Where Do Moral Questions Stop?

[The Thinker]

Thinker - how far back have I asked this same question? I believe and have stated that my choices are made by rational conscious deliberations (for the most part). Do I know how that all works, no, but if that is not the case then what are we left with? Chemicals that prefer the color red today or the color green tomorrow? Really Thinker? How is that coherent?

The "for the most part" is your fundamental flaw in this area of your thinking. If we assume your view for the same of argument then how do you address the following? If some of our decisions are not made by rational conscious deliberation, then what causes those decisions? How do the atoms in your brain "know" to pull your hand back when you touch something hot? How do the atoms in your brain make a random decision that is not rationally or consciously deliberated? You have to explain this, because on your view, you'd face the same exact problem that you think my view has. How is that coherent at all?

But it wasn't a delusion, and was witnessed by a passerby. So your unbelief does not change fact.

Sorry buddy, but you have not established a "fact". If your claim is a fact, then I have to grant many alien abduction claims and many claims of other religions that contradict yours. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

What do you mean by all? All phenomenon have natural explanation?

Everything that is explained is natural. There are no supernatural explanations to anything that meet the same criterion we use for natural explanations.

[The Thinker]

Yes, I have owned dogs all my life, they are smart, monkeys are smart. How do they reason, if they reason? I have no idea, I can't get into their head. And instinct may be more complicated than we know. I really only know how I reason.

You don't know how you reason in terms of all the functionality and causes behind it. Using subjective experience to base your views on is exactly what made people think the earth was flat or that the earth was the center of the solar system. It is simply not good enough to ground scientific claims.

If dogs and monkeys and other animals are smart, then your claim that their thoughts are based on instinct is false. So your problem is still there. Even if we consider instinct, on your view since animals do not rationally deliberate, then how would their atoms choose one thing or the other? Another problem you face is how rational conscious deliberating can take place at all without a physical cause, especially given your own belief that the brain causes the mind. You also need to explain what causes the rational deliberations if they have no physical cause. And worst of all, on the libertarian view, you have to make a coherent account for how thoughts can be rational since you already know that you cannot have a thought, about a thought, before you have the thought. Every thought in your consciousness arises with no ability for you to have any control over it.

[Tassman]

That is not what I asked Thinker, make a coherent argument for why my brain chemicals chose the red shirt over the other options? Do chemicals prefer the color red? Did they make a totally arbitrary choice? What?

There are any number of possible reasons why your subconscious self chose a red shirt, e.g. good associations with the colour red, it suits your complexion or it was the cleanest one in the wardrobe etc. Who knows what subconscious components were in play, but you cannot argue that your decision was purely a LFW decision...other factors of which you were unaware also informed your "choice" of shirt.

[Tassman]

Tass, there is no reason why I shouldn't offer an opinion. And I never dishonestly misappropriated him, in the very quotes I used he made it clear that he believed there probably was a natural explanation.

That of course doesn't mean there is, or that there ever will be. It may be something beyond the reach of science.

Nope, not what I said at all. But he did say what he said. Consciousness is a mystery with no good scientific explanation - of course atheists like you and Harris do have faith that it will someday be resolved.

every single phenomenon of seeming "supernatural" mysteriousness

[Tassman]

Tass I have no idea how a monkey thinks, what actually goes through his mind, if his thought patterns offer him various choices. Or if his conscious deliberations are anything like mine - mine include complex language, the use of logical rules, the ability to factor in possible consequences, does his?

[Jichard]

I quoted Dan Dennett recently, he certainly does not believe that LFW is incoherent.

http://www.theologyweb.com/campus/sh...l=1#post260426

And I dealt with your misrepresentation on that thread:

Except you claimed to like Dan Dennett, and he makes a good case for LFW. And he does this by denying that everything is deterministic.

Pure, unrepentant misrepresentation. Daniel Dennett does not make a good case for libertarian free will. In fact, Dennett rejects there being libertarian free will. He rejects the idea that quantum indeterminacy is required for free will and he rejects the idea that quantum indeterminacy can be harnessed in some way that yields free will. He makes this painfully clear in his book Freedom Evolves, especially in its critique of the work of Robert Kane.

I mean, he literally writes things like:

Libertarians have long insisted that the compatibilist sorts of free will I am describing and defending are not the real thing at all, and not even an acceptable substitute for the real thing [...] According to us compatibilists, libertarians seem to think that you can have free will only if you can engage in what we might call moral levitation. Wouldn't it be wonderful to be able to levitate - and then to dash off in any direction with the merest flick of a whim? I'd love to be able to do that, but I can't. It's impossible. (Freedom Evolves, page 101).

