Bigmouthing @ frdb; gb

The theological notion of free will is used in two ways, I think, one in a good way, and the other in a bad way. The good way it's used is: it imputes free agency to people, it imputes an understanding of morality and a moral responsibility for our actions. In other words, God does not foreordain the actions of people; how people choose to act is up to them. This absolves God from ultimate responsibility for human behavior. However, this set-up is complicated by the notion of Original Sin.

For if we are free in our actions then we are free in our actions, but if Original Sin is true than this "stacks the deck" against us as moral agents. We do not inherit this sin nature by virtue of choice, and yet we are to be held accountable for our actions, which are heavily influenced by this innate tendency for behaving badly. A rational person must see the problem with this.

How can a person be punished for his actions if his actions were influenced from the start by an innate predilection for naughty behavior? It is obviously not just. After all, God does not have this innate tendency for naughty behavior, so it is no wonder he is never inclined to do something naughty. So why would a perfect being such as God judge a far lesser being harshly because said being acted in accordance with this sinning nature, the presence of which is clearly not the lesser being's fault? It does not wash.

So the good way in which this term free will is used in a theological context is that it grants free agency and moral responsibility to humans; the bad way it is used in the same context is that it removes culpability from God, which cannot be rational in light of Original Sin, which was brought about by some magical trees God made and a naughty snake God also made. God cannot be judged innocent of the flourishing of human sin, no way, no how (unless we do away with the concept of Original Sin, but even if we do that, we still have problems).

An interesting side-note to this is: God knows this, and his knowledge of this is the reason for Christ's torture and death. Hence, all we need to do is recognize that God apologized for his error by enduring punishment and cruel torture, and he did this through Christ's (His own) atonement on the cross. If we can believe this and believe on Christ we can be saved. Why we can't be saved and on good terms with God without all this razzle-dazzle (to borrow a phrase from kennethamy) and the need for faith, is the real and ultimate theological question.

*

Now, the reason I argue that the denial of free will is dangerous in a secular context (the real world), is because:

Vast groups of people can be controlled only if they allow themselves to be controlled, or if they are controlled by brute force.

Absent brute force, a really useful (and oftentimes awful) philosophical and political ideology must be introduced if one intends to control the masses. History is full of such attempts. Religion is the biggest and most successful non-brute-forceful means of keeping people in order. This isn't to say that certain agents of religion haven't resorted to brute force, of course they have, lots of times; but over-all religious doctrines are devised as a means of encouraging good behavior and discouraging naughtiness without the cudgel; or at least as much as possible without it.

It worked before and it's still working for a good number of people. Note the posters in certain threads who admit that without God's command and God's morality they would do any number of nasty things. We must take such people at their word, if you ask me.

Another ideology (or ideologies) is Statism, or collectivism, or socialism. And in the case of WW2 Japan, extreme militarism. None of these methods of socialization could possibly be set in motion without the consent of the people being governed (and this is not to say that the stick is never used: it is, as is the mere threat of the stick, but it can be easily seen that a bad idea is just as dangerous and has equal if not greater motivating force than a stick or a gun). The best way to get this consent is to convince them that individuality, selfhood, ego, and all those other good things, are actually bad things (or falsehoods).

Convince people today that the really smart folks have figured out that consciousness and selfhood aren't real, that what we think is going on in our own minds is a fiction, an illusion; that we are nothing more than biological, organic machines (some of us "arrogantly-programmed to boot), and you are well on your way to installing your tyrant of choice. It can happen as long as people choose to let the three wise old bald men sitting at the top of the Ivory Tower in Academia decide what is true and what is not.

Every living human being has a right to philosophy, to big ideas, to reasoning and thinking. I'll close with something Frank Zappa said:

"If you want to get laid, go to college. If you want an education, go to a library."

