Heh, is forgiveness a feeling or a pattern of learned overt behavior?
We generally think of it as a mental state. The "proof" of forgiveness is that our behavior is no longer punitive.
Is love (you choose the definition) a feeling or a pattern of behavior that reflects a global state of mind (multiple parts of the brain chiming in to one's state of consciousness at the same time)?
As you state, a lot depends on the definition. However, it seems to me that we sometimes will private/internal acts (e.g., a mental act of computation) which are not simply "actions."
Wait, are you (YOU?) going to chip-in with subjective phenomenological states??? My response? Cogito ergo sum" baby! And while we're at it, why not, "I forgive, therefore I am"?
OK?
If we accept subjective phenomenological states of mind, what is the big leap to the Free Will?
Depends on the definition of free will.
Poets sing about them both, but I posit "Will I (who is "I"?) forgive?" is an extant reality as a subjective phenomenological state but having the choice of whether or not we forgive is out of bounds?
A Delorean has the "ability" to go 88 MPH, but will only do so if Marty McFly determines the system to travel at that speed by depressing the gas pedal. Likewise, you have the "ability" to forgive, but will only do so if you are determined to do so by various threads of nature and nurture. We're talking about a non-magical ability (e.g., the "ability" of a thermostat to control temperature).
For you , there can be no choices.
Depends on your definition of choice. If choice requires magical abilities, then "no."
Or, the experience of decision making is a mental delusion to pass the time before we do the inevitable.
It's only inevitable in the sense of not being able to change/defy the preceding states of the universe such that you are caused/self-caused to something else.
That stated, if you did not decide to act, you would not act. It is NOT a delusion that your choice has causal properties. Rather, the delusion is to see you choice as itself being uncaused.
Darwin was fated to pen "Origins."
Fated? No. Fatalism is a big mistake and we're using terms of art, so I will clarify that fate is out of it.
Determined? Yes.
(Do you know a little of the history of its publication?
Yes, I am.
Darwin was reluctant to publish his work because he knew it would create a fecal tornado, so he dilly-dallied for a full decade. it was only after it came to his attention that another was preparing to publish the same ideas that he got his butt in gear).
Determination is not always simple and is frequently complex, involving an innumerable set of fault lines with tensions pushing in one direction or another, like the counterbalancing forces in a clockwork, or Rube-Goldberg machine. But at bottom, causality is causality is causality. Complicated causality is still causality.
Have you ever sweated a really important life decision, the kind that takes time to ruminate over, the kind that you go back and forth over, talk to friends and family, seek expert advice?
Yes.
Is this process mere mechanism and determined?
If the scientific perspective is correct, yes. Full stop.
I have been giving thought to your arguments, trying to figure out how you think so I can more efficiently communicate with you. I note a heavy predisposition for taxonomic classification.
Uh oh! I am on the analyst's couch. And the irony. You are trying to figure out how I am determined so as to dislodge me from determinism.
Read a thought, label it as coming from this school of thought or that school of thought and then make conclusions that theirs and mine are identical and you carry through with the long reaching implications of those academic debates.
You are always welcome to clarify your meaning. Like anyone else, I approach a conversation with a particular idiolect and set of "facts" in my commitment store.
But, I am not from those schools and the context of those academic debates are not identical to this discussion even if they touch on common themes.
And that is why we have dialogue -- so that we may come to know each other better.
You seem to be looking for some strange land which allows for freedom, but which does not deny the basic tenets of physics and biology. Sadly, I do not believe that there is any such place, unless you reframe freedom under the definition of compatibilism.
And I do not know how to avoid those open man-holes so that you do not ascribe to points I make some far reaching conclusions due to some recognizable similarity to some tangentially relevant academic work. Thus, I can't talk about Hume without being a skeptic, I can't mention Kuhn without being accused of relativism.I can't echo the reasoning of romantic thinkers without being a romantic.