[...]

An examination of the best positive case for libertarianism shows that it cannot find a defensible location for indeterminism within the decision-making processes of a responsible agent. Since it cannot motivate its defining requirement, we can leave indeterminism behind and consider more realisitic requirements for freedom, and how they could have evolved (Freedom Evolves, 136-137)."

So, once again, seer willfully misrepresents sources. Typical.

[Jichard]

And David Chalmers states:

Your usual quote-mining of Chalmers. This has been dealt with to death:

Not a lie at all. For example, as I noted, you previously quote-mined David Chalmers, even though Chalmers is a naturalist who offers an account of how consciousness would arise from non-conscious parts. Chalmers account involves the use of psychophysical laws linking phenomenal properties to various materialist properties such as functional properties. He combines that with a double-aspect view of information. Of course, you leave Chalmers's account out in your dishonest quote-mines of Chalmers, so you can pretend that no such account exists. You instead just go to quote-mining him and Harris, so that you can pretend no such account has been given.

[Jichard]

Jichard, I'm requesting that you stay out of any thread that I start. Try and be a gentleman and honor this request.

Then stop directing your posts at me. You've been warned about this before; you're not allowed to ask me to leave, and then make a post directed at me. I mean, I understand why you do that; it allows you to dishonestly pretend that I can't address you when you call me out, and it allows you to continue to deceive people without me pointing out when you quote-mine sources, leave out relevant facts, and so on.

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Seer,

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Then tell me how are these things; rational deliberation, conscious considerations, planning, etc... not just as determined as anything else - in what sense are they FREE? This is what I mean, you are not defining what free will means, in what sense are we free.

Let me quote Peter van Inwagen



Do you agree, disagree?

But the NASA press release says:

http://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/...er-than-losses



Are you saying that you understand NASA's study better than NASA?

[seer]

The "for the most part" is your fundamental flaw in this area of your thinking. If we assume your view for the same of argument then how do you address the following? If some of our decisions are not made by rational conscious deliberation, then what causes those decisions? How do the atoms in your brain "know" to pull your hand back when you touch something hot? How do the atoms in your brain make a random decision that is not rationally or consciously deliberated? You have to explain this, because on your view, you'd face the same exact problem that you think my view has. How is that coherent at all?

There are somethings that are automatic, a fly will react if you try and swat it. This is not on the same as choosing among a number of options, or working through a math problem, etc.... But still you have not offered a coherent reason for why brain chemicals preferred a red shirt on one day and a green shirt on another. Basically you are saying "just because."

Sorry buddy, but you have not established a "fact". If your claim is a fact, then I have to grant many alien abduction claims and many claims of other religions that contradict yours. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Of course it is fact. I can't establish that I had tea yesterday morning, there was just me and no witnesses. But that is just as much a fact as any other fact in history. Now you are perfectly free to doubt my claim, you weren't there after all, and you have a bias against non-natural events - that is fine, but that does not in the least undermine the reality of the event.

Everything that is explained is natural. There are no supernatural explanations to anything that meet the same criterion we use for natural explanations.

Really? You have explained the creation of the universe? You have personally investigated every miracle claim?

[seer]

You don't know how you reason in terms of all the functionality and causes behind it. Using subjective experience to base your views on is exactly what made people think the earth was flat or that the earth was the center of the solar system. It is simply not good enough to ground scientific claims.

Oh please what nonsense - how do you know when your brain chemicals are causing you to believe a truth as opposed to a falsehood that presents itself as a truth? YOU CAN'T. Again Thinker, remember you could not square the circle: That because you were determined to believe that A is true, that A is actually true.

And worst of all, on the libertarian view, you have to make a coherent account for how thoughts can be rational since you already know that you cannot have a thought, about a thought, before you have the thought. Every thought in your consciousness arises with no ability for you to have any control over it.

LFW by definition says nothing about thoughts, these are simply my ideas of how it may work. LFW only claims that we have the power of contrary choice. It was within my power to choose a red shirt, or not choose a red shirt.

If dogs and monkeys and other animals are smart, then your claim that their thoughts are based on instinct is false. So your problem is still there. Even if we consider instinct, on your view since animals do not rationally deliberate, then how would their atoms choose one thing or the other?

Listen, I never said for instance that brain chemicals could not cause me to pick the red shirt. I have been asking you for a coherent reason why brain chemicals decided to choose red, over let's say green. And all I got was crickets. And yes, intelligence is a mystery - in us and in animals.

