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Author Topic:   Do I have a choice? (determinism vs libertarianism vs compatibilism)
JavaMan
Member (Idle past 2576 days)
Posts: 475
From: York, England
Joined: 08-05-2005


Message 166 of 210 (360515)
11-01-2006 4:23 PM
Reply to: Message 162 by Tusko
11-01-2006 11:58 AM


Re: I may be some time...
although I don't know who Tom Cobley is
It's an allusion to a folk song (Widdecombe Fair?), where a line of people going to the fair gets longer and longer as more and more people join in. Each round ends with the line '...and Uncle Tom Cobley and all'.

'I can't even fit all my wife's clothes into a suitcase for travelling. So you want me to believe we're going to put all of the planets and stars and everything into a sandwich bag?' - q3psycho on the Big Bang

This message is a reply to:
 Message 162 by Tusko, posted 11-01-2006 11:58 AM Tusko has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 167 by Tusko, posted 11-01-2006 4:28 PM JavaMan has not replied

  
Tusko
Member (Idle past 358 days)
Posts: 615
From: London, UK
Joined: 10-01-2004


Message 167 of 210 (360518)
11-01-2006 4:28 PM
Reply to: Message 166 by JavaMan
11-01-2006 4:23 PM


Re: I may be some time...
You are right - I just looked it up. I'm sorry I don't know the song at all. I really like folk songs; I'm an especial fan of sea-shanties. Living in London I'm lucky enough to have a few odd little clubs that I'm able to attend that play odd little forgotten folk songs.
I hope you have a really good holiday.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 166 by JavaMan, posted 11-01-2006 4:23 PM JavaMan has not replied

  
JavaMan
Member (Idle past 2576 days)
Posts: 475
From: York, England
Joined: 08-05-2005


Message 168 of 210 (362552)
11-08-2006 3:58 AM
Reply to: Message 161 by Tusko
11-01-2006 11:46 AM


Re: Hard Determinism isn't Science
OK. Back to the fray.
I don't see why the burden of proof should be placed an determinists.
...
What I'm really interested in right now is your comment that you thought determinism was a comparitavely crude way of understanding cognitive processes. I'm very interested in why you think this is.
Don't misunderstand me. I'm a determinist too. What I'm objecting to is hard determinism.
Maybe you'll understand my objection better if I give you a bit of historical context. For the last fifty years or so, academic psychology has been dominated by behaviourism, a theory of human behaviour that attempts to explain behaviour in terms of simple, deterministic stimulus-response mechanisms. It was so dominant, so all-pervading, that it was pretty much impossible for several decades for any respectable psychologist to investigate cognition (because cognition was considered a consequence of deterministic stimulus-response mechanisms, and so was irrelevant to an understanding of the causes of behaviour). Fifteen years ago an article like Velmans would have been inconceivable.
But to me the beliefs we have are the map that gets us hopefully from where we are to where we want to be. We can't use someone else's map. We can't choose to change our map either, as far as I can see. We can just get more insight into our decision-making by trying to understand that map and perhaps watch it as it shifts as we age.
The map isn't the landscape (as jar is fond of saying), and it's certainly not the same as me walking through the landscape (if it were, how could I ever get lost?).
Consider the following two examples:
1. I sometimes make mistakes in multiplication or in spelling, especially when I'm rushed or I'm not paying attention. I have difficulty understanding how this could be the case if my mental processes were as straightforward as you seem to believe. I know how to multiply 7 by 16, how to spell misconceived, so how come one day I'll get them right, and another day I'll make a mistake, when the only difference in those cases is the amount of attention I'm paying to the task? Can you explain this phenomenon with your model of cognition?
2. How do you explain the behaviour of someone giving up an addiction? If I'm a smoker, for example, my preference every day is to smoke a cigarette (or several), but if I'm giving up, I fight that preference in order to achieve a long term goal. Not smoking, at least for the first few weeks, is an act of will. In the long term, though, what I'm doing is re-conditioning myself, re-routing the soft-wiring that determines my behaviour ('choos[ing] to change our map' in your terms).
The fundamental flaw of hard determinism, as far as I'm concerned, is that it treats cognitive processes as a special case, purely as effects in a chain of cause and effect. In the real physical world, any phenomenon can have causal relations too.
I see subjective experience as part of the physical world, having causes as well as well as being caused. To a hard determinist, subjective experience is an isolated bubble, peripheral to the physical world.
Edited by JavaMan, : Fisnished off after interruption

