Sorry about the time it took to respond, but I've been very busy, and the
response is not just a 5 minute job.
----- Original Message -----
From: Marvin Long, Jr. <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: BRIN-L Mailing list <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Wednesday, March 14, 2001 11:40 PM
Subject: Ethics, free will
>
> It seemed appropriate to break this section off into a separate thread.
>
>
> Even believers in predestination, as far as I know, assume that people
> have some personal responsibility (Calvinists still punish their
> children, I presume).
Actually, I think it is fair to say that believers in double predestination
(as Calvin was) behaves as though we still have choice in the matter.
Calvinists believed that those favored by God could be seen by how they
lived
and by how God favored them on the earth. So, people would act as though
everyone would know that they were to be predestined for heaven.
> On the other hand, I would guess that historically most moral systems do
> not depend upon metaphysical proofs of freedom of the will derived from a
> priori cognitions by means of pure reason.
Oh, I don't think free will can be proven metaphysically. I'm just saying
that without free will, ethical discussions are pointless. People will do
what they are forced to do, and that's about it.
> "Yes, I can do what I
> want. But I cannot *want* what I want." He's a man whose assumptions
> about himself have been shattered by the war in the desert, he's horrified
> by some of what he has discovered, and he no longer knows who he is. He
> is free to choose his actions, but not to choose what moves him to action.
>
Well, that reminds me of Augustine "the mind orders the body and the body
obeys; the mind orders itself and finds resistance." But, that doesn't
affect my views of free will and morality. We can have drives to do all
sorts of different things. But, we don't have to do them, simply because we
have a drive to do them. A good example is the way that incest and child
abuse get passed on from generation to generation. It takes a tremendous
amount of work to overcome some of the patterns that have been familiar from
family of origin stuff. But, with a lot of work, the patterns can be
broken.
To me, this is the crux of the matter. Are we really forced to do what we
do by circumstances and genes or are we able to struggle to overcome those
limitations. I'll concede that there are limitations concerning what we can
do.
I must be a bad philosopher because I don't feel married to any one
> explanation of what we call "freedom of the will."
Well, that doesn't make you a bad philosopher, just someone who hasn't
chosen a viewpoint yet.
For me, at least, the
> free will vs. fate question is still a mystery. I find the arguments
> (presented on Brin-L in the past by others) for a certain degree of
> biological determinism pretty compelling, and my internal sensation of
> freedom can be explained fairly well, I think, in terms of the
> biological "machine" making a choice. On the other hand, I've always been
> fond of the radical form of freedom presented by Sartre and Camus, and
> I'm not sure the two doctrines are entirely incompatible (because even
> that form of freedom is constrained by circumstances).
>
Right, but I think that it would be hard to imagine the freedom of Sartre
if, using his terminology, people would be found to be things in themselves
instead of things for themselves: or being instead of nothingness.
> I'm also inclined to agree with you, Dan, that future brain states may
> well be unpredictable due to the consequences of QM, leaving the door open
> for freedom of the will. On the other hand, if the physical brain is the
> source of all consciousness, then we have good reason to believe that the
> things among which we choose, and the feelings that drive our decisions,
> may be largely predetermined in a preconscious physical process that we
> cannot really control. Being conscious of the act of choosing, we feel
> free...but at what point in the brain-mind-will process did that choice
> really get made?
If my viewpoint is right, that would be as meaningful a question as which
slit the photon went through. Everything we see, through introspection or
empirical observations is simply a partial understanding.
> I'm not sure that's an answer that can be had from
> introspection alone...but who knows, maybe the Dalai Lama would disagree.
>
> <bg>
>
> Generally speaking, the arguments about freedom of the will that I see in
> metaphysics that are involved with Christianity in some way always leave
> me cold because they're rarely just about freedom of the will: they are
> about sin and good and evil and the idea of absolute moral standards and
> human dignity and so on. Too many philosophers seem to start with the
> assumption that unless we prove free will, the rest of the Christian myth
> will crumble, therefore our concept of the free will *must* be true, even
> if we are obliged to reason as though we don't at the start believe that
> to be the case.
>
Well, I think that most Christian philosophers since Kant have given up on
the idea of being able to prove their ideas about God immortality and free
will by pure reason. I certainly admit that it is logically possible that
we do not have free will, and that everything we do is determined by outside
agencies.
My arguments for free will would be to list all the conclusions that one
would have to accept by accepting the "no free will, all actions are
determined by biology and environment." Indeed, just about every person
that
I've seen argue the other way seems to hide from the consequences of their
own beliefs. Even B.F. Skinner in "Beyond Freedom and Dignity" slips back
into talking about things as good or bad, or OK.
I think that one would need to accept the concept of meaning as arbitrary.
> These associations don't necessarily invalidate a given argument, but I
> find all such arguments inherently suspect because they mix philosophy and
> theology. They seem to whisper,"Please overlook my flaws because you
> know you want what I've got to offer."
>
OK, take it out of the theological arena. Assume there is no free will.
