all gone.
1.29.2009
9.04.2008
Fireflies of the Dusk
The stories I posted at my wordpress site for short fiction [site defunct - 3.12.17] so far will eventually - hopefully - be part of a collection which when complete will be called "Fireflies of the Dusk". I intend for the stories to all hang together in some fashion - some more closely than others, as in the ones about or referring to Noah Crowley, the central character - and for each story to be able to function independently of the others. The last one posted, entitled "The Prisoner", should be thought of as a work in progress. I thought I had it finished, but as it happens it doesn't sit well with me, for a number of reasons. Instead of deleting the story as it is and re-posting it when I have something different, I'm going to leave it up. For one thing, it could very well be that I won't be able to get the story into better shape; secondly, if the work becomes much longer, which I think might happen, it will be easier to add to the post as it is at present than post another much larger, or somewhat larger, file at some future date. Posting big files is a tedious affair, and the bigger they are the more difficult it is to go through and edit them. No work is ever really finished as long as their author is still living, and there are no existing prose texts anywhere that cannot be at least in some measure improved, I don't care where you look.
I chose the over-all title for the work from a poem by Charles Reznikoff, an untitled piece, as most of that poet's works are, which, in its entirety, goes thus:
I will write songs against you,
enemies of my people; I will pelt you
with the winged seeds of the dandelion;
I will marshal against you
the fireflies of the dusk.
To me, this is one of the finest poems ever written. As a contrast to what I just said, this poem is perfect as is and I doubt that it could be made any better. It's good in so many ways and says so much I can't possibly do justice to it here. In those five lines weakness and strength, impotence and true power, go hand in hand. It's important to note that Reznikoff was Jewish. Noah Crowley, my anti-hero, is half-Jewish, not because of this poem, but because the historical Jewish struggle against every sort of persecution and prejudice affords a symbolic background for Noah's struggle for a sense of purpose and happiness in the world, which, unfortunately, he doesn't find. I thought of the title for my collection of stories, from the final line of this poem, well after the Noah character was well established in my mind and in the writing of his story. So, the title was sort of an afterthought, or a mid-thought, and it fit nicely, at least so I think. The main thing now is to make my stories live up to the title I've given them, which is a daunting task which I may be unable to do.
I could go on for a good long time considering how and why Reznikoff's poem provides such a good touchstone and reference point for my stories. First, the poem is a sublimely passive response to the aggression it speaks of. The characters in my stories are passive to a fault, they suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune as a matter of course, and do nothing to fight back, or fight impotently. So far I have only one character, Ed from "The Grange" - more or less my version of Iago from Othello - who doesn't fight impotently but in a cowardly and underhanded fashion. He is the oddball thus far, but his main purpose is to tell us a little about Noah in his final year of high school. In that story Noah is a minor character and is hardly involved at all. A long time ago I saw a great film, adapted from a play by Tom Stoppard, called Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, which takes two minor characters from Hamlet and makes them central, and in which Hamlet is reduced to a minor role. I had that in mind when I wrote "The Grange". I also had in mind certain poems, by Auden and Williams mainly, written about a Breughel painting depicting the fall of Icarus as a trivial incident in the background which goes all but unseen by the main figures in the painting. Here is a way to make art even more multi-dimensional, so to speak, to present major literary characters or incidents from a completely different point of view, to set them in the background or off in the distance. What I envision with my stories is along these lines: to make who ought to have been minor characters into main characters. But it could be that Noah, in a certain sense, turns himself from minor to major, which is to say tragic, by taking - or suffering - the final action of his life. Suicide is often a cry for attention, a last ditch effort to lift one's self out of the ordinary and into the extraordinary. It's pathetic but true, at least in some cases. But just as a suicide doesn't justify or romanticize a life half-lived, or lived badly, neither does suicide turn an uninteresting character into an interesting one, at least not by virtue of that act alone. I had no intention of killing Noah while I was writing "The Viaduct". I don't necessarily believe that Noah intended to do it. He was in great despair, and he was very drunk. When he went over I was somewhat surprised. As silly and grandiose as it may sound for me to say it, it's pretty much true. In a very real sense I still think it might have been an accident. He was drunk and ruminating and clinging to the side of the trestle. He even considers how bizarre it would be if he fell accidentally, because everyone would conclude that he had killed himself. He thinks those very thoughts while he looks for the creek which he thinks has to be down there. [edited out something 3.12.17] Is the author of the work an omniscient party in regard to the actions of his characters? Common sense says yes, of course; but I have to say it's not absolutely so in Noah's case. The silly little bastard might have been thinking about jumping but not really intending to do it. He could have simply had an accident. It's up in the air, if you'll excuse the pun, whether I like it or not.
After Noah died I thought it best to give him a life. "The Viaduct" was written first, and in a blog, which is why each section is one large paragraph dealing with a single idea, theme, or incident. Each section was initially composed at one sitting. It was a lark. I was heavily influenced by Henry Miller, and I was drinking Wild Turkey while I wrote most of it. Despite its tangents and superfluous material, it was heavily edited. Many sections which were originally there were dropped. Several sections currently included should probably be dropped, but I have yet to do it. Maybe the whole damn thing should be dropped. I've written some poems that people thought were successful, and I've published a handful, but I'm a greenhorn when it comes to prose. My work, though it makes me happy in a lot of ways, is no doubt riddled with incompetence and on the whole just very bad writing. At this point I can accept that easily. It doesn't matter anyway.
More to come on this, I think. Maybe not.
I chose the over-all title for the work from a poem by Charles Reznikoff, an untitled piece, as most of that poet's works are, which, in its entirety, goes thus:
I will write songs against you,
enemies of my people; I will pelt you
with the winged seeds of the dandelion;
I will marshal against you
the fireflies of the dusk.
To me, this is one of the finest poems ever written. As a contrast to what I just said, this poem is perfect as is and I doubt that it could be made any better. It's good in so many ways and says so much I can't possibly do justice to it here. In those five lines weakness and strength, impotence and true power, go hand in hand. It's important to note that Reznikoff was Jewish. Noah Crowley, my anti-hero, is half-Jewish, not because of this poem, but because the historical Jewish struggle against every sort of persecution and prejudice affords a symbolic background for Noah's struggle for a sense of purpose and happiness in the world, which, unfortunately, he doesn't find. I thought of the title for my collection of stories, from the final line of this poem, well after the Noah character was well established in my mind and in the writing of his story. So, the title was sort of an afterthought, or a mid-thought, and it fit nicely, at least so I think. The main thing now is to make my stories live up to the title I've given them, which is a daunting task which I may be unable to do.
I could go on for a good long time considering how and why Reznikoff's poem provides such a good touchstone and reference point for my stories. First, the poem is a sublimely passive response to the aggression it speaks of. The characters in my stories are passive to a fault, they suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune as a matter of course, and do nothing to fight back, or fight impotently. So far I have only one character, Ed from "The Grange" - more or less my version of Iago from Othello - who doesn't fight impotently but in a cowardly and underhanded fashion. He is the oddball thus far, but his main purpose is to tell us a little about Noah in his final year of high school. In that story Noah is a minor character and is hardly involved at all. A long time ago I saw a great film, adapted from a play by Tom Stoppard, called Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, which takes two minor characters from Hamlet and makes them central, and in which Hamlet is reduced to a minor role. I had that in mind when I wrote "The Grange". I also had in mind certain poems, by Auden and Williams mainly, written about a Breughel painting depicting the fall of Icarus as a trivial incident in the background which goes all but unseen by the main figures in the painting. Here is a way to make art even more multi-dimensional, so to speak, to present major literary characters or incidents from a completely different point of view, to set them in the background or off in the distance. What I envision with my stories is along these lines: to make who ought to have been minor characters into main characters. But it could be that Noah, in a certain sense, turns himself from minor to major, which is to say tragic, by taking - or suffering - the final action of his life. Suicide is often a cry for attention, a last ditch effort to lift one's self out of the ordinary and into the extraordinary. It's pathetic but true, at least in some cases. But just as a suicide doesn't justify or romanticize a life half-lived, or lived badly, neither does suicide turn an uninteresting character into an interesting one, at least not by virtue of that act alone. I had no intention of killing Noah while I was writing "The Viaduct". I don't necessarily believe that Noah intended to do it. He was in great despair, and he was very drunk. When he went over I was somewhat surprised. As silly and grandiose as it may sound for me to say it, it's pretty much true. In a very real sense I still think it might have been an accident. He was drunk and ruminating and clinging to the side of the trestle. He even considers how bizarre it would be if he fell accidentally, because everyone would conclude that he had killed himself. He thinks those very thoughts while he looks for the creek which he thinks has to be down there. [edited out something 3.12.17] Is the author of the work an omniscient party in regard to the actions of his characters? Common sense says yes, of course; but I have to say it's not absolutely so in Noah's case. The silly little bastard might have been thinking about jumping but not really intending to do it. He could have simply had an accident. It's up in the air, if you'll excuse the pun, whether I like it or not.
After Noah died I thought it best to give him a life. "The Viaduct" was written first, and in a blog, which is why each section is one large paragraph dealing with a single idea, theme, or incident. Each section was initially composed at one sitting. It was a lark. I was heavily influenced by Henry Miller, and I was drinking Wild Turkey while I wrote most of it. Despite its tangents and superfluous material, it was heavily edited. Many sections which were originally there were dropped. Several sections currently included should probably be dropped, but I have yet to do it. Maybe the whole damn thing should be dropped. I've written some poems that people thought were successful, and I've published a handful, but I'm a greenhorn when it comes to prose. My work, though it makes me happy in a lot of ways, is no doubt riddled with incompetence and on the whole just very bad writing. At this point I can accept that easily. It doesn't matter anyway.
More to come on this, I think. Maybe not.
10.21.2007
Definitions of God IIDB post
It isn't the atheist's job to define God. All we do is examine the multitude of definitions for God which are put forth by theists and point out whatever we discover in them which seems to be illogical, immoral, or just plain nonsensical. Speaking for myself, I don't think the god or no-god argument amounts to a damn thing except how it shapes a person's political ideas. I'm a weak atheist, since to be completely honest I don't believe that there is no god. I think it's probable that there is no god, but I don't believe it. I have no faith whatsoever in the proposition: there is no god. I say this for the rising tide of theists who have lost faith in faith and seem dead set on turning what was for centuries a cardinal virtue into a condition of mental depravity and happily attributing it to atheists. But while I'm a weak atheist, I'm a strong secularist.
There are literally thousands of definitions of God up for offer. Even among Christians there are thousands of definitions of God, and hundreds of thousands of sub-definitions. Since God remains unavailable for any sort of analysis, the definition of God remains highly personal and subjective. For this reason it's laughably incorrect to suggest that the Bible is an objective, authoritative basis for any sort of political ideology. How could it be when people who make this very claim have been at each other's throats for more than two thousand years? The Bible, purportedly the word of God, has been a miserable failure as a source of moral and peaceful co-existence among human beings. I'll concede that no political system is without fault, and that certain non-theistic approaches to the problem of creating civil societies have failed just as miserably, but what I can't understand is how so many people feel that the problems with the world today are the result of a falling away from God's law, or God's commandments, or what have you, when two thousand years of bloody conflicts, witch-hunts, inquisitions, crusades, and holy wars have never brought about a time of peace, have never brought about a happier society, have never done a thing to improve the human condition?
Has any definition of God been sufficient to produce any positive effect in the world? Of course not. In fact, quite the contrary: the inability of theists themselves to arrive at a plausible and universal definition of God has had nothing but negative effects. The fact is, humans are prone to disagreement and discord is inevitable, and history has demonstrated without a shadow of a doubt that no definition of God, no religious doctrine whatsoever, has altered this fact.
And yet many Americans, - to speak of my own particular tribe - completely ignorant of how their country was founded, and a good deal of them equally ignorant of the Bible, believe that America is an example of God's law in action, and the only example. Many Americans believe that America was founded on a Judeo-Christian worldview, or "values", without realizing that there is no such thing as "a" Judeo-Christian worldview, or that one Christian's "values" might be diametrically opposed to another Christian's. They blissfully forget that certain Christian "values" once caused other Christians to be imprisoned, tortured, even burned alive, or that the Book that these so-called "values" were founded upon is the very same Book which they believe gave birth to ideas of political freedom and human rights.
If you're a theist and don't feel that religion and politics should mix, then I don't care in the least about what you believe. You can believe whatever you like and I hope you have a happy life, sincerely; but if you're a theist and you believe that your definition of God is the correct one and that it should be the basis for public policy, well now I'm deeply interested in you. If we're talking metaphysics or epistemology, I can be civil and friendly, but if we're talking ethics and politics, and if your ultimate intention is to deprive me of my rights as a human being - which means my right to have, or not have, whatever religious feelings I damn well please, well now we have a problem.
