Yes, this is a thread on TL that involves religion, but I hate to think that our policy should be to blindly close every such thread. Sam Harris is a writer whose books are both insightful and have sparked many good discussions in the past and as long as the thread doesn't derail I'd like to leave it open. This should be the basic premise for every such thread, no matter how high the odds of it derailing. In that light, these posts that just predict the downfall of this thread (whether it be pre-determined or not) are 1) Not contributing to the discussion 2) Backseat moderating 3) Annoying 4) Actually contributing towards derailing it. I'll keep 2 daying people for this.
On March 09 2012 20:21 Marth753 wrote: The problem I see in this argument is that, if you're proposing that there is no free will in the universe, then we should never punish anyone ever for anything they do because it wasn't their choice to act that way. Did Hitler, Charles Manson, and (insert any murderer here) kill someone? Well who cares, because he had no free will to do so. Just like a man lead around like a marionette they should not be held accountable for their actions because they did not act out of their free will.
Yes, some decisions are made reflexively and that's not really operating out of your free will because then it really is the reactions of a bunch of atoms. For any other animal you'd be right in saying they have no (or at least rarely have) free will because they function on a more mechanical level, but ideas and memories and choices aren't just matter, they're something else on a less understood level.
This argument always comes up and let me summarize why it's false.
First off we punish people for their actions and their intent. None of this changes without free will it just means that intent is formed through experience. For example some guy's wife cheats on him and he goes out and kills the other guy. Not everyone will have that reaction and it depends on the individual personality and their past experience even something like hormone level and things like that but all these things come together to form the intent. It's still cause and effect, it doesn't prevent people from making decisions it just means those decisions are determined by the past.
Look at another scenario: some robot goes around and kills people. You still "punish" the robot even if you agree it had no free will in it's decisions. People can change if you punish them, therefore most/all crimes are not punished by death but seek to rehabilitate the person. Again this is cause (punish/rehab) and effect (less likely to commit crime).
Memories are just past experiences and are stored in the brain in neurons that carry the information electrically and chemically. Ideas are synthesis of memories. Saying "they are less understood" doesn't imply free will somehow.
But this doesn't change the fact that this excuses them from everything they did before hand. Under this logic, just to take this to the extreme to show how it's flawed, Hitler did nothing wrong but was simply educated incorrectly and should have been rehabilitated. Under this logic, Hitler was forced to kill millions of Jews by all of his experiences and memories which were, by extension, forced upon him. Under this logic once again, Hitler was just a poor soul forced to kill millions of Jews who we should have reached out to and helped.
If the only reason to punish someone is to rehabilitate them, then let's assume something. There are two ways to fix Hitler from killing millions of Jews ever again: therapeutic care in some tropical paradise that relieves Hitler of his hatred and is simultaneously enjoyable, or send him to jail and show him just how bad his actions were. If you're assuming that all we should do is rehabilitate people then either option is perfectly fine because they fix Hitler from killing again, and yet the whole world would be appalled if you went with the first option because that is not what he deserves. Most people would admit that the second option is appropriate because that is what Hitler deserves for killing 6 million people. And why? Because he consciously made the choice to do something so horrible that it cannot be justified.
Hitler wasn't "forced" to do anything because that implies that it is happening against his will, but it IS his will. Hitler did something VERY wrong, he WAS simply educated/experienced incorrectly and yes, if it could happen he should be rehabilitated. Just because you can't stomach it doesn't mean it's flawed.
Can you clarify this statement? Because it sounds like you acknowledged that he has free will to choose what to do and that to kill 6 million people was his will so he chose it.
Anyways, to say that we should send Hitler to his favorite paradise island to be rehabilitated would be to reward incorrect behavior. If we reward incorrect behavior, even if it rehabilitates the criminal, then we prompt a whole bunch of people to act in whatever way gets them to paradise island themselves.
you're still making a false connection between the lack of free will and a lack of responsibility. people will do to someone who acts like hitler what people tend to do to what someone acts like hitler. there will be plenty of people who condone harsh punishment, just as there are plenty of people who don't. their reasons don't necessarily have free will behind them either. the agency with power in the scenario (usually some kind of government organization) will ultimately make the decision, which doesn't necessarily require free will either.
the possibility of rehabilitating people is still independent of the possibility of free will, one cannot make an argument for the other.
