Science and Free Will

Despite the title of this article, the testing is about Free Will.

Why conservatives might be better at dieting than liberals

"Are conservatives more likely to stick to a diet than liberals? The answer might be yes.

In a paper published Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers say there is a link between political ideology and the ability to exert self-control.

In a series of three studies with more than 300 participants, the authors found that people who identify as conservative perform better on tests of self-control than those who identify as liberal regardless of race, socioeconomic status and gender.

They also report that participants' performance on the tests was influenced by how much they believed in the idea of free will, which the researchers define as the belief that a person is largely responsible for his or her own outcomes.

For example, conservatives who are more likely to embrace the idea of free will overwhelmingly agreed with statements like "Strength of mind can always overcome the body's desires" and "People can overcome any obstacles if they truly want to."

"Conservatives tend to believe they had a greater control over their outcomes, and that was predicting how they did on the test," said Joshua Clarkson, a consumer psychologist at the University of Cincinnati and the lead author of the paper.

To screen for self-control, Clarkson and his colleagues relied on the Stroop test that asks participants to look at a list of color words such as "red" or "blue" that are printed in mismatching color fonts. (Picture the word "orange" printed in green letters.) Volunteers were asked to read the words, ignoring the color of the font, which can be challenging.

"If you see the word 'red' in blue type your mind wants to say 'blue' right away, but you have to suppress that," Clarkson said. "That's why it is a strong indicator of self regulation."

The authors found that while both liberals and conservatives were able to accurately read the words, conservatives generally were able to do it faster than liberals.

There was, however, one instance when liberals outperformed conservatives on the test.

During one of the experiments, participants were given a fake research article that suggested believing in free will is an obstacle to achieving personal goals. The volunteers were asked to read it before taking the test.

The fake article argued that people who take full responsibility for their outcomes can suffer from more frustration, anxiety and guilt compared with people who put less faith in free will. It concluded that those negative feelings are counter-productive to self-control performance.

After reading the article, conservatives did worse on the test and liberals did better.

Clarkson said one possible explanation for this result is that the article put doubt in the minds of the conservatives.

"For conservatives, their default when they experience struggle is to dig deep," he said. "But if all of a sudden you have a struggle, and then you think you are getting in your own way, you may start second-guessing yourself."

And that second-guessing takes up brain power that might otherwise be applied to the task at hand, he said.

Liberals, on the other hand, may have performed better on the test after reading that embracing free will is bad, because it allows them to better focus on the test, he said.

"You tell liberals that belief in free will is bad and they are like, 'Good, I don't have it anyway,' " he said.

The researchers ran a similar test with a different fake article that argued belief in free will is useful for self-control and can lead to better and increased effort. After reading that article, conservatives outperformed liberals once again on the test.

Clarkson said that the research team, which includes members from Saint Louis University, Indiana University and the University of North Florida, come from different places on the political spectrum.

"We've got liberals, conservatives, libertarians and people who aren't sure," he said. "We are not saying that conservatives are better in general. We just think this study gives us a novel way to think about self-control." "

And "believing that you are not responsible for your own outcomes" is directly logically linked to the victimhood ideology of the Left, and the resulting class system which is based on victimhood and messiahism.

“Free Will: The Scandal in Philosophy”; A Book Review

After having subjected myself to Harris’ book on Free Will, I found this work by Bob Doyle. Doyle has created a massive web site called the “information philosopher”, which serves as a reference for much philosophy, including that of information theory. He then compiled this book from the information he accumulated on the website. Even though Doyle’s work is far more massive, inclusive (and superior) to all other works that I have encountered, this review will be shorter, since the flaws in the work are few, and the conclusions are specific and easily addressed.

Doyle’s book focuses first on the history of the philosophy of free will from Aristotle to Searle, including determinism (18 different types of determinism are outlined), and Compatibilism. He analyzes the necessary and sufficient components of free will, and concludes that a two stage approach, as initiated by William James in 1884, can be made to work for a Compatibilist Theory of free will.

What Doyle suggests is that stage one in any thought process is the initiation of the process by random events, in this case quantum activity in the neurons. This occurs in the subconscious, and it generates “alternative possibilities”. This is the indeterminism stage. Stage two is not randomly controlled, but is determined by “deliberation of the alternative possibilities for action generated by that indeterminism. This we call self-determination”.

On pages 370 and 371, the concept of a two-stage “Cogito” model is developed which includes a feedback loop called “think again”. Around this point in the book, Doyle theorizes that humans are not like computers, humans are information processing machines which are vastly parallel and exceedingly complex. In fact, he says:

”But the ability to translate our thoughts into language and communicate that information to others is unique. We may not be the only species which has thoughts, but we are the only ones that can share our thoughts”.

This seems dubious, but even assuming that it is true that we save our thoughts for others to peruse, thereby creating information external to ourselves (anentropic), this does go against a totally deterministic and entropic universe, placing humans in a specific position which is not controlled deterministically. So are humans actually the uncaused causers that materialists and Atheists fear? Doyle concludes on page 387 with a short statement on the “Mind-Body Problem”. He claims that it is “solved in part” by knowing that the information creation is done physically, even though the…

“…information is the mind in the body, the ghost in the machine, as close to a spirit or soul as science can get. When we die, it is our information which is lost”.

But there are other questions which science is unable to address, even within Doyle’s Cogito theory. The first, most obvious question is: why. Why is non-determinism and anentropic macro-operation predictable from a macro-deterministic universe? Why is it seen only in living things, and why are living things predictable from a deterministic universe? Why would the operation of science, which requires cause and effect determinism as a foundation, now be content with macro-indeterminism as an explanation? What evidence is there that supports the idea that all thoughts, including “re-thinking”, are necessarily initiated randomly rather than purposely looking for specific items in memory for examination and comparison? Why should we believe, without evidence, the just-so story that all this just evolved?

The bottom line seems to be that philosophers and scientists cannot pin down with any exactness (and certainly no certainty) where the boundary between conscious mental activity and subconscious mental activity actually lies. So any free will theories involving subconscious vs. conscious tradeoffs are merely speculation. And Doyle’s speculation is a complex attempt to reconcile the determinists with the non-determinists to produce a compatibilist compromise… a compatibilist speculation. Doyle seemingly works well with information theory, but stumbles into statements of “fact” which he cannot prove. The most glaring “fact” of which is that death = information lost, where information is the understood substitute for “self”, an unstated materialist ideological conclusion.

This book is interesting and useful if for no other reason than as a compendium of historical theories and types of theories. Apparently the information in the book is also on Doyle’s website and would be searchable, but I like books too. Buying the book rewards Doyle’s efforts, and I’m glad to have done so. I recommend it.

Sam Harris and Free Will

A book review of "Free Will", a book by Sam Harris.

SUMMARY

Sam Harris bases his argument against free will on two premises: first, there is neuroscience which shows a delay in blood flow in the brain between initiation of blood flow and the declaration of conscious recognition, from fractions of a second to 7 to 10 seconds. Second, because we are ignorant of the causal physics which produces our thoughts and actions fully formed and complete to the conscious mind, there is no freedom involved in our conscious thinking.

These premises are exercised over and over throughout the book.

But these premises are defective in the first place and ignore other solutions completely. This book is a rationalization of a position which Harris has chosen in advance, a position which is necessary for his Atheism and Philosophical Materialism, both of which he also exercises in the book

The first premise is based on the concept that correlation is causation, which Harris embraces completely with no apparent realization of the logical defect, and no explanation for using it as a first principle.

The second premise is based on the concept that the ignorance of X proves something about X: consequences of X are an illusion. More completely stated, ignorance of the source of Q proves that Q is an illusion despite universal experience of Q and material evidence for Q.

Harris also demonstrates his ignorance of Christianity in an unjustified complaint, which is neither the case nor necessary to his argument.

THE BOOK
This is not, Harris says, philosophical materialism. He explains, on page 11:

“It is important to recognize that the case I am building against free will does not depend on philosophical materialism (the assumption that reality is, at bottom, purely physical). There is no question that (most, if not all) mental events are the product of physical events. The brain is physical system, entirely beholden to the laws of nature-and there is every reason to believe that changes in its functional state and material structure entirely dictate our thoughts and actions.”

This is fundamentally flawed from the get-go. First, he contradicts himself completely by claiming no philosophical materialism, then he makes completely materialist claims without any reasoning, any data. He makes red-flag generalizations to bolster his claim with imagined authority: “no question that”; “every reason to believe”. He has established both Philosophical Materialism and internal contradiction to be the foundation for his argument.

And he continues on page 12:

“But even if the human mind were made of soul-stuff, nothing about my argument would change. The unconscious operation of a soul would grant you no more freedom than the unconscious physiology of your brain does.”

And this provides the basis for ignoring the possibility of a non-material mind, which initiates the neural activity which Harris will repeatedly call “mysterious”, ad nauseum. So he has established, apparently in his mind, a blockade for the defense of materialism, which he denies using.