It's one thing for people to put their heads together and come up with laws that intend to make society more secure, and it's no surprise that people, who are by no means perfect, should create imperfect forms of government; but it's quite another thing for people to claim that they have been given the means of forming a better society by a supernatural being with whom no one has had any kind of direct contact, a being who has been defined in thousands of ways, a being who is eternal and changeless but whose followers have changed dramatically over a relatively brief stretch of time, a being who openly declares favoritism to a particular group of people, a being who is described as perfect in every sense but who cannot exist without the constant praise and the endless humility of entities of far lesser magnitude, entities who are so corrupt that this perfect being cannot accept a single one of them to his breast without forgiving them for their imperfections, a being of incomprehensible magnitude who enjoys the smell of roasted animal flesh, a being of absolute knowledge and intelligence who doesn't know that some women do not have an issue of blood when they lose their virginity, a being who promises to spread excrement on the faces of certain people who displease him, a being who decides to put his word in a certain book which is intended to act as a beacon to humanity and which is nonetheless interpreted a million different ways by the very people who trust in it completely and which either directly or indirectly causes conflict and war and widespread human suffering. If theists expect to influence government policy I suggest that they do the one thing they haven't been able to do: come up with something that works better than what we've tried so far. But remember, we folks with our eyes open already know that a return to God's law, if by that you mean Old Testament law, would spell certain disaster today just as it spelled disaster in times past. And by disaster I mean witch-hunts, inquisitions, crusades, holy wars, dark ages. If theists couldn't agree on crucial doctrinal issues at any time in the past sufficiently enough to keep from cutting one another's throats and burning one another at the stake, what reason do we have to think they'd be able to do it now?
And just to add, in fairness: I'm a secularist much more than I'm an atheist. A theist can be a secularist, in fact many theists are secularists. I am just as opposed to depriving people of their right to worship God as I am to making god-belief a civic duty. The attempt to stamp out religion by force is just as misguided and stupid as trying to establish a theocracy by force.
If God Himself or Herself comes and tells me to shut up, I'll shut up. But not until then.
9.19.2007
Clarification and thank-yous
I just want to make a note about why I've started and deleted several blogs for my poems and why I've disallowed comments on this blog and on my current poetry-blog, Ignotus. I think that essentially I'm antisocial, I'm not comfortable with the whole idea of networking, and I'm totally unable to self-promote. In over six years of activity online I've successfully blended in at only two places. The first was at an Iwon chat group where I became somewhat popular with the name IkilledElmo. Eventually I got bored with chat-rooms - although they allowed me socialize like a normal person for a little while - and discovered the world of Internet bulletin boards. I've joined probably well over a dozen of these places but became pretty well-established at only one of them: The Poetry-Free-For-All at everypoet.net. Bela Selendy, the generous man behind everypoet, started a thing called the Amplifier which allowed members to have a little place of their own in which to post poems, pictures, what have you. I got something going but gave up after a while and deleted my spot, twice. There didn't seem to be much point in doing it.
This was before the blogging craze. I started a blog or two at MSN and deleted them both. Then I got one going at Blogger until a very kind soul, Rob Mackenzie, from PFFA, discovered it and told a few others about it. He linked to me and I linked back to him. I linked to several other blogs run by fellow PFFAers and was linked back to by one or two others besides Rob. The majority of people I linked to did not link back to me. They were either not aware that I had linked to them or they didn't wish to return the favor for whatever reason. Before long I decided my blog wasn't drumming up any interest, despite Rob's valiant efforts on my behalf, and I deleted it. I started up another which was again discovered by Rob and linked to by him. I made a few comments at his blog and he left one or two at mine. This felt too compulsory to me, too much like protocol. I visited other blogs and made a few comments, but by and large I thought the whole thing was pointless. So I deleted my blog yet again. At this point Rob realized that he was wasting his time trying to get me into the loop. I wasn't going to get into it and that was that. I'll grant that I'm anti-social and a bit paranoid, but it seems to me that what drives the blogging world is self-promotion. If you can't self-promote you will fail, unless you are inordinately talented. I can't self-promote. I'm not humble, mind you, just insecure, hypersensitive (yes, Rachel), neurotic, and passive to a fault. I want to make that plain.
I keep these two blogs at Blogger going mainly because it offers a professional-looking format in which to put my stuff. If someone stumbles on something I've written and likes it well enough (or hates it enough) they can send me an email. I don't see the point in allowing comments since the majority of comments I've received are spam: a little soap to my back and a nudge: hey, soap my back too? How pointless.
I'm not afraid of someone disagreeing with my ideas or finding my commentary stupid or offensive. I participate at Internet Infidels, a secular board where I post as WilliamB, and most of what is contained in this blog was posted there; indeed, many of my posts here are lifted verbatim, with minor alterations, from that board. I'm perfectly willing to defend my views and have done so, in public and in private. The same applies to my poems. Some of the stuff on Ignotus was posted at PFFA or Eratosphere. I am not afraid of harsh, objective critique and have deliberately sought it out. But if I allow comments at either blog and begin the whole process of networking via comments and links once again, I'm certain that I would regret it. I'm just no good at that sort of thing. And, to be completely honest, I find most blogs boring, even those whose subjects are similar to my own. For this reason I expect people to find my blogs boring as well.
Before I forget, I want to thank Rob MacKenzie for his efforts to drum up interest in my poems. At this point he remains one of three people who have gone out of their way for me. Timothy Murphy and David Anthony, from Eratosphere, are the other two. I'm not complaining. After all, I never expected anyone to go out of their way for me since I've gone out of my way for exactly no-one (net-wise that is). These three gentlemen are quite successful and have published poetry to critical acclaim, and I'm grateful to them. Rob's blog is one of the most successful blogs going. I sincerely don't know how he does it, but I wish him all the luck in the world. Not that he'll need it.
8.08.2007
More on Freewill/Determinism IIDB
I believe in freewill but I would never say consciousness was "uncaused". My consciousness couldn't exist without my brain, so it appears the immediate "cause" of my consciousness is my brain, which is not magical at all. By the same token, physical bodies (people) who have brains are made (caused) by the sexual union of other bodies. (If one wants to say that robots or machines might have something called "consciousness", that's fine, and no one would say that such was uncaused.)
And furthermore, the facts that 1) I am alive and 2) I am conscious, are both caused; but to say that these facts were "determined" seems to me to suggest that I somehow "had" to be born, which I don't believe to be true. My parents could just as well have chosen not to have children.
I think there might be a problem with definitions in regard to the words "determined" and "caused", at least for some.
'Determined' has connotations which 'caused' doesn't have, for instance to say something is 'determined' could mean "to limit or set boundaries, to fix conclusively, to fix beforehand, ordain, regulate, decide" (Merriam-Webster).
'Caused' doesn't have those connotations. It mostly boils down to: to "cause" is to "effect". Merriam-Webster's online dictionary says, "to effect by command, authority, or force." There is nothing to suggest that to 'cause' something is to necessarily limit or set boundaries, ordain or decide anything, just "effect".
Another problem is that the word 'cause' is being used as a noun and a verb. As a noun, a 'cause' is a reason, a motive, or an agent, "something that brings about an effect or a result" (Merriam-Webster). But again, nothing suggests that this effect was "determined" (see above) in any sense, just "caused".
In an online dictionary of philosophy, there's this:
Cause: (Lat. causa) Anything responsible for change, motion or action. In the history of philosophy numerous interpretations were given to the term. Aristotle distinguished among:
1. the material cause, or that out of which something arises,
2. the formal cause, that is, the pattern or essence determining the creation of a thing,
3. the efficient cause, or the force or agent producing an effect; and
4. the final cause, or purpose. Many thinkers spoke also of
5. the first cause, usually conceived as God.
There's no entry in the dictionary I searched (Dagobert D. Runes, Dictionary of Philosophy, 1942) for 'Determined', just 'Determination' and 'Determinism'.
Determinism: (Lat. de + terminus, end) The doctrine that every fact in the universe is guided entirely by law.
and further down in the entry:
The doctrine that all the facts in the physical universe, and hence also in human history, are absolutely dependent upon and conditioned by their causes. In psychology: the doctrine that the will is not free but determined by psychical or physical conditions. Syn. with fatalism, necessitarianism, destiny. -- J.K.F.
So it seems to me that the determinist is saying that everything is dependent upon and conditioned by their causes, while the freewiller is merely saying that everything (at least that which pertains to his own decisions and actions) is "effected" by their causes: dependent on them only to a degree, not absolutely; and not necessarily "conditioned" by them.
From Merriam-Webster again:
Main Entry: conditioned
Function: adjective
1 : brought or put into a specified state
2 : determined or established by conditioning
************************************************
This "motivator" that causes us to make decisions and do things is You, and Me. We are the motivators, since we are the sum total of all these "memories and emotions" going on inside us, plus a myriad of other factors which make up our individual personalities and identities. And your reply in no way accounts for the fact that what you basically suggested was that the body makes choices, not the conscious mind, or at the very least that the conscious mind plays a decidedly subordinate role:
"I think the decision is *made by the body* as a preponderence of mitgating factors involving memory and emotion and our consciousness makes thoughts out of it that seem like choices."
Your post, once again, reminds me of the Calvinists, according to whom everything goes according to God's will, and nothing can go against God's will. God not only has foreknowledge of our destinies down to the last detail, he has foreordained our destinies, which will unfold exactly as he has determined and there is absolutely nothing we can do about it. We will either be saved or damned, and God is the sole arbiter and "motivator" in every single case.
Then the Calvinists turn around and say that the damned deserve their punishment, despite the fact that they are given zero capacity to save themselves, and despite the fact that God intentionally and with forethought blinds their eyes and deafens their ears to the only means that are available to ensure their salvation.
Your worldview is virtually the same as Calvinism, without the mythology. Instead of God you have these hazily defined impulses and "motivators" which dictate what we will do in every situation (which sounds eerily like Original Sin, by the way), and you seem dead set against granting any free agency to a conscious, intelligent human mind.
And yet at the same time you claim that people who commit crimes ought to be held accountable for their actions, actions which you claim are pre-determined and fixed and over which these unlucky individuals have zero control. It isn't necessarily that a moral judgment is made against them, nor is it that they are to be held "responsible" in any clear sense. Instead you suggest that these people ought to be made examples of, not as a means of punishing wrongdoing, but as a means of ensuring less wrongdoing by others in the future.
And so poor Mr. Smith is to be a scapegoat, punished for no better reason than to be an example to others, despite the fact that he couldn't have done otherwise, just as the condemned sinner, in the Calvinist's view, is damned as a means of demonstrating God's "justice", despite the fact that he couldn't have done otherwise.
Don't get me wrong, I fully believe in people being held accountable for their actions, but only to the extent that they are free agents who could have acted responsibly but elected not to. If I believed that the way you describe things is accurate, I'd advocate removing murderers and criminals from society but my conscience would insist that they be treated with the utmost kindness being that they had no real control over what they were doing.
*******************
...that's exactly what free will means to me: the ability to make decisions based on what kind of life I want for myself. It's the knowledge that actions have consequences, and that it's infinitely wiser to take actions and make decisions which have beneficial and positive consequences, and conversely to avoid taking actions or making decisions which bring about the opposite. Free will to me is the understanding that ultimately I determine which course my life will take, though obviously I don't have absolute control over things I interact with or which act upon me. I know that I'm not a superhero: I have a limited course of action to chose from in any given circumstance. I'm not omniscient either, and since I know that my knowledge is limited I'm aware that sometimes I can only make a best guess as to what the most beneficial course of action will be in any given situation. I can make mistakes and often do. And given the unpredictable nature of any number of external things going on around me at any given time, sometimes even the most practical and well-informed actions or decisions will have negative consequences: shit happens.
I shouldn't have used the word "enslaved" in my last post. To be a slave, at least to my mind, means having no options, having no choices, which isn't the case for your garden variety criminals or derelicts, or for responsible people. I don't believe that because our choices are influenced either internally or externally they are therefore "determined", at least not as I define the word. I take "determined" to mean outside the province of choice, not a choice which is arrived at by virtue of simply having a reason for making it, whether that reason be a simple preference or a strong disposition. If the argument is: our choices are determined by virtue of the fact that they are influenced by a whole bundle of factors such as personal tastes, habits, memories, predispositions, predilections, not to mention external influences such as the actions of other people, accidents of nature, environment, peer-pressure, legal obligations and limitations, social mores, well then I agree to that, but I agree only that our actions are influenced, sometimes heavily influenced, but not "determined" in the sense that these influencing factors are so overwhelming as to make our "choices" merely mechanical and automatic responses.
To me, the word "choice" itself often entails having to make a mental effort, having to weigh all sorts of various influences together and come to some sort of educated decision. Naturally some choices are trivial and easy and some are extremely difficult. But a choice made without any influencing factors whatsoever isn't a choice at all. It seems to me that to be completely free of influencing factors one would have to be unconscious, or dead. If free will is defined as a will which is totally uninfluenced either internally or externally, then I don't believe in it either.
**********
V**: It seems to me that he's arguing against determism simply because it's harsh. I'm just saying too bad. That's life. No problem.
This is incorrect, as I stated in another thread somewhere on this freewill subject when something was said to the effect that certain people might just not like the idea that they are not free agents. I said that, well, I don't like the idea that I am going to die someday and go back into oblivion, but I argue for that position anyway because I believe it to be true.
And don't forget that saying something like, "You argue against determinism because you just don't like it" is strikingly similar to the typical theistic response to just about any atheistic argument: "Aw, come on now, you argue against God because you just don't like the idea of God! Admit it!" The user j** typed this very same sentiment a thousand times.
I argue for what I think is more believable, period. Whether I like something or not is not a consideration. And what's more, I don't think determinism presents a world that is any more harsh than the world as I currently see it.
And all I'm trying to do is point out that responsibility and accountability are awfully hard to justify in the context of determinism. It's very simple: if a person has no real control over his or her actions then that person shouldn't be held responsible for what they do. That's why I asked the question about the insanity defense.
Do determinists think an insane person ought to be held to a much lesser degree of accountability when they commit a crime? And if so, is it because we agree that an insane person is not in control of his or her behavior? And if this is the case, then shouldn't the same leniency be granted to any and all in a deterministic world?
