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The Beauty Of Determinism!

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  • The Beauty Of Determinism!

    It seems more and more that the atheists on this board are denying free will and free thought, believing that we are completely determined by the laws of nature to think and act as we do. That we have no control over what we think or do. You know, this theory does have its advantages. Whenever the atheist does something immoral, unkind or untoward - well no big deal, why feel guilty? You couldn't help it, you were determined. And it seems that people who do believe that they are determined act less morally:


    Abstract

    Does moral behavior draw on a belief in free will? Two experiments examined whether inducing participants to believe that human behavior is predetermined would encourage cheating. In Experiment 1, participants read either text that encouraged a belief in determinism (i.e., that portrayed behavior as the consequence of environmental and genetic factors) or neutral text. Exposure to the deterministic message increased cheating on a task in which participants could passively allow a flawed computer program to reveal answers to mathematical problems that they had been instructed to solve themselves. Moreover, increased cheating behavior was mediated by decreased belief in free will. In Experiment 2, participants who read deterministic statements cheated by overpaying themselves for performance on a cognitive task; participants who read statements endorsing free will did not. These findings suggest that the debate over free will has societal, as well as scientific and theoretical, implications.
    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18181791
    Atheism is the cult of death, the death of hope. The universe is doomed, you are doomed, the only thing that remains is to await your execution...

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jbnueb2OI4o&t=3s

  • #2
    Originally posted by seer View Post
    It seems more and more that the atheists on this board are denying free will and free thought, ...
    It seems you made that up because it suited your 'argument'.
    Jorge: Functional Complex Information is INFORMATION that is complex and functional.

    MM: First of all, the Bible is a fixed document.
    MM on covid-19: We're talking about an illness with a better than 99.9% rate of survival.

    seer: I believe that so called 'compassion' [for starving Palestinian kids] maybe a cover for anti Semitism, ...

    Comment


    • #3
      Originally posted by Roy View Post
      It seems you made that up because it suited your 'argument'.
      Made what up? So you believe in free will? The atheists I have been debating here don't, like Tass, Jim L and Thinker. And from what they are saying it is becoming the default position of neuroscience.
      Last edited by seer; 10-03-2015, 12:18 PM.
      Atheism is the cult of death, the death of hope. The universe is doomed, you are doomed, the only thing that remains is to await your execution...

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jbnueb2OI4o&t=3s

      Comment


      • #4
        Originally posted by seer View Post
        It seems more and more that the atheists on this board are denying free will and free thought, believing that we are completely determined by the laws of nature to think and act as we do. That we have no control over what we think or do.
        Once again, you try to mislead people into thinking that the only option is that determinism entails no free will. And you do this by ingoring compatibilism. Sorry, but informed people aren't going to fall for this. Free will is compatible with determinism, even though folks like you attempt to confuse people into thinking otherwise, by doing things like conflating determinism with bypassing,fatalism, or epiphenomenalism:

        "Experimental Philosophy on Free Will: An Error Theory for Incompatibilist Intuitions"
        http://scholar.google.com/scholar?cl...en&as_sdt=0,26
        "Suppose laypersons are presented with scenarios that describe a deterministic universe, and suppose that some respond that agents in that universe do not have free will (FW) and are not morally responsible (MR) [emphasis added] for their actions—they express “incompatibilist intuitions”—while others respond that agents in these deterministic universes can have FW and MR—they express ‘compatibilist intuitions.’ […]

        Our hypothesis is that many people who appear to have incompatibilist intuitions are interpreting determinism to entail what we will call “bypassing,” and they take bypassing to preclude FW and MR. While bypassing does preclude FW and MR, it is a mistake to interpret determinism to entail bypassing [emphasis added]. So, if the reason people express incompatibilist intuitions is that they mistakenly take determinism to entail bypassing, then those intuitions do not in fact support the conclusion that determinism, properly understood, is incompatible with free will.