Harris’ principle for this book is singular and it is knowledge based. Says Harris on pg 8, after referring to the Libet, and two other fMRI brain scan experiments, discussed below:

“Some moments before you are aware of what you will do next – a time in which you subjectively appear to have complete freedom to behave however you please – your brain has already determined what you will do. You then become conscious of this “decision” and believe that you are in the process of making it.”

He continues on page 9:

“…I, as the conscious witness of my experience, no more initiate the events in my prefrontal cortex than I cause my heart to beat.”

And,

“…even if all mental states were truly co-incident with their underlying brain states – I cannot decide what I will next think or intend until a thought or intention arises.”

Harris proceeds to repeat these claims as if they were established fact, incorrigible and unquestionable and not Philosophical Materialist. On page 16:

“Today, the only philosophically respectable way to endorse free will is to be a compatiblist – because we know that determinism, in every sense relevant to human behavior, is true. Unconsious neural events determine our thoughts and actions – and are themselves determined by prior causes of which we are subjectively unaware.”

[emphasis added]

And on page 27:

“Cause and Effect
In physical terms we know that every human action can be reduced to a series of impersonal events: Genes are transcribed, neurotransmitters bind to their receptors, muscle fibers contract, and John Doe pulls the trigger on the gun.”

Determinism is the cheap leisure suit with which Philosophical Materialism dresses itself. (Note 1) Harris leaves no room for conscious decision: everything is predetermined.

On page 25:

“How can we be ‘free’ as conscious agents if everything that we consciously intend is caused by events in our brain that we do not intend and off which we are entirely unaware? We cannot. To say that “my brain” decided to think or act in a particular way, whether consciously or not, and that this is the basis for my freedom, is to ignore the very source of our belief in free will: the feeling of conscious agency. People feel that they are the authors of their thoughts and actions, and this is the only reason why there seems to be a problem of free will worth talking about.”

[emphasis in the original]

And here it seems necessary to object without going further yet. No, Harris, that is not the reason there is a free will issue. The reason is that the denial of free will is used as a foundational brick in the establishment of Atheism. That is the reason that the New Atheists, now including Harris, are fighting the free will battle: because if there is truly agency which is not deterministic, then there is more to humans and the universe than determinism and materialism and Atheism can account for. Free will MUST be defeated, in order to maintain the Atheist and Materialist narrative.

Harris repeats his single thought on virtually every page. He tries to drive it home on page 32:

“As we have begun to see, however, this feeling of freedom arises from our moment-to-moment ignorance of the prior causes of our thoughts and actions. The phrase “free will’ describes what it feels like to identify with certain mental states as they arise in consciousness. Thoughts like ‘What should I get my daughter for birthday? I know – I’ll take her to a pet store and have her pick out some tropical fish’ convey the apparent reality of choices, freely made. But from a deeper perspective (speaking both subjectively and objectively), thoughts simply arise unauthored and yet author our actions”.

And on page 40 he makes what appears to be a conclusion:

”What I will do next, and why, remains a mystery – one that is fully determined by the prior state of the universe and the laws of nature (including the contributions of chance). To declare my ‘freedom’ is tantamount to saying, ‘I don’t know why I did it, but it’s the sort of thing I tend to do, and I don’t mind doing it.”

Harris has defined the equivalent of an internal homunculus which controls our every action, thought and intention, and then lets us know what was decided outside of our conscious reach. I don’t know why I did it: I have no free will. Only Harris calls the homunculus a “mystery”, and he refers to this mystery on almost every subsequent page. We have this mystery, he says so we have no freedom of our own; every thought and intent has to be predetermined by the universe and chance, purely because we don’t understand this mystery.

Harris has pushed the agency (new redefinition of deterministic vs fatalistic) back into the mysterious, homunculus zone of the brain – out of our “self” and onto the mysterious Other which inhabits our neurons without our knowledge or control. Yet it is within us, it acts like it is us acting, it deludes us into thinking that we are doing it, thinking it, creating it, responsible for it ourselves. But the self is a delusion too; we are not the actors. We are merely the librarian storing the records, the Boswell to Johnson (neither of whom had agency either, of course), the hobo along for the ride, looking out the side door, not knowing where we are going but remembering where the boxcar has taken us before.

Harris never mentions that the mystery might in fact be based on non-causal correlation, which is done by non-instrumentation of the actual phenomena being discussed: the mystery might, in actual fact, not even exist. And further investigation will likely produce information on mental processes which are not even considered in the simplistic model which Harris and the neuroscientists are using in their current apologetics.

But WAIT! On page 42 Harris takes a new turn:

“There is no question that human beings can imagine and plan for the future, weigh competing desires, etc. – and that losing these capacities would greatly diminish us. External and internal pressures of various kinds can be present or absent while a person imagines, plans and acts - and such pressures determine our sense of whether he is morally responsible for his behavior. However, these things have nothing to do with free will”

[emphasis added]

What? Humans can consciously imagine and plan and act? Really?

Harris has previously defined free will and now re-defines it in light of obvious human agency. Now he defines free will as requiring knowledge of the psychological cause of his behavior, page 43:

“However, when I look for the psychological cause of my behavior, I find it utterly mysterious”.

Well, it is now becoming clear that his inability to explain his own psychology leads him to conclude that he cannot make intentional decisions and to affect causal actions based on those decisions. He concludes that chapter with this:

“- you cannot account for your decision either. You will do whatever it is you do, and it is meaningless to assert that you could have done otherwise.”

So he has it both ways here. IF/Because he cannot account for the origin of the neural activity, which remains a homuncular mystery to him, THEN he concludes that you will do whatever is predetermined for you to do, without any conscious control or ability to change what you do (it’s already done for you). Except as he also claims, humans can consciously “imagine, plan and act”.

This is completely dependent upon Philosophical Materialism and the denial that the mind might be other than previous electron positions in the universe, and might in fact cause the neural activity in the first place.

But that would seem to contradict the “science” Harris quotes. Does it? And does it matter? Harris is comfortable with contradictions, even in the same paragraph.

What about Libet? Libet’s experiment is now thought of as merely a first attempt, without providing accuracy in instrumentation; the response was measured externally, on the skin. An explanation of the Libet experiment is found here (http://www.informationphilosopher.com/freedom/libet_experiments.html), complete with a timing clock.

Additional experiments are noted by Harris, and many of them are subliminal tests which measure the subject’s response to very short visual exposures. These are claimed to show that there is mental processing of inputs which is not conscious. Surprisingly enough, Dennett points out that the short exposure might be consciously recognized and then forgotten with the same speed, so that there is no direct causal interpretation of this correlation. Neither Harris nor Dennett appears to recognize any timing difficulty in measuring the first microsecond that conscious recognition occurs. Merely reporting the event of conscious recognition incurs significant delay, itself, and is unaccounted for because it cannot be accurately measured. After all, consciousness seems to occupy much of the entire brain.

In fact, most, if not all, of these types of “neural science” depend upon correlation in order to “prove” causation. This is necessary, at least at this point in the science, because there is no direct instrumentation which can be connected to the “conscious awareness” in order to determine the exact time of awareness. While some researchers warn against this flaw, others publish papers claiming fact based on correlation alone; Harris refers to the latter.

Moreover, other correlates are ignored, such as related activity in other portions of the brain which are activated at only sub-threshold levels in terms of increased blood flow (a poor correlate in itself)(Note 2), so that there actually is no understanding of the full mental process. Further, what is being measured is stimulus – response, without acknowledging the full process of rational determination, which necessarily includes comparison with other acquired knowledge (requires a memory search), differentiation between cases, judgment based on a rule set which must be accessed, and refiling into a related memory location. Much less understood is the spontaneous generation of creative, original thoughts. None of these are measured, or even acknowledged as necessary to the making of an intentional decision.

So not only is the instrumentation not on the right correlate, it doesn’t measure actual mental processing.

Most glaring is the unanswered issue of how it is that the subconscious mind might be induced to make abstract decisions, create abstract thoughts previously unthought, causally produce action which can be carried out only by the conscious, but parasitic, mind, not to mention why consciousness is there at all given that everything is done subconsciously with the conscious mind merely receiving notice that it was done already.

This is dismissed as “mystery” by Harris. And if there is mystery, “then,” he asks, “where is the freedom in that?” Why not admit that X exists by universal experience, even if the neurological discharge is still a mystery.

But those questions are just the start of the hard questions surrounding free will, questions which, if answerable and answered, might turn determinism on its head.


Why is the dream-world irrational? Is the rational homunculus asleep? Why is consciousness required in order for rationality to be instituted into mental activity? Given that consciousness merely receives information after the fact, why doesn’t determinism work the same without consciousness as it does during consciousness?

How does determinism of atomic and electron placement clear back to the origin of the universe predict rational intellect? Or is there no rational intellect, purely because of determinism? Why do Harris and Dennett etc. need to make a distinction between complete determinism and “fatalism”, unless they need a hole in their argument to allow for the actuality of agency, even if agency is within the environmental and psychological constraints to which an individual is subject? If “freedom” is an illusion, then why is the distinction – strained as it is – necessary, or even logical, given the abjurance of fatalism and the existence of choice but not freedom?

