NP:Leading atheist branded a ‘heretic’ for daring to question Darwinism

[alexey]

But how much of that is because people think they actually have a choice?

In the absence of a mechanism to describe how that can happen in a deterministic system, how much of that goes away (again see the link I posted on the other page in response to PockerPakcer)?

People's beliefs matter and that can and will change.

...

Do people's beliefs matter in the absence of a mechanism to describe how they matter in a deterministic system?

Do you deny that people have "volition"?

Or do you claim that "volition" is different from "actually having a choice"?

[PeterMP]

Do people's beliefs matter in the absence of a mechanism to describe how they matter in a deterministic system?

Do you deny that people have "volition"?

Or do you claim that "volition" is different from "actually having a choice"?

 

I'm not going to get into word games with you.

 

I have no interest in carrying out such a conversation with somebody that can't understand what it means to make a decision.

 

People's beliefs matter and the ability to accurately describe a mechanism affects people's beliefs.

 

And that includes their beliefs with respect to free will as the link I gave PockerPacker demonstrates.

 

And that doesn't even get into the issue of the larger picture if things matter with respect to the whole system (e.g. unattended consequences) in a deterministic system.

 

You can't say that everything will continue as is with respect to behavior and responsibility in an environment where things are believed to be deterministic when the research done indicates that's not the case.

[alexey]

I'm not going to get into word games with you.

...

"volition" is a scientific term. This discussion cannot continue in light of your inability to openly admit that "volition" exists.

I think you saw a glimpse of where I was going - you cannot deny that we have "volition" regardless of determinism, and you cannot explain how "volition" is different from "free will".

[PeterMP]

"volition" is a scientific term. This discussion cannot continue in light of your inability to openly admit that "volition" exists.

I think you saw a glimpse of where I was going - you cannot deny that we have "volition" regardless of determinism, and you cannot explain how "volition" is different from "free will".

 

If you think you have an intelligent point, you are welcome to make it on your own without asking me a hundred questions.

 

(If you can.)

 

I've been pretty clear on what I think free will is over multiple threads over multiple years and in this one.

 

I don't think anybody that is paying much attention has any real doubt about what I think free will is.

 

If I feel the need to respond, I will do so.

 

(I don't think you know where you are going for me to get a glimpse of it.)

[alexey]

Ok Peter lets get back to this when you are ready to discuss the difference between volition and free will.

[PeterMP]

Ok Peter lets get back to this when you are ready to discuss the difference between volition and free will.

 

Why don't you start by discussing the difference between volition and free will from your perspective and based on what I've already said instead of asking me questions?

 

You know, actually try and make a point.

[alexey]

Volition is a meaningful well defined concept that is useful.

Free will is a poorly defined and pretty much useless concept that confuses people and wastes time.

The difference between volition and free will is similar to the difference between consciousness and soul.

[s0crates]

At a minimum, the payoff would be us actually having a conversation.

It is difficult to engage with you in the oppressive shadow of your concerns with supposed consequences of determinism, as well as various "aha! I know this argument!" knee jerks.

I'm not sure what your complaint is. I would think you'd be happy to have me acknowledge your argument and explain my understanding of it before addressing my concerns. Is there some point you've made that you feel I've ignored? All this time I thought we were having a discussion.

How do you imagine the day we find out that determinism is true? Chaos on streets, all prisoners let out, cats sleeping with dogs, newspapers with headlines "Determinism shown to be true! Turns out nobody could have ever done anything otherwise!"

Obviously not. I'm not talking about practical consequences so much as theoretical ones.

Let's take "volition" as the starting point. Hopefully we can agree that we have "volition" regardless of whether determinism is true. Then we could explore how "volition" would map to "could have done otherwise". Maybe you'd claim that "volition" is compatible with determinism while "could have done otherwise" is not compatible with determinism?

Will you claim that "volition" does not exist if determinism is true?

Will you claim that "volition" is not "free will" if determinism is true?

Hard to say with the term "volition" undefined. I take it you mean "acting voluntarily" not in the sense of making actual choices, but in the sense of "acting in a way that isn't coerced."

