My problems with religion

[t0sh]

There is a major problem with with secular humanism because prior hominids, those of which were incapable of speech, and by cause and effect, religion, were still burying their dead and living in groups with each other. Which demonstrates that we are definitely capable of morality and social bonding without religious belief.

Name one moral thing that a Christian can do better than an Atheist.

Morality is socially influence and dependent on a different variety of factors. What is moral in our society may be completely immoral in another and therefore; there is no universal acceptance for what ought to be. It is a natural progression that is socially influenced to benefit the existence of whatever is trying to survive. There is no reason to change it into a convoluted philosophy that is completely independent of social norms, this simply isn't the case. If it were, than morality, in all regards, should be universally accepted on every level, but it isn't.

If there was an individual who was capable of demonstrating that miracles do happen, don't you believe that it would have occurred already? It hasn't. That is as simple as it can be stated. Therefore my assertion that nobody is capable of doing this, simply because nobody has been able to yet, isn't grandiose or misleading, it is actually very accurate and is completely dependent on observation.

Transcendent meaning may or may not exist, and our only way to find out will be via scientific means, not religious beliefs. :willy_nilly:

[Magnocrat]

Sam Harris well known atheist wrote 'The Moral Landscape ' in an attempt to create an objective morality. He suggested well- being as a moral yardstick. Acts that create an increase in well-being are good.

[YesNo]

If Christians and Atheists are both human beings and if belief and morality are part of our biology rather than our culture, then one should not expect Christians and Atheists to be very different when it comes to being able to act morally.

They are both human beings. That is clearly true. So, is the other part of the premise true? Are belief and morality part of our biology and not culturally or socially constructed? I think that is true also. One place to look for supporting evidence is a survey by Justin Barrett, "Born Believers: the science of children's religious beliefs".

One of my problems with atheism is that it leads to what I call dehumanization with assertions (and I am thinking of Sam Harris here) that we do not have free will or beliefs that our minds are epiphenomena of our brains. In terms of judging the values of particular religious positions (and I consider atheism to be a religious position), start with humanity and see what that religion has to say about us. Forget God. Stick with humanity and the "God within" or our subjectivity and see which religious position is worth practicing considering the short amount of time we have to practice anything.

[Magnocrat]

Most humans have consciences due to self- awareness and hence self- judgement.
Along with this they also have ambitious self interest a survival driving force.
That is why Freud declared ' we are at war with ourselves.'This is human nature and resulted in morals and religion. The battle between these two forces within has resulted in history and the present world as we know it.
The picture is complicated by the presence of psychopaths who have no conscience.
Robert Hare believes 1% of the American population are psychopaths.
Apparently they have a different brain scan from normal humans. Those interested can test themselves on Mr Hares site.

[YesNo]

Is psychopathology correlated to a particular religion or kind of religion or to atheism? Is happiness correlated to any of these? I wonder if longevity can be correlated?

[The Atheist]

Transcendent meaning may or may not exist, and our only way to find out will be via scientific means, not religious beliefs. :willy_nilly:

You're not going to get any argument from me!


Sam Harris well known atheist wrote 'The Moral Landscape ' in an attempt to create an objective morality. He suggested well- being as a moral yardstick. Acts that create an increase in well-being are good.


If Christians and Atheists are both human beings and if belief and morality are part of our biology rather than our culture, then one should not expect Christians and Atheists to be very different when it comes to being able to act morally.

Same Harris is:

1 A moron
2 Pro-torture
3 Not a spokesman for atheist or any atheist other than himself, and I remain unconvinced he's actually an atheist
4 Did I mention he was a moron?




One of my problems with atheism is that it leads to what I call dehumanization with assertions (and I am thinking of Sam Harris here) that we do not have free will or beliefs that our minds are epiphenomena of our brains.

Yeah, the idea that we're nothing more than an almost infinitely unlikely arrangement of atoms scares the hell out of people, which is why religion and superstition will always exist.

I've been saying for half a century that religion is a crutch for the weak, and I've seen nothing to make me think it's wrong.


... (and I consider atheism to be a religious position), ...

Please don't, because the idea is absurd. Is someone who doesn't collect stamps a philatelist?

Remember the lesson:

"A-" = without.
"Theos" = god.

Without god. Not religious.

If you're genuinely interested in whether morality is better served by religion or atheism, you should perhaps check out the relative prison populations of countries that keep numbers of these things:

USA (https://thehumanist.com/commentary/nonbelievers-behind-bars-does-the-us-prison-system-privilege-religious-inmates)

UK (http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2009/08/12/how-many-atheists-are-in-englands-prisons/)

[YesNo]

Yeah, the idea that we're nothing more than an almost infinitely unlikely arrangement of atoms scares the hell out of people, which is why religion and superstition will always exist.

I've been saying for half a century that religion is a crutch for the weak, and I've seen nothing to make me think it's wrong.

Please don't, because the idea is absurd. Is someone who doesn't collect stamps a philatelist?

Remember the lesson:

"A-" = without.
"Theos" = god.

Without god. Not religious.


I view what we normally hear of as atheism in English speaking countries as a kind of Protestant religion. Nothing more. I judge these various religions by how they view human beings, not by any assertions about their Gods.

[The Atheist]

I view what we normally hear of as atheism in English speaking countries as a kind of Protestant religion. Nothing more.

Feel free to remain completely incorrect then.

Atheists have only one common ground - a lack of belief in god/s. To assume they have anything else in common, be it morality or worldview, is both naive and ignorant.

[Helga]

I am an atheist, or I usually say I'm agnostic, knowing it is the lazy man's atheist. I was once told that 'being an atheist, I act very Christian' I don't really know what that means but I think it has something to do with morality, and it is almost an insult, like I couldn't be a good and moral person and not have faith in some sort of deity.

[Magnocrat]

It shows that they know nothing about the human conscience or more likely they believe only Christians have consciences. Don't take offence explain that we all have consciences , even St Paul admits that in his letters. You can add that we all , Christians included , often chose to ignore our consciences.

[YesNo]

Feel free to remain completely incorrect then.

Atheists have only one common ground - a lack of belief in god/s. To assume they have anything else in common, be it morality or worldview, is both naive and ignorant.

Feel free to remain incorrect also.

--------------------------------------------------

I am reading Jonathan Haidt's "The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion". I suspect he would call himself an atheist but he says things I find interesting. In particular he identifies something he calls WEIRD culture: "Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (forming the acronym WEIRD)" (p. 112).

He also talks about six moral foundations (Moral Foundations Theory) that are not rooted in reason, but which we have "organized prior to experience". Reason is only used to rationalize choices already made. So these do not originate culturally nor are they logically derived by individuals. They are "innate" in some way that he isn't clear about, but hopes a Darwinian hand-waving will suffice. Here they are (1) caring, (2) liberty, (3) fairness, (4) loyalty, (5) authority and (6) sanctity. The WEIRD group have socialized themselves to only value the first three. Everyone else use all six.

He has been able to identify groups based upon these moral foundations. He is mainly interested in Democrats (liberals, of which he claims to be one), Libertarians, and Republicans (conservatives whom he tries to understand). One might be able to use these innately identified foundations or modules to clump people based on general religious or atheistic traits so we can ignore their respective dogmas (which are rationalizations anyway).

[WhiteRabbit24]

I think the problem is that you're only viewing the term religion in relation to Christianity. Looking at eastern religions (Buddhism or Sikhism), religion = discipline or a way of life. God isn't necessarily a superhuman sitting in the clouds. Instead, religion can be there to remind us of what it means to be human (i.e. uphold human virtues).

[YesNo]

I agree that religion shouldn't be restricted to Christianity. But if one has "problems with religion" and that really means "problems with Christianity", knowing that helps focus the discussion to only Christianity.

If one remains more general, one can refer to our subjectivity as the "God within". This gets us down to the human level where we at least can use our personal subjectivity as empirical evidence. It is here where I see atheism falling apart because, to be consistent as I see it, it must reject this God as well. If that is what "problems of religion" mean, then it is about rejecting the existence of agents, including ourselves, who can make choices. We would have to be reducible to machines or downloadable into computers for that position to be valid.

[The Atheist]

I am an atheist, or I usually say I'm agnostic, knowing it is the lazy man's atheist. I was once told that 'being an atheist, I act very Christian' I don't really know what that means but I think it has something to do with morality, and it is almost an insult, like I couldn't be a good and moral person and not have faith in some sort of deity.

I always find that attitude hilarious - that humans need the guidance of an invisible entity to display morality.

While 99% of jail inmates are religious...

[Ecurb]

There is a major problem with with secular humanism because prior hominids, those of which were incapable of speech, and by cause and effect, religion, were still burying their dead and living in groups with each other. Which demonstrates that we are definitely capable of morality and social bonding without religious belief....


Transcendent meaning may or may not exist, and our only way to find out will be via scientific means, not religious beliefs. :willy_nilly:

And yet "transcendent meaning" (in other words, meanings or truths most of us generally acknowledge that transcend our physical experience) is accepted by most of us atheists. Mathematics, for example, is a system of thought that is purely logical, and transcends physics. Similarly, historical knowledge is transmitted through words, and we accept (often) the eye-witness accounts of others to learn about the distant past. Indeed, our experience is shaped by language, and experiments show that our memories are shaped linguistically -- we can remember events far better (and differently) if we tell stories about them. Even in experimental science, our conclusions are shaped by the nature of language, and how we can write down and codify our observations.

By the way, the more we learn about non-human (and non-lingistic) animals, the more we discover that some of them are capable of self-reflection, self-consciousness, and altruism.

In addition, analogical reasoning is (I think) as vital in shaping morality as logical reasoning. Literature (including, but not limited to, religious literature) may play a role in shaping our ethos.

Finally, although (of course) myth (a key component of religion) is dependent on language, other quasi-religious behaviors are not. One "school" in the anthropology of religion was the "Myth-Ritual school", which postulated that rituals preceded myths. Indeed, we know that many non-linguistic animals practice what appear to be rituals -- mating rituals, social rituals, etc. The "myth-ritual" school hypothesized that myths developed as explanations for rituals (as opposed to the more normal, modern notion that rituals celebrate myths). The Protestant emphasis on both "belief" and "myth" is actually unusual in the history of religion.

[Jackson Richardson]

Name one moral thing that a Christian can do better than an Atheist.

If they know their faith, they know they are never wholly good or healthy but they and others can be by God's grace.

Accepting all life as gift seems to me central to a Christian view.

[papayahed]

I am an atheist, or I usually say I'm agnostic, knowing it is the lazy man's atheist. I was once told that 'being an atheist, I act very Christian' I don't really know what that means but I think it has something to do with morality, and it is almost an insult, like I couldn't be a good and moral person and not have faith in some sort of deity.

Right? I've had someone tell me that non-religious people don't have a conscience. The opposite seems to be true. An Atheist does the right thing because its the right thing. A religious person, at times, does the right thing for fear of of their God.

[Ecurb]

Right? I've had someone tell me that non-religious people don't have a conscience. The opposite seems to be true. An Atheist does the right thing because its the right thing. A religious person, at times, does the right thing for fear of of their God.

We all make decisions based on a variety of factors. Atheists (and theists) might drive at 65 miles per hour because they are afraid they will get a ticket if they drive faster. Still -- their decision to drive more slowly (whatever their motivation) saves gasoline and lives. Legal sanctions, the approbation or disapproval of our peers, and many other factors influence our decisions -- but I don't thing these motives make us less moral. On the contrary.

The notion that religion is a crutch seems naive. Surely the hope of heaven is counteracted by the fear of hell. Far from making one's life more comfortable, it seems to me that religion makes life more demanding and uncomfortable. Of course it may be true that some simplistic forms of "born again" Christianity offer security to the faithful, but more sophisticated forms of Christianity must entail constant (and failed) striving to achieve unattainable goals. "Be Ye Perfect."

[YesNo]

Right? I've had someone tell me that non-religious people don't have a conscience. The opposite seems to be true. An Atheist does the right thing because its the right thing. A religious person, at times, does the right thing for fear of of their God.

Jonathan Haidt (The Righteous Mind) claimed that conservatives respond equally high on six innate moral foundations but liberals are off-balanced preferring two or three of them. The off-balancing comes from cultural and personal choices that are afterwards rationalized (not rationally derived). Haidt is a liberal and an atheist. He is interested in how to help liberals win elections and his research shows why liberals who play down loyalty and the sacred (two of his six innate foundations) are setting themselves up for failure in elections. All groups "do the right thing", because they rationalize whatever they did as the right thing to do.

The way I see it, claiming that the religious person does the right thing "for fear of their God" is a way for a non-religious person to rationalize the religious person as inferior in some way. This draws a boundary between the two groups primarily to remind the insider not to defect to the other group. The non-religious insider doesn't want to be labeled inferior. The religious insider doesn't want to "go to hell", which, if one sees past the fire and brimstone, is just a way to say that the outsider is inferior.

[Sancho]

I think Papaya has a point. There are a fair number of "religious" people who primarily follow the strictures of their faith so that they will go to the good place instead of the bad place. In other words they are just operating in their own self interest. By the same token there are a fair number of people who only follow the laws of the land so that they will stay out of jail (or off the gallows) but wouldn't think twice about raping or stealing or murdering if the could get away with it.

I also think Y/N has a point. There's an "us-ness" and "them-ness" inherent in human nature. We like to band together in groups. And "we" are right but "they" are wrong. People of reason deride people who take things on faith, and people of faith look down their noses at those godless commies. Even within relatively similar religious faiths I get the sense that everybody thinks they are a member of the One True faith, and everybody else is going to fry. I have even had conversations with people who seemed almost anxious to die just so that they could prove they were right.

