- #71
JoeDawg
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poor mystic said:Without a common goal, we can never achieve secure happiness.
In my experience very few people want to achieve happiness. They are way to busy with other things.
poor mystic said:Without a common goal, we can never achieve secure happiness.
Seemingly altruistic behaviour is common. What evidence do you have that evolution functions on the level of populations, rather than of reproductive individuals?JoeDawg said:Evolution functions on the level of populations, not individuals. Self-sacrificing behavior is common throughout the animal kingdom.
You could characterize all observed behaviour that way. Not sure what your point is though.cesiumfrog said:Seemingly altruistic behaviour is common.
What evidence do you have that evolution functions on the level of populations, rather than of reproductive individuals?
Evolution is the change in the inherited traits of a population of organisms through successive generations.
JoeDawg said:This is incorrect.
Evolution functions on the level of populations, not individuals. Self-sacrificing behavior is common throughout the animal kingdom.
If a creature with a self sacrificing gene has 10 offspring with that gene, some may have the opportuntity to sacrifice themselves, others won't, but the ones that do not, will benefit from the sacrifices of those who do, and then pass on the gene.
There is a similar evolutionary argument for the existense of homosexuality. Homosexuals siblings do not compete for mates, but do contribute to group survival. And even bacteria form communities.
I think what you were describing is a more controversial topic:JoeDawg said:Biology class?
Evolution is an evolving field. :)GeorgCantor said:There are clear emergent traits in our development that cannot be solely attributed to Evolution.
Communication via language facilitates group action, which increases survivability in social animals. Langauge is a form of symbol manipulation. Art is another form of symbol manipulation.Can you explain art in terms of evolution?
Is much less free than most people would like to believe.Or free will?
Like any human behaviour, its rarely a matter of one gene... likely many, and it only gives us a certain predisposition, environment also plays a role. The latter is how we are able to adapt.I am not certain that self-sacrifice is entirely a gene-caused behavior, we are not entirely deterministic machines.
You decide... based on your previous inputs. I'm not afraid of determinism, and I don't think it negates free will.I can contemplate whether to self-sacrifice or not, so in the end it's me who decides. But i agree with you that respective genes can and probably do play a role.
Actually no, altruism is very complex. In animals, an altruistic male often attracts females, because his selflessness manifests as bravery... and thus an ability to provide. Altruism can also lead to his death, but not always.cesiumfrog said:I think what you were describing is a more controversial topic:
Some, of course will make the group selection claim about altruism, but that I think oversimplifies a very complex topic.regardless of the alleles' effect on the fitness of individuals within that group.
JoeDawg said:Communication via language facilitates group action, which increases survivability in social animals. Langauge is a form of symbol manipulation. Art is another form of symbol manipulation.
Is much less free than most people would like to believe.
And... Freewill requires determinism.
You can't make a choice, if the result is random.
You decide... based on your previous inputs. I'm not afraid of determinism, and I don't think it negates free will.
GeorgCantor said:There is no way there could be a deterministic reality in a locality populated with beings of free will. If, on the other hand, every event plays out according to a script, then there is no concept of objectivity and consequently no truth.
SW VandeCarr said:I share your dislike for strict determinism, but the alternative, truly random process, is no better regarding free will. A third option is the effectively deterministic process as a statistical convergence of random processes. But that doesn't get us free will either. So what is a scientific hypothesis for a basis of free will?
GeorgCantor said:The usual label - 'Emergent property'. It's well described but not understood.
poor mystic said:Dear SW VandeCarr
There is a principle which holds that your conclusion that "emergent properties still must be explained in terms of determinism and/or randomness" is unjustified.
In the following sentence, even you admit: "What else is there?"
What else indeed!
The conclusion cannot be verified without complete knowledge of all possible explanations of emergent properties. Since this knowledge is not available (to me), I recognise the un-testibility of the proposition, which I call a "null hypothesis" - a hypothesis that cannot be tested.
It has usually been my experience, when faced with a seeming null hypothesis, that some third way into the problem will present itself. Whenever this has happened in the past, the result has made the very question from which the difficult explanation arose, redundant.
SW VandeCarr said:Although you can't say for certain, can you speculate as to what new principle that might be the basis of free will?
.I (and others) have an idea. Maybe you have the same idea. (It's not in any way metaphysical). It's a fairly familiar term.
We can't discuss anything too speculative, so I won't reveal the word unless you type it.
GeorgCantor said:If you can show that free will could have a rational explanation(and exists), it'd be relevant to the question if violence is fundamentally bad.
Pythagorean said:I'm also intrigued by the "free energy principle of the brain" I've always found the consequences of Maxwell's Demon very interesting.
Spiritual?? I don't even know what that means. If you mean some supernatural mumbo jumbo, then I don't see how it is even useful to talk about it.GeorgCantor said:Sounds cool but i don't agree that Shakespeare and Michelangelo were a gene mutation. We are bound to our genes but we are also spiritual beings now and we relate to each other through spiritual ideas and values.
If it can't be... we're just puffing around about nothing.You implicitly assumed that free will is something to be explained through causality and the laws of physics as we know them.
Consciousness is a complicated thing... but I don't see any reason that it requires a non-physical process, even if we don't understand it yet. We're still scratching the surface on a lot of things.Free will is by far not the only thing that is yet to be explained(in fact we are merely scratching the surface of that which we call reality).
This is where I think you are making the mistake. Like many others you have a self-contradictory view of what 'freewill' is. You imply that because we make choices based on a history, we are not free. But that is how choices get made.You can't make a choice if you don't have choices.
