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Have Materialists Lost Their Minds?

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In answer to the question, I suggest that they have. Materialist philosophy inevitably leads to transparent absurdities and self-contradiction, whether moral relativism (a truth claim about morality that no truth claims about morality are valid), or that random errors can produce sophisticated information-processing technology (for which there is no evidence and much disconfirming evidence).

The no-free-will thing is yet further evidence of the lobotomizing influence of materialist philosophy. Just the other day I was in the supermarket, and decided to treat myself to some ice cream. I like the Haagen-Dazs coffee and dark chocolate varieties. I thought to myself, “Self, which flavor would you like to purchase?” I chose the dark chocolate.

A thoroughgoing materialist would argue that my choice was no choice at all, that my decision was determined by my brain chemistry and other such transparent idiocy.

I make free-will decisions all day long every day, just as everyone reading this post does.

The denial of this obvious fact, along with other absurdities and self-contradictions as mentioned above, leads me to conclude that materialists have indeed lost their minds.

Comments
C: ALU's in processors, strictly, are not ADDING, they are simply gating current flows and producing voltage levels. It is the intelligently imposed hardware organisation and software design that cause the unconscious physical processes -- properly spatially and sequentially arranged -- to yield a useful result per relevant algorithms. It is therefore WE who add, using properly organised hardware and software tools. Do you remember when the first pentiums came out and had problems with floating point processing? The computers did not know, we did. Similarly, there are as of last I checked, some subtle problems with Excel spreadsheets on certain statistically relevant calculations, so that there is a niche for specialised spreadsheets that make those calcs correctly -- check out Gnumeric. GIGO, in short, i.e. the computer is not going to correct itself, unless we program that in too; if the hardware or software are not quite right, it will happily and quite blindly produce exactly the patterns of voltages and currents we tell it to, not those we desire it to; even, if the results are quite misleading. Null is quite right. And, that is one reason we should never trust a simulation to be an accurate representation of reality, beyond where we calibrated and validated it. Sims are NOT experiments. KFkairosfocus
January 5, 2012
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Really? You think computers can't add numbers? Wow.champignon
January 5, 2012
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If you can see why she is wrong, and why the computer is actually doing arithmetic, then you’re on your way to understanding how it’s possible for a deterministic, purely physical brain to evaluate evidence and make decisions. Computers don't 'do arithmetic' anymore than abacuses do. If I see red at a stop light, the light doesn't know that red means stop.nullasalus
January 5, 2012
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JDH
When people are allowed to write coherent arguments about abstract possibilities and hypotheticals which really don’t exist,the idea of believing that all of these surmises and if-then’s and therefore’s are determined by the initial position, velocities, spin, charge and charm of finite set of elementary particles is completely ridiculous.
I don’t understand this argument.  I think it is something like: “The number of things a person can do is infinite but a brain has only a finite number of states.  Therefore, something in addition to the brain must determine all things someone can do.” Consider a simple device that displays a digit from 0-9 every second. The choice of digit is based on random number generator (you can make a quantum random generator if you are concerned about pseudorandom numbers).  Such a machine can produce as many different outcomes as you wish given enough time.  Yet, if you implement it in hardware it has only one state. Have I misunderstood the argument? markf
January 5, 2012
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tjguy, Maybe an analogy will help. Imagine that you see a friend laboriously adding up a big column of numbers using pencil and paper. You ask her why she doesn't just use a computer, and she replies that it's because computers can't do arithmetic. Puzzled, you ask her what she means. "Well, a computer is deterministic. It does exactly what the program tells it to, no more and no less. The computer itself has no control over its actions. The "additions" it performs are merely causal chains of physical events, and the results are determined. It's not really doing arithmetic." If you can see why she is wrong, and why the computer is actually doing arithmetic, then you're on your way to understanding how it's possible for a deterministic, purely physical brain to evaluate evidence and make decisions.champignon
January 5, 2012
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"It appears from your comment that you think it is impossible for a deterministic physical system to evaluate evidence and make decisions. Correct?" Yes, I think so, because if it everything is determined, it is not a decision at all. Even your "evaluations" are simply the output of your brain which you have no control over. You only do what has been determined. Although I'm a bit new to this compatibilist/incompatibilist stuff. It seems though that you feel it is possible to make real evaluations and meaningful even if we have no free will. Can you explain a bit further please? Thanks.tjguy
January 4, 2012
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tjguy, First of all, I actually believe we have free will (of a qualified compatibilist sort). It appears from your comment that you think it is impossible for a deterministic physical system to evaluate evidence and make decisions. Correct? If so, why?champignon
January 4, 2012
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That you’re having the feeling is self-evident; that the feeling is true is not self-evident. Likewise, feeling that you have free will does not guarantee that you actually have free will. Only if having free-will is not self-evident, and that's what's under discussion. I remember one dopey philosopher claiming that introspection showed him that all that needs to be explained about the mind are functions. A good reply was, maybe that's true for that philosopher's mind - it's apparently not the case for much anyone else's. Like I said, I'm not necessarily endorsing the claim. That doesn't mean I think much traction can be had against it. Back to the solipsist - if someone tells me I have no conscious experience, and I say I do, and they say 'prove it', that's their problem. My inability or unwillingness to give them a demonstration or argument to their satisfaction won't mean much to me. Or to anyone else in the same position.nullasalus