Flannery O'Connor wrote a good story about it: Revelation

[Ecurb]

I think Papaya has a point. There are a fair number of "religious" people who primarily follow the strictures of their faith so that they will go to the good place instead of the bad place....

Fair enough. Religion obviously also has a function in building and defining groups. However, my moral codes (and probably yours as well) are culturally constituted and doubtless derived to a large extent from religious teachings. We can hardly infer from the notion that there is no God that it is suddenly OK to steal, kill and covet our neighbors things.

For those with a humanist bent (like me, and like, I assume, most others who love literature) religions (and God) are, if nothing else, creative achievements of mankind. They have consumed the thoughts and efforts of a great many talented people, and inspired the efforts of a great many more. Of course we can also blame religion for witch killings, Inquisitions and religious wars.

I just read "Darkness at Noon" (see my review), an expose of Stalinism. Koestler prefaces chapter 2 with a quote from Dietrich Von Nieheim, Bishop of Verden, written in 1411.


When the existence of the Church is threatened, she is released from the commandments of morality. With unity as the end, the use of every means is sanctified, even cunning, treachery, violence, simony, prison and death. For all order is for the sake of the community, and the individual must be sacrificed for the common good.

Koestler then begins his chapter with an excerpt from Rubashov's diary (Rubashov is a committed communist who has fallen afoul of the Party, and is languishing in prison):


The ultimate truth is penultimately always a falsehood. He who will be proved right in the end appears to be wrong and harmful before it.

But who will be proved right? It will only be known later. Meanwhile, he is bound to act on credit and sell his soul to the devil, in the hope of history's absolution.

Such is the case for Christians and atheists (Commies) alike. Idealism promotes evil -- but what is the alternative? Cynicism? Despair?

If we see religious mores as a form of collective wisdom, we might respect them even though we see God as a metaphor or symbol. But modern liberalism must descry the sublimation of the individual and individual rights to either political or religious ideals.

[YesNo]

Here is a short discription of Haidt's moral foundations: http://www.moralfoundations.org/ There is also a site listed there where you can test how you stand on these moral foundations.

Ecurb's concern for "individual rights" seems to place him on the liberal side that is not using all six moral foundations equally. Also his view that moral codes are "culturally constituted" implies a belief in reason rather than acknowledging that what we really do is rationalize our prior choices. Haidt provides evidence that the belief in reason is a 200 year old error. Haidt prefers to side with Hume's intuitionism rather than rationalism. Our hearts not our brains give us our morals; our brain simply rationalizes our hearts' desires. Haidt's research justifies Hume's position and puts reason in its place.

What is the problem with individual rights liberalism? The problem with it is we are not selfish individuals. We are not so much worried about our rights as our ability to serve others as groups. Haidt also seems to like the selfish individual even though his research suggests evolution is all about cooperative groups. He has a two level theory of evolution. This is where I disagree with him and where he would agree more with Ecurb. I favor just keeping the group evolution.

If one does not recognize the individual need to altruistically serve the groups they belong to, this may weaken society. Liberal interest in abortion and patriarchy discredit the smallest, most immediate groups of society. Liberal scorn for religion discredits submission to higher powers (groups way beyond and more inclusive than any fantasy, liberal world government). What is left for the individual to serve? They could try to serve big brother manifested as large corporations or governments or world government utopias, but there is little for them to do there but consume, protest or work as selfish individuals. If we innately desire to serve altruistically, that is not satisfying. While some religious people may damn outsiders to hell after death, the non-religious people create a rationalized hell on earth damning us to selfishness and discredited service. Which is worse?

[Ecurb]

When I spoke of "liberalism" I was thinking of classic, old-fashioned liberalism, one feature of which was respect for individual rights (as opposed, for example, to the notion that all rights derive from the King, or from God). This should have been obvious from the context of my post, in which "liberalism" was contrasted to the "leftism" criticized in "Darkness at Noon". Leftists scorn religion; classic liberals do not. In fact, Webster's #2 definition is, " a movement in modern Protestantism emphasizing intellectual liberty and the spiritual and ethical content of Christianity."

The 6 "foundations of morality" to which YesNo linked are ridiculous, as is much evolutionary psychology. The website states: "Moral Foundations Theory was created by a group of social and cultural psychologists (see us here) to understand why morality varies so much across cultures yet still shows so many similarities and recurrent themes. In brief, the theory proposes that several innate and universally available psychological systems are the foundations of “intuitive ethics.”

Question: if "innate... psychological systems are the foundations of intuitive ethics", why have human ethics varied so dramatically through time and space?

Here are the ridiculous six points from the moral foundations folks:


1) Care/harm: This foundation is related to our long evolution as mammals with attachment systems and an ability to feel (and dislike) the pain of others. It underlies virtues of kindness, gentleness, and nurturance.
2) Fairness/cheating: This foundation is related to the evolutionary process of reciprocal altruism. It generates ideas of justice, rights, and autonomy. [Note: In our original conception, Fairness included concerns about equality, which are more strongly endorsed by political liberals. However, as we reformulated the theory in 2011 based on new data, we emphasize proportionality, which is endorsed by everyone, but is more strongly endorsed by conservatives]
3) Loyalty/betrayal: This foundation is related to our long history as tribal creatures able to form shifting coalitions. It underlies virtues of patriotism and self-sacrifice for the group. It is active anytime people feel that it's "one for all, and all for one."
4) Authority/subversion: This foundation was shaped by our long primate history of hierarchical social interactions. It underlies virtues of leadership and followership, including deference to legitimate authority and respect for traditions.
5) Sanctity/degradation: This foundation was shaped by the psychology of disgust and contamination. It underlies religious notions of striving to live in an elevated, less carnal, more noble way. It underlies the widespread idea that the body is a temple which can be desecrated by immoral activities and contaminants (an idea not unique to religious traditions).

We think there are several other very good candidates for "foundationhood," especially:

6) Liberty/oppression: This foundation is about the feelings of reactance and resentment people feel toward those who dominate them and restrict their liberty. Its intuitions are often in tension with those of the authority foundation. The hatred of bullies and dominators motivates people to come together, in solidarity, to oppose or take down the oppressor. We report some preliminary work on this potential foundation in this paper, on the psychology of libertarianism and liberty.

Now it doesn't take a genius (or even someone who has read Koestler's "Darkness at Noon") to recognize that these foundations vary wildly. Stalinists betrayed #1 and #2 in elevating #4 and #5. Socrates, Plato and Jesus accepted slavery, ignoring #6 (and 1 and 2).

Like may reductionist theories, evolutionary psychology paints with such broad strokes that it ignores nuance, history, culture and reality. By looking for common threads in human culture, it ignores cultural differences.

YesNo accuses me of worshiping reason and rationalizing prior choices. But isn't that exactly what the silly evolutionary psychologists are doing? They have no evidence for their simplistic theories. Instead, they hypothesize that certain moral choices MAY have been selected for in the past (there is little evidence that they actually were). Of course this is true -- mammalian mothers must ignore self interest in favor of altruism or their children would all die. But where does this get us in terms of more complicated moral arguments? Indeed, it is the evolutionary psychologists (not I) who are "rationalizing". They see commonalities in ethics, and offer simplistic "explanations" for them -- explanations that have no predictive value and no nuance.

I'll say this in favor of Christianity: it offered a new approach to morality. It offered prescriptions instead of proscriptions; "thou shalts" instead of "thou shalt not". I'm sure scholars can show that this was not as revolutionary as it might seem from reading the Bible, but to say that their are no differences between Old and New Testament morality is naive -- like the evolutionary psychologists who suggest that these differences must be the result of "psychology".

I hope the evolutionary psychologists never get involved with literary criticism -- are all the great novels derived from the same evolutionary psychological "needs"? Are there no distinctions or nuances between what attracts readers to Shakespeare, Tolstoy, or Joyce? No doubt, there are some commonalities -- but in examining the forest, we must look at the individual trees or we miss something.

Evolutionary psychology is fundamentally anti-intellectual, reducing complicated cultural constructs to simplistic evolutionary principles, and ignoring nuance, history, and (most important) the details, in which the devil lies.

[Sancho]

When I read Dietrich Von Nieheim's quote:


When the existence of the Church is threatened, she is released from the commandments of morality. With unity as the end, the use of every means is sanctified, even cunning, treachery, violence, simony, prison and death. For all order is for the sake of the community, and the individual must be sacrificed for the common good.

I immediately went to a top-down interpretation (perhaps a result of my cultural upbringing) and thought the Bishop meant the Catholic Church needed to keep the people in line in order to maintain its existence - a form of crowd control in the High Middle Ages, much the same as the Stalinist regime acted as crowd control against the Russian people in the 20th century. But after a little reflection (and a quick google search) I think Von Nieheim is referring to the Papal Schism and thus looking from the bottom up. The individual who must be sacrificed for the common good, in this case, is one of the popes (or antipopes).

According to Wiki, Koestler took some liberties with Von Niehiem's words. Here's the actual quote from Dietrich's De Modis:


Therefore, pay attention, o faithful. For obeying such quarrelers, and supporting those dividing the Church, we see as sinning most gravely and mortally -- dividing, I say, the Body of Christ among their wickednesses and sins. For I believe you have been freed from these tyrannical lordships already, if your obedience were not cherished.

But if these two or three [popes and antipopes] will not concede voluntarily, it remains to proceed to stronger remedies. That is, overthrowing them and segregating them from the community of the Church, and, as I said before, taking away obedience from them.

Then, if the Church will not be able to accomplish it in this way, then by way of deceit, fraud, arms, violence, power, promises, gifts and money, and finally, prison and death, it is appropriate to procure in any way whatever the most holy union and conjoining of the Church.

Close to what was said by Tullius Cicero in De Officiis [III v 23]: 'This is what the laws look for, this is what they will: [the city] to be conjoined safely. So those who break the laws are punished by death, exile, chains, and fines.'


At any rate, this is not to say the the Catholic Church didn't engage in crowd control in the Middle Ages. It did. It seems to me by promising the hoi polloi a glorious afterlife, the powerful men of the church could convince them to live a miserable life here on earth, which was indeed a "hell on earth", as you say Y/N. Wouldn't it cheapen your life here on earth if you're basing your existence on what comes next? Seems to me it did for the masses in the Middle Ages. Wouldn't they have demanded more had they not been promised their just rewards for towing the line? By contrast, wouldn't a person who has no delusions of an afterlife make the most their time here on earth, for self and community?

[YesNo]

YesNo accuses me of worshiping reason and rationalizing prior choices. But isn't that exactly what the silly evolutionary psychologists are doing? They have no evidence for their simplistic theories. Instead, they hypothesize that certain moral choices MAY have been selected for in the past (there is little evidence that they actually were). Of course this is true -- mammalian mothers must ignore self interest in favor of altruism or their children would all die. But where does this get us in terms of more complicated moral arguments? Indeed, it is the evolutionary psychologists (not I) who are "rationalizing". They see commonalities in ethics, and offer simplistic "explanations" for them -- explanations that have no predictive value and no nuance.


If I read Haidt correctly, he knows he's rationalizing. He is not claiming that he is on a privileged frame of reference above everyone else. Nonetheless, he does have evidence for those six moral foundations and for their innateness and for reason's less glorified role. You would have to look at his "The Righteous Mind" to get a survey of that evidence and then check its references. I am assuming they are now established.

However, I do agree with you about Haidt's evolutionary theory that tries to explain the existence of those innate moral foundations. He bases it upon both a selfish individual and a group centered (or altruistic individual) evolution. Both are Darwinian perspectives on evolution. I think he is rationalizing to include the selfish individual and for this he doesn't have evidence that I am aware of from his book. He is now trying to make sense out of his evidence in terms of some Darwinian traditions. It is a rationalization that may well be false. I actually think it is false, because I rationalize his data differently.

What I mean by liberalism is what Haidt means by it. I am apolitical. I am more interested in theist/atheist arguments than I am in Republican/Democrat political contests. I don't care who's president. Liberals would be people who are trying to get a Democrat elected into political office. Conservatives want the Republican to win. Haidt's claim is that the liberals have a moral disadvantage because they no longer appreciate all six of these moral foundations, but conservatives do. From my independent, apolitical position, that is how I see these two groups as well. Since he is confirming my common sense it is not hard for me to accept his data.

What interests me is how does all the "selfish", that is, not "altruistic", talk about individuals affect what we mean by "hell", both in this life and any potential after life. My memory of C. S. Lewis, who believed in a Christian Hell, suggests that Lewis thinks hell is people getting what they want. Heaven or Hell: Do they want God's will or their own will? The two hells that I described in a previous post may be identical. The selfish individual goes to hell in this life because that individual cannot fulfill his/her altruistic nature. In the next, who knows? Perhaps that selfish individual gets what he or she wants: an isolated, selfish reality?

[YesNo]

At any rate, this is not to say the the Catholic Church didn't engage in crowd control in the Middle Ages. It did. It seems to me by promising the hoi polloi a glorious afterlife, the powerful men of the church could convince them to live a miserable life here on earth, which was indeed a "hell on earth", as you say Y/N. Wouldn't it cheapen your life here on earth if you're basing your existence on what comes next? Seems to me it did for the masses in the Middle Ages. Wouldn't they have demanded more had they not been promised their just rewards for towing the line? By contrast, wouldn't a person who has no delusions of an afterlife make the most their time here on earth, for self and community?

