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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Dec 19, 2017 - 09:46am PT
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I'm settled. No worries.
I didn't say he was a compatibilist.
we need to hold people who do bad things accountable.
Ah, I see. "Word game!" Accountable but not responsible. I see! Why didn't I think that. Why didn't Pinker!
Choice but no choice. Chance but no chance. Ah, I see now! lol
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Moose wrote,
HFCS, I’m quite familiar with incompatibilists and compatibilist arguments.
With all due respect I am not convinced. The compatibilist argument requires consideration of the subject (the word, the concepts, the reality) from more than one frame. I do not see where you are doing this, even attempting to do this. I see you posting from one frame, from one perspective – that ONE being the Big Picture perspective, that's all.
Where is the framing, or the perspective, using the language we grew up with, from the social (interaction) perspective, or from the moral accountability perspective, or from the legal perspective? I do not see these perspectives, or these contextual frames?
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Perhaps you and EEyonkee missed it...
I already stated - numerous times now - that from the Big Picture perspective… we ARE NOT responsible, we ARE NOT to blame, for our actions, in particular our offenses.
Harris wrote an entire book entitled The Moral Landscape. We have evolved in us, built into us, moralities (moral systems). So of course we are morally responsible (we have to be) as part of the social game. Therein is your "seeing it both ways". Call it "compatibilism" if you like. Or don't. But both you and eeyonkee exercise choice, morality, responsibility along with your will (that is "free" in numerous respects apart from physics) every day of your lives or you wouldn't have survived / flourished for as long as you have. Those are the brass tacks.
In the end, it is a simple matter of recognizing a common occurrence in our common experience: Seeing something from different angles yields different answers. "Free will" and "responsibility" like a thousand other subjects viewed from one domain yields one answer, viewed from another domain yields another answer. And that's first and foremost a framing problem or framing game, not a word game.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 19, 2017 - 10:00am PT
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you are assuming something about agency, which might be an interesting assumption to examine.
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Ed, how about dumping your assumptions and just looking at your own process when you are wrangling NEW material. From my perspective, all agency is "empty," that is, NOT having any standalone, separate reality.
So far as "doing the work," I've never suggested that you do MY work or Mike's work or PPSP's work or anyone's work other than your own (maybe share with the group what your work has been, and what you have learned in the process so we know where you are coming from). In fact I've discouraged people from trying the "phony Zen narrative" as Dingbat refers to it, for various reasons.
"The work" in this regards is to continually go back to the question: What is mind? It's fine to work off the assumption that to know mind you need only wrangle down brain function, that is, the objective EXPLAINS the subjective entirely and you need not even DO any work or referencing to the subjective.
But doesn't this strike you as a little strange? Rather then go into real world processes to fact check on something, I'll spin around here with computer models and so forth and then postulate from there what mind must be, based on the same methods I've always used. What do you suppose are the first assumptions of doing so?
Per doing the work. Take compatibilism, a term that's been bandied around here in various ways. Reaching back to Hobbs and others, the issue of motives or intentions has often been used to counter hard determinism. But what does this mean in real world terms? How might one get a direct experience of this to vet the concept? How might we "do the work" on this idea.
In many ways the mind question is the body-mind "problem." So why not do the work on something that involves both, and and see how mechanical determinism squares with a real world body/mind processes, in light of the issue of motives and intentions.
As easy way to do so - as I've suggested before - is to buy a 10 dollar inside/outside thermometer (which suffices for a biofeedback device), tape the sensor to your fingertip and try and raise the temperature in your finger. That is, you are giving yourself a physical task to perform with a desired outcome. Since you will have no idea going in how to achieve the outcome, consider just holding the intention of raising the temperature, but try it two different ways.
First time, submit the intention (the temperature in my fingers will increase...) to your mind, then quietly do whatever you feel like doing - mind wander, read, watch the tube, listen to music, etc. while the "unconscious decision making engine" tries to do the task.
What you will discover is that the temperature will not rise. At all.
Now, second try, hold the intention in awareness and instead of letting your unconscious process entirely run the show, pay close attention to not only the intention, but to your hand, how your body feels - basically anchor your attention and awareness on the ongoing process as your body figures out how to raise the temp. And it will. You know because you are able to pull a measurement in real time. Objective data - the holy grail for many on this thread.