'I can't even fit all my wife's clothes into a suitcase for travelling. So you want me to believe we're going to put all of the planets and stars and everything into a sandwich bag?' - q3psycho on the Big Bang

This message is a reply to:
 Message 161 by Tusko, posted 11-01-2006 11:46 AM Tusko has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 170 by Tusko, posted 11-10-2006 5:31 AM JavaMan has replied
 Message 172 by DominionSeraph, posted 11-14-2006 12:39 AM JavaMan has replied

  
JavaMan
Member (Idle past 2576 days)
Posts: 475
From: York, England
Joined: 08-05-2005


Message 169 of 210 (362586)
11-08-2006 7:40 AM
Reply to: Message 165 by DominionSeraph
11-01-2006 1:15 PM


What universe...
Time is included in the universe.
What you will choose is already determined. Since its already included, there's no wait. (and what timestream would the universe be waiting in, anyway?)
What universe are you living in?
I don't know about you, but time is a one-way street for me. I can't go back into the past, and I can only go forward into the future one step at a time.

'I can't even fit all my wife's clothes into a suitcase for travelling. So you want me to believe we're going to put all of the planets and stars and everything into a sandwich bag?' - q3psycho on the Big Bang

This message is a reply to:
 Message 165 by DominionSeraph, posted 11-01-2006 1:15 PM DominionSeraph has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 171 by DominionSeraph, posted 11-14-2006 12:13 AM JavaMan has replied

  
Tusko
Member (Idle past 358 days)
Posts: 615
From: London, UK
Joined: 10-01-2004


Message 170 of 210 (363025)
11-10-2006 5:31 AM
Reply to: Message 168 by JavaMan
11-08-2006 3:58 AM


Re: Hard Determinism isn't Science
Oh god... I don't know where my reply has gone so I'm going to have to write it again... grr...
Firstly - I've read more of the article now. Its very enjoyable but I fear I'm not understanding the finer points of his argument because I don't have specific enough knowledge. I love it when he lays into people he perceives have misread him though - priceless!
I've always accepted that there are very smart people out there who know more about the subject who have opposing views to mine. Its just that I'm still having trouble coming to terms these kinds of attitudes towards decision-making.
I don't see a problem with either of your examples that you believe might cause a problem for someone who sees the choice-making system from my perspective.
The smoking one doesn't seem problematic to me. You will only consider giving up as a possibility in very certain circumstances. For instance - if you live in a culture that believes tobacco is addictive... and that addiction is bad... etc. If you classify yourself as addicted, and you believe addiction to be bad, or if you can't afford to support your habit any more, then you are developing beliefs that, if they are strong enough, will become sufficiently strong to counter the urge to smoke more. Where do these beliefs come from? I think they are largely external, learned things.
I'm a bit unsure how the first one (spelling mistakes) relates to free choice - because mistakes are by definition involuntary. I assume you chose it then more as a means of exploring my model of mind.* The thing is, I'm not sure if the process of cognition is entirely relevant to the question we are addressing. This may sound beyond the pail (pale?) to you, but let me try to explain.
Assuming that you are right and there is a cognitive process that allows free choice, I'm speculating that in practice you would be as constrained as someone who was just a behaviourist input and response machine. The learned beliefs that you hold are the scaffolding of your sense of self - your sense of reality. This is what I was trying to talk about when I was talking about the maps. I'm not sure if I was clear enough. Our beliefs are our map of reality. I mean this in a jar-ist way. They merely discribe it - if our beliefs are sufficient to help us see where dangers lie then great. But we don't have any real access to reality.
Okay, I'm going off on one. All I mean is, how can you act contrary to your beliefs? Why would you want to? Many of your beliefs keep you alive from hour to hour. All I'm saying is that there isn't an aspect of our lives, our decision-making, which isn't scaffolded and I would argue, determined by these beliefs. Is there?
*I'm not sure if this is my model of mind, but just say it is - even then, I don't see a problem in the face of spelling mistakes. I speculate it might work something like this: external pressures (time constraints) make you use a different, less precise way to work out a sum that gives a quicker but less accurate result. Or if it comes to spelling, you use general spelling or syntax rules that are rong in a specific instance, rather than bothering to search your memory for the correct, specific spelling of the particular word.
Edited by Tusko, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 168 by JavaMan, posted 11-08-2006 3:58 AM JavaMan has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 173 by JavaMan, posted 11-14-2006 3:42 AM Tusko has replied

  
DominionSeraph
Member (Idle past 5011 days)
Posts: 365
From: on High
Joined: 01-26-2005


