Hobbes: Main is a Machine

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Originally Posted by JuniperWoolf

But that sounds like behaviourism. Isn't behaviourism kind of dead?

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In a way, yes. But behaviourism probably has its roots in Locke, with his Tabula Rasa, where he postulates an empty child that has to be filled with evrything. Another ridiculous philosopher who discards capacity as separate from possibility, adaptability, environment, etc.

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Originally Posted by JuniperWoolf

But that sounds like behaviourism. Isn't behaviourism kind of dead?

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A bit, but Hobbes' idea is basically tied to an older idea of universal mechanism, the belief that everything in the universe is based on cause and effect of matter. Hobbes goes on to deduce from the assumption that the human mind is mechanistic in this way that there are laws of human nature, just like there are laws of physics, such as his belief that man is basically self-interested. It's more metaphysical than a detailed psychological theory.

It was also a dominant view at the time that animals were mechanistic automatons. So, Hobbes' view is a bit controversial for its time as an attempt to treat humans in the same light as the current scientific ideas about animals.

So, when I said modern cognitivism or neurobiological ideas would agree with Hobbes, I was just speaking of a generally materialistic approach to the question of mind. In opposition to people like DesCartes who thought that the mind had some existence outside of matter.

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Originally Posted by OrphanPip

A bit, but Hobbes' idea is basically tied to an older idea of universal mechanism, the belief that everything in the universe is based on cause and effect of matter. Hobbes goes on to deduce from the assumption that the human mind is mechanistic in this way that there are laws of human nature, just like there are laws of physics, such as his belief that man is basically self-interested. It's more metaphysical than a detailed psychological theory.

It was also a dominant view at the time that animals were mechanistic automatons. So, Hobbes' view is a bit controversial for its time as an attempt to treat humans in the same light as the current scientific ideas about animals.

So, when I said modern cognitivism or neurobiological ideas would agree with Hobbes, I was just speaking of a generally materialistic approach to the question of mind. In opposition to people like DesCartes who thought that the mind had some existence outside of matter.

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Good points because Hobbes was not so simplistic as people like Locke, Descartes, Rousseau or Freud. Some scientific credit should be given there.

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Originally Posted by OrphanPip

So, when I said modern cognitivism or neurobiological ideas would agree with Hobbes, I was just speaking of a generally materialistic approach to the question of mind. In opposition to people like DesCartes who thought that the mind had some existence outside of matter.

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Ah, okay. I think that there is a very strong likelihood that we are machines, but we can't prove it yet because we can't predict the machines' behaviour and so I'm not willing to fully subscribe to the theory. Then again, what's the alternative, that we have "souls?" *shrug* I don't know, maybe there's something else we haven't thought of yet.

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Originally Posted by JuniperWoolf

Ah, okay. I think that there is a very strong likelihood that we are machines, but we can't prove it yet because we can't predict the machines' behaviour and so I'm not willing to fully subscribe to the theory. Then again, what's the alternative, that we have "souls?" *shrug* I don't know, maybe there's something else we haven't thought of yet.

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The problem is that we do have biological souls which are the same as the behaviour of the body. There is no separation.
Also, you can also prove this through probability. Today it's pretty high and we have no other tool. But also, I don't understand you argument pretty well, since it is much harder to prove that we are not machines, and in that case we don't even have the tools of probability.

Machines don't have subjectivity. Machines don't love. Don't hate. Don't believe. I think free will is an illusion, but even that mere illusion separates us qualitatively from machines. I mean Arnold had some feelings of fondness and friendship for John Connor in Terminator 2, but that's still a far cry from the emotion a father gets holding his new-born son in his arms, that which makes a groom's heart flutter as he stares into the eyes of his beloved bride, or the sense of compassion, of hatred, of fear, of hope, none of which machines know. Our subjectivity ought to be regarded as our most precious quality, one that machines do not have and perhaps never will.

Yes, an organic machine with additional features.

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Originally Posted by Darcy88

Machines don't have subjectivity. Machines don't love. Don't hate. Don't believe.

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Not yet they don't. Maybe we're just very complex machines, and our endocrine and neurological systems are simply "parts" which enable us to feel emotions and think, and which we humans haven't re-created in metal and silicon yet. Emotions and thoughts are useful; a machine which can think and feel could be very useful. Maybe that's all we are - machines, created by natural selection and evolution. It's a scary thought, but I'm not willing to shrug the theory off just because it makes me uncomfortable, nor am I willing to completely buy the theory just because it's seems most likely with what we currently know about consciousness and the brain. Put me down for "not enough information - undecided."

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Originally Posted by JuniperWoolf

Not yet they don't. Maybe we're just very complex machines, and our endocrine and neurological systems are simply "parts" which enable us to feel emotions and think, and which we humans haven't re-created in metal and silicon yet. Emotions and thoughts are useful; a machine which can think and feel could be very useful. Maybe that's all we are - machines, created by natural selection and evolution. It's a scary thought, but I'm not willing to shrug the theory off just because it makes me uncomfortable, nor am I willing to completely buy the theory just because it's seems most likely with what we currently know about consciousness and the brain. Put me down for "not enough information - undecided."

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If we are machines by virtue of our being physical specimens then yes, sure, we are machines. But to me that's like comparing a third grader's paper-mache volcano project to Mount Vesuvius. Man as machine is a useful yet narrow and over-simplistic metaphor that draws connections between the few similarities while entirely missing the many meaningful differences that separate us from machines. We are the result of billions of years of evolution and thousands upon thousands of years of culture. Machines have "evolved" at a tremendous rate in recent centuries, but I believe it will be some time before they reach the level of complexity that's been reached by the human brain. When machines start loving and imagining and praying I'll change my tune.