I can appreciate the frustration. You're trying to make a subtle point without being committed to the most radical implications of any particular thinker. At the same time, to grab the attention, you kind of have to trumpet the disruptive aspects of these thinkers for people who are complacent true-believers (the thoughtless Jessie Pinkmans of the world who just yell, "Yeah, science!")
Even so, I think you're hunting after that something that doesn't exist and that you cannot square the circle as you seem to want to do. And believe me, I would LOVE to have a robust argument to put hard determinists on the back foot.
And then you seem to have a playbook: when faced with relativism, say this, when faced with a romantic, say that.
I have been at this particular debate for a long time.
In the end, I am The Man Who Wasn't There in the discussion, and it puts up a barrier to understanding and I am a mere amalgam of positions with whom you have debated or books you have read in the past.
And by my lights, you're a bit of an equivocator. At some moments, you acknowledge that there are biological limits set in the foundations of our actions. At other moments, on the other hand, you want to articulate the substance of choice and agency in terms that seemed to have disavowed. Dan Dennett on "Deepities" discusses the frustrations of trying to pin down such a position. Or see Shackel on "Troll's Truisms."
It may be the case that I do not yet perceive the substance of your position. Or, it may be the case, that you don't quite see fatal flaws with your position.
A common argument against Darwinian Evolution is that given the rate of genetic mutation and the age of the Earth, there has not been enough time for the level of complexity to have evolved based on the posited mechanism. I'm not sure how those critics have done their calculations and I don't care to follow-up. But I gather you and I both don't buy the criticism and that ~3 Billion years is not enough?
Sure.
What about the 13.7 Billion years of accumulated quantum fluctuations.
OK.
The Big Bang was followed by a rapidly expanding phase where the subatomic particles were distributed homogeneously.
Perhaps. However, I seem to recall evidence suggesting asymmetry in this initial expansion.
And out of this homogeneity (which is symmetrical, mirror images in all directions are identical) emerges matter in asymmetrical clumps. Galaxies are distributed in irregular clusters. How does this happen if natural law is consistent, universal and necessary, factors that are required for a deterministic universe.
I dunno. The boundary conditions of the universe appear to have played by slightly different rules. I wasn't there, so I can't really say.
At any rate, the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics already asserts a probabilistic universe underneath our classical deterministic picture of the world.
However, establishing that we have free will requires doing more than defeating determinism and substituting randomness in it's place. This point is discussed upthread. "Free" and "will" is a contradictory conjunction of terms.
REMEMBER, we are talking about physics here, not Hegel nor fundamentalist theology. Resist going into your fixed action pattern of argumentation.
OK?
Think about this: subatomic particles from which emerge matter are distributed homogeneously. And out of homogeneity, perfect symmetry, and with natural laws applied consistently, universally there emerges asymmetrical clumps.
Hmm, you seem to think you're on to something here. If determinism is true (all-the-way-down), however, then there is a deterministic explanation for this pattern which we do not possess. If determinism is not true (all-the-way-down), then we might attribute this to quantum fluctuations which created winners/losers in terms of clumps of matter and energy.
Why? Because reality operates based on probabilities.
Perhaps it does, perhaps it doesn't. And yet there is nothing here which would establishes the probability, plausibility, or even possibility of free will (in terms of origination).
And again, if we commit to the scientific worldview, there are no resources available for building such a story. If you want to talk about Gods and souls and so on, OK. But in the frame materialism/naturalism, you have resources for "bootstrapping" the prospect of being an "uncaused cause."
Uncertainty is built into the system at the most fundamental levels and the effects of that mechanism of variability accrue over the 13.7 Billion years since the big bang. Chance and variability are part of the original mechanisms of the universe and began as soon as the Universe became transparent.
Again, it might be, it might not be. However, there is nothing you will find in a scientific account that will vault you over being an effect of prior causes.
But in a perfectly deterministic universe, the symmetry and homogeneity would never have been lost, there would be no mechanism or cause and effect process to create asymmetry from symmetry.