If that is right then the relevant issue is my acting in accordance with my own desires and beliefs, which are presumably not of my choosing, and it is not whether I actually have choices.

I do think there is a certain elegance to this answer. It does seem to solve the puzzle, but it comes at the cost of my not actually having choices, which to me is suspicious.

How would you analyze my example of "you should be taller" vs. "you should lose weight" on this account?

What would that actually mean, beyond banal concerns about usage of words?

You're the one that asked about our "colloquial usage" of words.

You say it's about holding people responsible... but we hold people responsible for their actions to achieve desired consequences, not because "volition = free will".

That depends who you ask. Some justify punishment this way, but others think we punish people because they deserve it.

Will you claim that "consequences" do not exist if determinism is true?

No. Quite the opposite really. Consequences become inevitable it seems.

As an aside, I find it noteworthy that when we discuss materialism, most people seem more troubled by the denial of free will than the implication that we don't have consciousness. My students are the same way. I'm not sure why that is. I myself am more convinced that I have a mind (that is not identical to my brain) than anything else, including that I have free will.

[PeterMP]

Volition is a meaningful well defined concept that is useful.

Free will is a poorly defined and pretty much useless concept that confuses people and wastes time.

The difference between volition and free will is similar to the difference between consciousness and soul.

 

https://www.google.com/search?q=volition

 

volition: the faculty or power of using one's will

 

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/volition

 

:the power to make your own choices or decisions

 

I don't see a whole lot of clarity there, and in the context of the conversation, I don't think volition is very useful.

 

(What does ones own choice mean?  What is one's will?)

 

Decisions can be made by deterministic systems or made by non-deterministic systems depending on how we want to define decisions and will.

 

Does the computer I described to s0crates above have violition?

 

It isn't clear to me from those definitions.

 

I think most people use the term free will (especially historically) to describe a process where things are decided through non-deterministic system.

 

I'd extend that to include the concept of purely deterministic systems, but also what I would call quantum deterministic systems that are probabilistic in nature due to quantum mechanics and related affects as I've already described in this thread.

[alexey]

...

Hard to say with the term "volition" undefined. I take it you mean "acting voluntarily" not in the sense of making actual choices, but in the sense of "acting in a way that isn't coerced."

Volition is the thing we have, the thing scientists study.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volition_(psychology)

If that is right then the relevant issue is my acting in accordance with my own desires and beliefs, which are presumably not of my choosing, and it is not whether I actually have choices.

I do think there is a certain elegance to this answer. It does seem to solve the puzzle, but it comes at the cost of my not actually having choices, which to me is suspicious.

How would you analyze my example of "you should be taller" vs. "you should lose weight" on this account?

I do not understand where the cots of "not actually having choices" comes in.

It sounds like you define "actually having choices" in terms of determinism. That may be the key to our disagreement.

The way I look at it, right now I have a choice to finish this post or go outside for a walk. If I do not actually have that choice, then I no longer understand what it means to actually have choices.

If I do not actually have that choice, then I lose the meaning of the word "choice". I cannot lose the choice itself because the word "choice" no longer has any meaning at that point.

In other words, we either have free will, or free will does not make sense

As an aside, I find it noteworthy that when we discuss materialism, most people seem more troubled by the denial of free will than the implication that we don't have consciousness. My students are the same way. I'm not sure why that is.

Maybe consciousness is much better at protecting itself from existential threats versus to protecting itself from destabilizing ideas. Or maybe it's about resisting coercion.

[s0crates]

This is going to start to matter what we are calling free will. While I think alexey's example was flawed, it is possible to make computers that are not completely deterministic and therefore not purely predictable.

http://es.redskins.com/topic/363947-ask-an-atheist-thread/page-3#entry9349907

Does such a system have free will?

I'd argue no.

There is currently no evidence that quantum probabilistic events are directly involved in the decision making system, but I certainly wouldn't rule it out.