Message 171 of 210 (363687)
11-14-2006 12:13 AM
Reply to: Message 169 by JavaMan
11-08-2006 7:40 AM


Re: What universe...
JavaMan writes:
I don't know about you, but time is a one-way street for me. I can't go back into the past, and I can only go forward into the future one step at a time.
Your limitations are irrelevant.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 169 by JavaMan, posted 11-08-2006 7:40 AM JavaMan has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 174 by JavaMan, posted 11-14-2006 3:44 AM DominionSeraph has replied

  
DominionSeraph
Member (Idle past 5011 days)
Posts: 365
From: on High
Joined: 01-26-2005


Message 172 of 210 (363690)
11-14-2006 12:39 AM
Reply to: Message 168 by JavaMan
11-08-2006 3:58 AM


Re: Hard Determinism isn't Science
JavaMan writes:
The fundamental flaw of hard determinism, as far as I'm concerned, is that it treats cognitive processes as a special case, purely as effects in a chain of cause and effect. In the real physical world, any phenomenon can have causal relations too.
You don't understand the difference between hardware and software?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 168 by JavaMan, posted 11-08-2006 3:58 AM JavaMan has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 175 by JavaMan, posted 11-14-2006 3:45 AM DominionSeraph has replied

  
JavaMan
Member (Idle past 2576 days)
Posts: 475
From: York, England
Joined: 08-05-2005


Message 173 of 210 (363702)
11-14-2006 3:42 AM
Reply to: Message 170 by Tusko
11-10-2006 5:31 AM


Re: Hard Determinism isn't Science
I haven't forgotten about our discussion. I'm mulling things over. I've also just got to the point in Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding where he's discussing free will, so I want to digest his arguments as well.

'I can't even fit all my wife's clothes into a suitcase for travelling. So you want me to believe we're going to put all of the planets and stars and everything into a sandwich bag?' - q3psycho on the Big Bang

This message is a reply to:
 Message 170 by Tusko, posted 11-10-2006 5:31 AM Tusko has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 176 by Tusko, posted 11-14-2006 9:59 AM JavaMan has replied

  
JavaMan
Member (Idle past 2576 days)
Posts: 475
From: York, England
Joined: 08-05-2005


Message 174 of 210 (363703)
11-14-2006 3:44 AM
Reply to: Message 171 by DominionSeraph
11-14-2006 12:13 AM


Re: What universe...
I don't know about you, but time is a one-way street for me. I can't go back into the past, and I can only go forward into the future one step at a time.
Your limitations are irrelevant.
Irrelevant to who?

'I can't even fit all my wife's clothes into a suitcase for travelling. So you want me to believe we're going to put all of the planets and stars and everything into a sandwich bag?' - q3psycho on the Big Bang

This message is a reply to:
 Message 171 by DominionSeraph, posted 11-14-2006 12:13 AM DominionSeraph has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 177 by DominionSeraph, posted 11-15-2006 6:07 AM JavaMan has replied

  
JavaMan
Member (Idle past 2576 days)
Posts: 475
From: York, England
Joined: 08-05-2005


Message 175 of 210 (363704)
11-14-2006 3:45 AM
Reply to: Message 172 by DominionSeraph
11-14-2006 12:39 AM


Re: Hard Determinism isn't Science
The fundamental flaw of hard determinism, as far as I'm concerned, is that it treats cognitive processes as a special case, purely as effects in a chain of cause and effect. In the real physical world, any phenomenon can have causal relations too.
You don't understand the difference between hardware and software?
Yes I do. What's your point?

'I can't even fit all my wife's clothes into a suitcase for travelling. So you want me to believe we're going to put all of the planets and stars and everything into a sandwich bag?' - q3psycho on the Big Bang

This message is a reply to:
 Message 172 by DominionSeraph, posted 11-14-2006 12:39 AM DominionSeraph has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 178 by DominionSeraph, posted 11-15-2006 6:10 AM JavaMan has replied

  
Tusko
Member (Idle past 358 days)
Posts: 615
From: London, UK
Joined: 10-01-2004


Message 176 of 210 (363729)
11-14-2006 9:59 AM
Reply to: Message 173 by JavaMan
11-14-2006 3:42 AM


