Subjectivism

[Inevitable Droid]

I view consciousness as an emergent property of the activity of the brain. Yeah, it's a process. I don't know if I draw a distinction between calling it present or not, it seems obvious that it's present when it's present.

I'll ask a question and then drop the topic, since it isn't really germane to much of anything.  Right now I'm breathing.  Is my breathing present?  I would say no, based on how I understand and use the word present.  But if you would say yes, OK.

No. If free will operates within the realm of cause and effect, then it's the same as everything else, and there's no point in giving it a name.

Breathing operates within the realm of cause and effect, and breathing has a name.  What is it about free will that makes it different from breathing in this context?  Is it the fact that breathing can be perceived by my sensory apparatus whereas free will can only be inferred by analytic reasoning?  Arithmetic can only be inferred by analytic reasoning.  Does arithmetic operate within the realm of cause and effect?  Surprisingly, since I think the answer is no, I think you may be onto something.  The person performing calculations is operating within causality, but the propositions put forward aren't.  Nothing causes 7+5 to equal 12.  It is simply true that 7+5 equals 12, and no action, no event, no stimulus, nor non-action, non-event, or non-stimulus, can alter the fact that 7+5 equals 12.  I continue on this line of thought directly below.

It only has special meaning if it's a means of operating outside of cause and effect.

What I think you're doing is defining the term free will as, "the capacity to operate outside of cause and effect."  This would require human decisions to be on, or at least be tightly coupled with, the same order of being, and have, or at least be tightly coupled with, the same kind of truth, as analytic propositions, such as those of formal logic or of mathematics, since analytic propositions are the only order of being, and have the only kind of truth, toward which causality is irrelevant.  Oddly, by what I think is your definition of free will, we could say that mathematics and formal logic have free will, since they operate outside of cause and effect.  A semantic curiosity and nothing more, of course, deriving from the versatility of the verb, operate.

My DNA code is spatial and termporal, as is my environment, and my memory bank, the database in my brain.  Because these three things are 100% spatial and temporal, and because we assume my decision-making apparatus is 100% dependent on these three things, we conclude that my decision-making apparatus is itself 100% spatial and temporal, and therefore 100% subject to cause and effect.

But what if my decision-making apparatus were tightly coupled with formal logic or mathematics?  These things don't exist in space and time, and therefore aren't subject to cause and effect.  What if the capacity to operate outside of cause and effect isn't simply yes/no, either/or, on/off, 100% or zero percent, but rather is a spectrum, a range, such that, a thing's capacity to operate outside of cause and effect can be greater than zero percent but less than 100%?  What if, furthermore, a thing's capacity to operate outside of cause and effect can vary, relative to what that thing is currently doing?

Thinking is part of my decision-making apparatus, and thinking, at any given moment, is more or less tightly coupled with formal logic or mathematics, and thus is more or less tightly coupled with that order of being and that kind of truth which operates outside of space and time and outside of cause and effect.

I will suggest that thinking, by tightly coupling itself with formal logic or mathematics, grants itself to some extent, less than 100% but greater than zero percent, free will as I think you define it, the capacity to operate outside of cause and effect, and by carrying forward these tight couplings into the decision-making process, grants decision-making to some extent, less than 100% but greater than zero percent, free will as I think you define it.

Does analytic truth set us free?
 

The only thing that operates outside of cause and effect is quantum events such as atomic decay. But as I've said before, neither randomness nor determinism, nor a mixture, make you free.

Out of curiosity, do you define randomness as operating outside of cause and effect?  I'm not sure that randomness actually exists, but if it does, and if we define it as operating outside of cause and effect, and if we define free will as the capacity to operate outside of cause and effect, then the capacity for randomness is free will.

The alternative is to hold nothing and no one responsible for anything, ever, rendering all morality and all law moot. That outcome is unacceptable to me, so I reject the thought process that leads up to it, and hold to my foregoing definition of responsibility.

That constitutes the logical fallacy of Appeal to Consequences. What's true is true regardless of our wishes.

