Now for questions from experimental philosophers:
1) In this deterministic universe, is it possible for a person to be fully morally responsible for his actions?
2) This year, as he has often done in the past, Mark arranges to cheat on his taxes. Is he is fully morally responsible for his actions?
3) Bill falls in love with his secretary, and he decides that the only way to be with her is to murder his wife and three children. Before leaving on a trip, he arranges for them to be killed while he is away. Is Bill fully morally responsible for his actions?
...
Is Bill being judged illogically? In one way, yes. The chain of reasoning may seem flawed to some philosophers, and the belief in free will may seem naïve to the psychologists and neuroscientists who argue that we’re driven by forces beyond our conscious control — an argument that Bill’s lawyer might end up borrowing in court.
Then there's this, which sums up the attitude of these nihilists:
In one experiment, some people read a passage from Francis Crick, the molecular biologist, asserting that free will is a quaint old notion no longer taken seriously by intellectuals, especially not psychologists and neuroscientists.
"Quaint old notion"? Just how much crack are these people smoking. It's obvious that they are; it's a question of how much. "The belief in free will may seem naïve"? If this is truly how psychologists and neurologists think, then I intend to give them a very wide berth in future. I thought I put this sort of woolly thinking behind me when I stopped teaching undergraduates first year history of science. I don't know what's worse, their idea that there is no such thing as free will or that they explain the belief in it as some evolutionary trick to maintain social order. The first one is bad logic while the second is flat-out wishful thinking wrapped in a Just So story.
Aside from more detailed refutation, which I shall fore go to prevent fits or narcolepsy, this sort of idea is nonsense because it refutes itself. Any argument that attempts to demonstrate the non-existence of reason or to reduce it to a purely mechanistic operation is inherently self-contradictory and therefore invalid because it negates a priori the foundations of any epistemological system upon which it bases itself. That is, if you can reason that there is no such thing as reason, then you cannot regard the conclusion as true because it is the result of unreason. QED. To negate free will is to negate reason because reason cannot exist without it. Therefore, if you can argue that free will does not exist, your argument is invalid because you could make it
It is even more obvious that no one who espouses the claim that free will does not exist cannot believe this because if he did, he wouldn't bother to tell anyone. Why should one automaton argue with another automaton? It's pointless.
The other problem I have is that in the experimental example they have got the question wrong. This comparison of tax evasion and murder isn't a question of free will; it's a question of morality. The tax problem has a grey area because taxes are coercive and collected without individual consent. They may even be punitive, unjust, or flat-out persecution. On the other hand, the husband is quite baldly guilty of adultery and premeditated murder. Regardless, how anyone can claim that free will is not operating or operates differently in either case is beyond me.
Finally, there is the fact that this whole idea is based on three hidden assumptions: One, that man is not possessed of a soul that is transcendent, hence subject to inherent nature rather than physical forces, and is therefore capable of exercising free will. Two, that the universe is purely mechanistic (and crudely so) and three, that God does not exist.
God, you see is where all of this truly falls down. Let us grant for a moment all that these nihilists argue. Let us agree that man is a mere puppet of impersonal, mechanical forces that make him dance to their blind, mindless tune. Let us grant that man's every thought, decision, and emotion is also a product of these forces. Let us concede all of this. It does the nihilists no good. If God is in the equation, then He is the Prime Mover from which all these forces emanate. But God is not mindless nor is He without will. Far from it. He is the source and archetype of all will and reason. Our reason is merely a pale imitation of His created in His image. These forces exist and operate in accordance with His will and are unable to do otherwise because all action is dependent on Him. If God, as He has made plain to us, wishes man to have free will, then it is logical to conclude that these forces that the nihilists invoke must conform to God's will, which is to grant man free will. Short version: The universe is determinate, but the goal of this determination is to make man free.
I really do wish some of these nihilists worked for me. I'd cut their pay immediately by 50 percent and when they squawked, I'd blame it on impersonal forces. I think that their determinism would go South pretty fast after that.
22 comments:
If God exists, then we all are screwed.
The whole Christianity is based on the assumption that humans do not have free will.
As St. Augustine already demonstrated in the 5th century, the concept of predestination (see Romans 9) implies that God himself predetermines the final depository of a human soul, and we have been already predestinated to either Heaven or Hell, and we have absolutely no means to affect our final fate. The very concept of free will has been a grave heresy in the Christian religion since the Pelagian Dispute in the early 5th century.
