Secular Morality?

[JonathanL]

What you mean is how a scientist arrives at the conclusion that free will is an illusion. Science arrives at this conclusion because, as Hawking (along with most scientists) argues: “Given the state of the universe at one time, a complete set of laws fully determines both the future and the past". AND: “since people live in the universe and interact with other objects in it, scientific determinism must hold for people as well”…”If we have free will” Hawking rhetorically asks: “where in the evolutionary tree did it develop? Do blue-green algae or bacteria have free will, or is their behaviour automatic and within the realm of scientific law?”

As I said, the denial of free will presupposes a belief in materialism.

There’s no substantive evidence of anything other than the material universe, so it’s a reasonable assumption that the material is all there is.

Free will is substantive evidence of something other than the material universe.

Of course, given that this is the only credible “perspective” there is. “Recent experiments in neuroscience support the view that it is our physical brain, following the known laws of science that determines our actions and not some agency that exists outside those laws" "…It is hard to imagine how free will can operate if our behaviour is determined by physical law, so it seems that we are no more than biological machines and that free will is just an illusion”. – Hawking.

I don't consider Hawking to be an authority on the subject of the mind. If you want to argue that neuroscience discredits the notion of free will then refer to some specific experiment and explain why you think it discredits free will.

Well yes, because genuine free will doesn't exist, it’s merely an illusion; that’s what this is all about in case you hadn't noticed.

…as opposed to the absurd claim that because the illusion of freewill seems real therefore it must be real; this is surely the very definition of what “illusion” means. As molecular biologist Anthony Cashmore says: “Free will is defined as a belief that there is a component to biological behaviour that is something more than the unavoidable consequences of the genetic and environmental history of the individual and the possible stochastic laws of nature”. But there’s no good reason to believe this.

Freewill not only seems real. The reality of free will is on the same level as the fact that we perceive things. Someone could argue that the monitor I'm sitting in front of is just an illusion, and he wouldn't necessarily be unreasonable. But if he insisted that I'm not actually perceiving anything at all, reality or illusion, I would laugh my head off, and rightly so. In the same way, if someone tries to argue that I don't have free will I have all the right in the world to shake my head at this ridiculous notion.

[JimL]

That is the point Jim, there is no "backwards," morally, with evolution. There is only what works. And if violence and dominance works then that is what is good.

And quite possibly we will come to realize that, other than in the short term, violence and domination, such as was used by the Israelites in their zeal for riches and land on the supposed command of their God is not good, and does not work to create a more peaceful earth, and possibly we will never learn and in our selfishness destroy ourselves. But we can either learn from the past and go forwards morally, so to speak, and create a better world or we can remain the uncaring, unempathetic, selfish beings, that in general we are, and destroy eachother.

[seer]

And quite possibly we will come to realize that, other than in the short term, violence and domination, such as was used by the Israelites in their zeal for riches and land on the supposed command of their God is not good, and does not work to create a more peaceful earth, and possibly we will never learn and in our selfishness destroy ourselves. But we can either learn from the past and go forwards morally, so to speak, and create a better world or we can remain the uncaring, unempathetic, selfish beings, that in general we are, and destroy eachother.

Jim this is all very nice, but our discussion was a spin off of my discussion with Norm, who, like Tass, does not believe in freedom of the will. And if that is the case we are, in the end, slaves to our biology. And we do not, and can not, know where that biology will lead us.

[Carrikature]

Right, I misunderstood, but it seems to me that the studies of aphasia and other behavioral changes due to brain damage do not support the notion that the material is all that exists when it comes to the mind. Being that we in principle do not even have access to a first-person perspective of the mind which is affected by the brain damage (even if we take that mind to be purely material) it follows that any assertion that goes beyond what we can observe externally (for example, that a certain kind of brain damage leads to problems with language) is going to be unwarranted, and far more than what the evidence itself permits us to say. And this is why a materialistic viewpoint (or methodological naturalism) is misguided when it comes to the study of the mind, because it necessarily leads to the kinds of interpretations you give above. Methodological naturalism might be the proper way to conduct a study of the external world, but you're going to be poorly equipped if you use it to interpret the findings of psychology and neurology.