What does the above process tell you about mechanical determinism? The first time you let your brain and body try the task in full machine mode. Second time around you made the process conscious so far as you could and what happened? What was added the second time around that changed the outcome?
I raise this example because in my experience, "doing the work" is never a matter of simply sitting on a cushion and wrangling the "phony Zen narrative," or grinding on equations till the cows come home. Rather it is an ongoing adventure of inclusive inquiry, engaging both the objective and subjective.
The point is when you go this route you will discover that in looking at the whole coin, so to speak, you will learn things otherwise impossible if you were to merely study heads or tails.
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yanqui
climber
Balcarce, Argentina
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Dec 19, 2017 - 10:02am PT
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When it comes to "free will" and "moral responsibility" doesn't it seem there is, say, a factual difference between someone who plans out and intends to murder someone and someone who accidentally kills someone? Say, for example, a difference between that guy in New York who recently ran over people on purpose and someone who accidentally runs over someone? Can't we sometimes find evidence that indicates a factual difference between those two kinds of acts? It seems to me when we talk about "free will" and "moral responsibility" we're talking more about those kinds of distinctions and not some philosophical problem about how people are different from rocks or machines.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Dec 19, 2017 - 10:16am PT
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Still waiting on Moose or eeyonkee...
...to clearly state in no uncertain terms that Brock is/was NOT responsible - either "morally responsible" or "socially responsible" for "raping" that Stanford girl because his life in all its ones and zeros (details to the microsecond and to the atom) was FATED from the Big Bang.
Why? Because they have claimed they are not compatibilists. Why? Because they do not see these subjects from more than their one context or one domain, that being the Big Picture / from the Big Bang.
I want to hear, in their own words, what justifies their ONE FRAME of thinking on these subjects (that being from the perspective of the Big Bang and causation and particle physics) at the expense of all the other FRAMES (re: social living, social contract, law, civilization, ecology).
If there really is no TRUE choosing or deciding (Moose), not really, then what word does Moose use when he "chooses" to go to Mt Rose to ski instead of Kirkwood. If there really is no TRUE moral responsibility on our part, then what word does Moose use when he takes "responsibility" (moral, social) as a moral being (manifesting a morality system within) and adheres to traffic speed limits or else submits to paying a speeding ticket?
I'm all ears.
But try to clarify without "just" word games.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Dec 19, 2017 - 10:38am PT
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"The work" in this regards is to continually go back to the question: What is mind?
Yes, master.
Back to the work.
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Norton
climber
The Wastelands
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Dec 19, 2017 - 10:43am PT
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Fructose,.......
what exactly is the "work" that various posters through the years on this thread have stressed that one must do in order to .....what...understand ?
is this a scholastic exercise laid out step by step?
or, is this some kind of a sufficiently vague response in order to avoid fully answering another poster? seriously not meant sarcastically...
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 19, 2017 - 11:06am PT
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Moose beat me to it. The Stanford source is a got-to index of much of what has been discussed here.
And Fruitcake, you're obsessing again.
I gave you two real-world examples of giving the brain a task, and the outcomes were different in measurable ways. Which one was "fated" and ordained by the Big Bang, and which one wasn't. Or were they both "fated" even though the subject made no change in either the structure (brain) or the input.
What Fruity is trying to do is posit human behavior based entirely on mechanical functioning, with no reference to consciousness. Basically, old school behavioralism, whereby the whole story can be known and predicted by way of determined processing. It follows that changes in behavior can only be accomplished by changing the machinery Fruitbasket believe sources that behavior. Of course this is not so in the real world, otherwise psychological challenges would be the sole domain of MDs to drug the behavior into submission or prompt another response. In fact the biggest challenge psychologists often face is the struggle to make the client CONSCIOUS of what is going on, and to work past the defense mechanisms and denial that the brain has unconsciously imposed.
There certainly are determined impulses and patters to our behavior. There are also various pattern interupts to challenge the fated direction.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Dec 19, 2017 - 11:14am PT
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Norton, I think you meant largo, not me, in your post.
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Moose, fair enough.
So it is written, so let it be believed...
You are NOT responsible. The Big Bang made you do it!!
Take no responsibility. The Big Bang is your escape!!!
Causation is your escape!!
