Kevin Beal

"Fight" and "dominance" here are loaded terms with alternatives that have more positive or neutral connotations. The implication is clearly that this behavior is dysfunctional, but it is only implied through adjective, and not reason. Let's say, for sake of argument, that it is a fight, and that it is an exercise in dominance. I won't speak on your behalf, and I'd invite you not to speak on mine. But I fight bad ideas, and that's an important thing to do. I use snarky language, pointed language, and I do dominate in some debates. You can call it "aggressive," if you like, but that's not the same thing as showing that it's bad. If you take a single online debate in isolation, you are missing the point. People, insofar as they have any integrity (and everyone has a little), have their bad ideas eroded away against the storms of disagreement, intellectual debates, and even hostility. I speak from direct experience. I've been made humble by hundreds of random people on the internet pushing back against nonsense things that I believed. I am incredibly grateful to all the people who let me know that I was wrong. In the moment I cared if they were mean, but I couldn't care less now. In the moment I let my compromised morals dictate my actions, but later I accepted the truth. Some people lack the ego strength to survive a belief they hold being proven wrong, but that's not an argument for them being coddled. I treat people with respect enough to know that some pointed language isn't going to crush their souls. It's the ideas that are so fowl, not the people holding them, except insofar as they have become a hollowed out person, filled only with that propaganda. Ideas are worthy of ridicule. If I say something stupid, I want it to be laughed at! And if a person is a total false self, then it's not personal to fight them as a person either, because there's no them left. There's nothing wrong with fighting and dominance by themselves. When bullies dominate defenseless victims, it's not the dominance that is the problem, but the violence, vile cowardice, and grandiosity. Fighting bad ideas is necessary. Not everyone is like you (were?). Not everyone who engages in intellectual debate is trying to hurt other people. That's not to say that there is no room for your strategy. Tell us about your success using this approach. What did you convince people of? Did it stick beyond that one interaction? What was their emotional block that you were able to navigate around?

Also, it depends on what flavor of determinism you're talking about. Functionalism, Epiphenomenalism, Behaviorism and others all say that consciousness is not important, adds nothing, is an illusion. Daniel Dennett, the popular academic pseudo-philosopher says that consciousness is not only meaningless, but that it doesn't exist at all. The video I shared above (in post #77) gives a brief outline of popular determinist positions on consciousness. It is incredibly common for Determinists to think that consciousness doesn't matter. And it must be that consciousness is at least partly meaningless if there is only ever one outcome possible, and that consciousness includes choosing different outcomes. If determinism is true, then it has to be somewhat useless. There's no way around that. And it need only be useless in the one respect for my arguments to work. It can burn calories or something and have utility that way, but obviously we're talking about something specific here.

Can you see why I might be confused? It's not meaningless fluff, but it doesn't do what we think it does, and maybe it doesn't even do anything. This is what I mean by meaningless fluff. Maybe you have a different definition of meaningless fluff...? This is, like, the whole debate, as far as I'm concerned. If you can make the case that consciousness doesn't do these things, then I consider my arguments defeated. For free will to exist, it requires that we use our consciousness to volitionally create outcomes according to our reason, and our desires. If our consciousness doesn't do these things, then there is no choice and free will is an illusion, as far as I can make sense of it. You seem very confident that consciousness doesn't do these things, so I look forward to your reasoning! I didn't say I disproved Determinism, either. I fully concede that I could be a biological flesh robot who is only kidding himself that he can choose. I'm providing challenges to the Determinist position, because often it is taken simply as granted that Determinism is true. I don't think it is, and I provided my reasoning as to why. If only we were so lucky as to have proof either way! :,( Evidence and rational arguments will have to do in the meantime, with your blessing, that is. P.S. I wish that people would only quote the relevant bits of the posts they are responding to. That way I know for sure what they take issue with. I pack my posts pretty densely with propositions and logic.

The chinese room argument is about this. The turing test is what we used to say would mark the beginning of artificial intelligence. If a program can trick a person into thinking it's a person with it's own thoughts, feelings, and perceptions on the other end, then it's as good as the real thing. And in a sense, it is. If the result you are looking for is simply a conversation, or a prediction or something else that human intelligence offers, but offered by a computer, then there is no meaningful difference. The only problem that I have is in assuming that this is the same thing as intelligence, or that the representation of it is any kind of proof that the original operates in the same way. In other words, that because the computer has no choice, neither do humans. There is no subjective experience occurring for these artificially intelligent machines. They are not conscious. If this distinction were never important and the existence of consciousness is completely superfluous, meaningless fluff that could be entirely replaced by a non-conscious program in the brain, then why would it exist in the first place? In order to have conscious awareness, we use a ton of vital resources that could be used elsewhere. If it is unnecessary, adds nothing significant, but is a huge waste of resources in our bodies, then that makes no sense. My contention is that it is incredibly important, and while it can be reproduced in a certain capacity, the thing itself is of unique value. The effect perceptions, thoughts and desires have on our consciousness are causal on a subjective level that can only be simulated on a machine and cannot be literally reproduced. That has value in ways which are countless, immediate, and completely surrounding us.