Maybe though I've misunderstood your point. I don't think there are many people in science today that think of the universe as being purely deterministic. From a scientific stand point, quantum mechanics is real and has affects.

Do quanta have free will or consciousness? No. But my thinking is that they have some modicum of "awareness" (speaking loosely) and spontaneity that is the type of thing from which full fledged consciousness and creativity can emerge in complex systems.

Basically my point is that the old physics still has a hold on our imaginations. Despite the discoveries of the last 100 years, we are still thinking in basically Newtonian terms (which are basically Cartesian, which are basically Aristotelian). We still tend to think of matter as "stuff" when we are finding matter is better understood as "events."

I think we have yet to fully integrate the latest discoveries into our overall worldview.

My hunch is that quantum mechanics gives us a way of thinking about reality much differently. I'm speculating, but it seems to me quantum events are the type of things from which creativity, choice, and consciousness could emerge (whereas the old notion of material substance did not seem to allow for that).

I know this is a bit unclear, but I'm basically thinking something like Whitehead's "actual occasions" are the building blocks of reality.

You can read more about it here: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/whitehead/#WM

It's worth noting that Whitehead's metaphysics was informed by the latest physics (in particular many conversations with his buddy Einstein). Unfortunately he was largely ignored, and we are still saddled with a metaphysics based on outdated physics. I'd bet Nagel's complaint is along these lines.

[s0crates]

Here's a relevant excerpt from the above link that explains the type of metaphysics I'm envisioning:

Later, Whitehead introduces a new metaphysically primitive notion which he calls an actual occasion. For Whitehead, an actual occasion (or actual entity) is not an enduring substance, but a process of becoming. As Whitehead puts it, actual occasions are the “final real things of which the world is made up”, they are “drops of experience, complex and interdependent” (1929c, Pt 1, Ch. 2, sec. 1, p. 27).

As Donald Sherburne explains, “It is customary to compare an actual occasion with a Leibnizian monad, with the caveat that whereas a monad is windowless, an actual occasion is ‘all window.’ It is as though one were to take Aristotle's system of categories and ask what would result if the category of substance were displaced from its preeminence by the category of relation …” (Sherburne 1995, 852). As Whitehead himself tells us, his “philosophy of organism is the inversion of Kant's philosophy … For Kant, the world emerges from the subject; for the philosophy of organism, the subject emerges from the world” (quoted in Sherburne 1995, 852).

Significantly, many of these key aspects of Whitehead's metaphysics run counter to the traditional view of material substance:

“There persists,” says Whitehead, "a fixed scientific cosmology which presupposes the ultimate fact of an irreducible brute matter, or material, spread through space in a flux of configurations. In itself such a material is senseless, valueless, purposeless. It just does what it does do, following a fixed routine imposed by external relations which do not spring from the nature of its being. It is this assumption that I call ‘scientific materialism.’ Also it is an assumption which I shall challenge as being entirely unsuited to the scientific situation at which we have now arrived. (1925, 22)

The assumption of scientific materialism is effective in many contexts, says Whitehead, only because it directs our attention to a certain class of problems that lend themselves to analysis within this framework. However, scientific materialism is less successful when addressing issues of teleology (or purpose) and when trying to develop a comprehensive, integrated picture of the universe as a whole.

[PeterMP]

Volition is the thing we have, the thing scientists study.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volition_(psychology)

 

From reading your wiki link, it still isn't clear to me what volition is.  It does seem to be that something that we have, but that isn't really a place to start a conversation.

 

And it even seems that experts disagree what it is:

 

From your link:

 

"In the book A Bias for Action, which sets to differentiate willpower from motivation - the authors use the term volition as a synonym for willpower and describe briefly the theories of Kurt Lewin. While Lewin argues that motivation and volition are one and the same, the authors claim that Ach argues differently. According to the authors, Ach claims that there is a certain threshold of desire that distinguishes motivation from volition: when desire lies below this threshold, it is motivation, and when it crosses over, it becomes volition. Using this model, the authors consider individuals' differing levels of commitment with regard to tasks by measuring it on a scale of intent from motivation to volition. Modern writing on the role of volition, including discussions of impulse control (e.g., Kuhl and Heckhausen) and education (e.g., Corno), also make this distinction. Corno's model ties volition to the processes of self-regulated learning."