If the answer is, "well of course not, we need to ensure a stable society after all, we can't have these criminals running loose. And besides, punishing wrongdoers will discourage others from doing the same..." then my reply to that would be: Despite protests to the contrary, to worry about the interests of society, to actively work towards ensuring the security and prosperity of society in the future, is to project more than one possible state of affairs on the future. It presumes that there are things we can do and ought to do in order to prevent society from falling apart, and it presumes that failing to do these things could very likely have negative results, which means: the choice is up to us. But If we aren't free agents as individuals, then we aren't free agents as a collective either.
I didn't get a chance to read the comments that were deleted. Feel free to send them to me via PM, if you choose.
**And, in case there is any misunderstanding, I absolutely DO NOT advocate being kind to murderers and hardened criminals, since I believe that people are responsible for their actions, barring only very special cases. But if I were a determinist I would be forced to think differently, since I would believe that people acted in response to internal and external forces which were beyond their control.
D**: Did you notice that in William B.'s post he responds that if he were to believe that choices are made by the brain, he would advocate treating criminals with the "utmost kindness" since they wouldn't be responsible for what they did?
Wait a sec. I already believe that choices are made by the brain. Maybe this was a typo, or I am just missing the boat here? Is the brain being thought of as somehow separate from consciousness? If it is, I don't agree with that. Not that I believe that consciousness is material, only that it resides in the brain, is an "emergent property" of the brain, is wholly dependent on the brain, whatever.
I do believe in free agency, which is why I feel comfortable imputing culpability to people who commit crimes, being that alternatives are possible. What I did say was that if it could be definitively shown that people were not in control of their actions I would advocate removing criminals from society as a practical measure, but I couldn't see why we should be cruel to them, since in my view they wouldn't be responsible for what they did. When my old computer stopped working right and started to be a major pain in the caboose, I didn't render a moral judgment against it, I just put it out in the garage in the corner where it wouldn't cause any more headaches. I could've tried to get it fixed, but it was tax-season and I used my refund to buy a new one...
While I still hold he position I started out with, I'm more fascinated with this whole subject than I was before, though I can't get too excited about how the future looks in regard to criminal justice. Unless I'm mistaken, isn't eye-witness testimony holding up a lot less in court these days? And couldn't this be at least to some extent the result of so much doubt being cast on the reliability of the senses? It bothers me to no end that a woman who has endured being raped could potentially stand less and less of a chance of being trusted to identify her own assailant. Add to this what you guys have just been talking about, like:
D**: ...whether personal responsibility can remain fundamental to Law.
Maybe I'm making too much of it, but it seems to me that criminals might be dancing in the streets for joy in the not-too-distant future.
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I am sympathetic to a lot of what you said. But I think I've gone past the point where any of this freewill/determinism argument causes me anger, mainly because I suspect that the reason this particular argument is one of the mainstays in philosophy is because, quite frankly, a lot of people use terminology carelessly and loosely, on both sides that is, and most of the time what's being argued over isn't so much a drastic difference in how we view the world so much as it is how we define certain terms and how we integrate those terms into our arguments. Aside from that is the fact that there is too much we don't know about how the brain works---or, let's just say for now that there's an awful lot that I don't know about how the brain works---, which means that there is a lot of presumption and speculation involved.
I don't want anyone to think that I'm caving in, mind you. I'm not remotely convinced that determinism, in the strictest sense, is true. I very strongly believe that human beings are causal agents, some to a much greater degree than others, and that human intelligence can and does interfere with and manipulate physical laws to affect change; but at the same time I'm fine with this being just a strong belief, and as such I consider it susceptible to change depending on what there is to be learned, and depending on my capacity to understand it, which admitedly is not very great.
As for meaning and purpose: No one can tell me my life is meaningless or purposeless, I don't care who they are. I decide what my life means to me and what my purpose is, no one else. And it's really nobody's damn business anyway to tell someone else what their life means and what it doesn't. People who do that are annoying and pretentious whether they are theists or atheists, or anything in between.
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rosy tetra: You mean humans possess some sort of Maxwell’s Demon?
Or something akin to the “dust‿ or dark matter that settles on humans and brings free will to the characters in Philip Pullman’s “His Dark Materials‿ trilogy?
No, I mean that we're conscious. Why do you think an extra entity of some kind needs to be added to the mix in order to explain will and volition? I don't; and even if I did, it wouldn't be anything supernatural, since I don't believe in the supernatural. I also don't believe in destiny or fate, or that rocks avoid rolling uphill.
We might not be able to explain how consciousness, including will and volition, works, but it's like others have been trying to say: just because we don't fully understand how something works is no reason to suggest that it's either an illusion or it's magic. We thought rainbows were magical at some point in the past; we now know what causes rainbows to appear.
We interfere with and manipulate natural processes all the time. That's how we've survived. Medicine, surgery, farming, the building of dams, digging of canals, electricity: we use nature to our advantage, make it work for us, exploit it, harness it. That isn't to say that we can change physical laws, only interfere (as in alter or instigate an action caused by those laws, not the nature of the laws themselves) with them and manipulate them to our advantage. Sometimes we do it in an ugly way, I'll admit. And sometimes we screw up.
I think some determinists are just uncomfortable with the ideas of freedom and autonomy, much as certain theists are. The more I think about it, there are quite a lot of similarities between determinists and theists.
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m**:You just presented a list of things entirely consistent with deterministic law following. Did you have another argument?
It wasn't so much an argument for something as it was a response to rosy's humorous suggestions that I attribute volitional consciousness to some sort of outside agent, or supernatural internal agent. Why this is not completely obvious to everyone eludes me.
And, as it happens, my post is also competely consistent with the idea of volitional will and free agency. I basically described how we go about interacting and sometimes interfering with nature, at will, and not through recourse to a tiny demon in our heads or anywhere else, or any other fantastical thing. My post was a response to particular questions asked of me.
m: (By the way, the argument against counter causal free will is not: "we don't understand it", so you might want to work on that point too.)
If I understand you correctly, I've never argued for "counter-causal" free will. I've gone out of my way to explain that I agree that nothing is uncaused. All things, including human choices and decisions and actions, have causes; but what I don't believe is that something being "caused" and something being "determined" is the same thing. There are crucial distinctions: "determined" implies that something is ordained, decided, fixed conclusively, set; "caused" doesn't have those connotations, at least not necessarily.
So I suppose what I am saying is that: If we don't know exactly how intelligent humans can act as causal agents, that shouldn't mean we ought to rule out the possibility that it might one day be sufficiently explained.
I'll very gladly take your advice on working on any and all points.
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rosy tetra:When you said that “… human intelligence can and does interfere with and manipulate physical laws…‿ it sounded to me like you meant human intelligence molds, controls, alters physical laws.
Not at all, as far as molds or alters. 'Molds' would imply some authoritative creative process:
Merriam-Webster:
Main Entry: mold
Function: transitive verb
1 archaic : to knead (dough) into a desired consistency or shape
2 : to give shape to
3 : to form in a mold
4 : to determine or influence the quality or nature of
5 : to fit the contours of
6 : to ornament with molding or carving
Note that 'influence' above refers to the quality or nature of something. We can't influence natural processes in that manner, we can only influence how those processes act in a specific situation, as in the making of a dam, or an electric light bulb.
Here's what Merriam-Webter's has for 'manipulate':
Main Entry: ma·nip·u·late
Function: transitive verb
Inflected Form(s): -lat·ed; -lat·ing
Etymology: back-formation from manipulation, from French, from manipuler to handle an apparatus in chemistry, ultimately from Latin manipulus
1 : to treat or operate with the hands or by mechanical means especially in a skillful manner
2 a : to manage or utilize skillfully b : to control or play upon by artful, unfair, or insidious means especially to one's own advantage
3 : to change by artful or unfair means so as to serve one's purpose
I was using the word in the sense of 1 and 2a. Naturally the word has negative connotations as well, and depending on how one views humanity's technical progress, you could say I was using the word in the 2b sense also. The third definition has no bearing on my use of the word, since this seems to be refering to outright deception and deceit, as in the manipulation of documents or evidence or something like that.
As for one of the words you used: yes, I am arguing that human intelligence can exert some degree of control over natural processes. Medicine, the use of electricity, farming, even an atrocity like the atomic bomb, are all examples of exerting control over physical laws. Note that doesn't suggest that these laws can be altered or changed insofar as their nature is concerned, only that we can control those laws in regard to their action in a specific circumstance.
I try to use words carefully and I don't mind any criticisms if I've used them carelessly, and when I do I'll own up to it, as I did in a very recent post. But in this case I think you took the words interfere and manipulate the wrong way because you might have preconceptions of what the freewiller's position is, or maybe because some people on this side of the FW/D fence really do believe that the human mind has some sort of authoritative creative powers in regard to natural processes, physical laws. I'm not one of those people.
I'll also grant that it's very possible that I am just not getting what your position actually is. On the surface you seem to be pushing for the idea that there isn't a great deal of difference in regard to human consciousness and an unconscious life-form such as a tree, or even an inanimate object, like a rock. I find that too fabulous a view to entertain, and I have to think that my phrasing must be inadequate in describing what you are really trying to say.
r.t: Certainly we can do things that affect our surroundings. I know you must mean more than just that, because all things living and non-living use natural processes that affect their surroundings. Certainly we do things to affect our surroundings often according to intentions we have.
Yes, I do mean more than that and hopefully by this time I've gotten it across. Now, is it just me or is there not a marked difference between the phrase: "do things that affect our surroundings", and "use natural processes that affect their surroundings."? Using things (even if we allow that non-sentient things can be said to "use" anything in the true sense of the word, and I'll allow it since I don't feel like quibbling over every word) that affect their surroundings" is clearly not equal to "do[ing] things that affect our surroundings." Can you see the difference? And even if certain living things behave in a way that increases their chances of survival to some degree, can it really be argued that what they do in comparison to what humans do is significant enough to trivialize the fact that humans build cities, write books, heal the sick, compose symphonies, fly to the moon?
r.t: If you just mean that I feel an intention to do something, while a rock does not feel an intention, then why not just say that humans feel intentions?
If I did, what would be the reaction in a discussion like this? "Hey, we humans feel intentions, therefore we have freewill." Obviously it's a lot more than that. For one thing, these intentions vary from person to person, and they vary greatly. Even if you could prove that a tree intends things, can you show me that there is a variety of intention among individual trees, or groups of trees? Some animals? Sure, I suppose they might have varying degrees of intentions, but I would bet only to an almost negligible degree. In short, just saying humans "feel intentions" fails miserably short of what our species has managed to do.
r.t: If you say that humans can choose what intentions they will feel, and their choice is not determined by their physical state, their DNA, their environment, etc, but by a will that is free from all that, it sounds like we’re back to a Maxwell’s Demon.
I think we're back to the importance of clear definitions. In prior posts I've given my position in regard to the words "free" and "determined". I'll admit that my position could be all screwy, but bear with me. I don't think 'free' means free from all those causes you mentioned, as far as the term freewill is concerned. In the reading I've done I haven't seen anyone suggest that this is so. Free, in the context of freewill, means not forced to one option and one option only, it means having options: real options, not the illusion of options. But any and all options as they pertain to choices and decisions are limited to reality, and by the impositions and boundaries of the natural world. We can't talk out of our bellybuttons, we can't turn into horses at will, we can't do anything magical. It just means that given option X and option Y, we are actually at liberty to choose either one. At liberty doesn't mean that all those causes you mentioned are suddenly out of the picture, or don't factor in somehow. It just means that those causes will no doubt contribute to and influence the choices we make, in some cases very powerfully so, so powerfully perhaps that there is virtually no decision process going on. But the bottom line is that, in fact, it is in our power as creatures of volitional consciousness to choose X or Y, and that contingent on this power is the fact that choices have consequences. If it makes it sound any better, freewill is also the ability to make truly disastrous decisions.
The way I see it, freewill is the belief that choices are influenced, but not determined - determined connoting that something is fixed conclusively, set, ordained, decided - by their causes; whereas determinism (or at least it as I understand it, and as it pretty much says in most definitions) is the belief that choices (and everything else) are absolutely determined by their causes.
As I see it, freewillers aren't arguing against the fact that the universe acts deterministically, just that consciousness creates a degree of causal agency within it, the wherewithal to move at will as an example, whereas inanimate objects can only move as they are acted upon; and, in the case of human intelligence, freedom of choice and freedom of action, neither of which exempts us from having to obey natural laws and processes but which merely gives us the capacity to control our environment, and those laws and processes, at least to the degree that our interests and desires are served. No magical powers, no carte blanche to do whatever we damn well please, just leeway.
I guess what it boils down to is that I don't think freewill cancels out determinism. I believe the two co-exist and cooperate a good deal of the time, at least in intelligent human beings. I do believe that higher intelligence means more control, less susceptibility to internal and external influences, more will.
All I want to do at this point is clarify whatI believe. My beliefs could very well be wrong, and I wouldn't be devastated at this stage of my life to learn that they were.
C** wrote: If you are "not forced or compelled to one course of action", then you tend not to take a course of action. If I choose something, something must have caused me to choose or I wouldn't have chosen.