The Christian answers for the three points are:
1) No. As Romans 9:15 states, "For he says to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion." People are not sentenced to Hell because of their actions but because of the monergistic will of God.
2) No. Romans 9:16-17 "It does not, therefore, depend on human desire or effort, but on God’s mercy. For Scripture says to Pharaoh: “I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth. 18 Therefore God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden."
3. No. As St. Augustine brilliantly said: Evil people are not sentenced to Hell because of their evil deeds, but they commit evil deeds because they have already been sentenced to Hell.
Ergo: God is the source of all evil and people are being sentenced to Hell for fulfilling his irresistible, monergistic will.
Fair dinkum.
The very concept of predestination is the main reason why I am not a Christian. I simply cannot respect a jerkass and evil God.
Mostly agree, but point out that reason without free will can exist: I did artificial intelligence back in the grad school days. Automated theorem provers can do some pretty sophisticated reasoning, but are quite clearly machines.
I will pull a Fermat and say that this margin is not big enough for my thoughts. I'll come back in the evening.
Sergej: Don't confuse mindless computation with reason. what does on in a computer and in the mind of man is a difference of quality, not complexity. There is no silicon soul.
Ironmistress: I've never understood the argument that "I cannot believe God exists because He's evil". That's like saying "I do not believe David Cameron exists because he's a wet slap". Surely the end of your argument is merely that God is evil. You may argue that this interloper is therefore not God, but it does not follow that he does not exist.
Also, you are convoluting predestination, the primacy of God's will, and the necessity of divine mercy in salvation. None of us is damned by a capricious whim of God and none of us is forced to do evil by Him. By the very definition of God that is impossible. Besides, if we are damned or not from the moment of birth, then the Incarnation and Crucifixion are pointless, which is manifestly not the case, otherwise why have them happen?
Pace St. Augustine, whom I suspect you misunderstand, the fact is that God damns no one from birth. We do that ourselves by our disobedience of His will. Since you mention Pharaoh, read Romans and Exodus again and you'll see that God demonstrates with Pharaoh that free will is His gift to us, which he has the power to take away, but chooses not to. This is another example of His using miracles to instruct as well as effect.
If you study Christian doctrine more closely, you'll find that God extends every mercy to us, makes every effort to extend His hand as far as it is possible to go without violating our free will. All we have to do is accept His gift of salvation. There are no strings attached. The problem is that most of us refuse to accept His mercy and we shut ourselves away from Him.
God's reply to this is essentially, "Very well, if you wish to be away from My presence, then so be it. Your will be done." And He allows us to have what we want.
That is damnation.
Ironmistress: I've never understood the argument that "I cannot believe God exists because He's evil".
It is not disbelief on God's existence. It is disbelief on God's promises - salvation, elation, joy, paradise, whatever. It is basically considering God as a very evil being - a capricious, whimsical deity who has created sentient beings solely as his toys.
And what else reasons there are to respect or worship such cosmic psychopath except sheer fear, servility and cowardice?
Surely the end of your argument is merely that God is evil. You may argue that this interloper is therefore not God, but it does not follow that he does not exist.
God is defined as omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent. If he is evil, then he isn't omnibenevolent. An omnipotent, omniscient and evil god is a cosmic bully. What reasons are there to suppose the existence of such deity - or to respect him?
Also, you are convoluting predestination, the primacy of God's will, and the necessity of divine mercy in salvation. None of us is damned by a capricious whim of God and none of us is forced to do evil by Him.
The very concept of predestination - that our final depository has been predetermined and we simply have no way on affecting to it in any way - leads to that conclusion. The concept of free will was declared as heresy at Carthage synod 419, and has been a heresy ever since. Yes - some of us are indeed damned since birth and God punishes them from acting his irresistible monergistic will. See Romans 9:18-22.
By the very definition of God that is impossible.
Not, if the very definition of God is faulty. Nothing guarantees that God really wasn't a cosmic jerkass who gets his kicks by bullying his creations.
Besides, if we are damned or not from the moment of birth, then the Incarnation and Crucifixion are pointless, which is manifestly not the case, otherwise why have them happen?
No. Without the Incarnation and Crucifixion everyone would have been damned. The Incarnation and Crucifixion was required to save even that minuscule portion of humanity which has been pre-selected to salvation.
We do that ourselves by our disobedience of His will.
That is Pelagianism, which is heresy.