You assume it too. This conversation is only happening because you already grant there is a difference. Perhaps you really are insane, or maybe you are just being obtuse, but you aren't having this conversation with a chess bot. We both accept there is a huge difference, so let's stop pretending there is any debate about it. I find it very annoying. You say that the chess bot has schemes, logic, decisions, etc, but it doesn't. I already explained that above in post #72. The bot does none of these things. It does a single dumb process which represents these things. Anything humans do can be represented or simulated, theoretically. Suggesting that because you can represent a human performing an action in the same terms you describe a bot doing the same thing only means that they can be described using the same terms, and nothing else. A completely fictional character in a book can have a thought process be represented that way, and yet we don't suggest that he has free will, or that his sense of free will is an illusion. It's just a description! A representation and the thing it represents are two different things. You understand this, right? Please don't make me repeat this. If you are going to present a challenge for free will, you have to show direct, explicit implications for free will being an illusion. Nobody has done this so far, beyond simply asserting that it has implications for free will. That makes me very confident that Determinism is horse sh*t. If you accept that free will is magic from the get go, then your circular reasoning will lead you again back to free will being an illusion. But that's just mental masturbation, and has nothing to do with philosophy.

"In" is a reference to the inside of a mind for the human, and also inside the representation of certain conditions programmed into a computer. They are "in" two different things. He knows there is a difference because he has a mind, can safely assume that you and I have minds as well, and that computers haven't suddenly become conscious when nobody was looking. It's not a big blunder to make completely safe assumptions, which make perfect sense to anyone who thinks about it for a bit. We can do that to some extent already. Psychological journals are full of studies which attempt to do just this. It's not just Determinists who think this is possible, but anyone who thinks psychology is an objective discipline. Again, this makes no comment on whether or not our decision making is an illusion or not.

They can be simulated and are simulated in video games all the time. Computers simulate logic and calculations quadrillions of times per second across the world. A simulation is not the thing itself. I don't know why I have to repeat that so often... The guy is the computer in the analogy. Would you like me to explain it? He carries out the program. Just because the "CPU + program + memory" doesn't understand chinese, doesn't mean the computer doesn't understand chinese? Are you talking about the case those sit in? Does the case understand chinese?

Consciousness, subjectivity, semantics, rationality, concept formation, pretty much everything we do. Computers don't do anything people do except through representation. The person in the room never understands the conversation going on, and there is nothing to suggest that would ever happen. Moving faster (computing power) or a better manual (computer program) won't make him understand it. That's like the whole point of the thought experiment. If he also understood chinese then that's a different thought experiment. There's nothing precluding him from knowing chinese, except for the fact that he doesn't.

It could be modelled on a brain, for sure. But a simulation of a thing is not the thing itself. That distinction isn't always important, but in some cases it is. If you changed a computer so much that it actually had consciousness, at that point, it wouldn't be a computer, but something else. It's not a matter of programming or processing power or anything like that. It's an entirely new thing. We don't know for sure, but it appears that consciousness is a whole new class of biological phenomena, and not simply an aggregate of neuron firings – the way a program's execution is the sum of its component parts. New properties and functions emerge with consciousness that are separate from neurons (in the sense that atoms aren't solid, but the things they make up can be). The proof that it's not a matter of programming or processing power is what is called the "chinese room" thought experiment. Look it up if you want. Consciousness is completely underrated, actually. It's the most amazing phenomenon in the universe. More on the importance of consciousness here:

It's that experience you subjectively have where you must consciously decide to act, not to act, and if acting, which action – especially when it involves acting according to a rational standard, despite desires / inertia pushing you in another direction. It's not magic that stops the gears of the universe and pulls that lever that turns the train track in another direction, allowing the universe to continue moving forward again. If free will exists, it means that our experience of choice is not an illusion – that we work causally the way we experience it (more or less). It's that thing we experience all the time. We're not talking about quantum phenomena, or magic. It's infinitely more simple a proposition than all of that. It's just saying that this thing we experience is not an illusion. It's biological like all of our other functions. It's not a god of the gaps situation because you literally cannot avoid experiencing it. It's the exact opposite of a god of the gaps. The debate is just "is this an illusion, or isn't it?" If any considerations need be made, they must have something to do with this question. The fact that we live in a rational, causal universe, doesn't do anything to answer this question. And if it does, then the determinist must show that it does and not simply assert it in different words ad nauseum, as happens in nearly every Determinist / free will debate. Rationality is only possible if we already accept free will, so any suggestion that rationality implies Determinism is a logical contradiction.