By "not forced or compelled to one course of action I mean not one course of action in particular, and only that one. So I would argue that we can and very often do make decisions without being forced to one alternative to the preclusion of another. (I will admit that "compelled" was a poor choice of words on my part.) In your second sentence you seem to be using "caused" as if it were synonymous with being forced or compelled, which I think is a mistake. As I suggested in a post somewhere else, according to most definitions a determinist believes that all human decisions, are absolutely dependent on their causes, whereas a freewiller believes that all human decisions, are effected or influenced by their causes, but not absolutely, which just means that we don't believe that all of our choices or decisions are "determined". Caused, yes; determined, no, or at least not always. Determined connotes that limits are set, that outcomes are fixed conclusively, ordained, decided. Caused doesn't have the same connotations.
r.t wrote: If by “free will” people simply mean “conscious,” then why not just say “conscious”?
Because determinists believe in consciousness also.
r.t wrote: When people say that free will means a person could have chosen differently if he wanted to, this does not seem to mean anything except that people have desires and act on them. All living things do this. Unless you narrow the statement and say that you’re only talking about human desires and the sorts of human thoughts and feelings that happen when humans do things. Well, that leaves out rosebushes then, doesn’t it?
Of course. Rosebushes aren't conscious. The level of free (or volitional) agency increases in proportion to levels of intelligence and mental health. Animals might have some degree of limited, instinctually-biased free agency, but probably not much. Geniuses probably have the highest levels of free agency since it's evident in their work that they exert a greater degree of control over certain thought processes like concentration, focus, imagination, creativity. It takes a much greater control of mental processes to write "Paradise Lost" than it does to change a tire or make a grilled cheese sandwich, a much more powerful force of will.
N** wrote: The term [free will] is somewhat coopted by arguments over determinism. In this case it seems to be used mostly to mean "a choice not tracable to a cause".
I would say a "free" choice is one which is influenced by a cause or causes, but not absolutely fixed and determined by a cause or causes. A choice "not traceable to a cause" would be meaningless. For instance, if someone holds out a bunch of playing cards to me and says "pick a card, any card", and if they're evenly spaced and all appear identical, there will be a definite degree of randomness as to which card I select. Let's say for the sake of argument that there either is no real "cause" for picking one card over another, or that we just don't know what it is. We still wouldn't be able to say that my choice was not traceable to a cause. The action of picking a card was dependent on many factors: being at this boring party, sitting on a sofa beside the annoying aspiring magician, lying and saying I enjoyed card tricks, etcetera. So, even though all of those prior causes were necessary for me to pick a card at that particular time, when it came time to actually pick a card that particular choice at that particular time was not "determined" by those other "causes", which means that while the fact that I'm now sitting here looking at a group of playing cards was dependent on prior causes, none of those causes have anything to do with which card I actually pick. If I pick card X, that choice is traceable to a set of causes; if I pick card Y, that choice is traceable to the same set of causes, and so on.
N wrote: If we can prove that all of our choices derive from an indentifiable causal chain, then we do not have free will.
That sounds like 20-20 hindsight to me. The reverse would be true: if we could predict a causal chain going a fair ways into the future and get good results, that might help to cast doubt on free will; but humans, completely unaware that they are being observed or that they are involved in an experiment, must be present in such a chain or it wouldn't indicate anything except what we already know, which is that the universe runs according to certain fixed laws.
And furthermore, the facts that 1) I am alive and 2) I am conscious, are both caused; but to say that these facts were "determined" seems to me to suggest that I somehow "had" to be born, which I don't believe to be true. My parents could just as well have chosen not to have children.
I think there might be a problem with definitions in regard to the words "determined" and "caused", at least for some.
'Determined' has connotations which 'caused' doesn't have, for instance to say something is 'determined' could mean "to limit or set boundaries, to fix conclusively, to fix beforehand, ordain, regulate, decide" (Merriam-Webster).
'Caused' doesn't have those connotations. It mostly boils down to: to "cause" is to "effect". Merriam-Webster's online dictionary says, "to effect by command, authority, or force." There is nothing to suggest that to 'cause' something is to necessarily limit or set boundaries, ordain or decide anything, just "effect".
Another problem is that the word 'cause' is being used as a noun and a verb. As a noun, a 'cause' is a reason, a motive, or an agent, "something that brings about an effect or a result" (Merriam-Webster). But again, nothing suggests that this effect was "determined" (see above) in any sense, just "caused".
In an online dictionary of philosophy, there's this:
Cause: (Lat. causa) Anything responsible for change, motion or action. In the history of philosophy numerous interpretations were given to the term. Aristotle distinguished among:
1. the material cause, or that out of which something arises,
2. the formal cause, that is, the pattern or essence determining the creation of a thing,
3. the efficient cause, or the force or agent producing an effect; and
4. the final cause, or purpose. Many thinkers spoke also of
5. the first cause, usually conceived as God.
There's no entry in the dictionary I searched (Dagobert D. Runes, Dictionary of Philosophy, 1942) for 'Determined', just 'Determination' and 'Determinism'.
Determinism: (Lat. de + terminus, end) The doctrine that every fact in the universe is guided entirely by law.
and further down in the entry:
The doctrine that all the facts in the physical universe, and hence also in human history, are absolutely dependent upon and conditioned by their causes. In psychology: the doctrine that the will is not free but determined by psychical or physical conditions. Syn. with fatalism, necessitarianism, destiny. -- J.K.F.
So it seems to me that the determinist is saying that everything is dependent upon and conditioned by their causes, while the freewiller is merely saying that everything (at least that which pertains to his own decisions and actions) is "effected" by their causes: dependent on them only to a degree, not absolutely; and not necessarily "conditioned" by them.
From Merriam-Webster again:
Main Entry: conditioned
Function: adjective
1 : brought or put into a specified state
2 : determined or established by conditioning
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This "motivator" that causes us to make decisions and do things is You, and Me. We are the motivators, since we are the sum total of all these "memories and emotions" going on inside us, plus a myriad of other factors which make up our individual personalities and identities. And your reply in no way accounts for the fact that what you basically suggested was that the body makes choices, not the conscious mind, or at the very least that the conscious mind plays a decidedly subordinate role:
"I think the decision is *made by the body* as a preponderence of mitgating factors involving memory and emotion and our consciousness makes thoughts out of it that seem like choices."
Your post, once again, reminds me of the Calvinists, according to whom everything goes according to God's will, and nothing can go against God's will. God not only has foreknowledge of our destinies down to the last detail, he has foreordained our destinies, which will unfold exactly as he has determined and there is absolutely nothing we can do about it. We will either be saved or damned, and God is the sole arbiter and "motivator" in every single case.
Then the Calvinists turn around and say that the damned deserve their punishment, despite the fact that they are given zero capacity to save themselves, and despite the fact that God intentionally and with forethought blinds their eyes and deafens their ears to the only means that are available to ensure their salvation.
Your worldview is virtually the same as Calvinism, without the mythology. Instead of God you have these hazily defined impulses and "motivators" which dictate what we will do in every situation (which sounds eerily like Original Sin, by the way), and you seem dead set against granting any free agency to a conscious, intelligent human mind.
And yet at the same time you claim that people who commit crimes ought to be held accountable for their actions, actions which you claim are pre-determined and fixed and over which these unlucky individuals have zero control. It isn't necessarily that a moral judgment is made against them, nor is it that they are to be held "responsible" in any clear sense. Instead you suggest that these people ought to be made examples of, not as a means of punishing wrongdoing, but as a means of ensuring less wrongdoing by others in the future.
And so poor Mr. Smith is to be a scapegoat, punished for no better reason than to be an example to others, despite the fact that he couldn't have done otherwise, just as the condemned sinner, in the Calvinist's view, is damned as a means of demonstrating God's "justice", despite the fact that he couldn't have done otherwise.
Don't get me wrong, I fully believe in people being held accountable for their actions, but only to the extent that they are free agents who could have acted responsibly but elected not to. If I believed that the way you describe things is accurate, I'd advocate removing murderers and criminals from society but my conscience would insist that they be treated with the utmost kindness being that they had no real control over what they were doing.
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...that's exactly what free will means to me: the ability to make decisions based on what kind of life I want for myself. It's the knowledge that actions have consequences, and that it's infinitely wiser to take actions and make decisions which have beneficial and positive consequences, and conversely to avoid taking actions or making decisions which bring about the opposite. Free will to me is the understanding that ultimately I determine which course my life will take, though obviously I don't have absolute control over things I interact with or which act upon me. I know that I'm not a superhero: I have a limited course of action to chose from in any given circumstance. I'm not omniscient either, and since I know that my knowledge is limited I'm aware that sometimes I can only make a best guess as to what the most beneficial course of action will be in any given situation. I can make mistakes and often do. And given the unpredictable nature of any number of external things going on around me at any given time, sometimes even the most practical and well-informed actions or decisions will have negative consequences: shit happens.
I shouldn't have used the word "enslaved" in my last post. To be a slave, at least to my mind, means having no options, having no choices, which isn't the case for your garden variety criminals or derelicts, or for responsible people. I don't believe that because our choices are influenced either internally or externally they are therefore "determined", at least not as I define the word. I take "determined" to mean outside the province of choice, not a choice which is arrived at by virtue of simply having a reason for making it, whether that reason be a simple preference or a strong disposition. If the argument is: our choices are determined by virtue of the fact that they are influenced by a whole bundle of factors such as personal tastes, habits, memories, predispositions, predilections, not to mention external influences such as the actions of other people, accidents of nature, environment, peer-pressure, legal obligations and limitations, social mores, well then I agree to that, but I agree only that our actions are influenced, sometimes heavily influenced, but not "determined" in the sense that these influencing factors are so overwhelming as to make our "choices" merely mechanical and automatic responses.
To me, the word "choice" itself often entails having to make a mental effort, having to weigh all sorts of various influences together and come to some sort of educated decision. Naturally some choices are trivial and easy and some are extremely difficult. But a choice made without any influencing factors whatsoever isn't a choice at all. It seems to me that to be completely free of influencing factors one would have to be unconscious, or dead. If free will is defined as a will which is totally uninfluenced either internally or externally, then I don't believe in it either.
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V**: It seems to me that he's arguing against determism simply because it's harsh. I'm just saying too bad. That's life. No problem.
This is incorrect, as I stated in another thread somewhere on this freewill subject when something was said to the effect that certain people might just not like the idea that they are not free agents. I said that, well, I don't like the idea that I am going to die someday and go back into oblivion, but I argue for that position anyway because I believe it to be true.
And don't forget that saying something like, "You argue against determinism because you just don't like it" is strikingly similar to the typical theistic response to just about any atheistic argument: "Aw, come on now, you argue against God because you just don't like the idea of God! Admit it!" The user j** typed this very same sentiment a thousand times.
I argue for what I think is more believable, period. Whether I like something or not is not a consideration. And what's more, I don't think determinism presents a world that is any more harsh than the world as I currently see it.
And all I'm trying to do is point out that responsibility and accountability are awfully hard to justify in the context of determinism. It's very simple: if a person has no real control over his or her actions then that person shouldn't be held responsible for what they do. That's why I asked the question about the insanity defense.
Do determinists think an insane person ought to be held to a much lesser degree of accountability when they commit a crime? And if so, is it because we agree that an insane person is not in control of his or her behavior? And if this is the case, then shouldn't the same leniency be granted to any and all in a deterministic world?
If the answer is, "well of course not, we need to ensure a stable society after all, we can't have these criminals running loose. And besides, punishing wrongdoers will discourage others from doing the same..." then my reply to that would be: Despite protests to the contrary, to worry about the interests of society, to actively work towards ensuring the security and prosperity of society in the future, is to project more than one possible state of affairs on the future. It presumes that there are things we can do and ought to do in order to prevent society from falling apart, and it presumes that failing to do these things could very likely have negative results, which means: the choice is up to us. But If we aren't free agents as individuals, then we aren't free agents as a collective either.
I didn't get a chance to read the comments that were deleted. Feel free to send them to me via PM, if you choose.
**And, in case there is any misunderstanding, I absolutely DO NOT advocate being kind to murderers and hardened criminals, since I believe that people are responsible for their actions, barring only very special cases. But if I were a determinist I would be forced to think differently, since I would believe that people acted in response to internal and external forces which were beyond their control.
D**: Did you notice that in William B.'s post he responds that if he were to believe that choices are made by the brain, he would advocate treating criminals with the "utmost kindness" since they wouldn't be responsible for what they did?
Wait a sec. I already believe that choices are made by the brain. Maybe this was a typo, or I am just missing the boat here? Is the brain being thought of as somehow separate from consciousness? If it is, I don't agree with that. Not that I believe that consciousness is material, only that it resides in the brain, is an "emergent property" of the brain, is wholly dependent on the brain, whatever.
I do believe in free agency, which is why I feel comfortable imputing culpability to people who commit crimes, being that alternatives are possible. What I did say was that if it could be definitively shown that people were not in control of their actions I would advocate removing criminals from society as a practical measure, but I couldn't see why we should be cruel to them, since in my view they wouldn't be responsible for what they did. When my old computer stopped working right and started to be a major pain in the caboose, I didn't render a moral judgment against it, I just put it out in the garage in the corner where it wouldn't cause any more headaches. I could've tried to get it fixed, but it was tax-season and I used my refund to buy a new one...
While I still hold he position I started out with, I'm more fascinated with this whole subject than I was before, though I can't get too excited about how the future looks in regard to criminal justice. Unless I'm mistaken, isn't eye-witness testimony holding up a lot less in court these days? And couldn't this be at least to some extent the result of so much doubt being cast on the reliability of the senses? It bothers me to no end that a woman who has endured being raped could potentially stand less and less of a chance of being trusted to identify her own assailant. Add to this what you guys have just been talking about, like:
D**: ...whether personal responsibility can remain fundamental to Law.
