Does the notion that human beings arn't free from causation, bother you?

well horse

I found it unsettling when I first started to think about it but after a while my whole world view has become based on the assumption that our lives can only ever turn out in one way, and that all our behaviour, thoughts and actions come about as a result of the interplay of a myrid of factors, all deterministic.

Joycey

well horse wrote: »

I found it unsettling when I first started to think about it but after a while my whole world view has become based on the assumption that our lives can only ever turn out in one way, and that all our behaviour, thoughts and actions come about as a result of the interplay of a myrid of factors, all deterministic.

Well what are your grounds for holding this assumption? Traditionally the two ideological frameworks from which similar assumptions regarding the impossibility of human agency have arisen have been religion and science. Unless your belief is motivated by a belief in some supernatural being having set the universe in motion in a particular way and that it is as a result of this that we are determined then (I assume) it is through a scientific worldview that this assumption has emerged.

Newtonian physics, which conceives of the universe as a gigantic machine, within which we, and all other matter, are simply nuts, bolts and cogs which are determined by its operation, is no longer seen as being an accurate representation of the universe's reality. Instead, matter's movement is entirely unpredictable, even over the very short term, at the smallest levels of space. Even at the macro level, it is exceptionally dificult to make predictions of the operation of large systems, due to the necessity of almost infinitely accurate measurements and knowledge of initial starting conditions, a feat which is entirely beyond us at present, and explains our relative inability to predict the weather/markets and the operation of other large systems.

So even were you right in assuming that the universe, including our actions, is already determined, actually making any kind of prediction about what will happen is far beyond the capability of any humans, so the illusion of free choice is just as relevant as any "knowledge" about the lack of free choice which you may believe you have.

nyarlothothep

Joycey wrote: »

Well what are your grounds for holding this assumption? Traditionally the two ideological frameworks from which similar assumptions regarding the impossibility of human agency have arisen have been religion and science. Unless your belief is motivated by a belief in some supernatural being having set the universe in motion in a particular way and that it is as a result of this that we are determined then (I assume) it is through a scientific worldview that this assumption has emerged.

Newtonian physics, which conceives of the universe as a gigantic machine, within which we, and all other matter, are simply nuts, bolts and cogs which are determined by its operation, is no longer seen as being an accurate representation of the universe's reality. Instead, matter's movement is entirely unpredictable, even over the very short term, at the smallest levels of space. Even at the macro level, it is exceptionally dificult to make predictions of the operation of large systems, due to the necessity of almost infinitely accurate measurements and knowledge of initial starting conditions, a feat which is entirely beyond us at present, and explains our relative inability to predict the weather/markets and the operation of other large systems.

So even were you right in assuming that the universe, including our actions, is already determined, actually making any kind of prediction about what will happen is far beyond the capability of any humans, so the illusion of free choice is just as relevant as any "knowledge" about the lack of free choice which you may believe you have.

This interesting. How would you reconcile this view about the relevancy of free choice with your prior statement concerning the idea that our minds our illusions? Would they be equally relevant? This is an interesting dilemma, while things may be determined they aren't necessarily computable.

Joe1919

well horse wrote: »

I found it unsettling when I first started to think about it but after a while my whole world view has become based on the assumption that our lives can only ever turn out in one way, and that all our behaviour, thoughts and actions come about as a result of the interplay of a myrid of factors, all deterministic.

Be careful that your not confusing determinism with fatalism . e.g.
http://books.google.ie/books?id=krU20sT9hfoC&pg=PA382&lpg=PA382&dq=confusing+determinism+with+fatalism&source=bl&ots=sLktAYDykR&sig=yQqceQA215GMdry1FrnDEEiREqg&hl=en&ei=yq82Sq-dHYWz-QazwoyhDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1

We still have choice and can be held responsible, irrespective of whether we are determined or not.

Joycey

nyarlothothep wrote: »

How would you reconcile this view about the relevancy of free choice with your prior statement concerning the idea that our minds our illusions? Would they be equally relevant?

Well I take my view on the illusion of the "I" in large part from Nietzsche (or at least my limited interpretation of what he was trying to say), and I havent seen him deal with the debate around free will. He conceives of human identity insofar as it exists at all, as being constituted by impersonal "drives" which conflict with eachother, and when one drive (to eat cake) prevails over another (im watching my weight), the illusion of the "I" arises from the supposedly rational justification which we give to ourselves when narrating (and hence attempting to comprehend) the operation of the world.

This interpretation of the self leads, at least as far as I can see, to a completely deterministic worldview. Or to one where there is no such thing as human agency at any rate.