Since you mention Pharaoh, read Romans and Exodus again and you'll see that God demonstrates with Pharaoh that free will is His gift to us, which he has the power to take away, but chooses not to.
No. Nothing in the Bible suggests that Pharaoh hardened his heart by his own initiative, but it was God who did so. The Pharaoh was nothing but God's puppet.
If you study Christian doctrine more closely, you'll find that God extends every mercy to us, makes every effort to extend His hand as far as it is possible to go without violating our free will.
Only to those who have been pre-selected to salvation before their birth. The rest are massa perditionis, reprobates since birth.
What you suggest is heresy. It all has been already discussed in the early Church in the Pelagian dispute, and declared heretic in the Synod of Carthage 419.
All we have to do is accept His gift of salvation. There are no strings attached. The problem is that most of us refuse to accept His mercy and we shut ourselves away from Him.
That implies free will and that is still heresy. We cannot "accept" or "reject" salvation - the grace is irresistible to those who are chosen, and those who are not - well, no matter how much you pray, how much you plead, how much you want - will not make God's head to turn. Salvation is basically a lottery.
God's reply to this is essentially, "Very well, if you wish to be away from My presence, then so be it. Your will be done." And He allows us to have what we want.
Let's say I have seen enough schoolyard and other bullies to know when there are strings attached. What makes you think a cosmic bully would be different?
Just remember the TULIP mnemonic.
T = Total Depravity. We humans are the scum of the earth, totally deprave and everyone by default is doomed to Hell from beginning. God hates us because of that apple incident long ago. The default depository of the whole humankind is Hell.
U = Unconditional election. God has sentenced beforehand some people to salvation and the rest of the humanity to Hell. This has already been done, before we were born, and nobody has been informed beforehand. There is nothing than can change this election.
I = Irresistible grace. God squeezes his grace on those who are elect without them being able to resist it anyhow, and turns deaf ear on the pleads of the others. There is nothing we can do to be saved if we have been preselected to destruction and nothing to avoid salvation if we have been preselected to heaven.
L = Limited atonement. Christ didn't die for all humankind, he died for all kinds of humans. If the salvation was universal, then everyone would be saved. Since Hell exists, not everybody will be saved. But the salvation is not limited to Jews only, but to individuals of all nations and races - also some of the goyim belong amongst those who win in the lottery.
P = Perseverance of the saints. Nothing can make those who have been preselected to salvation to lose that status - no matter of sin, depravity, crime or immorality. Likewise, no matter of faith, good deeds, benevolence or love can save those who have already been preselected to perdition.
This is Christianity in the nutshell. Not quite appealing religion, if I am to be asked.
Then again, what are the choices? After all, the whole western civilization is child of Christianity, Roman law and Greek philosophy. The track record of Atheism is notoriously bad, and Islam does not appeal either. Judaism is too much connected to one ethnic group. Perhaps some kind of ethical Paganism could do?
I'm afraid that you are mistaken on all major points. Predestination is not Fate and, sorry, but free will is not heresy. Our capacity for making moral choice is at the centre of Christianity. You are confusing this with the fact that moral choices are inadequate for salvation and therefore divine grace is required.
You keep getting hung up on the matter of the elect because you do not grasp the nature of God. He hates no one and he does not rig the game so that some win no matter what and some lose no matter what. Nor was the Crucifixion merely a way to extend the franchise to Gentiles. It is God's offer of universal salvation, but the end is not universal because it is for us to accept it. There's that free will again, and no, it is not heresy it is His gift. We are not totally depraved, merely corrupt by our turning away from God. There is a difference.
Regarding predestination specifically, this is a very large topic that I haven't time to discuss fully, but perhaps the best way to explain it is that God is not forward planning. He is not sitting about waiting for events to unfold. You forget that time is one of his creations and He is not subject to it. For Him, the birth and death of each of His children are the same moment. Predestination, from His point of view, is merely a description of an event that is already happening, not a cosmic circular argument. You also confuse salvation and deeds. The offer is universal. Anyone from a saint to Satan himself is eligible, therefore conduct is not a bar to receiving grace. However, to accept grace is to accept rebirth. Where the Devil demands slaves to become food, God demands servants to become sons.
I don't have enough space to go into the all of it, but I'll leave a last point. Yes, God did harden Pharaohs heart. That was the point. It was a demonstration to His children that there is no limit to God's power. He is not Zeus or Baal or Odin. He is God almighty, the Alpha and the Omega who can reach even into the hearts of men if He so chooses.