But you see that's the flaw in your logic. There is no script. We write our own script. What most people forget with this kind of analogy is that there is a writer for every script. That is us, and no one, even us, knows what we are going to write, until we do it. Determinism just means things will follow from what has gone before, it doesn't mean they have already happened.There is no way there could be a deterministic reality in a locality populated with beings of free will. If, on the other hand, every event plays out according to a script, then there is no concept of objectivity and consequently no truth.
poor mystic said:Surely we might have disposed of the question of free will in another discussion, for in accepting that good and bad exist don't we imply the liberty to be good, to be bad?
JoeDawg said:Determinism just means things will follow from what has gone before, it doesn't mean they have already happened.
poor mystic said:SW VandeCarr has brought us the following link :http://www.jneurosci.org/cgi/content/full/27/34/9141.
In a paper in neuroscience I found following the link, an area of the human brain is found to have been excited during decisions whether or not to act.
I'm not sure how to interpret it, though.
I don't think that locating this set of cells proves anything about consciousness, but what of relevance does it prove?
JoeDawg said:Spiritual?? I don't even know what that means. If you mean some supernatural mumbo jumbo, then I don't see how it is even useful to talk about it.
There is more to Shakespeare than genes... there is more to you and I than genes, we have our whole lives, and the whole world, as influence, how we grew up, a very complicated process. Genes is just the starting point, but spiritual... that just sounds like magic. Spiritual is an empty word that explains nothing.
If it can't be... we're just puffing around about nothing.
This is where I think you are making the mistake. Like many others you have a self-contradictory view of what 'freewill' is. You imply that because we make choices based on a history, we are not free. But that is how choices get made.
We are not billiard balls, we don't just react to force and velocity in the things around us. We have internal processes. That is where choice is.
And no, its not magical.
But you see that's the flaw in your logic. There is no script. We write our own script.
What most people forget with this kind of analogy is that there is a writer for every script. That is us, and no one, even us, knows what we are going to write, until we do it.
Determinism just means things will follow from what has gone before, it doesn't mean they have already happened.
Many people want freewill to be some magical thing... and if you look to history... the main reason for this idea of freewill is the sin blame game. The world is imperfect, there is suffering, if god is good... then why ... but...humans are free... so its our fault. Its a theological shell game.
If that is the kind of freewill you think must exist... then yes, you'd need to be spiritual, because that makes no sense at all.
Jarle said:apeiron, you seem to generally take the behavioristic line of reasoning in questions regarding ethics. Purely in interest of hearing your opinion about it; how do you make up for the loss of individual perspective?
DaveC426913 said:Right. I was simply laying some groundwork to establish that we all pretty much agree that right and wrong are entirely human (subjective) concepts - rated by humans about humans.
DaveC426913 said:Well I'm hypothesizing that cause and effect are reversed.
You: our ethics lead to a stable society
Me: a stable society defines our ethics
We define right and wrong by what works. And that "what works" is directly proportional to how prosperous society is.
apeiron said:Chance and necessity, randomness and determinism, are a correct dichotomy for micro-physics, the simplest systems. But when we are talking about brains and societies, the dichotomy is really spontaneity~autonomy. More is different, as Polyani said. Complexity has its own character that just does not reduce neatly to micro-physical concepts.
poor mystic said:I think a simple set of arguments involving the irrational destruction of order and implicit loss of energy to a parent society could be mounted. We could start from the judgement that "waste is bad" and carry on from there.
poor mystic said:We could start from the judgement that "waste is bad" and carry on from there.
poor mystic said:So, apeiron: "the purpose of life and mind (bios) is to create waste?" I do not hope to argue you from this amazing belief.
That's just evasive.GeorgCantor said:If you manage to unambigously define what 'physical' is, i will unabiguously define what 'spiritual' is.
I think we are. Neuroscience is in its infancy, but there are interesting things almost daily with regards to consciousness.You thought we were making progress on what free will is?
That is your opinion, and it is based on a self-contradictory definition of freewill.deterministic causal events predclude free will.
It doesn't point to magical-freewill, but that is a contradiction in terms.Yes, we have deterministic internal processes. How exactly does that point to free will? What kind of logic requires you to use reductionistic approaches to emergent behavior?
Optimism?And what makes you think it will EVER work?
When you define freewill in such a way that it can't exist, then yes it must be magical to exist. I don't define freewill that way, however.So free will is determined by our internal processes(i.e. we don't have free will)
In simple terms, autonomy. But I'm thinking the problem here is that you are stuck on your magical 'spiritual' definition, and refuse to entertain any other definition as 'true freewill'.So the deterministic internal processes cause 'free will'? What exactly are you talking about??
No, events are 'determined' by cause and effect. PRE-determined involves teleology, knowledge of events, and directed purpose, before they happen. And there are plenty of arguments against quantum level determinism, not that it matters really, unless your magical freewill involves atomic particles with freewill.Happened or not, deterministic causal events are pre-determined at the dawn of history
Huh?As far as free will is concerned it must be magical if no one can explain it.
Obviously I disagree... and its not my own theory. Its called compatiblism. Its not even new.Your own theory is self-contradictory and the best you could say is that we don't have free will.
The fact we (you) still don't know or understand things doesn't mean you are justified in believing whatever takes your fancy.The universe with observers originating from a quantum fluctuation makes sense?
Common sense is a myth.Do you believe you are in the reality of common-sense? If you think so, you need to find yourself another reality.