There but for grace of FATE go I... !
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Dec 19, 2017 - 11:28am PT
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Okay, I gotta add this. And (2) apologies as earlier I was rudely disrupted by a battery failure. Anyways, check this out...
Moose wrote,
Yep, word games. From a big picture perspective, we not responsible, but we can exercise choice? Seriously?
Yes, seriously.
Now I am more convinced than ever that you're not appreciating the role of the mental faculty we have of shifting frames, based on change of context or domain, in all this.
Yep, from the big picture perspective, we are NOT responsible; and yet...
Yep, from a systems perspective, from a living organismic perspective, from many other perspectives, we can and do exercise choice.
From a systems perspective we exercise choice just as computers do. We have a gazillion branch points in our nervous system and these empower us with the power of choice.
I'm surprised this has to be explained. But per your quote above, apparently it does need explaining.
Ask eeyonkee if he is aware of computers or even more fun still, robots, that make choices or decisions based on programming and input. Ask him if he is aware of some computers being more powerful, more competent in a task, than others.
Is this really where we are at? Really?
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Dec 19, 2017 - 11:35am PT
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and earlier, Moose wrote,
Again, Compatibilists change the meaning of moral responsibility, but that’s cheating.
So that's cheating? In addition to playing games?
Those who see the "free will" idea, or set of ideas, from more than one perspective, one or more of which is "compatible" with a predetermined fixed universal behavior since the Big Bang are...
...cheating? They are cheating?
Hey, I had an opportunity, but note I didn't call incompatibilists... narrow-minded.
But without pause you call compatibilists or what they do cheating. Hmm.
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"From a big picture perspective, we not responsible, but we can exercise choice? Seriously?" -Moose
Show me where Harris, in any of his work, denies the power of choice or the power of decision making and I'll eat my sit harness.
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Me thinks the Moose should take at least a year-long circuitry design class in addition to a year-long computer programming class to learn or re-learn at a deep level - the deepest level possible - the phenomena of switching, choosing, deciding in machinery (in controllers, control systems). It's not just a theory, it is real-world.
Choosing is real-world. In biology/ecology, morality systems are real world. Whether or not a group or community, based on its morality, wants to consider an agent of theirs (a member of their group) "responsible" for his/its choosing is their business, indeed it's their choice.
Based on my own worldview and morality system, if Trump chooses to get us into a war with North Korea, I am going to consider him responsible for this, and I am, together with others, going to hold him responsible for this - in terms of reward or punishment.
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Dec 19, 2017 - 11:45am PT
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MikeL: well, what do you think of healyje’s report of: recognizing, prioritizing, alerting, contextualizing, interpreting, narrating? Hasn't he been systematically exploring his own process self-referentially?
A not-too-subtle difference: A high school student sits down to write an essay, saying to himself, first I will do this, then I will do that, and in that last step I will sometimes get an idea, etc. But what JL seems to be saying is that one watches one's self while in the process of engaging these steps, watching the very process as it unfolds in one's self during accomplishments and the formation of ideas.
Healye: Prioritizing: I can sometimes catch glimpses of the words which were discarded in the process of attempting to recognize the sounds
Is this the same as watching himself as he is in the process of catching glimpses of words?
IMHO watching one's self while engaged in mathematical research will divert attention from the task at hand. However, taking a break and relaxing, doing something else or having a nap may allow a critical thought to bubble up. But do you sit pondering, trying to watch yourself in this process?
Of course, in the sciences and mathematics one looks deeper and deeper into a subject, gaining insight along the way - usually focused on this task rather than shifting focus to your focusing.
Nonsense. Or maybe I dramatically misinterpret what you guys are saying.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 19, 2017 - 01:19pm PT
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No John. I think you are spot on here.
Subtle self observation of the process will probably only impede the original draft or effort per the math problem or the short story one is working on. Doing so is valuable, however, when you want to see how the creative process unfolds,and how there is a lot more going on besides unconscious, determined processing. But one has to look VERY closely - or at least I do - to get a handle on how perception works and influences the outcome.
The heavy lifting hinges on paying attention. During the first or discovery phase, that is the first wrangling of the given creative task, once we are narrow focusing our attention on this or that we often lose most sense of self awareness. However if you observe closely enough you will notice that your focus is always toggling slightly between extra narrow (virtually no self awareness), to a slightly wider focus where we step slightly back and observe and evaluate, make a judgement on where we are in the process, stay the course or shift tracks, then hunker down again.