        What is “bypassing”? The basic idea is that one’s actions are caused by forces that bypass one’s conscious self, or at least what one identifies as one’s “self”. More specifically, it is the thesis that one’s actions are produced in a way that bypasses the abilities compatibilists typically identify with free will, such as rational deliberation, conscious consideration of beliefs and desires, formation of higher-order volitions, planning, and the like. As such, bypassing might take the form of epiphenomenalism about the relevant mental states (i.e., that deliberations, beliefs, and desires are causally irrelevant to action), or it might take the form of fatalism—the belief that certain things will happen no matter what one decides or tries to do, or that one’s actions have to happen even if the past had been different. Bypassing suggests that conscious agents have no control over their actions because they play no role in the causal chain that leads to their actions. For our study discussed below, we “operationalized” bypassing in a more precise way.

        The crucial point is that determinism, as defined by philosophers debating free will, simply does not entail bypassing […] The history of compatibilism might be caricatured as an attempt to drive home this point. Compatibilists have emphasized that determinism does not mean or entail that all events are inevitable, in the sense that they will happen no matter what we decide or try to do. They point out that determinism does not render our beliefs, desires, deliberations, or decisions causally impotent. Quite the contrary. So long as our mental states are part of the deterministic sequence of events, they play a crucial role in determining what will happen [emphasis added]. Of course, incompatibilists generally agree with all this, but claim their arguments are not based on such mistakes (3-4).”


        Once you make it clear to laypeople that determinism does not entail bypassing, then much of their rationale for accepting incompatibilism (i.e. accepting the idea that determinism is incompatible with free will) goes away. That is supported in the above paper, and in the following two papers:

        "Folk Fears about Freedom and Responsibility: Determinism vs. Reductionism"
        http://www2.gsu.edu/~phlean/papers/F...onsibility.pdf

        "Free Will, Moral Responsibility, and Mechanism: Experiments on Folk Intuitions"
        http://www2.gsu.edu/~phlean/papers/N...tes_Kvaran.pdf


        You know, this theory does have its advantages. Whenever the atheist does something immoral, unkind or untoward - well no big deal, why feel guilty? You couldn't help it, you were determined. And it seems that people who do believe that they are determined act less morally:


        http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18181791
        You apparently didn't read the study (as expected). That's pretty clear, since you claim that the study was measuring the effects of people's belief in determinism, even though that isn't actually what the study is measuring. Instead, the study is measuring the effect of:
        exposing people to conjunction of incompatibilism (free will is incompatible with determinism)
        and
        a certain biological description of being human
        [it seems that the authors are presuming that this conjunction entails the denial of free will, since the authors are presuming that the study participants will think the biological description in question is a deterministic description]
        or:
        exposing people to the denial of free will
        That's made quite clear in the study. For example:

        "The Value of Believing in Free Will: Encouraging a Belief in Determinism Increases Cheating"
        http://pss.sagepub.com/content/19/1/49.long
        "[For experiment 1:]

        First, according to the condition to which they were randomly assigned, they read one of two passages from The Astonishing Hypothesis, a book written by Francis Crick (1994), the Nobel-prize-winning scientist. In the anti-free-will condition, participants read statements claiming that rational, high-minded people—including, according to Crick, most scientists—now recognize that actual free will is an illusion, and also claiming that the idea of free will is a side effect of the architecture of the mind.

        [...]

        [For experiment 2:]

        In the free-will condition, participants read statements such as, “I am able to override the genetic and environmental factors that sometimes influence my behavior,” and “Avoiding temptation requires that I exert my free will.” In the determinism condition, participants read statements such as, “A belief in free will contradicts the known fact that the universe is governed by lawful principles of science,” and “Ultimately, we are biological computers—designed by evolution, built through genetics, and programmed by the environment.”"


        So it's not a belief in determinism that's predicting people's cheating. Instead, it's:
        exposing people to conjunction of incompatibilism (free will is incompatible with determinism
        and
        a certain biological description of being human
        or:
        exposing people to the denial of free will

        Of course, that would not bother compatibilists, since compatibilists hold that free will is compatible to with determinism, not that free will does not exist nor that free will is incompatible with determinism. Furthermore, the "free-will condition" from experiment 2 is consistent with compatibilism, insofar as the condition involves one's mental states not being bypassed by genetic and environmental factors, something that determinism is consistent with (as per compatibilism). So the study's results don't measure the effects of accepting compatibilism. To generate results relevant to compatibilists, the study could have instead exposed people to the idea that free will is compatible with determinsm, and seen what effect that had. Or it could have exposed people to the conjunction of people have free will and determinism is true.