And if there is the onerous delay required to initiate action and then conscious recognition of the action, why do carpenters have fingers remaining on their hands? If there is no synchronicity between physical reality and conscious perception of reality, then power tools would be lethal and unusable. There would be no chance to perform any delicate manual procedure consciously. If there are delays, the world would have moved on without waiting for our illusion to appear. We would be “living” some indeterminate time behind the real, physical world. Do we believe that this is actually the case, and if so why? Merely to satisfy Philosophical Materialism, an internally non-coherent ideology?

Harris says on page 46,

“Our interests in life are not always served by viewing people and things as collections of atoms – but this doesn’t negate the truth or utility of physics”.

Physics, Harris says, (or at least some tests somewhere) overrules our personal experience: a philosophical Materialistic and Scientistic statement which Harris follows on the same page with this:

“A creative change of inputs to the system – learning new skills, forming new relationships, adopting new habits of attention – may radically transform one’s life”.

This statement of conscious agency is a direct contradiction of his prior statement, and the book is full of similar direct contradictions. Full. For example, two pages later in a new chapter on Moral Responsibility, Harris makes this observation:

“Judgments of responsibility depend upon the overall complexion of one’s mind, not on the metaphysics of mental cause and effect”.

By complexion he means, apparently, the prior states; by metaphysics Harris means, apparently, agency;. This is verified by his position that justice cannot assign guilt when there is no conscious agency. This contradicts the prior statement just above, which attributes agency to changing one’s life around.

And he blames the current justice system for retributive punishment rather than realignment, ignoring the fact that removal from society is the only “punishment” given for almost all moderately serious infractions these days. And even Harris agrees that removal from society is necessary, introducing another contradiction still.

And by page 56, Harris cannot resist an attack on religion, specifically Christianity:

“Few concepts have offered greater scope for human cruelty than the idea of an immortal soul that stands independent of all material influences, ranging from genes to economic systems. Within a religious framework, a belief in free will supports the notion of sin – which seems to justify harsh punishment not only in this life but eternal punishment in the next. And yet, ironically, one of the fears attending our progress in science is that a more complete understanding of ourselves will dehumanize us.”

Harris’ misunderstanding of Christianity is dwarfed only by his misunderstanding of world history. First, the most massive cruelties of history were endured very recently, historically, and were administered by Atheist regimes – Lenin/Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Castro; and the psycho regime of Aryan-Nordic-NAZIism. Moreover, the idea of separating criminals is not just a religious premise. And Atheists have no belief in eternal life, so they cannot be threatened by “eternal punishment” in a next life which doesn’t exist. Strike one.

While the concept of sin, which is actually the concept of personal responsibility for one’s actions, is supported by free will, it is not free will that generated it. But if there is total determinism as the Atheists wish it to be understood, then there is no personal responsibility for anything, whether good or bad. And that is the greatest scope possible for human cruelty.
Strike two.

Finally, Christians are not afraid of actual, factual, disciplined, empirical science; it was invented by Christians, and Christians populate industrial R&D where non-ideological science is done successfully. But what is being done more and more is scientism, unsupported by actual disciplined, replicable, falsifiable, objective empiricism. And this is done in academia where results and consequences do not exist, and ideology can corrupt without repercussions. And even Michael Shermer, the Atheist celebrity Skeptic, has termed the fMRI investigations to be the equivalent of phrenology. The categorical, conclusive-types of “studies”, and declarations of “fact” to which the Atheist authors want to apply to non-falsifiable subjects should be anathema to anyone who values valid data provided by disciplined and rigorous empiricism rather than ideology.
Strike three.

What Harris has delivered is breathless ideology based on his one single idea, ( based on two fallacies) which is that, given determinism, IF the cause of neural firing or even prior history electron placement is not known, THEN there is no freedom to attach to human will, which therefore is an illusion. This is entirely non sequitur, with the conclusion in no way dependent upon the antecedent, and the antecedent not even being a piece of knowledge which could even conceivably prove the conclusion.

Finally, Harris makes the astonishing claim that accepting the lack of free will has made him more moral: more empathetic because of his new understanding that people really can’t help what they do. On page 62, for example, he makes this claim:

“How much credit does a person deserve for not being lazy? None at all. Laziness, like diligence is a neurological condition. Of course, conservatives are right to think that we must encourage people to work at the best of their abilities and discourage free riders wherever we can. And it is wise to hold people responsible for their actions when doing so influences their behavior and brings benefits to society. But this does not mean that we must be taken in by the illusion of free will. We need only acknowledge that efforts matter and that people can change.”

How many contradictions are contained within that single sub-paragraph? Laziness and diligence are predetermined and not created; but free riders are loafers and must be addressed. People are totally predetermined and not free agents, but if held responsible they can change their behaviors. Free will is an illusion, but “efforts matter” and “people can change” even though their conscious world is totally deterministic.

Even further it is entirely dependent upon Philosophical Materialism being exactly true, an assertion which is noncoherent in itself (note 3).

CONCLUSION
Harris is far from an objective source for information which might reflect on his ideology. He is rather an apologist for his ideology who rationalizes, trying to justify his Atheism and Philosophical Materialism. In his rush to support his ideology, he accepts fallacies and contradictions and questionable science without question.

Especially disturbing are the glowing endorsements from professors of philosophy on the back cover. The attachment to ideology over logic is palpable.

I truly resent having to spend money on this book, especially now after reading it, even more than before. It seems that Harris’ books must be read purely because it is Harris who is writing it, and that the Atheist community will read it breathlessly and believe it uncritically, because Harris is one of them. Plus he gained considerable notoriety with his book attacking Christianity, so he is widely known and read. So if one is following Atheism, then one must know what sort of apologetics Harris is pumping out now.

Not all Atheists buy into Harris’ attempts to justify Scientism and his personal version of logical positivism. Massimo Pigliucci has long been a foe of both scientism and Harris. And evolutionary biologist Austin Hughes stings Harris in his article in New Atlantis. But Harris is a charter member of the inbred New Atheists, who give each other awards and pimp each other’s new books. So of course he gets high marks from the usual suspects. The New Atheists have created nearly as many Atheists as the Catholic church.

So I had to take 90 minutes to read Harris’ assault on Free Will. It could have been shorter, maybe 12 pages rather than the 66 pages he stretched it to (using double spacing and hyper-wide margins, including top and bottom. But no matter. Once he had stated the premise, it became quite familiar, showing up on nearly every page and sometimes twice. And with just the one premise, he actually had very little to say, once it was said.


NOTES
(1) If determinism is valid, then the human is an uncaused causer, because human agency is rationally undeniable, and it defies predetermined control; therefore, if causality is to be maintained, the cause of human agency must be some as yet unidentified, but non-material thing, which we would call a substance, but which has no actual material substance which is subject to determinism.
Bertrand Russell, Nine Lectures on the Mind; paraphrased.

(2) The concept of bloodflow in the brain as a definitive indication of having made a decision is completely accepted without question by the Materialist neuroscientists. But there is no direct measurement of either the decision, or the actual receipt of information by the conscious mind. And the conclusion can be accepted only by declaring our every experience to be a delusion.

In fact, there is no knowledge that the bloodflow indicates a decision at all; that is a Jump To Conclusion. The bloodflow might be preparatory for initial conditions which need to be satisfied in order to make the decision consciously. This might include the need for memory access to comparable situations so that a rational comparison can be made. And it might include the differentiation process, and other processes required of rational decision making, before the decision is actually made. Or it might merely be a nutritional preparation for a process which is upcoming.

This is more likely than the total delusion which is favored by the Atheist neuroscientists, without actual direct evidence for its support.

(3) Philosophical Materialism makes the specific claim that material existence is the only existence there is, and that all knowledge can and must be materially generated. That claim is internally contradictory, because the claim cannot be proven using material evidence. Therefore, the claim cannot be knowledge under its own conditions, and is paradoxical (internally contradictory, and noncoherent), thus being irrational.

Massimo Squirms on Free Will vs. Fate

It’s been awhile since I poked into Massimo’s place to see what the NY Atheists are up to. Today I had some time, and I found this, from Massimo who was discussing whether rejecting free will necessitates the acceptance of fate:

”“Yes and no” isn’t a wishy-washy non-answer to the question of whether or not I believe in fate because I can answer that question differently on the two sides of the is/ought divide. Metaphysically: yes, there is only one way the universe will unfold; Aubrey Plaza’s character will cause events that lead to her mother’s death no matter how many times she rewinds time. Morally: no, the way the universe unfolds isn’t the way things are supposed to be; it’s just the way things happen, in part because of our actions, and so Ms. Plaza’s character (indeed, any one of us) can still be responsible for what she does.