BB post; GB; FRDB 9/2011

There is no evidence of an actual, concrete God or gods, just personal intuitions, speculations, feelings, a strong desire for ultimate meaning and purpose; plus, the God-meme is deeply embedded in human culture and tradition, in fact it may even be in our DNA to a certain degree, although I wouldn't bet money on it. Just a thought. But because there is no evidence for it doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. God may exist, in a way which no human mind can comprehend. Spinoza wrote that the nature of God surpasses human understanding. It requires genuine humility to consider this proposition, and I enjoy considering it. Considering it doesn't mean I believe it. God may or may not exist, and I will probably never arrive at any certitude about it, in either direction, pro or con.

But, there is evidence of a self, of the ego, of autonomous agency. Generally speaking, we know who we are, what our name is, when and where we were born, and all of our memories pertain to things we have experienced in the first-person, and this first-person narrative is almost always linear and coherent; and, amazingly enough, our knowledge of ourselves and the facts of our history almost always coincide with what others know about us, and with what is recorded as hard data.

The self, the ego, the "I", are not substantive, or material in any way: they are items of subjective experience: qualitative, abstract, but nonetheless, they are real, in the same respect that language, forms of music, the concept of currency, are real, despite the fact that they are human inventions and do not exist as tangible things in reality.To posit the idea that there is no self, there is no "I", is perfectly fine, as long as you clarify what you mean by that, and as long as you really understand what it means. It does not mean that there is no positive sense of personal and distinct identity in a human being, and it does not mean that people do not consciously and with deliberate intent go about the living of their lives.

Telling someone there is no god may or may not be true. Telling someone there is no "self" and there is no "I", may be true, but only if those terms refer to material entities posited as existing independently of the physical body. If they refer merely to qualitative, subjective aspects of human experience, then telling someone the "self" and the "I" do not exist would be patently false. Ergo, if you tell someone that they have no self, and that the "I" they use in speech refers to nothing but a phantom, an illusion, then you should fully expect that person to take offense, unless you are willing to clarify exactly what you mean when you say such a thing.

If a person takes issue with something you tell them, bear in mind that it may not be because their fragile egos have been hurt, or because they are narrow-minded, stupid, afraid, uneducated, intolerant, or any of those things; they may be taking issue with you for the simple reason that you have said something which does not make sense to them, either because they do not understand it, or it is out of context, or it is phrased improperly, or because it is simply false.

Opposition to your philosophical, moral, ethical, political, even personal issues, may be just as intellectual as they are emotional. One of the hardest things to do in this kind of public discourse is to distinguish between a reasoned argument and an emotional argument, and to recognize that an argument can be (and usually is, for most of us) both emotional and reasoned. If there were an exhaustive, objective study made on the topic of bulletin board discussions, I would bet a week's pay that most people try their hardest to keep their emotional feelings at heel while participating in them. Of course there are trolls and crazy people all over, but I have faith in my species and I do believe that most of us are doing our best.

A good quote, in remembrance of Servetus

To kill a man is not to protect a doctrine, but it is to kill a man.

—Sebastian Castellio, Contra libellum, # 77, Vaticanus

From a letter to Olivia, 9 March 2011, re: Spinoza

...I know about those melancholy states. As it happens, Spinoza has much to say about such states, and I found myself agreeing with just about everything he wrote on the subject. His system of thought was as much about mental health and happiness as it is about God and the nature of the universe, in fact he is considered by many to be one of the first in that particular area of life-management, mental health, and self-help. If you can, look online, or in the library or bookstore, for two short early works by Spinoza called, Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect, and Short Treatise on God, Man, and His Well-Being. These are the only two that I have read in their entirety so far and I am thus far very pleased and sometimes astounded by the fact that this man composed his work about 350 years ago, and that he lived only to the age of 44. What an amazing scholar he was, a good man, enlightened, a master teacher. I used to say that if I could go back in time and meet only one person, it would be a toss between Gustav Mahler and John Keats. But now I can safely say that it would be my master, Baruch Spinoza.

