The Libet results on free will and their many descendants are crumbling now, and there is more to come. A nice case of science exposing hidden dualist assumptions in neuroscience.

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/09/free-will-bereitschaftspotential/597736/

From the article: "As a philosophical question, whether humans have control over their own actions had been fought over for centuries before Libet walked into a lab. But Libet introduced a genuine neurological argument against free will. His finding set off a new surge of debate in science and philosophy circles. And over time, the implications have been spun into cultural lore.

Today, the notion that our brains make choices before we are even aware of them will now pop up in cocktail-party conversation or in a review of Black Mirror. It’s covered by mainstream journalism outlets, including This American Life, Radiolab, and this magazine. Libet’s work is frequently brought up by popular intellectuals such as Sam Harris and Yuval Noah Harari to argue that science has proved humans are not the authors of their actions."

I was never a fan of Libet's famous study. Nice to see it get chopped by well done science.

HH =)

This is chopping?

"If Libet was right, that should have happened at 500 milliseconds before the movement. But the algorithm couldn’t tell any difference until about only 150 milliseconds before the movement, the time people reported making decisions in Libet’s original experiment."

I don't think free will exists and while the refining of the science is interesting, free will in my opinion still doesn't exist.

Thanks for the article. Libet wasn't taken to task too much. Too much brain noise.

I don't think free will exists and while the refining of the science is interesting, free will in my opinion still doesn't exist.

COMMENT: So, let me see if I understand you. If we want to know why the organism you call EB "chose" to respond to this thread, we can't just ask you about your personal motivations, beliefs and values, because they are all just physical events, which themselves are caused by prior physical events. As such, we need to go all the way back to the beginning of the universe where it all began, and trace all the related material interactions and causal events from there until now.

Now, that makes sense! What price we pay for unreasoned scientism!

Henry Bemis Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> COMMENT: So, let me see if I understand you. If
> we want to know why the organism you call EB
> "chose" to respond to this thread, we can't just
> ask you about your personal motivations, beliefs
> and values, because they are all just physical
> events, which themselves are caused by prior
> physical events.

I haven't claimed anything other than a disbelief in free will.

As to my personal motivations, beliefs and values I tend to believe that they are more explanatory to myself and others than causal.

"I haven't claimed anything other than a disbelief in free will."

COMMENT: From a scientific perspective, what follows from your position denying free will as an explanation of human action is either causal determinism or probabilistic quantum processes. If this leaves you rational space to postulate a meaningful life, your expectations in this regard seem a bit low.

That is the beauty of the thing - I don't have a scientific perspective. I also question the possibility humans can conceive of anything in an even remotely objective fashion. Call me crazy in so many words if it makes you feel superior.

"That is the beauty of the thing - I don't have a scientific perspective. I also question the possibility humans can conceive of anything in an even remotely objective fashion. Call me crazy in so many words if it makes you feel superior."

COMMENT: Let's not get testy :) I am not interested in feeling superior. I am interested in helping you come to a rational set of beliefs that service a worldview that leaves room to live a meaningful life. If you are not interested in science or rationality (or a meaningful life), then I guess we have nothing to talk about. But remember, when you post comments and opinions on the Board, somebody is bound to make the mistake of thinking that you are trying to be reasonable, and perhaps want feedback, or maybe even help. My bad!

Do you really think that it is impossible for humans to conceive of *anything* in an even "remotely objective fashion?"
Such cynicism is incredibly nihilistic. I hope you are not teaching this to your children. Better to teach them Mormonism. And I know you would never allow that to happen!

Henry Bemis Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I am interested
> in helping you come to a rational set of beliefs
> that service a worldview that leaves room to live
> a meaningful life. If you are not interested in
> science or rationality (or a meaningful life),
> then I guess we have nothing to talk about.

What is a "meaningful life?" I feel like I'm being evangelized. We might very well have nothing to talk about. Rationality isn't the point of living in my opinion.

> But
> remember, when you post comments and opinions on
> the Board, somebody is bound to make the mistake
> of thinking that you are trying to be reasonable,
> and perhaps want feedback, or maybe even help. My
> bad!

True. Also, when you post comments and opinions on the Board, somebody is bound to make the mistake of thinking you are just being you.

> Do you really think that it is impossible for
> humans to conceive of *anything* in an even
> "remotely objective fashion?"

I do. I suspect it not hold it as an axiom for human existence. I believe it is improbable humans can do much more than approach objectivity in their individuality. Judging their collective is something we all try and often fail at unless it is faceless and statistical. As you know how truthful stats can be.

> Such cynicism is incredibly nihilistic. I hope
> you are not teaching this to your children.
> Better to teach them Mormonism. And I know you
> would never allow that to happen!

I beg to differ. I don't belief life is meaningless. Quite the opposite but my views in this regard probably aren't rational and I think you would definitely not think they were since rational and meaningful life are tied together with your thinking.

And I didn't teach them Mormonism. I allowed it to happen in the vacuum of my beliefs or lack their of. Words can't describe everything. And I wish they weren't taught Mormonism though I love their Mormon mother more than any other person on this planet. Lets not dissect the word love.

“Do you really think that it is impossible for humans to conceive of *anything* in an even "remotely objective fashion?"
Such cynicism is incredibly nihilistic. I hope you are not teaching this to your children. Better to teach them Mormonism. And I know you would never allow that to happen!”

How is that nihilistic? The fantasy of consensus “reality”, or objectivity, may be the entire basis of free will. In other words, the only way free will can exist is in illusion. If illusion is the very definition of free will, why shouldn’t the illusory nature of life be factored into our philosophies?

Our lives would be better viewed as living stories. They should be seen as a teaching that unfolds, blossoming like a flower. The actual truth is in the eye of the beholder, so what does it matter what that “truth” is, objective or otherwise.

I’ll go further “out there” with an observation I brought up on another thread. Infants and object permanence. Objects and permanence are both alien experiences to an infant specifically because they are illusory constructs. Mortality is a weird consensual dream state, basically an elaborate illusion ostensibly constructed to provide “free will”.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 09/22/2019 08:54PM by babyloncansuckit.

Elder Berry Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I don't think free will exists and while the
> refining of the science is interesting, free will
> in my opinion still doesn't exist.

If it doesn't exist, what forced you to make that post? Come to think of it, was leaving Mormonism your choice or just a programmed impulse?

Evita Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> If it doesn't exist, what forced you to make that
> post?

Forced me? If I don't believe in free will I also don't believe we are automatons with a superior "free willing" being pushing our buttons.

How can I postulate who is my puppet master? Can I not be a being guided by impulses, instincts, learned adaptation(s), and acquired behaviors from interactions with groups of members of my own species?

Evita Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Come to think of it, was leaving Mormonism
> your choice or just a programmed impulse?