Maybe I'm making too much of it, but it seems to me that criminals might be dancing in the streets for joy in the not-too-distant future.
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I am sympathetic to a lot of what you said. But I think I've gone past the point where any of this freewill/determinism argument causes me anger, mainly because I suspect that the reason this particular argument is one of the mainstays in philosophy is because, quite frankly, a lot of people use terminology carelessly and loosely, on both sides that is, and most of the time what's being argued over isn't so much a drastic difference in how we view the world so much as it is how we define certain terms and how we integrate those terms into our arguments. Aside from that is the fact that there is too much we don't know about how the brain works---or, let's just say for now that there's an awful lot that I don't know about how the brain works---, which means that there is a lot of presumption and speculation involved.
I don't want anyone to think that I'm caving in, mind you. I'm not remotely convinced that determinism, in the strictest sense, is true. I very strongly believe that human beings are causal agents, some to a much greater degree than others, and that human intelligence can and does interfere with and manipulate physical laws to affect change; but at the same time I'm fine with this being just a strong belief, and as such I consider it susceptible to change depending on what there is to be learned, and depending on my capacity to understand it, which admitedly is not very great.
As for meaning and purpose: No one can tell me my life is meaningless or purposeless, I don't care who they are. I decide what my life means to me and what my purpose is, no one else. And it's really nobody's damn business anyway to tell someone else what their life means and what it doesn't. People who do that are annoying and pretentious whether they are theists or atheists, or anything in between.
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rosy tetra: You mean humans possess some sort of Maxwell’s Demon?
Or something akin to the “dust‿ or dark matter that settles on humans and brings free will to the characters in Philip Pullman’s “His Dark Materials‿ trilogy?
No, I mean that we're conscious. Why do you think an extra entity of some kind needs to be added to the mix in order to explain will and volition? I don't; and even if I did, it wouldn't be anything supernatural, since I don't believe in the supernatural. I also don't believe in destiny or fate, or that rocks avoid rolling uphill.
We might not be able to explain how consciousness, including will and volition, works, but it's like others have been trying to say: just because we don't fully understand how something works is no reason to suggest that it's either an illusion or it's magic. We thought rainbows were magical at some point in the past; we now know what causes rainbows to appear.
We interfere with and manipulate natural processes all the time. That's how we've survived. Medicine, surgery, farming, the building of dams, digging of canals, electricity: we use nature to our advantage, make it work for us, exploit it, harness it. That isn't to say that we can change physical laws, only interfere (as in alter or instigate an action caused by those laws, not the nature of the laws themselves) with them and manipulate them to our advantage. Sometimes we do it in an ugly way, I'll admit. And sometimes we screw up.
I think some determinists are just uncomfortable with the ideas of freedom and autonomy, much as certain theists are. The more I think about it, there are quite a lot of similarities between determinists and theists.
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m**:You just presented a list of things entirely consistent with deterministic law following. Did you have another argument?
It wasn't so much an argument for something as it was a response to rosy's humorous suggestions that I attribute volitional consciousness to some sort of outside agent, or supernatural internal agent. Why this is not completely obvious to everyone eludes me.
And, as it happens, my post is also competely consistent with the idea of volitional will and free agency. I basically described how we go about interacting and sometimes interfering with nature, at will, and not through recourse to a tiny demon in our heads or anywhere else, or any other fantastical thing. My post was a response to particular questions asked of me.
m: (By the way, the argument against counter causal free will is not: "we don't understand it", so you might want to work on that point too.)
If I understand you correctly, I've never argued for "counter-causal" free will. I've gone out of my way to explain that I agree that nothing is uncaused. All things, including human choices and decisions and actions, have causes; but what I don't believe is that something being "caused" and something being "determined" is the same thing. There are crucial distinctions: "determined" implies that something is ordained, decided, fixed conclusively, set; "caused" doesn't have those connotations, at least not necessarily.
So I suppose what I am saying is that: If we don't know exactly how intelligent humans can act as causal agents, that shouldn't mean we ought to rule out the possibility that it might one day be sufficiently explained.
I'll very gladly take your advice on working on any and all points.
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rosy tetra:When you said that “… human intelligence can and does interfere with and manipulate physical laws…‿ it sounded to me like you meant human intelligence molds, controls, alters physical laws.
Not at all, as far as molds or alters. 'Molds' would imply some authoritative creative process:
Merriam-Webster:
Main Entry: mold
Function: transitive verb
1 archaic : to knead (dough) into a desired consistency or shape
2 : to give shape to
3 : to form in a mold
4 : to determine or influence the quality or nature of
5 : to fit the contours of
6 : to ornament with molding or carving
Note that 'influence' above refers to the quality or nature of something. We can't influence natural processes in that manner, we can only influence how those processes act in a specific situation, as in the making of a dam, or an electric light bulb.
Here's what Merriam-Webter's has for 'manipulate':
Main Entry: ma·nip·u·late
Function: transitive verb
Inflected Form(s): -lat·ed; -lat·ing
Etymology: back-formation from manipulation, from French, from manipuler to handle an apparatus in chemistry, ultimately from Latin manipulus
1 : to treat or operate with the hands or by mechanical means especially in a skillful manner
2 a : to manage or utilize skillfully b : to control or play upon by artful, unfair, or insidious means especially to one's own advantage
3 : to change by artful or unfair means so as to serve one's purpose
I was using the word in the sense of 1 and 2a. Naturally the word has negative connotations as well, and depending on how one views humanity's technical progress, you could say I was using the word in the 2b sense also. The third definition has no bearing on my use of the word, since this seems to be refering to outright deception and deceit, as in the manipulation of documents or evidence or something like that.
As for one of the words you used: yes, I am arguing that human intelligence can exert some degree of control over natural processes. Medicine, the use of electricity, farming, even an atrocity like the atomic bomb, are all examples of exerting control over physical laws. Note that doesn't suggest that these laws can be altered or changed insofar as their nature is concerned, only that we can control those laws in regard to their action in a specific circumstance.
I try to use words carefully and I don't mind any criticisms if I've used them carelessly, and when I do I'll own up to it, as I did in a very recent post. But in this case I think you took the words interfere and manipulate the wrong way because you might have preconceptions of what the freewiller's position is, or maybe because some people on this side of the FW/D fence really do believe that the human mind has some sort of authoritative creative powers in regard to natural processes, physical laws. I'm not one of those people.
I'll also grant that it's very possible that I am just not getting what your position actually is. On the surface you seem to be pushing for the idea that there isn't a great deal of difference in regard to human consciousness and an unconscious life-form such as a tree, or even an inanimate object, like a rock. I find that too fabulous a view to entertain, and I have to think that my phrasing must be inadequate in describing what you are really trying to say.
r.t: Certainly we can do things that affect our surroundings. I know you must mean more than just that, because all things living and non-living use natural processes that affect their surroundings. Certainly we do things to affect our surroundings often according to intentions we have.
Yes, I do mean more than that and hopefully by this time I've gotten it across. Now, is it just me or is there not a marked difference between the phrase: "do things that affect our surroundings", and "use natural processes that affect their surroundings."? Using things (even if we allow that non-sentient things can be said to "use" anything in the true sense of the word, and I'll allow it since I don't feel like quibbling over every word) that affect their surroundings" is clearly not equal to "do[ing] things that affect our surroundings." Can you see the difference? And even if certain living things behave in a way that increases their chances of survival to some degree, can it really be argued that what they do in comparison to what humans do is significant enough to trivialize the fact that humans build cities, write books, heal the sick, compose symphonies, fly to the moon?
r.t: If you just mean that I feel an intention to do something, while a rock does not feel an intention, then why not just say that humans feel intentions?
If I did, what would be the reaction in a discussion like this? "Hey, we humans feel intentions, therefore we have freewill." Obviously it's a lot more than that. For one thing, these intentions vary from person to person, and they vary greatly. Even if you could prove that a tree intends things, can you show me that there is a variety of intention among individual trees, or groups of trees? Some animals? Sure, I suppose they might have varying degrees of intentions, but I would bet only to an almost negligible degree. In short, just saying humans "feel intentions" fails miserably short of what our species has managed to do.
r.t: If you say that humans can choose what intentions they will feel, and their choice is not determined by their physical state, their DNA, their environment, etc, but by a will that is free from all that, it sounds like we’re back to a Maxwell’s Demon.
I think we're back to the importance of clear definitions. In prior posts I've given my position in regard to the words "free" and "determined". I'll admit that my position could be all screwy, but bear with me. I don't think 'free' means free from all those causes you mentioned, as far as the term freewill is concerned. In the reading I've done I haven't seen anyone suggest that this is so. Free, in the context of freewill, means not forced to one option and one option only, it means having options: real options, not the illusion of options. But any and all options as they pertain to choices and decisions are limited to reality, and by the impositions and boundaries of the natural world. We can't talk out of our bellybuttons, we can't turn into horses at will, we can't do anything magical. It just means that given option X and option Y, we are actually at liberty to choose either one. At liberty doesn't mean that all those causes you mentioned are suddenly out of the picture, or don't factor in somehow. It just means that those causes will no doubt contribute to and influence the choices we make, in some cases very powerfully so, so powerfully perhaps that there is virtually no decision process going on. But the bottom line is that, in fact, it is in our power as creatures of volitional consciousness to choose X or Y, and that contingent on this power is the fact that choices have consequences. If it makes it sound any better, freewill is also the ability to make truly disastrous decisions.
The way I see it, freewill is the belief that choices are influenced, but not determined - determined connoting that something is fixed conclusively, set, ordained, decided - by their causes; whereas determinism (or at least it as I understand it, and as it pretty much says in most definitions) is the belief that choices (and everything else) are absolutely determined by their causes.
As I see it, freewillers aren't arguing against the fact that the universe acts deterministically, just that consciousness creates a degree of causal agency within it, the wherewithal to move at will as an example, whereas inanimate objects can only move as they are acted upon; and, in the case of human intelligence, freedom of choice and freedom of action, neither of which exempts us from having to obey natural laws and processes but which merely gives us the capacity to control our environment, and those laws and processes, at least to the degree that our interests and desires are served. No magical powers, no carte blanche to do whatever we damn well please, just leeway.
I guess what it boils down to is that I don't think freewill cancels out determinism. I believe the two co-exist and cooperate a good deal of the time, at least in intelligent human beings. I do believe that higher intelligence means more control, less susceptibility to internal and external influences, more will.
All I want to do at this point is clarify whatI believe. My beliefs could very well be wrong, and I wouldn't be devastated at this stage of my life to learn that they were.
C** wrote: If you are "not forced or compelled to one course of action", then you tend not to take a course of action. If I choose something, something must have caused me to choose or I wouldn't have chosen.
By "not forced or compelled to one course of action I mean not one course of action in particular, and only that one. So I would argue that we can and very often do make decisions without being forced to one alternative to the preclusion of another. (I will admit that "compelled" was a poor choice of words on my part.) In your second sentence you seem to be using "caused" as if it were synonymous with being forced or compelled, which I think is a mistake. As I suggested in a post somewhere else, according to most definitions a determinist believes that all human decisions, are absolutely dependent on their causes, whereas a freewiller believes that all human decisions, are effected or influenced by their causes, but not absolutely, which just means that we don't believe that all of our choices or decisions are "determined". Caused, yes; determined, no, or at least not always. Determined connotes that limits are set, that outcomes are fixed conclusively, ordained, decided. Caused doesn't have the same connotations.
r.t wrote: If by “free will” people simply mean “conscious,” then why not just say “conscious”?
Because determinists believe in consciousness also.
r.t wrote: When people say that free will means a person could have chosen differently if he wanted to, this does not seem to mean anything except that people have desires and act on them. All living things do this. Unless you narrow the statement and say that you’re only talking about human desires and the sorts of human thoughts and feelings that happen when humans do things. Well, that leaves out rosebushes then, doesn’t it?
Of course. Rosebushes aren't conscious. The level of free (or volitional) agency increases in proportion to levels of intelligence and mental health. Animals might have some degree of limited, instinctually-biased free agency, but probably not much. Geniuses probably have the highest levels of free agency since it's evident in their work that they exert a greater degree of control over certain thought processes like concentration, focus, imagination, creativity. It takes a much greater control of mental processes to write "Paradise Lost" than it does to change a tire or make a grilled cheese sandwich, a much more powerful force of will.
N** wrote: The term [free will] is somewhat coopted by arguments over determinism. In this case it seems to be used mostly to mean "a choice not tracable to a cause".
I would say a "free" choice is one which is influenced by a cause or causes, but not absolutely fixed and determined by a cause or causes. A choice "not traceable to a cause" would be meaningless. For instance, if someone holds out a bunch of playing cards to me and says "pick a card, any card", and if they're evenly spaced and all appear identical, there will be a definite degree of randomness as to which card I select. Let's say for the sake of argument that there either is no real "cause" for picking one card over another, or that we just don't know what it is. We still wouldn't be able to say that my choice was not traceable to a cause. The action of picking a card was dependent on many factors: being at this boring party, sitting on a sofa beside the annoying aspiring magician, lying and saying I enjoyed card tricks, etcetera. So, even though all of those prior causes were necessary for me to pick a card at that particular time, when it came time to actually pick a card that particular choice at that particular time was not "determined" by those other "causes", which means that while the fact that I'm now sitting here looking at a group of playing cards was dependent on prior causes, none of those causes have anything to do with which card I actually pick. If I pick card X, that choice is traceable to a set of causes; if I pick card Y, that choice is traceable to the same set of causes, and so on.