The brain is not a highly advanced computer. A computer is as a convenient analogy, but a brain is very different. A computer is dumb. It only moves 1's and 0's around like a river moving in the direction of least resistance against a stream shaped by a program. Everything we say a computer does is actually analogized. It doesn't literally process, calculate, predict or model. We just describe it in those terms out of convenience, and as a representation / simulation of those things, the distinction between doing the thing itself and being a representation of that thing is unimportant. Whether or not it actually calculates something, we still have the answer to some algorithm by the end. This distinction between the thing itself and representation becomes important when we're talking about things that are specifically subjective. When we talk about mental states (thoughts, feelings, desires, perceptions, etc), we're talking about something more than simple neuron firings. Consciousness is real and irreducible. It is an emergent phenomenon in and of itself. It has it's own causal relationships that the neurons which make it up don't have (neurons don't think, feel, desire, etc). In the same way, water molecules don't splash or quench thirsts, but the state water molecules are in allows for an emergent phenomenon called "liquidity" to occur. When people talk about brains being computers and humans being flesh robots, it can only be because they don't actually understand computers and robots. A computer can represent in 1's and 0's accurate models, calculations, predictions, etc, and this is obviously useful, but it's not literally the analogy. People have got it backwards. Computer analogies don't describe people, people analogies describe computers. Describing what computers actually do without these analogies makes computers very difficult to understand. Humans calculate, process, predict, model, etc, not computers. Free will involves these functions we say a computer has, and because a computer is clearly deterministic, in the sense that it has no choice, then we conclude that therefore humans are deterministic in the same sense. This is false.

Yes, if it was programmed to evaluate the same conditions we would in making our choice, and was programmed to weigh these conditions in terms of a number value. Technically, it doesn't predict anything, all it does is move 1's and 0's around according to a program, and it's just a representation of logic, but close enough, yes.

This doesn't conclude in there are fixed outcomes or that choice is an illusion. You are making an argument for something else. There is nothing about having a cause or being predictable which necessitates that only one outcome is possible. If we were all billiard balls, then maybe you'd have a point, but we're conscious agents. Free will requires that more than one outcome is possible, otherwise this subjective experience I have of choosing is an illusion. This is the entire debate, as far as I'm concerned, summed up in one premise. If you can show that only one outcome is possible, then my position has been refuted. I am wrong in that case. Otherwise, as I've defined my terms, I consider what you're saying to be just another way of saying that I'm right about Determinism, and that it is the free will position which is the right one.

An outcome isn't a law. "Fixed laws therefore fixed outcomes" is just being asserted here. Demonstrate this claim.

You refuted nothing. You simply offered other definitions. I never said consciousness doesn't include neurons. It clearly has to. That's obvious to anyone who thinks about it for even a single second. "Fixed laws" in no way means there is only ever one option. At least, you've done nothing at all to demonstrate this claim. That's the lazy "cause and effect, therefore no free will" I complained about. Don't just assert it, show your work! No determinist will ever do this, because to do so is to prove they have no idea what they are talking about. It's a naive conception of cause and effect that doesn't take into account that different objects have different causal relationships to each other. It's all just billiard balls bouncing off each other to the determinist. No. I explain what the debate is about in the last paragraph of consideration #2. Nearly every person who talks about determinism is talking about it as that thing which makes free will illusory. I'm not offering some obscure definition, I'm distinguishing between a completely immature debate tactic most determinists use by saying "cause and effect, therefore no free will" and the actual position itself as it relates to free will. Address it or don't, but don't just pretend it never happened. I'm not saying that this is what they say you should do. I'm saying that this is a natural consequence of the belief. If you don't create your own situation but only find yourself in it, then you are describing exactly the mind of a depressed person. If a determinist believes in Determinism but completely ignores what it means for their lives, then great! There's no problem.

