What is the role of cognition and planning in a law governed universe?
I understand that a discussion of free will and consciousness would require thorough definition of a long list of words, and I'm sure that part of the problem lies in an incorrect usage of certain words on my part. But I'm gonna try to phrase it simply, and maybe someone could help me see where I am going wrong:
Supposing that all actions are deterministic, what is the purpose of cognition, and consciously planning your actions?
Does the "planning" determine your action, or is the "planning" already determined? If the conscious planning is already determined, is it then merely a way of understanding your actions and communicating them to others?
Supposing that all actions are deterministic, what is the purpose of cognition, and consciously planning your actions?
Does the "planning" determine your action, or is the "planning" already determined? If the conscious planning is already determined, is it then merely a way of understanding your actions and communicating them to others?
Comments (52)
Determinism has all kinds of flavors as deterministic philosophers and scientists try to figure out how to leave some meaning in their lives (they do use the pronoun I when referring to themselves as doing something, not the Laws of Nature). But I guess a strict determinist would say that whole experience of life is just one giant illusion concocted by the Laws of Nature and Natural Selection.
Thus it follows, it is quite natural for us to feel we are planning even though it really isn't so. The determinists, seeing right through the whole illusion are here to set us straight. As for me, I am still believing that we observe, plan and make choices as we navigate our lives. You might say, I haven't been enlightened yet.
Correct me if I am wrong, but it sounds like your argument is: If all actions are deterministic, then planning is pointless because the actions will occur whether we plan them or not. If so, then I think this is an error because determinism is still compatible with causality. Thus it could be both that the planning is determining the actions, and the planning was itself determined.
By what? And what is it that makes us feel like we are planning and choosing?
Let me get in early to make the observation that whatever we say about the Universe, presupposes that we are making judgements and inferences about nature. After the so-called 'scientific revolution', it was supposed that the Universe simply existed, irrespective of judgement or intention or any other human cognitive act; that sundering between the (inner, subjective) mind and the (outer, existing) reality was one of the hallmarks of the understanding that grew out of early modern science.
But it was Kant's Critique of Pure Reason which undercut the 'modernist' assumption of the separation of mind and matter, right at the beginning of the modern age.
The Continuing Relevance of Immanuel Kant
The contradiction in a lot of modern thinking is that it presumes that this rational ability is the product of the very thing that it is setting out to explain. In the modern view, 'mind' comes last, as an output of a fundamentally mindless process. That is where I think the roots of your question lie.
I am not a determinist, but I suppose they would say by the same laws that move objects and animals in determined ways, namely our genes and external forces in the environment.
Quoting Rich
Feelings are not infallible. A friend once told me of his experience in being hypnotized. He said that while under, he felt that he wanted to do the things the hypnotist was telling him to do, and only realized that it wasn't his choice once he snapped out of it. Pretty scary stuff.
Thomas Aquinas has a similar reductio ad absurdum argument for free will:
If free will did not exist, then all praises and blames, rewards and penalties, would be in vain. But everyone acts as if these concepts are relevant. I personally have yet to find someone who does not. Therefore everyone acts as if free will exists. If the data does not back up the hypothesis, then it is likely be false.
Here lies the rub. There are no such laws. What we have are a hodgepodge of equations and theories about certain aspects of matter, none of which come anywhere close to explaining human behavior.
This is for my own info: What about animals? I think most people would agree that animals don't have free will, and that their acts are determined by instinct or genes. Wouldn't a determinist say that man is nothing but a complex animal?
I believe it is likely that all animals are making choices. There are about as many laws for animal behavior as there are for human behavior which is zero. The concept of Laws of Nature are just bandied about hoping that no one will notice that the concept is equivalent to God.
So how do you respond to scientists who have carried out studies where they are able to predict the choices of people, before they have "made the choice"?
In many performance areas, both artistic and sporting, you have to train yourself to act 'without thinking' as it were - like, you don't have time to consciously plan what you're doing, you just have to do it. You've internalised a skill to the point where a large part of it is automatic. But there is also a degree of freedom or spontaneity that can be attained through that (for example, with jazz improvisation, which I happen to do.) It's a combination of learned skill and spontaneous expression. And because it's improvised, by definition it's not 'determined'.
And as has already been said in this thread, it's simply unreal to presume that everything is determined. Reality itself is not like that - chaos and spontaneity is an irreducible aspect of life itself. It's in part determined, and in part chaotic, and many points in between. Perhaps the attraction of it being all determined is that it appears to relieve you of an existential burden.
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But how do you address Laplace's notion - that if you knew the facts about every atom you could predict the future of the universe.
Even if you introduce chaos and uncertainty as an obstacle to this prediction, is there really any room for a "free choice" in chaos and uncertainty?
