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Post by Rob Allen on Jun 10, 2017 14:35:35 GMT -5
The June mailing from Philosophy Talk:
The June Inquirer, from the program that questions everything...
except your intelligence!
Philosophy Talk <friends@philosophytalk.org> Jun 6 at 10:01 AM
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If you're bedeviled by a philosophical riddle stemming from everyday life, then enter our Conundrum Contest! Email us your most puzzling philosophical question for our hosts to tackle on the air. The winner will have the opportunity to talk about their conundrum on the radio!
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Watch the video of John, Ken and their human guest, Steven Wise, taping the Nonhuman Rights episode before a live audience.
Food for Thinkers: Philosophy Talk's Picks
Host Ken Taylor - "I’ve been thinking a lot about Democracy since the November election. I believe that democracy is a great thing, but that our own form of it is highly imperfect. So I’ve been considering other forms that democratic self-governace might take. One form that intrigues me a lot is so-called Deliberative Democracy. Amy Gutmann, who is one of my favorite political theorists, and Dennis Thompson, wrote the book on this topic. Actually they wrote two—Democracy and Disagreement and the follow up Why Deliberative Democracy?. Both are important, but if you want to read just one, read Why Deliberative Democracy?."
Driverless Cars at the Moral Crossroads: Highlights
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Roquefort Raider
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Aug 7, 2017 14:29:49 GMT -5
Here's a philosophical question on which I strongly disagree with people whose side I usually find myself on:
Do we have free will?
People like Sam Harris and Jerry Coyne claim we don't, (and the latter is rather emphatic about it, as if it went without saying).
I'd really like to see convincing evidence for that opinion, because it seems to rely on the type of cloud shovelling that can not replace proper empirical analysis. Pragmatically, it looks as if we have free will... we can decide to read the next sentence, or we can stop right here. That such a decision is made by neurons that were formed by a combination of genetics and developmental history is beside the point; our rational, self-conscious being exists right now, with all its emotional, hormonal, metabolic, genetic, neuronal actuality, and this system really appears to be able to make choices that are not entirely dictated by how it developed in the first place.
"Oh", goes the usual retort, "but this actuality can be seen as the result of an infinitely complex game of pool, with all the particles in the universe set in motion at the time of the Big Bang (as far as we know), and if we had an infinitely complex computer transcending time and space it would have been able to calculate that a few billion years down the line, a particular human would have decided to read the next sentence rather than not".
Which is all fine and dandy if one accepts the universe as being entirely deterministic. However, the very existence of radioactivity proves that it is not... at least not entirely. It is impossible, even with an infinitely complex computer, to predict when a particular radioisotope will decay. On average, sure, we can expect that a bucket-full of radioisotopes will have decayed by so much in any given length of time... But for one atom it is impossible. Why then would it be so inconceivable that the emergent properties of a thinking brain might be just as unpredictable? The advantage of such a position is that it seems to agree with the evidence.
I believe the burden of the proof is on the absolute determinists who claim our free will is but an illusion. (In all honesty, I sometimes get the strong impression that those who oppose free will do it for religious reasons... It suits their atheistic world view to claim that since free will exists, the whole concept of "sin" (and even "crime", actually) is irrelevant, since nobody could willfully do otherwise as what they're fated to do anyway. I'm an atheist too, but am convinced that this is nonsense. There is no fate, there is no predetermined destiny. Sure, probabilities might favour us doing this instead of that; our upbringing, our emotional status, our biology, our subconscious, might prompt us to do something... but in the final analysis, this amazing and yet unexplained thing we call a mind still can push the balance of decision this way or that.
Or so it seems. But once again, if free will is an illusion, I'd like to see some evidence of it. I mean, is this even testable? If it isn't, then it's not a scientific question.
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Post by LovesGilKane on Aug 7, 2017 14:59:43 GMT -5
if free will is an illusion (though philosophically it would be a DELUSION, hah ha, ho ho, hee hee, context-context), then all memetic theory is a lie.
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Roquefort Raider
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Aug 7, 2017 15:42:38 GMT -5
if free will is an illusion (though philosophically it would be a DELUSION, hah ha, ho ho, hee hee, context-context), then all memetic theory is a lie. Except Richard Dawkins doesn't seem to think we have free will! |
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Post by LovesGilKane on Aug 7, 2017 15:55:22 GMT -5
Richard Dawkins isn't exactly a poster boy for success through memetics.  |
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Post by berkley on Aug 8, 2017 5:44:43 GMT -5
I think there are a lot of different answers to the question of free will, depending on which level you're looking at. For us, as conscious, thinking, decision-making individuals, we don't have much choice (er, I mean, yes we do! we have complete freedom to choose!) but to act as if we had free will even if we think it's nothing more than an illusion. Although already that little aside I put in brackets shows how easy it is to fall into self-contradiction, whichever side you take in discussing the issue.