What do you do with a degree in philosophy? Obviously, you’d like to be doing something worthwhile and productive. It just isn’t clear to me that debating free will as a metaphysical issue accomplishes that. Intuition tells me that it’s not possible for the past to have proceeded differently; intuition may tell you otherwise. How do we resolve that debate? Our ignorance of what is and isn’t possible is so profound that philosophers can’t even agree on a system of logic with which to judge the truth of possibility claims. Discussions of free will in the metaphysical context just aren’t going to go very far; however, if philosophers get around to the moral context at all, it’s only after they’ve had the metaphysical debate.”

There appear to be a couple of misapprehensions involved here. First, changing the past, or rather the inability to change the past by going back in time, has no bearing on the ability to change the future from that same time. The time traveler argument merely diverts from the actual argument which is, “can a decision I make change the actuality occurred in the future?” And more specifically, “Can I actually make decisions, or has my deterministic brain made all the decisions without my actual conscious input, and made those decisions based on the positions of atoms and the flow of electrons through cranial impedances, as predetermined clear back to the origin of the universe?”. Massimo doesn’t address this, apparently because it is too metaphysical and our ignorance is “too profound”. Yet isn’t that what philosophers do?

Massimo conflates personal free will with teleology when he decides that the way the universe unfolds is not the way things are “supposed to be..”, which is not the issue at all. The issue of free will is this: can the way the universe unfolds be steered, in any miniscule fashion, by human decisions which result in human actions? So, Massimo continues, “…it’s just the way things happen, in part because of our actions…”.

Yes, in part because of our actions. And still Massimo does not address free will: are our actions deliberate and intentional, or not? Massimo’s final endorsement of personal responsibility seems to imply that he thinks they are.

Still, he has written an entire blog article based on the concept of using “yes and no” and “profound ignorance” as an answer, thereby placing the question into a category of implacable imponderability, beyond the reach of even philosophers.

So why are philosophers paid by public tax dollars, then?

Sam Harris: Over His Head

Sam Harris:

”Choice, reasoning, discipline, etc., play important roles in our lives despite the fact that they are determined by prior causes…”

Does no Atheist see the internal contradiction within this single position statement?

Free Will, Agency, Self, and Life, Part 7; Compatibilism.

The thrust of Compatibilism is that somehow the contraries of Free Will and Determinism are actually compatible with each other. Why? Because it is too difficult to shed either of the ideas in favor of the other, at least if one subscribes to Philosophical Materialism as the foundation for all existence, and subscribes to that dogmatically such that it is personally incontrovertible.

If Philosophical Materialism is incontrovertible, dogmatically, then it becomes intellectually impossible to shed Determinism; and if one perceives a personal freedom of will and agency, and recognizes that it is futile to deny it because denying it removes all meaning from one’s personal ruminations, then free will and agency are concepts which are also impossible to shed.

But they are contraries, and to hold both beliefs simultaneously renders the belief system non-coherent: irrational.

What to do?

It seems not possible for the dogmatic Philosophical Materialist to release Determinism, because the dogma of the philosophy requires it. But it also requires accepting the empirical, experiential conclusion that one must have free will and agency to function as a human. So we see right up front that the one contrary, Determinism, is dogmatic, and the other contrary, free will and agency, is empirical. So which is more important, the dogmatic or the empirical?

Philosophical Materialists choose not to choose. Instead, they create stories which attempt to show that the two contraries are not really contrary, but coexist somehow, compatibly. Hence, Compatibilism.

In order to do this, it is necessary to redefine the issue, so that it will fit the stories. Possibly Determinism is only partial? Or free will and agency are partial (or not free or intentional)?

Here I will consider a paper which is written from the completely Determinist viewpoint, a paper by James B. Miles, published in the British Psychological Society Journal, and reproduced at naturalism.org. I will quote from Miles’ paper, sometimes at length, and then place my own comments at appropriate intervals. I think this serves the analysis of Compatiblism because as a Determinist, Miles takes apart the Compatibilist theories for us. He then proceeds to the fully Determinist theory which he promotes, giving an opportunity to analyze that, as well.

First, Miles defines the categories which he makes available for discussion:

1. Illusionism claims that Free Will and Determinism cannot co-exist, that determinism is true at the human level, and that we do not have Free Will.

2. Compatibilism claims that Free Will and Determinism can co-exist, that determinism is true at the human level, and yet we do have Free Will (but not Free Choice).

3. Libertarianism claims that Free Will and Determinism cannot co-exist, that Determinism is not true at the human level, and that we do have Free Will.

What is left out is Dualism:

4. Dualism claims that Free Will and Determinism cannot co-exist, that Determinism is not true at the human level, and that we do have Free Will PLUS that Materialism is logically and evidentially false.

The analysis that Miles provides is for Philosophical Materialist propositions only; it is apparently inconceivable that non-Materialist thoughts might still exist in today’s Materialistic world. That works out fine for our needs here, since we wish to see and analyze the Materialist positions. And we will skip over Illusionism since that subject has already been addressed in earlier posts. So we proceed with Miles as he takes on Compatibilism:

Miles:

” But how can free will be compatible with, at the human level, a fully determined universe? Because, for free will compatibilists, free will is simply redefined as being something other than freedom of choice, something other than freedom to have done otherwise, something other than freedom to have willed otherwise.

This is ultimately what all compatibilism boils down to; this is why Kant in 1788 called compatibilism a ‘wretched subterfuge . . . petty word-jugglery’, why William James in 1884 called it ‘a quagmire of evasion’ (James, 1884/1956, p. 149; Kant, 1788/1956, pp. 189–190). Within compatibilism, the general rule is that free will can be defined as anything, so long as it is never defined as freedom of choice, freedom for any actual individual to have done otherwise. So, for example, Susan Wolf has redefined free will to mean sanity (1989), whereas others have redefined it as freedom from constraint, as unpredictability, as acting in accordance with ‘reason’, and many, including the doyen of modern philosophical compatibilists Harry Frankfurt (1971/2003), as acting in harmony with your basic – causally determined – personality. The philosopher of science Dan Dennett (1984) has defined free will as mechanical self-control. Free will, according to Dennett, is possessed by yeast, chrysanthemums, and some plastic toys. Under Dennett’s formulation were you to take your child’s toy car, put in new batteries, and then set it to race away, it would not have free will; however, as soon as you turn your back and walk away from it never to return, you have blessed it with free will. In other words, free will has deliberately been defined so generously it becomes a meaningless term, a morally empty concept, a capacity we can share with both the Energizer Bunny and fungal infections.

There are some who continue to argue that the compatibilist project is a noble one, trying to steer a just course of limited human freedom through the murky waters of determinism, but I argue Dennett gives the lie to the suggestion that compatibilism is about advancing human understanding or justice. Dennett, one of the world’s leading compatibilist scholars, tells us he finds facing up to the absence of free choice ‘almost too grim to contemplate’ (1984, p. 168). But what exactly does Dennett not wish to contemplate? As a free will theorist it is his job to contemplate the non-existence of free choice, so it cannot be his own contemplation he fears. No; what scares Dennett is not the fact of no free choice, it appears to be the risk of the public being given the chance to understand that fact. Motive becomes almost irrelevant; because, in a world without free will, ‘luck swallows everything’ (Strawson, 1998), one effect of denying the electorate such knowledge is to pretty much ensure that the lucky stay lucky while the unlucky remain unlucky.” [emphasis added].
J.B. Miles, The British Psychological Society;
Naturalism.org

So “real” Determinists have no truck with compatiblists. That’s fine; I agree. It is not possible to accept contraries without either a logical breech, or redefining the precepts in illegal or meaningless fashions. Compatibilism is false. But there is another way out, perhaps: Quantum Indeterminism, a rather self-descriptive concept.


Quantum Indeterminism

” Indeterminism cannot save free will for humankind, because if the mind is,
at least in part, undetermined, then some things ‘just happen’ in it outside the laws of causation for which, by definition, nobody and nothing is responsible. An individual is not responsible if their actions are caused, because those actions were ultimately set in motion before they were even born. But an individual is also not responsible if some of their actions are uncaused, because those actions just came out of nowhere. To be freely choosing an individual would have to be free from both deterministic effects and indeterministic effects. Free from both A and not-A, as a logician would put it. To be freely choosing you cannot have A, but you cannot have not-A either; free choice requires something that cannot logically exist in this or any possible universe.”

But is this seeming contradiction real? Is indeterminism as a cause really the contrary of determinism as a cause, or is there some other, actual contrary which applies? No, it is not a legitimate logical contradiction; it is a false dichotomy, because the categories which obtain are these:

U = D and !D

(Where U = universal set; D=Determinism subset)

The contrary of Determinism is not Indeterminism, it is non-determinism. The division is between physically causal and not physically causal. It is decidedly not the division between degrees of causality. So the actual field of choices is this:

[D] Determinism: (with Subsets A and !A):

[D & A] Determinism, Totally causal.
[D & !A] Determinism, Randomly causal.

[!D] Non-Determinism: (with Subsets N and !N):

[!D & N] Non–Determinism, Free Choice, agent caused.
[!D & !N] Non-Determinism, Totally acausal

The author’s argument above, purported to be logical, is actually selecting between sub-subcategories [D & A] and [D & !A], while ignoring the [!D] subcategory altogether. This is expected, not logically, but dogmatically if the dogma is Materialist determinism as the only possibility which is allowed in the universe – which exists only under a philosophical, not empirical, dogma.