We don't know what preceded the Big Bang. That which caused the Big Bang, if it was itself asymmetrical in its causation may have had asymmetrical effects. Who knows?
So how does rigid absolute determinism fit into a universe that has uncertainty built-in to the physical laws at the most fundamental levels?
Assuming that there is not hidden determinism lurking behind quantum phenomena, we don't like in a universe governed by a perfect chain of cause and effect. However, everything is still determined--either by chance or by the classical (deterministic) route.
And take super-complex and organized aggregates of this uncertain stuff, which has accrued and stewed the effects of this uncertainty over 13.7 Billion years with 3 Billion years of Natural Selection pressure towards functional organization of living things on this planet.
OK?
Why would this being be expected to exhibit more mechanistic rigidity than the subatomic stuff on which it is all based?
I expect material at the classical level to be subject to deterministic forces. By and large, and in the ways that matters, yes, we're determined by classical forces.
Yet, you state that it was more certain that Darwin would publish "The Origins" at the moment of the Big Bang than it is that a photon bounces off the surface of the water or penetrates it.
I am arguing that if you rerun the history of the universe exactly as it played out the first time (with the same deterministic force and will all the random events bouncing the same way--into the rim or out of the rime--you will arrive at exactly the same universe. Create a different universe with different events and you will get different results. There is no universe, however, in which Darwin could have done other than he did (in a metaphysical sense). He was either caused to do so (by both direct determinism and a little percolating randomness) or he was not. There is no Universe where Darwin stands above these forces to do other than he did, to choose other than he chose.
You may be arguing for that, but I am skeptical that you really believe in the soundness of your own argument.
I suppose you'll have to remain skeptical.
Uncertainty is normal in the expression of the mechanism of the Universe.
Perhaps. Perhaps not. Ultimate questions like these aren't really open to us.
There are rules but the machine analogy is poor. It is not rigid, repetitive, cyclical, binary.
Why? Because there is a little noise that accompanies the signal? A little friction? What could be more machine like?
There is cause and effect, but is blunted by the bald fact of probablistic variability. Einstein was wrong, God DOES play dice. The result, limited predictability.
OK, let's assume that quantum randomness is truly (ontologically, not just epistemically) random. So what? Where does the free will come in? You think that an Epicurean Swerve = free will? A little chaos in the system somehow liberates us from being caused? You have two masters, a pair of dice and clockwork,
where is the fancy bread?
We know that the firing of neurons is not binary. They are not "on-off" gates. In fact, Neurons operate on dimmer-switches and the intensity of the stimuli effect the output in a graded fashion which modulates the down-stream response of other cells.
So what? Complicated does not mean undetermined. A complicated determinism via a network of "dimmer-switches" is no more free than a computer with logic gates. Also, we've already built fuzzy logic processors and no one has attributed choice to these systems on grounds of complexity.
Not only that, the intensity and frequency of the firing will alter the intensity of future firings as well as the connectivity to other neurons and support cells which is beyond complex. All of this changes over time. We can't conceptualize the brain without keeping the notion of pasticity at the very front of our minds.
Sure. Complexity and determinism are friends. This is what everyone gets wrong about Chaos Theory.
What are the practical limits of predictability?
Who cares? Determinism is bigger than "practicality." Determinism is complicated beyond our ability to compute outcomes, but it is not for all that complexity, undetermined.
A multi-layered integrative system involving billions of modulated information gates representing trillions of plastic and adjustable connections: We both know it is physiologic mechanism, but how predictable is it? When does the word "predictability" start to lose meaning when the ability to predict complex behaviors? One in ten to the negative tenth power? Ten to the negative 20th, ten to the negative 30th?
If you think that determinism only holds insofar that we clever monkeys can compute cause and effect, then I suppose you will find that determinism is very limited indeed. But determinism is not "practical" nor dependent on our ability to make predictions.