N wrote: If we can prove that all of our choices derive from an indentifiable causal chain, then we do not have free will.
That sounds like 20-20 hindsight to me. The reverse would be true: if we could predict a causal chain going a fair ways into the future and get good results, that might help to cast doubt on free will; but humans, completely unaware that they are being observed or that they are involved in an experiment, must be present in such a chain or it wouldn't indicate anything except what we already know, which is that the universe runs according to certain fixed laws.
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5.21.2007
Sophisticated theology (phrase I heard at Internet Infidels)
History is full of sophisticated theologians who came to wildly disparate conclusions about the nature of God. Which of these sophisticated people should the unsophisticated person trust? They all sound terribly serious and sophisticated. John Wesley sounds every bit as sophisticated as John Calvin. And I'm sure if I looked into the work of Islamic theologians I would see much of the very same sophistication. Is Christian theology more sophisticated than say, Islamic theology or Jewish theology? How is a numbnuts like me supposed to tell the difference, when all of these sophisticated people sound so damned serious and sophisticated? From what I've been led to understand, the Bible should be sufficient for me, and I shouldn't need theology. But the problem is, the Bible is not sufficient. In fact, the Bible is miserably insufficient. For me. So I'm left with a choice, or what seems like a choice: make a leap of faith, or remain in doubt. I tried the leap of faith and couldn't do it, so I'm stuck with doubt.
I can see that the theist's answer to this might be something like: Well, look at science. Here we have all kinds of smart and sophisticated people coming to different conclusions about a great number of things, so how come we can live with that when it happens to scientists but have a problem when it occurs among theologians? But here's where the theist seems to forget that God is posited as a perfect being, not only a perfect being unto Itself but one with enormous power, and influence. Scientists are simply human beings who study the world around them, unaided by anything divine or supernatural, let alone perfect. They make no claims to perfection and they make mistakes, and these mistakes come as no great shock if we assume that scientists are not guided by the hand of Providence. Scientists coming to wildly different conclusions about various things doesn't present much of a problem. But theologians are laboring under the assumption that a perfect and extremely powerful being is shedding light on their studies, assisting them in discovering truths and spelling them out, guiding them in their work. Are there any current theologians (sophisticated ones, of course) who don't actually believe that this is the case?
As an objective observer, shouldn't it concern me that history is full of sophisticated theologians who presumably worked under the beneficent and guiding hand of the God they were defending and yet came to vastly different conclusions about the nature of this God? Are there many gods? Maybe there are. But if there is One True God, then a great many of these sophisticated theologians were laboring under a delusion, or were deceived, or were simply not sophisticated enough to do their God justice; and since I'm not all that sophisticated myself, I can't determine which of these fine people were wrong and which ones were right. One thing is certain: all of these well-known, ultra-credited theologians were smarter than I am, but some of them (if not all of them) were dead wrong.
Since my eternal soul is at stake here, this is unsettling to say the least. Does my salvation depend on being smart enough to read the works of every major theologian and determining which of them are correct? If it does, I'm doomed. And, since I'm not smart enough to ensure my salvation with my brains, then I have to make a leap of faith. But I can't do it. I've tried. I've tried like crazy. Preachers, pastors, and "witnesses" of every stripe have a thousand different versions of the God's-honest-truth, evangelists and priests are always landing themselves in jail, and the Bible is unconvincing, to be kind about it. I was thinking the other day about the good book, as I always am. I had to wonder about the flood and original sin. I can't understand why God would wipe everybody out except for a few good eggs, when he knew those good eggs would pass on the bad stuff anyway and start the whole stinky ball of sin rolling all over again. Did the world get any better after this cleansing? No. Sorry, I don't buy it. It's nonsense. I also know that clever people can take any type of nonsense and make it seem plausible, and in a thousand different ways.
I'll keep on thinking about God and talking to Her like always. Anything can happen. I'll continue reading and searching. Maybe someday I'll have an honest to goodness revelation and wind up on a sidewalk somewhere handing out flyers with a big smile on my face. Who knows.
x
4.30.2007
Guns cocked, ears pricked
Of Ernest Hemingway's short story, "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber", author Frank O'Connor wrote:
"Francis runs away from a lion, which is what most sensible men would do if faced by a lion, and his wife promptly cuckolds him with the English manager of their big-game hunting expedition. As we all know, good wives admire nothing in a husband except his capacity to deal with lions, so we can sympathize with the poor woman in her trouble. But next day Macomber, faced with a buffalo, suddenly becomes a man of superb courage, and his wife, recognizing that[...] for the future she must be a virtuous wife, blows his head off. [...] To say that the psychology of this story is childish would be to waste good words. As farce it ranks with "Ten Nights in a Bar Room" or any other Victorian morality you can think of. Clearly, it is the working out of a personal problem that for the vast majority of men and women has no validity whatever."
"Francis runs away from a lion, which is what most sensible men would do if faced by a lion, and his wife promptly cuckolds him with the English manager of their big-game hunting expedition. As we all know, good wives admire nothing in a husband except his capacity to deal with lions, so we can sympathize with the poor woman in her trouble. But next day Macomber, faced with a buffalo, suddenly becomes a man of superb courage, and his wife, recognizing that[...] for the future she must be a virtuous wife, blows his head off. [...] To say that the psychology of this story is childish would be to waste good words. As farce it ranks with "Ten Nights in a Bar Room" or any other Victorian morality you can think of. Clearly, it is the working out of a personal problem that for the vast majority of men and women has no validity whatever."
I found this quote on Wikipedia, so I could be taking O'Connor's comments out of context. I don't know what else he said about the story, but I did read the Hemingway story, and wow, does this ever miss the boat.
First: sure, it would be sensible to run away from a lion, in almost any circumstance, but what would not be sensible would be to run away from a lion when you have paid someone to take you on a safari with the intention of hunting and killing dangerous animals and when you are expecting to encounter a lion and are armed to the teeth in preparation for such an event; and second: it would most certainly not be sensible to run away from a lion (which you have gone out of your way to track down in the first place) when you are married to an unprincipled and adulterous woman and spend a good deal of time doubting your worth as a human being and, more importantly, as a man.
Speaking of Francis's "wife": O'Connor's remarks fail to say much of anything about the woman's character, or the already fucked-up condition of the marriage between she and her husband. He writes as if this single event causes her to sleep with Wilson, the safari guide and ultra-macho big-game hunter. There is a lot of history backing up the events which O'Connor so flippantly describes. Mrs. Macomber doesn't love her husband and remains married to him for all the wrong reasons. Most likely she would have fucked Wilson anyway. She's a cruel and unscrupulous bitch and she enjoys causing her husband pain. In some respects Francis deserves to be humiliated. He should have ditched his wife a long time ago. He shouldn't have married her to begin with. And he has a lot of silly hang-ups about what constitutes a "real man", although, in his defense, these hang-ups could well have been directly caused by his train-wreck of a marriage.
I don't entirely agree with O'Connor's comments in regard to the reasons Mrs. Macomber kills her husband. I do agree that she recognizes the change in him once he passes his silly manhood-test, as do Wilson and Macomber himself, but she doesn't kill him because she realizes that she will have to be a "virtuous wife". As I said, this memsahib is a cruel and ruthless bitch and being a virtuous anything is completely beyond her capacity, which of course she realizes; but more than that, she understands that her power over Francis is gone, that her primary source of sadistic pleasure has been tapped. She isn't unfaithful because of her husband's shortcomings, she merely uses them as an excuse for being the miserable cunt that she is. She doesn't realize that she will have to be a virtuous wife to Francis, she realizes that she will have to find another sap to abuse, that she will have to do a little work for a change in her efforts to pussy-whip another spineless sucker. Not only that, she is simply enraged that her little powder puff has risen up. Well, a bullet to the noggin puts paid to that, doesn't it?
The story is hostile and devoid of heroes but the psychology behind it is anything but childish. Unless you're reading it wrong. And Hemingway's writing is dead-on. I was a fool to ignore him until now. His influence is so huge that I've been imitating him without knowing it. But then I'm a hack so that's no surprise.
6.19.2006
BB post. As William B. Efficacy of the senses/duck or rabbit
Initially the viewer, presuming she has 20-20 vision, will see either a duck or a rabbit. In either case she will be correct, since the drawing is done intentionally to represent both. Her eyes have done their job, by perceiving the physical attributes of the image accurately. If I see a duck, my brain immediately registers the image as a duck, and I will, out of habit, stop looking for any further revelation. Now, if I see a firetruck instead, or a cathode ray-tube, I can see how my sense of vision might be deemed deficient. If I don't know the presenter's reason for showing me the drawing, it's probably simply a matter of luck as to which image will register first: the duck or the rabbit.
In any random group of viewers, assuming they all have 20-20 vision, some will see a rabbit, some a duck. If the viewer knows what is afoot, then she applies her brain and her eyes accordingly, and will eventually, in most cases, make out both images. Bottom line, and this is the part which is hardest for me to put across since I am no good with technical language or terminology, is that, assuming the viewer has 20-20 vision, she will see the actual, concrete information on the page (or screen) correctly. The rest is a matter of how her brain interprets the information-- a matter of intelligence, imagination, disposition, experience, predilections, what have you.
To an illiterate person, written language is merely a random smattering of lines and curves and loops. In this case, it's not his sense of vision which is deficient. He's seeing the same thing the literate person sees. He merely lacks the acquired ability to interpret those lines and curves and loops into sounds and thereby into words and language. And it goes for any of us who are ignorant of a foreign language. If someone speaks Burmese to me, all I will hear are random utterances. As far as concerns strictly the sense of hearing, I am hearing the same sounds as the person who understands Burmese and is able to interpret those sounds properly.
If we pick a thousand people at random and point out a kitchen table to them, anyone with normal eyesight will identify the object as a table. I daresay you would have great difficulty finding someone with normal vision who will identify the object as a tree or a ladder. By and large, our perceptions of the external world are remarkably consistent. Simple communication would be next to impossible if this were not the case. Granted, many people have poor eyesight, poor hearing, in various degrees. Without my glasses I would not be able to drive, for example; but, thanks to man's determination and ingenuity, I am able to put on my glasses and see normally.
Anyone would agree that the senses are fallible, deficient, to various degrees, and even if a person has 20-20 vision, I will grant that he can and often will see objects incompletely, incorrectly; but I don't see how that needs to cast us into any genuine philosophical doubts about the reality of the external world, or the actuality of the objects we perceive, however inaccurately. The human race has been around for a long time: a short time in relation to the cosmos perhaps, but a long enough time, certainly, for us to collectively recognize that our perceptions and interpretations of the world around us are, as I said, remarkably consistent. Civilization, language, communication, art, science, philosophy, are entirely dependent upon, not to mention the result of, such consistency.
Unposted response. Egoism/altruism
My response to B**, who argued that it was moral to expect and receive payment in return for saving a drowning victim's life, and that anything less would constitute a concession to altruism:
As far as the drowner scenario goes for me personally, insisting on receiving payment for saving his life would eliminate the ego-gratifying benefits that saving his life for free conferred upon me, unless I was in a profession in which life-saving was literally a part of my job. In the first place, it would be an admission that a human life was not a thing of value worthy of being preserved for its own sake. I would be embarrassed and ashamed as a human being to ever make such an admission, and it would also be self-damning, since I would be admitting that my own life was not of sufficient value to merit being preserved for its own sake, which would be crushing to my ego and sense of self-worth. In the second place, by reducing the heroic act of saving a life to a mere transaction of goods and services, I am denying myself the honor that would be associated with saving a human life out of little more than an extremely high regard for the value of that life. In one fell swoop I would confess to having no regard for a human life beyond some arbitrary monetary value and simultaneously strip myself of any and all chance to feel that I had acted heroically and valorously.
In other words, the act of saving a human life should confer a great many personal benefits to the person doing the saving, not to gloss over, of course, the enormous benefit received by the person being saved. I agree with you insofar as I think it's plain wrong to stick to the old idea that the greatest act of goodwill or charity is one which entails the least amount of benefit to the doer. Even if such an ideal were possible, which I suppose it may be given an infinity of hypothetical scenarios, why should we strive for it? If in such a scenario the receiver of the act of goodwill or charity were no better off, what possible good can come of the doer depriving himself of all benefits? Seems to me if we can have two that benefit from one act at no greater cost to either party then that should be the most desireable outcome.
Lastly, if you honestly wouldn't save a life (assuming for the sake of argument that the drowner is neither a loved one nor someone you know of in any way that might prejudice your action) unless you were paid in some way, I'd venture to say there could be something missing in you. I would never suggest that you should feel morally compelled to risk your life to save a total stranger; but if the act of rescuing someone, assuming of course that you were able to do so without putting yourself at too great a risk, failed to give you any reward whatsoever simply for the sake of having acted heroically and preserving a thing of value due to your ability to act with courage, skill, and physical prowess, then I guess I never understood a thing about egoism.
6.18.2006
BB post. As "WilliamB". Epistemology/senses/presup
M*** wrote: Not so, I do not believe the pages themselves to hold power or proof reality. Once again a false assertion based primarily on your empericistic view.
If the Bible is your "axiom", as you state below, then presumably one must be able to read the Bible, hear it spoken aloud, or have its contents conveyed to them through signs given via the sense of touch, as in the way Helen Keller was taught. You are putting the cart before the horse. If you want to convince me that the Bible is the perfect word of God, as you say, I have to read (or have its contents conveyed to me through some other sense) the Bible in order to see if your claim is true, and in order to do that I need at least one working sense. If I cannot trust my senses, which is the main thrust of your argument, then how can I trust what I read with my eyes? Think of what you are proposing: you claim that the senses are untrustworthy, and simultaneously claim that the only thing we can trust is the word of God as put down in the Bible, which cannot be received and understood without the senses.