Bear in mind, Spinoza's God is not the emotionally-driven, jealous God of the Bible, but a holistic, naturalistic Being who is Creator-and-created at once and in-One, the all-encompassing, intelligent architect of the Cosmos and of every living thing that ever was or will be. His God is one that surpasses human understanding, but Spinoza goes about his proofs of the existence (and absolute necessity) of this Being with such surety and skill that I found myself utterly consumed in the process. I, who have always been a defiant atheist, a libertarian, a defender of freedom in all of its kicking and struggling forms, types, and manifestations, gradually found myself being overwhelmed by an intellect far greater and also far more benevolent than my own. It was easy to submit my heart and mind to these ideas, written by a man nearly four centuries ago, especially since my life's experiences had prepared the way already. If conceding to the profound and beautiful intellections of a human being could bring me such a measure of peace and contentment, then try to imagine how fulfilling, how absolutely joyous, is my submission and total surrender to God. It is only in this complete surrender that I have finally found my freedom, my true happiness, my purpose.

I can't define this God, can't tell you His name, or anything like that. This is not a Sodom and Gomorrah type God I am embracing here, but a holistic, cosmic, eternal, inexpressibly magnificent, benevolent, and perfect Being who has everything in perfect order, despite appearances. In recognition of such a Being, taking stock of one's imperfections is the easiest thing to do. None of us are perfect, we are all flawed. No state or government can be perfect. We humans make mistakes, small ones and GIANT ones. But we are coming along. We are learning. We are getting closer and closer to the Source, the Divine Ground, as Huxley called it. Enjoy the journey and be at peace!

BB Post: as Embers of Servetus. More on ego, autonomy, consciousness

While it is certainly true that consciousness and behavior, and brain-function in general, is far more complex than most people realize, I don't think even the brightest people in neuroscience and neuropsychology have a good enough handle on the brain to be able to justify the hypothesis that the subjective sensation and intuition of conscious autonomy is an illusion.

There have been many studies over the past few decades, most notably by Benjamin Libet, which indicate that the sensation of being conscious of making a choice actually occurs after the brain has already made the decision: that the sense of autonomy is a sort of constantly updated narrative conducted by the brain to afford a feeling of self-control and free agency when in fact there is no control or free agency (freewill). Despite the seemingly overwhelming data giving credence to this idea, I don't buy it. And there are still plenty of well-credited scientists and psychologists who don't buy it either.

 I'm with thinkers like David Chalmers and John Searle when it comes to consciousness and behavior: I think what causes consciousness in the brain's mechanism is not yet understood, in fact I think we are far from grasping it. This is what keeps the field of A.I. in a sort of limbo: the inability to manufacture anything like sentience or consciousness in a machine. I believe nature's technology is many orders of magnitude more advanced than man's technology, and it's sheer arrogance to think that since we can't fully understand how consciousness, high intelligence, and free agency arises in humans, then the normal (not to mention manifestly common across generations, nations, and cultures) sensation of autonomy and self-generated action, as well as the ego and sense of self and identity, is "an illusion".

Natural vs. Human rights

Ack! for the love of Pete!

I self-banned at my favorite shit-shooting forum because it was taking up too much of my time and I wanted to force myself to stay away: but my silly neurons and dendrites will have none of it, so here I am viewing a thread about 'natural rights', and so far not a single contributor to the thread has recognized the distinction between natural right and human right. Before I continue, YES! the concept of a 'right' is man-made, and nature does not traffic in 'rights'. Rights, like language, like currency, like modes of musical composition, are the inventions of conscious, thinking, reasoning beings, and are not inherent in, nor intrinsic to, nature. This we know, but since certain people seem to suffer from amnesia every single time the subject of rights comes up, we are forced to reiterate and remind everyone of this fact from the start, in the hope that some tiny seed of this fundamental truth might take hold and find root in the rich and balmy soil of the brains of our potential interlocutors.

Now, a natural right to exist is that which every living entity possesses, and by this we mean only that all such entities are given leave to sustain and promote their existence by whatever means necessary; by 'whatever means necessary' we mean just that: a natural right to exist is the right to kill and eat other entities, to seek, exploit, and horde resources, to act, in whatever way an entity can, to survive. There is no question of privilege or entitlement, no penalty or punishment, no moral quandaries, no ethical responsibilities or considerations whatsoever. Might makes right, in nature. The laws that govern the overwhelming majority of unreasoning, living organisms in the cosmos are force and happenstance.