 

If there is disagreement at that level, can you see where it is difficult to have a conversation with that word at its basis?

 

Maybe you want to try and describe the concept you have in your mind more fully then it is something that we have that scientists study.

Do quanta have free will or consciousness? No. But my thinking is that they have some modicum of "awareness" (speaking loosely) and spontaneity that is the type of thing from which full fledged consciousness and creativity can emerge in complex systems.

Basically my point is that the old physics still has a hold on our imaginations. Despite the discoveries of the last 100 years, we are still thinking in basically Newtonian terms (which are basically Cartesian, which are basically Aristotelian). We still tend to think of matter as "stuff" when we are finding matter is better understood as "events."

I think we have yet to fully integrate the latest discoveries into our overall worldview.

My hunch is that quantum mechanics gives us a way of thinking about reality much differently. I'm speculating, but it seems to me quantum events are the type of things from which creativity, choice, and consciousness could emerge (whereas the old notion of material substance did not seem to allow for that).

I know this is a bit unclear, but I'm basically thinking something like Whitehead's "actual occasions" are the building blocks of reality.

You can read more about it here: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/whitehead/#WM

It's worth noting that Whitehead's metaphysics was informed by the latest physics (in particular many conversations with his buddy Einstein). Unfortunately he was largely ignored, and we are still saddled with a metaphysics based on outdated physics. I'd bet Nagel's complaint is along these lines.

 

I didn't understand much of that to be honest with you.

 

It seems to be largely what I'd term a philosophy of the gaps argument in that the claim is the answer to major philosophical arguments is just behind the bend in the newest science.

 

Thought I could be wrong.

 

I do think there is a general issue with incorporating quantum ideas into every day life.  I actually teach a relevant course and every year I go out and look for stories/papers on quantum events being important in biological systems, and we talk about them in my course.

 

I end with the just the general idea that quantum mechanics says that odd things can happen, quantum mechanics is relevant to biological systems, and if in the future they see something odd that doesn't make sense in the context of how they normally think, maybe it is quantum mechanics.

[alexey]

Peter,

We agree that there is something that we have - volition, decision making, whatever we want to call it. Let's call it volition to make things easier.

Now some people, like you and s0crates, are claiming that there is also something that we may or may not have... Let's call that free will.

Now, I simply cannot make sense of your claim. The only meaningful description I am getting is that free will = volition + no determinism.

[PeterMP]

Peter,

We agree that there is something that we have - volition, decision making, whatever we want to call it. Let's call it volition to make things easier.

Now some people, like you and s0crates, are claiming that there is also something that we may or may not have... Let's call that free will.

Now, I simply cannot make sense of your claim. The only meaningful description I am getting is that free will = volition + no determinism.

 

Well,I think you have the basics right.

 

But you could also look at post #96.

[alexey]

Well,I think you have the basics right.

But you could also look at post #96.

Frankly, I was expecting resistance to admitting that you are baking the "no determinism" part into the definition of free will.

Looks like we are done here unless you can explain how free will effects volition and why I, somebody who cares deeply about volition, should also care about free will.

(In other words, how does free will relate to reality in a way that volition does not?)

[PeterMP]

Frankly, I was expecting resistance to admitting that you are baking the "no determinism" part into the definition of free will.

Looks like we are done here unless you can explain how free will effects volition and why I, somebody who cares deeply about volition, should also care about free will.

(In other words, how does free will relate to reality in a way that volition does not?)

 

Did you read the link I provided to PokerPacker.

[alexey]

Did you read the link I provided to PokerPacker.

Yes. Nothing changes if you replace free will with volition there.

Please repost links in the future, if possible, as a courtesy.

[PeterMP]

Yes. Nothing changes if you replace free will with volition there.

Please repost links in the future, if possible, as a courtesy.

 

Really?

 

You re-did the studies and replaced free will with volition when dealing with the participants and got the same results?