January 4, 2012
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a truth claim about morality that no truth claims about morality are valid
Moral relativism is not the claim that no truth claims about morality are valid. It is the claim that moral truth claims are relative. These are quite different. For one "relative" does not equate to "invalid". But also it is the difference between a statement within morality and a statement about morality. I would have thought that a distinguished software expert like you would have been well aware of the difference between a statement in a language and meta-statement about a language. I hope you are not losing your mind.markf
January 4, 2012
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If free will doesn't exist, tear down the prisons and let darwin's 'survival of the fittest' rule the land.Blue_Savannah
January 4, 2012
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To say that it requires “many free will choices” is to assume the existence of free will. In other words, you’re assuming your conclusion.
No, to see the string of corresponding events which must occur in order to construct a reasonable argument demonstrates that the choices must be free. It is not because I assume them to be free, it is that the logical placement of them all in time one after another in correct order, requires the action of an intelligent agent. The idea that all of the consecutive steps necessary to construct the argument were somehow dependent on the initial conditions of each molecule is absurd. There just is not the amount of information content available there. When people are allowed to write coherent arguments about abstract possibilities and hypotheticals which really don't exist,the idea of believing that all of these surmises and if-then's and therefore's are determined by the initial position, velocities, spin, charge and charm of finite set of elementary particles is completely ridiculous.JDH
January 4, 2012
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Champignon Everything depends upon the definition you give it. I am just not interested in a definition of free will which is compatible with materialism. The reason I am not is because such position really does not exist. Any materialist universe implies "no free will" unless you tweak the meaning of materialism to include something that is not included in materialism. Why don't all of you "no free will" people really admit that the thing you are afraid of is the fact that there is a God. You keep coming up with more and more nonsensical arguments which only make sense to people who deny His existence. There is abundant evidence for free will. There is NO GOOD evidence against it. The problem is that admission of free will will invariably lead to the conclusion of ID which leads to God. The only way to maintain the "no God" position is to stick with materialism. God has said he will judge you for this. So as stated in a different thread - the definition I like for free will removes it from person hood. An entity which has free will is an entity which is able to effect the physical world by taking an action which is neither random nor dictated by the current initial conditions. I do actions like this every day. It is not because I "feel" that they are not random and are not dictated by the initial conditions. It is because the probability of any one of my actions like typing all the letters in this response, is not something which can be dictated by the physical state of my brain. It can only be something which is undertaken by making many intelligent choices which are all dependent upon each other. To believe in "not free will" is to believe in the absurd.JDH
January 4, 2012
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I agree Neil, that you cannot prove it in the sense that you want to do. And, in light of that, it makes most sense to assume it since we all have that experience and feel like we have free will. This world would not make sense if we did not have free will. Even your view that free will can't be proven is simply the result of the chemical reactions in your brain - if we have no free will. So, in reality, if we can make no truly "free" decisions, then we cannot trust the accuracy of anything we believe because we only arrived at that conclusion because of the chemical reactions in our brains. But, obviously, you do not believe this, because you are arguing as if your thoughts and deductions have meaning and are accurate. That would be a "no-no" in a world with no free will. My thoughts, whether right or wrong, accurate or inaccurate in an ultimate sense, would have a much value as your thoughts, because both of them are simply the result of the chemical reactions in our brain. No one is willing to agree to that. This world would be even more chaotic than it is if we really believed this. This may not be scientific proof that Gil is right, but it comes awful close to philosophical proof. Science is not the only begetter of truth in this world. In fact, it isn't always even a begetter of truth. It is wrong many times too, especially when it comes to trying to figure out the past. Personal bias, wrong interpretation, lack of information, etc can often lead to wrong conclusions. Besides, if there is no free will, science is worthless. It is all conditioned by our brains.tjguy
January 4, 2012
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Champ, Why are you a Darwinist? Is it because you have evaluated the evidence and decided that the evidence best supports Darwinism? OR is it because you have no choice in the matter? Since you have no free will, your brain has led you to that conclusion and there is nothing you can do about it?tjguy
January 4, 2012
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Feeling that you're looking at a computer screen does not guarantee that you're actually looking at a computer screen, as you stated earlier:
Now, someone can argue, ‘it’s not a computer screen it’s something else’ – but the experience at the time is what it is, period.
That you're having the feeling is self-evident; that the feeling is true is not self-evident. Likewise, feeling that you have free will does not guarantee that you actually have free will. Having free will means more than "feeling like you have free will."champignon
January 4, 2012
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Gil, I don't think anyone denies that it feels like we have free will. That's hardly what the age old controversy has been about. Also, I'm pretty sure it's a pretty small minority of materialists that don't believe in free will. (Actually, now that I think about it, almost everyone that I've seen that's denied the existence of free will have been theists.)goodusername
