wex@ittvax.UUCP (Alan Wexelblat) (08/23/83)
Oh, dear. I seem to have raised quite a stir! I probably should have sent that reply via mail, but what the heck, I've never retreated from a firefight yet. This is a summary reply to several questioners. The original articles will be indented, with speakers noted whenever they change: From Larry Kolodney: WEX@ittvax claims to have a logical proof of the need for existence for some sort of Is (GOD). Thanks for the mis-quote! I made no such claim, and in fact I stated at the beginning of the article that I thought it was a logical impossibility to prove or disprove God's existence. Please read more carefully this time! Human thought is the result of chemical processes in the brain. Possibly true, but beside the point. (Unless you're willing to admit to full-fledged determinism, in which case I shouldn't waste my time.) If you think there is some sort meta-physical soul, than you are starting out with an article of faith and your argument ceases to me logically sound. I have yet to say anything about the presence/absence of a soul, but I'm glad to see you're keeping an open mind :-) ... I think you had better explain what you mean by cause. I already did, but in words of one syllable: a cause is a physical force which produces an effect, which is also in some way physical. The best example I can give is the one of a moving ball striking a non-moving one. In an ideal sense we can say that the force of the first ball, plus the frictive forces of air and the surface on which it rests *cause* the second ball to roll forward in just such a fashion. I can cause things to happen. I can push a button on my keyboard, and a letter appears on the screen. But if a rock fell on my keyboard, the samething would happen. How do you differentiate? Assuming that there are no other forces operative, then I say that in the one instance, your hand has set in motion a particular chain of causes and effects within the hardware of the keyboard which has ultimately resulted in the effect of a letter appearing, and in the other instance, the rock has set off a similar chain, which produces a similar result. What's the problem? I hit the keyboard because I wanted to communicate with net.users. Here you are confusing desire and causation. Desires may exist without causative force attached, and causative force may exist without desire. I wanted to do that because I had the instinctive need of a social animal. This 'instinctive need' is a social fiction in which you have the faith that you condemn me for having in soemthing else. This instinctive need is contained in certain chemical structures in my brain which react in ways know to the laws of physics and chemistry. There's nothing mysterious about it. Until you can justify putting human action outside the laws of physics, your argument doesn't hold water. Oh, so you're claiming to understand human DNA? Right. Let me paraphrase: "Until you can justify putting human action *inside* the laws of physics, your argument doesn't hold water." Let me cite to you a powerful example: I am playing tennis at a local club. My regular opponent is ill, so I find someone else. I don't know this person, and he's not a club member. He absolutely, mercilessly thrashes me. He aces me as often as possible, smashes volleys into my face, and generally is obnoxious. After the game, he walks off the court past me, laughing a lot. I have a momentary desire to smash him over the head with my racket. This desire is quite intense, and in fact my adrenaline starts flowing. Now explain why I didn't hit him (in terms of 'certain chemical structures in my brain which...'). From Darrell Plank: Just because we can't accurately determine a person's behavior every time doesn't mean it doesn't have a cause. We also can't detect earthquakes with perfect accuracy, but in both cases (earthquakes and behavior) we are getting better and better at such predictions. I disagree. I think that the average medieval serf had much more predictable behavior than the average lower-class individual today. Further, I deny that there is any meaningful analogy to be drawn between predicting earthquakes and predicting behavior. Certainly, it is not simply a matter of degree of accuracy. What change occurs at time T between the universes? One thing that might occur: a life-form might gain sufficient intelligence to allow it to escape the chain of causality. Why should that change occur? Does one atom suddenly head off in one direction in universe A while the corresponding atom in universe B heads off in another? That's a possible explanation. In fact, quantum physics seems to require this sort of indeterminacy. The smaller the level of observation, the less causality holds. Your argument still has to explain how the "first cause" came about (as do all these "first cause" arguments). No, that's the point of defining a conscious entity like the Eternal Is. The Is is outside of time-space, and is an explanation unto itself. Otherwise, you run the risk of infinite regress. I also do not see the need for a "first cause" even if I accept your first hypothesis. It's sort of like saying that there must be a "last cause". Why? Why can't the universe just continue on like it is going now forever? I said nothing about last causes or the infiniteness of the universe. The endlessness of the universe is not related to the 'begininglessness.' Given any point in time, X, I have no trouble imagining a time before X which caused the conditions present at time X. Ah, but can you imagine a time before time existed? Remember, time is relative, just like everything else. The Is is postulated to be in some way "outside" of time. From Paul Torek: Why should the first event require a cause? According to Big Bang theory, there was no such thing as time before the Big Bang -- i.e., there WAS no "before the Big Bang." Two points here: one) As far as I had been able to determine (note past tense) human thought was the only event which was not causaly determined. More in a bit. Two) time is relative. In terms of *our* time, time didn't start until the formation of our sun. In terms of universal time, time didn't start until the big bang. In terms of meta-universal time (more below), it is perfectly sensical to talk of "before the Big Bang." Now, as promised above: I was talking with a physics student and he related to me something like this: there are physical phenomena (such as radioactive decay) which appear to be non-causal in nature. This is a product of an interpretaion of quantum theory which requires a "quantum indeterminacy" in the most basic particles (quarks and their relatives). The closer you get to the quark level of analysis, the weaker "causality" gets. In fact, it may be the case that this uncertainty propagates upward, thus making "causality" a phenomenon of our faulty perceptions. Personally, I find this reassuring. However, it's likely to give the determinists fits. As for "meta-time," that refers to the theory that the universe is cyclic. That is to say, after the universe has done expanding, it will contract again, drawing all matter and energy together to produce another Big Bang, starting the process over again. Under this theory, there is no reason to assume that we are living in the "first" cycle. Therefore, in meta-time, the moment before the Big Bang was the last moment of contraction of the old universe. My reply to him was that this seems to imply a first Big Bang, which leaves me wondering about first causes again. Sorry to talk so long; that's what comes of not logging on over the weekend. --Alan Wexelblat decvax!ittvax!wex
larry@grkermit.UUCP (Larry Kolodney) (08/24/83)
From WEX:
Oh, so you're claiming to understand human DNA? Right. Let me paraphrase:
"Until you can justify putting human action *inside* the laws of physics,
your argument doesn't hold water."