It was instinctual. My tipping point was as a victim of childhood sexual abuse learning my prophet yeah, verily even Joseph Smith was a sexual predator. My Mormon house of cards fell apart. There was a lot of other things that had built up and one huge one being that Mormons appeared to me to be no different than any other groups of likeminded people.

Don't cry for me Evita.

"The Libet results on free will and their many descendants are crumbling now, and there is more to come. A nice case of science exposing hidden dualist assumptions in neuroscience."

COMMENT: You are very confused. As the article states, the Libet study was originally presented to suggest that our feeling that we have free will is an illusion. This Libet result was jumped on by scores of philosophers and materialist scientists as "proof" that there was no such thing as genuine free will, and that consistent with the laws of physics there was no such thing as the related concept of mental causation. It is noteworthy that Libet himself did not reach that conclusion, and it has been challenged for decades.

In any event, this new study, debunking this interpretation of Libet, is a victory for dualism not monism. Dualism has long held that the physical brain cannot account for our having genuine free will. As such, according to traditional dualism, you need some transcendent entity, like a "soul" to account for it. Apparently, we now know that the Libet study did NOT undermine that view -- if we didn't already.

Henry Bemis Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Apparently, we now know that the Libet study did
> NOT undermine that view -- if we didn't already.

Love it.

*snicker*

;) HH

I refuse to have free will.

You refused to believe in God so it goes without saying. Only appeals to outside yourself agents gives one a soul's discretion.

"the power of acting without the constraint of necessity or fate; the ability to act at one's own discretion."
https://www.google.com/search?source=hp&ei=gU-CXaH-IebE0PEP-dSx-As&q=free+will&oq=free+will

In my opinion we all have will power of acting within a framework of the constraints of necessity or fate. We all adapt to changing environments differently. We can adopt what others do thus language.

We have to have a self outside of a willful body to consider ourselves acting solely on our own discretion. Brains in vats we are not. You know better how I think than a bat.

Hanging the “we don’t have free will” argument on the Libet studies was always a farce, a bit of bullshit to convince the gullible. It was also an argument Libet himself never endorsed.

But yes, I agree: it is good to see science undercut the bullshit premise Sam Harris and the like used to pretend that science says you have no free will.

There are many things that clearly we do not have free will about such as when we are born, what genetics we are born with, being shot or accidents, actions of others, and on and on.

There are many things that we do that we have no idea if it was true free will or not, so we live as if it is free will.

I don't understand most positions on this issue as a black or white topic. We don't know at what level our choices might actually be inconsequential enough that they are free will.

dagny Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> There are many things that we do that we have no
> idea if it was true free will or not, so we live
> as if it is free will.

I wonder how many convenient fictions we live with and assist us in living?

There are many things that clearly we do not have free will about such as when we are born, what genetics we are born with, being shot or accidents, actions of others, and on and on.

COMMENT: No doubt!
___________________________________

There are many things that we do that we have no idea if it was true free will or not, so we live as if it is free will.

COMMENT: Agree. There is no certainty, of course, that genuine free will exists; i.e. that when we think we are acting freely and causing events out of our will, we actually are. But there is very compelling reason to give these feelings the benefit of the doubt: (1) Such intuitions are compelling; perhaps more so that any other intuitions that humans have; and (2) Without it any meaningfulness we attach to our lives instantly becomes an illusion.
_________________________________

I don't understand most positions on this issue as a black or white topic. We don't know at what level our choices might actually be inconsequential enough that they are free will.

COMMENT: Well, as far as I understand the literature on this issue, it is very black and white; particular from those that study the matter. Most theoretical biologists (basically, biologists who engage in philosophy) reject free will and any suggestion of mental causation because they are committed to the view that all causation must by physical. Yet, in their personal lives, they of course have to "pretend" that this is nonsense. So you see this double standard exists in biology particularly but in the other physical sciences as well.
_________________________________________

Exactly, Dagny, it's not black or white. We have some free will, but it is limited by our ability, our physical capabilities, our mental capacity, our level of experience, the laws of Nature. Within all those parameters, we can bounce around in narrow corridors, which we assume will lead us--where? Free will is what makes us each a unique individual. There are some Mormons that don't fully understand the concept of the "individual", as the religion puts us all in boxed categories. Mormons don't understand free will, or "free agency," as they used to call it. They now call it "agency." One of the many reasons I couldn't abide the Mormon cult.

I hate to say it but this statement is almost oxymoronic.

"Free will is what makes us each a unique individual."

The whole concept of free will is that there is something about us that isn't uniquely us. The judicial system is built literally on the concept of mens rea.

"Mens rea is a legal phrase used to describe the mental state a person must be in while committing a crime for it to be intentional. It can refer to a general intent to break the law or a specific, premeditated plan to commit a particular offense."

https://www.google.com/search?q=mens+rea&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi9n7XxoefkAhUWvJ4KHSGUBUwQ7xYILCgA&biw=1010&bih=508

The reason humans can come together and agree on moral concepts infers that they each individual have some homunculus of an interior agent capable of unconstrained by biology "will" that are so similar to each other as to be indistinguishable. And therefore equally punishable if their criminal circumstances are similar enough.

"As a philosophical question, whether humans have control over their own actions had been fought over for centuries before Libet walked into a lab."

The concept of "free" will in my opinion has been one of the most used justifications for subjugating human beings to the lash, the whip, and the will of others. It is a concept Mormonism has used to claim people are agents unto themselves all the while promising their people magical "blessings" for letting themselves and their money be subject to Mormon rule(s.)

In human societies of relatedness and tribalism where individuals aren't as free they consequentially aren't as easy to ignore and as such nonconformity is often brutally not tolerated.

Mormonism would like such control but they can't given an individual's agency in a pluralistic and tolerant society driven on the gas of individuality where people bask in the freedom of will to conform or not to. Thus the real freedom is the freedom of self expression within a framework that attempts to lessen the harm to others in such expression.

I believe we focus on the wrong thing. We have bad faith often in the face of freedom of choice.

"A critical claim in existentialist thought is that individuals are always free to make choices and guide their lives towards their own chosen goal or "project". This claim suggests that individuals cannot escape this freedom, even in overwhelming circumstances. For instance, even an empire's colonized victims possess choices: to submit to rule, to negotiate, to commit suicide, to resist nonviolently, or to counter-attack.
Although external circumstances may limit individuals (this limitation from the outside is called facticity), they cannot force a person to follow one of the remaining courses over another. In this sense the individual still has some freedom of choice."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_faith_(existentialism)

Thus I believe we have freedom of choice. Our brains do this every second of every day. We are the adaptive animal. We choose. The argument is how far this choice goes in the way of freedom.