So much for the definition of 'natural rights'. Now we come to the definition of human rights. These rights are also called civil rights, individual rights, etc. Man, as an intelligent, rational, reasoning being, is not provided by nature with certain instincts particular to most other animal species: he has no inherent, automatic knowledge pertaining to how he must act in order to survive. He has drives, urges, and predilections, but these are not instincts, as many incorrectly assume. A bird knows how to make a nest by virtue of instinct; a man may well desire shelter and dryness and warmth, but he is not provided with the knowledge of how to build a house, an igloo, or a tepee. He must learn this knowledge for himself, and such information is remembered and passed down, rather than being encoded and inherited genetically.

That being the case, as man began to become civilized he reasoned that since he is not endowed with certain animal instincts he must be allowed to abide by the governance of his own mind, he must be at liberty to learn and to seek out the means for his survival, and to pursue whatever course he chooses that seems adequate to ensure that those means be attained; however, this right which man grants to himself, by virtue of inter-subjective, voluntary, social cooperation and agreement, carries with it a necessary negative aspect, which is that he may do only that which is rational and reasonable to sustain his own life, and not any action whatsoever, as it is with his natural right, which, it needs to be stressed, he still possesses, with respect to his dealings with lower animals who operate solely in the realm of natural right. Natural rights, or, the laws of nature, do not have this negative aspect. That is the distinction between the two terms, right there. If an individual wishes to possess the right to his life and to the pursuit of happiness, he is obligated to understand and obey the restraint which the negative aspect of that right imposes upon him, which is, that he may not interfere with nor violate the right of any individual to possess and to benefit from that very same right which he himself wishes to possess.

And so it goes, yadda yadda, etcetera, and so forth. Why can't people get this straight?

7/25/2011

On Morality; BB post

Originally Posted by G: Since I've realized that I was a moral nihilist I have no longer claimed that anything is moral or immoral. But this does not, as I have found, interfere with things like, say, vegetarianism which I practice. One can be entirely empathetic with other sentient beings without the idea "killing sentient beings is wrong" or "eating meat is wrong." Thoughts?

 

My opinion is that you've set up a false dichotomy, i.e: if there are no objective, moral absolutes, then there is no such thing as moral or immoral. But this is obviously not the case since you can empathize with other organisms, and that empathy is the result of a real quality you possess which we call morality. I would call it a moral sense, as some philosophers have named it. That there is no hard, brute fact called morality to examine, and by which to measure degrees of the intuitive beliefs and suppositions we call morals, is not a problem, as there are no hard, brute facts about a great many qualities which are nonetheless real qualities, experienced across the board by the greater majority of humans throughout history: love, hope, fear, grief, etc.

Take language itself: languages are human inventions. There are no absolute, objective linguistic facts against which we measure the utility of speech. We have modes of speech which have developed over vast periods of time, and complex grammars built up around them, fixed rules that are in a certain sense objective, in that they apply to all users of language regardless of subjective feelings or perspective (for instance, "shovel" is a noun and a verb in English whether I like or not), but which are nonetheless human inventions that exist only by inter-subjective social agreement and custom.

I think the sort of thinking implied in the OP is a remnant of religious thinking, and not the other way around as many would suggest. If you think about it, what fuels religious thinking, and in particular modern Christian reformed theology, is the idea that only God is perfect and absolute. Humans fall short of the perfection of God in every sense; they are crippled from the start by an inherent predilection towards reckless and "sinful" behavior. Since they can never know moral perfection, they are fatally and irrevocably flawed and can have no moral guidance other than obedience to the moral law set down by this mysterious and perfect Lawgiver.

The thing to remember is that there is no perfect, personal lawgiver*, and that Nature doesn't traffic in morality. Morality is a human invention, and is thoroughly unnatural. We should be proud of the fact that we've invented it and that we are able to live up to it at least some of the time.

To say that without absolute, objective moral facts there is no such thing as morality is the same as saying "without God, all is permissible." It's an old lie that needs to be put to rest.