He does not do so, however, because He is not a "bully". He is a loving father who is not playing games, but is in the literally most serious business of preparing His children for their part in His plan.
And even if He were a "bully" that does not negate His existence.
Thoughts about things. There is nothing incompatible between thought coming from mechanical sources and unpredictability. (And yes, a program can reason, if you define reasoning as combining knowledge to make more knowledge. Even quite primitive programs have come up with some sophisticated theorems. Not human-level reasoning. And not moral judgments. But you don't see a human solving a billion division problems in a second either.) An ant sees a stimulus and acts in a certain manner. A fish's brain is laid out quite simply as sensing; excitation or inhibition; motor. But as complexity grows, there are more knife edges, more behaviors that are not predictable. Bathe a man's brain in an appropriate chemical and he might tend to fly into a rage or to feel fear, but there is still the he inside that must permit the impulse, and if it's strong enough, can fight it. I see the mind as the software that runs on the brain, and not surprisingly for one in my profession, God as the Programmer. I wonder about that tree in the Garden of Eden. I wouldn't accuse God of putting it there, and pointing it out, and forbidding it, specifically so we could find it. But I wonder. It may have been hubris to take that fruit without being invited to do so, but it would have taken something more than human to resist the temptation. Anyway, when one says that Man (and Ironmistress) is made in God's image, I think he's talking about reason, and love of justice and joy of creation, which are reflections of some spark of the divine. On hardware of sufficient complexity, even this software may run.
As for God Himself, these days, most of the people at my professional and educational level do not believe that He exists. They are accustomed to the whole being the sum of its parts (Carl Sagan showing that all the chemical elements in a human body can be bought for about a buck-eighty nicely demonstrating and refuting this), and unwilling to accept a large body of axioms without proof. Well, first of all, if I'm just a random sack of chemicals and I act silly believing in God, before whom am I embarrassed? other sacks of chemicals? And if I do not believe, I am certainly missing out on something important. A more sincere form of Pascal's Wager. Second of all, perhaps there is something I hear in the universe after all, something like the fifth and sixth voices in a Bach organ fugue, that are there even though the organist has (presumably) only the standard number of hands and feet to play with.
I have no answer to the existence of evil. I console myself by thinking that in the last 2000-plus years, of all the wise and learned rabbis who have considered the problem, as far as I know, not one has said, "the answer is certainly this". The world is, and things are, and if at some point after it's all over He will permit an audience, and I ask, "Why?", the God that I believe in will not reply, "because".
Heavy thoughts. Me am engineer. Mostly use brains for soaking up beer with. Need look at MythBusters on TV. They blow things up real good, you bet.
Sergej:
A couple of observations:
1) Reason in man manifests itself in ways that do not map on a mechanistic model. There is consciousness, self-awareness, intuitive thinking, The capacity to immediately leap to conclusions and then work backward from them, abstract thought in general, the ability to use logical syllogisms, a moral sense, and the ability to experience the numinous to name but a few.
2)Where I think you're argument is weakest is in regarding the "I" as being software operating on wetware. By analogy, I am communicating to you via a computer running software. If you wanted to find me and you tried to do so by studying every line of code on the machinery between us and examined every atom of hardware, you'd fail miserably because I am not in the machine. The hardware and the software is merely the medium I exploit. So it is with the brain and much of what scientists falsely regard as the mind. I am not there. The essential "I" is in the soul, which is transcendent.
3) Whatever the real nature of the Tree of Knowledge (St Jerome is right about the use of folklore to try to explain the unexplainable), its purpose, in relation to us, anyway, is straightforward. It was there so that we would obey God's prohibitions, which we failed, and continue every day, to do.
4) The problem of evil is a knotty one, but one I believe is harder for the atheist than the Christian to maintain his faith against. There are many answers, but the one I feel comes closest to the mark is bfrom C S Lewis:
If God thinks this state of war in the universe a price worth paying for free will...then we may take it it is worth paying.
Sorry, forgot to include:
5) Me writer. Me watch Top Gear. Watch Jeremy Clarkson set car on fire while mending it.
Me too an engineer. Me melts things down and make railway track. Me likes sider and watch Mythbusters. Me wonders where the Thunderbirds are now as they would sorely be needed in Japan.
As for St. Augustin's Incompatible Triad (If God is omnipotent, omnibenevolent, and omniscient, why do evil and other bad things exist?), Augustin overlooked one little detail. God is not infallible.