January 4, 2012
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To create a situation where a hypothesis is chosen, an experiment is set up, a significant number of tests are run, and a suitable conclusion is drawn from those results requires many more free will choices than making a wrong evaluation of the results.
To say that it requires "many free will choices" is to assume the existence of free will. In other words, you're assuming your conclusion.champignon
January 4, 2012
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JDH, You and Gil both seem to believe that the denial of free will is inherently a materialist position. It's not. You can be a dualist and deny free will, or you can be a materialist and affirm it.champignon
January 4, 2012
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But he’s not merely claiming that his will feels free. He claims that it is free, and that “any rational person” can see this. Those claims require justification. Well, it's not a 'feels' but an 'is' as near as I can tell. It's taken as self-evident - data, not theory. And the self-evident doesn't require justification beyond itself. I'm having the experience of looking at a computer monitor - let someone tell me I have to justify that and I'll probably take them as seriously as Gil's taking free will deniers. If someone tells me that according to science I cannot possibly be having the experience of looking at a computer monitor, I'll tell him off besides.nullasalus
January 4, 2012
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I have to whole-heartedly agree with Gil on this one and it frustrates me to no end. There is indeed "fallibility to intuition" but just because something may be flawed in general does not mean it is flawed in a specific decision. If I am going to disbelieve my intuition, I need a good reason to distrust it. Here is the problem. 1. The conclusion "No free will" is not obvious. Indeed every intuition is that we do have free will. Many, many people confirm this. 2. OK. So you can do an experiment to try and prove the position of "no free will". Here is an even bigger problem. To set up such an experiment. To create a situation where a hypothesis is chosen, an experiment is set up, a significant number of tests are run, and a suitable conclusion is drawn from those results requires many more free will choices than making a wrong evaluation of the results. In other words - suppose Dr. Iam Materialist - designs an experiment, does the experiment, writes the paper, and submits it for peer review - with some supposed evidence that free will is only an illusion. Given all of the free choices he had to make in order to accomplish said task it is many, many, times more probable that his conclusions are erroneous - and that his logic is riddled with confirmation bias - than that he has shown at all that "no free will" is the most probable conclusion. Again in other words - "no free will' is not the conclusion that we would naturally conclude - and any experiment designed to convince us of "no free will" ends up only providing net evidence for free will. The only people who believe "no free will" believe it because it does not comport with a faith choice they have made. But I guess there is no end to how strongly people will choose deception over the obvious.JDH
January 4, 2012
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Neil, Did you have any free will concerning the decision to post your comment? Of course you did!GilDodgen
January 4, 2012
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I have the experience of looking at a computer screen right now. There’s no “fallibility of intuition” here – I have that experience. Now, someone can argue, ‘it’s not a computer screen it’s something else’ – but the experience at the time is what it is, period.
Sure, and if Gil had said "My will feels free to me" I'd see no reason to ask for corroboration. But he's not merely claiming that his will feels free. He claims that it is free, and that "any rational person" can see this. Those claims require justification.
I’m not saying I endorse Gil’s approach here, if I even have it right. But hey, I’m trying to aid communication.
Yes, and I appreciate that. I wish Gil would do the same.champignon
January 4, 2012
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With the kind of world that we live in, it ought to be apparent that you can neither prove nor disprove free will. Jerry Coyne's mistake was to think that free will can be (or has been) disproved. Gil Dodgen's mistake is to believe that he can prove free will.Neil Rickert
January 4, 2012
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Dear Champignon, Champignon is French for mushroom. Have you been imbibing in the magic psilocybin mushroom?GilDodgen
January 4, 2012
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Care to tell us why “any rational person” can see that you “exercise free will every minute and every hour of the day”? Given the fallibility of intuition, your certainty seems unwarranted. I suppose Gil may say that there's data, and there's theory. I have the experience of looking at a computer screen right now. There's no "fallibility of intuition" here - I have that experience. Now, someone can argue, 'it's not a computer screen it's something else' - but the experience at the time is what it is, period. I can't speak for Gil, of course. But that seems to be where he's coming from: you're asking for an argument, a theory, a test to show he's right. He's claiming that an argument, a theory, and a test is not necessary. It's akin to Gil arguing with a wannabe solipsist. The solipsist can explain away or doubt whatever argument or theory or test is presented to him against his view. So do you argue with the solipsist? Or do you shrug your shoulders, call BS where you see it, and move on? I'm not saying I endorse Gil's approach here, if I even have it right. But hey, I'm trying to aid communication. (Of course, that's assuming that reason, not blind mechanical forces, can affect someone's views. If they can't, oh well, stopped clocks can be right twice a day. Maybe we'll get lucky.)nullasalus
January 4, 2012
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Gil, I'll pose the same question here that I posed to you in another thread. You wrote:
This entire no-free-will thing is simply stupid. I exercise free will every minute and every hour of every day, and any rational person can recognize this. The denial of free will is utter sophistry.
I replied:
Care to tell us why “any rational person” can see that you “exercise free will every minute and every hour of the day”? Given the fallibility of intuition, your certainty seems unwarranted.
champignon
January 4, 2012
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