"the power of acting without the constraint of necessity or fate; the ability to act at one's own discretion."
https://www.google.com/search?source=hp&ei=gU-CXaH-IebE0PEP-dSx-As&q=free+will&oq=free+will

I don't believe we can choose to act acting without the constraint of necessity or fate. We are a biological creature. We are acting in a context of a human body. We often believe we are acting freely when we don't see how what we are doing is constrained by our biological necessity in the light of what probability has brought us in the way of our fate.

Even choosing to kill oneself isn't an act of free will. In different circumstances one might not. All said in my opinion. I have no rational arguments for what I believe.

Free will is an illusion (IMHO), just like the sunset is an illusion. Both are very powerful illusions. We all know that the sun is not actually setting, yet we still refer to the sun setting, because that is exactly what it looks like, reality be damned.

A water molecule going over Niagara Falls will probably hit the bottom and continue on downstream. However, not a few of them will evaporate on the way down and come down as rain somewhere else. A very few will evaporate and get bounced up into the stratosphere by brownian motion, and get hit by the right high energy particles or rays, and leave the earth's atmosphere altogether. The odds that that will happen are quite small, but not zero.

We can predict with high precision what will happen to water going over Niagara Falls. We cannot predict what will happen to an individual molecule, except to give probabilities. That does not mean the molecules have free will.

We like, indeed depend on the illusion of free will, because it justifies our desire to reward behavior we approve of, and punish behavior we do not approve of, and that includes personal behavior. We reward and punish ourselves, not that we are particularly good at that.

The catch is that there are alternate ways to look at "reward" and "punishment", just as there are alternate explanations for "sunset" that do not require the sun going down. There are actions that are inherently dangerous to society, and a society that works to reduce such actions is more likely to survive. It doesn't have to have anything to do with "punishment", any more than your immune system "punishes" viruses.

Individual decisions are unpredictable. Individual water molecules hitting the bottom of a waterfall is also unpredictable. Even in theory, both those events are unpredictable. Heisenberg figures into water molecules evaporating, and individual neurons firing. Perfect knowledge for a perfect prediction is impossible at the atomic level. Unpredictable is not the same as indeterminate.

I don't see a need for postulating free will to explain the universe, and my part in it, any more than I see a need to postulate a god to explain the universe and my place in it. There are simpler explanations that I find adequate.

I now turn the floor over to Henry. :)

Good comments.

Is being bumped around like humans in Brownian motion free will? Not in the big picture when it comes to our existence and the fate of the universe, it isn't. We are those water molecules with only predictions to go by.

I don't understand why so many people need to link any of this to a god or our behavior, since having free will is only "apparent" until someone else's free will trumps your free will.

I also don't understand why philosophers are so enamored with this topic for the reasons you discussed. There are so many variables and with probability to consider too. There's no reliable way to predict outcomes with certainty by individual for everything that can happen and every move we make.

Like you, I don't find the concept of free will useful.

I don't understand why so many people need to link any of this to a god or our behavior, since having free will is only "apparent" until someone else's free will trumps your free will.

COMMENT: This comment shows that you are very confused about the issues. The free will debate is not essentially about constraints on actions; either the constraints of one's personal environment or circumstances; or the constraints on one's actions imposed by the will of other people. It is much more fundamental than that. It is about whether a human being can by his or her mental will (personal motivations) affect the physical world, including their own life. For example, whether someone can mentally decide to leave Mormonism, and then instantiate the physical actions that are consistent with that mental decision. That decision of itself has nothing to do with constraints; or the universe; or evolution. It is a human act of will. In short, you could have done otherwise. (Ask EB)
_________________________________________

I also don't understand why philosophers are so enamored with this topic for the reasons you discussed. There are so many variables and with probability to consider too. There's no reliable way to predict outcomes with certainty by individual for everything that can happen and every move we make.

COMMENT: The reason you don't understand philosophers, even those biologists who are schooled in philosophy, is because you have not read philosophy, studied it, or prepared yourself to consider it. This was not part of your 70's biological education, which was steeped in materialism and neo-Darwinism. My guess is that you have never read a single book on the philosophy of biology--by a philosopher or a biologist? Or a book on cognitive neuroscience, or cognitive psychology? Can you cite a single respected academic for your position that free will does not matter; and/or a reference?

The issue has nothing to do with "so many variables" or "probability" calculations; or prediction issues. It is about the relation between the mental lives of human beings and the physical world.
____________________________________

Like you, I don't find the concept of free will useful.

COMMENT: O.K. The next time you feel moral outrage at the behavior of some person, don't blame them, blame the universe. In fact, you can blame the universe for your own "feeling" of outrage. On second thought, you can't blame anyone or anything, because moral values and moral accountability are meaningless in your world; it is all just physical effects and processes; no personhood, no moral agency, no free will.

Congratulations on this wonderful post-Mormon worldview. Don't worry if it is inconsistent at best, and incoherent at worst.

And finally, don't reject the message because you don't like the messenger, or the straightforward harshness of the presentation. It will not affect me in the least.

Respectfully (Really!),
HB

I blame people for their choices where I see alternatives. They may not. The successful suicide didn't. I don't claim this is rational thinking.

The construct of a "self" maybe another convenient fiction. I like to think Julian Jayne's theory of Bicameral Mind has some merit.

It's good to know free will is so important to you, Henry.

Like with many things I learned in undergrad Philosophy, this goes nowhere and solves nothing.

C’mon Dagny. To our good luck, you’ve spent years here opining about inconsistent and/or incoherent views.

If HB is wrong, and your views here *are* consistent and coherent, show us how he is wrong.

Ii didn't say he is wrong necessarily. He has his approved acceptable reading list of people who support his positions, like we all tend to do.

There does not appear to be much point discussing because I've learned from experience the philosophy he quotes on multiple topics has not actually resolved anything. Was I supposed to prove something by picking some biological philosopher who doesn't agree with Henry or something?

I'd like to think my views are consistent and coherent but I know they are not. That is not realistic since they change over time. Philosophy is not a good vehicle for verification of facts for me like it appears to be for Henry, so I can agree with him on that point.

There does not appear to be much point discussing because I've learned from experience the philosophy he quotes on multiple topics has not actually resolved anything. Was I supposed to prove something by picking some biological philosopher who doesn't agree with Henry or something?

COMMENT: What philosophy of science does, and rather effectively, is point out the logical space of disputes, and the logical flaws of arguments and theories presented in the sciences. In that role it is extremely effective, even though it generally does not finally resolve anything.

Think of all of the issues in evolutionary biology, or evolutionary psychology, encompassing natural selection, biochemistry and genetics. Philosophical treatment of these subjects has been instrumental in shaping the parameters and scope of natural selection, and its deficiencies in the wake of Neo-Darwinism, and more recently Evolutionary Development. And I am not just talking about philosophers; biologists too. Think about the debate in biology that is still going on with respect to group selection and altruism. Philosophers and biologists have participated in this debate, and the role of group selection now has been pretty firmly established as necessary to explain altruism, when once the mainstream biological community vehemently denied it.

