Freedomain Radio

http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/morality-without-free-will/

For a determinist, he sure depends on the existence of free will to make his argument.

This is all just post-modernist linguistics nonsense:

The problem is that no account of causality leaves room for free will—thoughts, moods, and desires of every sort simply spring into view—and move us, or fail to move us, for reasons that are, from a subjective point of view, perfectly inscrutable. Why did I use the term “inscrutable” in the previous sentence? I must confess that I do not know. Was I free to do otherwise? What could such a claim possibly mean? Why, after all, didn’t the word “opaque” come to mind? Well, it just didn’t—and now that it vies for a place on the page, I find that I am still partial to my original choice. Am I free with respect to this preference? Am I free to feel that “opaque” is the better word, when I just do not feel that it is the better word? Am I free to change my mind? Of course not. It can only change me.

He sees no distinction between brain and mind, and so, whatever it is you call your motives and your identity is nothing more than the way the brain's wiring causes it to function. What's worse, he is perfectly willing to ascribe intention to his brain ('it changes me'), but not to himself. What a fantastic escape route! "It's not my fault! My brain made me do it!"

But since there is no "me", by his argument, I don't understand how his brain can make anything to anything.

I'll admit I'm too stupid to really follow most of this stuff, but what I wonder is how afraid are you about the immoral actions of intellectuals who spend their time pondering free will and determinism?

GregG:

This is all just post-modernist linguistics nonsense:

The problem is that no account of causality leaves room for free will—thoughts, moods, and desires of every sort simply spring into view—and move us, or fail to move us, for reasons that are, from a subjective point of view, perfectly inscrutable. Why did I use the term “inscrutable” in the previous sentence? I must confess that I do not know. Was I free to do otherwise? What could such a claim possibly mean? Why, after all, didn’t the word “opaque” come to mind? Well, it just didn’t—and now that it vies for a place on the page, I find that I am still partial to my original choice. Am I free with respect to this preference? Am I free to feel that “opaque” is the better word, when I just do not feel that it is the better word? Am I free to change my mind? Of course not. It can only change me.

He sees no distinction between brain and mind, and so, whatever it is you call your motives and your identity is nothing more than the way the brain's wiring causes it to function. What's worse, he is perfectly willing to ascribe intention to his brain ('it changes me'), but not to himself. What a fantastic escape route! "It's not my fault! My brain made me do it!"

But since there is no "me", by his argument, I don't understand how his brain can make anything to anything.

That was my response too.  He says the mind changes him.  But what is he if not his mind?

His followup:

http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/free-will-why-you-still-dont-have-it/

You can see he also makes the mistake of believing that belief in free will is necessarily a theological belief. God and your Soul, and all that.

Nathan:

His followup:

http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/free-will-why-you-still-dont-have-it/

The first half.....this is why your mind is a product of everything else but you

The second half...."Imagine....", "our notions", "choices we make", "he had chosen", "our belief", "as I see it", "the moment you show that..", "our sense", "I think"

I'm not sure why he is suggesting personal responsibility for what happens in minds.

Right, he continually speaks with the language of free will.

What he is saying, however, is best followed up with what Stef goes over in the Bomb in the Brain part 4.

The problem is that no account of causality leaves room for free will—thoughts, moods, and desires of every sort simply spring into view—and move us, or fail to move us, for reasons that are, from a subjective point of view, perfectly inscrutable.

His reasoning went wrong when he assumed causality should be applied to the human mind. As someone on another forum has said: "Causality" works for billiard balls, but has no meaning in particle physics and falls apart under philosophical analysis. It also competes poorly with "teleology" in biology and the social sciences. Hence attempts at reducing "choice" to mechanisic determinism are epistemologically naive.

"We have no choice about our beliefs, but you should not believe in God..."

sighhhhhh

Serpentis-Lucis:

The problem is that no account of causality leaves room for free will—thoughts, moods, and desires of every sort simply spring into view—and move us, or fail to move us, for reasons that are, from a subjective point of view, perfectly inscrutable.

