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Author Topic:   The horror! The horror!
Sylas
Member (Idle past 5260 days)
Posts: 766
From: Newcastle, Australia
Joined: 11-17-2002


Message 6 of 84 (177310)
01-15-2005 5:57 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by robinrohan
01-15-2005 1:14 AM


robinrohan writes:
What I want to address is the following: I'm talking to all these very knowledgable people and they are blythely telling me that my mind is physical, and that my morality is subjective, and that I have no free will, and I am wondering if tney understand the philosophical implications of what they are saying.
Not sure if you are talking to me or not. I'm very knowledgeable... check. I think the mind is physical... check. (The word I use is "emergent".) I think morality is subjective... check. (I put it thus; morality is a human concern, but it is not wholly subjective in the sense of being chosen randomly. What works morally is constrained by our human nature. Some things lead to cohesion and good will and well being; others don't. The choice to value cohesion and good will and well being is a human choice; but we do have a natural propensity to value others, which is emergent from out physical biology.)
But I do think we have free will. This depends on what you mean by the term. My position seems to be close to Compatibilist philosophy. The link goes to an introduction from the Stanford Dictionary of Philosophy.
In any case, the answer to your question is roughly "yes". I have a reasonable notion of the philosophical implications of what I am saying.
robinrohan writes:
They don't seem to understand that what they are saying is that we are mindless robots, living meaningless lives. I hope they understand that, and I hope they understand that they cannot with any consistency be insisting on moral imperatives of any sort.
Not a good start. You are setting as a premise of discussion that you are correct, and reflecting on why others fail to recognize your insights. It's a burden you'll have to live with, unless you make a far better attempt to deal with views you do not share.
No, I am not saying we are mindless robots. Saying that the mind is physical is not the same as saying there is no mind. Your connection with "meaning" is unclear.
One can make objective observations relating to morality, but one cannot make a comprehensive objective account of all moral principles.
I do not want to hear about your relative moralities, because, logically, they do not work. Anybody who looks at the question honestly will realize that. I do not want to hear that somehow our lives are meaningful if we are nothing but physical processes.
Therefore, we should all be nihilists--like me.
OK, you don't want to hear it. Then why are you posting in a discussion board?
For the record "Therefore" would read better if it followed from some kind of actual argument; not a mishmash of blanket assertions and explicit refusal to even listen to any alternatives.
Cheers -- Sylas

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1 by robinrohan, posted 01-15-2005 1:14 AM robinrohan has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 9 by RAZD, posted 01-15-2005 6:49 PM Sylas has replied
 Message 33 by robinrohan, posted 01-17-2005 3:32 PM Sylas has not replied

  
Sylas
Member (Idle past 5260 days)
Posts: 766
From: Newcastle, Australia
Joined: 11-17-2002


Message 10 of 84 (177324)
01-15-2005 7:23 PM
Reply to: Message 9 by RAZD
01-15-2005 6:49 PM


Re: free willy
RAZD writes:
Usually it [free will] is given as a strict alternative to determinism (as you seem to suggest) ...
No; I am a form of compatibilist. I say that free will and determinism are compatible. In fact, free will (as I understand the term) requires some degree of determinism, for choices to be determined by your own wills and desires.
I am also a materialist; I consider that my wills and desires exist as emergent phenomena from my physical makeup; but they are mine nevertheless. The physical laws of natural things are what enables life and will to exist. They are the means by which I have a will and by which my will relates to my actions and choices.
Cheers -- Sylas

This message is a reply to:
 Message 9 by RAZD, posted 01-15-2005 6:49 PM RAZD has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 13 by RAZD, posted 01-15-2005 7:42 PM Sylas has replied

  
Sylas
Member (Idle past 5260 days)
Posts: 766
From: Newcastle, Australia
Joined: 11-17-2002


Message 14 of 84 (177345)
01-15-2005 8:52 PM
Reply to: Message 13 by RAZD
01-15-2005 7:42 PM