We're getting closer perhaps, but this isn't still entirely accurate. It isn't the case that our methodology renders us completely unable to find even a hint of non-material aspects of existence. Quite the contrary. It's a matter of figuring out what pieces are necessary and what they might be. This is what we're doing. If we look at any effect as having some set of causes, we can identify what those causes are. Continued study helps refine those causes we can understand, but it also helps us identify what is still missing. A perfect example of this is subatomic particles. We can tell by observed behaviors that something unknown must be playing a role in what we observe. With further study, we narrow down the traits that unknown something must possess. Eventually, perhaps with a little luck, we identify what that unknown is. Similarly, we can tell by observed behaviors if there's not something unknown. This is what we see from our progress in neuroscience, et.al. It's not that methodological naturalism necessarily leads to a material-only brain/mind, it's that our continued understanding of the mechanisms involved is reducing the amount of unknowns to the point that there's no longer room for a non-material component. That we lack a first-person perspective of the mind (if we truly do) is not the game breaker you make it out to be. It's a non-factor.

My assertion is not that the existence of free will is as obvious as, for example, that I'm sitting in front of a computer writing a reply to your post right now, rather my assertion is even stronger than that. I'm saying that it is just as warranted for me to believe in the existence of free will as it is for me to believe that I perceive things and on precisely the same grounds. If someone tells me that the fact that I perceive is not true I have all the justification in the world to dismiss their claims out of hand, and the same applies if anyone wants to claim that me having free will is also not true. Free will is not something that you need to support with philosophy and science, rather it is something that any worldview should be able to incorporate in order to be taken seriously.

Nonetheless, the only thing you have to present is that your assertion is patently obvious. I'm not sure how you could get any more dead in the water than that except, perhaps, to beg the question of free will before a discussion even gets started (which is what you're doing). It might be considered acceptable to take the existence of free will as axiomatic, but doing so precludes any meaningful discussion when that axiom is the very thing in question. You literally have nothing else to do from that point except that insist it should be an axiom. Why should I, or anyone, take that seriously? I could be grossly mistaken in my understanding of the world, but I've at least presented a framework within which it can be investigated. That's more than you can say, by a large margin.

[JimL]

Jim this is all very nice, but our discussion was a spin off of my discussion with Norm, who, like Tass, does not believe in freedom of the will. And if that is the case we are, in the end, slaves to our biology. And we do not, and can not, know where that biology will lead us.

That may be true, so far, other than our experience of it, which may be an illusion, there is no evidence of free will. Personally I haven't come to a conclusion on that. But if physics is the determining factor, it is probably leading us in the right direction. Whether it is leading us or not, doesn't mean that we don't learn and improve through that process. We'd be part of the process afterall.

[Tassman]

Um, so Hawking's a combination of misleading/wrong here.

If you check out the various interpretations of quantum mechanics you'll see that only about half of them are deterministic. The Copenhagen Interpretation is generally the most popular among scientists today, and it's non-deterministic.

From googling some of what Hawking has written on the subject, he seems to get a bit overly loose with his terminology. In this discussion he admits that the randomness in the wavefunction at a quantum level "would seem to make complete determinism impossible" and accepts that because of this that in the sense that determinism still exists "it is determinism on a reduced level" because of the non-deterministic elements inherent in the system. Yet having admitted to non-deterministic elements existing he still calls it determinism, which is just misleading/wrong. And then he says "Some people have tried to connect the unpredictability... with consciousness, or the intervention of supernatural beings. But it is difficult to make either case for something that is completely random." And okay, while I agree that it is potentially hard to see how randomness/non-determinism necessarily makes free-will any freer, it certainly makes the system not deterministic!