In other words we set a compass heading, so to speak, then narrow focus and let the machinery run, for awhile, then pull back a tige and reckon our progress, then go for it again. Every time we pull back we bring awareness to the process, interrupting straight mechanical grinding, and get an increasingly wider view of the whole that is starting to emerge.
If we just let the machine run, without "checking in" on where we are at, we often have to backtrack and retool what our brain came up with. Awareness is never absent, but our sense of observing self often vanishes in the process.
Notice what happens once we have a first draft or have done a first pass on the given task. We no longer have to narrow focus in the same way and tend to take a wider view, consciously observing and evaluating the work from another perspective.
Once we are "done" with a nearly finished draft, that's when wide, conscious awareness is especially crucial. In my own field (writing), I have to consciously track how the thing feels in my gut, how it sounds, how the transitions work and how the words string together, how the whole shebang works AS a whole as opposed to how much I fancy the discrete parts of the project.
This is where the revision process gets increasingly subtle and where awareness is most needed. The worst thing I can do is to narrow focus on small passages and let my brain grind on the details. This can lead to binging on passages that no matter how sage they might sound or feel, simply don't fit in the whole. I've wasted my time by letting my brain unconsciously work something over.
The more I review the work, the more aware I am of the how it works, till eventually I have a global view and can evaluate from there. Then I often set it aside for a few weeks or months and return with a fresh mind that is less determined by the mental tracks I followed first time around.
A crucial step in this process is to review the whole WITHOUT trying to evaluate it, just getting a feel and sense for what it is beyond a series of black marks on my monitor. Sort of like walking into a new house you are considering buying and and just being there for a bit to get some sense of the new digs. Of course there is massive unconscious processing going on under the hood, but I have to be aware of the whole of me lest one particularly robust part of my makeup will decide for me.
Fact is "we" (our self) is not monumental but is comprised of a vast array of sub-personalities, including a matching set of opposites. Without retreating to an aware vantage where I can experience the rainbow I call "me," and reckon the terrain accordingly, my choice will be entirely determined and I will later wake up in another self and think, "I hate this place."
Is there mechanical, determined, unconscious processing going on? Absolutely. That's where the content comes from. Is my every decision "fated" by the Big Bang? Only if I remain entirely unconscious of what options my brain is providing. In many ways what I am describing is the process of reconsidering and evaluating the first order impulses from my brain, and consciously directing and USING my brain to keep grinding on the options. This naturally involves an ongoing process of unconscious narrow focusing and wide, consciously aware experiencing, followed by evaluating, then revising accordingly.
I think there is little doubt that if you reviewed the whole process in strictly objective terms it could be explained that way, with no vectoring off awareness and experience.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Dec 19, 2017 - 01:31pm PT
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You can’t have it both ways, buddy.
Really, we cannot have (1) a mechanistic fated universe and (2) evolved systems (as part of an ecology) that have the power to choose at the same time? Better let Mother Nature know!!
I'm looking around right now... and I see decision making machinery (control systems, engines!) all around me. How could this be?!!
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And as Harris and others have pointed out many times, randomness has nothing to do with the main subjects we're talking about: volition (free vs constrained), power to choose, competence (vs incompetence), moralities, responsibilities.
Perhaps YOU should read some David Eagleman and what he has to say about neuroscience and the law and behavioral responsibilities. For context.
Start here...
http://www.eagleman.com/blog/the-brain-and-the-law
Eagleman is founder and co-director of the Center for Science and Law, which studies how new discoveries in neuroscience can navigate the way we make laws, punish criminals, and develop rehabilitation.
Then we could talk. ;)
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Dec 19, 2017 - 01:39pm PT
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Thanks, John. However, here is one aspect of the creative process in which I engage that comes closer to self-reflective: When others are not around and I am involved in a math problem I always talk to myself, saying things like What happens if I use a sine functions here? Oh that doesn't work, I'll try an exponential function, hmm . . . that doesn't work either ...
I'll offer suggestions to myself, then try them in a focused manner.
Am I weird or what?
