Behavior OnLine Forums  
The gathering place for Mental Health and
Applied Behavior Science Professionals.
 
Become a charter member of Behavior OnLine.

Go Back   Behavior OnLine Forums > >

Notices

Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
  #61  
Old February 11th, 2006, 01:51 PM
TomJrzk TomJrzk is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Dallas
Posts: 257
Default Re: Intelligent Design and Why Not

This post was moved to the new "Free Will" thread...

Last edited by TomJrzk; February 11th, 2006 at 05:54 PM.. Reason: Move to Free Will thread
Reply With Quote
  #62  
Old February 11th, 2006, 05:57 PM
alexandra_k alexandra_k is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Jan 2006
Posts: 106
Default Re: Intelligent Design and Why Not

why i don't want to say 'there is no free will'...

politics. that is why.

people sacrificed their lives for such things as freedom of speech
freedom of religion
freedom from opression
etc etc

do you want to say they were merely fighting for an illusion?

i guess... you wouldn't want to say that. you'd probably want to say that they were fighting for something worthwhile - but that something is not freedom.

but... i'm not sure a lot of people would still be with you... you would have lost them at the 'free will is merely an illusion' point. they think you mean to say they were fighting for an illusion, you see.

so i prefer to say sure they were fighting for freedom (but freedom is a little different from what they think it is). but thats okay. water is a little different from what the folk thought it was too (ie is is made of solid atoms of h2o). but should be say 'but water is a liquid by definition and something with solid parts shouldn't really be called a liquid and so really water doesn't exist?'. no... more in line with common sense to say 'well what do you know. liquids turn out to be composed of solids after all'.

levels of explanation...

?

not so sure what you mean here...

person level / intentional level. this is the level in which we have a rational agent who performs purposive behaviour on the basis of beliefs and desires and other mental states. this is the level where freedom is supposed to appear.

but... if freedom evolved (and how else did it get here - assuming it is here ;-) then we should expect to find rudimentary freedom in other things, just like we have found rudimentary morality / ethics in other things.

so... weather vanes can be free or unfree (in a slightly extended sense of the term)

if freedom is just acting on ones beliefs and desires then what about the cases of compulsions?

the kleptomaniac is acting on his strongest desire to steal though he wishes he did not have the desire to steal. he didn't freely choose to have the desire to steal - it just occured in him. is he free?
how about the person in the grip of a compulsion to wash their hands. skin and tissue wearing away... they didn't choose to worry about germs so very much. those thoughts just occur in them. they are acting from their thoughts and their desire to be germ free or whatever... but they don't choose their beliefs and desires (nor do we) and so... how does that help the case for free will?

this puzzle has been around for a loooooooooong time.
most people agree on a general picture.
but the details... are elusive...

levels of explanation...

has anyone heard of Conway's life game? It is worth checking out. It is a very vivid example of different levels of explanation and how those different levels are related to one another. On the physical level you have atoms that obey strictly deterministic physical laws. On the design level you have a different ontology of objects that move through space. They can even 'eat' another object in the life world... They have even managed to make self replicating objects in the life world... It is possible in principle to make a chess playing computer in the life world... (who moves the chess piece thus because it BELIEVES that is the best way to check its opponant and it DESIRES to do so..).

In "Freedom Evolves" Dennett tries to show how... Freedom can evolve in the life world. Where the physics are deterministic. If he succeeds in his enterprise... Then we can say 'well our world might be like the life world. Determinism might be true (on the physical level) yet we can have freedom from a higher level'.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway's_Game_of_Life

That is the life game link. Wiki isn't so kind to Dennett... But I think his book is worth a look if you are interested in freedom and more in particular different levels of explanation and how that is relevant to the evolution of freedom...
Reply With Quote
  #63  
Old February 11th, 2006, 06:19 PM
TomJrzk TomJrzk is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Dallas
Posts: 257
Default Re: Intelligent Design and Why Not

Quote:
Originally Posted by alexandra_k
why i don't want to say 'there is no free will'...

politics. that is why.
Ahhh, thank you! That makes perfect sense to me and makes sense of your earlier posts as well. But, just as I might be scaring folks away, you might be confusing folks away.

Knowing that the universe is truly deterministic did not change my view of life in any bad way at all. I still know that I'm part of the end result; in fact, I feel much more connected. I still know that I can make the future better or worse. The future that's predetermined still relies on me and my choices. That I cut you off or let you in on the freeway ramp is still a predetermined choice but now that choice is informed by the impact that I see it having on our future. After you...