Finally, you do not get to the root of problems and issues in biology without philosophy. Biology is more than looking in microscopes and analyzing data on computer screens. And certainly more than accepting pet theories at face value. As I read the scientific literature I find repeatedly that scientists who distain or dismiss philosophy are the very one who also make logical mistakes in their popular writings: Even great scientists, like Freeman Dyson. On the other hand, scientists who know philosophy and respect it tend to demonstrate much clearer logic and a much better understanding of the issues. And this observation has nothing to do with whether I agree with them or not.
___________________________________________

I'd like to think my views are consistent and coherent but I know they are not. That is not realistic since they change over time. Philosophy is not a good vehicle for verification of facts for me like it appears to be for Henry, so I can agree with him on that point.

COMMENT: I try to read everything you write on the Board and have found most of your views coherent, consistent, and helpful! Your views can evolve within a framework of logical consistency. Philosophy is not supposed to verify facts; that is science's job, coupled with human experience generally. When science takes their facts and incorporates them into abstract theories, philosophy steps in to analyze and critique the logical structure and validity of those theories.

In biology one of the many great examples of this role is in a book I have already mentioned to you by a philosopher and a biologist, Elliott Sober and David Sloan Wilson. The book is *Unto Others: The Evolution and Psychology of Unselfish Behavior.* I frankly do not agree with the conclusion reached in this book, but the analysis of the issues, and the historical and substantive critique of altruism is extremely helpful--and it was influential in getting the biology community to finally accept group selection as a necessary mechanism in explaining altruism.

Finally, I will repeat that I always appreciate your comments on the Board, and hope you will continue to push back with a thick skin and an open mind.

I now turn the floor over to Henry. :)

COMMENT: Thank you, but I am still waiting for your promised debunking of my "computational brain" post; remember you had recruited your philosopher friend to help you out. What happened?
___________________________________________

Free will is an illusion (IMHO), just like the sunset is an illusion. Both are very powerful illusions. We all know that the sun is not actually setting, yet we still refer to the sun setting, because that is exactly what it looks like, reality be damned.

COMMENT: Well, when we look at the sun (indirectly I hope) we *do* see a celestial body that actually exists, right? Moreover, we now know exactly what the sun is doing when it "sets," right? So, where is the illusion in this example? The fact that human beings are capable of false inferences from their sense experiences does not mean that the commonality of all human perceptions are illusions. And what is more common among human perceptions than free will; both in ourselves and in others? So, because some things are illusions, does justify your assuming that everything is an illusion--or that the evidence debunking your pet materialist theory is an illusion!
_____________________________________________

A water molecule going over Niagara Falls will probably hit the bottom and continue on downstream. However, not a few of them will evaporate on the way down and come down as rain somewhere else. A very few will evaporate and get bounced up into the stratosphere by brownian motion, and get hit by the right high energy particles or rays, and leave the earth's atmosphere altogether. The odds that that will happen are quite small, but not zero.

We can predict with high precision what will happen to water going over Niagara Falls. We cannot predict what will happen to an individual molecule, except to give probabilities. That does not mean the molecules have free will.

COMMENT: What you just described are complex physical processes and events. Nobody has ever argued that microscopic particles must have free will because we cannot predict their behavior. Their behavior, according to science, is deterministic, whether we can predict it or not. Brownian motion is entirely deterministic, and has nothing to do with free will. Note: The fact that an electron (or any other particle) is "free" in physics means that it is not connected to an atom. It does not suggest to anyone that it has a "will" that is free.
__________________________________________________

We like, indeed depend on the illusion of free will, because it justifies our desire to reward behavior we approve of, and punish behavior we do not approve of, and that includes personal behavior. We reward and punish ourselves, not that we are particularly good at that.

COMMENT: On what basis is it legitimate to reward or punish behavior when any and all behavior is determined by causes and forces other than someone's free choice that are beyond that person's control? I makes no sense. We do it because we assume that they are responsible; i.e. that they chose to engage in such behavior.
___________________________________________________

The catch is that there are alternate ways to look at "reward" and "punishment", just as there are alternate explanations for "sunset" that do not require the sun going down. There are actions that are inherently dangerous to society, and a society that works to reduce such actions is more likely to survive. It doesn't have to have anything to do with "punishment", any more than your immune system "punishes" viruses.

COMMENT: "Punishment" by definition implies that someone did something morally or socially objectionable. Moreover, they are punished because it is believed that upon being punished the person will not choose to do that thing again. Viruses are not punished. The immune system works by biochemistry. Now, maybe humans are just biochemistry as well. I have never denied that possibility. But my point is that if we make that assumption we lose all human values, including free will. Moreover, arguably unlike viruses, human beings demonstrate by their cognitive capacities that they can do things that cannot be explained by rote physical or computational processes.
______________________________________

Individual decisions are unpredictable. Individual water molecules hitting the bottom of a waterfall is also unpredictable. Even in theory, both those events are unpredictable. Heisenberg figures into water molecules evaporating, and individual neurons firing. Perfect knowledge for a perfect prediction is impossible at the atomic level. Unpredictable is not the same as indeterminate.

COMMENT: Yes. (Except the Heisenberg sentence) That is my point! (See above)
________________________________

I don't see a need for postulating free will to explain the universe, and my part in it, any more than I see a need to postulate a god to explain the universe and my place in it. There are simpler explanations that I find adequate.

COMMENT: Why is this so hard? You don't see a need for free will to make your life meaningful? That is absurd. You think there are simpler explanations to explain human actions and human cognition, without the need for free will, while preserving meaning in life. WHAT ARE THEY. YOU TELL ME. THE WORLD IS WAITING! The vast majority of philosophers and scientists who engage this issue believe in free will, and understand its importance. They do not deny it. What they do is try to reconcile this with materialist science. That is where your focus should be.

Help me understand if what you are terming "meaningful life" is similar to "purpose in life?"

I think someone without a strong feeling of free will could have a strong feeling of purpose.

Elder Berry Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> I think someone without a strong feeling of free
> will could have a strong feeling of purpose.

But both would be equally illusionary, right?

Presumably, the person feeling the way you’ve framed it, believes their purpose is to fulfill the impulses that they haven’t a strong enough sense of will to control?

My neighbor's daughter has been classified as mentally disabled. I believe there might be a genetic component. Several of the females in their line including the daughter's mother, my neighbor have indicators of social immaturity, comprehension problems, and very simplistic opinions borrowed from others without qualifications.

The neighbor's daughter works and it appears impulsive. She surprised many in her desire to work and succeed. She often trains others at her work. She is also very artistic. I believe her art and work give her a purpose in an otherwise dreary Mormon fenced in world. I suspect that if her mother were not the person she is and worked with her daughter, full independence might have been very possible.