In the quote above, I wasn't making a truth claim, nor even suggesting one.  I said I reject the thought process.  When I say that, I mean I reject the thought process itself, not merely its conclusions, but the very act of engaging in it, prior to engaging in it, and thus prior to even considering its conclusions.  I short-circuit the thought process before it begins.  Before it even arranges its premises or assumptions, I shut it down.  I will do this if I perceive a thought process to be so dangerous that it threatens my very survival, or my very sanity.  "Not every thought should be thunk," one might say, if one were willing to employ a non-standard grammatical construction.

Therefore it is in our collective interest to treat people as if they are responsible for their actions.

I strongly agree.  I would also say that it is in my own personal interest to treat myself as if I am responsible for my actions.  This is the assessment that underlies my comment above, that not every thought should be thunk.

[Inevitable Droid]

I found this excellent article on free will: http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Free_will

[Inevitable Droid]

I found this excellent article on free will: http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Free_will

I in turn found this excellent article on compatibilism: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/compatibilism/

It is logically necessary that I develop myself into a coherent compatibilist, since I am unwilling to deny determinism, yet am unwilling to deny free will.  Facing the intellectual challenge while staving off self-deceit is a daunting aspiration, yet it is my only option short of closing my eyes to the whole problem.  The good news is, I can be confident that if I post my thoughts here on this thread, the likelihood of being let off the hook with respect to sophisms is almost nill.  

[Inevitable Droid]

I in turn found this excellent article on compatibilism: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/compatibilism/

I haven't committed yet, but it intrigues me that I can formulate a variant of Strawsonian Compatibilism (see the artice referenced above) in terms of my own theory of subjectivism, as follows:

1. Subjective truth derives primarily from emotion and/or appetite as responsive (or unresponsive) to analytic or synthetic propositions.
2. Objective truth derives exclusively from analytic or synthetic propositions, independent of emotion and/or appetite.
3. Objective truth is powerless to overcome subjective truth because it is powerless to overcome emotion and/or appetite.
4. The fact of determinism is an objective truth.
5. The fact of moral responsibility is a subjective truth.
6. The fact of determinism is powerless to overcome the fact of moral responsibility.

[meta]

meta wrote:
There is no free will. It's an illusion, along with "the self."

I experimented with thinking like that. Denying myself the alleged illusion of free will, I denied myself the capacity to take responsibility for my actions, and thereby denied myself the capacity to commit to principled behavior. I quickly recognized this condition as survival-threatening, prosperity-threatening, and relationship-threatening. Any perspective that debilitating must be rejected.

Meta:  Of course responsibility is necessary, but your supporting free will because of that is faulty logic as best.  Conflicts in the mind abound in many ways, and this is one of them.  As I said, our illusion of free will is necessary for our survival.  I should have added that one reason (a minor one) is that it is needed for responsiblity in the social arena.  So we must then just stay with the illusion, even as we do for existence of a self.


I have no problem acknowledging that there is no free will in the traditional sense. However, I also have no problem acknowledging that my brain capacity is so limited [as to be incapable of considering the vast array of complex variables involved in every one of my decisions] that on my own scale of consciousness I have what largely resembles free will. I must always take responsibility for my direct actions, for I am the direct cause. If I were to directly cause unjust suffering for another then I would hope to be the first to suggest perhaps I ought to be appropriately excluded from the relevant causal chain.

Meta:  Yes we do need to stay with the illusion, but seeking truth requires we face it head on and admit it is but an illusion. Also we do need to stay with responsibility, but you have no ability to extract yourself from causality.

The system of this forum is very bad, either takes a long time or just fails.  Too bad.

Thank you,
Richard.

[meta]

On consciousness, in a book review, these excerpts:

In his new book, Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain, Antonio Damasio, director of the USC Brain and Creativity Institute and David Dornsife Professor of Neuroscience, explores how the brain constructs a mind and how the brain makes that mind conscious.