The theory is that we are "selfish individuals". As soon as we allow us to think about altruism, or our community, we acknowledge that we are no longer selfish, and that means the selfish individual theory is false. Now, I don't think we are selfish individuals, so I have no problem with making the most of my time here on earth for both myself and my community since the good of my community is my good as well. For me any selfishness is in the eye of the beholder. We think someone is selfish, but they are altruistic toward a different group. They may be misguided in their altruism and make mistakes, but they are still altruistic.

So, we need to establish (or rationalize) as best we can whether we are selfish or altruistic. I have made my choice already. We are altruistic and so is all of nature. I don't see how evolution could have happened otherwise. That means, for me, in my own rationalization of what is real, there are no such things as selfish individuals, selfish genes, selfish memes or even selfish quantum particles.

[Ecurb]

You may be right about the Bishop's quote, Sancho. I just took it from the novel. Either interpretation could fit the novel's slant.

Obviously, YesNo, there are selfish people (i.e. some people are more selfish than others, and some behaviors are more selfish than others). Of course the notion that man is FUNDAMENTALLY selfish (the so called "economic man" theory of behavior) is clearly incorrect, for both humans and for all mammals (and many other animals who care for their young).

The logical error repeated over and over by evolutionary theorists is assuming the antecedent. Darwinian theory states: "if a trait (generally genetic, but it could be an inherited non-genetic trait, like learning a language) has adaptive value (increases descendant-leaving success and the spread of the gene) it will tend to become more prevalent."

Many naive theorists, however, reverse that and say, "If a trait has become prevalent, it must have adaptive value." So they look at moral values, and say, "These moral values have prevailed in human history, so they must have adaptive value.' But that is both a logical error, and an error in cultural history. The moral values Haidt notes have NOT prevailed through human history, and even if they had, that would NOT be sufficient to demonstrate that they have adaptive value. The institution of slavery, for example, has been widespread throughout human history. Yet we moderns have abandoned it and find it morally repugnant. Is it our "intuitive ethics" that are repelled by slavery? If so, why were the Golden-Age Greeks not repelled by it?

To understand ethics, religion, literature, or any of the other seminal works of mankind, we must look at ethics, religion, and literature. When we rely on reductionist theories (like evolutionary psychology) we miss the details, the nuance, and the ways in which PARTICULAR ethics originate and spread.

Indeed, when we look at Sancho's theory that Catholicism's promise of a glorious afterlife was a social control mechanism, we might (while recognizing that there is some validity to the theory) wonder why so many other religions fail to promise a glorious afterlife (yet also offer the function of social control). The glorious afterlife is specific to Christianity and Islam (in general), and arose out of a specific Middle Eastern tradition. If one of its FUNCTIONS is to reconcile people to a lousy life on earth, we cannot conflate the function with the cause. One function of morality is to produce an orderly society -- but many different moral codes have served that function, and how these codes developed is a matter for scholarly inquiry, not for overly generalized hypothesizing.

[Sancho]

Is it an either/or proposition? Aren't we selfish at times yet altruistic at others? Does it have to be all one thing and not the other? And is it strictly an individualistic trait or can groups act selfishly towards some groups yet altruistically with others?

Also, I agree, there are nuanced differences in morals and ethical codes between cultures, but don't we all share the same morals on the basics? You know, the big ones - murdering, raping, robbing, the value of courage, honesty, care of children...stuff like that. I certainly haven't done a scholarly study of it. This is a layman' perspective, but as someone who has and does travel widely (it's part of my job) I am always struck by how much we are alike rather than different across cultures.

[Ecurb]

Of course each individual can be selfish and altruistic in different situations. I'm not sure I agree about the universality of moral codes, though. It is true that some morals are necessary for a society to function reasonably efficiently -- including the prohibitions against murder, rape and robbery that you mention. However, if there were some evolutionary psychological predisposition toward these codes, we might expect that they would be extended to all people (rather than just to members of one's social or political group). This has hardly been the case, historically. The Ancient Greeks (as just one example) saw nothing wrong with killing, raping, or robbing -- so long as one was killing, raping or robbing people from other groups. In fact, the Greeks thought trading with non-Greeks was wimpy. Why trade, when you could just take their stuff and give them nothing in return? Trade was cowardly. You killed, raped, or enslaved your defeated enemies (depending on their sex).

Were these Greek traditions unique? I don't think so. War-like, primitive cultures where regular murder, rob and rape have been studied by modern anthropologists include the Yanamamo and other South American groups, as well as warlike people in New Guinea. And what about the horrors of 20th century Nazism or Communism? As Koestler points out, idealism -- founded on an intellectual basis -- trumps the disgust at murder, torture, mass imprisonment, etc. that evolutionary psychologists might deem universally human. The witch-killings and Inquisitions of the past serve as further examples of specific "moral" necessities (founded on specific religious teachings) overcoming the postulated evolutionary psychological foundations for morality.

[Sancho]

I'm pretty sure the ancient Greeks raped regardless of their enemy's sex.

But more to the point, I'm not sure the ancient Greeks even considered the Barbarians to be of the same species. Those other guys don't even talk right. They just go "Bar-bar-bar-bar" while we Greeks have an actual language. And language is to a large part what makes us human, eh? Many centuries later, when Europeans made contact with Native Americans, the church had a papal congress to determine whether or not the indigenous peoples in the new world were actually - people. You know, since they didn't show up anywhere in the good book. (The church decided, after much disagreement and tearing of hair and gnashing of teeth, that they actually were people) And not to let the Native Americans off too easily, I believe I read somewhere that the name for the northwestern tribe: The Nez Perse, loosely translates as : The Human Beings, meaning of course that everybody else is something less than Nez Perse.

So I think the theory still works if you consider, as the world moved on, tribes morphed into city-states, then to nation states, then to huge global united nation states, sometimes along cultural lines, sometimes not. I may be channeling a Sam Huntington idea here.

But there are exceptions to every rule. Which brings me to the 20th century.

General "Buck" Turgidson to President Merkin Muffley:


Well, I, uh, don't think it's quite fair to condemn a whole program because of a single slip-up, sir.

Despite the nationalistic zealotry of the Nazis, I don't think it necessarily follows that the German people lack a moral disgust for murder. And as much as the Nazis dehumanized the Jews, the allies found it much easier, in that war, to shoot-to-kill the Japanese than the Germans. The Germans just seemed seemed to be more like real people.

So anyway, it seems to me that we continue to muddle along and figure things out as a species, but there are still some basic, universal, human morals, regardless of culture.

[Ecurb]

The Greeks may have raped regardless of sex, but I'm not sure they disregarded species (as is suggested by your argument).

There are doubtless universal human urges (like nursing children). "Morals" might suggest (just by the mere word) something culturally constituted.

Let's face it, if we are psychologically programmed not to murder, rob, or rape, we wouldn't need all those Commandments, laws, and punishments. Their very existence (and the suspicion that without the laws and punishments there would be even more murder and rape than there is now) casts doubt on the evolutionary psychology position. You don't need to outlaw things that nobody wants to do, or punish people for doing them. Jews and Muslims ban eating pork, not cow pies.

[YesNo]

Haidt's moral foundations do not work as absolutes. They actually conflict with each other. Three of them, care, fairness and liberty, support individual freedom in opposition to group allegiance. The other three, loyalty, authority and sanctity, support group allegiance and expect the individual to serve the group. Haidt would think there is both selfishness and altruism. I think he needs only altruism. Selfishness could be explained as the perspective of one individual on some other individual's altruistic decision which that first individual does not agree with.

Haidt also has a questionable evolutionary theory to justify the innateness. I would admit, if there is something innate, one should be able to see it in fMRI scans or in picking out specific genes. I think he has brain scan evidence justifying his innateness claim, but I don't have the book anymore. This doesn't mean culture has nothing to do with morals. Since his moral foundations contradict each other there is plenty of room for cultural diversity to refine how people live out their innate moral natures.

The part of his theory that I don't agree with is that he seems to reject punctuated equilibria theory. By that theory our genes are more or less stable. They don't change unless a new speciation event occurs. He thinks the innateness (in our genes) changes more rapidly and these moral foundations have changed over the past 10,000 years. If that is the case, he should be able to find isolated populations today that do not have the same moral foundations. If he can find those populations it would challenge punctuated equilibria. Since I prefer punctuated equilibria to neo-darwinism, I don't think that would be possible.

While thinking about this today, his view that we do not reason but rationalize is a very useful discovery. Rationalization is a way to arrive at the truth faster than we could arrive at it with reason alone. Rationalization assumes we are motivated and focused to find an explanation that justifies our actions or positions. The best rationalization is the truthful one. Hence the truth pops out very quickly. People who viewed reason as dominant might look at Spock on Star Trek as an ideal of rational behavior. Haidt mentioned, if I remember correctly, that people who use only their reason, like Spock, without empathy are usually described as psychopaths.

[Sancho]

...there is plenty of room for cultural diversity to refine how people live out their innate moral natures.

This seems right to me. You like vanilla, I like chocolate, ecurb likes pistachio (!?), but we're all going to get ice cream.

As for the ancient Greeks, I honestly I doubt they would have been too squeamish about a little inter-species raping. That's the whole point. But I am taking some liberties with the definition of species. I'm thinking of it in the way the ancient Greeks would've thought of it. Which is to say, they considered their enemies subhuman, hence open game.

Of course I'm just shooting from the hip at this point, and really was just making a joke, sort-of. Because then again, the way I understand it, those of us of European descent have a fair amount of Neanderthal DNA. So, hey, open game. Our forebears must've been a horny bunch.

At any rate it got me thinking about the story of Jacob and Esau in Genesis. I'm not a religious person, and I'm certainly no biblical scholar, but that story always intrigued me. When Jacob popped out regular and Esau came out all red and hairy, it made me think the ancient Hebrews were acknowledging a prehistory when humans were more animalistic. Naturally Yahweh shunned Esau and went with Jacob as the progenitor for the chosen people. I probably ought to ask a Rabbi (and perhaps a professor of interpretive literature) for his take on the story.

[Ecurb]

I do like pistachio, but I don't know if you understand my point. Societies do not make rules enjoining us to perform those actions which we have innate urges to perform. There are no prisons for those who don't have sex (although sex is vital to the continuance of society). We don't jail people who refuse to eat.

Instead, we make rules like "Thou shalt not commit adultery" because people have an innate urge TO commit adultery. Without our innate lustiness, there would be no need for the taboo.

Of course evolutionary forces affect culturally constituted morals: that's why many such morals seem relatively universal. That society which allows incest, murder, theft, adultery and the worship of false idols may not support the well-being of its members as well as societies which outlaw such activities, and members may not breed as prolifically. Nonetheless, religion (and non-religious moral codes) serve to harness our (baser) innate urges -- not confirm and support them.

When religions ban eating horse manure, I'll believe they are merely confirming our innate urges. Certainly nobody would object to such a ban, since it confirms our innate urge to avoid such a repast. Until then, I'll continue to believe that morals (and the laws based on them) serve to control our (anti-social) innate urges for the good of society.

(By the way, many primitive tribes have, like the Greeks, one word for their own people which might be translated as "human" or "the people" and another word for other people, which would perhaps be better translated as "barbarian" than as "non-human". The Greeks were not idiots. They knew full well that non-Greek-speaking people were "human" in the species sense of the word, and that they could breed with them and produce fertile offspring. Just as Hitler knew the same about the Jews. Let's not go overboard on some silly lingusitic distinctions.)

[YesNo]

One problem I have with "innate" is that I don't know how to tell if something is innate or not. Haidt quoted someone else (whom I forget) as defining "innate" to be "organized prior to experience". It is not socially constructed although culture adds to it. Here are some different innate features.

1) Homosexuality is innate to those individuals who prefer the same sex. (See Young, Alexander, "The Chemistry Between Us" for a survey.) That does not mean it is innate for all humans. However, the brain is not "hardwired". It can change. To what extent can sexual preference be influenced by culture? I think very little, but people who believe in social construction of gender might disagree with that.

2) We have two conflicting innate pleasure/pain responses which encourage pair bonding. There is pleasure to have sex and there is pain when we separate. This is innate to our species but each individual experiences this somewhat differently. Not all species have this but some like prairie voles do. Will our species ever grow (evolve?) out of pair bonding? I doubt it. That means we will enjoy rom-coms until our species goes extinct and have social codes dealing with adultery because it is not clear what to do with that conflicting innate pleasure/pain experience.

3) Haidt's moral foundations are also conflicting. They need some social controls but politically they offer wide differences in behavior depending on how people balance them or go one-sided to either promote individual rights or communal allegiance. Haidt thinks these foundations are peculiar to humans. I think one can find them in other species but individuals within any species will vary. Helga commented earlier about this:


I was once told that 'being an atheist, I act very Christian' I don't really know what that means but I think it has something to do with morality, and it is almost an insult, like I couldn't be a good and moral person and not have faith in some sort of deity.

Haidt, who is also an atheist, would have an answer to what that means, if I understand him correctly: Helga's social behavior balances those six innate moral foundations the way that other person thinks a Christian would balance them.

But all of these differences between individuals and species makes me think innateness is still very vague, but useful. When someone says something is innate are they referring to something innate to a particular individual, a particular species or a larger group of species? And how do we know it is innate? Brain scans, genes?