[Tassman]

There are somethings that are automatic, a fly will react if you try and swat it. This is not on the same as choosing among a number of options, or working through a math problem, etc.... But still you have not offered a coherent reason for why brain chemicals preferred a red shirt on one day and a green shirt on another

Basically you are saying "just because."

No, it's YOU saying "just because". You've provided no explanation of where and how where in the evolutionary tree our free-will developed.

Of course it is fact. I can't establish that I had tea yesterday morning, there was just me and no witnesses. But that is just as much a fact as any other fact in history. Now you are perfectly free to doubt my claim, you weren't there after all, and you have a bias against non-natural events - that is fine, but that does not in the least undermine the reality of the event.

A routine event such as having tea yesterday morning can be reasonably accepted as fact without requiring supporting evidence. Whereas an extraordinary event such as claiming you were abducted by aliens or experienced a miracle yesterday morning cannot.

Really? You have explained the creation of the universe? You have personally investigated every miracle claim?

[Tassman]

LFW by definition says nothing about thoughts, these are simply my ideas of how it may work. LFW only claims that we have the power of contrary choice. It was within my power to choose a red shirt, or not choose a red shirt.

[The Thinker]

There are somethings that are automatic, a fly will react if you try and swat it. This is not on the same as choosing among a number of options, or working through a math problem, etc.... But still you have not offered a coherent reason for why brain chemicals preferred a red shirt on one day and a green shirt on another. Basically you are saying "just because."

Automatic? How do the atoms "know" how to react if they aren't caused by conscious rational deliberation? How is it that all animals can make decisions? If you concede that atoms and chemicals can react and make decisions, then that would explain how you make unconscious decisions as per your own framework. If that's coherent, then there is nothing incoherent about your brain making you choose red over green. If not, then your view faces the same exact problems that you think my view faces. Do you deny this?


Oh and regarding working on a math problem, in case you are unaware, I've already provided you empirical evidence that abstract thinking involves brain functions that happen before we are aware of them, and scientists can predict what you're going to do, before you're even aware of them. See below:

Predicting free choices for abstract intentions

Highlights:

- Researchers are able to show that the outcome of a free decision to either add or subtract numbers can already be decoded from neural activity in medial prefrontal and parietal cortex 4 seconds before the participant reports they are consciously making their choice.
- Previous findings have been mostly restricted to simple motor choices.
- In the current study, participants were not cued to make decisions at specific points in time but were allowed to make decisions spontaneously. By asking participants to report when they first consciously decided, we could investigate what happened in the brain before the decisions were consciously made. We found that both medial frontopolar cortex and posterior cingulate/precuneus started to encode the specific outcome of the abstract decisions even before they entered conscious awareness. Our results suggest that, in addition to the representation of conscious abstract decisions, the medial frontopolar cortex was also involved in the unconscious preparation of abstract decisions.

Of course it is fact. I can't establish that I had tea yesterday morning, there was just me and no witnesses. But that is just as much a fact as any other fact in history. Now you are perfectly free to doubt my claim, you weren't there after all, and you have a bias against non-natural events - that is fine, but that does not in the least undermine the reality of the event.

So it is a fact that Mohammad spoke to the angel Gabriel and Joseph Smith spoke to the angel Maroni?

If not, what criterion does a claim have to meet in order to be an established fact?

Really? You have explained the creation of the universe? You have personally investigated every miracle claim?

The universe wasn't created, it is eternal. Something eternal cannot be created. See the video below for a little science lesson. And no miracle claims is backed up by enough evidence to establish it as a fact, and the burden of proof is on the person who makes or believes the miracle claim to do so. Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence.

Eternal universe:

[seer]

Automatic? How do the atoms "know" how to react if they aren't caused by conscious rational deliberation? How is it that all animals can make decisions? If you concede that atoms and chemicals can react and make decisions, then that would explain how you make unconscious decisions as per your own framework. If that's coherent, then there is nothing incoherent about your brain making you choose red over green. If not, then your view faces the same exact problems that you think my view faces. Do you deny this?

Once again Thinker, I'm not saying that the brain can not choose a a red shirt, I asked for a coherent why brain chemicals would choose red over green. Did my brain chemical prefer red one day and green another?

- Researchers are able to show that the outcome of a free decision to either add or subtract numbers can already be decoded from neural activity in medial prefrontal and parietal cortex 4 seconds before the participant reports they are consciously making their choice.
- Previous findings have been mostly restricted to simple motor choices.
- In the current study, participants were not cued to make decisions at specific points in time but were allowed to make decisions spontaneously. By asking participants to report when they first consciously decided, we could investigate what happened in the brain before the decisions were consciously made. We found that both medial frontopolar cortex and posterior cingulate/precuneus started to encode the specific outcome of the abstract decisions even before they entered conscious awareness. Our results suggest that, in addition to the representation of conscious abstract decisions, the medial frontopolar cortex was also involved in the unconscious preparation of abstract decisions.