Re: Hard Determinism isn't Science
I'm really glad that you are still thinking. I've never read Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Perhaps I'd better give it a go myself...
In the meantime, I've thought of another way of talking about it while I was walking along Chancery Lane. Maybe I've said this before, but here goes....
I consider people rational beings. I don't mean rational in an objective sense (I've done my fair share of really stupid things in my time), but rather rational in a subjective sense. That is to say, that every decision we make might not improve our lot, or the lot of others, but nonetheless it is enacted because some part of us believes, consciously or unconsciously that it is the most appropriate course of action at the time.
Some people -- very violent men for instance -- will believe that attacking others is the most appropriate course of action even when, in an objective sense, it is probably more dangerous in the short term and more likely to lead society's application of restrictive measures like prison in the long term.
However, they will persist in this behaviour until they die, unless that belief is changed. I can see how change might be precipitated from without - by a kind of societal reprogramming, to put it crudely. But for a person to change independently, I can only see this as possible if there is already a seed of the desire to live a more peacable life planted in them.
RIGHT! Sudden flash! I get why Locke's relevant here - Tabula Rasa, right? Aha! Right, I think I'd better get on and read that then, as soon as I can find the time.
Anyway. I used the example of a violent man - but I feel like that same kind of thing applies universally.
I don't know if that's helped you understand my position at all, but Its helped me. Cheers!

This message is a reply to:
 Message 173 by JavaMan, posted 11-14-2006 3:42 AM JavaMan has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 181 by JavaMan, posted 11-15-2006 8:02 AM Tusko has replied

  
DominionSeraph
Member (Idle past 5011 days)
Posts: 365
From: on High
Joined: 01-26-2005


Message 177 of 210 (363859)
11-15-2006 6:07 AM
Reply to: Message 174 by JavaMan
11-14-2006 3:44 AM


Re: What universe...
JavaMan writes:
Irrelevant to who?
To who?
Don't even know the meaning of 'relevant', eh?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 174 by JavaMan, posted 11-14-2006 3:44 AM JavaMan has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 179 by JavaMan, posted 11-15-2006 7:24 AM DominionSeraph has replied

  
DominionSeraph
Member (Idle past 5011 days)
Posts: 365
From: on High
Joined: 01-26-2005


Message 178 of 210 (363860)
11-15-2006 6:10 AM
Reply to: Message 175 by JavaMan
11-14-2006 3:45 AM


JavaMan writes:
Yes I do. What's your point?
No you don't, or you wouldn't be asking that.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 175 by JavaMan, posted 11-14-2006 3:45 AM JavaMan has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 180 by JavaMan, posted 11-15-2006 7:31 AM DominionSeraph has replied

  
JavaMan
Member (Idle past 2576 days)
Posts: 475
From: York, England
Joined: 08-05-2005


Message 179 of 210 (363863)
11-15-2006 7:24 AM
Reply to: Message 177 by DominionSeraph
11-15-2006 6:07 AM


Re: What universe...
Irrelevant to who?
To who?
Don't even know the meaning of 'relevant', eh?
You're a bit rude, aren't you?
Do you want to engage in debate, or do you just want to make snide remarks?

'I can't even fit all my wife's clothes into a suitcase for travelling. So you want me to believe we're going to put all of the planets and stars and everything into a sandwich bag?' - q3psycho on the Big Bang

This message is a reply to:
 Message 177 by DominionSeraph, posted 11-15-2006 6:07 AM DominionSeraph has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 182 by DominionSeraph, posted 11-15-2006 8:08 AM JavaMan has not replied

  
JavaMan
Member (Idle past 2576 days)
Posts: 475
From: York, England
Joined: 08-05-2005


Message 180 of 210 (363865)
11-15-2006 7:31 AM
Reply to: Message 178 by DominionSeraph
11-15-2006 6:10 AM


Maybe you could explain
Yes I do. What's your point?
No you don't, or you wouldn't be asking that.
Maybe you could explain why your analogy with hardware and software is relevant to my argument? Here's the original argument for reference:
The fundamental flaw of hard determinism, as far as I'm concerned, is that it treats cognitive processes as a special case, purely as effects in a chain of cause and effect. In the real physical world, any phenomenon can have causal relations too.
You don't understand the difference between hardware and software?
Edited by JavaMan, : typo

'I can't even fit all my wife's clothes into a suitcase for travelling. So you want me to believe we're going to put all of the planets and stars and everything into a sandwich bag?' - q3psycho on the Big Bang

This message is a reply to:
 Message 178 by DominionSeraph, posted 11-15-2006 6:10 AM DominionSeraph has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 183 by DominionSeraph, posted 11-15-2006 8:47 AM JavaMan has replied

  
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