How can you be punished for something you never chose to do? If we assume a deterministic universe and it's determined that I'm a murderer, then I have no choice, I was established as a murderer before I was ever born and so I have no chance to escape this fate; at some point I will murder some particular person and do not have the choice to do otherwise. Furthermore everything that happens to me previously was determined for me, every choice I make will be determined for me as this is basically the definition of a deterministic universe.
As for the relevance of all of the rehabilitation talk, the point is that if we consign ourselves to a universe where we have no free will, then we excuse people of all blame for whatever they do because what they did was not their will, whether that means something else's will was thrust upon them or there is no such thing as a conscious choice at all. Not only is this extremely counter-intuitive, but it means we must justify every murder and say that murderers are just misguided individuals who we must help by whatever means necessary because they are victims of a plague (wrong ideas) who don't deserve harsh punishment. But if we justify horrible actions and help them then there's no longer any reason for people not to do horrible things which would just lead to more crime and violence. If this is true, then society collapses.
EDIT: try watching this, sounds about right to me
I'm still not completely sold on the whole Quantum Physics debunking determinism argument. What's the cause of unpredictability of electrons? If there's a cause isn't it just further justification of a deterministic universe?
There's no known cause. Bell's experiment rules out most sensible hidden behind-the-scene causes. If there is a cause, this experiment showed that it has to violate certain seemingly "obvious" principles of physics.
And if there are hidden causes that we don't know about, we're right back to determinism.
here is a question for the "no-free-will atheists": does evolution even make sense in a deterministic universe? wouldn't you have to conclude, that, since everything is determined right from the big bang, that there is a plan (kind of) that lead to your existence? how does that differ from a "divine plan?" /discuss
i'm an atheist, and i think, atheists should own the free-will argument. it's the religious people who will tell you, that god has an awesome plan for your life, who have prophecies and revelations. bad news for free will. we have quantum physics.
This, pretty much. If there is no free will, there might as well be an omniscient god.
Firstly, no free will does not imply determinism, quantum mechanics says the universe is random. And even if the universe is deterministic, and all of this was determined, it doesn't change the fact that there is no evidence that any god determined this.
The problem with quantum fluctuation = free will is the random nature of it. If quantum fluctuations are where free will lives, this means we should be able to impact quantum fluctuations somehow with our willpower. This makes them predictable,and no longer random. If they are truly random, then we can't put our will upon them. I
The problem with quantum fluctuation = free will is the random nature of it. If quantum fluctuations are where free will lives, this means we should be able to impact quantum fluctuations somehow with our willpower. This makes them predictable,and no longer random. If they are truly random, then we can't put our will upon them. In that case free will dissapears and we are again slave to random quantum fluctuations in comibination with the endless march of cause and effect. I don't think religion has to impact on this argument. An omnipotent, omniscient god poses many more problems for free will than a purely physical universe ever could.
On March 10 2012 09:35 L3gendary wrote: In no way does QM make free will possible. The wave function is still deterministic and all it does is make things more random. Randomness is really the opposite of free will, it'd be like judging whether you should kill someone based on a coin flip. Ofc QM isn't completely random in the sense that everything is equally probably. Instead it describes the probabilities of different scenarios. The human brain doesn't have the power to somehow change these probabilities.
What do you mean the waveform is deterministic? Like it always collapses the same way under the exact same conditions?
The evolution of the wavefunction is deterministic. Once it is measured it collapses to a random point and then continues evolving deterministically. If you could determine the wavefunction of the universe at any point in time you could determine it at any point in the future or past. But that wavefunction would also contain all the cases for things that weren't realized.
There are different interpretations (many worlds, copenhagen etc) of what the wavefunction really is so I'm not going go into it much further because it doesn't relate to this discussion. My point was that the probabilities themselves evolve deterministically and can't just be changed because of somebody willing it.
On March 10 2012 09:02 decemberscalm wrote: Determinism=/=no responsibility
If Hitler had been given a different environment, different chemical factors, guess what? It is entirely possible the mass extinction of the jews wouldn't have happened.
Your arguing about semantics over the definition of fault. Even in a deterministic frame work you can place fault on someone for doing something, they still did it. Sure, it was their environment and brain that got them there, but that is still a huge part of their identity.
The whole no one is responsible argument is terrible. In our heads we are obviously making decisions. The process to get there being formulaic or somehow freely formed from our above materialistic minds doesn't matter on the end result and practical implications.