I addressed everything you said already in the post you're responding to. It's as if you didn't read or process any of it. If your definition of determinism is simply that we live in a rational, predictable universe, then I'm a determinist. This, however, makes no comment on free will for the reasons I already mentioned ("everything is the same, then everything will be the same"). If that is your definition of determinism, then you are the compatibilist, not me.

Dear all determinists: First off, I didn't say determinism results in nihilism, but I guess it does in a sense, but that's not the main point I'm making. More below: Consideration #1: Cause & Effect is Beside the Point The fact that causes have effects, outcomes can be knowable, is not evidence of the Determinist position (as it relates to free will). Just because you can describe things as causal relationships between objects over time, that means nothing for the Determinist / free will debate. If you set me up with my same desires, my same options, etc. – the fact that I choose one repeatedly and that this is knowable, can be predicted at a neurological level and whatever else, is beside the point. All it says is that if everything is the same, then everything will be the same. A conscious volitional choice is a variable, an effect and a cause. You could go lower down describing the same event at another level, but that's only half the story (i.e. "I didn't do it officer, my neurons did!"). That just results in an infinite regression because the neurons are just collections of molecules which are collections of atoms, quantum stuff, etc. Consideration #2: Consciousness Matters The role that consciousness plays in our decisions matters. Each of these levels of description, these emergent phenomena, have their own causal relationships, new properties and functions that exist only at that level (gold atoms aren't solid, H2O molecules don't splash, neurons aren't conscious, etc.). Any event can be modeled in physically deterministic terms. (Maybe I'm just ignorant or stubborn or whatever, but I'm convinced that includes quantum events, despite the authorities saying otherwise). That's not the same thing as the Determinist position. Determinism here is used in a different sense than the Determinist position (as it relates to free will). Treating them the same is to equivocate between different senses of the word. Determinism (as it relates to free will) is taking the accuracy of causally deterministic descriptions and concluding that this must mean that our subjective experience of choosing between multiple options is illusory – that the actual "decision" is being determined at a lower level than consciousness. Talking about a series of causal events in terms of desires, decisions and other mental states is not very satisfying to most Determinists who conclude that a more deterministic level of description (i.e. at the neuronal level) must be more true / scientific. Consideration #3: Free Will is not Magic Free will isn't free from cause and effect in the physical world. Descartes might argue otherwise, but he was a lunatic, and he does not represent a modern philosophical libertarian position on free will. If free will exists, it is clearly a biological phenomenon and must be part of the physical world. Y'all Determinists have a weird conception of freedom of the will, like it should not obey any kind of logic or physics or biology – like it should be random or magical. We aren't actually slaves to logic or gravity or causal relationships between objects and events, or whatever. They are limits within a system. Because a board game has rules doesn't mean it's lacking in any choice. That would be the stupidest game ever. Free will is creating outcomes according to value, desire, and reason; the highest expression of which being able to choose things which meet a standard despite desiring something different (e.x. deferring gratification). Free will is free to make our own choice despite instinct, inclination, addiction, desire, etc. It's not random or probabilistic. It can be described causally just like everything else. It's simply the acceptance that this subjective experience of choosing one option over others is causal in the way we experience it being causal. Consideration #4: Determinism is a Rejection of Reason The whole concept of a desire is a rational one. It is something which has a condition which must be satisfied. Conditions imply logic. Reason is a subjective process – not in the sense of propositions being subjectively true/false, but it's a conscious volitional act (i.e. consciousness exists subjectively). If it's our neurons which do the choosing (prior to consciousness), then reason is not a volitional process, but an illusory, superfluous, inconsequential one. Trying to reason a person into thinking reason is illusory is a self detonating argument. It is to say "listen to my reason so that you can reject my reason." -------------------- This doesn't disprove determinism. It may still be true despite this significant challenge, but please don't misrepresent the free will position. Trying to say "causes have effects, therefore determinism" is such a lazy, unthinking non-position.

And I know a tall chinese man. I know some famous nihilists, so therefore nihilism has no negative effects on a person's psychology. And I didn't say you can't be productive. Coming up with rationalizations to excuse what you feel like doing anyway, rather than what is right, can take a ton of effort, and be some amazing mental gymnastics. I know full well what determinism is. I'm talking about the consequences of beliefs, not the beliefs themselves, necessarily.

