rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Rich Rosen) (01/12/85)
| From: -- Jeff Sargent (quoting C.S. Lewis) | > Thus no thoroughgoing Naturalist believes in free will: for free will | > would mean that human beings have the power of independent action, the | > power of doing something more or other than what was involved by the | > total series of events. | Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, WRONG! I present to you a thoroughgoing | naturalist who believes in free will: myself. FREE WILL DOES NOT, NOT | AT ALL, BY NO STRETCH OF THE IMAGINATION, NIL, ZIP, ZERO, NEGATION, | NEGATIVITY, NEVER, NO WAY mean the power of doing something "more or | other than" what was involved in the total causal network of events!!! | It means the power to rationally evaluate one's prospective actions and | choose accordingly, that is all, and if this ability and one's excercise | of it have a deterministic causal explanation, THAT'S GREAT! [TOREK] Sorry, Paul, as I've discussed with you before, rational evaluation is not equivalent to free will. Unless, of course, you shirk the meaning of the term and simply label rational evaluation as "free will" because you feel like it. The level of rational evaluation present in humans may be greater than in other life forms (e.g., greater ability to distinguish immediate short-term gratification from potential long-term gratification in the broader scope). That doesn't make it free. | From Rich Rosen: | > In a naturalist system there could not be free will. And we want for there | > to be free will, right? [despite whatever evidence we've seen and ignored] | > Thus, the naturalists are wrong!! Boy, thanks, Mr. Lewis, for 'clearing | > that up' for me!" | Now you've heard the sound of one knee jerking! Rosen, if you would put | aside your ideological blinders for a second you might see that believing | in free will is a can't-lose proposition, and disbelieving in it is can't- | win! If you believe you have free will and you're wrong, it was out of | your power to be correct anyway so you haven't lost anything. But if you're | right, you have gained something by exercising your power correctly. There- | fore, anything that implies lack of free will can be dismissed right there. | Lewis was right about that much! Thus, whether or not the evidence supports it, thus, whether or not the sole basis for believing in it (not rational evaluative capabilities, but real live free will) is wishful thinking that the cause of one's thoughts is anything other than the result of chemical processes, since believing in it is subjectively "better", believe in it! Talk about knees jerking!! You can claim all you want that the chemical processes themselves are the agent of the free will, but, I ask again, look up the word "free" and explain how, when flowing rivers, animal behaviors and human actions all result from the same process (why think otherwise?), how human actions are somehow "different"? The basis of the "rational evaluation" is the process that causes it, and whether or not the end result IS strictly rational, optimal, or (to use YOUR word) free, depends upon other variables within the biochemical system (e.g., previous conditioning). Since such elements are going to have a bearing on the final decision, there is no way that decision can reasonably be called "free". (Discussion along similar lines has mentioned Pascal's reasons for choosing to believe in god. The point is the same: beliefs based on their utility amount to a sort of corollary to wishful thinking--it would nice if the world was the way I like it, and in this case I have nothing to lose because it can't be proved either way, so I'll pick the belief I happen to like.) | > What a highly anthropocentric view of the universe this is. "Science" | > can not be true unless human thought can be explained to follow certain | > rules. <[but science IS part of human thought! Aarrggh! --pvt]> What | > does human thought have to do with the physical state of the universe? | > The universe exists whether or not we perceive or understand it. [ROSEN] The second sentence was meant to be a "translation" of Lewis' previous statement quoted by Sargent. That's why "science" was in quotes. Science is the study of "what is"; what Lewis claims is that our observations about what is (i.e., "science") cannot be true if the source of our thoughts is "irrational". Which infers that the nature of the universe is somehow contingent on human thought! We have to be able to understand it for it to exist in a certain form! > An imperceptible, incomprehensible universe would be completely > uninteresting! If the physical state of the universe had no relevance > for human life, which should we pay attention to? THREE CHEERS FOR > ANTHROPOCENTRISM if that's what it is to answer, "humanity"! [TOREK] Yay! Sis-boom-bah! Cheerio!! (There, you've got your three cheers.) Fact is, an imperceptible, incomprehensible universe simply