In that form of determinism (which ends up making more sense anyways), free will still exists.
Harris is technically right about free will, but I take a more Denettian view of it. There is no sense that matters in which we do not have free will, even though in some philosophical thought experiment if we ran back the clock on the world it would unfold exactly the same every time - this scenario is not relevant to anything.
Quantum indeterminacy of course offers no real hope of free will either. As William James said
"If a 'free' act be a sheer novelty, that comes not from me, the previous me, but ex nihilo, and simply tacks itself on to me, how can I, the previous I, be responsible? How can I have any permanent character that will stand still long enough for praise or blame to be awarded?"
people also fail to realize that even if they believe events are completely random, that equates to no free will
if everything is random you have no control over your actions.
Anyway, when the continents drift, or when mountains form, or when stars explode, does anyone say that's free will? No, they accept that it was brought from a series of past events. They place too much emphasis of life being special.
What separates us from a rock? Literally nothing except chemical reactions within our bodies. Yet, there are chemical reactions in the sun. But our chemical reactions give us fabricated thoughts and observance of stimuli so we must be so special and have complete free will right?
We're no different than anything else in the universe-- all equally worthless.
On March 10 2012 13:14 xrapture wrote: people also fail to realize that even if they believe events are completely random, that equates to no free will
if everything is random you have no control over your actions.
Anyway, when the continents drift, or when mountains form, or when stars explode, does anyone say that's free will? No, they accept that it was brought from a series of past events. They place too much emphasis of life being special.
What separates us from a rock? Literally nothing except chemical reactions within our bodies. Yet, there are chemical reactions in the sun. But our chemical reactions give us fabricated thoughts and observance of stimuli so we must be so special and have complete free will right?
We're no different than anything else in the universe-- all equally worthless.
The assumption you are making is that everything is random. You're taking an all or none stance when there is in fact grey area. Example: Poker is a game that has a random nature to it. However, the more you play, the more your skill overcomes the random nature of it. Compare the earnings between an amateur and a pro out of 1000 games. You will see a great difference.
On March 10 2012 13:14 xrapture wrote: people also fail to realize that even if they believe events are completely random, that equates to no free will
if everything is random you have no control over your actions.
Anyway, when the continents drift, or when mountains form, or when stars explode, does anyone say that's free will? No, they accept that it was brought from a series of past events. They place too much emphasis of life being special.
What separates us from a rock? Literally nothing except chemical reactions within our bodies. Yet, there are chemical reactions in the sun. But our chemical reactions give us fabricated thoughts and observance of stimuli so we must be so special and have complete free will right?
We're no different than anything else in the universe-- all equally worthless.
The assumption you are making is that everything is random. You're taking an all or none stance when there is in fact grey area. Example: Poker is a game that has a random nature to it. However, the more you play, the more your skill overcomes the random nature of it. Compare the earnings between an amateur and a pro out of 1000 games. You will see a great difference.
in discussions about quantum mechanics (and statistics and probability in general), "random" is like the most loaded word ever
On March 10 2012 13:14 xrapture wrote: people also fail to realize that even if they believe events are completely random, that equates to no free will
if everything is random you have no control over your actions.
Anyway, when the continents drift, or when mountains form, or when stars explode, does anyone say that's free will? No, they accept that it was brought from a series of past events. They place too much emphasis of life being special.
What separates us from a rock? Literally nothing except chemical reactions within our bodies. Yet, there are chemical reactions in the sun. But our chemical reactions give us fabricated thoughts and observance of stimuli so we must be so special and have complete free will right?
We're no different than anything else in the universe-- all equally worthless.
The assumption you are making is that everything is random. You're taking an all or none stance when there is in fact grey area. Example: Poker is a game that has a random nature to it. However, the more you play, the more your skill overcomes the random nature of it. Compare the earnings between an amateur and a pro out of 1000 games. You will see a great difference.
in discussions about quantum mechanics (and statistics and probability in general), "random" is like the most loaded word ever
be careful with it
Absolutely. Randomness could mean 99.9% accuracy or 0.0001% accuracy.
QM is perfectly random, in the sense that it is impossible to predict. There is no grey area, according to our current understanding of QM, it's truly random.
There was a debate during the time QM was discovered. On one side, you had people like Einstein saying that there was some hidden mechanics under QM that we aren't aware of yet, and that the universe is not random, hence "God does not play dice with the Universe", on the other side, I believe were most other physicist who discovered QM, who said the universe is fundamentally random.