I would, vehemently. Because it could only ever be a fleeting kind of happiness at the expense of long term happiness. Are you a determinist? Are you happy? If you are basically a determinist, and if you are ultimately unhappy, and your fatalistic view of the world contributes to your unhappiness, then encouraging her in this is kinda messed up. Because you have empirical evidence of why not to be a determinist. Having people in your life who care about you is clearly important, but a determinist position is going to get in the way of that. Winning the admiration and love of other adults can only work with personal responsibility, otherwise it's just pity. And determinism is absolute poison for personal responsibility. Finding good people is not a passive process, it's an active one. A passive life is the life of so many children whose best friends are the kid they happen to sit next to in class. The kid whose day's activities are chosen for them, and whose neglectful parents have not helped them grow into self directed adults. Determinism is finding yourself in your situation and not fighting to change it. It's feeling overwhelmed and resigning yourself to some fate. It's avoiding taking personal responsibility because "that's just how things are." I can't stress this enough.

It's not an ad hominem. I even conceded that it doesn't make you wrong. It is however extremely important to consider. When you first became convinced is of no concern to me, since it's the familiarity I'm talking about, not a person's present mood. I didn't say free will was free from desire and I do not accept this premise as given that to have desires is to be a slave to them. The very idea being ridiculous. Of course you want to satisfy desires. What point would there be in having free will except to get what you want? You failed to understand what I said, not the other way around. And you're wrong, again. A K-selection strategy is in your control. I'm wired for r-selection by my own estimation, but I made a commitment to myself to live a more principled life. You use "hardwired" and "instinctive" like they are logical arguments, but they are vague terms that seemed to be used more out of convenience than to clarify. At least, it doesn't help me understand anything more about why it should be described deterministically. You've used multiple examples of situations which definitely are in your control that you claim are out of your control. That's a problem for sanity, self esteem, happiness. You need more personal responsibility (e.x. you chose the guys you did).

You were creating confusion by talking about exactly the wrong type of freedom. Freedom of the will is not the same freedom you are referring to.

Please don't speak on everyone's behalf.

Depression comes about in response to a sense that life is out of one's control. Thinking that determinism will cure you of your depression is lunatic. It is the worst possible thing to do to a person, to make them believe that they do not have control over the quality of their own life. I'd say it is an act of malice and rage, in fact, if it were a conscious act. It's the same kind of rage that a narcissistic abuser inflicts on a child, when they gaslight the child into obedience by divorcing the child from their own perception of control. They want the child to feel ineffective because they don't want them to continue some action they don't like. The first thing I think whenever anybody argues against free will is: they are depressed. How could you not be? But I fully concede that it doesn't prove free will to point out the clear connection between depression and determinism. I just want to point out that it's no coincidence that you would be drawn to it as an explanation, something which feels familiar. --------------- You have a degree of control over what you desire insofar as you develop multiple competing desires. You may want to eat ice cream all day, but you want to live a healthy life even more. With increased knowledge, you can prioritize your time and energy. This is part of healthy normal maturation. You are responsible for gaining knowledge and prioritizing your desires in a rational way. If someone were completely a slave to their immediate desires or instincts, then clearly that is not a conception of free will which could make sense. Free will, in order to be something recognizable, would have to involve rational decision making, deferring gratification, comparing actions to rational standards and resistance to unhealthy, immoral or otherwise irrational desires. If that is actually what you experience, then the only barrier in the way of accepting free will is to say that this subjective experience is illusory. That is to say that being rational is illusory, or that following through on the reason is illusory. In either case, the position implodes in on itself logically. Arguing for free will does not require a suspension of the laws of physics or chemistry or biology or logic. It's simply the acceptance that this subjective experience of rationally choosing one action over another, despite instinct or conflicting desire, is a true and accurate description of events. Arguing for free will does not require randomness or that we can't have knowable outcomes for people's behavior. Setting up conditions such that they are exactly the same, getting the same behavior at the end and concluding that therefore free will is illusory, is not a meaningful test of anything. The only thing it says is that if everything is the same, then everything will be the same. If determinism were true, then it would certainly be the ultimate red pill. Fortunately, it's not.

Yes. I was talking about physical objects. I did not misunderstand you. It can't and you're right that it does not matter. Insofar as squares describe the shape of physical objects, qualities of squares also describe that object. Insofar as concepts match up with reality, the functions and properties we ascribe to those concepts also describe reality, a priori. Out of convenience, you can qualify "insofar as the relevant concepts describe the reality, the proposition can be evaluated" when referring to analytic propositions. The only problem then is knowing whether or not reality is real, which is not something I would debate because to debate it would be to accept it. It would be silly.

I'm not sure how this is different than saying "if nothing is knowable, then nothing is knowable". If matter and energy are so variable and random that no objects can be defined, then we have far bigger problems than debating how accurate concepts can be.