[Ecurb]

It's impossible to tell what is innate (genetically inherited) and what is acquired because everything about us has components of both. The gay community wanted to advocate that homosexuality was "innate" because they thought that if sexual proclivities were genetic (like "race"), the public would be more sympathetic to civil rights. In my opinion, this is ridiculous. Either homosexual behavior is a reasonable choice, or it is not. Why should whether it is genetic have any bearing on its acceptability? If inherited sexual proclivities are automatically acceptable, pedophiles could make that same argument. Bigotry against gays is unacceptable because there is nothing immoral about homosexuality -- not because gay proclivities are genetically inherited.

Biological "explanations" for morality SEEM scientific, but they (like many reductionist theories) are actually either anti-intellectual or intellectually lazy. Moral codes are best studied by studying (surprise, surprise) the history of morality and legal codes, not by theorizing about biology or evolution. Once again (to compare this subject to the subject of interest on these boards), literature is best studied by studying literature -- the history of its development, the extent to which authors are reacting to other authors, the development of new styles and techniques. Were some Haidt to theorize about how literature is biologically determined, and our psychology has evolved to write in a particular way, such a theory might have passing interest, but it would (doubtless) fail to help us understand the complexities involved in the development of literature.

[Sancho]

Ah-Ha! Pistachio! I knew it. Next time you make it up to Portland and find yourself browsing the stacks at Powell's on Burnside, there's a great little scoop shop about two blocks from the bookstore: Ruby Jewel's. Mmmm, Sancho's got a sweet tooth. (Probably it's genetic)

Concerning homosexuality, yes the gay community had always maintained it wasn't a choice, and when the science caught up they would be proved right. Then, counterintuitively, when the science did catch up and showed that homosexuality wasn't a choice (primarily through DNA studies of identical twins) many of the gay organizations came out firmly against the study. You see, they reasoned that if homosexuality was something that could be tested for and then the label attached to individuals, the risk for discrimination by a prejudiced society was too great.

At any rate, Ecurb, I get your argument, and I admit I've been talking past it (and mostly cracking wise). It's an open forum after all and we all end up talking about what we want to talk about. You are getting the jokes, aren't you? I'll take some responsibility there too - my jokes aren't very good. I'll also say I'm just not terribly invested in either theory, but I think you're mostly right about evolutionary psychology being junk science. And I'm willing to bet the scientific community has moved past it as well.

But argumentatively I don't think you're proving your point. You go along just fine for a while and then, it seems to me, you jump the tracks and make a leap. I don't think you can compare an innate human revulsion towards murder with religious dietary principles. I wouldn't call it a moral to eat kosher, nor would I call it a moral to let the rabbi turn your anteater into a helmet. (Joke) I also think you're stretching the argument to compare the study of evolutionary psychology to that of interpretive literature - two totally different disciplines.

You also seem to point to the exceptions to disprove the rule. The Nazis were the exception. Didn't the broader German population show revulsion when they figured out what had happened? What makes the genocide of the Jews by the Nazis more shocking than the genocide of the Native Americans by the US Army was the integration of the Jews within German society. It took a leap, or a disconnect somewhere, to dehumanize the Jewish population who were their friends and neighbors. Whereas with contact between Europeans and Native Americans it would've been much easier for each to look at the other as nonhuman. In the nazi case, the Versailles Treaty of course was the catalyst. The German people felt victimized. One of Hitler's slogans was : "Make Germany Great Again" (warning!)

As for the Catholic Church using the promise of Paradise as a form of medieval crowd control, that's another exception. I doubt you'll find that program in Christian doctrine; that was powerful men (Popes and Kings) doing what powerful men do - taking care of number one.

I know you didn't want to get into the weeds with a linguistic argument, but I think it's important to understand the the distinctions between morals, ethics, cultural norms, religious strictures, and, well, manners. And I think the distinction is this - there's not a good distinction between those words, they overlap. But eating pork and murdering someone aren't even in the same ballpark.

Speaking of language, I couldn't help but to notice two cliches you used in an earlier post:


I hope the evolutionary psychologists never get involved with literary criticism -- are all the great novels derived from the same evolutionary psychological "needs"? Are there no distinctions or nuances between what attracts readers to Shakespeare, Tolstoy, or Joyce? No doubt, there are some commonalities -- but in examining the forest, we must look at the individual trees or we miss something

Evolutionary psychology is fundamentally anti-intellectual, reducing complicated cultural constructs to simplistic evolutionary principles, and ignoring nuance, history, and (most important) the details, in which the devil lies.

I like those two sayings: "The Devil is in the details." And. "You can't see the forest for the trees." In fact I've always thought there's a sweet spot (if not on a sliding scale) somewhere between those two extremes, and that's where the truth lies. Finding it is the tricky part. You and I have chatted before. I've got a small sense of your personality, but I think it's a bit of a "tell" to use both sayings to define just the one extreme.

Back to the Greeks. (More jokes) A better argument against me when I said the Greeks probably didn't consider their enemies to be human, would have been to bring up the Peloponnesian War. Clearly the Athenians would've considered the Spartans to be of the same species, but the barbarians...those guys were weird - they drank mead instead of wine, they wore animal skins instead of fine woven robes, and they used bear grease as a hair treatment. Besides, would a little inter-species rape-age really have seemed all that unusual to them? They had mules. They'd seen a Jack with a Mare. Herodotus wrote about it. But you're right, the ancient Greeks weren't idiots. Although I can't help but to point out that while I'm using "species" in a non scientific metaphorical way, you're doing the same with idiot. Did you really mean it as a designation of someone with an IQ from zero to 20?

So I did a Dr Strangelove quote earlier. Here's one from Ed Abbey on the ancient Greeks:


A desert tortoise. Tortoise, turtle, what's the difference? There is none. The ancient Greeks thought the tortoise a kind of demon. So much for the Greeks. An ignorant people.

[Ecurb]

Well, since the ancient Greeks practiced gay sex regularly (as did British public school boys), it seems unlikely that homosexuality is entirely genetic. But that doesn't really matter.

And you might object to comparing dietary restrictions to injunctions against murder -- but what about comparing Commandments to avoid murder, theft, adultery and bearing false witness to those against worshiping other Gods, making graven images, ignoring the Sabbath, and taking the Lord's name in vain? Although some might suggest that the first group is inherently abhorrent, and the second is not, they are all listed as commandments brought down from the Mountain by Moses. Surely it's reasonable to compare them. The gist of my argument, though, is that you don't need draconian prohibitions, taboos, laws and punishments to prevent people from doing things that are abhorrent to them. Such laws are needed to prevent people from doing what they want to do. (You and I aren't tempted, of course, but some people are. Or are those tempted somehow sub-human?)

Speaking of "sub-human" -- and going on another (literary) tangent, I've always objected to describing evil people as "monsters" or "brutal". Such usage involves the dehumanization of evil; it seems to me that evil is a uniquely human attribute of which brutes, lacking the cultural constructs of morality, are incapable.

[YesNo]

Concerning homosexuality, yes the gay community had always maintained it wasn't a choice, and when the science caught up they would be proved right. Then, counterintuitively, when the science did catch up and showed that homosexuality wasn't a choice (primarily through DNA studies of identical twins) many of the gay organizations came out firmly against the study. You see, they reasoned that if homosexuality was something that could be tested for and then the label attached to individuals, the risk for discrimination by a prejudiced society was too great.


If there is a way through brain scans to identify homosexual tendencies then this information also applies to heterosexuals. The idea of "homophobia" or some fear that one will "turn" homosexual becomes nonsense.

There are other things besides homosexuality that can be diagnosed from brain scans. I have an acquaintance who was diagnosed as disabled from ADHD, if I remember the acronym correctly, by referencing a brain scan. This helped him get social security benefits. I can see how it is best not to be so diagnosed, but if such diagnosis becomes useful I don't see how one is going to stop it.

[Sancho]

The study on homosexuality, if I'm remembering it correctly, dealt strictly with the DNA of identical twins. They tried to find as many adult men as they could who self identified as homosexual and who also had a twin from whom they'd been separated at birth. There was a statistically high number of these cases in which both identified themselves as homosexual. Once they'd identified enough of these cases they could start matching DNA sequences. Or something like that. Anyway the study only worked with men and acknowledged that at times through history homosexuality was fashionable and hence a choice for some. I doubt they went into federal prison system and studied who was pitching and who was catching. (Jesus! Another lousy joke)

Ecurb, I get what you're saying about not needing a commandant or a law against something that is abhorrent to us. (although there is a sticker on the handle of a hammer I recently bought warning me not to smash myself in the head with it (whoops did it again)). At any rate, as you said, we don't need anybody to tell us not to eat a cow pie. I can't think of a single time I've thought, or anybody I know has thought: Awe shucks, nobody's looking. I'll just eat a little around the edge. They'll never know. Murder though, there's something that's a bit more complex than a food aversion. I don't think anybody needs to tell us murder is wrong, but we still do it from time to time - a fit of rage or passion, a selfish means to an end. And sometimes we murder someone who needs to be murdered, such as an axe murderer loose in an elementary school. In fact, back in Alabama, that's a viable defense in a murder trail - "he needed killin' yore honah" (there I go again)

Bearing false witness, Kant's categorical imperative aside, also has caveats. For instance, when the Nazis are banging on your door asking you where you have the Jews hidden, it's a good time to lie. And speaking of which, if I had to chose a moral guide to live by, I'd chose the Golden Rule. In fact I do. It shows up in just about every religious book worldwide as well as secular texts. It ain't perfect, but it's close.

[YesNo]

Having an innate tendency to homosexuality or not does not mean that one is without choices. Both homosexuals and heterosexuals can choose differently from this tendency. They can also choose not to have sex at all, but the preference is still there. I can see how twins might be useful, but what one really needs is the ability to scan a brain while the human being is still alive and that technology is only a few decades old.

There is an issue of free will here as well. Given that we rationalize what we have already chosen, our free will is not dependent on that rationalization since the choice has already been made.

[Sancho]

Good point Y/N. If the entire universe follows strict laws, what are the odds a single species of 5-foot anthropoid creatures on a backwater planet in the western spiral of the Milky Way has freedom of choice? Donno. It certainly seems like I'm making my own decisions. And that might be good enough.

[YesNo]

And you might object to comparing dietary restrictions to injunctions against murder -- but what about comparing Commandments to avoid murder, theft, adultery and bearing false witness to those against worshiping other Gods, making graven images, ignoring the Sabbath, and taking the Lord's name in vain? Although some might suggest that the first group is inherently abhorrent, and the second is not, they are all listed as commandments brought down from the Mountain by Moses. Surely it's reasonable to compare them. The gist of my argument, though, is that you don't need draconian prohibitions, taboos, laws and punishments to prevent people from doing things that are abhorrent to them. Such laws are needed to prevent people from doing what they want to do. (You and I aren't tempted, of course, but some people are. Or are those tempted somehow sub-human?)


I think I just understood what you are saying.

Haidt would put the dietary restrictions (perhaps even preference for "organic" food) under the sanctity/degradation foundation or some other communal foundation. These foundations include "worshiping other Gods, making graven images, ignoring the Sabbath, and taking the Lord's name in vain". Doing these things for some people is a form of defilement because it violates their various group allegiances, but if one isn't a member of the group they don't matter.

However, "murder, theft, adultery and bearing false witness" would go under the more individualistic foundations such as care/harm, fairness/cheating and liberty/oppression which are associated with different groups (state, family, etc).

Liberals find violations of individual rights more "abhorrent" to them than they do violations of the communal foundations. They don't understand what the big deal it is to take the Lord's name in vain because they are no longer members of groups that value such concepts. The response to murder involves a state law and the response to taking the Lord's name in vain involves criticism from a church one belongs to. They are different because the groups are different. We belong to multiple groups each protecting itself in different ways.

[YesNo]

Good point Y/N. If the entire universe follows strict laws, what are the odds a single species of 5-foot anthropoid creatures on a backwater planet in the western spiral of the Milky Way has freedom of choice? Donno. It certainly seems like I'm making my own decisions. And that might be good enough.

Well, the universe doesn't follow strict laws. That would be one thing learnt from quantum physics.

We fool ourselves into thinking we can't make any choices by creating simplified models that use deterministic mathematics to make specific predictions. When the models predict accurately some measurable subset of possible observations, we then generalize and say everything is deterministic just like our model. It is confusing the menu with the meal, or the Google GPS map for the road.

[Sancho]

Well that's a relief. But does a certain randomness at the quantum level actually provide for free will at our level, or does it just provide for an infinite number of situational possibilities given which we'd react to exactly the same every time.

[Sancho]

Ecurb, I don't think it makes us sub-human to to be tempted to murder. I think it makes us human. I get temped to murder somebody every time I drive I-5 during rush hour. Not seriously temped, but temped nonetheless, I'm usually happy just muttering "putz" under my breath when somebody cuts me off. Also I like to fantasize about me and some of my army buddies traveling back in time to 9/11 and boarding those planes with some box cutters of our own and carving up some terrorist hijackers. I also wouldn't mind choking baby Hitler in his crib.

[YesNo]

Well that's a relief. But does a certain randomness at the quantum level actually provide for free will at our level, or does it just provide for an infinite number of situational possibilities given which we'd react to exactly the same every time.

I don't think what is happening at the quantum level is "random" in the way we normally use that word, that is, it is not like flipping a coin. Quantum indeterminism doesn't provide for free will at our level, but it does mean that any attempt to find a deterministic explanation for everything (including us) based on quantum particles will fail. I think what provides for free will at our level is the kind of pleasure/pain, carrots/sticks, that one finds in our brains underlying sexual activity and these moral foundations. One doesn't give a deterministic machine a carrot or stick to make it do something. The very existence of this pleasure and pain implies we have the ability to choose.