"...their purpose is to fulfill the impulses that they haven’t a strong enough sense of will to control..."

I believe this holds true for my neighbor's daughter. She has very little autonomy.

I think it holds true for many artists as well, who feel themselves to be a conduit of something larger than themselves. Try as they may, they cannot will themselves out of the feeling or will themselves to disobey the feeling. They must fulfill the impulse even if their lives and happiness go to wreck (or indeed wrack) and ruin.

Van Gogh was one of these, definitely.

First and foremost, a meaningful life is one where you recognize that you are a conscious person; a self; a moral agent. During your life you are faced with real alternatives to action, both morally and in general. As such, you are able to plan for the future, set goals; and choose between alternative actions that you think will best bring about such goals. And finally, you hold yourself responsible for the actions you choices you make when you could have done otherwise, and you judge other people the same way.

That is the beginning of a meaningful life; the part that is dependent upon human nature. Of course, how you use such capacities, and the choices you make within a context of worldly constraints, will determine the extent of the meaning your life actually achieves as it unfolds.

Without freedom (some degree of a lack of constraints), a meaningful life is difficult. Without free will it is impossible!

My reply to your computational brain post is still a work in progress. I had read something in the last year comparing the reactions of various people (Gödel, Russell, Cantor, etc) to Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem and it's implication for/against a computational brain. I haven't found it yet. I will post something before winter!

COMMENT: O.K. I was just wondering.
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When non-euclidean geometry was being investigated, no less a person than Immanuel Kant was firmly of the opinion that euclidean geometry was self-evidently the "correct" geometry that humans were hard-wired to understand.

That is pretty much what most of humanity believed for most of its existence. The parallel postulate was kind of ugly compared to the other geometry postulates Euclid presented. Geometers hoped they could derive that postulate from the other simpler ones, but never succeeded. The 19th century experiments in non-euclidean geometry were attempts to show that by replacing the parallel postulate with different postulates (there are no parallel lines; there are multiple parallel lines through a point and an line not on the point), you would get a system of geometry that made no sense. Much to their surprise, they got different systems of geometry, but they were internally consistent.

COMMENT: Yes. I agree with all of that, but will wait for the connection to the issue at hand.
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In the 20th century, they even turned out to be useful in describing general relativity.

COMMENT: Yes.
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Euclidean geometry was self-evidently true. That the earth was the center of the universe was self-evidently true to Galileo's inquisitors.

COMMENT: Well, I don't think that is quite right. A "self-evident" proposition is one that seems true of itself, like a tautology. Now, Euclidean geometry comes close to that, I admit. But the Galileo's inquisitors were motivated more by theology than evidence; especially after Copernicus and Kepler.
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1+1 = 2 is often cited as the most self-evidently true statement imaginable. (Sometimes 2+2 = 4 is used, but same idea). I've seen both examples repeatedly used on RFM over the years.

COMMENT: Yes. As long as we define the parts of the equation in the standard way of number theory, as encompassed by natural language.
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Let's take a look at 1+1 = 2.
If you are talking about two pebbles in a cup (calculi in Latin, which is where the terms calculate and calculus come from) 1+1 = 2 is indeed true.

COMMENT: Hold on. Be careful. 1+1=2 is a mathematical abstraction; a mathematical proposition dependent upon what is meant by the symbols involved. When you apply this to the real world you equate "1" with the identity function of some object. So, immediately the mathematical abstraction, with its abstract concept of "1" is subject to the identity of a specific object. Keep that in mind as we discuss your examples!
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What about a ram and a ewe? You can still say 1+1 = 2, with an asterisk and a note that there may be lambs.

COMMENT: No asterisk needed. The fact that one ram and one ewe equals two sheep is true. But, again, you have to be careful about your definitions, and the universe of discourse you are contemplating. Obviously, one ram and one ewe does not equal 2 sheep if the universe of discourse encompasses more than these two sheep.
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What about a hall light with a switch at each end?
Both switches down, the light is off. 0+0 = 0 (light off)
Either switch up, the light is on: 1+0 = 0+1 = 1 (light on)
Both switches up, light off: 1+1 = 0 (light off)

COMMENT: If we are still talking about counting, what are we counting? If we are counting the possible discrete positions of each light switch, the answer is two. If we are counting the possible combined positions, we get four. If we are counting the possibilities of the light being on or off we get two. (Either on or off)
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What if you are talking about combining two clouds? What does 1+1 even mean in that case? The most obvious meaning to me would be 1+1 = 1.

COMMENT: Again, it depends upon how you are defining a cloud; i.e. a cloud's identity. It may be a certain kind and number of molecules within a given space; or perhaps some perceptual criteria.
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There are actual common mathematical definitions for all the the different results for 1+1 listed above. 1+1=2 is only true in certain contexts. It is not "self-evidently" true.

COMMENT: You are confused here. Mathematical definitions operate on the symbols that it uses, and the formal definitions that number theory attaches to such symbols. That is what makes mathematics "self-evidently" true if a given proof turns out to be correct. The only context that is important is the mathematical context. When you take a mathematical theory and apply it to the world, then you have to incorporate real world definitions into your physical theory, for example definitions for identity, as noted above. But, the mathematics stays the same. Thus, a scientist that wants to understand how an electron behaves in a wire, she must first come to grips with the properties and identity of electrons. Then she can apply the appropriate mathematics. But mathematics is NOT a slave to the material world, far from it.
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My point in all this is that a great many things that are self-evidently true turn out to either not be true at all, or only true under certain conditions, and either not true, or possibly even completely meaningless in other conditions.

COMMENT: If you are talking about human perceptions of evidence, human experience, and human inferences, then there are some things that seem "self-evidently" true psychologically given our knowledge and understanding at one point in time, that may turn out not to be true. But that is just a rather trivial observation.
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You consider that free will is self-evidently true. It was self-evidently true to a lot of people that the earth is stationary. In fact, even today, a surveyor can lay out the lot lines in a town subdivision and do a perfectly adequate job while assuming that the earth does not move. For that matter, the surveyor doesn't even need to assume the earth is round(ish). For a local job, a flat, stationary earth assumption is fine.

COMMENT: Here is what I would say to all this. First, consciousness is beyond doubt the epidemy of something being "self-evidently" true. We all know, beyond doubt that we are conscious; it is self-evident. With that observation, we all also have a very compelling intuition that our thoughts, desires, motivations and actions represent or contribute to our will, through which we are able to manipulate the physical world; i.e. our decisions and choices matter. In addition, it is a simple matter of logic to notice that but for our free will, our thoughts, desires, motivations and actions would be totally determined by physical events and thus be beyond our conscious control; and thereby undermine the meaningfulness of our lives. Now, given all that, YOU have the burden of explaining how and why all of this should be doubted in the name of science. The fact that humans can be deceived gets you nowhere. We also get a lot of stuff right, and frankly I see little evidence that we are being deceived when we believe we have free will.
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You're saying that it is self-evident that free will exists.
I'm saying that there are alternate ways to describe individual and group actions without having to appeal to free will, and that those alternatives eliminate some of the awkward paradoxes that arise with free will.