Without consciousness - that is, a mind endowed with subjectivity - you would have no way of knowing who you are. -Antonio Damasio....According to Damasio, the brain uses specific mechanisms to produce consciousness, which is made of mind and self. The mind is the basic component and self is derived from the mind where consciousness emerges.  â€œWe take consciousness for granted because it is so available, so easy to use, so elegant in its daily disappearing and reappearing acts, and yet when we think of it, scientists and nonscientists alike, we do puzzle,” Damasio writes in the book’s first chapter.....Damasio cautions that consciousness does not happen instantly as it may appear, as evidenced by sequences recorded on brain scans. For example, if you wake up in a different country several time zones removed, select areas of your brain will work together to bring you to full consciousness.

“You wake up and it takes you more than an instant to realize that you are not in your bed,” he said. “In several hundreds of milliseconds you open your eyes, take in images that become increasingly vivid to form your proto self, and receive a message of who you are from a high level coordination of memory processes.

“The brain stem, cerebral cortex and memory act in unison in the complex mental process that tell us who we are and generate the feelings that are at the heart of being conscious,” he said.....In addition to humankind’s high level of reasoning, unique memory and rich language, Damasio holds that what separates us from primates is a sense of autobiography.

I think he says about all that can be said now about consciousness.

Richard.

[dloubet]

Breathing operates within the realm of cause and effect, and breathing has a name. What is it about free will that makes it different from breathing in this context?

The fact that you're not calling it "Free Breathing". The word "Will" already exists, and is perfectly adequate to describe human behavior. The addition of the word "Free" is there only to push the source of our decisions into an acausal, supernatural realm.

Of course arithmetic occurs within the realm of cause and effect. Addition and subtraction are not acausal. They do not occur in and of themselves. If I perform math, it is caused by the desire or need to perform math. Yes, math does not exist in space and time, it only exists as patterns of pigment on paper, or magnetic domains on a fast spinning disk or electrochemical patterns in a brain. And all those things DO only exist in space and time.

What I think you're doing is defining the term free will as, "the capacity to operate outside of cause and effect.

This is an atheist forum. I am trying to debunk the theistic conception of free will that is the thing that keeps us from being robots because believers don't like the idea that their god would judge and punish automatons. They invent this bogus idea of free will that does two things, it severs human behavior from the mechanical chain of cause and effect to keep us from being automatons, and through that means nails responsibility to the individual.

I say human behavior cannot be severed from the mechanical chain of cause and effect, and thus we are automatons, and that this also implies that as automatons we cannot be responsible for our actions.

Out of curiosity, do you define randomness as operating outside of cause and effect? I'm not sure that randomness actually exists, but if it does, and if we define it as operating outside of cause and effect, and if we define free will as the capacity to operate outside of cause and effect, then the capacity for randomness is free will.

Theists don't like either determinism or randomness as the determining factor of human behavior. Both means result in actions they feel one should not be held accountable for. If one's action is inevitable, how can one be accountable, and likewise if one's action is necessarily random, how can one be judged? So the theist is stuck with positing something that affects our decision-making but is neither random nor deterministic.

The problem you bring to light is that "outside of the chain of cause and effect" is actually a pretty good definition of randomness! That being the case, the theistic definition of free will has to be something that is neither inside nor outside the chain of cause and effect. This pretty much defines free will right out of existence.

"Not every thought should be thunk,"

Ah, well, here we disagree.

I strongly agree. I would also say that it is in my own personal interest to treat myself as if I am responsible for my actions. This is the assessment that underlies my comment above, that not every thought should be thunk.

But I have thunk the thought. The outcome is that I appreciate the truth, and at the same time appreciate the practicality of utterly ignoring it.

[Persimmon Hamster]

Does arithmetic operate within the realm of cause and effect?  Surprisingly, since I think the answer is no, I think you may be onto something.  The person performing calculations is operating within causality, but the propositions put forward aren't.  Nothing causes 7+5 to equal 12.  It is simply true that 7+5 equals 12, and no action, no event, no stimulus, nor non-action, non-event, or non-stimulus, can alter the fact that 7+5 equals 12.  I continue on this line of thought directly below.
...
Oddly, by what I think is your definition of free will, we could say that mathematics and formal logic have free will, since they operate outside of cause and effect.  A semantic curiosity and nothing more, of course, deriving from the versatility of the verb, operate.
...
These things don't exist in space and time, and therefore aren't subject to cause and effect.  What if the capacity to operate outside of cause and effect isn't simply yes/no, either/or, on/off, 100% or zero percent, but rather is a spectrum, a range, such that, a thing's capacity to operate outside of cause and effect can be greater than zero percent but less than 100%?  What if, furthermore, a thing's capacity to operate outside of cause and effect can vary, relative to what that thing is currently doing?