As far as murder goes, here is a YouTube video of crows killing another crow: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7liZdySa-IU&t=14s One of the reasons I hope Haidt nails down better what innateness means for these moral foundations is that we could use that to search for similar innate structures in other species and then make the conclusion that those species are moral as well.

[Sancho]

In any given situation where everything is the same - everything - aren't we going to act the same every time? But change the slightest detail and the gig's up. So then naturally we can't have the same situation twice, eh? Therefore the only way to consider any single situation is to look at history. And when I look at any situation I've ever been faced with, I acted the same whether I look at it today or whether I consider it tomorrow. You can't change history. Would it follow then that how I'm going to deal with a situation tomorrow, has already been determined? Is this a fallacy? I'm fully prepared to admit that it is. In fact I hope that it's false. But by the same token if there is any randomness whatsoever in the universe, the future most definitely has not been determined.

At any rate, the universe is a pretty big place, with a practically infinite number of possibilities, even without randomness, so it probably doesn't matter, to me anyway. The fact that I think I'm acting of my own free will is good enough for me.

[YesNo]

In any given situation where everything is the same - everything - aren't we going to act the same every time? But change the slightest detail and the gig's up. So then naturally we can't have the same situation twice, eh? Therefore the only way to consider any single situation is to look at history. And when I look at any situation I've ever been faced with, I acted the same whether I look at it today or whether I consider it tomorrow. You can't change history. Would it follow then that how I'm going to deal with a situation tomorrow, has already been determined? Is this a fallacy? I'm fully prepared to admit that it is. In fact I hope that it's false. But by the same token if there is any randomness whatsoever in the universe, the future most definitely has not been determined.

Richard Feynman wrote in "QED" on page 19 the following which is similar to what you are describing but about photons reflecting or not off of a pane of glass:


Philosophers have said that if the same circumstances don't always produce the same results, predictions are impossible and science will collapse. Here is a circumstance--identical photons are always coming down in the same direction to the same piece of glass--that produces different results. We cannot predict whether a given photon will arrive at A or B. All we can predict is that out of 100 photons that come down, an average of 4 will be reflected by the front surface. Does that mean that physics, a science of great exactitude, has been reduced to calculating only the probability of an event, and not predicting exactly what will happen? Yes. That's a retreat, but that's the way it is: Nature permits us to calculate only probabilities. Yet science has not collapsed.

Note that this behavior is not deterministic for a single photon. Nor is the probability of reflecting off a pane of glass like a random toss of a coin (which would mean 50 out of 100 photons should reflect, not 4). If one defined the ability to make a choice as behavior that cannot be determined nor is uniformly random, then each photon could be described as making a choice. Whether the photon actually makes a choice or not is left to philosophers to argue.

If a photon could be interpreted as making a choice, we should be careful before assuming that we cannot make a choice.

We fool ourselves because our models are simplifications of reality and they use mathematics which is deterministic. Those mathematical models we know must be incorrect because in those models we could go backward in time, but reality generally speaking does not go backward. The models give accurate predictions, but that does not mean that reality is the same as those models.



At any rate, the universe is a pretty big place, with a practically infinite number of possibilities, even without randomness, so it probably doesn't matter, to me anyway. The fact that I think I'm acting of my own free will is good enough for me.

Here you are viewing yourself as an individual. It does matter what you think about reality because you influence the people around you. We are all members of various groups. We cannot isolate ourselves from all of these groups.

[Sancho]

Thanks for the concise, well thought out reply, Y/N. I believe you. I would like to read more about it, though, and I'm certain there is much written on the subject, but I sense it may be tedious. Any suggestions?

[YesNo]

I think philosophical idealism and panentheism are true and so I will try to rationalize those ideas. They would be my not-so-hidden agenda. Here are some books that I think further that agenda:

(1) If I am interested in a better understanding of quantum physics, I would read Richard Feynman's "QED". He is clear although he probably doesn't agree with my agenda.
(2) If I wanted to know more about the pleasure/pain chemistry in the brain that I think justifies saying we have free will, I would read Alexander and Young, "The Chemistry Between Us".
(3) If I was interested in questioning scientific models of gravity, I would read John W. Moffat's "Reinventing Gravity" who has a modified theory of gravity.
(4) If I were interested in seeing how mathematics dealt with formal logic, I would read Ernest Nagel and James R. Newman's "Godel's Proof". This helps to clarify mathematics role as a model.
(5) The book I have read most recently is Jonathan Haidt's "The Righteous Mind". Although I disagree with his evolutionary theory I think his data does provide a foundation for altruistic individuals and their groups.
(6) If I were interested in Darwinian evolution, I would read Niles Eldredge's "Eternal Ephemera".

There are other sources, but these come to mind and interest me the most at the moment.

[Scheherazade]

Ecurb, I don't think it makes us sub-human to to be tempted to murder. I think it makes us human. I get temped to murder somebody every time I drive I-5 during rush hour. Not seriously temped, but temped nonetheless, I'm usually happy just muttering "putz" under my breath when somebody cuts me off. Also I like to fantasize about me and some of my army buddies traveling back in time to 9/11 and boarding those planes with some box cutters of our own and carving up some terrorist hijackers. I also wouldn't mind choking baby Hitler in his crib.Interesting thoughts there, Sancho (not that we expect anything less from you!). Do you also wonder had those wishes were granted, how the world history would have evolved?

I am not objecting your notion (might be willing to pay for the cutters myself, for example) but also cannot help wondering how the dominoes would have fallen.

[Sancho]

Scher, my friend, it's good to hear from you. Sorry I didn't see this earlier. I intended no snubbery with my slow response.

At any rate, I think you're exactly right - if we start meddling around with history, no telling how things might work out. The theory of unintended consequences, or something like that. But it's fun to think about, eh? Somehow though whenever I think about it, I always wind up being the hero. So I suppose it's a sort of self-serving, cartoonish thought:

Here I come to save the day!

https://youtu.be/rsPa8QgGGkc

But of course nothing happens in a vacuum. I can't really look at that one moment in time without considering everything that led up to to it. Why were those guys so angry? Was it just one big thing, or more of a death by a thousand cuts type situation? Americans pushing their economic interests in the middle east? Cold War tensions? Europeans colonizing the African continent? The crusades? Shenanigans on The Silk Roads? What? I suppose for me to make any difference at all, I'd have to travel way-way back in time, into prehistory and squish that little genetic mutation that made us into such an angsty species.

And so, by El Sancho trying to save the day, he winds up wiping out the whole species - the whole enchilada - the whole shebang-a-bang.


Anyways, I'd still kinda like to choke out baby Hitler in his crib. And infanticide being a pretty-much indefensible crime in court, that's just one I'd have to take for the team.


(By the way, Scher, I'm still reading 1001 Nights. Great stories. Great fun)

[Ecurb]

Murder (unlike killing) is a uniquely human behavior. However, the Christian approach would be that the human soul is immortal, in which case choking baby Hitler would NOT lead to "the greatest good for the greatest number". One soul sent to perdition is more horrible than 6 million, or 20 million (or however many) people dying. IN addition, the notion of preventive punishment is abhorrent. We shouldn't put people in prison because they are likely to commit crimes, unless they deserve the punishment by having already committed them.

I'm not a Christian, but I have a feeling that good and evil are eternal, and the ends (per Kant) cannot justify the means. Of course the Christian (and Communist) witch hunters and Inquisitors would disagree.

[Sancho]

Who said anything about doing the greatest good for the greatest number? I'd enjoy choking baby Hitler for the sake of choking baby Hitler. Besides, not being Christian myself, trading one soul for 6 million or 20 million (or however many) lives sounds like a pretty good swap. Also, minor detail here, Hitler has already committed those atrocities. Duh. So when I choke baby Hitler, I'm just acknowledging the fact that time is not necessarily linear.

One final point, I can't confirm it, but I did read it in a scientific periodical a while back. Some of the great apes, chimpanzees in particular, not only murder but organize wars as well.

[YesNo]

Murder (unlike killing) is a uniquely human behavior.

An animal cannot commit murder because murder means violating a human law applying to only humans. However, that does not mean animals (or plants) do not have a moral approach to their lives and some of their killing could be viewed as unjust even to themselves. That is, they could perceive themselves or members of their species as good or bad. I have suspicions they have this ability.

One of the things I liked about Haidt's "The Righteous Mind" is his discovery of "innate" moral foundations. Although I don't think he extends these to animals, the fact that they are innate implies they could be so extended. Finding a signature or correlate in brain chemistry or genes of this innateness would help confirm his research. We could then check if other species have this genetic or brain chemistry pattern.

[Ecurb]

I'm the one who mentioned "the greatest good for the greatest number", Jeremy Bentham's (possible) justification for murdering the baby Hitler. As much as I hate to agree with YesNo on anything, the notion that we can predict which baby will become a mass murderer smacks of scientific (not "atheistic") determinism. If murdering baby Hitler could stop the atrocities, then, of course, that would disprove the notion that Hitler has "already" committed the atrocities. You can't have it both ways. If you can prevent genocide by killing baby Hitler, then Hitler has NOT already committed the atrocities. If murdering baby Hitler is just for your own satisfaction, then you are stepping down the slippery slope toward evil.


as far as Haidt's simplistic theory is concerned, why would non-human animals tendency toward "morality" (or war) indicate that morality is "innate"? The notion that culture is uniquely human is, I think, incorrect, and the notion that a correlation of brain chemistry to morality proves "innateness" is idiotic. If proving Euclidean theorems could be correlated to brain chemistry, would that prove that we have an innate ability to prove Euclidean theorems, and that Euclid discovered nothing? Of course it wouldn't. All of our thoughts and behaviors, whether learned or innate, presumably are correlated with chemical reactions in our brains. So what?

[Sancho]

Make no doubt about it. I won't pull a punch here. I'd get a tremendous amount of satisfaction out of choking baby Hitler. And if that is stepping down a slippery slope towards evil, then once again, that's one I'll have to take for the team.

Also, this thought experiment is all about having it both ways, and not at all about determinism (scientific, atheistic, or otherwise). We are not talking about some baby with a weird brain chemistry. Hitler did commit those atrocities. So then, if El Sancho can time travel and choke baby Hitler, it follows that time is not linear. Similarly my action doesn't prevent what has already happened, but rather creates an alternate or parallel universe in which it never happened. And this new universe, just one of an infinite number of universes, is the one that El Sancho has just jumped to. And of course the one he will probably die on the gallows in because nobody there will believe his cockamamie story about why he needed to kill baby Hitler.

There are other worlds than this one.*

*I ripped that off from a Stephen King book

[North Star]

You all should watch this TED Talk about homosexuality, how epigenetic markers from the mother affect the child's sexual orientation - and of the reasons why it happens, and why it appears in so many animals. I can't say I've ever seen any evidence of treating sexual minorities poorly advancing anything positive.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Khn_z9FPmU



Richard Feynman wrote in "QED" on page 19 the following which is similar to what you are describing but about photons reflecting or not off of a pane of glass:


Philosophers have said that if the same circumstances don't always produce the same results, predictions are impossible and science will collapse. Here is a circumstance--identical photons are always coming down in the same direction to the same piece of glass--that produces different results. We cannot predict whether a given photon will arrive at A or B. All we can predict is that out of 100 photons that come down, an average of 4 will be reflected by the front surface. Does that mean that physics, a science of great exactitude, has been reduced to calculating only the probability of an event, and not predicting exactly what will happen? Yes. That's a retreat, but that's the way it is: Nature permits us to calculate only probabilities. Yet science has not collapsed.

Note that this behavior is not deterministic for a single photon. Nor is the probability of reflecting off a pane of glass like a random toss of a coin (which would mean 50 out of 100 photons should reflect, not 4). If one defined the ability to make a choice as behavior that cannot be determined nor is uniformly random, then each photon could be described as making a choice. Whether the photon actually makes a choice or not is left to philosophers to argue.

If a photon could be interpreted as making a choice, we should be careful before assuming that we cannot make a choice.

We fool ourselves because our models are simplifications of reality and they use mathematics which is deterministic. Those mathematical models we know must be incorrect because in those models we could go backward in time, but reality generally speaking does not go backward. The models give accurate predictions, but that does not mean that reality is the same as those models.



Here you are viewing yourself as an individual. It does matter what you think about reality because you influence the people around you. We are all members of various groups. We cannot isolate ourselves from all of these groups.
That the probabilities for each of the possible outcomes are not evenly distributed doesn't in anyway imply that the photons make a choice. You might as well be saying that a coin bent slightly makes a choice since it has a statistically significant tendency to land on one particular side. If the concept of choice was defined so that uneven odds = choice, the whole concept would be meaningless.

Before a human or some other living creature decides on a course of action, they have 'choice potential' and after they have made a choice they have 'choice action'. Humans have consciousness, and a huge amount of information in the form of past experiences, what they've learned from school, Internet, TV, friends or whatever, and what they've observed. It's not possible to remove all these sources of information from our lives, but if we are selective about them, their influence will be more stable and predictable, and so our choices. In the end, I think this 'free will' is just the result of having so much different information that there are infinite ways to interpret it - imagine a dice with an infinite number of sides to land on - a ball. I am reminded of Dijkstra saying that "whether machines can think is about as relevant as the question of whether submarines can swim" - Free will doesn't really exist if we look close enough, just as there is no solid matter since we see a whole lot of emptiness in a diamond with a tunneling electron microscope. That doesn't mean that the concept of free will, solid matter, or of swimming, is useless, though.