COMMENT: What could possibly more awkward than NOT having free will? Also, give me the paradoxes you are concerned about, and I will turn your argument on its head. WHY NOT ASSUME THAT IT IS SCIENTISTS WHO ARE BEING DECEIVED BY THEIR MATERIALIST ASSUMPTIONS, JUST AS QUANTUM PHYSICS DEMONSTRATED WITH NON-LOCALITY AND ENTANGLEMENT. MAYBE THE WORLD IS MORE COMPLEX THAN SCIENTISTS THINK IT IS! MAYBE THERE IS SUCH A THING AS MIND, MENTAL CAUSATION, SELVES, AND FREE WILL, EVEN IF IT DOES NOT FIT NEATLY INTO THE CURRENT SCIENTIFIC PARADIGM.

As a matter of fact, we already know the world is more complex than scientists think it is because we already know that consciousness is self-evident, and ironically that science is itself dependent upon it. Science has no clue how to explain consciousness, Zero; the very thing that science depends upon to construct theories, engage in debate, and do experiments. So, should we be surprised that they have no clue as to how to explain free will?

My reply to your computational brain post is still a work in progress. I had read something in the last year comparing the reactions of various people (Gödel, Russell, Cantor, etc) to Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem and it's implication for/against a computational brain. I haven't found it yet. I will post something before winter!

As for the rest of your comments, I don't have time for a detailed response right now (will shoot for this afternoon), but here is one thought. When non-euclidean geometry was being investigated, no less a person than Immanuel Kant was firmly of the opinion that euclidean geometry was self-evidently the "correct" geometry that humans were hard-wired to understand.

That is pretty much what most of humanity believed for most of its existence. The parallel postulate was kind of ugly compared to the other geometry postulates Euclid presented. Geometers hoped they could derive that postulate from the other simpler ones, but never succeeded. The 19th century experiments in non-euclidean geometry were attempts to show that by replacing the parallel postulate with different postulates (there are no parallel lines; there are multiple parallel lines through a point and an line not on the point), you would get a system of geometry that made no sense. Much to their surprise, they got different systems of geometry, but they were internally consistent.

In the 20th century, they even turned out to be useful in describing general relativity.

Euclidean geometry was self-evidently true. That the earth was the center of the universe was self-evidently true to Galileo's inquisitors.

1+1 = 2 is often cited as the most self-evidently true statement imaginable. (Sometimes 2+2 = 4 is used, but same idea). I've seen both examples repeatedly used on RFM over the years.

Let's take a look at 1+1 = 2.
If you are talking about two pebbles in a cup (calculi in Latin, which is where the terms calculate and calculus come from) 1+1 = 2 is indeed true.

What about a ram and a ewe? You can still say 1+1 = 2, with an asterisk and a note that there may be lambs.

What about a hall light with a switch at each end?
Both switches down, the light is off. 0+0 = 0 (light off)
Either switch up, the light is on: 1+0 = 0+1 = 1 (light on)
Both switches up, light off: 1+1 = 0 (light off)

What if you are talking about combining two clouds? What does 1+1 even mean in that case? The most obvious meaning to me would be 1+1 = 1.

There are actual common mathematical definitions for all the the different results for 1+1 listed above. 1+1=2 is only true in certain contexts. It is not "self-evidently" true

My point in all this is that a great many things that are self-evidently true turn out to either not be true at all, or only true under certain conditions, and either not true, or possibly even completely meaningless in other conditions.

You consider that free will is self-evidently true. It was self-evidently true to a lot of people that the earth is stationary. In fact, even today, a surveyor can lay out the lot lines in a town subdivision and do a perfectly adequate job while assuming that the earth does not move. For that matter, the surveyor doesn't even need to assume the earth is round(ish). For a local job, a flat, stationary earth assumption is fine.

You're saying that it is self-evident that free will exists.
I'm saying that there are alternate ways to describe individual and group actions without having to appeal to free will, and that those alternatives eliminate some of the awkward paradoxes that arise with free will.

More later. I'm late for an appointment

Somehow, my response was misplaced. See above.

Sorry to take so long in getting back to this. Been a busy weekend. I'll start at base response indent in the thread since my and Henry's comments got transposed. As I read back through the thread, Elder Berry and dagny and I are pretty much in agreement, and I don't know that there is all that much more to be said.

Not that that has ever stopped anyone here. :)

Above I gave examples of 1+1 equal to 2, 1, or 0, depending on how you define "+", and gave real world examples of where each definition makes sense. 1+1 = 2 is often given as the pinnacle of obvious truth, to which everything else should be compared, when it is not absolute truth at all, but one of a number of equally useful alternative definitions.

In fact, 1+1 = 1 and 1+1 = 0 are such useful definitions, that they have their own names and I dare say that every electronic computer CPU has implemented all three versions of "+".

1+1 = 1 is called "OR", or logical addition. The symbol often used for it is "+", just like regular addition. It got the name OR because when operating on a single bit, it matches the or operation in logic. However, it is used for a great many other purposes (bit manipulation techniques on long strings of bits)

1+1 = 0 is what is called Exclusive Or (XOR). A two-switch hallway light is a simple physical implementation of an XOR. It also uses the "+" symbol, with a small circle drawn around the +, a mnemonic to remind the user that 1+1 = 0, not 1.

A third operator that I did not give an example of is known as logical multiplication, or AND. Again, the word "logical" gets put in one of its names because it behaves like the word "and" both in English and boolean logic. However, it is more commonly used for manipulation of long strings of bits in a computer, so often it is only coincidentally related to boolean logic.

My point: 1+1 = 2 is not immutable truth, but it is an extremely handy relationship for a lot of purposes. The other definitions are also extremely handy for their own purposes, and equally "true" in their own domain.

BTW, Henry objected to my examples somewhat because the other definitions were not "counting". Yes and no. They were not counting in the sense most people think of, but they were clearly manipulating symbols. It is possible, in fact to implement a standard add operation in a computer using only AND, OR and XOR. It is ugly and complicated, but possible. They are all closely related.

Also, some numbers cannot be operated on mathematically even though they are plain vanilla numbers. You can certainly add two phone numbers together. Mathematically, perfectly well defined. Practically, it makes no sense whatsoever. Not all numbers are compatible with arithmetic. Not all math requires numbers. When I took group theory, the professor joked that the only numbers in the book were the page numbers. He was not far wrong.