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Originally Posted by Darcy88

Machines don't have subjectivity. Machines don't love. Don't hate. Don't believe. I think free will is an illusion, but even that mere illusion separates us qualitatively from machines. I mean Arnold had some feelings of fondness and friendship for John Connor in Terminator 2, but that's still a far cry from the emotion a father gets holding his new-born son in his arms, that which makes a groom's heart flutter as he stares into the eyes of his beloved bride, or the sense of compassion, of hatred, of fear, of hope, none of which machines know. Our subjectivity ought to be regarded as our most precious quality, one that machines do not have and perhaps never will.

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All that shows is that you don't want it because you have a prejudice as to what's a machine. You think the only kind must be inorganic.

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Originally Posted by cafolini

All that shows is that you don't want it because you have a prejudice as to what's a machine. You think the only kind must be inorganic.

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Well, let me invert the question then: what's the appeal of thinking that man is a machine? From where I'm standing, it just smacks of low self-esteem and misanthropy.

Mary Midgley, in her excellent book The Myths We Live By, remarks that Hobbes, like many thinkers, philosophers and scientists of his time, was fascinated by the recently discovered clockwork. This imagery in the 17th and 18th century was highly influential in shaping a mechanistic view of everything, from the physical sciences to human sciences, with a scientist like Laplace declaring that the universe was literally a clock.

Man is a machine is just a reductive statement about humans and shouldn't be seen as anything more than that. It's informed by the same principle of reduction at work in statements like, Man is just a machine for reproducing genes, or, Man is just a meme machine, or, All behaviour is driven by Will to Power, or, Life is intrinsically competitive, or, History follows inexorable laws.

Since the Enlightenment, thinkers and scientists have tried to find a few simple laws that can explain everything about humans, much in the same way that Newton discovered a few simple laws that could explain the universe (until the 20th century, that is). One of the most frustrating thing about the human or social sciences, or the humanities, is that humans don't behave like tides, planetary orbits, stones, or the blood in our veins. All study of humans is messy and unscientific, and that annoys those who want their areas of human study to have the same respect that science does. This is what led people like B.F. Skinner, one of the fathers of Behaviourism, to ignore unscientific things like motives and feelings and stick to external behaviour. It's also what made him defend the absurd theory that parents shouldn't create emotional bond with their children. But studying just physical behaviour explains nothing about humans because our behaviour is motivated by our consciousnesses: our ambitions, dreams, hopes, and reactions to the consciousnesses of other individuals.

Those who ignore the complexity and unpredictability of humans have often built complex edifices of concepts and words that collapse once they're tried to be applied to real people, and have only led to suffering and death. Isaiah Berlin has written one excellent essay on that, called "The Sense of Reality," collected in the book of the same name. I recommend it to those who want to continue to define Man in simple terms, like machines.

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Originally Posted by Heteronym

Man is a machine is just a reductive statement about humans and shouldn't be seen as anything more than that. It's informed by the same principle of reduction at work in statements like, Man is just a machine for reproducing genes, or, Man is just a meme machine, or, All behaviour is driven by Will to Power, or, Life is intrinsically competitive, or, History follows inexorable laws.

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Agreed.

I'm reading Midgley's The Ethical Primate now based on your recommendation in another thread.

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Originally Posted by Heteronym

Mary Midgley, in her excellent book The Myths We Live By, remarks that Hobbes, like many thinkers, philosophers and scientists of his time, was fascinated by the recently discovered clockwork. This imagery in the 17th and 18th century was highly influential in shaping a mechanistic view of everything, from the physical sciences to human sciences, with a scientist like Laplace declaring that the universe was literally a clock.

Man is a machine is just a reductive statement about humans and shouldn't be seen as anything more than that. It's informed by the same principle of reduction at work in statements like, Man is just a machine for reproducing genes, or, Man is just a meme machine, or, All behaviour is driven by Will to Power, or, Life is intrinsically competitive, or, History follows inexorable laws.

Since the Enlightenment, thinkers and scientists have tried to find a few simple laws that can explain everything about humans, much in the same way that Newton discovered a few simple laws that could explain the universe (until the 20th century, that is). One of the most frustrating thing about the human or social sciences, or the humanities, is that humans don't behave like tides, planetary orbits, stones, or the blood in our veins. All study of humans is messy and unscientific, and that annoys those who want their areas of human study to have the same respect that science does. This is what led people like B.F. Skinner, one of the fathers of Behaviourism, to ignore unscientific things like motives and feelings and stick to external behaviour. It's also what made him defend the absurd theory that parents shouldn't create emotional bond with their children. But studying just physical behaviour explains nothing about humans because our behaviour is motivated by our consciousnesses: our ambitions, dreams, hopes, and reactions to the consciousnesses of other individuals.

Those who ignore the complexity and unpredictability of humans have often built complex edifices of concepts and words that collapse once they're tried to be applied to real people, and have only led to suffering and death. Isaiah Berlin has written one excellent essay on that, called "The Sense of Reality," collected in the book of the same name. I recommend it to those who want to continue to define Man in simple terms, like machines.

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There is indeed the possibility that some might want to reduce men to simple things. In fact, they do. But a machine is not to blame for human simplicity and ignorance. Organic machines have been shown to be highly complicated and complex. A machine is a machine...is a machine...is a machine...

Complexity is not the purview of machines. Poems are highly complicated and complex, but it does not follow that they are machines. Man are machines is a metaphor taken too far by some thinkers who, fascinated by 17th century clockworks, applied its imagery to several areas of human inquiry. For me the most interesting question is, what do you gain from thinking men are machines? What new insight does it give you about humans? How does that improve the way you interact with other people? What new pathways of knowledge are opened for you?

I'm very curious to understand that, because for me metaphors are only useful in so far as they provide a framework to understand something in a new light, and I still fail to see how that works in this case.