Re: free woolly
RAZD writes:
There are elements that are determinisitic in the universe, and there are elements that are chaotic, where the result is unknowable until it happens.
Although the universe is not deterministic, as far as we can tell, this is not connected with chaos. Deterministic behaviour can give rise to chaos and unpredictabilty just fine. Chaos is to do with such things as sensitivity to intial conditions. You can't know the result of a chaotic process in advance simply because you would need to know the initial conditions to infinite accuracy. That would hold even in a fully deterministic physics.
My position is that predictability and freedom are orthogonal concepts.
My thought experiment on this. Imagine three persons in a shopping mall, who see an item they desire but cannot afford. They have an opportunity to lift the item without detection.
  • One person is completely amoral. I know they want it, and I know they will take it.
  • One person is highly principled. I know that they are trustworthy, disciplined and reliable. I know they will not take it.
  • One person is superficially principled, but unstable; subject to whims and fancies. What they do might depend on whether they had a fight with their boyfriend, or whether they are depressed about the weather, or whether they got their medication this morning. I have no idea what they will do.
The third person has the least freedom, by the way I think of freedom. They are blown about by circumstance and easily manipulated. They probably regret their actions in many cases.
The two people I predict are free, but I know them well enough to be confident of what their free and unconstrained choice will be; even without being particularly omniscient. My knowledge does not constrain them; their actions are effectively constrained only by their own choices; this is freedom.
Concerns that I cannot know for sure miss the point; freedom is not about how predictable you are. The least predictable, in this scenario, is the least free. The freedom of the others contributes to their predictability.
Cheers -- Sylas

This message is a reply to:
 Message 13 by RAZD, posted 01-15-2005 7:42 PM RAZD has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 17 by RAZD, posted 01-16-2005 9:12 AM Sylas has replied

  
Sylas
Member (Idle past 5260 days)
Posts: 766
From: Newcastle, Australia
Joined: 11-17-2002


Message 18 of 84 (177574)
01-16-2005 2:31 PM
Reply to: Message 17 by RAZD
01-16-2005 9:12 AM


Re: free woolly
RAZD writes:
That pretty much says a relationship between free-will and determinism exclusive of other factors.
No, it actually means about the opposite. "Orthogonal" means no correlation, and it says nothing whatsoever about other factors. In the remarks of mine that you quoted I am saying only that whether an act is free or not has nothing much to do with whether it is predictable or not.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 17 by RAZD, posted 01-16-2005 9:12 AM RAZD has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 19 by RAZD, posted 01-16-2005 3:27 PM Sylas has replied

  
Sylas
Member (Idle past 5260 days)
Posts: 766
From: Newcastle, Australia
Joined: 11-17-2002


Message 25 of 84 (177743)
01-17-2005 4:56 AM
Reply to: Message 19 by RAZD
01-16-2005 3:27 PM


Re: free woolly
RAZD writes:
to me orthogonal is perpendicular and when you arrange one to be orthogonal to the other you are creating a grid system to map all the relationships while only considering their "free-will-ness" and their "deterministic-ness" and no other factors.
By "orthogonal" in this context, I mean that there is no particular relationship between predictability and freedom (by my understandings of those terms). And that is all I mean.
As for the maths, there is never ever any implication that other factors or co-ordinates are unimportant. You can have a multidimensional co-ordinate system, with as many axes as you like. To say two of them are orthogonal is to say that two of them are perpendicular to each other; but it does not ever say that those are the only axes needed.
Also, note that my remark was with reference to predictability, not determinism.
I have noted that determinism is not sufficient for predictability, due to the potential for chaos in deterministic systems. I have also argued that that some level of determinism is required for freedom.
Cheers -- Sylas
This message has been edited by Sylas, 01-17-2005 04:59 AM

This message is a reply to:
 Message 19 by RAZD, posted 01-16-2005 3:27 PM RAZD has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 27 by RAZD, posted 01-17-2005 8:06 AM Sylas has not replied
 Message 28 by Dr Jack, posted 01-17-2005 8:18 AM Sylas has not replied

  
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