So what does this have to do with Henry's defense of free will? Not much, I just like doing math tutorials! I guess if there is a point, it is be careful about claims of absolute truth and absolute necessity.

Plane geometry, elliptic geometry, and hyperbolic geometry are perhaps a better know example of the same thing. Plane geometry was obviously the true geometry, until mathematicians got serious about trying to prove that the other geometries were nonsense, and discovered, much to their surprise, that the other geometries, in the right circumstances, worked perfectly well, and plane geometry was the one that didn't work in those circumstances. Again, be careful about supposedly self-evident truths.

OK, enough with math.

I gave the example of Galileo's inquisitors feeling that the earth being the center of the universe was a self-evident truth. Henry stated that their belief was theological, not based on evidence.

They had some evidence. It is easy to predict the motions of the sun and moon, assuming the earth is at the center of the rotation. For the moon, the earth is effectively the center of rotation, so no problem. For the sun, the basic math (oops, sorry, math again) of either rotating around the other is the same, so again, no problem, as long as you are not trying to explain the laws of gravity.

However, for the planets, assuming the earth is the center is a real mess. Mathematically, it can be made to work, but you get really ugly equations, planets in "retrograde", all manner of complications. But astrologers and astronomers actually figured out a passable approximation to that truly ugly math.

So, Galileo's opponents did have some evidence on their side. But their argument was indeed mostly theological. God created the earth so that He could create humans, and if we obeyed God, we got to return to heaven. Demoting the earth to just another planet going around the sun was demoting God's creation. Blasphemy, sacrilege, and an attack on civil order and morality!!

Closer to home, most of us who have left Mormonism had one or more (usually many more) people who basically acted like there was now nothing keeping us from raping, murdering, stealing, doing drugs, and we were surely on our way to shuffling down street gutters in soiled clothes begging for spare change.

Atheists get that same general reaction from believers. I was going to say Christian believers, but I don't know that the flavor of the religion even matters. Believers feel atheists are a threat to decency and morality. Atheists, meanwhile, look at the believers and think "oh, please...."

I bring this up because I get the feeling that the defenders of free will are deeply invested in the rightness and absolute necessity of free will. Without it, civilization would be impossible, etc, etc.They think people who don't accept the existence of free will are not just wrong, but dangerous. Much like TBMs treat exMos.

My POV is that yes, we are fundamentally unpredictable individually, though probability type predictions can be made, and the larger the group of people, the better our predictions can be. But, it is possible to describe what happens with individuals and with groups, without having to resort to free will. That POV may be wrong, and may turn out to be a possible POV, but not very useful, or it may turn out to be the best way to describe behavior. I don't know. It is a work in progress. I'm pretty sure that, like atheism, it is not dangerous. The non-free-willers will not be shuffling down the gutter begging for spare change.


And if this doesn't make much sense to Henry, it didn't make all that much sense to me. Too big a topic, and I find my mind going off in 20 directions at once. And of course I have no hope of convincing Henry of my obvious correctness. He lacks the free will needed to see my POV. :)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/22/2019 08:24PM by Brother Of Jerry.

It makes sense to me.

IMO it is not an awkward problem if we should find we don't have free will because we don't know the outcome from our vantage point (and probability, etc.). It is not a dangerous concept that will take away meaning. It seems like a relic from religious thinking to me, no matter how it is defined in philosophy.

Obviously I have no free will or I would disagree with you. :-)

It seems like a relic from religious thinking to me, no matter how it is defined in philosophy.

COMMENT: You nailed it. You associate free will with religion (God only knows how!) so you just have to reject it, come hell or high water. Try associating free will with HUMANISM! That pill may be easier to swallow.

That's not really the way I view it, Henry. As a humanist, I don't find it impacts anything I do.

Henry replied to BoJ:
>>Now, in contrast, my arguments were perfectly logical, consistent, and straightforward; and were not effectively challenged or debunked by you or anyone else. So, arguably, it is *you* that should be convinced! Unless, damnit, it is just not what you want to believe, so you resist logic in favor of your own prejudices.


There is no evidence whatsoever either way, no matter how many words you quote from philosophers. That might be compelling to you, but as they say, all hat, no cattle.

BoJ knows a thing or two about logic. His math example demonstrates that perhaps your arguments aren't as straightforward as you claim. You have a preconceived conclusion that needs free will, yet you accuse us as having a psychological problem.

It is not an issue of inconsistency, IMO. There appears to be inconsistency in what might be true choices and what is beyond our control. I know you insist I use the term according to your chosen philosophers and I am not possibly educated enough to have an opinion in your view, but when it comes to believing what you want to believe, at least I'm waiting for actual evidence.

There is no evidence whatsoever either way, no matter how many words you quote from philosophers. That might be compelling to you, but as they say, all hat, no cattle.

COMMENT: WRONG! There is evidence on both sides of this debate. Like anything else, you have to read the literature in order to understand the issue. You have repeatedly shown that you have not, which is why you cannot articulate the scientific materialist point of view that you subscribe to, let alone understand my rebuttal.
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BoJ knows a thing or two about logic. His math example demonstrates that perhaps your arguments aren't as straightforward as you claim. You have a preconceived conclusion that needs free will, yet you accuse us as having a psychological problem.

COMMENT: This is BoJ's final comment after all of his "arguments," none of which were on point: "And if this doesn't make much sense to Henry, it didn't make all that much sense to me. Too big a topic, and I find my mind going off in 20 directions at once." So, apparently you found some treasure in his "logic" that he did not find himself! Yet, you cannot tell me what it was. I can only assume you have a "psychological" motivation if you cannot articulate a point of view, other than your distain for religion. That is precisely the standard you yourself would hold if you were criticizing Intelligent Design from the standpoint of evolution, say, and all you got were religious objections or platitudes.
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It is not an issue of inconsistency, IMO. There appears to be inconsistency in what might be true choices and what is beyond our control. I know you insist I use the term according to your chosen philosophers and I am not possibly educated enough to have an opinion in your view, but when it comes to believing what you want to believe, at least I'm waiting for actual evidence.

COMMENT: It is not a matter of appearances, it is a matter of logic. Either you have free will or you don't. If it is not an issue of your being inconsistent, then tell me how it *is* consistent to have humanistic values while denying free will. At least tell me what evidence you are waiting for? Scientific evidence? Much such evidence is already here. So, let's discuss it. Let's talk about the evidence for and against mental causation. Do I have to raise your arguments for you?

Yes, for you it seems to be all about religion, because you have not shown anything else. And it is so ridiculous because this debate has nothing to do with religion!

So what does this have to do with Henry's defense of free will? Not much, I just like doing math tutorials! I guess if there is a point, it is be careful about claims of absolute truth and absolute necessity.