To exacerbate the issue, the argument is said to be a case against Free Will and Agency, when in fact it is an illegitimate rendering of the universe in order to eliminate them from consideration, a priori. Even further, this illegitimate elimination is done under the cover of the claim of logic.

When we look at the possibility categories, we see that we can eliminate [!A] and [!N] fairly easily. (The author already eliminated [!A]). So the proper differentiation becomes that between [D & A] vs. [!D & N], or [totally causal Determinism] vs.[ Free Will / Agency]. Under this proper understanding, either we are totally predetermined in every action and thought, or we have Free Will. In other words, there is no compatibility to be had using this particular logic.

” But logic, which deals only in right and wrong answers, certainly can disprove the existence of free choice. We saw earlier that to be freely choosing an individual would have to be free from both deterministic effects and indeterministic effects. Free from both A and not-A, as we put it. To be freely choosing you cannot have A, but you cannot have not-A either; free choice requires something that cannot logically exist in this or any possible universe.”

This is an acceptance and promotion of a false dichotomy; these are the only two Materialist choices, perhaps, but not the only two choices, and not proper logical contraries to boot.

” Most of the great intellectual names of the pre- and post-enlightenment openly derided belief in free choice, including Hobbes, Spinoza, Voltaire, Darwin, and Einstein, and they did so because logic ruled out even its hypothetical existence. Nietzsche went so far as to call the idea of free choice ‘a kind of logical rape’ (1886/1990, p. 50).”

Under Philosophical Materialism, these great intellectual names used the same unprovable and illogical constraints that Materialism provides, and which is falsified, above. And Nietzsche also murdered the First Principles, thereby nullifying logic totally, and necessitating his invention of Antirationalism. If one chooses Antirationalist claims, then one cannot also claim rationality. As an Appeal to Authority, this comment is weak on top of being a fallacy in argumentation.

And what becomes of “logical” refutation, any logical thought at all (especially in the absence of material evidence) if the lack of free will produces an inability to choose correct over incorrect, true over false, logical over illogical? This alone falsifies the position taken by the author.

However, this is ignored, and the moral issue is taken up.


Free Will vs. Morality

The moral case goes like this: because the concept of Free Will leads to the concept of personal responsibility, Free Will leads to “contempt” and “violence”, where the impoverished are blamed for their own problems, and violence in prisons is due to the idea of personal responsibility.

Libertarians, those who think that there is Free will and Agency, exhibit a “moral hardness”:

” their unwavering faith in the righteousness of their worldview no matter the lack of any objective evidence and the pain caused to others. As Double puts it, ‘fallibilism about one’s views is a desirable quality in general, but it is morally obligatory when dogmatism has potentially harmful repercussions for persons’ (2002, p. 231). It should furthermore be noted that asserting the existence of something for which there is zero objective evidence is widely viewed as a form of pseudoscience.”

After having admitted that there is no empirical evidence against free will either, it is remarkable that Determinism is not declared pseudoscience first and foremost; it cannot be proved, ever, because it is a universal, inductively held and subject to the inductive fallacy. Plus, Hume famously put a perpetual doubt in place concerning the actual existence of cause itself. And as for self-righteousness, there is none so great as that of those who create their own ethic, which they demand that others must obey; it is out of this self-righteousness that others are morally condemned.

But this is ignored, and the moral case for denying free will continues:

” To consider for a moment, Western law recognizes that the penal system is so harmful to the existing life and future opportunities of persons that to convict requires evidence beyond a reasonable doubt. Yet libertarians provide no objective evidence whatsoever for the existence of free will, and therefore no apparent justification for the mass poverty and brutal punishments that belief in libertarian free will often brings with it. The leading legal theorist Stephen J. Morse freely admits that harsh prison conditions and execution are only morally tolerable where the presumption of free choice exists (1976a; 2004).”

And,

” Shariff, Vohs, and Schooler tell us that we should be prepared to ‘stake our very lives on the introspective certainty’ that we are conscious, but ‘perhaps none of us would be prepared to do the same for free will’ (Shariff et al., 2008, p. 190). Yet surely social psychology risks appearing far too ready to stake other people’s lives on the ‘introspective certainty’ of free will?”

The pressure of moral denouncement by their peers is too much for them? Especially under the draconian accusations proffered pompously here.

Now for the obligatory Social Justice:

” Because of their belief in the fairness of ‘deserved inequalities’, such respondents were discovered to have become almost completely unconcerned with the idea of promoting greater equality while at the same time asserting that Britain was a beacon of fairness that offered opportunities for all.”

It seems that it is not opportunities which he really wants:

”The 2010 British Social Attitudes Report also found that there has been a fall in those supporting any form of wealth redistribution, from 51% in 1994 to 38% in 2010; sympathy was now limited to those who did not ‘choose’ to live in poverty”

It is equal outcomes which he really wants. Here comes compassion and justice:

”Thomas Halper showed in a 1973 Polity essay that attitudes to poverty – including our corresponding compassion towards the poor or lack thereof – have always depended upon our views of personal merit, and choice in one’s position, but Halper’s most worrying conclusion comes when he describes how the main reason for the great longevity and influence of the notorious concept of the deserving versus undeserving poor ‘was its profound legitimating power’ (1973, p. 76). When some are identified as deserving their station through choice rather than luck or accident it becomes not only an excuse not to do anything to help them but also, even more malignantly, is given as proof that such a society is just.”

And,

”Free will becomes the legitimating excuse that is used to ignore the plight of the most unfortunate, as the world is not now examined to see if it is just but instead is simply assumed to be just.”

In this discussion we are not allowed a glimpse of any actual chosen degradation; we are told that it is all because of a lack of empathy in society, which in turn is due to the concept of Free Will. It also presumes that prosperity is completely accidental and not a product of any personal agency.

And of course racism is the next charge:

”All of which leads the legal theorist Anders Kaye at the Thomas Jefferson School of Law to note that any legal approach, such as compatibilism, which plays down the fact that choice is lacking is more conducive to the use of state violence against the disadvantaged, and that the disadvantaged tend to be ‘disproportionately – though not exclusively – people of color. . . . This is also the group with the most reason to criticize and challenge the social order’

Kaye has called this the ‘secret politics’ of the compatibilist criminal law. Free will is a belief that hurts the poor, acts to advantage the rich and powerful, and discriminates against the coloured, and it is crass not to recognize the unfair advantage the myth of free will may be giving to some segments of society, and very much at the expense of others.

Fatalism

”Confusing determinism and fatalism is lack of knowledge of the history of the free will debates; almost two and a half thousand years ago, the Stoics showed that an understanding of determinism should never imply fatalism. Determinism means that every action in the quasi-classical universe has a cause. In contrast, fatalism is a resignation to events that suggests that as everything is determined it is pointless to act because of a belief that no matter what one does one’s future will not change. The Stoics called this the ‘lazy’ or ‘idle’ argument, and Cicero said that Chrysippus (ca. 270–207 BCE, Before Common Era) criticized the fatalist argument by showing that determinism left plenty of room for taking action. Fatalists used to argue over the point of calling the doctor if you are ill, but Chrysippus showed that you will get better by calling the doctor; it is just that the act of calling the doctor is itself also part of the chain of cause and effect.Where there is no free will, actions and efforts have effects and change the outcome from what it would have been if the effort had not been made; it is just that the outcome can still be defined in terms of prior causes. Where there is no free will, actions and efforts have effects and change the outcome from what it would have been if the effort had not been made; it is just that the outcome can still be defined in terms of prior causes.”

This is blatantly impossible to reconcile with no Free Will or Agency; if it is possible to decide to act or not to act, then there is Free Will. Fatalism is not a philosophical option in opposition to free will, it is an emotional response. The response is an emotional reaction to the concept of no free will and no agency, as is required under Determinism. To claim that Determinism allows for the free choice to call a doctor or not is an on-the-fly redefinition of Determinism. It is false to claim that an outcome can be changed by personal action if it is also claimed that every action is predetermined and thus every outcome is predetermined. These claims are internally contradictory and non-coherent.

”But a determinist will make as many decisions as a libertarian, it is just that he or she will recognize their [sic] decisions as fully determined.”

This becomes word-play, where the rationalization becomes unintelligible to all but the cognoscenti who endorse the premise. If an outcome is predetermined, it is not determined by decisions being made, it is “fully determined” by preexisting states which force an outcome which could not be otherwise. To claim that decisions are anyway involved in changing outcomes requires a complete redefinition of at least one and maybe several terms in the proposition.

Redefinition as a tactic is quite common in Philosophical Materialist propositions; this is one example.

Here the author goes the whole distance:

”As a determinist understands that all effects need causes, and that all change only comes about through effort, a determinist is perhaps more likely to strive harder than most. I make the effort to write this paper in order to have an effect; the effect of, at the minimum, ensuring social psychologists become better informed about the free will debates. Vohs, Schooler, and Baumeister appear to have to date been testing the effect of belief in fatalism, not the effect of disbelief in free will.”