[Sancho]

Speaking of other worlds, one of the better books I read last year was The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon. The writer wasn't quite so crass as to simply choke out baby Hitler in his crib, but rather he created an alternate history in which the United States stepped up in 1940 and created a Jewish homeland in southeastern Alaska, thereby preventing much of the holocaust. (This book popped into my head partly because I'm sitting in a hotel room in Juneau right now.) Evidently, FDR considered doing just that, but a congressman from Alaska blocked the vote. And, well, the rest is history.

Okay, enough of this. It's a pretty day and El Sancho is going hiking.

[Sancho]

Whoops, sorry North Star

I was talking over you. We were parallel posting.

[Ecurb]

Similarly my action doesn't prevent what has already happened, but rather creates an alternate or parallel universe in which it never happened. And this new universe, just one of an infinite number of universes, is the one that El Sancho has just jumped to. And of course the one he will probably die on the gallows in because nobody there will believe his cockamamie story about why he needed to kill baby Hitler.


Uh oh! I smell trouble! I remember endless arguments between YesNo and the departed (from this site) Morpheus Sandman (which I never read) about the "multiverse" theory of time. Morpheus was on your side of the argument.

[Sancho]

Hey, man. I'm just saying - the truth is the truth is the truth and you can't really have an opinion about the truth - know what I'm saying?

Also you can't really argue with pseudoscience, eh?

So here's a question: If El Sancho, like Mighty Mouse, is a superhero who can right horrible wrongs with his superpower, which is time travel, why then did he choose as his point-of-departure a nursery instead of popping in 9 months earlier and c*ck-blocking Hitler's baby-daddy, or just 3 months earlier and driving Hitler's baby-mama down a really bumpy Bavarian road and shaking loose that genetic mutation from her womb?

The answer is, and I never thought I'd say something like this, but there's just more satisfaction involved in choking a baby than in the other two. Could it be, contrary to what a Rabbi or Priest would say, that the most effective weapon against pure evil is a more pure form of evil?

[Ecurb]

To each his own, although I've never desired to burn witches, however many times they may have fornicated with Satan. Nor would I kill a baby, even if I knew what his future would bring. Hatred begets hatred; evil begets evil.

[Sancho]

While I agree with with you in principle, Ecurb, I am also a pragmatic man and believe there are exceptions to every rule, Adolph Hitler being one of them. Gandhi's peaceful resistance worked with the British, but I doubt it would've worked with the Nazis.

As for witches, I'm a little cynical about that situation as well. Were those people that gullible? I doubt it. The legal system back then was such that if you had a beef with your neighbor and wanted to make an accusation, you had to do it publicly - except if you suspected your neighbor of being a witch, in which case you could accuse anonymously lest the accused put the evil eye on you. So, talk about a spineless way of putting the kibosh on your competition, eh?

[Ecurb]

If you're interested in witches, I recommend Oxford historian H.R. Trevor-Roper's book on the European Witch Craze. Between about 1520 and 1650, Trevor-Roper claims that half a million Europeans were executed as witches (other historians think the number was lower, but all admit it was hundreds of thousands). Debate rages as to what caused the craze -- the religious and political upheavals of the Reformation were doubtless involved, and Catholics and Protestants killed about the same number of "witches". One thing that fueled the craze was torture -- when asked to name names by witch hunters (or by Stalinists), many complied under torture. Then those they accused were tortured, and named others.

Persecution and execution of witches is not a uniquely Christian practice, however. It is found in cultures around the world, and another hyphenated Oxford man (E.E, Evans-Pritchard) wrote a very good book about witchcraft beliefs among the Azande (in Africa).

The Inquisition (which peaked in Catholic Spain slightly earlier) involved torturing and executing people for heresy, which we no longer deem a crime. Witch trials (which were generally held in civil courts rather than ecclesiastical ones) involved torturing and executing people for what would have been real crimes, had they actually occurred. In one case, people were "guilty" of something benign, in the other, they were "not guilty" of something wicked. Many, many times more people were executed for witchcraft than for heresy. One reason that Salem witch trials are so notorious is that by 1690 the witch craze had run its course, and the Salem executions were relatively unusual by that time.

[YesNo]

You all should watch this TED Talk about homosexuality, how epigenetic markers from the mother affect the child's sexual orientation - and of the reasons why it happens, and why it appears in so many animals. I can't say I've ever seen any evidence of treating sexual minorities poorly advancing anything positive.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Khn_z9FPmU



That the probabilities for each of the possible outcomes are not evenly distributed doesn't in anyway imply that the photons make a choice. You might as well be saying that a coin bent slightly makes a choice since it has a statistically significant tendency to land on one particular side. If the concept of choice was defined so that uneven odds = choice, the whole concept would be meaningless.

Before a human or some other living creature decides on a course of action, they have 'choice potential' and after they have made a choice they have 'choice action'. Humans have consciousness, and a huge amount of information in the form of past experiences, what they've learned from school, Internet, TV, friends or whatever, and what they've observed. It's not possible to remove all these sources of information from our lives, but if we are selective about them, their influence will be more stable and predictable, and so our choices. In the end, I think this 'free will' is just the result of having so much different information that there are infinite ways to interpret it - imagine a dice with an infinite number of sides to land on - a ball. I am reminded of Dijkstra saying that "whether machines can think is about as relevant as the question of whether submarines can swim" - Free will doesn't really exist if we look close enough, just as there is no solid matter since we see a whole lot of emptiness in a diamond with a tunneling electron microscope. That doesn't mean that the concept of free will, solid matter, or of swimming, is useless, though.

Sorry I missed your post.

For choice at the quantum level, both the non-uniform results and the inability to find a deterministic explanation for that non-uniformity leads to the idea of choice. In the case of the bent coin there is just the non-uniformly random observations. There is no guarantee one can't account for that by referencing the bent property of the coin.

The TED talk you mentioned sounds interesting. It would be evidence against a social construction of homosexuality.

[Sancho]

Witch hunting and burning reminds me of the the adage to always beware of the power of a mob.

A couple of years ago I walked through an exhibit on methods and instruments of torture in a museum in San Diego. Although it was fascinating on one level, I remember walking out of the building into the bright So-Cal sunlight and feeling a little sick to my stomach. I also remember being a little concerned that there were a number of biker-looking dudes in the museum who appeared to be taking notes.

I'm going to put Hugh Trevor-Roper on my list. Next time I'm in a good bookstore I'll see what I can turn up. Tips like that, Ecurb, are one of the reasons I visit this website. Thanks. I think I might like his style. This from his wiki page:

Trevor-Roper was famous for his lucid and acerbic writing style. In reviews and essays he could be pitilessly sarcastic, and devastating in his mockery

[fudgetusk]

>>My problems with religion



There is a major problem with with secular humanism because prior hominids, those of which were incapable of speech, and by cause and effect, religion, were still burying their dead and living in groups with each other. Which demonstrates that we are definitely capable of morality and social bonding without religious belief.

>> Name one moral thing that a Christian can do better than an Atheist.

----------

Pascal's wager?

Religion is only useful for comforting people. Science has yet to do this...in fact it seems to worry people. at best we are robots who will die and be dead for ever. I think scientific people who believe this and are fine with it are probably lying to themselves. Or they have not fully appreciated the notion.
Religious wars have killed scores of people. Nukes can kill us all in hours. Never mind take your Prozac.

The truth behind religion is that reality is not what it seems. I have practised this belief all my life. When you do it long enough reality seems to become more fluid. Call me crazy, but mistrust of the façade of the world brings about magical events. I believe our world is a bubble of logic and outside it is madness. Magical madness. No scientist has explained where the world came from. I do not believe they ever will. It is not a logical problem.

[YesNo]

The truth behind religion is that reality is not what it seems.

That is a good way of putting it.

[fudgetusk]

>>That is a good way of putting it.

And isn't science proffering the exact same notion? religion is a form or early philosophical science. as alchemy turned to chemistry.

[YesNo]

I see religion as more than science which is a kind of technology or alchemy or a kind of gnosis. Religion binds people together in a community through rituals, stories and views of reality which might not have anything to do with technology or knowledge. This would go for even the new age spiritualities that often seem like individualistic therapies or techniques to me. When they go beyond the individual, they become a kind of religion no matter what Gods or angels or muses are involved.

[fudgetusk]

Oh of course I was just highlighting one aspect of religion. There is a story telling aspect. But surely god came about when some kid asked his dad..."where did the sun come from?" Which is a scientific question. The answer became religion...if you want to be empirical about it. That is why creation myths are all different. Of course some modern religions claim to be divinely inspired. Who is to say this did not happen for all religions or myths.

>>views of reality which might not have anything to do with technology or knowledge.

Guesswork was the first stage of science.

[YesNo]

I think the experience came first then an attempt to explain it. First you have to experience the sun. Then you talk about it.

The basic experience is neither rational nor the result of socialization. I think that is what research shows about religion and moral foundations. (I am thinking of Jonathan Haidt, "The Righteous Mind", and Justin Barrett, "Born Believers".)

The stories are different as you mention. Words aren't adequate to turn our subjective experiences into an objective medium, that is, we will never dump ourselves into an AI computer. If the texts are taken literally, that would be one kind of idolatry. Perhaps a kind of technology as well.

[fudgetusk]

Are you saying that experiencing something is a religious experience? I would say experiencing something mysterious and powerful looking like the sun would contain awe. All religions foster this I would say. Rely upon it. As does science. And after awe we look for explanation. then the beginnings of organised religion -as opposed to a raw religious experience- sprout.
And science develops in the same way for the same reason. But more accurately.

[YesNo]

Science models and then confuses the models with reality because in a limited context those models work. Religion does the same thing. Which is more accurate? If you are looking for a prediction of what the next piece of objective data will be, then go with science. If you are looking for an understanding of your subjective experience, then go with religion. In both you may have to dig around to get to something of value to your particular problem or experience.

Experiencing anything is subjective. Science doesn't deal with the subjective because it tries to find truth by abstracting the subjective away and looking for what remains. That would be a measurement of some sort, something one can record. However, if one abstracts away the subjective one is no longer talking about the subjective. The inaccuracy of science comes with claiming it can account for the subjective by abstracting away the subjective in its models.

Here is an example of the inaccuracy of science. The models science uses are mathematical. That means they are models of individual points moving deterministically. That is fine for the models as long as the models lead to accurate enough predictions, but if one assumes that the model is reality, then one claims that even we, subjective human beings, are "individuals" operating "deterministically". That is, we have no ability to make choices. That's inaccurate.

[fudgetusk]

I personally don't believe in free will. I believe we think logically. Offer a man a five pound note or a ten pound note and he will pick the tenner. No free will involved. Science has proven that to a point the brain has made a decision before the conscious mind has come to a decision. Of course we don't always agree with the decision of the brain. Is this free will or error? I believe the latter. If we are faced with two choices that are equal...we go by a feeling. I believe this feeling is generated by the brain which is much better at calculating our best options. If we are faced with two equal options and we cannot decide and yet we do decide without a feeling, then we are simply being random. Which isn't free will. Free will is therefore a magical notion, as we would expect, from a construct(the brain)that is a computer. It appears as though we are experiencing the process of free will taking place. But in reality the conscious mind is simply a cog in the machine of calculating the best option.

Even the soul is just a machine that responds and administers logic. To say otherwise is to suggest that we are mad. For surely madness is the opposite of logic.

Unromantic? No free will and love is a drug? don't get me started on the notion of infinity. :)

[YesNo]

He has to decide to take the tenner at all. That involves choice even if it is an easy one.

I don’t think science has proven anything about when the brain has made a decision relative to our awareness of the decision although I expect the awareness to come after the decision. I would be willing to look at links to such evidence. Perhaps you are referring to Benjamin Libet’s experiments? Regardless, one can interpret what happens in the brain as the mind making the decision and the brain tracing through that process so we can be conscious of the decision we, not I, have already made. Our individual awareness comes secondary and maybe allows us, individually, to question our decisions.

Why would I want to interpret free will in that way?

I want to see free choices almost everywhere, even in plants which don’t have a brain, even in quantum particles which don’t have a brain, even in the sun and stars which don’t have a brain. I want to find a way to defend panpsychism.

In other words, the logical part of the brain comes after our free choices and our reasoning abilities are used to rationalize our prior choices. See Jonathan Haidt’s “The Righteous Mind” (or YouTube videos of him explaining this) for the idea that we do not think logically. If we did we would be pathological without empathy and without motivation to come to a conclusion.

To look at it in still another way, what really constrains us is not our individual brains, but something larger than our individual selves. Our individual brains do offer carrot-stick chemical constraints (which only suggests we are in fact making choices). Socionomists call this larger-than-our-individual-selves constraint “social mood”. Even the belief that we think logically is constrained by this holistic social mood, not the reductionist brain. Haidt traces this to the success of the belief in rationality which occurred after Hume’s failure to convince philosophers that we are not as rational they they wanted to believe. It is further confirmed in a third wave bull market from 1780s until today which socionomists use as a metric to trace social mood changes.

[YesNo]

don't get me started on the notion of infinity. :)

How do I get you started on the notion of infinity?

[fudgetusk]

The guy deciding to take the money is still doing so out of his own logic. he may end up being wrong about taking it. Doesn't matter. He took it because it was right at the time. Logic does not always mean we are right. If we have logic there is no need for free will.

Libet? No, this research was from about ten years ago. They scanned the brains of people making choices and found their deep brains lighting up before they made a conscious choice. Cannot find the research on the web.