 

Where did you publish it?

 

Do you have a link?

 

Mechanisms (e.g. deterministic vs. non-deterministic) and beliefs matter.

[alexey]

Really?

You re-did the studies and replaced free will with volition when dealing with the participants and got the same results?

Where did you publish it?

Do you have a link?

Mechanisms (e.g. deterministic vs. non-deterministic) and beliefs matter.

Read those studies Peter. They talk about people believing that they are responsible for their actions. Belief in volition is sufficient for that. Tell me how belief in free will is different from belief in volition.

[PokerPacker]

Do you mean to distinguish between the way you perceive the world and the way the world actually is? Do you think your "thoughts and feelings" are real?

You'll have to define "real" in this context. Do I believe that they exist? Well yeah; I think, therefore I am . Do I believe that there is some PokerPacker ethereal essense that can makes decisions free from the laws of nature or influence quantum mechanics or some such? No, I do not have reason to believe that. That does not mean I necessarily believe in determinism, nor do I disbelieve it.

As far as worries being sufficient reasons to reject a theory, I guess it depends what the worries are. I might worry that certain observations violate Newton's laws of motion, for example, in which case I would have grounds to reject Newton's laws.

The worries I speak of were the worries more along the lines of "determinism means I'm not in control of my destiny" and such things; not disagreements with well established scientific theory.

 

The worry here is that we have this raw data of our own consciousness that doesn't seem explainable within the theoretical framework of materialism. It seems to me a pretty substantial worry.

There are many things that are as of yet unexplainable within the bounds of our knowledge and current theories. All that means is that our knowledge is incomplete. Hell, we still can't even explain how gravity works.

 

If either the way we understand ourselves or the way we understand the world is mistaken (because they imply contradictions of each other), then some drastic revision of our understanding is necessary. Assuming science will allow the use of logic of course.

I guess that depends on how you understand that the world works and how you understand yourself. I acknowledge that my understanding of both are incomplete.

 

I'd be interested to hear your criteria for what "qualifies as science" . . .

Science is built upon the scientific method with experimentation with repeatable results. It does begin with a question and a hypothesis, but it continues on to experimentation which is peer-reviewed, and then from the results it begins to draw conclusions. When an experiment shows something that contradicts established science, it comes under heavy scrutiny to make sure that the experiment is repeatable and the method of experimentation is properly merited to ensure that this new finding is, in fact, true, and changes our understanding of the world. You may recall some years back when there was an experimented that showed Neutrons to travel faster than the speed of light, and as a shocking discovery the experimentation was reviewed and a flaw was found in the experiment (if I recall correctly, the neutrons were travelling straight through the earth instead of following the curvature of the planet, and this was causing them to show up faster than expected). That is how science works; in order to challenge a well-established science, you need solid experimentation to disprove it, not conjecture.

 

Patricia Churchland uses this exact example to make a similar point. She calls this "folk physics," which she uses to illustrate her idea of "folk psychology." She thinks that ideas like consciousness, self, and free will will eventually go the way of Aristotle's idea of impetus.

Of course we needn't take her seriously according to you, because she is only a philosopher, and what could a philosopher tell us about science?

Did I not say that I respected Aristotle? He was a great philosopher, but not a very good physicist. In an age before real science, philosophers were probably as close as we had. That being said, Churchland's belief is still conjecture and not science. It doesn't seem, however, that it is attempting to be science, but rather she is hypothesizing where science will one day go (at least the way you explained her belief). Will she be right? Maybe. Does her belief mean anything to science? Not really.

 

I think this notion of "established science" sounds awfully dogmatic, and is quite frankly "far from scientific." I'm under the impression that all scientific theories must be falsifiable and are held tentatively (pending further observation/experimentation). Sometimes I think philosophers of science understand the very basics of the discipline better than most scientists . . .

Established science CAN be challenged and overturned. Heck, it wants to be challenged. But if you're goint to overturn established science, you need solid backing to prove that it's wrong. You need repeatable, peer-reviewed experimentation that can show where established science is wrong. I'm not on some philosopher witch-hunt, there just needs to be more brought to the table than a thought if you want to challenge established science.