Let’s parse this position:

1. ” All effects need causes.”

Maybe so; but first, consult with Hume.

2. ”All change only comes about through effort.”

No. Wrong. Under Determinism the total causal chain is entropic, requiring no effort, which is good because minerals are incapable of expending effort in order to create change. Energy is degraded and lost to heat, not summoned forth for teleological efforts. Water makes no effort to flow downhill; it never exerts itself to flow uphill toward some elevated purpose. The statement above is completely false, and is not a principle of physics. It is a principle of Free Will, not Determinism. It is false to co-opt a principle of Free Will in order to prove Determinism.

3. ”I make the effort … in order to have an effect.”

BINGO. Here the author claims to have agency. It is by his own effort that the effect is created, and he, the human agent, is the cause. He is the agent which created this very paper, an effect which he hopes will have even further ripple effects after publication. And the author doubtless is an agent in the pursuit of the effect of publication. It is an inadvertant admission that his prior denial is wrong; yet he sees it as consistent: Determinism is now wholly compatible with his own agency. The eternal contradiction and non-coherence is not even recognized.

Summary of the Miles paper:

1. Free Will is “Irresponsible and a disservice” (title of the paper).

This is a moral conclusion, based on defective logic as well as personal moral tenets.

2. Free Will cannot exist in a Deterministic universe. Free Will fails logic.

Disproved easily and categorically, as was shown above.

3. Compatibilism is false.

Agreed. Determinism and Free Will are mutually exclusive, and cannot be made compatible without either internal non-coherence, or changing the ground rules.

4. Free Will is a myth which is morally reprehensible. Free will is an illusion which serves to suppress decent goals such as empathy for the poor in the form of equal outcome as a goal. Free Will is racist. Free Will leads to state violence in prisons, against those who are not responsible for their own actions and thus cannot be guilty (victimology).

Moralizing based on faulty conclusions, in turn based on the illogic of the original proposition.

5. Determinists make decisions.

No, actually that cannot be the case without severe damage to the original definitions. That decidedly falls into Compatibilism, which the author previously declared false, and with good reason. Now claiming otherwise is non-coherent.

6. The public needs to know that they don’t have Free Will.

It will take a better case than presented here to convince anyone other than the prior believers that none of us has Free Will and Agency.

The author has not proven his case that Free Will does not and cannot exist. He maintains that Free Will has no material, empirical evidence, despite the fact that neither does his own position, Determinism, meaning that that claim is not a differentiator. In fact, the universal human experience is that humans do choose freely and are agents; this universal subjective experience is far more empirical and credible than any Determinist data. He claims logic: but, his logic is fatally flawed. His morality is Virtue Ethic, which is nothing more than an opinion, being without any moral authority opinion, with no moral authority to proclaim its supposed universal value. His appeal to empathy is little more than an egalitarian political move, driving toward equality of outcomes based on the non-responsibility which the impoverished have for their own poverty, and the incarcerated have for their incarceration. Redistribution of wealth, that is the key. And of course, Free Will is racist.

In short, this compendium of flawed logic veered into Leftist political territory very quickly.

The result is that we can see that Illusionism is false, Compatibilism is false, and Libertarianism needs the help of Dualism. This is because under Materialism (as Libertarianism is), it cannot account for any source for that which it believes: that Free Will exists and that Determinism is overridden at the human level in order for agency to operate. There is no Materialist explanation or provision for this phenomenon. And so Libertarianism suffers and dies due to its inability to fulfill its obligatory Materialist evidentiary requirements.

When a concept is false it will generate contradictions at every attempt to justify it. Monism is one of those concepts, and Determinism is clutched to the monist’s heart as a necessary fallacy which must be held tight in order to preserve the “reality” which monists have defined for themselves. But monism leads to falseness such as the Philosophical Materialism fallacy, the necessity for abiogenesis, and the illegitimacy of Free Will and Agency. These beliefs and others are held uncritically and despite their rational non-coherence, purely in order to preserve the perceived necessity of monism. But the process is inverted from rational processes, which demand that the conclusion flow from the truth of the premises. Monism demands that all premises be true because the conclusion is true, by virtue of dogma alone. Monism, Materialism and Atheism all suffer from this irrational basis. They are held despite the glaring lack of evidence and the embarrassingly faulty logic required for their support: they are held as faiths, blind faiths without evidence, and blind faiths of the worst kind: demonstrably false.

Free Will, Agency, Self, and Life, part 6; Brain as Meat Machine

Free Will Part 6 Brain as Meat Machine

As part of the Free Will and Agency discussion we need to address the issue of whether the brain is a machine. It has been posited that the brain is nothing more than a “meat machine”, and this proposition has been carried forth by the warriors in the battle to create Artificial Intelligence. The Turing-Church thesis goes back over half a century, to at least 1937, and was stated in 1939 as follows,

" It was stated ... that 'a function is effectively calculable if its values can be found by some purely mechanical process.' We may take this literally, understanding that by a purely mechanical process one which could be carried out by a machine. The development ... leads to ... an identification of computability † with effective calculability"
(Turing 1939)

"†We shall use the expression "computable function" to mean a function calculable by a machine, and we let "effectively calculable" refer to the intuitive idea without particular identification with any one of these definitions."
(Turing 1965)

http://psychology.wikia.com/wiki/Church-Turing_thesis

The Turing Church thesis and its ancestors became foundational in computing, and by extension have been carried over to theories of mind. Or have they?

Turing-Church has been misunderstood, and consequently misapplied:

From plato.stanford:

A myth seems to have arisen concerning Turing's paper of 1936, namely that he there gave a treatment of the limits of mechanism and established a fundamental result to the effect that the universal Turing machine can simulate the behaviour of any machine. The myth has passed into the philosophy of mind, generally to pernicious effect. For example, the Oxford Companion to the Mind states: "Turing showed that his very simple machine ... can specify the steps required for the solution of any problem that can be solved by instructions, explicitly stated rules, or procedures" (Gregory 1987: 784). Dennett maintains that "Turing had proven - and this is probably his greatest contribution - that his Universal Turing machine can compute any function that any computer, with any architecture, can compute" (1991: 215); also that every "task for which there is a clear recipe composed of simple steps can be performed by a very simple computer, a universal Turing machine, the universal recipe-follower" (1978:. xviii). Paul and Patricia Churchland assert that Turing's "results entail something remarkable, namely that a standard digital computer, given only the right program, a large enough memory and sufficient time, can compute any rule-governed input-output function. That is, it can display any systematic pattern of responses to the environment whatsoever" (1990: 26). These various quotations are typical of current writing on the foundations of the computational theory of mind. It seems on the surface unlikely that these authors mean to restrict the general notions of ‘explicitly stated rule’, ‘instruction’, ‘clear recipe composed of simple steps', ‘computer with any architecture’,‘rule-governed function’ and ‘systematic pattern’ so as to apply only to things that can be obeyed, simulated, calculated, or produced by a machine that implements ‘effective’ methods in Turing's original sense. But unless these notions are restricted in this way from the start, we should reject such claims.

Turing did not show that his machines can solve any problem that can be solved "by instructions, explicitly stated rules, or procedures", nor did he prove that the universal Turing machine "can compute any function that any computer, with any architecture, can compute". He proved that his universal machine can compute any function that any Turing machine can compute; and he put forward, and advanced philosophical arguments in support of, the thesis here called Turing's thesis. But a thesis concerning the extent of effective methods -- which is to say, concerning the extent of procedures of a certain sort that a human being unaided by machinery is capable of carrying out -- carries no implication concerning the extent of the procedures that machines are capable of carrying out, even machines acting in accordance with ‘explicitly stated rules’. For among a machine's repertoire of atomic operations there may be those that no human being unaided by machinery can perform.

The further proposition, very different from Turing's own thesis, that a Turing machine can compute whatever can be computed by any machine working on finite data in accordance with a finite program of instructions, is sometimes also referred to as (a version of) the Church-Turing thesis or Church's thesis. For example, Smolensky says:

connectionist models ... may possibly even challenge the strong construal of Church's Thesis as the claim that the class of well-defined computations is exhausted by those of Turing machines. (Smolensky 1988: 3.)

This loosening of established terminology is unfortunate, for neither Church nor Turing endorsed, or even formulated, this further proposition. There are numerous examples of this extended usage in the literature. The following are typical.

That there exists a most general formulation of machine and that it leads to a unique set of input-output functions has come to be called Church's thesis. (Newell 1980: 150.)

[T]he work of Church and Turing fundamentally connects computers and Turing machines. The limits of Turing machines, according to the Church-Turing thesis, also describe the theoretical limits of all computers. (McArthur 1991: 401.)

[I]t is difficult to see how any language that could actually be run on a physical computer could do more than Fortran can do. The idea that there is no such language is called Church's thesis. (Geroch and Hartle 1986: 539.)