Infinity? My main issue with infinity is the notion that the universe has always existed. Which to me is ridiculous. How can you not have a beginning? Yet some scientists believe it. If an infinite period of time never ends then you can never come to an end of it. It cannot be crossed just as an infinite gap of space cannot be traversed. So how did we manage to come to NOW if there is an infinite amount of time before we existed? In a sense with an infinite past an event can never happen because its happening can always be set backwards through time.

[YesNo]

I would say his choice is not based on logic and reference Haidt’s “The Righteous Mind” as justification (see YouTube if you want more). Claiming that it is is a “rational” perspective of who we are. This is something Haidt views as a “delusion”, but he is using Dawkin’s definition of delusion which views us as rational. So I don’t think “delusion” is the best word. I think it is better described as something people would tend to believe during a period of bullish optimism as would appear in an Elliott 3rd wave. The position I'm taking is something people might find acceptable during a 4th wave correction.

From my perspective, it doesn’t matter when awareness occurs, the choice is made prior to awareness, however, that implies a different definition of “free choice” than the one you are using. We differ more on how we define free choice.

I agree with you about infinity. The cosmic microwave background suggests that the universe is under 14 billion years old. However, that does assume that the speed of light has been constant all that time which might not be the case. In any case, there appears to have been a beginning to our universe because of that cosmic microwave background. If our universe had a beginning I assume infinitely many other universes have also had beginnings as well. I also assume they are all pretty much like ours (which is not what most people assume who believe in a multiverse).

There is another problem with an infinitely large universe called Olbers paradox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olbers%27_paradox Too much infinity and we could not be here.

So I assume the universe in not infinite.

[fudgetusk]

I cannot access youtube at the moment so maybe you could tell me what he says in a nutshell. If you are saying a guy taking a ten pound note off someone is not rational then nothing is. and if it is not rational then it cannot be free will. Unless we are all mad all the time. I would argue that rationality is dependant on logic. It is logical to take money. I cannot see a way around it.

The argument about the universe is that it oscillates. It blows up and then shrinks back into a singularity and repeats. Hawkings says this goes against the second law of thermodynamics. entropy increases and does not decrease. The theory of the big crunch goes against this. and the universe is showing no sign of contracting. There only seems to be two ways the universe can come about. Either it was always there(which we both disagree on) or it came from absolute nothing...which science says is impossible. Yet the universe exists. So something impossible has to have happened.

This applies to God also. has he always existed? if so then let's freeze his mind by asking him his earliest memory. ;)

We are finite in one direction(the past) maybe in both. We will never know.

[YesNo]

I think this would be what Haidt is saying about rationality: we rationalize what we have already chosen to believe or do. That’s how I understand it in a nutshell. The choice comes before the brain kicks in to reason. Reason is motivated and that is why we get things done.

Haidt references Antonio Damasio’s “Descartes Error”. It is a technical study of what happens to certain brain damage in the prefrontal cortex, that is when we can still be rational, but have lost the motivation to come to a conclusion. Again, that’s my nutshell summary.

I am reading Malcolm Gladwell’s “Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking”. He references Damasio also. His emphasis is on what he calls the “adaptive unconscious”. We make up our minds in seconds (blink) and rationalize after that. We aren’t aware that we’ve made up our minds and the reasons we give don’t always match what we actually choose.

These three seem to be saying the same thing. One can say, as you do, that we are mad and have no free will as a result of that, but I think that is where our free will lies. It is not completely individuated by the brain (although the brain may add some feedback value to the mind). I admit it is different from the idea of free will that a rationalist would accept. I also disagree with Haidt, Damasio and Gladwell in certain philosophic perspectives, but we can discuss that later if you want.

Regarding the universe, it could come from absolutely nothing if there still is absolutely nothing. I think that is possible. That position would be represented by philosophical idealism. That may sound cryptic, but by “absolutely nothing” I mean nothing that is fundamentally “unconscious” or not mind or not mentality. There could be some cultural stuff or some aggregations of consciousness that is unconscious as that stuff, but that stuff is not fundamentally there. A chair or a computer or the wind would be in that category as I see it. They are made up of conscious reality, but as a chair or a computer they have no consciousness. This does imply that mind is fundamentally real, but it is not a “thing”--no thing. Call that eternal no thing God, if you want.

[fudgetusk]

Haidt seems to be saying that the brain reacts so quickly that it is not rationalising. I would argue that in most cases it must be rational because people generally act rationally. Painfully rationally. To the point where we invented Dada to get away from rationality. In some cases the brain reacts instantly in cases of sudden danger. Throwing our heads back if someone throws a punch. Even if we know the person is feigning punches it is almost impossible to not react. This is an electrical switch going off rather than a reason based internal debate. But aren't all thoughts reactions? Thinking is being introduced to an idea and the brain reacting by throwing out relevant info. The pros and cons. The brain them reacts again and again to that info until we come to a conclusion. We are trapped by cause and effect. As in all of reality. This is only altered in the brain when it is malfunctioning.

>>we rationalize what we have already chosen to believe or do.

I think in most cases we are right to do so. The brain is a logical computer and acting logically is the right thing to do. It makes many calculations in an instance.

You mention Descartes Error. Wiki says on that topic that emotions influence our actions and thoughts. I would agree and this connects to the idea that love is a drug that sways our choices in favour of what we deem to be good. You say people had brain damage and this made them lose motivation. Was this damage to the brain dealing with emotions?

>>One can say, as you do, that we are mad and have no free will as a result of that, but I think that is where our free will lies. It is not completely individuated by the brain

You think free will is connected to madness? I would say in the area of creativity that is true. I read recently that scientists have created AI that is programmed with mental illness in an attempt to make them create more humanlike works of art. But as for other areas I would say madness is not free will. Unless you are getting spiritual and saying consciousness is beyond being a machine and is therefore unknowable.

>>Regarding the universe, it could come from absolutely nothing if there still is absolutely nothing. I think that is possible.

Then the universe is an illusion made from nothing? I would say an illusion is still something and needs to be explained or held up as an example of the impossible happening. The same can be said for consciousness or the unconscious. It is still something and needs to be explained or so on.

[YesNo]

The brain damage was in the prefrontal cortex. Those with the injury basically acted like Spock, but could not come to conclusions and their social ability to get along with people decreased. They lacked empathy.

I agree that rationalizing is a good thing to do, however, it need not be rational. Think Spock on Star Trek for the ideal of being rational. Rationalizing is different. It is more like Kirk. It is motivated reasoning. The motivation is more important than the reasoning which serves the belief.

I wouldn’t call it “madness”, but I am using your metaphor for where I would look for a general source of free will. Nor do I see the brain as a “logical computer”. I do agree that “consciousness is beyond being a machine” would represent my view of consciousness at the moment. A machine is unconscious because it is deterministic.

The universe is really there, but it is conscious. What we measure is a surface of it. That measurement data is an unconscious side-effect or epiphenomenon. The illusion is that we confuse the measurement with reality. All science can do is describe (measure) and attempt to make predictions based on models (theories) of how change occurs. That doesn’t explain reality, but it helps us build better technology. Philosophy would try to take science, religion and other sources and describe what reality actually is and perhaps explain it. One comes up with different descriptions and explanations. These are all rationalizations of what the philosophers, motivated by their different beliefs, try to prove.

[fudgetusk]

I always thought the limbic system dealt with emotions. But the web seems to say they are connected. yeah damage to the prefrontal cortex creates psychopaths. I recently saw a documentary about scientists scanning the brains of people playing musical instruments. What they discovered is that when they improvised the prefrontal cortex shut down while doing so.

https://www.nidcd.nih.gov/news/2008/jazz-improv-large-portion-brains-prefrontal-region-takes-five-let-creativity-flow

Which means they became temporarily psychopathic. Which seems to suggest that the prefrontal cortex inhibits us from being random. Psychopaths are generally impetuous. They do not think things through before doing them. Being random requires the same. But I would suggest that we are not truly random. That would defy logic as we are a logical machine. If the soul is magical and it does have free will then I would have to wonder how it does this. In the end being a logical machine and thinking and reacting logically are the same thing. The result is the same. Logic decides what we do. Free will seems to have no use.

Spock would have less info to use to make a decision, I think. Without emotion. I would say all functions of the brain are logical whether it is a simple switch being activated or a prolonged internal discussion involving emotion. It is the same process except it appears to us that we are the one doing the prolonged processing. In fact we are just the medium through which the process is being done. We monitor the decision process. Logic decides in the end.

all this talk about brain damage makes me wonder about the relationship between soul and brain. Making decisions would be part of the soul's functions. So how can damaging the brain effect us? surely our mind is our soul and cannot be altered. Either we are not a soul or what we experience of our own minds is not our soul.

The universe conscious? People like David Icke believe that. I have read his books. I haven't seen any evidence for the idea. I would wonder why it would be conscious if it had no senses to know what it was. What would be the point? Unless God had to make the universe out of something and all he had was himself.

[YesNo]

That was a good link. I like how they found a way to measure the brain during creative activity and used improvisation as the creative activity. It would be nice if those fMRI machines were smaller so different types of creative activity could be measured such as snap decisions that Gladwell mentioned in “Blink”.

I don’t know how this relates to Damasio’s “Descartes’ Error”, but I think it does. I would have to read that book again with this other research in mind. Ultimately, the medical goal is to do what we can with the brain so we can function optimally.

Research also needs to include the heart. Based on what I’ve read from HeartMath articles (https://www.heartmath.com/science/), the heart may be more involved with our decisions than the brain. I see HeartMath as a kind of heart-brain training organization, however, I do not use their products.

According to Haidt, the decision is made before the brain starts any logical process. The logical process is motivated to support whatever decision we came to in that “blink” moment of decision. Also I don’t think our brain is a logical machine. I see it more as a form of mind that supports our minds. At some level it is making choices (and so it is not a machine).

As far as how a damaged brain affects us, I don’t think it affects our minds as such, but it does affect our individual perspectives of our minds. This is almost like saying that our brains are like radios picking up a song that is broadcast. When the radio is broken, the song cannot be picked up, but the song itself is not damaged. What I don’t like about this radio metaphor is that a radio is a machine--our brains are not. They are mind at a different level.

Good point: “Unless God had to make the universe out of something and all he had was himself.” That’s how I see it. God made the universe out of himself.

[fudgetusk]

If the brain is not a machine then we will never understand it or replicate it in this world, which is made up of logical things and logical ideas. if it is not a machine then what is it? what is a 'mind'? I tend to think pragmatically about the function of the mind/soul. Yet believe that the existence of the mind is impossible and yet is. I cannot still get around the idea that free will exists. in the end there is only ever one best choice in any given situation. And is it coincidence that we always take it?

[kiz_paws]

I recently saw a documentary about scientists scanning the brains of people playing musical instruments. What they discovered is that when they improvised the prefrontal cortex shut down while doing so.

https://www.nidcd.nih.gov/news/2008/...reativity-flow

Which means they became temporarily psychopathic.Very interesting indeed, thanks for that link, fudge.

[fudgetusk]

I made up loads of songs and even trained my brain to be random, being a fan of surrealism. I wonder if my brain works as well as it should. I haven't commited a crime...in ages! :)

[YesNo]

If the brain is not a machine then we will never understand it or replicate it in this world, which is made up of logical things and logical ideas. if it is not a machine then what is it? what is a 'mind'? I tend to think pragmatically about the function of the mind/soul. Yet believe that the existence of the mind is impossible and yet is. I cannot still get around the idea that free will exists. in the end there is only ever one best choice in any given situation. And is it coincidence that we always take it?

You are making some assumptions here that I will list just to clarify them. I don't think any of them are true, but they are more or less believable given whatever social mood influences us.

1) We can never understand something if it is not a machine.
2) The world is made up of logical things and ideas.
3) There is only ever one best choice in any given situation.
4) We always make the best choice.
5) Free will does not exist.

The opposite of a machine would be something capable of making a choice. We would be examples of that. Given indeterminism, quantum reality could be interpreted as making choices as well. Given quantum physics, number 5 is false at least at the quantum level.

[desiresjab]

I do not find a necessity for free will. Some people obviously feel this necessity personally and strongly, however. This could be left over belief from their religious hangover.

I do not have incontrovertible evidence that there is or is not free will. My philosophy does not depend on it and is not supported by one notion over the other. At an experiential level, having free will and having asymptotic approximation are the same thing. Additional differentiation judgements beyond normal experience would be required to determine if one had free will or merely possessed asymptotic approximation. The human being could absolutely not tell the difference between the two states. Whether human beings would be capable of devising tests to answer the question definitively is itself an interesting question.

[fudgetusk]

You are making some assumptions here that I will list just to clarify them. I don't think any of them are true, but they are more or less believable given whatever social mood influences us.

1) We can never understand something if it is not a machine.
2) The world is made up of logical things and ideas.
3) There is only ever one best choice in any given situation.
4) We always make the best choice.
5) Free will does not exist.

The opposite of a machine would be something capable of making a choice. We would be examples of that. Given indeterminism, quantum reality could be interpreted as making choices as well. Given quantum physics, number 5 is false at least at the quantum level.

1 When I say we cannot understand a non mechanical soul I am saying there is nothing to understand. If we are just a blob of consciousness with no physical presence then what is there to test and know about? All we know about is the side effect of personality. How do you examine something when it is not there?

2 I see no reason to think otherwise. Sure weird unexplained stuff happens but it is surely logical to assume there is a logical explanation. ockham's razor. I only turn to a metanatural explanation when all else fails.

3 No I have talked about options that are equally good. Then we turn to being random. or do we? I would suggest we simply rely on something like superstition to make a choice like that.(I prefer left to right)

4 I haven't said that. I've said that being wrong is still logical to the person making the decision. All depends on how much info we have.