According to Hawking and Mlodinow : "Quantum physics might seem to undermine the idea that nature is governed by laws, but that is not the case. Instead it leads us to accept a new form of determinism

I've always thought this type of argument sounds similar to a primitive island-dweller looking out at the horizon and seeing only ocean and saying "I can't see any evidence for any other land existing, therefore this land I'm on is probably all there is."

Not a good analogy, I think. An islander would be foolish to think that no other similar island could exist elsewhere. Islands are natural entities after all and his own island is proof that such things can exist.

Scientists routinely hypothesize the existence of things beyond what we can immediately observe. eg. the 'observable universe' that astronomers can see is presumed to be only a small fraction of the total universe; the many-worlds model of quantum mechanics (Hawking's own view) hypothesizes that a number of (or infinite) alternative universes also exist, etc. There's nothing inherently unskeptical or unscientific about the idea that something beyond our physical universe might exist. Of course, making and believing arbitrary and detailed claims about that unevidenced thing - eg that there is a certain being of type X who has characteristics Y who deserves to be labelled 'God', is totally unjustified.

[Tassman]

Again Tass, this is nonsensical. What do you mean by colossal strides? From what to what? You act like there is some objective way for man to be, some goal. Some moral high ground to which we are moving. But that does not exist in a godless universe. There is only survival - we do not "descend" into violence or ascend to peacefulness. We just act out our biology.

So goes your perpetual mantra but it's demonstrably wrong. There is no good reason the think we don't live in a godless universe and it's very obvious that we do have values. Does a mother need to commanded by a deity to love her child? Or a father to defend his family and the community in which he lives. Of course not, it's instinctive behaviour as evolved via Natural Selection, just as our evolved instincts for community living and cooperation have enabled us as a species to develop ever more complex societies with growing notions of Human Rights. Adding a deity into the mix adds nothing to the equation, quite the reverse. It provides grounds for inter-tribal conflicts as rival religions compete for supremacy - as we've seen throughout history right up to today.

And I'm still awaiting your explanation of when we acquired this alleged free-will of yours. If you believe that we have genuine freewill, as opposed to the illusion of freewill, you need to show at what point in the evolutionary process it was inserted. If you can't do that - apart from unsupported faith statements about God giving it to Adam and Eve - then the universe we living is determined. If you disagree then explain without invoking mythological notions how it is not.

[seer]

So goes your perpetual mantra but it's demonstrably wrong. There is no good reason the think we don't live in a godless universe and it's very obvious that we do have values. Does a mother need to commanded by a deity to love her child? Or a father to defend his family and the community in which he lives. Of course not, it's instinctive behaviour as evolved via Natural Selection, just as our evolved instincts for community living and cooperation have enabled us as a species to develop ever more complex societies with growing notions of Human Rights. Adding a deity into the mix adds nothing to the equation, quite the reverse. It provides grounds for inter-tribal conflicts as rival religions compete for supremacy - as we've seen throughout history right up to today.

And it is just as instinctive to kill our fellow man and take his goods. And if ISIS for instance wins, takes territory, wealth and prospers, then that is a good thing. Natural selection at its best.

And I'm still awaiting your explanation of when we acquired this alleged free-will of yours. If you believe that we have genuine freewill, as opposed to the illusion of freewill, you need to show at what point in the evolutionary process it was inserted. If you can't do that - apart from unsupported faith statements about God giving it to Adam and Eve - then the universe we living is determined. If you disagree then explain without invoking mythological notions how it is not.

No Tass, since I know by experience that I do have freedom, and that freedom is as real as any other aspect of reality, your protests are completely moot. And if you don't have freedom of the will Tass, then you don't have freedom of thought - you are biologically programmed to think and act like you do. Programmed by the non-rational forces of nature. No a very secure foundation for human knowledge.

[seer]

But if physics is the determining factor, it is probably leading us in the right direction. Whether it is leading us or not, doesn't mean that we don't learn and improve through that process. We'd be part of the process afterall.