Quantum physics says that nothing can be contained anywhere. There are no boundaries.
But, your argument, is then simply: there is no such thing as deterministic laws of nature?
It is therefore not surprising that everything being fated is a common thread between Calvinism (and other religious beliefs) and determinism.
And I don't think I'm ready to dispense with them without some sort of alternative.
Do you have an alternative view to how the world is being run, or are you just "anti science"?
And there are closet-eliminativists like Dennett who say consciousness, free will ect are only terms to cut down processing time. IE: we pretend we have these things because it makes things easier. So you could pretend a machine has free will to save looking at how it is wired up and we do the same for humans. (Because we can't account for the 86 billion neuron interactions).
This is where the Zombie problem arises from since there is really a phenomenological world (first person view) attached to it also that is really real.
The laws I am talking about are the laws that determine the motion of bodies in the universe.
Is your view that there is something immaterial about consciousness?
Or that there is at least something about it that does not follow the classical laws of mechanics?
Our illusion of having ultimate control over our actions seems to stem from our not being conscious of all the factors that completely determine our actions. This illusion is probably more pronounced in the Western culture because this culture places more emphasis on the autonomy of the individual and is generally more analytic than holistic.
Cognition and planning are simply an internal mechanism that enables the organism to perform complex external behaviors. This internal mechanism and the resultant external behaviors evolve via random mutations and non-random natural selection.
I don't think this is a contradiction. It's more like circular reasoning - we assume that reality is rational, in the sense that it is built on the principle of non-contradiction: every thing is identical to itself and different from other things. But we don't have any other option than to acknowledge that reality is indeed rational in this sense (that is, non-contradictory). Any other option would automatically refute itself.
I actually have a general metaphysical theory in which consciousness has a natural place:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/1455/an-outline-of-reality/p1
I'm not an anthropic mechanist (in relation to humans) if that's what following the classical laws of mechanics means.
The main reason is that I find it difficult to believe we can speak and communicate about phenomenology/consciousness with them being a) epiphenomenal. b) mechanistic illusions that vanish when explained from a third person point of view.
And it depends on what material means. Are we assuming everything reduces to electron/quark interactions?
Yes.
Why would it be impossible to speak about consciousness if it were an epiphenomena?
Simply detecting your consciousness would be an effect of detecting consciousness making it not an epiphenomena.
You have to presume Zombies are real and someone can sit and talk about consciousness all day without having any inner experience for it to work.
Quoting Daniel Sjöstedt
Okay the reason I asked is that some might consider them immaterial or simply an instrumentalist fiction. Many consider material the stuff we can see and touch.
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Free will is synonymous to freedom of intentions. These intentions are usually categorized as good and bad intentions. We may not always have freedom of choices if the choices are restricted, nor know the outcome ahead of time, but we can intend for a good or bad outcome.
In regards to Newton's Law:
1) They are only applicable to large bodies of non-living matter.
2) They are approximate in nature.
3) They have been replaced/superceded by quantum theory though Newton's Laws are still used for approximate, practical applications. Quantum theory is probabilistic.
Therefore, Newton's Laws are inadequate as a basis for deterministic universe.
Good point. I think we need to differentiate between two kinds of praises/blames:
(1) Praises/blames to the face of the person, as a means of conditioning them to another end, as you said.
(2) Praises/blames not necessarily to the face of the person, and because their act was judged to be praiseworthy/blameworthy. Judging an act as being praiseworthy/blameworthy only makes sense if there was a conscious choice made by the person. If I unintentionally saved a person's life, say by accidentally bumping into them, then I shouldn't be praised for it.
I was referring to the second meaning in my argument.
The issue is that quantum theory speaks of an interaction between an observer and observed with being about define what they are or what are the boundaries between the two. Even with Bohm's causal/real interpretation there is a quantum potential (probabilistic in nature) that cannot be classically defined. It v is impossible to think of a universe in mechanistic terms within quantum theory.
In any case, I have no idea what the Laws of Nature might be. It is far more mysterious than consciousness, mind, or quantum potential.
One does not have to have complete freedom in order to have a non-deterministic universe. There are constraints, but there is the creative impulse which allows us to attempt to move in a given direction with uncertain (probabilistic) results.
This would be analogous to a sailor that is navigating with many constraints but had the ability to choose left or right with unpredictable, but probabilistic results. Living a life is similar to sailing.
Laws of nature are simply certain regularities in nature. Nature contains various stuff, and just as there are differences in nature, there are also regularities (commonalities, symmetries or repeated features). For example, the law of gravity is the regularity with which massive bodies attract each other in a specific way. These regularities may be difficult or impossible to visualize but they can be expressed mathematically.