5 Haven't heard anything to dissuade me from that viewpoint. Why is quantum reality proof of free will?

[YesNo]

1 When I say we cannot understand a non mechanical soul I am saying there is nothing to understand. If we are just a blob of consciousness with no physical presence then what is there to test and know about? All we know about is the side effect of personality. How do you examine something when it is not there?

The problem is you are assuming in spite of empirical evidence, “the side effect of personality”, that consciousness is not there but unconscious physical reality is. All we know of physical reality is that it is susceptible to measurement. I admit that the measurements are unconscious and they can be manipulated mathematically to obtain predictions, but that is just the surface of reality and the predictions are only about the next measurement.


2 I see no reason to think otherwise. Sure weird unexplained stuff happens but it is surely logical to assume there is a logical explanation. ockham's razor. I only turn to a metanatural explanation when all else fails.

To believe that the world is made up of logical things and ideas may be a cultural illusion. An alternative would be that the world is made up of volitional reality at many levels, that is, stuff that can make choices which need not be dependent on logic nor having a brain.


3 No I have talked about options that are equally good. Then we turn to being random. or do we? I would suggest we simply rely on something like superstition to make a choice like that.(I prefer left to right)

An AI machine would behave this way, but I don’t think we do. We are not even aware of all the options available to us and still we make a choice even before we know which is the best one, even before we flip a coin to choose one option from the set of best options.


4 I haven't said that. I've said that being wrong is still logical to the person making the decision. All depends on how much info we have.

That is how I understood what you meant by “best choice”. It is the best choice to the one making the decision even though it may not actually be the best choice. What I am saying is that our choices are made prior to the brain coming in to justify the choices, or rationalize them. When we use logic we are not interested in finding the best choice, but justifying the one we have already made. I don't see this as a bad thing. We reach better answers faster this way because we are motivated although partially blinded. I would reference Jonathan Haidt's "The Righteous Mind" to support the position.


5 Haven't heard anything to dissuade me from that viewpoint. Why is quantum reality proof of free will?

It is not proof, but indeterminism can be interpreted as volitional activity. What makes quantum indeterminism so powerful in support of free will is that quantum theory claims there are no “hidden variables” to explain this indeterminism. All one has is a wave probability distribution to estimate what the likely outcomes will be. That this indeterminism exists at all suggests that indeterminism at all levels may exist as well. There may not be any laws of nature but only probabilistic answers to base predictions on.

[fudgetusk]

>>The problem is you are assuming in spite of empirical evidence, “the side effect of personality”, that consciousness is not there but unconscious physical reality is.

I never said that either. I'm talking about consciousness and/or physical reality. A 'machine' doesn't denote being unconscious in this context. I'm simply making the distinction between a soul that can be studied and worked out and a soul that cannot be. Both would be bound by internal logic and have no free will.

>>To believe that the world is made up of logical things and ideas may be a cultural illusion. An alternative would be that the world is made up of volitional reality at many levels, that is, stuff that can make choices which need not be dependent on logic nor having a brain.

if the world is not bound by logic then it is not making much of an impression on me because it is painfully logical to me. I experience very weird coincidences but I don't see it as proof that the world is alive. That's way down the list of possibilities.

>>An AI machine would behave this way, but I don’t think we do. We are not even aware of all the options available to us and still we make a choice even before we know which is the best one, even before we flip a coin to choose one option from the set of best options.

AI would behave superstitiously? Maybe if it had gathered enough data(memories) I believe the subconscious makes a pretty good go at making a decision in a very short time. Do you know how many operations the human brain makes per second? 38 thousand trillion. So when you are wondering if to have an egg sandwich or a ham, what is actually going on is millions of calculations that we experience as the mundane act of choosing a filling. We experience next to nothing of what is going on. So who is to say we do not think superstitiously? Mentalists make a living on the fact we do. The subconscious mind has access to much more data(memories) than the conscious mind. This is proved through hypnosis. In a trance we can recall things that the conscious mind never could. We have drawn a link between emotion and making decisions. Surely emotions ARE subconscious. do you consciously decide to be angry when someone insults you? no. it just happens. We would struggle not to have these emotions. Add it all up and the subconscious mind is way better at making decisions than the conscious mind. The conscious mind is making decisions with very little data.

>>When we use logic we are not interested in finding the best choice, but justifying the one we have already made.

Our ability to monitor the brain has not come to a point where we would be able to know this. are you going to cite some practical macro sized experiment to show this? I find such tests a little dubious. They are all open to suggestion by the tester. But none of this proves we have free will in the end. Retroactive thinking is still logical. Logic decides what we do. Not us.

>>All one has is a wave probability distribution to estimate what the likely outcomes will be.

if you are talking about the double slit test and the photon becoming a wave then I am with you. I do not see indeterminism as proof of free will. Rather it is proof of our ignorance.

[YesNo]

You could say, metaphorically, that quantum indeterminism is “proof of our ignorance”, but ignorance usually means we are ignorant about something that we could know but don’t at the moment. In the quantum physics case there are no hidden variables. That means our ignorance is permanent. There is nothing to know. In order to get around that some people propose “many worlds”, many universes where each possible option occurs so one can avoid saying that some quantum reality made a choice when we measured it.

I agree: “Add it all up and the subconscious mind is way better at making decisions than the conscious mind.” However, I don’t think these are “logical” decisions that we are unaware of.

When you write, “I'm simply making the distinction between a soul that can be studied and worked out and a soul that cannot be. Both would be bound by internal logic and have no free will”, the assumption I hear is “Both would be bound by internal logic”. The alternative is they could be making choices perhaps influenced by constraints.

When we study something we do two things: (1) We make observations about some measurable aspect of reality; and (2) we create a model from those observations. The model allows us to predict future observations. In the model, there is determinism and no free will. The model, however, is not reality. It is only a way to make a prediction about a future measurable aspect of reality.

[fudgetusk]

>>but ignorance usually means we are ignorant about something that we could know but don’t at the moment. In the quantum physics case there are no hidden variables.

We thought we had gravity down, then we didn't. Now we have dark matter. We thought we knew how the expansion of the universe went down, then we didn't now we have dark energy. We cannot detect them but we do see their effect on reality. So we cannot say there are no hidden variables. You cannot rule out something you cannot sense. Scientists have created negative mass. When you push it it moves towards you. Madness. There would have been a time when that was thought impossible. But let's suppose you are right and there IS indeterminism. Doesn't mean it is proof of free will. I have said the creation of the universe/God/consciousness is an impossible act. Doesn't mean it is an act of free will. That requires a mind and choices. There was nothing before creation took place. No mind. Just madness. The indeterminism of particles could be part of that madness. It could pervade all of reality to some degree. Madness is not free will. It is movement without reason. Like the creation of the universe. This unreason could inflict our own minds. It could explain insanity and genius inspirations.

>>I agree: “Add it all up and the subconscious mind is way better at making decisions than the conscious mind.” However, I don’t think these are “logical” decisions that we are unaware of.

We are aware of these decisions as a feeling. The mass of calculations(millions, billions, trillions) adds up to an emotion or a vague thought. And I see no reason to believe they aren't logical, if that's what you are saying. Why not? because they are so quick? if I tap a difficult sum into a calculator it will figure it out in microseconds. Is that not logical? because it's quick? It would take a person minutes to work out, probably making a few mistakes on the way. I think you are entranced by the experience of your own mind as all people are. THAT plodding tool of logic which allows you to see the decision process, to include you in the game. You've become convinced it is you doing the thinking. Because you cannot see the trillions of calculations under the surface. You say we are aware of these decisions. Trillions of them? Per second? Of course not. The human experience is a dream and we are not the dreamer, we are an extra in the dream.

>>the assumption I hear is “Both would be bound by internal logic”. The alternative is they could be making choices perhaps influenced by constraints.

Logic is restrained by data.

>>When we study something we do two things: (1) We make observations about some measurable aspect of reality; and (2) we create a model from those observations. The model allows us to predict future observations. In the model, there is determinism and no free will. The model, however, is not reality. It is only a way to make a prediction about a future measurable aspect of reality.

The model may be accurate. Still waiting for more data.

[YesNo]

When I read logic and madness I think of determinism (logic) and uniform randomness like flipping a coin (madness). I agree with the following statement:


If something is determined or uniformly random then that something does not have free will.

I use this argument to claim that an AI machine has no free will and cannot be conscious.

However, I don’t agree that reality in general is determined or subject to uniform randomness. Quantum indeterminism and our own experience of our choices do not suggest this is true. To get past these two objections one would have to claim two things: (1) A future quantum theory will remove indeterminism, and (2) Our experience of our choice making ability is a delusion. I don’t think either of these are reasonable to assume today.

The idea of “indeterminism” is in the quantum theory model. It need not be in reality. I don’t think reality is indeterministic. Rather I see reality as making choices, hence conscious. The quantum indeterminism just means that quantum theory does not offer an objection to my claim. As far as quantum theory goes, reality might be conscious. That is one valid interpretation of what its model shows as indeterminism.

When you write, “The model may be accurate”, I wonder what you mean by “accurate”. If the model works to give predictable results about future measurements, then I would agree that model is accurate enough for our prediction purposes today. I don’t think we should ever assume that a scientific model is an accurate description of reality because our models change and what we are measuring are only some aspects of reality.

When you write, “I see no reason to believe they aren't logical”, I would refer you to Jonathan Haidt’s “The Righteous Mind” and his moral foundations. These moral foundations are, according to his research, “innate” and they contradict each other. This suggests to me that logic will not solve moral issues. Here is a video of Haidt talking about the “Rationalist Delusion”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kI1wQswRVaU&t=309s


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kI1wQswRVaU&t=309s

[fudgetusk]

Oh I'm not saying for definite that I am right. Just that what I'm saying is more logical. I have said that the creation of the universe has to be illogical. But that does not mean anything else is. Some people look for the most obvious answer(scientists/doctors/police/reporters/) some look for the second or third likeliest answer. There's room for both. But the first group should have more power than the second, logically.

[YesNo]

I don’t see any use of logic in the argument. However, I also think that the creation of the universe is “illogical”. Basically it has nothing to do with logic being a choice.

Now, it might be worth asking which position corresponds best the current social mood. Your position would correspond to a bullish social mood. People believe in their individual rights and abilities and think they are rational. A bearish social mood would switch to the opposite position.

[fudgetusk]

I don’t see any use of logic in the argument. However, I also think that the creation of the universe is “illogical”. Basically it has nothing to do with logic being a choice.

Now, it might be worth asking which position corresponds best the current social mood. Your position would correspond to a bullish social mood. People believe in their individual rights and abilities and think they are rational. A bearish social mood would switch to the opposite position.

Logic would dictate that we are machines. Surely. That is what we must consider first. We are cause and effect. We are it and it binds us. Cause creates effect. We make(cause) the right choices(effect) as far as we are able to tell(logic).

[YesNo]

If people like Jonathan Haidt disagree, it is not “surely” the case. I do admit if we project aspects of reality on a set of measurements we can use logic to manipulate those measurements. That logic would be deterministic. However, what that logic is working with are measurements, projections of reality, and not reality itself.

[fudgetusk]

If we are not machines then what are we? If consciousness does not have a mechanism then how does it function? The brain is clearly a machine or device because it uses electricity and we can see parts of the brain light up when we do certain things. You could argue it is a medium through which soul interacts with the body. But if the soul has no mechanism then what is it?

>> I do admit if we project aspects of reality on a set of measurements we can use logic to manipulate those measurements. That logic would be deterministic. However, what that logic is working with are measurements, projections of reality, and not reality itself.

Not sure what you mean about projecting aspects of reality on a set of measurements. Surely we just measure reality.

I would argue that is reality. We measure it and we understand it.

[YesNo]

We would be agents with the ability to make limited choices.

I don’t know if the brain is a machine or not. One can describe the brain as a machine, but that doesn’t mean it is a machine. Although I like the “radio analogy” in showing the relationship between mind and body, the radio is a machine and that is where that analogy may break down.

When we measure something we obtain data. The data is what is analyzed mathematically and logically, not reality. The theories that are useful are able to predict future data values like the ones we have already collected. These data values are projections of reality. They are not reality itself.

[fudgetusk]

So you think reality lies to us or is hidden from us? I would wonder why it always gives off the same numbers.

[YesNo]

I don’t see what lying has to do with it. That would assume reality is conscious enough to lie. If reality has a subjective side, that would be hidden from us.

I suspect some people think that if determinism is not true then we have chaos or randomness, but it need not look any different from what we see now. Agents are limited in their freedom. With an indeterminate theory quantum mechanics was able to bring us technological advances. Indeterminism is not as bad as some fear it to be.

[fudgetusk]

I don't think it is lying like a human lies. JUst showing us wrong data because of the way we measure it. Take the core of a black hole. Scientists would have us believe that it has zero volume yet infinite density. This seems mad. The maths is lying to us. 1 divided by 0 is infinity according to them. Take one cake and divide it by zero people(hence do not divide it at all) and we have infinite cake to feed the world with. HAHH. Maths is crazy sometimes.

[YesNo]

There may not be any black holes (or dark matter or dark energy). As you note the singularities are problems with Einstein’s gravitation theory. There are alternate gravitation theories.

Quantum physics has not ruled out a global Law of Nature that would make everything deterministic. That would be called superdeterminism. We could view that as an unconscious God with omniscience defined as “infallible foreknowledge” rather than “knowing everything that is knowable”. However, I don’t believe this Law of Nature God exists.