Also (more distant still from anything that Church or Turing actually wrote):
I can now state the physical version of the Church-Turing principle: "Every finitely realizable physical system can be perfectly simulated by a universal model computing machine operating by finite means." This formulation is both better defined and more physical than Turing's own way of expressing it. (Deutsch 1985: 99.)


This formulation may be ‘more physical’ than Turing's own, but it is scarcely ‘better defined’. The notion of an effective method played an important role in early debates about the foundations of mathematics, and it was sufficiently clear to allow Turing, Church, and others to recognize that different formal accounts gave alternative modellings of the notion. Their notion was certainly not that of a ‘finitely realizable physical system’.
J. B. Copeland, plato.stanford.edu

One of the misapprehensions of Turing-Church is that the human brain is a Turing machine, with all of its functions describable by calculable algorithms which are therefore transferrable to other computing devices. This is the thrust of the notion that the brain/mind is just a “meat machine”, a term used by AI researcher Marvin Minsky, MIT.

If the brain/mind truly is merely a meat machine, then it is wholly unremarkable. Moreover, it cannot possess any features which an ordinary machine does not possess, nor produce any products which an ordinary machine could not produce. Ordinary machines are not known to create new or innovative responses which are not predetermined by their makeup and environment: they respond with total abeyance to deterministic conditions. By this reduction, then, the human brain/mind can exhibit no creative or innovative responses and is restricted to deterministic behaviors as controlled by internal algorithms working on current environmental inputs.

This determinism absolutely precludes any free will, free choice or agency (intentionality), as well as creativity and transcendence into abstractions. That would have precluded Turing and Church from producing a generalized theory of computation in the first place, of course, as well as precluding the use of their thesis in hypothetical philosophies (however flawed or misappropriated).

While the conclusion that brain/mind is deterministic might be necessary for thinking that machines can be endowed with actual artificial intelligence, it contradicts human experience and is therefore non-empirical, to say the least. But it has another use too.

The reduction of human mind/brain to machine status is necessary in order to sustain the Philosophical Materialist tenet that because physical existence is all that there is, then the rules of physics are universally applicable, including to human brain/mind activities. Since determinism is an underlying axiom of physics, then the human brain/mind has to be deterministic under PM:

P1: IF [Philosophical Materialism], THEN [human brain/mind=deterministic].

P2: [Philosophical Materialism].

C: THEREFORE: [human brain/mind=deterministic].

Here we see that the conclusion is determined by the philosophy, not by any empirical data or evidence. Under rational processes, the empirical data would determine the validity of the theory, not the other way around. By reversing this process, the holder of Philosophical Materialism has created a dogma, one with a contradiction to empirical understanding. This reveals yet another defect in the philosophy of Materialism: if the human mind is as it seems, which is a non-deterministic agent with the ability to cause material changes through mental initiation, then at least something in the universe is not deterministic, is an uncaused causer, and does not fit the concept of “materialness”. The existence of such a thing is enough to refute Philosophical Materialism.

So back to the above argument, under the auspices of logical rigor it can be seen that P1 is false, P2 is false, and the conclusion is false. But we can redesign a syllogism with proper statements and premises to reflect what the expectations of the real world would be. Restating for proper structure and premises:

P1: IF [human brain/mind=deterministic], THEN [this proposition and all propositions have no truth value (meaning)].

P2: IF [all propositions have no truth value or meaning], THEN [Philosophical Materialism is meaningless].

C: THEREFORE [Philosophical Materialism is meaningless].

Note that P1, even though stating the concept properly, is internally non-coherent because the conclusion negates the premise; P1 cannot be true. Yet it is a natural outgrowth of the deterministic, meat machine model of human brain/mind. In the end, Philosophical Materialism has created still another internal contradiction for itself.

Obviously no Materialist believes this conclusion. So the options available for salvaging Philosophical Materialism are (a) to ignore the logical disproof, (b) to redefine determinism, (c) to redefine agency, (d) to redefine both determinism and agency so that they are somehow thought to be compatible (aka “Compatibilism).

Compatibilism will be the next subject.

Free Will, Agency, Self, Life; Part 5

Part 5. Delusion as a Premise in Deduction

So far we have established that the argument for Free Will is not circular, it is not an infinite regression, it is grounded in an axiom, as well as being a properly formed deductive syllogism.

That might seem to be enough for an ordinary argument to be considered acceptable. But when it comes to Free Will and other assaults on the ideology of AtheoMaterialism, there is and will be a never ending series of continuing attacks, trying mightily to gain a foothold for the materially unprovable propositions of Atheism and Philosophical Materialism. The discussion of Free Will is identified as having two major components or threads: (1) being able to do otherwise, and (2) the ultimate source of one's will. (Note 1) We are still on (1), whether or not we can actually control any of our actions, or whether they are fully causal and pre-determined.

Since the argument for Free Will itself is not defeatable on terms of its logical structure and grounding, the attack on Free Will then takes another tack: Free Will, some philosophers declare, is imaginary: we are all deluded by thinking that we have Free Will.

A recent spate of attacks has come in the form of scientific experiments. Regardless of the methodology, the experiments consist of measuring brain activity which exists before a decision is consciously made. Delays ranging from a few milliseconds (Note 2), to as long as 8 seconds are claimed. From this simple data, philosophers infer that the neurons are making the decision subconsciously and without conscious involvement, and that the conscious mind is therefore merely informed of the decision, ex post facto. And from that inference, the second inference is derived: there is no Free Will.

The ancillary inference is philosophically important to AtheoMaterialists: IF we are deluded to think that we have Free Will, THEN there is no Free Will.

This falls nicely under the AtheoMaterialist concept of total causality, the determinism that is seen in non-living nature. Or does it? If there are acausal occurrences that are observable, then an acausal agent exists… somewhere. Under the delay theory, the acausal agent is merely transferred from the conscious mind to the neural activity of the pre-conscious. So the free agent is the neuron conglomerate in the brain, which decides and activates, and then informs the conscious mind.

So before we even begin to investigate the logic of the delay, we can see that the argument does not defeat free agency (Free Will plus ability to implement it) in any way. Free agency is merely moved back a level, into the pre-conscious neural level.

But to take on the “delusion” aspect of the argument anyway, despite the early failure of the argument, there are some logical considerations.

If we let X => Free Will,
We can say that if Free Will is a delusion, Then Free Will does not exist.

IF [X is a universal delusion], THEN [ !X ].

The contrary of this would be,

IF [!(X is a universal delusion)], THEN [X].
(This matches empirical observations)

Because the contrary is valid and matches empirical observations, then the original proposition is false.

Notice also that even if we actually were under a universal delusion that X, that still doesn’t prove that X doesn’t actually exist, only that the belief that it exists is a delusion. The original statement is non sequitur in the sense of comparing a belief to an existence; existence does not depend on belief or non-belief: Category Error and Black & White Fallacy. Further consequences of the original proposition are found below.


From an objective standpoint, using “universal delusion” as a premise in any argument against a universally held, empirical (note 3) concept, X, looks like this:

IF [universal delusion that X], THEN [!X]

Contrary:

IF [!universal delusion that X], THEN [X]
(coherent, valid, empirical)

Therefore the original statement is logically false.

More to the point is that any statement which requires that belief in the existence of X be declared universal delusion goes directly against universal observation, and violates empirical standards. moreover, providing empirical proof of universal delusion is not possible, as is the case with any universal statement; and universal delusion is not an axiom.


Other consequences of a theory of universal delusion:
(a) What we think we observe empirically in ourselves and others is a delusion, one that is universal in scope; empiricism itself is suspected of being delusional, throwing all objective knowledge into the category of universal delusion.

(b) What we experience cannot be known not to be delusional also, throwing all subjective knowledge into the category of universal delusion at the particular level.

But what about the delay? What does that mean? There are several aspects of this issue, the first of which is the types of mental activity required in order to make a decision. John Locke presented a categorization of mental functions which are necessarily activated as inputs are processed into decisions: apprehension; comparison; differentiation; judgment; comprehension.

Some of these include complex operations, such as comparison which requires scanning memory for comparable situations and their outcomes, transferring that information into comparator files. The differentiation process requires that rules based comparison be done, so that the proper rules must be found and loaded into place for the differentiation process to proceed. If there are no prior situations to compare, and no rules found, then the differentiation must be done based on axioms of worldview or view of reality. Judgment itself might need consequence scenarios set up and differentiated.

The initiation of the process is not necessarily conscious, and in fact the whole process might be subconscious if the decisions are common, previously made, trivial in nature. I might drive home from work safely, with no conscious input to the process and no memory of the drive, my mind still occupied with work-stuff.

On the other hand most of the process can be made consciously too.

The point is that there are a great many steps, serial in nature, that obtain to a decision. The measurement of delays from start to finish shows absolutely nothing regarding what the mind is actually doing. To make inferences based on such data is irresponsible from a logic standpoint.

And finally, asserting universal delusion as a premise is not rational.