BTW, you may have noticed that I moved my other posts to a new thread so others can get to this conversation without going through the Intelligent Design posts. If you move yours there, too, I'll move this one and delete it from here. Or, you can just leave yours here and I will too...
Reply With Quote
  #64  
Old February 11th, 2006, 06:48 PM
TomJrzk TomJrzk is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Dallas
Posts: 257
Default Re: Intelligent Design and Why Not

Quote:
Originally Posted by alexandra_k
people sacrificed their lives for such things as freedom of speech
freedom of religion
freedom from opression
etc etc

do you want to say they were merely fighting for an illusion?

i guess... you wouldn't want to say that. you'd probably want to say that they were fighting for something worthwhile - but that something is not freedom.
I would say that they were, indeed, fighting for freedom, and thank goodness they were. My present, their future, directly depended on it. Their brains felt the oppression, dreamed of a future without it, sacrificed their present, and made a better world. That all of this was predetermined has no effect on any of that.

Of course, if they thought the future was already determined and that depressed them to the point where they did not get out of bed, that would have caused an entirely different present for us, but one that was predetermined. That is why, in the past, I kept my thoughts mostly to myself (or those I thought could handle it). But I now think attempting the final step to understanding how determinism makes one more connected to the future is worth the try, especially in the environment where religions are using free will as a tool to make a decidedly worse future.
Reply With Quote
  #65  
Old February 11th, 2006, 09:41 PM
alexandra_k alexandra_k is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Jan 2006
Posts: 106
Default Re: Intelligent Design and Why Not

> I would say that they were, indeed, fighting for freedom, and thank goodness they were. My present, their future, directly depended on it. Their brains felt the oppression, dreamed of a future without it, sacrificed their present, and made a better world. That all of this was predetermined has no effect on any of that.

Ah. So I've converted you to compatibilism then?

(The view that EVEN IF determinism is true... it is still possible for us to have freedom)

:-)
Reply With Quote
  #66  
Old February 14th, 2006, 01:18 AM
ToddStark ToddStark is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Jul 2004
Posts: 174
Arrow Re: Intelligent Design and Why Not

A thought ...

Being beyond observation or testing is not the same thing as being beyond the reach of explanations. A good case can be made for scientific realism which assumes that what exists transcends human belief or capacity for testing. The question is not whether every fact of nature can be tested, but whether an explanation is consistent with honest empirical inquiry and the required epistemic virtues or not. The origin of matter is one puzzle among many, all of which rely on the others to some degree for their solution. The logical strategy of taking one puzzle and making everything else hinge on it is a different approach than the one used in empirical inquiry in general and science in particular.

kind regards,

Todd
Reply With Quote
  #67  
Old February 14th, 2006, 01:44 AM
ToddStark ToddStark is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Jul 2004
Posts: 174
Cool Cognitive Evolutionary Psychology - how it views the mind

Quote:
Originally Posted by Margaret McGhee
I keep hoping to see some meaningful discussions here that would illuminate some of the ways that Evolutionary Psychologists would look at human nature that would be different from other psychologists and scientists.

I hoped that some of my past comments might have encouraged that type of discussion. Let me try this - is there a coherent functional model of the mind that most (or many) Evolutionary Psychologists would generally agree on? Something that would show the various elements of the mind and how they relate to each other - such as intellect, emotion, disposition, instinct, etc.

I've read several of the more popular EP authors and I get the gist of it (I think) but none of them seem interested in providing such a specific model. Maybe there is one out there and I just haven't found it yet.

Margaret
Cosmides, Barkow, and Tooby (The Adapted Mind) were the most explicit about this, their variant is probably best known as "Cognitive Evolutionary Psychology," and it is the variant that Pinker subscribes to for the most part.
As is often the case with relatively new research models, one of the best ways to understand what makes their model distinctive is to peruse the various critiques of the model, and their responses to them.

Conceptually, a good starting place is the concept of modularity, especially Jerry Fodor's original concept of opaque, encapsulated modules that he believes are responsible for human perceptual abilities.

Sterelny's "Representational Theory of Mind" discusses the concept by itself prior to Cosmides and Tooby. C & T came along and imagined that cognitive processes of other sorts worked the same way as Fodor's perceptual modules. This served their purpose of carving a new niche particularly well because it gave them a plausible nativist axe handle for attacking what they saw as the deplorable "blank slate" environmentalism they perceived in social science.

Fodor and many others have argued against this extension of the modularity concept for various reasons, and the dialogs are useful for understanding how EP (or rather, CEP of the Cosmides-Tooby-Pinker sort) views the mind in terms of discrete computational modules that drive behavior. There are technical issues of all sorts, such as how opaque the modules really are, how sophiticated and flexible they can be, and how much of their function is a direct result of Pleistocene adaptation.