wouldn't be perceived or comprehended. Because we HAVE sensory channels between the brain and the universe, because we CAN distinguish between blatantly false and distorted observations through those channels and more objective and consistent ones, we humans are able to see (and, further, potentially understand) the universe. Our observations do not make the universe what it is. The universe is what it is with our without our observation of it. And the universe is not the same as our observations of it (as many anthropocentrists would believe). Our observations simply enable us to codify what the behavior of the universe is. By distinguishing between subjective and objective observation, we can form the demarcation between two sets of equally real physical events: that which is actually happening in the "outside world" being observed, and that which is actually fabricated in the brain. | > ... In what way is the total system NOT RATIONAL? What does | > such a statement mean? Rational to whom? Rational thinking takes into | > account THE WAY THE SYSTEM WORKS. How could the way the system works NOT | > BE RATIONAL when "rational" is defined to take into account how the system | > is (perceived to be) working? ... | > ...ALL thoughts seem to stem from the same very rational causes. Even | > those of wishful thinkers and presupposers. (No :-) intended!!) The | > rational causes? Chemical actions of the brain. | | You're doing this just to annoy me, right? HOW CAN YOU NOT SEE THE | DIFFERENCE? The thoughts of wishful thinkers do NOT stem from rational | causes, that's why they're irrational! You seem to be twisting the | word rational to mean "predictable", etc. What it means is reasoning | validly, and learning from experience (at least these anyway). I meant to say "logical causes", since "rational" implies a purpose, an intent and an evaluation as part of the cause, which some wishfully think to be the way certain process work. Remember the difference between the processes that result in the thoughts and the "nature" of the resulting thoughts ("rational" or "irrational"), as analyzed later. Lewis claims that these processes are "irrational" (what *is* an "irrational" process?), and although they have the potential to be clouded (as Lewis' and others' apparently are), one can distinguish between the "rational" thoughts and the "irrational" thoughts, and act accordingly, by using the "rational evaluative capabilities" Paul Torek has described. (Though many simply will not do this for whatever reason.) Yet the cause of both sets of thoughts is the same. Granted the causes are not "rational" based on an evaluation of their result; what was meant was that the derivation of the elements behind these causes had a rational rather than an irrational basis. | From: Kenneth Almquist | > The problem is that it is not possible | > to argue that rational argument is valid because you can't begin to | > argue unless you *first* concede that rational argument is valid. Thus | > you must accept as a postulate that rational argument is valid. | > ... There is no way I can argue with someone who refuses to accept the | > validity of reason. | | To recognize an argument as rational IS to recognize it as valid; as | being normatively binding on one's own thought. Furthermore there is | nothing viciously circular or otherwise improper about using reason to | argue for reason. Reason is not a premise in any argument but rather | the way of getting from premises to conclusions; and only by using the | conclusion as one of the premises can the question be begged. I suggest you read Carroll's "Conversation Between the Tortoise and the Hare" reproduced in Hofstadter's GEB: The EGB. Though I agree that reason is simply the means by which one evaluates the validity of conclusions based on the premises, and that many wishful thinkers (yourself included, apparently, when it comes to free will) use (potential, unresolved) conclusions as premises, the nature of reason as the justification for reason is indeed circular. Carroll describes a set of premises, and claims that one can accept all of the premises and yet still reject the conclusion that logically follows (e.g., 1) All A's have property B; 2) C is an A; CONCLUSION: C has property B). His tactic was to add an additional premise that state "if all the above premises are true, then the conclusion is valid", but one might still reject the conclusion EVEN if one accepts all the premises including that one. He then goes into recursive mode to propose new premises that are of the same basic form as the additional one above (but intending to include each preceding added premise in the base of "all the above premises"). Ad infinitum, because the conclusion is still rejected. Each time. (A "logical" person might not do any of this rejecting, but what's the "reason" for a non-logical person to do so?) Perhaps, instead of forcing some new case-specific premise into the set of propositions