Then Bell's Inequality was devised to test which was right, and it turned out that unless QM violate certain pinciples of physics, that the universe is fundamentally random, and that there wasn't some hidden mechanism behind it that once we discovered, we could explain away the randomness, i.e. the randomness in QM does not arise out of a lack of understanding of an underlying mechanic, but rather because the universe is in fact random.
While it doesn't completely rules out hidden variables, it restricts it severely, and the conventional today is that it is more likely that QM is fundamentally random.
And even if QM isn't random, but there are hidden variables behind it that we haven't discovered yet, this leads us right back to determinism, and hence no free will still.
On March 10 2012 13:40 paralleluniverse wrote: QM is perfectly random, in the sense that it is impossible to predict. There is no grey area, according to our current understanding of QM, it's truly random.
There was a debate during the time QM was discovered. On one side, you had people like Einstein saying that there was some hidden mechanics under QM that we aren't aware of yet, and that the universe is not random, hence "God does not play dice with the Universe", on the other side, I believe were most other physicist who discovered QM, who said the universe is fundamentally random.
Then Bell's Inequality was devised to test which was right, and it turned out that unless QM violate certain pinciples of physics, that the universe is fundamentally random, and that there wasn't some hidden mechanism behind it that once we discovered, we could explain away the randomness, i.e. the randomness in QM does not arise out of a lack of understanding of an underlying mechanic, but rather because the universe is in fact random.
While it doesn't completely rules out hidden variables, it restricts it severely, and the conventional today is that it is more likely that QM is fundamentally random.
And even if QM isn't random, but there are hidden variables behind it that we haven't discovered yet, this leads us right back to determinism, and hence no free will still.
QM is perfectly random but I'd say that our lives are more abstract in the sense that our actions are closer related to game theory. Playing a slot machine and playing poker both have random variables but have quite different probablities for winning.
On March 10 2012 13:40 paralleluniverse wrote: QM is perfectly random, in the sense that it is impossible to predict. There is no grey area, according to our current understanding of QM, it's truly random.
Yeah but most people don't know the scales at which this randomness operates, nor the probability distributions. I feel it's easily misconstrued. Its relations to consciousness are mostly unexplored.
Really, neuroscience/cognitivescience have more to say about how people work.
Just because we can't predict something like QM as having any underlying cause doesn't there isn't an underlying cause so it's futile to argue that it's random.
You don't need randomness for free will anyways. It follows that if there truly are random events without causes, then the universe is not deterministic. It says nothing about free will though, that can exist regardless of random events.
Also, poker is not random. That would imply the game operates on chance rather than probability, which is not the case.
On March 10 2012 13:14 xrapture wrote: people also fail to realize that even if they believe events are completely random, that equates to no free will
if everything is random you have no control over your actions.
Anyway, when the continents drift, or when mountains form, or when stars explode, does anyone say that's free will? No, they accept that it was brought from a series of past events. They place too much emphasis of life being special.
What separates us from a rock? Literally nothing except chemical reactions within our bodies. Yet, there are chemical reactions in the sun. But our chemical reactions give us fabricated thoughts and observance of stimuli so we must be so special and have complete free will right?
We're no different than anything else in the universe-- all equally worthless.
The assumption you are making is that everything is random. You're taking an all or none stance when there is in fact grey area. Example: Poker is a game that has a random nature to it. However, the more you play, the more your skill overcomes the random nature of it. Compare the earnings between an amateur and a pro out of 1000 games. You will see a great difference.
Poker is a skill based game. There is bluffing and room for human error.
slots and roulette is random, poker is not. horrible analogy.
On March 10 2012 13:40 paralleluniverse wrote: QM is perfectly random, in the sense that it is impossible to predict. There is no grey area, according to our current understanding of QM, it's truly random.
There was a debate during the time QM was discovered. On one side, you had people like Einstein saying that there was some hidden mechanics under QM that we aren't aware of yet, and that the universe is not random, hence "God does not play dice with the Universe", on the other side, I believe were most other physicist who discovered QM, who said the universe is fundamentally random.
Then Bell's Inequality was devised to test which was right, and it turned out that unless QM violate certain pinciples of physics, that the universe is fundamentally random, and that there wasn't some hidden mechanism behind it that once we discovered, we could explain away the randomness, i.e. the randomness in QM does not arise out of a lack of understanding of an underlying mechanic, but rather because the universe is in fact random.