        So really, seer, your OP is irrelevant to any determinist who thinks that free will is compatible with determinism and your OP is irrelevant to compatibilists [and thus irrelevant to the compatibilit position held to by the majority of philosophers].
        Last edited by Jichard; 10-03-2015, 04:43 PM.
        "Instead, we argue, it is necessary to shift the debate from the subject under consideration, instead exposing to public scrutiny the tactics they [denialists] employ and identifying them publicly for what they are."

        Comment


        • #5
          Originally posted by seer View Post
          Made what up? So you believe in free will? The atheists I have been debating here don't, like Tass, Jim L and Thinker. And from what they are saying it is becoming the default position of neuroscience.
          Your opponents have made it very clear that they reject your libertarian account of free will. For instance:
          Originally posted by Tassman View Post
          Unlike coconuts, you and chimpanzees are both conscious entities capable of making effective choices. If you want to claim that, unlike the chimp, you have libertarian free-will you need to say how this came about in a determined universe and why the chimp doesn't.
          Originally posted by Tassman View Post
          We are conscious animals capable of making effective decisions; this is the way we've evolved in order to best survive. This applies to all animals not just humans. You've not made a case that what’s true for chimpanzees is not equally true for his human cousin. Either both have libertarian free-will, for which there’s no good evidence, or neither does. Obviously, in the absence of credible evidence to the contrary, it’s the latter which applies.
          Originally posted by The Thinker View Post
          You are on the hook seer of explaining how your consciousness can make a choice, when thoughts pop into your mind without any control. Being aware of other kinds of food makes no difference whatsoever in terms of the fact that you can't have a thought about a thought before you have the thought. And you have to provide scientific evidence that mind causes brain. So far you have zero.




          You still need evidence in favor of your views otherwise you must admit that they are based entirely on faith and intuition. I can only claim the knowledge that I can show using reason and evidence. I can claim that 35 years of neuroscientific data shows brain always causes mind and that this is the dominant view in neuroscience and the philosophy of mind (of which 61% are physicalists). I can claim that the laws of quantum mechanics that govern all atoms - including the atoms in your brain - do not allow for a soul to have any effect on them. That hypothesis is empirically ruled out. I can claim that libertarian free will is not even logically coherent, and this is demonstrated by your inability to come to terms with the fact that you can't have a thought about a thought before you have the thought.

          I think you can answer this question at least:

          1. And more simply, do your thoughts have a cause, or not? If they have a cause, what is that cause?

          As far as your question, I am not afraid to answer. We are indeed biological automatons completely controlled by the laws of physics. There is no libertarian free will and there can't be. The whole concept is logically incoherent. This may seem depressing or weird, but when you really think about libertarian free will, although it seems appealing at first, it actually makes no sense, nor is it supported by any scientific evidence. Determinism actually makes more sense. I presume you believe that everything that begins to exist has a cause right? If our will "begins to exist" it must have a cause. And whatever caused that must have a cause, and that must have a cause, and so on and so on back to the big bang. Once you acknowledge that, you essentially have determinism. Otherwise, you must believe that things begin to exist in the universe without a cause. And if they have no cause why are they ordered? Why aren't they random? You see, just 2 years ago I like you naively believed in free will. Once you study it, and all the evidence, you will realize it is impossible that it is true.
          Originally posted by The Thinker View Post
          That is complete nonsense. You're trying to say that a view that is technically incoherent (which you have not refuted at all) is the only way to make our will to be coherent and rational. I mean, I cannot believe you don't see this. There is nothing about humans being physically determined that logically leads to rationality going out the window. Nothing. We are evolved biological organisms. Our brains are the product of 3.5 billion years of evolution, during which time, we evolved to rationally respond to our environment, because our very survival depended on it. This is called adapting to the environment. You have not offered an alternative solution that makes sense. You have not refuted the incoherency of libertarian free will or provided any evidence. Just like with morality, you're basically resting your view on faith. That's all you got. And I suppose future debates we'll have will lead to the same thing. You have not refuted the scientific evidence I showed you. You have not explained how animals can think and rationally respond to their environment. You have done nothing but make claims on faith and appeal to consequence and ignorance. There is a reason why the majority if philosophers and neuroscientists agree with me and not you. My views make sense and are backed up by actual evidence. Your view is incoherent and backed up by faith.
          And there is no need for you to pretend that people who reject your libertarian account of free will are rejecting free will in general. For example, they can reject your reject your libertarian account of free will, while being compatibilists (who think that that free will is compatible with determinism) and thinking that humans have free will. That, of course, is my position. And compatibilism is the position of the majority of philosophers (as is atheism). That doesn't mean that compatibilism is true; but it does mean you need to stop pretending that compatibilism does not exist as a position, as if the only two options are no free will or libertarian free will exists.
          Last edited by Jichard; 10-03-2015, 04:38 PM.
          "Instead, we argue, it is necessary to shift the debate from the subject under consideration, instead exposing to public scrutiny the tactics they [denialists] employ and identifying them publicly for what they are."