The OT is rife with examples of God's misjudgment, going back to Lucifer (his right-hand man who got waay too ambitious).
The Tower of Babel was a "quick fix" for human (mortal) hubris (something God built into the pilot model without considering the consequences). The Flood was an attempt to deal with Lucifer's actions re human nature that went to overkill level. The Ten Plagues were His means of getting Pharaoh to man up and "let my people go", after He had made the howling error of giving Pharaoh his head to begin with.
In the end (the NT), He had to give His Son to save those who could be saved, due to the accumulated problems caused by His succession of errors in initial planning and long-term execution. A strategist He is not.
I tend to view Him as the Creator of the Universe (I.e., when things are ready for the Big Bang, says, "OK, here goes" and lights the blue touch-paper). After which, He is mainly in "It's up to you; try not to make a mess of things" mode.
Meaning, He only intervenes when it's blindingly obvious that the mess in question is His fault to begin with. Which means we are pretty much on our own.
Just IMHO, take it for what it's worth.
cheers
eon
David: your first point (and again I need to type quickly, as I have to be places). I would regard neither consciousness nor self-awareness as components of reason. Materialistically, I expect that there are parts of the brain that if damaged, cause these to disappear; part of the operating system. Intuitive thinking on the other hand, is uniquely biological reasoning, and perhaps the most interesting difference between us and the machines. Simply put, it is a matter of hardware. Computers have a small number of processing units (CPUs/cores/GPU processors), which are very smart and run fast. We have a huge number of neurons (which have some mid-level organization inside the regions of the brain), which are individually very slow and very stupid. How do you see an attacking dinosaur and know to run away when this is the hardware you're stuck with? Back of the envelope thing I read once. A synapse's transmission delay is on the order of n mSec; a human's reaction time is m mSec; argal, a maximum of m/n levels of firings could have taken place between stimulus and response. How the brain accomplishes this, is by matching patterns. You see a noisy picture or low-resolution photograph, it matches a pattern you've got stored, and you identify it: dinosaur; must run. I think that all memory works this way: you see the concept of "2+2", you remember "4". You don't need to invoke a binary adder to perform the calculation. Intuition is the same thing, and I would say, wisdom as well: I have met this man before, only he had a different face; this is what made him tick last time, and this time around the qualities that made it so are the same; I will assume that he's got this other quality also, even if it's hidden. The flip side of this is the kind of prejudice that the PC types don't like (but despite that, is still incorrect reasoning, and wrong morally): I've been told that being colored like this causes these qualities, I see this coloration, and I jump to unwarranted conclusions.
If the right kind of brain damage breaks something, then you can say that you've found it in the hardware. Some fairly specific pieces of hardware have been identified this way---for instance, a region of the brain that identifies two dots and a crescent as a face. Pattern, (in this case) simple yes/no output: this is or isn't a face I'm looking at. Of course, we see faces, and almost-faces, in all kinds of things, and it is because this specialized face-recognizer was triggered. Face recognition comes from birth, because it's important. Other patterns, we learn. I've always (well, since about grad school) thought that the ideal relationship between men and machines would be one that uses the respective strengths: human intuition and mechanical speed at linear thinking.
I would not call this the soul, however. The charioteer driving the brain, maybe I would. The essential self that gates the impulses, that in the dojo learns to overcome the instinct to run away and move into the attack, and that in the unfortunate case of damage to the hardware, is left living in a damaged house.
I would caution against falling into the fallacy of some creationist types: "I can not see how this structure could evolve, therefore, it must have been built." This goes for both the hardware behind the essential I, and the causes and reasons behind evil. Not to hold myself up as a model of humility (I'm a hoopy frood, AND I'm humble as well!), but on such questions, I'm simply glad that my job is to say bad words at computers until they behave themselves. I do not see an answer (a very intuition-based thing to say), but this does not mean that an answer does not exist.
Sorry for rambling. I didn't have time to give this more than a cursory proof-reading.
eon: I would view it as hammering us humans into something slightly civilized. First lesson: sacrificing your children, not needed, you Bronze-Age person. Later lesson: here is the Law for you. Christians believe (fundamental belief) that there is another, more advanced divine lesson in the teachings of Jesus. I would say that if God is good at anything, it is looking ahead and anticipating consequences. Our limited minds can do it a little, I don't think that He would be worse at it.
eon: I must agree with Sergej here. The examples you cite are all the result of free will being abused and its consequences. If this is a flaw on God's part, it's because he wants children to love and not puppets to admire. Also, there is the point the God is not some sort of order freak. Just look at how a forest grows and you can see that he's more Capability Brown than Bauhaus.