His reasoning went wrong when he assumed causality should be applied to the human mind. As someone on another forum has said: "Causality" works for billiard balls, but has no meaning in particle physics and falls apart under philosophical analysis. It also competes poorly with "teleology" in biology and the social sciences. Hence attempts at reducing "choice" to mechanisic determinism are epistemologically naive.

Whoever said this did not know any particle physics, unless the context and meaning was completely different from that which is implied above.  Causality is built into physics from the very beginning, and there is a thing called "unitary time evolution."  A unique state of a closed system at t1 evolves to a unique state at t2.

If people would like to make a compelling argument against a deterministic reality, it would be far more impressive if they would carry out the debate in a manner which does not use technology that was enabled by knowledge of deterministic physical laws.

The great worry is that any honest discussion of the underlying causes of human behavior seems to erode the notion of moral responsibility. If we view people as neuronal weather patterns, how can we coherently speak about morality? And if we remain committed to seeing people as people, some who can be reasoned with and some who cannot, it seems that we must find some notion of personal responsibility that fits the facts.

Great point by Sam Harris.  This is exactly what is going on in these debates.  People are starting with a philosophy that pre-supposes the universe must work in a certain way.  But it turns out that if you actually study the way the universe works, it seems very obviously to be doing something different, and that difference is actually quite comprehensible and enables all sorts of new understanding.

Adapting the philosophy so that it does not depend on incorrect notions might be difficult and might even be frightening at the beginning, but that shouldn't stop people who really do care about the truth of the matter.

I think the article Causation as Folk Science* is informative.

*http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/p/pod/dod-idx?c=phimp;idno=3521354.0003.004

SimonF:

I think the article Causation as Folk Science* is informative.

*http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/p/pod/dod-idx?c=phimp;idno=3521354.0003.004

Since I'm the only one arguing the opposite position, I figure that I should comment on this.  I got through section 3 (after which he had stated his main thesis, and presented his evidence) before losing interest.

Basically, he points to quantum theory and a class of Newtonian examples as his evidence against deterministic time evolution.  Quantum theory, however, still evolves deterministically -- probabilities do enter the theory in a non-classical way, but this doesn't have to do with how things evolve in time (the probabilities have to do with how things are measured in quantum theory) -- the state of a closed system at t1 still evolves to a unique state at t2. Deterministic evolution is still there.

The Newtonian examples are basically special points in certain solution spaces that are hand-built to have certain pathological features.  The terminology people use is that such solutions "are of measure zero" -- i.e. that you can never actually encounter this kind of phenomenon in real life, because they require unrealistic idealizations of infinite precision in order to see the pathological effects.  An analogous example of this kind of thing are two infinitely rigid masses which collide and bounce off each other at time T.  What is their velocity at precisely time T?  OMG it's undefined!  But this does not really signify a breakdown of the general properties of Newtonian physics -- it's just a pathological property of an unphysical system, combined with asking a question which would require infinite precision to test (something never possible in reality).  The "counterexample" of determinism he points to is just this type of thing.  It is not a physical effect that could ever be observed -- it "occupies zero volume" in the space of possibilities.

Anyway, for these reasons I don't take his thesis very seriously.  The deterministic evolution in both Newtonian and quantum mechanics is quite manifest, even in the basic postulates of the theory, from which the mathematical construction follows.  To the extent that he's arguing against deterministic evolution as a fundamental component of physics, he's trying to build an argument out of vapor.  I do agree that deterministic evolution isn't a logical necessity for physics, but it just turns out that nature seems quite clearly to be doing it that way.

Sounds like I might be with metric

Free Will doesn't exist in the metaphysical sense that most people think they have/want.  In fact, I don't see how its even a coherent idea. 

Indeed he sees no distinction between brain and mind in humans, because they are the same thing.  Morning Star, Venus. Both he and I think a mind can be made of silicon, however, and I guess if I'm more exact, brains and minds are in one-to-one correlation in humans, and a description of one is a description of the other, whcih a change of symbols for linguistic ease. 

I agree with Harris that we should replace retributive justice with purely reformative justice.

Also, I think his article is about as far from postmodernism as possible.  I guess he could add scare quotes to every word he uses, but the article isn't a 500 page doctoral thesis.  His argument still holds.