Thinking is part of my decision-making apparatus, and thinking, at any given moment, is more or less tightly coupled with formal logic or mathematics, and thus is more or less tightly coupled with that order of being and that kind of truth which operates outside of space and time and outside of cause and effect.

I got up this morning, read the above, it did not sit right with me, and I left for the day and have now returned.  I spent the day thinking about why this did not sit right with me during whatever moments I could afford.  I have not yet read everything posted since, but I skimmed and don't think I saw anyone address this, so here is the result of my thinking thus far:

Your words suggest that you think mathematics/logic hold some kind of "truth" on an absolute scale.  You also suggest they "operate" in some active sense (this may not be what you meant, but the word operate nevertheless sounds that way).  I think there is a problem with either of these suggestions.  I would say mathematics is nothing more than a language, totally abstract and arising from consciousness as a means for evaluating propositions.  In your example, "5 + 7 = 12", there is no more absolute truth than in the English sentence "grass is green".  For either statement to make sense, you must fully define every term that is used.  But the harder you try to absolutely qualify/define "grass", "is", or "green", the more elusive you will find the abstract ideas they represent.  Similarly, try to define what is meant by "5".  It seems simple, but I tried, and the best I could do was to admit that it is simply a relative term with respect to an abstract concept of "1", which is a relative term to an abstract concept of "0"--and can we even prove that "0" exists beyond the abstract?  If we cannot, what exactly is "1"?  I offer for your considering that these things are not truths, and we can not be certain they are even things at all...they are straws we created for grasping at to understand the universe, just as any other language.

Actually as I considered the above I went off on all manners of interesting philosophical tangents, considering (not for the first time) that everything is entirely relative to something else, and I began to suspect even more strongly a proposition I have been considering of late--that "I" (internal consciousness) cannot exist in the absence of "you" (external consciousness).  And of course that "I" and "you" are actually inseparably "we", and, as Carl Sagan has stated, "we are a way for the cosmos to know itself".

Then my head exploded.  They need an animated smiley for that.  

[Persimmon Hamster]

In his new book, Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain, Antonio Damasio, director of the USC Brain and Creativity Institute and David Dornsife Professor of Neuroscience, explores how the brain constructs a mind and how the brain makes that mind conscious.

Coincidentally, I actually picked this very book up today at the book store and skimmed the inside jacket.  After doing so I was left with the feeling that perhaps it was written "for the layman/novice"...which is not a bad thing, and I don't claim to be much farther ahead of this proverbial "layman", but, it did leave me with the overall conclusion that I might have already heard most of what it might say.  Judging further by your excerpts alone I am not yet convinced that conclusion was inaccurate, but, if the book also gives any concrete scientific data pertaining to the study of consciousness that could certainly be interesting to me, and a useful foundation on which to base propositions & debates.  Would you say it does?

[Inevitable Droid]

Of course responsibility is necessary, but your supporting free will because of that is faulty logic as best.  Conflicts in the mind abound in many ways, and this is one of them.  As I said, our illusion of free will is necessary for our survival.  I should have added that one reason (a minor one) is that it is needed for responsiblity in the social arena.  So we must then just stay with the illusion, even as we do for existence of a self.

After reading the two articles I referenced in posts above, I've learned a better way of speaking, along the lines of what you're doing in what I've quoted here.  I don't have to say, "I have free will."  I can say instead, "I have moral responsibility."  I agree with the author of the Standford article, that saying I have free will is really just another way of saying I have moral responsibility, so I might as well just say the latter and drop the former.  I've also become very clear on the fact that I can't uphold my moral responsibility objectively, I can only uphold it subjectively, so the latter is the only thing I attempt.