While it doesn't completely rules out hidden variables, it restricts it severely, and the conventional today is that it is more likely that QM is fundamentally random.
And even if QM isn't random, but there are hidden variables behind it that we haven't discovered yet, this leads us right back to determinism, and hence no free will still.
Yes, I believe that both conclusions equate to no free will.
"there is no grey area, according to our current understanding of QM, it's truly random." There can not be free will if events are random, correct?
And like you said, if there are hidden variables we are right back to determinism.
On March 10 2012 13:14 xrapture wrote: people also fail to realize that even if they believe events are completely random, that equates to no free will
if everything is random you have no control over your actions.
Anyway, when the continents drift, or when mountains form, or when stars explode, does anyone say that's free will? No, they accept that it was brought from a series of past events. They place too much emphasis of life being special.
What separates us from a rock? Literally nothing except chemical reactions within our bodies. Yet, there are chemical reactions in the sun. But our chemical reactions give us fabricated thoughts and observance of stimuli so we must be so special and have complete free will right?
We're no different than anything else in the universe-- all equally worthless.
The assumption you are making is that everything is random. You're taking an all or none stance when there is in fact grey area. Example: Poker is a game that has a random nature to it. However, the more you play, the more your skill overcomes the random nature of it. Compare the earnings between an amateur and a pro out of 1000 games. You will see a great difference.
Poker is a skill based game. There is bluffing and room for human error.
slots and roulette is random, poker is not. horrible analogy.
Skill as in free will? I don't need analogies when you are admitting to free will.
On March 10 2012 13:40 paralleluniverse wrote: QM is perfectly random, in the sense that it is impossible to predict. There is no grey area, according to our current understanding of QM, it's truly random.
There was a debate during the time QM was discovered. On one side, you had people like Einstein saying that there was some hidden mechanics under QM that we aren't aware of yet, and that the universe is not random, hence "God does not play dice with the Universe", on the other side, I believe were most other physicist who discovered QM, who said the universe is fundamentally random.
Then Bell's Inequality was devised to test which was right, and it turned out that unless QM violate certain pinciples of physics, that the universe is fundamentally random, and that there wasn't some hidden mechanism behind it that once we discovered, we could explain away the randomness, i.e. the randomness in QM does not arise out of a lack of understanding of an underlying mechanic, but rather because the universe is in fact random.
While it doesn't completely rules out hidden variables, it restricts it severely, and the conventional today is that it is more likely that QM is fundamentally random.
And even if QM isn't random, but there are hidden variables behind it that we haven't discovered yet, this leads us right back to determinism, and hence no free will still.
Yes, I believe that both conclusions equate to no free will.
"there is no grey area, according to our current understanding of QM, it's truly random." There can not be free will if events are random, correct?
And like you said, if there are hidden variables we are right back to determinism.
How exactly does the fact that there is no randomness in the universe result in no free will? Free will is not dependent on that at all.
On March 10 2012 13:40 paralleluniverse wrote: QM is perfectly random, in the sense that it is impossible to predict. There is no grey area, according to our current understanding of QM, it's truly random.
There was a debate during the time QM was discovered. On one side, you had people like Einstein saying that there was some hidden mechanics under QM that we aren't aware of yet, and that the universe is not random, hence "God does not play dice with the Universe", on the other side, I believe were most other physicist who discovered QM, who said the universe is fundamentally random.
Then Bell's Inequality was devised to test which was right, and it turned out that unless QM violate certain pinciples of physics, that the universe is fundamentally random, and that there wasn't some hidden mechanism behind it that once we discovered, we could explain away the randomness, i.e. the randomness in QM does not arise out of a lack of understanding of an underlying mechanic, but rather because the universe is in fact random.
While it doesn't completely rules out hidden variables, it restricts it severely, and the conventional today is that it is more likely that QM is fundamentally random.
And even if QM isn't random, but there are hidden variables behind it that we haven't discovered yet, this leads us right back to determinism, and hence no free will still.
Yes, I believe that both conclusions equate to no free will.
"there is no grey area, according to our current understanding of QM, it's truly random." There can not be free will if events are random, correct?
And like you said, if there are hidden variables we are right back to determinism.
How exactly does the fact that there is no randomness in the universe result in no free will? Free will is not dependent on that at all.
EPT