Joe's point about the distinction between determinism and fatalism is a good one, hadnt come across an explication of it before.

well horse

Joe1919 wrote: »

Be careful that your not confusing determinism with fatalism . e.g.
http://books.google.ie/books?id=krU20sT9hfoC&pg=PA382&lpg=PA382&dq=confusing+determinism+with+fatalism&source=bl&ots=sLktAYDykR&sig=yQqceQA215GMdry1FrnDEEiREqg&hl=en&ei=yq82Sq-dHYWz-QazwoyhDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1

We still have choice and can be held responsible, irrespective of whether we are determined or not.

Is this just because "personal culpibility and responsibility" is a "social reality" ie. because we all agree on its existence, it then becomes "true"?

You say we have choice even though our brain processes are deterministic; by this do you mean that because our "will" or "desires" couldn't have been otherwise (and because we don't care what our (1st order) desires happen to be, only how we can satisfy them), the only thing that really matters is how many obstacles there are to us in persuing our predetermined "will"?

Also, do people here think that the determinism arguement should be kept away from the legal system to prevent a can of worms being opened up :pac:

Joe1919

well horse wrote: »

Is this just because 'personal culpibility and responsibility' is a ';social reality'; ie. because we all agree on its existence, it then becomes ';true';?..............
Also, do people here think that the determinism arguement should be kept away from the legal system to prevent a can of worms being opened up :pac:

The free will versus determinism argument is a well trashed out argument and both the law and historians have learned to get on with life irrespective of which way one argues and hence are immune from this. There are views called 'Compatibilism' which more or less argues that free will and determinism are the same thing. (free will = self-determinism).
It has also been argued that responsibility has nothing to do with freedom but is something that is learned or as you say, a social reality. We can after all train an animal to act in a responsible way, we can socialise an animal so to speak. A classic and complicated text in this regard is Strawsons which more or less turns these arguments on their head and argues that our attitude to responsibility is more based on our attitude to 'resentment' and who we consider liable to be resented.http://users.ox.ac.uk/~ball0888/oxfordopen/resentment.htm

One can get into complex subjective/objective and philosophy of mind arguments and like both Kant and Mills argue that we are both free and determined at the same time or perhaps one could argue that freedom is a 'function' of a determined mind, a subset of consciousness.

tech77

Joycey wrote: »

Well what are your grounds for holding this assumption? Traditionally the two ideological frameworks from which similar assumptions regarding the impossibility of human agency have arisen have been religion and science. Unless your belief is motivated by a belief in some supernatural being having set the universe in motion in a particular way and that it is as a result of this that we are determined then (I assume) it is through a scientific worldview that this assumption has emerged.

Newtonian physics, which conceives of the universe as a gigantic machine, within which we, and all other matter, are simply nuts, bolts and cogs which are determined by its operation, is no longer seen as being an accurate representation of the universe's reality. Instead, matter's movement is entirely unpredictable, even over the very short term, at the smallest levels of space. Even at the macro level, it is exceptionally dificult to make predictions of the operation of large systems, due to the necessity of almost infinitely accurate measurements and knowledge of initial starting conditions, a feat which is entirely beyond us at present, and explains our relative inability to predict the weather/markets and the operation of other large systems.

So even were you right in assuming that the universe, including our actions, is already determined, actually making any kind of prediction about what will happen is far beyond the capability of any humans, so the illusion of free choice is just as relevant as any "knowledge" about the lack of free choice which you may believe you have.

You're talking about chaos theory, right.
(always found that mind-blowing, when i first came across it).

But isn't there another layer of uncertainty on top of that.
Isn't quantum mechanics involved in this as well?
(isn't it QM that completely blows the deterministic stuff out of the water- everything becomes probabilistic, is that correct).

The chaos stuff is just a practical limitation of computation/knowability (but still essentially theoretically deterministic if you could measure these sensitive systems with absolute precision) whereas the quantum theory stuff is the real killer- it makes reality a complete probabilistic enigma.
Haven't i got that correct.

Offalycool

Its an interesting debate. This is sometimes referred to as "the mind body problem". If man is matter, and this matter is always changing, over time what remains of me, what is permanent? I don't know, it's tempting to lean towards the behaviourist conception of determinism, if only because it reduces the issue down to a materialist causation. If not yet proven, they believe it is but a matter of time. The other extreme is Cartesian dualism, separation of the "I" from matter. The "I" is permanent because the "I" is immaterial. I am not ready yet to accept any conception, I can live with doubt.