          Comment


          • #6
            Originally posted by seer View Post
            Made what up? So you believe in free will? The atheists I have been debating here don't, like Tass, Jim L and Thinker. And from what they are saying it is becoming the default position of neuroscience.
            It already is the default position in neuroscience and the philosophy of mind, it isn't becoming it. Only theists like you who believe based on faith believe in libertarian free will - a position that is totally incoherent.
            Blog: Atheism and the City

            If your whole worldview rests on a particular claim being true, you damn well better have evidence for it. You should have tons of evidence.

            Comment


            • #7
              Originally posted by The Thinker View Post
              It already is the default position in neuroscience and the philosophy of mind, it isn't becoming it. Only theists like you who believe based on faith believe in libertarian free will - a position that is totally incoherent.
              And it seems, according to the study, that those who actually do believe in determinism are less moral.

              Exposure to the deterministic message increased cheating on a task in which participants could passively allow a flawed computer program to reveal answers to mathematical problems that they had been instructed to solve themselves. Moreover, increased cheating behavior was mediated by decreased belief in free will. In Experiment 2, participants who read deterministic statements cheated by overpaying themselves for performance on a cognitive task; participants who read statements endorsing free will did not. These findings suggest that the debate over free will has societal, as well as scientific and theoretical, implications.
              Atheism is the cult of death, the death of hope. The universe is doomed, you are doomed, the only thing that remains is to await your execution...

              https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jbnueb2OI4o&t=3s

              Comment


              • #8
                Originally posted by seer View Post
                It seems more and more that the atheists on this board are denying free will and free thought, believing that we are completely determined by the laws of nature to think and act as we do. That we have no control over what we think or do. You know, this theory does have its advantages. Whenever the atheist does something immoral, unkind or untoward - well no big deal, why feel guilty? You couldn't help it, you were determined. And it seems that people who do believe that they are determined act less morally:

                http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18181791
                First and foremost, the truth should determine what we believe, not social consequences. If Islam made people cheat and steal less, would you honestly recommend that we should all try and convert people to Islam? I doubt it.

                Second, this study was repeated and results couldn't be replicated. That shows that it is not so cut and dry that rejecting free will makes people cheat more.

                See the new experiment here: http://rolfzwaan.blogspot.nl/2013/03...free-will.html
                Blog: Atheism and the City

                If your whole worldview rests on a particular claim being true, you damn well better have evidence for it. You should have tons of evidence.

                Comment


                • #9
                  Originally posted by The Thinker View Post
                  First and foremost, the truth should determine what we believe, not social consequences. If Islam made people cheat and steal less, would you honestly recommend that we should all try and convert people to Islam? I doubt it.
                  Except that beliefs have consequences. Well actually in your determined world they would not. Sorry.

                  Second, this study was repeated and results couldn't be replicated. That shows that it is not so cut and dry that rejecting free will makes people cheat more.

                  See the new experiment here: http://rolfzwaan.blogspot.nl/2013/03...free-will.html
                  I have no idea who this guy is, the Vohs and Schooler study was published in a peer revived journal: the Association for Psychological Science. What journal did Zwaan publish his paper?
                  Atheism is the cult of death, the death of hope. The universe is doomed, you are doomed, the only thing that remains is to await your execution...