As someone else said, the presuppositionalist arguments are sometimes brilliantly presented, but this is not one of those occasions. At bottom you are defending an indefensible claim: that knowledge can only be received through revelation, not through empirical observation. Serial killers, the mentally ill, cult leaders, fraudulent televangelists, psychics, and presuppositionalists all make claims to receiving knowledge through some type of revelation. Revelation and delirium are synonymous.
M*** wrote: And once again, my questions are not aimed at proving the Bible. My questions are aimed at proving you cannot know something by means of empericism.
Look at what you're writing. Your aim is to prove that we cannot know something with the material we receive from the senses,and how do you propose to do this? I presume your proof will be in the form of words appearing on my computer screen, no? You intend to "prove" to us that we can't know something through the senses, by appealing to our senses, and by presupposing that our senses are working properly enough for us to read and understand your "proof". You cannot prove anything to us on this board without presupposing the efficacy of the senses and without also depending on the efficacy of our senses, let alone "prove" that one cannot know anything by means of empericism!
Let me put it another way: the only way for you to help your position is by withdrawing from the discussion now and not typing another word, because with each word you type you are taking things for granted: and those happen to be the very things you are trying to pooh-pooh through your magnanimous presence here.
And you're getting nowhere by tossing this "know" word around. With each and every word you type, you are entirely dependent on the fact that there will be someone on the other end who will "know" what those words mean. You seek to show us how little we can "know" by being one-hundred percent confident that we do, in fact, know something: you are confident that there will be someone out there who will "know" enough about the English language to make sense of what you're typing.
It's all utterly pointless anyway since your worldview demands that you grant the existence of an objective reality and grant that we can gain knowledge of this external world through our senses and through our capacity to reason. It so happens that my worldview accepts all that as well. What you need to do is demonstrate how the external world would be any less real to me than to you, and why my senses or my capacity to reason are less efficient than yours, simply because I lack belief in God. But then again, no, that isn't your intention. You already know that you and I are on relatively equal footing in regard to our senses and our capacity to make sense of the material we acquire through them. That isn't the problem for you.
The problem for you is that I do not recognize God as being responsible for my ability to adapt to my world and survive in it. What you need to do is demonstrate how your belief in Christian theology gives you a more rational epistemological foundation, which is what the presup argument is supposed to do but which presuppers never actually get around to doing. They talk about it a lot, but they never do it. No one has managed to be even remotely convincing when it comes to that. All we get are a bunch of pointless questions which are designed to undermine the reliability of the senses and of human reasoning, questions which depend entirely upon the reliable senses and reasoning ability of those being questioned!
It's sheer absurdity.
M*** wrote: The proof of reality lies within revelation, not empericism.
Like I said, mystics throughout the ages have made similar claims. So have serial killers, various cult leaders, psychics suckering people out of their money on television, unscrupulous evangelists, and all sorts of people occupying mental wards throughout the world. Yet not a single one of them could possibly give any "proof" of the veracity of their claims without appealing to the senses of the people they were trying to convince, or without relying on the capacity of those very same people to "know" what in blazes they were blathering on about.
M** wrote: You cannot prove revelation to be faulty.
Which means you cannot prove any "revelation", so-called, to be faulty. The Christians aren't the only ones who claim to receive knowledge via revelation, in case you haven't heard. Yeah, I know, those other revelations don't count. Of course, what was I thinking.
M** wrote: You cannot test it by your means of obtaining truth. I can however, prove empericism to be faulty by one's own testimony. You cannot define or explain how or why something is real without further adding to the list of questions as to how or why. My revelation of what is reality cannot be proven faulty and is not under obligation to verfiy itself by means of the senses. You could say, "but how do you know you have had revelation?". My response would then be, the revelation itself was verification of it's own validity. It doesn't matter if I can prove or show it, it is a revelation.
If I claim that I received a revelation only this morning, you would not be able to gainsay my claim by virtue of what you typed above. My claim is unassailable. And yet if I claim that I have a cup of coffee here beside me, this is something you can tear apart? You can claim to have "revelations" and yet are not required to give any evidence for it whatsoever. I'm to take your word for it, no questions asked. But if I claim that my feet are cold, I am making an unsupportable claim? What if I said that I had a revelation that my feet were cold? Would you find that more believable?
Your kind of thinking belongs in the Dark Ages.
M** wrote: ...belief in the Bible comes by revelation which cannot be found or proven faulty.
Pointless claim, the result of fantasy and the fear of death.
M** wrote: Did you come up with that one by means of the senses?
What do you mean by "Did"? What do you mean by "you"? What do you mean by "come"? What do you mean by "up"? What do you mean by "with"? What do you mean by "that"? What do you mean by "one"? What do you mean by "by"? What do you mean by "means"? What do you mean by "of"? What do you mean by "the"? What do you mean by "senses"? Please explain.
What's the difference between a banana?
BB post. As "WilliamB". On Satan as a state of mind/ego
So Satan doesn't exist as an actual being, it's more a state of mind in human beings? That's fine by me if you want to call it Satan, but usually when people deny the existence of Satan they are denying an entity, a "person" if you will, which is not just symbolic of evil but an actual, concrete, conscious, living being. So when an atheist says "Satan doesn't exist", s/he is merely denying the literal existence of that mythological entity, the same as one would deny the existence of unicorns, centaurs, or dragons. S/He is not denying the existence of evil or the potential for evil in human beings, or the concept of evil in the abstract sense; or any concept, for that matter, which s/he happens to associate with Satan.
j***** wrote: Satan = ego.
Okay, so the ego to you is altogether a bad thing? Would that be correct? Because if this is what you are saying then you happen to be wrong. Ego is, among other things, the recognition of the self as being distinct from others. There's a lot more to it than that. The following is a quote from Britannica Online, in reference to something called "strong ego":
A strong ego is exhibited in the following characteristics: objectivity in one's apprehension of the external world and in self-knowledge (insight); capacity to organize activities over longer time spans (allowing for the maintenance of schedules and plans); and the ability to follow resolves while choosing decisively among alternatives.
Do you object to any of the characteristics listed in the above quote? I certainly don't. The fact is, the ego is a necessary part of who we are. I'd even venture to say that it plays a major role in inspiring you to participate here. Anyone who struggles to survive has a good streak of ego running through their veins, whether they will admit to it or not. On a fundamental level the ego is simply the recognition of one's own right to exist.
***
To go back to the OP: Satan is a symbol for me as well, in the sense that he is a fictional character which is representative of human characteristics and not a real living being. Satan represents rebellion against tyranny and absolute power. In my obviously non-literal view, Satan doesn't want to become God, he wants to dethrone a tyrant. I think it's unjustified to regard opposition to absolute power as a desire for absolute power. One can oppose absolute power as a means of obtaining freedom for one's self and others. Sure, we're told that God is perfect and just in all things, and so while he has absolute power he couldn't possibly be corrupt in any way; but this simply doesn't follow from the Bible, at least not for me.
In order to think of the Biblical Jehovah as perfect and just, I'd have to abandon everything I've ever heard or understood about perfection or justice. A perfect being would not be jealous. A perfect being would not require eternal positive reinforcement from his creations, nor would he be compelled to demand it by intimidation or bloody displays of power. A perfect being would have no reason to repent of his own actions. A perfect entity would not create a race of beings only to allow each and every one of them to be born into corruption; he would not allow every infant ever conceived to be brought into the world in immediate need of forgiveness. Such a notion is a travesty of justice.
So naturally the Satan character, since he stands in adamant opposition to the Biblical God, seems virtuous, even heroic. He sacrifices his comfortable existence for an eternity of torment and pain, on principle. Christ endured pain and torment for a few hours, a single day, in order to save people from punishments they never deserved for wrongdoings they never committed. Satan endures pain and torment forever, in order to remind people that they have the right to exist and to seek happiness and meaning on their own terms.
Of course that's a highly romanticized view, and I don't believe Satan exists. I don't believe that the Biblical God exists either, but that isn't to say that I flatly deny the possibility of something existing which is God-like in nature. As inconsistent and mysterious as his appearances in the Bible are, in a lot of ways I agree with j***** that Satan represents the ego; it's just that I don't equate the ego with evil.
***
O Prince de l'exil, a qui l'on a fait tort,
Et qui, vaincu, toujours te redresses plus fort...
- Clarles Baudelaire
Note: The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels & God, and at liberty when of Devils & Hell, is because he was a true Poet and of the Devils party without knowing it.
- William Blake
j***** wrote: Satan = ego.
Okay, so the ego to you is altogether a bad thing? Would that be correct? Because if this is what you are saying then you happen to be wrong. Ego is, among other things, the recognition of the self as being distinct from others. There's a lot more to it than that. The following is a quote from Britannica Online, in reference to something called "strong ego":
A strong ego is exhibited in the following characteristics: objectivity in one's apprehension of the external world and in self-knowledge (insight); capacity to organize activities over longer time spans (allowing for the maintenance of schedules and plans); and the ability to follow resolves while choosing decisively among alternatives.
Do you object to any of the characteristics listed in the above quote? I certainly don't. The fact is, the ego is a necessary part of who we are. I'd even venture to say that it plays a major role in inspiring you to participate here. Anyone who struggles to survive has a good streak of ego running through their veins, whether they will admit to it or not. On a fundamental level the ego is simply the recognition of one's own right to exist.
***
To go back to the OP: Satan is a symbol for me as well, in the sense that he is a fictional character which is representative of human characteristics and not a real living being. Satan represents rebellion against tyranny and absolute power. In my obviously non-literal view, Satan doesn't want to become God, he wants to dethrone a tyrant. I think it's unjustified to regard opposition to absolute power as a desire for absolute power. One can oppose absolute power as a means of obtaining freedom for one's self and others. Sure, we're told that God is perfect and just in all things, and so while he has absolute power he couldn't possibly be corrupt in any way; but this simply doesn't follow from the Bible, at least not for me.
In order to think of the Biblical Jehovah as perfect and just, I'd have to abandon everything I've ever heard or understood about perfection or justice. A perfect being would not be jealous. A perfect being would not require eternal positive reinforcement from his creations, nor would he be compelled to demand it by intimidation or bloody displays of power. A perfect being would have no reason to repent of his own actions. A perfect entity would not create a race of beings only to allow each and every one of them to be born into corruption; he would not allow every infant ever conceived to be brought into the world in immediate need of forgiveness. Such a notion is a travesty of justice.
So naturally the Satan character, since he stands in adamant opposition to the Biblical God, seems virtuous, even heroic. He sacrifices his comfortable existence for an eternity of torment and pain, on principle. Christ endured pain and torment for a few hours, a single day, in order to save people from punishments they never deserved for wrongdoings they never committed. Satan endures pain and torment forever, in order to remind people that they have the right to exist and to seek happiness and meaning on their own terms.
Of course that's a highly romanticized view, and I don't believe Satan exists. I don't believe that the Biblical God exists either, but that isn't to say that I flatly deny the possibility of something existing which is God-like in nature. As inconsistent and mysterious as his appearances in the Bible are, in a lot of ways I agree with j***** that Satan represents the ego; it's just that I don't equate the ego with evil.
***
O Prince de l'exil, a qui l'on a fait tort,
Et qui, vaincu, toujours te redresses plus fort...
- Clarles Baudelaire
Note: The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels & God, and at liberty when of Devils & Hell, is because he was a true Poet and of the Devils party without knowing it.
- William Blake
BB post. As "Servetus"
777luvsme:
2 my understanding hell burns u not physically but ur soul burns endlessly! The torcher is not like anything on the planet a person mite experience..And its all repeticous and u'll bag 4 water and pray 2 the lord 4 4giveness but nothing will save u now!! sorry spell check wont show up
Does anyone here accept the possibility that a divine and perfect Being would want any part of the above quote? Can the sentiments voiced in that quote possibly speak for the magnificent Entity who created a universe of such inconceivable magnitude and beauty? Does that sloppy and mean-spirited mess of a post pay any respect at all to the gravity of what is under discussion? Does the absence of a spell-checker make it acceptable for a person to indulge in such laziness, such disrespect for language, when that very person is purportedly trying to reach the mind of someone who claims to be lost with what is obviously such a grave and serious message?
We are talking about the damnation of a human soul, a human life subjected to unspeakable pain for all of eternity, and yet we find it acceptable to discuss such a tragedy in this careless and juvenile fashion. Is it any wonder that atheists find it so easy to make a mockery of the concept of Hell and damnation when Christians themselves are not expected to treat the subject with the seriousness it deserves, when Christians can engage in any sort of wild and adolescent speculation, when they see fit to describe the unconscionable plight of the damned in terms which would scarcely be fitting even for a teen chat room?
So the spell-checker isn't available. There are countless dictionaries online that can help with spelling, at the touch of a finger. A few seconds of your time. Is that so much to ask of someone who wishes to offer a definition of Hell, the true knowledge of which, if there is even any to be had, any humble Christian ought to recognize is solely in God's possession?
But spelling mistakes, and language that is virtually incomprehensible, aren't the real problems, they are merely the most apparent indicators of what the problem really is. Everyone makes mistakes. I suspect there are probably quite a few in this post of mine. The problem I am refering to is the casual and flippant attitude on display in this entire thread. The notion of a human being, any human being, however desperately fallen, existing for infinity in a state of unimaginable grief and pain, is not a notion that ought to be taken lightly.