Final point, and this is general and not directed at you, I get very leery about passing judgment on the competence of someone who created an entire Universe, both terrestrial and divine, while I can't even get my Hoover to work right. At least Job understood that talking back to God is a good way to get a right bollocking about who the heck do you think you are? It's kind of like talking back to your Dad on a cosmic scale.
Sergej: Pretty good for back of envelope stuff. Couple of points: Again do not confuse data processing and reason. These are two very different things. Consider the simple act of turning will into action and you'll find that a mechanistic explanation is inadequate (I want to move my arm, my arm moves). Also, physical damage to the brain can be misleading. If my keyboard is broken, I cannot send emails, but that doesn't mean I am myself struck dumb.
Also, I quite agree with the Creationist point, but caution not to fall into the Darwinist fallacy of assuming that because it is inexplicable it justifies a Just So story that cannot be tested. I've always loathed Sagan's Hayki crab story. It's about as scientific as Medieval explanations of where geese come from. Sounds plausible, but there's no way to test it empirically.
Arguing about creationism/evolutionism is only feasible when one has a long evening free and many pints of beer close at hand. I was commenting on the reasoning, often seen from the creationist side, which is flawed. This is the reasoning that goes something like, "I cannot explain this in this framework, therefore it must have no such explanation". It is a broken version of a proof by cases: "Here is the proof for acute triangles, here for obtuse, and here for right; since these three cases cover all triangles, the proof stands." The problem with the argument about critters is, "I can't imagine" can not be shown to cover all possible cases. I have heard the argument applied to eyes and flagella, and in both cases, there is a plausible way from lack of the structure to its presence, whether or not this is immediately obvious. I think it a bad bet to use this kind of thinking to support faith in any case---because, what happens if you're not as smart as you think and your golden example is found to have a mundane explanation? "Here is the proof for isosceles triangles and here for right triangles" is broken reasoning, even if the theorem is correct. Once more, the reasoning itself, not necessarily its conclusion.
As for talk of structures, I would say that if something breaks, and a function stops working, the two are likely related. In your keyboard example, losing your keyboard does strike you dumb as far as writing goes. Just as losing certain parts of the brain can make one mute. The mind is still there, but it can no longer find words.
Sergej, I do agree with you. It's a crude version of The God of the Gaps, which is an atrocious argument. At any rate, Creationism is worse than bad science, it is bad theolog; just as when science is used to produce a secular creation myth it is no longer science.
That being said, it doesn't preclude arguing that a problem is literally unsolvable. It may be that it can be proven to be unsolvable (our whole computer encryption system is based on such a proof), or that there can never be adequate data for solution (the event may be literally unique or the surviving evidence inherently and demonstrably too sparse), or it may be infeasible to solve (A physics problem that requires a particle accelerator 1000 light years in diameter). In these cases, it is entirely possible to make a positive argument. For example, I am forever hearing people arguing that there is no "scientific" proof for the existence of God, but if one tries to design such a proof, it soon becomes apparent that no such test can exist. How can you test the existence of an omnipotent, omnipresence, omniscient entity who can change every single factor right down to the basic laws of the universe at will? One who, in any real sense, isn't even present in our world as the author of a book isn't present in his story? Such an experiment would be a logical absurdity. So it is with transcendence. Science is a great tool, but it is actually applicable to a very finite series of questions about the physical universe. It can't even be applied to political questions, much less the metaphysical or the moral.
As to structure, your argument is sound, but only if you are dealing with a closed experiment. You may say that I am indeed struck dumb because it appears that way from your end, but to an outside observer would simply say that "the keyboard is broken."
It's basically the same reason why Schrodinger's cat and other uncollapsed quantum universes don't work if you put them in reality instead of a thought experiment. The cat is a wave form because until it is observed it is literally neither alive nor dead? Sorry, never happens because with an omniscient, omnipresent God, the cat is never unobserved. It is therefore always alive or dead, never in between. From our point of view, we are expressing ignorance, not reality.
Let's say that if something sounds too good to be true, it most likely is.
My nation was forcibly converted centuries ago. Christianity was brought here with the point of sword.