Why would physics be leading us in the right direction? Physics doesn't care or lead. And remember the process has already cause 99% of all species that have ever lived to go extinct.

[Starlight]

Given the state of a system at some time, the laws of nature determine the probabilities of various futures and pasts rather than determining the future and past with certainty.

I agree with that summary.

Historically in the philosophical debates about free-will, the term 'determinism' has meant complete determinism and was contrasted to its opposite 'indeterminism' in which not everything was fully determined. So the correct word to describe the fact that in quantum physics the future is not determined with certainty is 'indeterminism'.

Nor does quantum theory affect the determined nature of so-called free-will.

You'll have to unpack this for me.

[JonathanL]

We're getting closer perhaps, but this isn't still entirely accurate. It isn't the case that our methodology renders us completely unable to find even a hint of non-material aspects of existence. Quite the contrary. It's a matter of figuring out what pieces are necessary and what they might be. This is what we're doing. If we look at any effect as having some set of causes, we can identify what those causes are. Continued study helps refine those causes we can understand, but it also helps us identify what is still missing. A perfect example of this is subatomic particles. We can tell by observed behaviors that something unknown must be playing a role in what we observe. With further study, we narrow down the traits that unknown something must possess. Eventually, perhaps with a little luck, we identify what that unknown is.

And this is all legitimate, when it comes to studying the material/physical world, it's matter and "laws" that govern the behaviour of this matter.

Similarly, we can tell by observed behaviors if there's not something unknown. This is what we see from our progress in neuroscience, et.al. It's not that methodological naturalism necessarily leads to a material-only brain/mind, it's that our continued understanding of the mechanisms involved is reducing the amount of unknowns to the point that there's no longer room for a non-material component. That we lack a first-person perspective of the mind (if we truly do) is not the game breaker you make it out to be. It's a non-factor.

And here is where you demonstrate why the assumptions of methodological naturalism is inadequate when it comes to study of the mind.

Let's assume for a moment that the mind really exists as a separate entity apart from the brain (but not necessarily independent of it). Given that we lack a first-person perspective of other peoples minds (which is just another way of saying that we do not have direct access to someone else's experiences) it follows that we cannot know the contents of another persons minds without them communicating this knowledge to us in some way. For example, the only way we know that someone hears a sound is if he, for example, acknowledges it verbally, or reacts to it in someway. The same way goes for other sensory experiences, like touch, smell, hearing, pain, pleasure and so on. Based on this we would be justified to conclude for example, that when someone flinches right after a loud explosion it is probably because they heard the sound of the explosion, and became startled. What we are not justified in concluding however, is that if the same person did not react in anyway to the explosion, it meant that he did not hear it. The explanation could just as well be that he's become so accustomed to the sound of explosions that he does not react to them anymore, while still being perfectly aware of them.

And now to why I think your account of what neuroscience is able to tell us of the mind is simply wrong. Given the fact (and it is a fact) that we do not have direct access to what someone else is experiencing except through communication (which I'm using here in a broader sense than intentional/deliberate communication, someone reacting to something and us experiencing that reaction would be considered communication) it follows that your assertion that "we can tell by observed behaviors if there's not something unknown" is manifestly false. It just isn't true, and is nothing more than an unjustified assumption of methodological naturalism. To make the jump from observed behaviour to discounting a (hypothetical) facet of the mind is simply not warranted.

For example, let's posit that there exists a man who has been involved in a car accident and his brain has been damaged to the point where he is no longer able to communicate, feed, clothe or clean himself. He has basically reverted to a state of infancy. What a neuroscientist would be warranted in concluding here is that brain damage can lead to behavioural changes or disabilities. What he is not warranted in concluding however, is that the man's mind has reverted to the state of an infant. It could be that this is the case, but it could just as well be the case that the man is perfectly aware of everything that's going on around him and that if he had the ability he would very much prefer to take care of himself instead of letting a nurse do it for him. The neuroscientist however, who holds to methodological naturalism must operate as if behaviour tells us everything we need to know about the relationship between the mind and the brain , cannot take into account possibilities that behavioural changes does not necessarily reflect changes in the conscious mind , and is therefore inclined to interpret the changes in the man's behaviour to mean that the man has reverted to a state of infancy, even though that interpretation is no more likely than the latter explanation that he has simply lost the ability to clearly communicate what he really is experiencing/is aware of.