Look into your hearts for a moment. If you ever took any secret pleasure in the prospect of a human life being condemned to damnation, if you ever used the notion of Hell as an occasion to gloat over an intransigent pagan or atheist, if you ever felt that you would one day take even the smallest morsel of satisfaction in the knowledge that you were right and that some unfortunate so-and-so would thereby also know that you were right, let me inform you that these feelings come from the most corrupt and ungodly marrow of your bones and ought to be purged from within you with all due haste and humility.
If you ever speak of Hell or damnation with a smile and a light heart, ask yourself why you would stand on Christ's shoulders during the hour of his greatest pain.
2 my understanding hell burns u not physically but ur soul burns endlessly! The torcher is not like anything on the planet a person mite experience..And its all repeticous and u'll bag 4 water and pray 2 the lord 4 4giveness but nothing will save u now!! sorry spell check wont show up
Does anyone here accept the possibility that a divine and perfect Being would want any part of the above quote? Can the sentiments voiced in that quote possibly speak for the magnificent Entity who created a universe of such inconceivable magnitude and beauty? Does that sloppy and mean-spirited mess of a post pay any respect at all to the gravity of what is under discussion? Does the absence of a spell-checker make it acceptable for a person to indulge in such laziness, such disrespect for language, when that very person is purportedly trying to reach the mind of someone who claims to be lost with what is obviously such a grave and serious message?
We are talking about the damnation of a human soul, a human life subjected to unspeakable pain for all of eternity, and yet we find it acceptable to discuss such a tragedy in this careless and juvenile fashion. Is it any wonder that atheists find it so easy to make a mockery of the concept of Hell and damnation when Christians themselves are not expected to treat the subject with the seriousness it deserves, when Christians can engage in any sort of wild and adolescent speculation, when they see fit to describe the unconscionable plight of the damned in terms which would scarcely be fitting even for a teen chat room?
So the spell-checker isn't available. There are countless dictionaries online that can help with spelling, at the touch of a finger. A few seconds of your time. Is that so much to ask of someone who wishes to offer a definition of Hell, the true knowledge of which, if there is even any to be had, any humble Christian ought to recognize is solely in God's possession?
But spelling mistakes, and language that is virtually incomprehensible, aren't the real problems, they are merely the most apparent indicators of what the problem really is. Everyone makes mistakes. I suspect there are probably quite a few in this post of mine. The problem I am refering to is the casual and flippant attitude on display in this entire thread. The notion of a human being, any human being, however desperately fallen, existing for infinity in a state of unimaginable grief and pain, is not a notion that ought to be taken lightly.
Look into your hearts for a moment. If you ever took any secret pleasure in the prospect of a human life being condemned to damnation, if you ever used the notion of Hell as an occasion to gloat over an intransigent pagan or atheist, if you ever felt that you would one day take even the smallest morsel of satisfaction in the knowledge that you were right and that some unfortunate so-and-so would thereby also know that you were right, let me inform you that these feelings come from the most corrupt and ungodly marrow of your bones and ought to be purged from within you with all due haste and humility.
If you ever speak of Hell or damnation with a smile and a light heart, ask yourself why you would stand on Christ's shoulders during the hour of his greatest pain.
3.05.2006
More on Freewill vs Determinism
Here's what I get from the majority of determinist arguments:
1) Everything is a "determinant", or has some degree of "causative" power (though not in the sense of a "first" cause), with the exception of a conscious being, because a conscious being isn't actually a "thing" so much as it is a sum of lots of other things, things like genetic make-up, environment, experiences, memories, desires, etcetera.
2) When we make a "choice", the feeling we have of possessing some sort of executive control over our actions is an illusion. What we sense as a decision-making process, one in which two or more courses of action seem available to us with equal potential of being actualized, is an illusion. It isn't that whatever action we do take has necessarily been "predetermined", but rather that every prior state of affairs determines the state of affairs that follow from them, and by "state of affairs" I mean every internal or external factor at work on a conscious mind or entity at every second, all the time. Therefore, to say that a person "self-determines" any action is to claim that said "person" is somehow "out of the loop", or is in some sense impervious to the constantly forward-moving, snow-balling momentum of time and events. Poetically speaking, to suggest that a person can be "self-determining" at any point in time would be tantamount to saying that such a person can side-step a tidal wave.
***
Determinists seem fixated on illustrating that there is no point at any time prior to making a decision wherein I am completely uninfluenced by any of the factors which contribute to how I decide, and that a "free" choice must be completely divested of anything resembling a reason for choosing what I choose; but in such an instance nothing resembling a decision would or could be made, "freely" or otherwise (which neither party involved in this argument is arguing for), since making a choice presupposes a set of options with forseeable consequences, negative or positive, better or worse. We can only be said to decide something if we are conscious of two or more courses of action and if there occurs a mental process of weighing alternatives . Obviously we can't weigh alternatives or make any considerations without being cognizant of what we want or intend, and being cognizant of what we want or intend presupposes that our decision must somehow be in accordance with that, and therefore influenced by that.
What I believe the free willers are saying is that, certainly, my decisions are influenced by any number of factors, but as far as which influences prove to be stronger-- at any point in time and in any circumstance whatsoever-- there is never a point, at any time prior to the choice being made,-- and I mean the precise, exact moment,-- at which the "state of affairs" is static enough for whatever choice we arrive at to have been in any true sense "determined". A choice is never truly determined until it's been made, because there's an incomprehensibly complex and enormous array of variables constantly at play across every instant in time. In my opinion it's far too disrespectful of all of these variables to sit back, after the fact, and declare that any choice whatsoever, however trivial, was the only choice that was truly available at any or all points prior to choosing.
This isn't to say that there is anything "random" among all these variables. Whatever happens, happens as a result of a prior state, or states, of affairs, -- for lack of a better term (more on that later). This seems like common sense to me and yet it's this self-evident and obvious fact which is sometimes palmed off as sufficient grounds for siding with determinism. Free willers aren't saying that any of their actions are uncaused, only that their actions, though caused, have causative power themselves. That isn't to say that because their actions have causative power they can be thought of as "first causes", or that they somehow enter the flow of events by some magical intervention having no connection or relation to prior events. What they are arguing is that there is no predetermination. Nothing is fixed absolutely, except the laws of nature themselves. Anything can happen, as long as we understand that "anything" means within the confines of physical laws, laws which don't "determine" what happens so much as establish and underlie the limited context in which things happen.
Every conscious entity that is capable of self-generated (and thinking of "self-generated" in strictly mechanical terms is fine with me for the time being) motion is therefore capable, to widely varying degrees, of molding the course of events in a manner which might not have occured were it not for its involvement. This involvement might be so trivial as to be to all intents and purposes negligible, or it might be vastly significant and impact events worldwide, as in the case of a world leader like Hitler. That isn't to say that someone like Hitler came out of a vacuum and acted without desire, reason, influence or motivation. It just means that the course his life took contributed vastly (not to mention horrendously) to the course of events in general, a course of events which would not have transpired were it not for his involvement, or, at the very least, that the course of events that would have transpired without his involvement would probably have been significantly different.
If we are saying that Hitler's birth and career (or anyone's, for that matter), was "determined" from day one because of the fixed laws of the universe, that strikes me as pure nonsense; but it doesn't seem to me that many people are arguing for predetermination. What I get from determinists is that any state of affairs is entirely the result of a prior state (or states) of affairs. What I think the free willers are saying is that while this is no doubt true, the phrase itself, "state of affairs" is misleading since it seems to refer to something individuated or "static", something which is somehow quantifiable.
I think this is the point from which stems a great deal of the disagreement among free-willers and determinists. I would gladly agree to throw the word "free" out the window since it's also midleading, and in much the same way. In the same way that nothing can be literally "free", as in unbounded, unrestrained, unlimited, there can't be anything like a literal "state" of affairs, since time is perpetually forward-moving and sweeps everything along with it. Only if time could be stopped could there be an actual "state" of affairs. It isn't that one "state" affects the next, in some sort of one-on-one linear relationship that can in any way be accurately refered to as a "chain; and "affairs" occur in a mind-numbingly vast, inter-related, and convoluted manner, making "causal chain" yet another misleading term which ought to be dispensed with, in my humble opinion.
1) Everything is a "determinant", or has some degree of "causative" power (though not in the sense of a "first" cause), with the exception of a conscious being, because a conscious being isn't actually a "thing" so much as it is a sum of lots of other things, things like genetic make-up, environment, experiences, memories, desires, etcetera.
2) When we make a "choice", the feeling we have of possessing some sort of executive control over our actions is an illusion. What we sense as a decision-making process, one in which two or more courses of action seem available to us with equal potential of being actualized, is an illusion. It isn't that whatever action we do take has necessarily been "predetermined", but rather that every prior state of affairs determines the state of affairs that follow from them, and by "state of affairs" I mean every internal or external factor at work on a conscious mind or entity at every second, all the time. Therefore, to say that a person "self-determines" any action is to claim that said "person" is somehow "out of the loop", or is in some sense impervious to the constantly forward-moving, snow-balling momentum of time and events. Poetically speaking, to suggest that a person can be "self-determining" at any point in time would be tantamount to saying that such a person can side-step a tidal wave.
***
Determinists seem fixated on illustrating that there is no point at any time prior to making a decision wherein I am completely uninfluenced by any of the factors which contribute to how I decide, and that a "free" choice must be completely divested of anything resembling a reason for choosing what I choose; but in such an instance nothing resembling a decision would or could be made, "freely" or otherwise (which neither party involved in this argument is arguing for), since making a choice presupposes a set of options with forseeable consequences, negative or positive, better or worse. We can only be said to decide something if we are conscious of two or more courses of action and if there occurs a mental process of weighing alternatives . Obviously we can't weigh alternatives or make any considerations without being cognizant of what we want or intend, and being cognizant of what we want or intend presupposes that our decision must somehow be in accordance with that, and therefore influenced by that.
What I believe the free willers are saying is that, certainly, my decisions are influenced by any number of factors, but as far as which influences prove to be stronger-- at any point in time and in any circumstance whatsoever-- there is never a point, at any time prior to the choice being made,-- and I mean the precise, exact moment,-- at which the "state of affairs" is static enough for whatever choice we arrive at to have been in any true sense "determined". A choice is never truly determined until it's been made, because there's an incomprehensibly complex and enormous array of variables constantly at play across every instant in time. In my opinion it's far too disrespectful of all of these variables to sit back, after the fact, and declare that any choice whatsoever, however trivial, was the only choice that was truly available at any or all points prior to choosing.
This isn't to say that there is anything "random" among all these variables. Whatever happens, happens as a result of a prior state, or states, of affairs, -- for lack of a better term (more on that later). This seems like common sense to me and yet it's this self-evident and obvious fact which is sometimes palmed off as sufficient grounds for siding with determinism. Free willers aren't saying that any of their actions are uncaused, only that their actions, though caused, have causative power themselves. That isn't to say that because their actions have causative power they can be thought of as "first causes", or that they somehow enter the flow of events by some magical intervention having no connection or relation to prior events. What they are arguing is that there is no predetermination. Nothing is fixed absolutely, except the laws of nature themselves. Anything can happen, as long as we understand that "anything" means within the confines of physical laws, laws which don't "determine" what happens so much as establish and underlie the limited context in which things happen.
Every conscious entity that is capable of self-generated (and thinking of "self-generated" in strictly mechanical terms is fine with me for the time being) motion is therefore capable, to widely varying degrees, of molding the course of events in a manner which might not have occured were it not for its involvement. This involvement might be so trivial as to be to all intents and purposes negligible, or it might be vastly significant and impact events worldwide, as in the case of a world leader like Hitler. That isn't to say that someone like Hitler came out of a vacuum and acted without desire, reason, influence or motivation. It just means that the course his life took contributed vastly (not to mention horrendously) to the course of events in general, a course of events which would not have transpired were it not for his involvement, or, at the very least, that the course of events that would have transpired without his involvement would probably have been significantly different.
If we are saying that Hitler's birth and career (or anyone's, for that matter), was "determined" from day one because of the fixed laws of the universe, that strikes me as pure nonsense; but it doesn't seem to me that many people are arguing for predetermination. What I get from determinists is that any state of affairs is entirely the result of a prior state (or states) of affairs. What I think the free willers are saying is that while this is no doubt true, the phrase itself, "state of affairs" is misleading since it seems to refer to something individuated or "static", something which is somehow quantifiable.
I think this is the point from which stems a great deal of the disagreement among free-willers and determinists. I would gladly agree to throw the word "free" out the window since it's also midleading, and in much the same way. In the same way that nothing can be literally "free", as in unbounded, unrestrained, unlimited, there can't be anything like a literal "state" of affairs, since time is perpetually forward-moving and sweeps everything along with it. Only if time could be stopped could there be an actual "state" of affairs. It isn't that one "state" affects the next, in some sort of one-on-one linear relationship that can in any way be accurately refered to as a "chain; and "affairs" occur in a mind-numbingly vast, inter-related, and convoluted manner, making "causal chain" yet another misleading term which ought to be dispensed with, in my humble opinion.
I think some form of compatibilism is what I'm pushing for, one which recognizes the fact that nothing happens without a cause but which also recognizes the fact that the actions of living organisms are themselves causative. And one which rejects the idea that making a choice is somehow proof that no choice was possible, which doesn't make a lick of sense.
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