**Methinks I was in error there. 18 July 2011 GB

BB post: as Gulielmus Beta : Free will/dubious phrase

Yes, I think the phrase free will is dubious in and of itself (in and of itself does not mean separate from [as in not including] any of its specific definitions, but that it contains or is comprised of all of its definitions, hence its dubious-ness). It arouses doubt and uncertainty because one cannot be certain in what sense it is being used. One of the reasons there is such debate over the phrase free will is precisely because it has so many definitions and means a variety of sometimes vastly different things. For instance, the accepted definition among at least a few of us in this thread: the ability to consciously choose from among two or more realizable options, is much different from the compatibilist definition ventured by a few, which refers chiefly to an action which is not compelled. While these two definitions are substantially different, each is useful in its own way, and the fact that they are not in agreement doesn't take away from their respectful usefulness. But to just toss out the phrase without defining it, there is not a great deal of usefulness there. If there were no threads here on the subject, and a person started a thread which began, "Do you believe in free will?", the first thing to be at issue would be: what exactly does free will mean?

I think we could say that a great many common terms and/or phrases are dubious in and of themselves and often require a good deal of pinning down. Take the word God. God is a famously dubious term and there is a different definition of God for practically every individual; yet this doesn't mean that a Calvinist's definition of God is dubious or non-useful to the Calvinist nor, for that matter, to the person with whom she is conversing. It is useful insofar as it conveys a particular, generally well-defined Being.

Your last question: "How does the term ''free will'' relate to the drivers of human behaviour?"

I would say that free will relates to the actions which are the result of those drivers, and not the drivers themselves. Or more simply: it is not a driver of behavior, but is an attribute of behavior. I have these "drivers" all at work in my brain, and I have a set of wants, desires, predilections, predispositions, what have you. Out of this comes the act of choosing. The act of choosing is free in that while I will necessarily choose one option, which option I in fact choose is not necessarily forced upon me nor inevitable. The act of choosing involves will in that it is an act of conscious intent. Hence, free will.

BB post: as Gulielmus Beta : Mind/body/dualism

In my many discussions of the mind/body problem, extending to off and online activity over the past 15 years, I have resolved only recently that there is no mind/body problem. The duality, mind and body, exists, insofar as we have an objective existence as a physical body which can be observed and analyzed by others, and a subjective existence which is internal and private, and cannot be literally shared with another person. We can share our subjective experiences by way of communication: conversation, philosophy, and poetry, for example, but we cannot literally allow someone else to experience what we experience inside ourselves.

This duality is sometimes embraced wholesale, as it was by Descartes (I think) and by people who believe in a soul as distinct from but operating in conjunction with a body. For some this soul is God-given and does not arise by any biological process that can be remotely identified or understood, and yet to others the soul or spirit refers simply to consciousness and its abstract, intangible content, its workings and motivations.

I have come to believe that the best approach to the mind/body problem is to understand that a whole person, a sentient, intelligent human being, is the consummation of its objective and subjective components, its quantitative and qualitative "parts". i.e: the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. It is not the mind and body operating in some distinct and/or independent fashion; it is both, operating together to form a unified entity or being. In this sense it is a trinity, or tri-unity.

This triunity, or union of three, can be observed in so many different things, not just organisms. Take a chair. A chair is at first an object made up of parts in an organized fashion. It has quantitative parts: wood, nails, varnish, leather (and these extend to statistical properties which are not material but nonetheless objective and not subject to opinion: size, weight, height, breadth); and it has qualitative parts or properties: it is pleasing to observe, as a piece of art or design; it has a function, a utility; it has a name, a purpose. The chair is neither its physical, or concrete parts alone, nor its abstract parts (which could not exist without the ordered design of its material parts, except as concepts in the mind about a thing called a chair, which would require by necessity having seen a chair or having invented the idea of a chair), but is all of these material and non-material components and properties taken together to form a whole.

If we extend this way of looking at things (and I admit that is all this is, a way at looking at things) to something like the Christian concept of the Trinity, it is more than a little illuminating.