each time, he should have gone to the root of reason and logic with an assumed axiom of meta-logic itself: if a proposed conclusion based on a set of proven or assumed premises results in a contradiction, then that conclusion is false; AND if the denial of some proposed conclusion leads to a contradiction between the premises and the result, then that conclusion is true. (I think I phrased that badly, so I would appreciate someone with a background in formal logic rephrasing it for me here.) With this in mind, the rejection of the above conclusion (from the previous paragraph's example) would result in a rejection of the axiom(s) I just described. Those who do reject the conclusion are simply rejecting the axiom I've described. Which is OK, provided the rejecters of well-oiled conclusions (e.g., religious believers) realize the consequences of their rejection of the axiom itself: everything they stand on crumbles, including their beliefs. Of course, the axiom is not provable (I don't think so), unless one claims they are simply definitional, defining truth and falseness. | From: Gordon A. Moffett ...!{ihnp4,hplabs,sun}!amdahl!gam | > This makes sense to me, but why does "the search for truth [presuppose] | > ethics"? | | It figures Moffett would pick on the one thing that Popper got right. The | search for truth presupposes that knowledge is valuable; that scientific | inquiry is worth doing. It also presupposes that there is something which | we ought to believe -- and believing is an action. And science can make | pronouncements about ethics, contra Popper; the health sciences can and | should deal with human benefit and harm (what constitues a benefit or harm | is a value judgement), and behavioral sciences can (at least in principle) | indicate what actions one would perform if one were rational, informed, and | free (i.e., what actions are right!). The worth (or lack of worth) of scientific inquiry is not the issue; that worthfulness/worthlessness would be determined by an application of the results obtained. What one "should" do winds up being influenced by one's chosen ethics. But the way that the sciences provide input into the "what one should do" loop stems from its acquisition and analysis of factual information. It is that information that constitutes truth, regardless of how that information winds up being employed. That method of deployment, or the determination of how the aforementioned information is used in that deployment, has NO relation- ship to the truth, except in that the accuracy and usefulness of the result will depend on the truthfulness of the information initially provided. (We've seen Bickford argue that Darwin is "bad" because Hitler used his theories to justify his racism and murder; what someone does with true information in combination with irrational/anti-social ethics has little bearing on the truthfulness of the original information, and attempts to associate the information with the "bad" behavior [whatever it might be] are erroneous. Remember that ethics may be chosen rationally, weighing all input to formulate a resulting ethical system that works best for all human beings; or they may be chosen irrationally.) | From: Rich Rosen | The use of absolute right/wrong was used in the context of absolute | good/evil, in a moral sense and not an observational sense. And I'm | sure Paul [Dubois, I think it was--pvt] knew that when he wrote what he | did. (Since many of recent articles addressed this point.) | Can this dichotomy between the moral and the observational hold any water? | Can there be -- as I think Rosen wants to suggest -- an "absolute right/ | wrong" in science without implying a similar cognitivity for ethics? You'd be right if you said Paul and I don't seem to be communicating. But I think part of the reason stems from his never having seen much of what I write (mail or net) due to any number of problems. He clearly hasn't seen anything I've written on the subject of good versus evil, and the fallacy of absolute good/evil in a world where good and evil are simply defined as what's beneficial/harmful to the person saying the word(s). Wingate spoke at length on the subject, but had little to say in response to my contention that evil is simply defined by the person(s) saying the word, be it an individual or a society. A rational definition of good/evil would take into account longterm ultimate benefits/harms, and would seek to set up "rules" that fostered ultimate benefit, seeking to maximize individual human life by proscribing only the limits that prevent one human being from interfering in the life of another. "Scientific" right/wrong simply consists of that which is true as opposed to that which isn't. "Moral" right and wrong are clouded by the issue of who is determining the rightness and wrongness and on what basis. -- "So, it was all a dream!" --Mr. Pither "No, dear, this is the dream; you're still in the cell." --his mother Rich Rosen pyuxd!rlr