[Inevitable Droid]

The word "Will" already exists, and is perfectly adequate to describe human behavior. The addition of the word "Free" is there only to push the source of our decisions into an acausal, supernatural realm.

Good point.  I agree.  In addition, I have learned, from the Standford article that I reference in a post above, that to say, "I have free will," is really just a way of saying, "I have moral responsibility."  I therefore, from now on, will say the latter, and drop the former.  Furthermore, I have concluded that I cannot uphold my moral responsibility on objective grounds, but only on subjective ones, for reasons of emotion and appetite, and so I will drop any attempt to uphold moral responsibility on objective grounds, and will incorporate my claim (that I have moral responsibility) into my subjectivism.  

Of course arithmetic occurs within the realm of cause and effect. Addition and subtraction are not acausal. They do not occur in and of themselves. If I perform math, it is caused by the desire or need to perform math.  Yes, math does not exist in space and time, it only exists as patterns of pigment on paper, or magnetic domains on a fast spinning disk or electrochemical patterns in a brain. And all those things DO only exist in space and time.

After a head-splitting struggle, I think I know how to think about math in relation to nature.  "Quantity is an attribute of natural phenomena."  Now I need to take some aspirin.

This is an atheist forum. I am trying to debunk the theistic conception of free will that is the thing that keeps us from being robots because believers don't like the idea that their god would judge and punish automatons.

Yes.  Baron d'Holbach (18th century atheist author) did the very same thing.  I get it.

I say human behavior cannot be severed from the mechanical chain of cause and effect, and thus we are automatons, and that this also implies that as automatons we cannot be responsible for our actions.

Yes.  The Stanford article offers three propositions that no one yet has successfully refuted:

1. If determinism is true, no one can do otherwise than one actually does.

2. If determinism is true, no one is the ultimate source of actions.

3. No one has power over the fact that the facts of the past and the laws of nature entail every fact of the future (i.e., determinism is true).

I am left, therefore, with the fact that I cannot do otherwise than I actually do, and I am not the ultimate source of my actions, yet I insist on my moral responsibility, for reasons of emotion and appetite.

Theists don't like either determinism or randomness as the determining factor of human behavior. Both means result in actions they feel one should not be held accountable for. If one's action is inevitable, how can one be accountable, and likewise if one's action is necessarily random, how can one be judged? So the theist is stuck with positing something that affects our decision-making but is neither random nor deterministic.

Randomness wouldn't be a choice, in other words, but a brute fact, outside the scope of will, and thus outside the scope of moral responsibility.  You're right.

The problem you bring to light is that "outside of the chain of cause and effect" is actually a pretty good definition of randomness! That being the case, the theistic definition of free will has to be something that is neither inside nor outside the chain of cause and effect. This pretty much defines free will right out of existence.

Ha!  Glad to be of service!

But I have thunk the thought. The outcome is that I appreciate the truth, and at the same time appreciate the practicality of utterly ignoring it.

The cognitive dissonance doesn't bug you.  It bugs me, unfortunately, so I have to resolve the conflict, which I accomplish by subjectivism.

[dloubet]

Yes. The Stanford article offers three propositions that no one yet has successfully refuted:

1. If determinism is true, no one can do otherwise than one actually does.

2. If determinism is true, no one is the ultimate source of actions.

3. No one has power over the fact that the facts of the past and the laws of nature entail every fact of the future (i.e., determinism is true).

I am left, therefore, with the fact that I cannot do otherwise than I actually do, and I am not the ultimate source of my actions, yet I insist on my moral responsibility, for reasons of emotion and appetite.

If I thought the universe was actually deterministic, I would feel kind of disappointed that the future was set in stone and unchangeable. Luckily, it seems the otherwise deterministic universe accommodates random inputs such as atomic decay, which means the future is not set in stone and what I do makes a difference.

[Inevitable Droid]

If I thought the universe was actually deterministic, I would feel kind of disappointed that the future was set in stone and unchangeable. Luckily, it seems the otherwise deterministic universe accommodates random inputs such as atomic decay, which means the future is not set in stone and what I do makes a difference.