COMMENT: So, all of that mathematical stuff had no point to the discussion of free will? O.K. Then, I won't comment on it. If you want to talk about mathematics, start another thread. For now, let's cut to the free will chase!
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Closer to home, most of us who have left Mormonism had one or more (usually many more) people who basically acted like there was now nothing keeping us from raping, murdering, stealing, doing drugs, and we were surely on our way to shuffling down street gutters in soiled clothes begging for spare change.

Atheists get that same general reaction from believers. I was going to say Christian believers, but I don't know that the flavor of the religion even matters. Believers feel atheists are a threat to decency and morality. Atheists, meanwhile, look at the believers and think "oh, please...."

COMMENT: The atheist-believers issue has nothing to do with the free will debate, since both necessarily believe in free will absent the interjection of science and philosophy to undermine it. But simply, atheist believe they freely to chose to disbelieve in God based upon the evidence; and believers believe they freely choose to believe in God, for whatever reason.
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I bring this up because I get the feeling that the defenders of free will are deeply invested in the rightness and absolute necessity of free will. Without it, civilization would be impossible, etc, etc.They think people who don't accept the existence of free will are not just wrong, but dangerous. Much like TBMs treat exMos.

COMMENT: Free will is necessary for a meaningful *individual* life, but societies could exist even if all human action was determined. So, the point is not about society. People who don't accept free will are not dangerous; after all they continue to live their lives *as if* they believed in free will. The problem for me is that they are inconsistent; i.e. believing one thing and acting as if what they believe is false. And then, in the face of such inconsistency and hypocrisy, they criticize the religious for "magical thinking." Funny!
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My POV is that yes, we are fundamentally unpredictable individually, though probability type predictions can be made, and the larger the group of people, the better our predictions can be. But, it is possible to describe what happens with individuals and with groups, without having to resort to free will. That POV may be wrong, and may turn out to be a possible POV, but not very useful, or it may turn out to be the best way to describe behavior. I don't know. It is a work in progress. I'm pretty sure that, like atheism, it is not dangerous. The non-free-willers will not be shuffling down the gutter begging for spare change.

COMMENT: The fact that to some extent science can predict human behavior in statistical terms does NOT undermine the free will of the individual, because humans have similar interests and needs on a basic level. However, predict what any given human will do in a particular complicated situation, good luck--particularly if ethical judgments are involved.
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And if this doesn't make much sense to Henry, it didn't make all that much sense to me. Too big a topic, and I find my mind going off in 20 directions at once. And of course I have no hope of convincing Henry of my obvious correctness. He lacks the free will needed to see my POV. :)

COMMENT: If it didn't make sense to you, how is it supposed to convince me of anything? Now, in contrast, my arguments were perfectly logical, consistent, and straightforward; and were not effectively challenged or debunked by you or anyone else. So, arguably, it is *you* that should be convinced! Unless, damnit, it is just not what you want to believe, so you resist logic in favor of your own prejudices.

But why resist? Why is it that someone like you (or Dagny) does not want to believe in free will in the face of compelling arguments, intuitions and evidence? Is there a psychological problem believing that your actions are freely chosen? :)

"So, all of that mathematical stuff had no point to the discussion of free will? O.K. Then, I won't comment on it. If you want to talk about mathematics, start another thread. For now, let's cut to the free will chase!"

I didn't say no point. I said not much. As for starting another thread, I liked my post where it was.


"COMMENT: If it didn't make sense to you, how is it supposed to convince me of anything?"

You're assuming I was trying to convince you of anything. I'm hoping some other people will be intrigued enough to look into the issues. You seem quite satisfied with your conclusions. There is no chance I am going to change them. I think Max Plank got it right when he said “a new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”

You, I suppose, think the same of my opinion. We will surely both die. Perhaps one of us will turn out to be right, but even that is hardly a sure thing.

Not a few scientists and others find free will problematic. I don't see that going away any time soon. If dagny or Elder Berry or I find anything that changes our minds, I'm sure we will let people here know.

Let's step back a minute.

Generally speaking the RfM Board exists because thousands of people who at one time were committed Mormons found their way out of this stifling cult. As Mormons they were subject to intense indoctrination and social and family pressure all designed to solidify their Mormon worldview and all it stood for. Somehow they managed to come to question such beliefs, apply logic and reasoning, and think their way out of this intensely domineering Mormon mindset. When you think about it, that in itself is a remarkable testament to the human capacity to think freely and to change course by acts of will against powerful forces of resistance.

When leaving Mormonism, we all found ourselves in a situation where our worldview was shattered. We were left to pick up the pieces and try to determine a rational alterative worldview from the one we left behind. More thought and effort was needed. Some of us engaged philosophy and science. Some retained some sort of religious orientation. Some became atheists. Whatever happened, the process was rational and thoughtful. We didn't just "fall into" an alternative worldview, as if somehow the universe "dictated" that first we would be Mormons; then dictated that we would be exMormons, and finally dictated what we would become thereafter. EACH OF US, AS CONSCIOUS, AUTONOMOUS AGENTS WITH FREE WILL, HAD SOMETHING TO DO WITH IT.

So, now we find people who have forgotten all of this and have allowed materialist scientism to pervade their thinking. Instead of humanistic "free-thinking" they have embraced determinism, a doctrine that by definition undermines human choices and values. Oh, and when someone points out the inconsistency of such a view, they blame "Philosophy" a subject they know nothing about.

Such is an over-reaction. It is a fear that somehow a religious "soul" might find its way back into one's worldview. So, rather than allow that to happen, they embrace the most extreme scientism one can imagine; i.e that there is no free will after all; that we only "think" we have free will; and that free will is an illusion. All this presumably to keep religion at bay!

And, when I point out in no uncertain terms, with logic and rational argument, how nihilistic such a view is, they dismiss it without argument, in much the same way Mormon's dismiss the rational arguments that challenge their favored worldview. And they don't notice what's happening. They think they are being rational; just like our Mormon friends. But, like them, they have NO arguments.

So, go ahead and dismiss free will, human agency, and human values, in favor of scientific determinism. But in my view there is no doctrine in Mormonism that is nearly as irrational and ridiculous as such a position; a position which you cannot possibly follow in your ordinary day-to-day life.

It appears that you have come full circle. But please, do not utter the words "lack critical thinking" as a derogatory assessment of Mormons, or people of religious faith, ever again. You have lost all credibility to do that. IMHO

"And, when I point out in no uncertain terms, with logic and rational argument, how nihilistic such a view is, they dismiss it without argument, in much the same way Mormon's dismiss the rational arguments that challenge their favored worldview. And they don't notice what's happening. They think they are being rational; just like our Mormon friends. But, like them, they have NO arguments."

I don't think you got my memo. I didn't say that I thought I was being rational.

"They think they are being rational"

You are clumping me into "everyone" who disagrees with you. You've lost credibility with me.