Finno-Ugric nations were the last Pagans in Europe. They knew perfectly well that the new religion was followed with slavery by a foreign conqueror. And it also happened. Finland was first reigned 627 years by Sweden and then 110 years by Russians and we got rid of foreign yoke after an immensely bloody civil war.
Let us say those centuries have taught us Finns to be VERY suspicious on any religions, ideologies or doctrines. We had a perfectly good Pagan religion before we were forcibly converted. Granted, there is no return to Cuivienen (or, rather, to Paganism) but the religion brought us by a foreign conqueror begins to be more or less history as well.
That is one reason why I am not particularly enthusiast on Christianity. It was brought us forcibly by a hated conqueror.
And about Islam... well, we Finns have our own ways on welcoming a hated conqueror and its ideology. Just as in 1940.
Ironmistress: What you have described is a heinous crime.
Forcible conversion is expressly forbidden under Christian doctrine. Anyone who does such a thing to the Finns or anyone else is in peril of excommunication. As this occurred in centuries past, at least there is the satisfaction of knowing that the perpetrators have gone before their final judge.
Just on the subject of free will, the concept - as in, some third factor apart from chance or determinism that plays a part in our decision-making - doesn't make any sense to me. Think about any decision you make. You chose A, and not B (binary choices are the easiest to talk about but it's not hard to generalise to any decision) presumably for some reasons. Now either those reasons were overwhelming (eg. A=step off the road, B=don't, reasons=there's a bus coming and you don't want to die) in which case your decision-making could be modelled by a deterministic reasoning system; or they were not. In the second case, you weigh up the pros and cons (we can model this by saying you put numerical weights to each reason, although there're probably better models) and then you choose, based on - what? Once you've gotten all the reasons out the way, all you have is a moment of choice about which you subjectively have very little information. All you know is that 'you chose'. How could you tell whether it was just a flip of a coin (weighted according to the weights you gave your reasons) or whether it was a case of 'free will'?
The weightings you give the reasons in this example (and yes, it's not a perfect description of what goes on but it'll do for an approximation) are the most obvious point at which you might attack it, but we can model that process by some algorithm. Alternatively we can treat those weightings as decisions themselves and argue inductively until we get to some primitive weightings ('raw valuations').
The main point I'm trying to make is not that this is precisely how it happens but that if we can construct working models of the way human minds =appear= to be, and they then =appear= to perform every function of the human mind, the burden of proof is shifted onto people who believe in souls etc. to prove that we =don't= work in that mechanistic way, by Occam's razor.
However this isn't an argument against people being morally responsible for their actions. Just because your decisions have causes doesn't absolve you of responsibility for them. I think the reason this is a problem - that Bill's notional lawyer might try to use 'his actions were not free because they were determined' as a defence - stems from the notion of radically free will which is bound up with Christianity and its sister creeds, which is what I've been arguing against. The tempting notion that if your decisions are determined then you =have no choice= is flawed because it begs the question of the nature of choices. It makes no sense to say that you have no choice about what you choose. A far more functional notion of free will - the one lawyers etc. actually work with - is freedom from coercion.
Oliver: The problem with your argument is that it destroys itself at the first hurdle. If decisions are predestined (let's call it what it really is), the result of mindless, random forces, then that applies to all other thought as well. Unfortunately, that means there is no thought at all–in which case, the argument cannot be considered because it is a priori the result of mindlessness. It can't even seem like reason because that assumes true reason on the part of the observer.
Another stumbling point that I have seen many times is to confuse unpredictability with randomness. We use randomness in models as a way of simulating actions we cannot predict. That does not mean that in real life such actions may be the result of an entirely rational decision.
The third point is that your argument uses the same logic as the Turing test, which is actually a very poor test of reasoning. This is demonstrated every time someone a chatbot for a real person. Chatbots have zero reasoning and the coding is actually painfully simple, yet people often ascribe intellect to them for a very simple reason; the person supplies it.
Fourth, Coercion is certainly a factor, but in Bruce's case it does not apply. Coercion is never a defence for murder and in lesser cases it is merely mitigation. In English law, unlike American law, even mental incompetence cannot produce a not guilty verdict, merely a plea for mitigation on the grounds of reduced responsibility. On a more general plain, moral choice is only absent when the person is demonstrably incapable of making a choice either through the inability to exercise his will or through the physical inability to make his will manifest. Someone who pulls a trigger in a fit of convulsions is an obvious example as is the case of someone letting another person drown because they are trapped behind a sealed bulkhead.