Notes:
1. Timothy O’Conner; Free Will, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/freewill/

2. Libet’s experiment. Lots of google sources.

3. This does not apply to any concept which is internally non-coherent a priori, such as that white = black, which is independently demonstrated to be false; and it is also not an empirical concept which is universally held.

Free Will, Agency, Self, Life: Part 4

Part 4: Is the Argument For Free Will Grounded? Is it coherent?

We have determined that the argument for Free Will is neither circular nor is it an infinite regression. And in fact the argument against regression came down to the assertion that the concept of Free Will qualifies as an axiom, because the contrary of Free Will reduces to universal delusion.

So the prior argument concerning infinite regression answers this question too: the argument is grounded in an axiom.

Being grounded in an axiom presents another solution, too: the argument is not non-coherent. It becomes a tautology:

IF [Free Will exists axiomatically], Then [Free Will exists].

So far we have determined that the argument for Free Will is a valid syllogism, that it is neither circular nor an infinite regression, that it is grounded, axiomatically, and that it is not internally non-coherent.

All objections and corrections welcome

Free Will, Agency, Self, Life: Part 3

Part 3: Is Free Will an Infinite Regression?

There are several arguments running around which propose that Free Will involves an infinite regression. One argument proposes that before one can choose the next thought, then he would have to be able to choose to choose the next thought, and to choose to choose to choose the next thought, ad infinitum, which leads to the absurdity of an infinite regression. Do we actually choose the next thought? Is it a choice made between a number of possible next thoughts? Or do we develop the next thought as a step in the progression of our thought process currently underway? It is much more likely that we develop each thought either independently or as a step in a progression of thoughts. This is a singular step, not an infinite regression. It is not necessary to think that we choose between possible next thoughts, and that concept certainly does not guarantee that an infinite regression is a necessary part of Free Will.

In terms of decisions, it is said that we must “decide to decide”, or “decide to decide to decide”, ad infinitum. Under this proposition, it is said that no control is possible since it is necessary to invoke an infinite regression just make a single decision. But again, it is more parsimonious to invoke “development”: we develop a decision after finding that a decision is necessary. It is not necessary to think that we must decide to decide, and that concept is no guarantee that an infinite regression is a necessary part of Free Will.

The idea of an infinite regression is commonly applied to the issue of verification of the premises within an argument. Premises cannot be valid if they are circular, or if they refer to an infinite regression of sub-premises that cannot be grounded in known axiomatic truths.

For a proposition to have truth value, its premises must have truth value. In the following (valid form) proposition, there are two truth claims:

P1: IF [X], Then [Y] < First truth claim.

P2: [X] < Second truth claim.

C: [C] < inevitable conclusion, IFF the two truth claims are, in fact, true.

Our Free Will proposition has these elements:

X = conditions surrounding free will (superset):

(a) free from restraints;
(b) free from compulsions;
(c) free from antecedent conditions.

Y = proposed implication of X (subset of X): Free Will.

We have already established that it is possible for the conditions named in X to exist. But does X actually imply (=>) Y?

Because it is a definition, then it is tautologically true. But do we want to sit on that level, or should we validate that somehow?

Validation
In order to validate the argument for Free Will, it must be shown that human will exists, and that it is a subset of the freedoms listed, hence it is Free Will.

(a) Human will is observable, as is human agency. Both will and agency are empirically sound concepts. Will and agency are either axiomatic, in the sense that the universe would be much different if there is no will or agency and everything were in fact deterministically causal, or they are false, leading to philosophical acceptance of total universal delusion.

Determinism is a concept which goes against human observations, and which requires the extraordinary proof which Sagan extolled. The discussion of determinism as opposed to observation of human Free Will is discussed below, where axioms are considered.

Delusion is not an acceptable premise in logic statements. Why would arguments which premise delusion be acceptable as explanations of what is? The case for delusion is anti-empirical; it asks us to accept that our observations are delusions merely in order to salvage a particular theory.

Especially logically egregious is when the delusion being posited negates truth values, even that of its own posit of delusion (internally non-coherence). The case for delusion is internally contradictory and its internal confliction is fatal for any use in a logical argument. However, it is possible to accept delusion for oneself and not subscribe to logic at all because of one’s acknowledged delusion. That eliminates the argument altogether for that one arguer, and him only, because under delusion no premise can be validated.

There is no valid reason to accept universal delusion (avoidance of empirical observations) as a valid premise in logical arguments.

(b) IF [asserted human will is observable], THEN [at least some humans are free to assert it].

This argument, being based on either an axiom or a false statement, is either True, or it is meaningless in the sense that humans are deluded and can know the truth value of nothing: everything is meaningless. The delusion argument is discussed just above. The question here is whether the observability of human will makes it axiomatic.

Axioms are undeniable, incorrigible truth statements that are apparent upon their presentation, or are apparent upon addressing the contrary to the statement. The contrary to the existence of human free will is human enslaved determinism. This is a true dilemma, being binary and without degrees; either human free will exists, or it does not.

In order for human Free Will to be an axiom, the falsity of its converse must be readily apparent and undeniable. Is human enslaved determinism the actual state of humanity? In order for us to accept this as the actual state, we must also accept some of the consequences of this premise.

First, in a universe of total human enslaved determinism, every concept would be predetermined and deterministic (fully causal) clear back to the origin of the universe. Given enough computer power, every thought could be perfectly predicted based on prior causes. This would lead to sub-premises, such as that consciousness is not necessary for any interface with the physical world; there is no need to think a thought, because there is no originality possible since every thought is predetermined causally. The flow of human existence and endeavor is inexorable and unchangeable, to the last detail.

But even more interestingly it leads to the negation of all theories; those thoughts are not original either, and being totally predetermined, there is no reason to think that they have knowledge value for humans, much less truth value. Since all thoughts are totally causal and predetermined, there is no reason to think that logic is an actual discipline or valid in any respect; it is more likely that that our thoughts are valueless (and delusional).

Being in possession of only valueless or delusional thoughts, our experience of human accomplishments, sky scrapers, helicopters, radiated information, mass manufacturing of toilets, and the acquiring of humans seeking power over other humans, etc, is either a delusion, or it occurred inevitably as a natural progression of predetermined causation going back to the origin of the universe, with no chance of personal interference due to will.

What would cause us to believe this view of the human experience, as opposed to that view which is actually very easily observed, empirically? Again, delusion comes into play: must we accept that we are deluded, with no control in actuality? According to what is easily and commonly observed, the existence of human Free Will is axiomatic.

Being axiomatic, the concept is not an infinite regression of premises.

Invalidation
In order to invalidate, it must be shown empirically that either (a) human will does not exist, or (b) that human will is negated by some other universal constraint which prohibits it from having any freedom, contrary to observation, and (c) that humans are in fact deluded, and (d) that either the appearance of will is false, or that some other non-human agent is the cause of the creations which we observe.

For attempts to empirically demonstrate that human Free Will is a non-valid concept, it must be recognized that empiricism itself must first be proven valid in the absence of human Free Will.

Causal chains going back at least to the electron level will need to be verified, specifically and empirically.

Not allowed under Sagan’s condition of “extraordinary evidence” are speculations, story telling, extrapolations, or any form of Scientism. Only actual empirical evidence need apply.

That will take some doing.

Free Will, Agency, Self, and Life, part 2

Part 2. Is The Argument For Free Will Circular?
Circularity occurs when the conclusion of an argument is declared to be true in the premises used for arguing its truth:

"p1 => p2 => p3 => ... => pn => p1"
Fallacy Files

One wag submitted the following doggerel as proof that Free Will is a circular concept:

”Due to circumstances beyond my control,

I am captain of my fate and master of my soul."

The first part appears, on first glance, to contradict the second part. But it actually doesn’t relate to the second part, because the first phrase addresses the acquisition of X, while the second phrase addresses the consequence of the possession of X. For example, I had no part in the acquisition of my hands, but I can use my hands for my own purposes. There is no circularity nor contradiction in this particular attempt to falsify Free Will. It is not actually an argument against Free Will at all.

Now, what of our own proposition?

”Free will: The human will, regarded as free from restraints, compulsions, or any antecedent conditions; freedom of decision or choice.”

Restated syllogistically,

P1. IF [there exists “the human will, regarded as free from restraints, compulsions, or any antecedent conditions”],
OR [there exists freedom of decision or choice],
THEN [Free will exists].

P2. [there exists human will, regarded as free from restraints, compulsions, or any antecedent conditions].

C. THEREFORE: [Free Will exists].

The question here is not whether the syllogism has any truth value; the question is whether the syllogism is circular.

To be circular, the conclusion must be in the premises: For example,

If [X], then [Y];
[X];
[X].

Or,

Because [X], then [Y];
[Y];
[X].

Example:

P1: Because [Philosophical Materialism is true], then [the mind is the brain];
P2: [The mind is the brain],
C: Therefore, [Philosophical Materialism is True.]

In the Free Will syllogism above, the form is as follows:

If [X or Z], then [Y];
[X];
[Y].

This form is a normal syllogistic structure; there is no circularity.

Again, whether it is True as well as well remains to be determined.