Then consciousness is a useless byproduct of biology, right? It doesn't
matter that we are aware, because the chemistry would work the exact same
way if we weren't.
> > But, turn it around. If we have absolutely no control over our actions,
> > what dignity is there in being humans. We are just along for the ride.
>
> What an interesting use of the word. "Dignity" is something that
> adheres to people of high social status who refuse to stoop to indulge in
> the habits and practices of those without status. By extension people
> without status who nevertheless have the bearing of those with status are
> sometimes said to be dignified. For the sake of egalitarianism we also
> ascribe dignity to those who maintain their individuality and resolve in
> the face of adverse circumstances regardless of status.
>
Well, the arguments about human dignity do go back at least 2500 years.
Indeed, if you compare Gilgamesh and Genesis, you will see vastly different
views on the dignity of human beings. In the former, humans are the
accidental byproduct of a war between the gods. In the latter, humans are
made in the image and likeness of God.
>From the latter source, all humans have dignity outside of their social
standing. Indeed, that's part of the reason that a group of people who had
only 25000 people living in their homeland, which was the size of Galveston,
could have formed the basis for the viewpoints of 2 billion or so people.
>
> In other words, "dignity" used in this way means, "Please God don't let us
> turn out to be nothing but animals." Compare this to, "Darling, I'd be
> devestated if our Johnny had to go to a state university instead of
> Harvard. It's so undignified!" and you'll see what I mean.
>
Why stop at animals? Why are we any better than rocks or glaciers? What
makes humans more special than any other collection of atoms? Why is it
worse to kill a human than to melt a block of ice?
> The dignity with which we invest the human condition (freedom) is
> something built up elaborately with myth and metaphysics and dogma over
> centuries. But it isn't an argument.
>
Except the argument of A-> B, C, D, E, F...ZZZ and then discussing the
consequences of accepting or rejecting the resultant theorems. I fully
accept that morality, freedom, and God must be taken on faith. My
arguments are that these faiths do not require rejecting the results of
scientific research, etc. I think the most challenging question is the
resolution of the brain/free will dilemma.
> Imagine that we have free will, or a form of it--this strikes me as being
> well within the realm of scientific possibility. But also imagine that
> our free will were demonstrated scientifically, using known physics and
> maybe future laws of mesophysics yet to be formulated. We *know* we are
> free.
That's possible; Penrose may have the last laugh. My guess is that
mesoscopic physics will not provide a massive surprise.
> What then?
Well, for one, it means that the shining examples of wonderful and heroic
human behavior are not just illusions. People who made sacrifices for
others actually did it of their own free will, they were not forced to do
it. I can actually love or be loved, in the truest deepest sense of the
word. The possibility of meaning exists.
>Does freedom, by itself, confer dignity?
Well, it certainly offers the possibility of actions that are better than
simply chemistry in action. I'm thinking of statements like "No greater
love has any man than to lay down his life for his friends." A free person
has the potential to do something that wonderful. If one is simply forced
to die, then he does not do the laying down, it is done to him.
>If freedom doesn't exist, then
> dignity is simply a property of subsets of social systems; if freedom does
> exists, than dignity is far from given.
I'd argue that a being with that potential for good has an inherent dignity
that cannot be taken away, even by the improper use of that freedom.
> Again, this only makes sense if we assume that possibilities are binary
> opposites: totally free or enslaved by biology and physics.
Well, we are obviously not totally free to do whatever we want. Its the
potential for making moral choices. I guess that I have more
>If we
> look at humanity dispassionately, we'll see that people tend to do the
> same things, good and bad, to themselves and each other over and over
> again. Despite our progress and in spite of knowing better, we continue
> to do the same stupid, cruel, greedy things, and we continue to indulge in
> senseless acts of kindness and beauty as well; but we seem to do these
> things for the same reasons as always.
>
There have been good people for ages, and people who do bad for ages.
> Besides, even if we conclude that fate is predestined, we can't help
> behaving as though we have choices because we do have them to make,
> regardless of whether we have much control over how we make them.
Well, if we are predestined, we can't help it if we behave poorly or well.
If it is well established and fully agreed upon that we don't have choices,
then I would expect human behavior to deteriorate...no one is really to
blame for bad behavior.
>And hey, maybe it makes sense to adopt a no-worries (that is, no worries
about
> sin or hell or the rapture or what the neighbors think) attitude. We
> do worry about a lot of silly crap, after all.
How far does the "no worries" thing go?. No worries about whether one's
actions are right or wrong, because one is out of control. I remember when
this was discussed on sci.physics someone noted that most people who argue
that they have no control over their actions are not arguing that they
should have no credit for their wonderful actions. Even back in West Side
Story, the argument was "we're really not to blame" for what we do.
>Our serious decisions will still be informed by concern for the
consequences because that's how we've
> evolved to operate.
>
But, paralleling the second foundation, does the fact that we know about our
actions not being free change our reaction enough, so that the system
developed by evolution stops working?
Dan M.