There are definitely regularities (habits) in nature but this is far, far, far from an absolutely deterministic universe. All calculations are approximate. Just one, single, probabilistic event of any sort to destroy determinism. Unless quantum can be shown to be completely deterministic, then determinism dies.
But even with this, determinists need to define precisely what exactly they are talking about when they refer to the Laws of Nature. As I mentioned, historically the roots of the concept are in the belief of a God who created such a set of Laws that govern everything. It appears to me that the Laws of Nature, without a concrete definition, is indistinguishable from God.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
Absence of free will does not equal absence of intentions, so again, I have to disagree.
That is, "choices are unfree" is not true either.
Well, that was torpedoed by the discovery of the 'uncertainty principle'. There are laws, but the discovery of the 'quantum leap' was, I think, fatal to determinism as it had previously been understood. Laws are maybe more comparable to what is called 'strange attractors' in chaos theory - patterns that emerge out of the chaos.
But what I'm rejecting is old-school, bottom-up, materialist determinism. I think that has actually been undermined by science itself, but it has left a footprint in popular culture in the aftermath of the so-called 'death of God'.
I accept the analogy, and will add that the sailor has the freedom to set the goal to whichever direction he likes, even if the path that lies ahead has many constraints.
Life is about learning.
What then is free will, if not freedom of intentions? A good will is one that intends on doing the good. We may not always be able to do good deeds, but we always have the freedom to intend to do good. A saint that is in captivity is no less a saint just because he is unable to do saintly things; rather he is a saint as long as his intentions are aimed at doing saintly things if he could.
I have thought about this before as well. The phenomenology of planning is that there are multiple options, choices, that are possible.
So the question seems to be, what exactly is a possibility in a deterministic system? If there is only one single path that a system can proceed in, do possibilities actually exist?
I can't help but think of Nietzschean psychology - "I" am not the originator of my thoughts, my thoughts come on their own terms. That which influences my actions is precisely that which is the most powerful. The most powerful thoughts are those which come to my attention and direct my action. It is not that I "choose" to do some action but rather a thought commands me to do something and I obey it - willing is the combination of command and obey.
The problem is there is not one shred of evidence to support such a view other than faith. Such a belief is exactly equivalent to Calvinism and other fated religions.
Determinism on the whole is destroyed by quantum physics. Given this, and given that humans are subject to quanta just like all matter, then determinism can't hold for humans.
So what is left is some localized force in the human mind that is singularly controlling all choices and creating an illusion that there is a choice being made. More than this, this force is creating this illusion while at the same time revealing the true nature of the illusion to some humans - the chosen ones, the Determinists.
This convoluted explanation of how the human mind makes choices wreaks with religious flavor and dogma. It stands in opposition to the simple explanation that humans simply make choices. So why do scientists and philosophers continue to propagate such a ideology? What is the economic benefit of making humans computerized robots that can be tinkered with? As with any religion there is always an economic benefit for propagating a supernatural force that only a certain few have access and knowledge to - the priests.
Why is the human brain being made into a computer is the critical question?
No, this is wrong. Are you seriously telling me Nietzsche advocated his metaphysical scheme based on faith?!
Quoting Rich
No, this is also wrong. Quantum mechanics is difficult to predict but that does not make it necessarily indeterminate.
Quoting Rich
The same could be said about libertarian free will, which is overwhelmingly argued for by religious believers.
Quoting Rich
It's not. Computational theory of mind is more of a folk-psychological notion these days. Nobody really takes the idea seriously, that the human brain is basically a computer. That, and the representational theory of mind, have been blown out of the water by phenomenology and contemporary cognitive science.
Precisely what happened. At the time there was these belief, this faith, that at some point humans will understand all of the Natural Laws (God's Laws) and with such knowledge be in control of everything. It was (is) just a new religion under the guise if science.
Just because someone substitutes a new phase for God (Natural Laws, Natural Selection) does't make it different - just more appetizing got atheists. The essence of the belief, faith,. remains the same. In today's world such faith remains for Determinists that in some way, in some time, in the future these Laws will be revealed.
Quoting darthbarracuda
And here lies the Faith. Quantum theory is not only fully probabilistic it also states that it can not be anything but. However, faith in the discovery of some hidden variables remains. However, at this point, determinism is dead.
Quoting darthbarracuda
Those who believe in an omnipotent force it nature whether it be God or Natural Laws will always have a tough time reconciling Real Choice with their faith. That is not my problem. Real Choice is something I experience everyday and I do not need to appeal to any type of religion to affirm my everyday experiences.
Quoting darthbarracuda
Such ideas are heavily funded and propagated. The computer brain, only accessible by ....