From what I've been able to glean, the question of whether quantum mechanics can be formulated so as to eliminate randomness has been reopened in this decade.  Here are two articles I was able to find:

The mathematical basis for deterministic quantum mechanics: http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0604008

Submicroscopic deterministic quantum mechanics: http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0109012

Here's a third that was written in 2008, admittedly by a college student, but it has math in it, so for all I know it may be legitimate - Is a deterministic theory of quantum mechanics at least plausible? - http://www.physics.utoronto.ca/~cpaul/BBTtheory.pdf

I've decided to let go of randomness entirely, as a philosophical lynchpin.  I just don't trust it to still be a good assumption twenty years from now.  It seems to me that the longer scientists study a field of knowledge or an area of nature, the more they will attack and ultimately defeat assumptions of randomness, because calling something random is just a way of saying it's unpredictable, and calling something unpredictable is just a way of saying we lack sufficient knowledge to be able to predict, and lacking knowledge is precisely the condition that gets lessened the longer scientists study a field of knowledge or an area of nature.
 
But even if it is utterly true that events at the quantum level are random, I haven't heard any real, working physicists, as opposed to writers of popular science texts, say or even imply that events at our macro level are random too.  Have you?  Got any articles?  If macro events lack randomness, then randomness at the quantum level is irrelevant to me in my life.  

Furthermore, even if macro events are random because quantum events are random, this only matters from a moral perspective if randomness is at least sometimes either an input to, or an output from, human will.  Otherwise - if human will neither receives as input nor yields as output any kind of randomness - then human will must still be viewed as Classically deterministic, regardless of such phenomena as atomic decay.  I haven't heard any real, working physicists, or real, working neuroscientists, talk about human will in the way I'm saying I would need them to talk before what they're saying would be relevant to moral philosophy.  Have you?  Got any articles?

As things stand in my head right now, I'm taking determinism as a fact that I need to deal with, undiluted by the concept of randomness or any other concept.

[dloubet]

But even if it is utterly true that events at the quantum level are random, I haven't heard any real, working physicists, as opposed to writers of popular science texts, say or even imply that events at our macro level are random too. Have you? Got any articles? If macro events lack randomness, then randomness at the quantum level is irrelevant to me in my life.

Ask yourself if your life would be different if Abraham Lincoln had died of cancer as a child because a radioactive particle decayed at just the wrong time in just the wrong place. Microscopic events can have profound macroscale consequences.

Meanwhile, I'll check out those links.

[Inevitable Droid]

In my Robotics thread I diverged briefly into the same topic we've been discussing here, because I deemed it relevant over there too.  I'll quote myself from over there:

I will take an approach to moral responsibility that can be applied to robots as readily and appropriately as to humans, and isn't dependent on any assumption as to the truth or falsehood of determinism or the condition of the subject as being or not being an automoton.  This approach, a legalistic one, will derive moral responsibility from moral competency, which I'll define as, "having (1) the intellectual capacity for moral reasoning; (2) the intellectual understanding of moral reasoning's goals and methods; (3) no developmental anomalies that made the formation of conscience impossible or implausible; and (4) no history of one's brain being abused by self or others."  It should be obvious that all four tests could be applied to a robot as readily and appropriately as to a human.

Now, the question to ask, from the perspective of this thread, would be - By what right, objectively speaking, do I define moral responsibility in the above manner?

The answer would be - By no right whatsoever, objectively speaking.  There is no fact about nature that would support my definition.  I simply made it up.  It's arbitrary.  It represents a decision, not a discovery.  If I were to debate on behalf of my definition, I wouldn't do so on the basis of its accuracy, for a criterion of accuracy cannot be applied to decisions.  Rather, I would debate on behalf of its justice, utility, social appropriateness, sanity, and authenticity, for these are criteria that can be applied to decisions.  But these criteria are themselves arbitrary, because they follow from five prior decisions, those being, the decisions to favor justice, to favor utility, to favor social appropriateness, to favor sanity, and to favor authenticity.  I can't defend those those decisions objectively.  I favor those five principles because favoring them is what I want to do.  Emotion and appetite make those five principles appeal to me.