Again, like the Libet study there is quite lag from when the brain activates (encodes the outcome) and when the act is completed. And the act is not completed until there is consciousness awareness. But why would we need conscious awareness before the act is completed. Why is conscious awareness even needed, why is there a lag time? Why don't we complete the act before awareness?

So it is a fact that Mohammad spoke to the angel Gabriel and Joseph Smith spoke to the angel Maroni?

If not, what criterion does a claim have to meet in order to be an established fact?

Like I said, I only KNOW (for certain) what I experienced. And I have zero reason to doubt it.

The universe wasn't created, it is eternal. Something eternal cannot be created. See the video below for a little science lesson. And no miracle claims is backed up by enough evidence to establish it as a fact, and the burden of proof is on the person who makes or believes the miracle claim to do so. Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence.

The B theory of time does not necessarily show that the universe is past infinite. And do you really believe that in this universe you simultaneously are both alive and dead? In your mothers womb and not in your mother's womb? And if the past present and future are equally "real" then why don't I have memories/knowledge of the future as well as the past?

And why are physicists like Alexander Vilenkin still searching for what caused this universe?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXCQelhKJ7A

[The Thinker]

Oh please what nonsense - how do you know when your brain chemicals are causing you to believe a truth as opposed to a falsehood that presents itself as a truth? YOU CAN'T. Again Thinker, remember you could not square the circle: That because you were determined to believe that A is true, that A is actually true.

It's not nonsense. How do I know when my brain chemicals are causing me to believe a truth as opposed to a falsehood? It's because if my belief are true, there will be certain things I can do with that, and if my beliefs are wrong, there will be certain things I cannot do. I've already given you an example.

Let's say belief A = people cannot fly by flapping their arms like birds.


I see a person jump off a cliff and flap their arms and fall to their death. I see another person jump off a cliff and flap their arms and fall to their death. Then I see yet another person jump off a cliff and flap their arms and fall to their death. I get all this data from my senses of sight and sound and my brain processes that data with all of my experiences of gravity throughout my life and I am determined to conclude that people cannot fly by flapping their arms like birds. The sights and sounds of several people jumping off a cliff and flapping their arms and falling to their death determined my brain to believe that A = people cannot fly by flapping their arms like birds. Now if you say that I can't know for sure whether my belief in A is true you'd will be violating your claim that "I never asked you to demonstrate with 100% certainty."

Basically determinism is the only way beliefs can make sense because beliefs must be caused by something. If your beliefs are uncaused, then there is no way that the evidence of things that are true can have any kind of causal effect on your thinking. And thus uncaused beliefs wouldn't be reliable, caused beliefs would. Determinism or non-LFW is the only coherent view but it's counter-intuitive, like many complex things in the world.

LFW by definition says nothing about thoughts, these are simply my ideas of how it may work. LFW only claims that we have the power of contrary choice. It was within my power to choose a red shirt, or not choose a red shirt.

LFW makes many claims on thoughts because it says your thoughts could have been otherwise if you were put through the same exact situation with all the atoms in the universe the same exact way multiple times. And it says your thoughts are not caused by antecedent brain activity or causes. Given how you admitted that you cannot have a thought, about a thought, before you have the thought, there is no way for you to choose X over Y, because you cannot choose your thoughts. Your whole view here is false and incoherent. If you disagree with this, make a coherent case for how you can choose what your next thought is before you have it.

Listen, I never said for instance that brain chemicals could not cause me to pick the red shirt. I have been asking you for a coherent reason why brain chemicals decided to choose red, over let's say green. And all I got was crickets. And yes, intelligence is a mystery - in us and in animals.

Well once you concede that chemicals and atoms in your brain can make choices without the process of rational deliberation, you've essentially conceded your whole point of view. Why your brain chemicals choose red over green could be as simple as you having received something red in the past that made you feel good, which released dopamine in your brain, and now your brain prefers red things over green things.

You might be interested in a recent PBS special by David Eagleman on the brain. Here is a short video explaining emergence relevant to our past discussions on how individual parts of a brain together can allow for properties to exist only when the whole thing is working together:

http://video.pbs.org/video/2365575386/

How the brain makes choices

Here's an episode on how brain's make decision showing how little role consciousness plays:

How do I decide?