Nonetheless, the only thing you have to present is that your assertion is patently obvious. I'm not sure how you could get any more dead in the water than that except, perhaps, to beg the question of free will before a discussion even gets started (which is what you're doing). It might be considered acceptable to take the existence of free will as axiomatic, but doing so precludes any meaningful discussion when that axiom is the very thing in question. You literally have nothing else to do from that point except that insist it should be an axiom. Why should I, or anyone, take that seriously? I could be grossly mistaken in my understanding of the world, but I've at least presented a framework within which it can be investigated. That's more than you can say, by a large margin.

No, you really haven't. It seems to me that what you've done is present a framework that cannot even in principle answer the question if free will exists or not.

But let me ask you a question. What sort of justification can you give for the fact that you are experiencing/perceiving right now, that does not simply refer back to the fact that you really are perceiving something? I.e I'm asking you to justify your belief that you have perceptions, not whether or not those perceptions are true, or if they accurately portray the external world. Or if you want to take the extreme skeptic position and argue that the self is an illusion, how would you justify the position that there exists experiences/perceptions? And I want you to do this without referring back to these experiences themselves. I.e no circular reasoning allowed.

[Tassman]

And it is just as instinctive to kill our fellow man and take his goods.

Such antisocial behaviour is not our dominant instinct. This is demonstrated by the existence of highly structured, ordered societies throughout human history. If the primary instincts were to kill and steal there would be anarchy, not the complex, socially cohesive civilizations we have developed over millennia.

And if ISIS for instance wins, takes territory, wealth and prospers, then that is a good thing.

Natural selection at its best.

No Tass, since I know by experience that I do have freedom, and that freedom is as real as any other aspect of reality, your protests are completely moot.

And if you don't have freedom of the will Tass, then you don't have freedom of thought - you are biologically programmed to think and act like you do. Programmed by the non-rational forces of nature. Not a very secure foundation for human knowledge.

[seer]

The point is Tass that it is all quite natural and what ISIS is doing is good for their survival, and in the end that is all that matters.



OK, so Natural Selection was not a major part in creating the ISIS fighters to do what they do?




OK,

1. We don't have free will

2. We have no choice in what we believe to be true or false.

3. The non-rational forces of nature (that care nothing for truth) programmed us.

4. Therefore we believe mostly true things.

Do you see how irrational this position is Tass? It doesn't follow.

Unless you can say at what point at what in the evolutionary process free-will was instilled then there no good reason to think that your perceived free-will is any more actual than that of your fellow apes. Or are you arguing that the other primates have free-will too?

Sure, I will tell you when you tell me when consciousness was instilled. And I'm glad you brought up Harris - who says there there is no evolutionary reason for consciousness and that we have no idea why or how it came about.

[JonathanL]

What you “experience” as free-will is an illusion, i.e. the misinterpreted perceptions of sensory experience.

No, just no. The experience of free will is categorically different from sensory experience. You might use the information you get from sensory experience to make freely willed decisions, but the sense of free will that humans have is itself not a sensory experience. The human will, whether free or determined, is something different from sensory experiences.

[Doug Shaver]

And it is just as instinctive to kill our fellow man and take his goods.

OK, so we don't need a devil to tempt us to do bad things any more than we need a god to tell us to do good things.

And if ISIS for instance wins, takes territory, wealth and prospers, then that is a good thing. Natural selection at its best.

So far as I've noticed, nobody here has suggested that whatever is natural is necessarily good. What we're arguing is that we don't need any supernatural explanations for anything we do.