                  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jbnueb2OI4o&t=3s

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Originally posted by seer View Post
                    Except that beliefs have consequences. Well actually in your determined world they would not. Sorry.
                    Nothing about determinism prevents beliefs from having consequences. Beliefs would all be the result of neural-chemical elements in the brain, and that would of course have physical effects.

                    I have no idea who this guy is, the Vohs and Schooler study was published in a peer revived journal: the Association for Psychological Science. What journal did Zwaan publish his paper?
                    It's not peer reviewed, at least not yet. But it is reason to think that the original study may be false.
                    Blog: Atheism and the City

                    If your whole worldview rests on a particular claim being true, you damn well better have evidence for it. You should have tons of evidence.

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Originally posted by The Thinker View Post
                      Nothing about determinism prevents beliefs from having consequences. Beliefs would all be the result of neural-chemical elements in the brain, and that would of course have physical effects.
                      You know this is interesting. The actual belief would not have consequences, but the brain chemicals that actually cause the consequences. Our conscious beliefs would not make any difference (since they have no real influence).


                      It's not peer reviewed, at least not yet. But it is reason to think that the original study may be false.
                      That is fair, except like I said in the OP:

                      You know, this theory does have its advantages. Whenever the atheist does something immoral, unkind or untoward - well no big deal, why feel guilty? You couldn't help it, you were determined.
                      Atheism is the cult of death, the death of hope. The universe is doomed, you are doomed, the only thing that remains is to await your execution...

                      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jbnueb2OI4o&t=3s

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Originally posted by seer View Post
                        And it seems, according to the study, that those who actually do believe in determinism are less moral.
                        That's a lie. You haven't read the paper, and the paper shows no such thing.
                        "Instead, we argue, it is necessary to shift the debate from the subject under consideration, instead exposing to public scrutiny the tactics they [denialists] employ and identifying them publicly for what they are."

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          Originally posted by Roy View Post
                          It seems you made that up because it suited your 'argument'.
                          He's misrepresenting what the paper says, even though it's painfully clear that he hasn't actually read the paper nor understood it.

                          Originally posted by seer View Post
                          And it seems, according to the study, that those who actually do believe in determinism are less moral.
                          "Instead, we argue, it is necessary to shift the debate from the subject under consideration, instead exposing to public scrutiny the tactics they [denialists] employ and identifying them publicly for what they are."

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            Originally posted by Jichard View Post
                            That's a lie. You haven't read the paper, and the paper shows no such thing.
                            It may be a lie, or it may just be misconstrued. I can see how some who come to accept determinism might become less moral, probably wouldn't be the current atheists though. As a matter of fact, I think thats the reason why god was created in the first place.

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              Originally posted by JimL View Post
                              It may be a lie, or it may just be misconstrued. I can see how some who come to accept determinism might become less moral, probably wouldn't be the current atheists though. As a matter of fact, I think thats the reason why god was created in the first place.
                              It's not a necessary consequence of determinism that people might become less moral. In any event there's no coherent alternative to determinism, i.e. there's no coherent way that libertarian free-will can exist, even compatibilists acknowledge this to be largely true. Nevertheless, we live in societies governed by rules of morality as devised by our communities. It's recognised that such rules are necessary for the successful functioning of society and we enforce them for society's protection. In times past we've even attributed such moral codes to the gods we invent so as to reinforce them via divine imprimatur.

                              Hence, to paraphrase Jichard's quote, ...determinism does not render our beliefs, desires, deliberations, or decisions causally impotent. Quite the contrary. So long as our mental states are part of the deterministic sequence of events, they play a crucial role in determining what will happen.

                              In short, our choices and decisions are an integral part of the causal stream that is ‘determinism’.

                              Originally posted by Jichard View Post
                              He's misrepresenting what the paper says, even though it's painfully clear that he hasn't actually read the paper nor understood it.
                              Regrettably this is fairly standard procedure for seer. Facts mean little to him; he’s only interesting in supporting his religious agenda by whatever it takes.
                              Last edited by Tassman; 10-06-2015, 05:31 AM.
                              “He felt that his whole life was a kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.” - Douglas Adams.

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