David Buller's recent book, "Adapting Minds" has a pretty good coverage of the EP program, agreeing with its general focus and long term goals but differing on some of the specifics of the way they conceive of the functional partitioning of the mind.

kind regards,

Todd
Reply With Quote
  #68  
Old February 14th, 2006, 04:09 PM
TomJrzk TomJrzk is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Dallas
Posts: 257
Default Re: Intelligent Design and Why Not

Quote:
Originally Posted by ToddStark
A good case can be made for scientific realism which assumes that what exists transcends human belief or capacity for testing.
I'm sorry, I'm an engineer, and NOT by accident. IF there is something beyond determinism that adds 'free' to 'choice' then I'd like to know its source. If it's in the brain, then I'd assert it's under control of neurotransmitters, and therefore not free. If it's outside the brain, hey, I'd like to know how it gets in.

I can accept that there 'might' be a god that created the universe, or what the universe eminated from, that's why I call myself an unconfirmed atheist; someday, whatever that is might burn a bush or two. Only because I can not yet see what started what and can not get my head around infinite time.

I have a harder time accepting choice being anything beyond the brain weighing plusses and minuses, only because I can see how nature could do without it. Could still be there, but I don't see the need. There's Occam's Razor again; I guess I'm channeling Fred now. Would this something still be here if all human brains are gone? Do monkeys have it now?
Reply With Quote
  #69  
Old February 15th, 2006, 08:41 AM
ToddStark ToddStark is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Jul 2004
Posts: 174
Cool Re: Intelligent Design and Why Not

Quote:
Originally Posted by TomJrzk
I'm sorry, I'm an engineer, and NOT by accident. IF there is something beyond determinism that adds 'free' to 'choice' then I'd like to know its source. If it's in the brain, then I'd assert it's under control of neurotransmitters, and therefore not free. If it's outside the brain, hey, I'd like to know how it gets in.
These are different questions to me. I am a determinist, but not a predeterminist. I think events always have physical causes, but I don't think that mechanics provides the only realistic causal model. My original background is in cognitive science and cybernetics. I've built devices that act on their own "purposes" and "preferences" to some extent even though they are obviously also responding to their environment as well. I have no trouble with that transition to ---> thinking of physically constrained devices as having some form of self-guided agency. Human beings are obviously far more sophisticated than cybernetic toys, but for me the difference is one of sophistication rather than rendering physical causality irrelevant to human intentions. For me, we are constrained by physical causality, but our choices are not predetermined by simple mechanics. There is a form of agency that is meaningfully self-guided action even though all of the little bits that go into it can also be described in terms of neural nets and stimuli in principle. I don't know if I can explain it better than that to anyone who cannot make that mental shift from equating determinism with predetermination.

Quote:
I have a harder time accepting choice being anything beyond the brain weighing plusses and minuses, only because I can see how nature could do without it. Could still be there, but I don't see the need. There's Occam's Razor again; I guess I'm channeling Fred now. Would this something still be here if all human brains are gone? Do monkeys have it now?
That was my original point. Scientific realism, the form that I endorse, says that the world per se exists in spite of our believing or understanding it and would exist without us. In spite of all the radical interpretations of quantum physics that are in vogue, I think Einstein was right to doubt that the moon goes away when we stop looking at it. Of course the earth would look (and smell) a lot different without us!

The idea that things don't rely on a human mind or experience for their existence as such does not neccessarily give warrant for the existence of all sorts of incorporeal things. That is a matter of honest empirical inquiry, in my opinion.

My feeling on intelligent design in brief: ID is theological, and theology is a rational enterprise, but it is definitely not empirical inquiry even when it draws on empirical observations.

kind regards,

Todd
Reply With Quote
  #70  
Old February 15th, 2006, 12:38 PM
TomJrzk TomJrzk is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Dallas
Posts: 257
Default Re: Intelligent Design and Why Not

Quote:
Originally Posted by ToddStark
I don't know if I can explain it better than that to anyone who cannot make that mental shift from equating determinism with predetermination.
Cool. I agree that I can not get there from here, now; your 'predeterminism' must be something different from my point AGAINST the idea that the future is 'predeterminable', that is to say, we're unable to create all the conditions but they are still there and would repeat if we had a 'dup' button (of course, we wouldn't even know that we pressed it!!!). Whether some psychology in my brain is preventing me from accepting your arguments or some psychology in your brain is forcing you to make them is anyone's guess. Or maybe it's less ominous than that (maybe I've read too little or you've read too much? ) or maybe we just lean in different directions. Anyway, we're obviously different people and I can accept that we differ...for now.

It's great, though, that we agree on determinism.
Reply With Quote
Reply

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump


All times are GMT -4. The time now is 05:47 AM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.11
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions Inc.
Copyright © 1995-2023 Liviant Internet LLC. All rights reserved.