Argument #2: From the Nature of Rationality

[dloubet]

The videos are about an hour a piece, the article doesn't provide much while the videos provide a great amount of information.

Humph! I'll take your word for it.  ;-)

Actually, I just resented the impression that I was being treated like a lab rat when all I wanted to do was read the article. I'm sure it's informative, and my knee-jerk reaction was, well, knee-jerk.

[dloubet]

Now, if a person's thought process is necessarily determined by the physics in his brain, then there is no such thing as a "good" or "bad reason" for anything. You don't really believe anything because of this or that; you "believe" it because its just the way the physics works. In still different terms, to be rational is a normative statement; we ought to believe this or that, whereas if our believes are determined, they are not normative, but purely descriptive; we do believe this or that.

There are good and bad reasons for things. Results are the good and bad reasons. For instance, repeating an action and getting the same positive result means you've gained knowledge of some small part of the universe to your benefit. You are rewarded with a cocktail of pleasing brain chemicals, and a strengthening of neuron pathways favoring that action. No free will necessary, just trial and error and a hardwired reward system and voila, you're rational.

And you do believe because of "this or that" because the perception of this or that mechanically set up neural pathways in the brain that mechanically result in you believing them. This or that can even be arguments. It's just the way the physics works.

And so the brain can wire itself to be biased towards that mode of thinking called rational if the results of that kind of thinking are positive.

No free will necessary, just mechanical calculation.

[hackenslash]

Just spotted this:

I have read, for instance, Steven Hawking, who does think the universe is deterministic.

Bzzzzzzzzz. Thank you for playing. Hawking thinks no such thing. What Hawking actually says is that, while the uncertainty principle shoots full-on Laplacian determinism in the foot, a semi-deterministic universe is still possible because quantum events, when averaged out over macroscopic scales, behave very predictably. Indeed, this is why radiometric dating is a rigorous science, because while the decay of an individual atom is completely random, decay in a macroscopic sample follows probability distributions very predictably.

That aside, you have completely misrepresented Hawking here, who never said that he thinks the universe is deterministic, but that determinism is not ruled out QM, or at least that a form of determinism isn't. Laplacian determinism is most definitely ruled out, though.

This amounts to little more than a quote mine, and it is dishonest. I am willing to give you the benefit of the doubt and sim ply assume that it stems from ignorance or a failure to understand what Hawking was talking about, because I'm nice like that.