I think the deeper problem becomes evident when we start to think about what we're actually trying to talk about when we say "will", free or otherwise? And what do we mean mean by "we", these things that supposedly have this free will we're so keen on?
The obvious answer to the last question is that "we" and "I" always designate the subject, the "I" of Descartes's "I think, therefore I am.". IOW the conscious, thinking, decision-making subject mentioned earlier. But what is that? Is it something that can be separated from the body as a whole? And if it isn't, do we have a right to talk about it as a separate entity? And if we can't do that, isn't it possible that it's just an abstraction, a convenient way to think about that part of the body that does things like thinking? We know that most of the body's activities are involuntary and thus, as the word says, outside the realm of the will - things like breathing, the heart beating, changes in blood pressure, etc. But if consciousness is also just another thing about the body, what makes it so special?
That brings us back to what we mean by "will". It seems to have something to do with making decisions: I could do this or I could do that. I weigh the pros & cons and make choose one or the other, or perhaps neither. Free will. But on what basis are these decisions made? I, the subject, must have some motivation for choosing one over the other: but motivation implies I am being moved by something, which seems to call into question my freedom of decision.
OK, forget the word motivation. Let's say I choose this or that just because I want to. But then will seems to be just another word for desire, and how is that different from a protoplasm "desiring" to engulf whatever is next to it? We say that we as conscious beings have the freedom to engulf or not to engulf, but let's say we decided not to: isn't it just a matter of some other desire taking precedence? I decide not to have that tasty desert because my desire not to get diabetes has proven stronger than my desire to taste that sugary treat.
Anyway, this could go on forever, but that's a sample of how complicated these things can get.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Aug 8, 2017 8:23:20 GMT -5
I think there are a lot of different answers to the question of free will, depending on which level you're looking at. For us, as conscious, thinking, decision-making individuals, we don't have much choice (er, I mean, yes we do! we have complete freedom to choose!) but to act as if we had free will even if we think it's nothing more than an illusion. Er... yeah... unless the illusion of free will is itself an illusion created by our analytical brain, and that we willfully decide to consider free will an illusion. I mean, why not? I see no hard data backing one idea over the other; to my untrained self, it's really a matter of how many angels can dance on a hairpin. It is an emergent property. Consciousness can be measured, so it is real; however, it is not a mere effect of our having so many neurons and so many neurotransmitters and so many hormones; it depends on these things working in a certain way, and consciousness can be perturbed or even annihilated without us losing one neuron. (To wit: anesthesia robs us of consciousness temporarily, but no part of the body is removed; it is just kept from acting a certain way). Consciousness is like a written story. Sure, the story needs a medium on which to write, needs a pre-existing language, needs to have been elaborated, and so on and so forth... but the story itself is more than the ink, more than the paper, more than the book. It has its own existence, not totally separated from its physical support, but clearly transcending it. Sure, but that's in large part what the self is: an entity shaped by its biology and its experiences, conscious of the existence of other beings that are not simply there to feed its primal urges, conscious that one's decisions have repercussions, and accordingly prone to decide one way or the other in agreement with one's knowledge, values, expectations, needs, and immediate considerations. That one's free will be influenced by the rest of the universe does not mean it is an illusion; just that it's part of a bigger whole. Hearing determinists talk, we can never really play heads or tails because each of our calls was predetermined billions of years ago. I find the idea intellectually intriguing, but neither self-evident nor in fact very convincing! |
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Post by Rob Allen on Aug 8, 2017 11:24:58 GMT -5
Which is all fine and dandy if one accepts the universe as being entirely deterministic. However, the very existence of radioactivity proves that it is not... at least not entirely. It is impossible, even with an infinitely complex computer, to predict when a particular radioisotope will decay. On average, sure, we can expect that a bucket-full of radioisotopes will have decayed by so much in any given length of time... But for one atom it is impossible. A really determined determinist would argue that it may be impossible to predict now, but we may someday figure out how to predict the fate of every atom. |
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Aug 8, 2017 11:41:25 GMT -5
Which is all fine and dandy if one accepts the universe as being entirely deterministic. However, the very existence of radioactivity proves that it is not... at least not entirely. It is impossible, even with an infinitely complex computer, to predict when a particular radioisotope will decay. On average, sure, we can expect that a bucket-full of radioisotopes will have decayed by so much in any given length of time... But for one atom it is impossible. A really determined determinist would argue that it may be impossible to predict now, but we may someday figure out how to predict the fate of every atom. That's the argument, but if you can't determine when an isotope is going to disintegrate, you cant predict the fate of every atom. It's like the quantum fluctuation that may have played such an important role in the creation of the universe... We can't predict when a particle-antiparticle pair is going to pop into existence. It seems to me that there is a lot of uncertainty built into reality, and I'm convinced that the macroscopic universe we can observe reflects that in a lot of ways... including the fact that we can have actual free will!  |