I disagree - my argument only seems to fall down because you presuppose the conclusion that thought is not deterministic (including randomness, it's not a terribly important difference). My point is that in fact we just don't know how thinking works, and so if we're presented with a deterministic working model that not only stands up to a broadened Turing test (one that includes behaviour as well as speech) but also has an internal structure that tallies with what little information we have about our psychology, then it would be foolish not to accept that model as a good working hypothesis of how our minds work, until new results appear that falsify it.
You might object that a deterministic model would be missing the subjective elements of consciousness, but that'd be to make exactly the same mistake. It's precisely those subjective elements that the model would be an attempt to explain in terms of other, less mysterious processes.
When I talk about the model having a similar 'internal structure' to our thoughts I mean something like Daniel Dennett's second-order philosophical zombies, that is, creatures that act exactly like you and I, but without any inner life: they have 'z-thoughts' which are like thoughts but without the subjective component, and 'z-feelings' which are like feelings but without the subjective part; they are likely to z-ask themselves exactly the same questions we're discussing now. The question is, how do you know that your thoughts aren't in fact z-thoughts, and your feelings z-feelings? It's not satisfactory to answer 'Well, I have this rich inner life that I'm directly acquainted with' - because that's exactly what a zombie (or robot) would z-think.
I think you're slightly missing the point when you contrast randomness with unpredictability and say I've mistaken the two: where I bring in randomness is precisely at the point in our own decision making beyond which we cannot discern our reasoning. It seems likely that part of that apparent randomness is actually due to the chaotic influence of other factors - the weather, the time of day, a person's tone of voice, etc. - but those other factors could still in principle be factored into a deterministic model. You're right that I'm treating the moment of choice as a sort of black box out of which an unpredictable result emerges - but the moment of choice is not awareness, and research has indicated that we actually make decisions shortly before we become aware that we've made them ( http://exploringthemind.com/the-mind/brain-scans-can-reveal-your-decisions-7-seconds-before-you-decide ).
The alternative to the dualist idea of free will might be one in which you are fully morally responsible for your actions just the the extent that you aren't compelled by some overwhelming drive such as immediate fear of death or, say, extreme addiction - a characteristic feature of such cases of diminished moral responsibility being that after the drive has gone you feel guilty about bad things done whilst subject to it. However, legal responsibility need not precisely track moral responsibility because it is designed to serve and improve society - a society one of whose ideals is that individuals should determine the course of their own lives, and in which the choice to commit a crime is usually a free (in whatever sense) choice, but in which it may nevertheless be useful to allow legal responsibility to accrue to actions which are not entirely free (for example, actions compelled by drug addiction) in order to discourage harmful behaviour.
Looking at the bigger picture, what if it were true that our minds are material and work in deterministic ways? That doesn't imply that there's no God, or no immortal soul - do you suppose it would be beyond God to piece back together the person you were after you die? There's no need to choose between religious belief and scientific explanation even here.
Oliver: Religion, or to be more precise: Christian doctrine, is at the heart of this and it has nothing to do with the afterlife. It has to do with the nature of man, the soul, and of reason. A purely mechanistic model doesn't work because, as I've earlier, it negates itself. And invoking z-thoughts is simply a way of dismissing annoying concepts that won't go away. "I am not aware, I only think I'm aware. I do not make decisions, I only think I do." That is merely removing reason by flushing down the drain of a reducto ad absurdum. Please bear in mind that awareness is not subjective. From my point of view, it is the most basic of objective facts. I think, therefore I am. And there is nothing mysterious about the process. It simply is one that is not amenable to a materialistic explanation.
As to randomness, I stand by my original statement. Chaotic factors should produce chaotic results. If our ideas correspond to reality, it should be merely by coincidence, but this is manifestly not the case or no one would survive an ordinary day. Brain scans? I've never put much stock in them. Studying the device through which I manifest reason is no way to explore its nature. It's like trying to imprison my by locking up the computer you receive my comments on.
As the Turing test and a reasoning machine, I'll grant that perhaps some better test may be devised. My preferred one would be to see if a machine would cheat on the test for its own personal gain. However, as to this machine and its impact on the existence of the soul, etc., I fall back on St. Augustine's answer when asked if fauns and centaurs have souls: Present me with one and I'll give my verdict.
That's the annoying thing with theology as opposed to philosophy or science. It's the only one of the three that demands a rigid adherence to facts and reason.
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