Is there a threshold of complexity
I'm going to stop you right there an say "No." Complex causality layered on complex causality layered on complex causality is still causality. There's no secret sauce in complexity (please send Chris Nolan the memo
).
that makes prediction mere "science fiction" and that the idea of Free Will becomes the much more tenable, practical conception.
Just look up the word "compatibilism." If you can live with being a compatibilist, then we're good. If not, you've still got miles to go.
Take Occam's Razor: What is the more insightful/meaningful explanation for the behavior of humanity: we are a collection of physiological processes that in theory can be predicted but that there is no significant statistical differentiation between the probability of successful prediction and impossibility, or that we call this practical unpredictability "Free Will."?
Well, you might as well argue that we cannot really say what "dark energy" and "dark matter" are yet, so we might as well "practically" refer to this as "God."
The human-of-the-gaps argument no longer bears scrutiny, because we know, in principle, that there is no room for it in the scientific paradigm (either in the old Newtonian sense, or within our contemporary probabilistic view of micro-physics).
The Horseshoe Crab has not changed much in 750 Million years because it has been well adapted to its environment for that long. But the word "Evolution" means, literally, 'Change Over Time." So change is deep in the essence of Evolution. How can an organism adapt? We accept that genetic variability is the 'clay" on which the sculptor 'Natural Selection' works.
OK.
The fossil record suggests that early life was simple, in genetic and phenotypic structure. This is one enormous manner in which change manifests over time is biologic complexity.
We have seen evolution go in both directions. Evolution seeks to optimize fitness, not to maximize complexity.
We can have simple organisms that have superior fitness and we can have complex organisms that have superior fitness. But early life was simple. So it follows that over time natural selection has resulted in organisms with greater complexity because they were not there early.
The reason why we did not have complex organisms early on is because it takes time to have the opportunity to evolve in the direction of complexity. It's not as if mother nature has a complexity vector.
Why the trend towards complexity?
See above.
As per formula, the genetic changes are random.
Not in the ontological sense of the term, no. Genetic changes result from deterministic shuffling which is epistemically veiled or inscrutable to our eyes, but which is as determined as anything else.
However, the fitness rendered from those changes originates from the ability of complex organisms to adapt to more diverse environmental conditions than a simple organism.
Fitness is nothing more than survivability. What is fit in one context is unfit in another.
Did you ever see that (original) Star Trek episode where a landing party beams down to a seemingly abandoned city and the party hears insect like buzzing,
Yes, I hear that buzzing every time you type the word ontogeny or capitalize the word "will" as if stretching the "w" will make it taller in dignity.
that turns out to be a small party of marauding aliens that want to take over the Enterprise and are invisible to the crew only because they our out of temporal phase and are existing in a more rapid time phase, too fast for Kirk, et. al. to perceive outside of the buzzing they hear. Both sets of people are regular material beings, people, existing concurrently, but in different time phases. This is the story.
A determined system moving fast is no less determined than another system moving slow.
This is my analogy to describe the relationship between Darwinian Evolution and Socio-historical Evolution. Both are based on the same natural stuff of the universe, but the emergent properties of the human mind results in a social evolutionary process that is distinct, concurrent and temporally out of phase with natural selection.
Nature evolved these abilities and the abilities which made these constructs possible. It's all part of Darwin's game. We symbol-users just play it faster.
The rate of change in the human capacity to manipulate their environment is far faster than natural selection combined with genetic mutation.
And nature selected for this. And our own fitness to live in our environment (which we are damaging) is now under the shadow of serious doubt. We might very well "flame out" as a species, but Darwin wins, either way.
Now, this hypersonic development of ability to manipulate the environment has some obvious short-term fitness advantages, but it isn't looking too good long term right now.
Bingo.
Anyway, we are not immune to the effects of Natural Selection, but it is tantamount to a frozen captain Kirk who is actually moving at his normal speed, but is so slow as to be imperceptible compared to the rate of socio-historical change as we experience it.
Driving fast doesn't make the car any less a car.