In science, you always assume the simplist explaination until the
evidence contradicts it. I know of no evidence which contradicts the
purely chemical roots of human behavior.
Let me cite to you a powerful example: I am playing tennis at a local
club. My regular opponent is ill, so I find someone else. I don't
know this person, and he's not a club member. He absolutely,
mercilessly thrashes me. He aces me as often as possible, smashes
volleys into my face, and generally is obnoxious. After the game, he
walks off the court past me, laughing a lot. I have a momentary desire
to smash him over the head with my racket. This desire is quite
intense, and in fact my adrenaline starts flowing. Now explain why I
didn't hit him (in terms of 'certain chemical structures in my brain
which...').
The brain is made up of three main main sections. The Neocortex, the
Limbic system, and the R-Complex. The R-Complex is the phylogenicly
oldest part of the brain, going back to fish and reptiles. The limbic
system didn't appear until mammals, and the Neocortex is unique to
higher mammals including man. The R-Complex tends to deal with
regulatory and survival type functions such as territoriality. The
Limbic system tends to deal with what we consider emotional states.
And the Neocortex is primarily concerned with higher mental functions
such as language, sight, abstract thought, etc.
Each of these systems operates in a semi-autonomous manner, with
signals being sent back and forth between them. Thus, human behavior
is a result of the interaction of these three systems.
A plausable explaination for you actions is that your limbic
system generated a feeling of fear
or hatred of your opponent for humiliating you, (although the
humiliation feeling itself may have originated in the neocortex). Your
neocortex sensed this feeling or rage and blocked it. It did so because
its analytic part realized that there would be negative consequences if
you were to actually hit the opponent.
The generation of the fear in the neocortex can easily be understood as
the setting off of certain chemical reactions due to inputs from the
neocortex. These reaction cause andrenalin to be produced, which makes
you actually FEEL angry, this is sensed by the neocortex (again
chemically), and the neocortex goes through certain chemical processes
which inhibit any signals to your muscles to hurt the other guy. I
could go on and on, but I think this gets the point accross.
--
Larry Kolodney (The Devil's Advocate)
{linus decvax}!genrad!grkermit!larry
(ARPA) rms.g.lkk@mit-airlr@pyuxn.UUCP (08/24/83)
[In this article I am referring to points made by ittvax!vex in article ittvax.963. Since it would be very difficult to excerpt from this source article (as I am making points about things said all over the original article), I ask that you either bear with me or re-read the original article. I hope that the way I have made my points will make referencing the original article unnecessary.] First, let's clarify some terms. Often when people talk about intelligent beings choosing to do things outside of the realm of physical causality, they are jumped on by people who say "What proof do you have that there is a soul?" They respond: "Who said anything about a soul?" I will use the term "external agent" to describe that which causes intelligent beings to make decision and do things without natural physical cause. This term is probably an exact equivalent functional definition of "soul", without the religious/afterlife connotations. More terms: determinism and free will. Free will advocates declare that the actions that intelligent beings take are not /predictable/ by using physical laws, that there are true choices to be made (by an "external agent"? if not, by what?). Determinists claim that ALL actions and decisions are the result of physical and chemical processes and thus all of history has already been written (in effect). Freewillers, having read articles on quantum mechanics in People magazine and Jerry Falwell newsletters (slight humorous exaggeration) say that the unpredictability at the subatomic, "fundamental" particle level /proves/ that, since the universe is not "pre-determined", there is free will. There IS a middle ground that is probably more believable. The course of the events in the universe cannot be predicted, but this does not mean that the "choices" that we make are ordered by 'free will' (they are just as much rooted in physical/chemcal laws as a ball falling from the top of a building). Now, to ittvax!wex: You separate "desires" from "causality". Why? Why aren't desires based on what chemicals exist in what proportion at whatever places in our brains/bodies at a given time? Remember that desire without cause implies an external agent, and you have refuted the notion of a soul. The notion of instinctive needs or primal instincts can be thought of as a native operating system in the "ROM" of an organism. This is a perfectly reasonable explanation of what goes on at the instinct level in humans and other animals. No one claims to understand the fundamental inner workings of biochemistry. But it is reasonable to believe that it DOES WORK to perform the functions that you attribute to "beings with enough intelligence to esape the chain of causality". Just because we don't understand the fundamental processes behind something doesn't mean that its roots lie in something mystical (sorry, Laura). True, we cannot predict either earthquakes or human behavior. That is not to say that we cannot eventually do so, once we fully understand the inner workings. Of course, the nature of particle physics theory may preclude our predicting /everything/ in the universe... Thank you for your time. Comments are welcome. Rich Rosen pyuxn!rlr