 

It's also worth noting that the basic idea of materialism is essentially Aristotelian. You see Aristotle held that the universe was composed of substances with essential properties. Descartes borrowed this idea which still reigned in his time. He famously divided reality into two kinds of substance: Mental substance whose essence is "thinking" (consciousness) and material substance whose essence is "extension" (mass).

 

Now Descartes' material substance is observable, measurable, and operates according to physical laws. Sound familiar? I think the materialist world view basically says Descartes' material substance is the only real thing.

Incidentally I think the mistake that the materialist makes is to think of substance in this basically Aristotelian way, and that is why we have the sort of problems that concern Nagel. My own view is that reality is better understood as being composed of events or happenings rather than substances.

But I'm just a philosopher so . . .

And that's perfectly fine to view reality from the domain of events. In engineering, we find it useful to look at signals in multiple domains as there are some things you can see with more clarity in the frequency domain or the complex domain that are not as clear as the time domain.

Another way to look at it is Newtonian physics versus particle physics. It's much easier for us to describe the motion of some object with these Newtonian equasions, when really the object is made up of a bunch of smaller particles that are a part of the process. Newtonian physics is a very good approximation, though, for describing movement when you're not concerned so much with what's going on with the individual molecules and atoms that make up the object.

[PeterMP]

Read those studies Peter. They talk about people believing that they are responsible for their actions. Belief in volition is sufficient for that. Tell me how belief in free will is different from belief in volition.

 

I've read the studies and the BBC piece that I posted, and I'm pretty sure they are explicit to free will and not a general concept or a potentially related concept that may nor may not be the same based on how you want to define words.

 

That they are specific to free will and not a concept that YOU, but potentially many other people, might consider equivalent.

 

In fact, I'm pretty positive of that, and the BBC piece is pretty clear on that.

 

Does the computer program I described previously to s0crates have violition?

 

If responsible for actions = free will 

 

Then responsible for actions does not (necessarily) equal voilition based on earlier conversation.

[PeterMP]

Established science CAN be challenged and overturned. Heck, it wants to be challenged. But if you're goint to overturn established science, you need solid backing to prove that it's wrong. You need repeatable, peer-reviewed experimentation that can show where established science is wrong. I'm not on some philosopher witch-hunt, there just needs to be more brought to the table than a thought if you want to challenge established science.

 

Is there any evidence that established science is more likely to be correct than less established science?

 

Is there an actual correlation between the length of time the idea has been accepted by scientists and its correctness?

 

If you look back 50 years ago are the ideas that were accepted 100 years ago more widely accepted today than the the ideas that were knew 52 years ago?

 

This is one of those things that people say, but I suspect the evidence supporting the argument is weak at best.

[PokerPacker]

Is there any evidence that established science is more likely to be correct than less established science?

 

Is there an actual correlation between the length of time the idea has been accepted by scientists and its correctness?

 

If you look back 50 years ago are the ideas that were accepted 100 years ago more widely accepted today than the the ideas that were knew 52 years ago?

 

This is one of those things that people say, but I suspect the evidence supporting the argument is weak at best.

It's not about length of time, its about peer-review and standing up to experimentation and being able to provide prediction. Science isn't established by someone being the first to guess on something, but through careful experimentation and analysis of the results. Established science doesn't earn reverence for being around for a long time, but for standing up to scrutiny. When something new comes along to challenge it, that something new will have to stand up to repeated experimentation, peer-review, and scrutiny to show that it is more correct than what it is challenging.

on a related note, I'm finding this thread to be somewhat interesting: http://forums.philosophyforums.com/threads/scientific-vs-philosophical-methods-32945-2.html

[s0crates]

Does theoretical physics count as a science on that definition? Do Einstein's thought experiments count as experiments, or is that more like philosophy?

What kind of experiments did Darwin do for the Origin of Species? Newton for the Principia?

What kind of sciences are the social sciences?