them.

 

[tonyrey]

Hear, hear! That is the fundamental problem for the theists of Tony’s kind.