One interesting thing about your question OP.. If we didn't have causation (if we imagine such an existence), we would not be able to change anything. We would be incapable of affecting the world through cause and effect. Edit: On the other hand, I recognise your concern for choice in the first place

Offalycool

I thought that perhaps some people might be interested in a defence of the Cartesian "I" (Edit: though in this re-conception, there is no dualism). Emmanuel Levinas has been a professor of Philosophy at Sorboone, and is known for a his radical phenomenological ethics, our primary responsibility to the other. I picked his essay, The Phenomenological Theory of Being as an introduction to Phenomenology because this copy has a good short introduction, and the essay itself is relativity short and straight forward to read. It can be a little tricky, but if you take it slowly, and reread it, you should get the gist of the argument.This is by no means the totality of his view, it is an early piece on Husserl's insight into the Phenomenological point of view.

Google Books

Edit: On a side note, Levinas would say we have a unavoidable responsibility to respond to the call of the other. Our freedom can be realised in how we respond.

Joe1919

Offalycool wrote: »

Edit: On a side note, Levinas would say we have a unavoidable responsibility to respond to the call of the other. Our freedom can be realised in how we respond.

I always personally found Levinas difficult and impossible.
My question is, What is to motivate us to 'to respond to the call of the other'? Why have we this 'unavoidable responsibility'? Can we not shrug this responsibility off? Does Levinas' ethics not in the end reduce to 'sympathy' i.e. Its is from our biological human sympathy that we confront the face of the other and is this not really Hume's point all along?
Sartre puts it differently with his 'Look' but this has similarities in that when we get the 'Look' from the other, we feel guilty and responsible, (as well as being aware that we are not alone in the world) and hence is it not the case that much of morals is really about sentiment and feeling and is really beyond reason and rationality?

If this is the case then, are we not to some extent 'slaves' to our own bodies, our passions and our situations and our freedom is very limited.

Offalycool

Joe1919 wrote: »

I always personally found Levinas difficult and impossible.
My question is, What is to motivate us to 'to respond to the call of the other'? Why have we this 'unavoidable responsibility'? Can we not shrug this responsibility off? Does Levinas' ethics not in the end reduce to 'sympathy' i.e. Its is from our biological human sympathy that we confront the face of the other and is this not really Hume's point all along?
Sartre puts it differently with his 'Look' but this has similarities in that when we get the 'Look' from the other, we feel guilty and responsible,( as well as being aware that we are not alone in the world) and hence is it not the case that much of morals is really about sentiment and feeling and is really beyond reason and rationality?

Don't quote me on any of this as I find most of his work difficult also. I was really only recommending this particular essay, as a phenomenological response to the Cartesian and Empiricist separation of subjective and objective.

The world exists independently of perception, but it only can be experienced in perception. Levinas does not reduce everything to sympathy, because one can choose not to act or be responsible for the other. What we have no choice in is our responsibility at the encounter with the other. The face of the other calls our attention, demands our responsibility without uttering a word. The face of the other is irreducible to any particular phenomena. ie, it is not reducible to just facial expressions for example. It is a singularity, and can never be generalised. Things (our concepts of reality) are given to the world by the other, the speech of the other fixes and thematizes the world. The other creates the (intelligible) world. We can only have desire because it is provoked by the other. Even our psyche is originally categorised (created by us) by our desire for the other. When we encounter more than one other things get complicated. Ideally we should fulfil the ultimate responsibility after the encounter with the other, but in actuality, to do so would be to complete the task, rendering it imposable. We must always fall short of our responsibility to the other, thereby realising this responsibility to some extent, and particularly when we must judge which other is deserving of preference.

Joe1919

I agree with much of this and it ties in with philosophers like Hegel and Wittgenstein. Both would argue that knowledge is always communal in the sense that our very thoughts are through language and concepts that are part of the community. (There are no private languages).

However, does this not make a great argument against freedom as we are creations of the society that we are brought up in. Our language, our concepts are public and are learned from the Other.
Add to this the fact that we are to some extent 'slaves' to our own bodies, our passions and our situations and our freedom is very very limited, if at all.

Offalycool

Joe1919 wrote: »

I agree with much of this and it ties in with philosophers like Hegel and Wittgenstein. Both would argue that knowledge is always communal in the sense that our very thoughts are through language and concepts that are part of the community. (There are no private languages).

However, does this not make a great argument against freedom as we are creations of the society that we are brought up in. Our language, our concepts are public and are learned from the Other.
Add to this the fact that we are to some extent 'slaves' to our own bodies, our passions and our situations and our freedom is very very limited, if at all.

Perhaps so. But we are the world, and perhaps freedom itself is defined by choice in the world.

bagels4u

I used to be a compatibilist, which leans towards determinism, however acknowledges we have a very limited "will". I'm becoming more in agreement with David Hume, who proposed that our concepts of causation and other universal laws are supported primarily by observation and arguments with irrational and assumptive premises.