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Post by Rob Allen on Aug 8, 2017 11:47:06 GMT -5
I knew you were going to say that.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Aug 8, 2017 12:26:54 GMT -5
I knew you were going to say that. I couldn't help myself! |
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Post by berkley on Aug 8, 2017 23:14:43 GMT -5
I think there are a lot of different answers to the question of free will, depending on which level you're looking at. For us, as conscious, thinking, decision-making individuals, we don't have much choice (er, I mean, yes we do! we have complete freedom to choose!) but to act as if we had free will even if we think it's nothing more than an illusion. Er... yeah... unless the illusion of free will is itself an illusion created by our analytical brain, and that we willfully decide to consider free will an illusion. I mean, why not? I see no hard data backing one idea over the other; to my untrained self, it's really a matter of how many angels can dance on a hairpin. Yes, like you said before, this goes back to who has the burden of proof. You say that because we experience ourselves as possessing free will the burden is on those who question this to prove its absence, buy I think there's something to be said for the POV that the burden is on the defender of free will to define what they mean by it - and I think that's not as easy as it might seem. Yes, agree that it's an activity of the body or an emergent property that arises from a certain way in which the body acts. But I think this too is very tricky: for example, say we wrote a computer program that behaved in certain ways depending on the inputs it receives - not an unusal case. But say we made this so complex, its reaction dependent on so many different factors and then cnaging in response to the relationships between those factors, and also on its own past behaviour, etc, etc, that we have no way of predicting how it will act in any given situation except by simply running the program and seeing what it does. Must we now say that our program has, if not free will (since it isn't necessarily intelligent), then some other kind of freedom to behave? This of course has real-world implications in the field of AI: at what point do we get to say we've created a real artificial intelligence? Is it a matter of complexity or is something else involved, and if so what would that something else be? And would such an intelligence, once created, necessarily also have what we call free will? Well I agree that we don't live in the clockwork universe imagined by 19th-century physicists. But I'm not sure we need to reduce the question to an either/or of determinsim vs free will. Some philosophers would question whether the concept of free will really means anything outside our subjective experience. |
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Post by LovesGilKane on Aug 9, 2017 6:50:34 GMT -5
Which is all fine and dandy if one accepts the universe as being entirely deterministic. However, the very existence of radioactivity proves that it is not... at least not entirely. It is impossible, even with an infinitely complex computer, to predict when a particular radioisotope will decay. On average, sure, we can expect that a bucket-full of radioisotopes will have decayed by so much in any given length of time... But for one atom it is impossible. A really determined determinist would argue that it may be impossible to predict now, but we may someday figure out how to predict the fate of every atom. and when they can predict the fate of a tachyon, i'll buy them a slice of cheesecake. the preceding statement was VERY philosophical. |
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Aug 9, 2017 7:17:37 GMT -5
Er... yeah... unless the illusion of free will is itself an illusion created by our analytical brain, and that we willfully decide to consider free will an illusion. I mean, why not? I see no hard data backing one idea over the other; to my untrained self, it's really a matter of how many angels can dance on a hairpin. Yes, like you said before, this goes back to who has the burden of proof. You say that because we experience ourselves as possessing free will the burden is on those who question this to prove its absence, buy I think there's something to be said for the POV that the burden is on the defender of free will to define what they mean by it - and I think that's not as easy as it might seem. Yes, agree that it's an activity of the body or an emergent property that arises from a certain way in which the body acts. But I think this too is very tricky: for example, say we wrote a computer program that behaved in certain ways depending on the inputs it receives - not an unusal case. But say we made this so complex, its reaction dependent on so many different factors and then cnaging in response to the relationships between those factors, and also on its own past behaviour, etc, etc, that we have no way of predicting how it will act in any given situation except by simply running the program and seeing what it does. Must we now say that our program has, if not free will (since it isn't necessarily intelligent), then some other kind of freedom to behave? This of course has real-world implications in the field of AI: at what point do we get to say we've created a real artificial intelligence? Is it a matter of complexity or is something else involved, and if so what would that something else be? And would such an intelligence, once created, necessarily also have what we call free will? Well I agree that we don't live in the clockwork universe imagined by 19th-century physicists. But I'm not sure we need to reduce the question to an either/or of determinsim vs free will. Some philosophers would question whether the concept of free will really means anything outside our subjective experience. Is that to say we need a Turing test for ourselves? |
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Post by Arthur Gordon Scratch on Aug 9, 2017 7:35:44 GMT -5
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