;>)
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Dec 19, 2017 - 01:40pm PT
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Is this the same as watching himself as he is in the process of catching glimpses of words?
Definitely not and here I agree with John and Largo. Despite the fact the whole of the experience of being handed amusing gibberish by your own subconscious feels very third-partyish, the "catching glimpses" part is definitely way after the fact even if in this case 'after the fact' may be some fraction of a second. But still, it's never an aspect of any kind of deliberate attempt to 'observe' the process of turning sounds into fully contextualized speech. To be honest I wish I didn't have a window into this subconscious process and by design we really aren't meant to.
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WBraun
climber
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Dec 19, 2017 - 01:44pm PT
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Those who see the "free will" idea, or set of ideas,
It can't be ideas. If so it means you are ultimately guessing and are clueless.
It's either free will exists or it does not at all .......
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Dec 19, 2017 - 01:50pm PT
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It's either free will exists or it does not at all...
Again, this free will business holds zero interest or fascination for me, but strike me from the compatibilist column and count me (am I really saying this...) in with the duck.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Dec 19, 2017 - 01:51pm PT
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Seriously, Moose, all kidding aside...
I am earnestly trying to understand you. So are you saying there is decision making in the brain but no choosing in the brain? Is that it? Are you parsing between choosing and decision-making? as part of our larger conversation here?
Here, I just dug this up. We could use it for context, I bet it could be helpful if we're so inclined....
[Click to View YouTube Video]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EREriwV71mA
We could also focus on the language, the lexicon, Eagleman uses throughout to help get us, hopefully together, through this briar patch. If you're so inclined.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 19, 2017 - 02:46pm PT
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What Fruitycake is binging on is the notion of infinite regress.
For a number of reasons — including a desire to feel that we have a complete understanding of where we came from, or at least an understanding which is completely sufficient for all of our purposes — there is a strong tendency to suppose that an infinite regress of causes and effects is impossible. We see this in the writings of Aristotle on a first mover.
Traditionally in Greco-Roman influenced philosophy, this prime mover has been identified with a creator god. A more modern formulation comes from the Big Bang theory, which (although we study the question) happened for no reason that we know of; and perhaps occurred for no reason at all. Indeed, if time is a property of the universe, a good argument can be made that there is no such thing as "before" the Big Bang.
At the same time, we have gotten a lot of leverage in science from the ideas that everything happens for a reason, i.e. because it is caused by something else. This is sometimes described as the Principle of Sufficient Reason.
Aristotle also applies this idea, except that the first mover is made an exception, something which exists literally for no reason. Indeed, the emotionally negative way that "no reason" is used in common speech, as something groundless and irrational, indicates how widespread the feeling is that the idea of uncaused events is deeply dissatisfying.
Almost all of our modes of critical thinking are infused with both of these ideas: that we may work from first principles, a definite starting point, counting up from zero (or one, historically); but also that we may trace the causes of things to some point, and then later ask how that starting point came to be. But the two ideas are themselves in conflict.
Which is true — that infinite causal chains are impossible? Or that they are necessary? Or are they perhaps possible without being necessary?
Aquinas ran with this whole shebang by way of this logic:
1. Any infinite cause/effect chain would have no first member (no "first cause," by definition).
2. If a causal chain has no first member, then it will have no later members. (since to take away the cause is to take away the effect)
3. But there exists a causal chain with later members. (such are the events that Fruitcake witnesses)
4. Therefore, there are no infinite cause/effect chains. (follows from 1 and 3)
Of course this is a questionable premise. Aquinas gives it in his slogan that if you remove the cause you remove the effect. But if you "take away" the first member, you're not really removing anything. Rather, you're just adding causes before it. Every event would still have a cause. There would just be infinitely many of them.
It’s perfectly coherent to imagine that the universe lasts forever (in the future). And it seems just as perfectly coherent to imagine that the world goes infinitely far back into the past. Why not? We can imagine it. It is not a contradiction to suppose it. Therefore, some would say, it is possible. But Aquinas' argument relies on the claim that it is impossible.
So the argument, some say, is unsound because premise (4) (of the main argument) is not true.
NOTE: From a folder I had on my desktop.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Dec 19, 2017 - 03:05pm PT
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There are just some times when it's hard to avoid viewing philosophy this way:
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