It appears that you haven't read any Hume at all.
— Corvus
Suffice to say you are not an honest interlocutor. Take it easy.
6h — AmadeusD
However - I would say that if you can’t say something without referring abstractly to other up to date known facticities circa 2024, I applaud your efficiency but laud the lack of a Socratic method ;)
And a forum… just seems the right place for the Socratic method. — Metaphyzik
The reason we can not do those is because of lack of data to us, and our brain has limited capacity in thinking, not because anything is determined.It's not possible to think freely. Can you think up everything there is to know about dark matter and dark energy? No, you can't. Can you think of a trillion thoughts per second? No, you can't. Our thoughts are determined and constrained by our genes, environments, nutrients, and experiences. — Truth Seeker
These comments are not factual objective descriptions of anything in the world, but just reflection of your psychology. You can change your beliefs and emotions by changing your reasoning and reading some philosophical textbooks. No one else can change your beliefs apart from yourself.We are all prisoners of causality - doomed to suffer and die. I am all-loving but I am not all-knowing and all-powerful. I am so sad. I wish I never existed. — Truth Seeker
Hume and Kant were dualists? There are different interpretations about them. It is not that simple. They are not wrong. They present us with deep and rich arguments on our mind and the world. You should try reading them first, and try to understand them. I am sure you will enjoy.Hume and Kant were dualists. They are both wrong. You are also wrong about having free will. I am a materialist monist hard determinist because I am convinced by evidence. — Truth Seeker
Good question. I wish I know the answers for the questions. Only thing I know is that there are things we know, and there are things we don't know. Most of the unknowability can never be cleared I presume. Humans are critically and sorely limited existence in time of life on the earth, knowing and thinking capabilities due to them having the biological bodies, and thinkings and knowings that rely on the biological brain.Why does our brain have limited capacity? Why aren't all living things all-loving, all-knowing and all-powerful? How do you know that someone could have done something else at the time and place of the doing instead of what was done? I am not convinced that anyone could have done something else but I could be wrong as I am not all-knowing. — Truth Seeker
I have no knowledge or experience in the field of pains and clinical psychology. I am sorry that I cannot offer any info or advice on the situation. I hope that you will feel better and get back to your normal emotional state and physical health as soon as possible.There is no substitute for actual experience. No amount of reading will help you comprehend how painful pain is. — Truth Seeker
You are very welcome Truth Seeker. Please take your time. If you open new threads with Hume or Kant topics later on when you feel better, I will definitely try to join and engage in discussions with you then. Take care, and thank you for engaging discussions with me for the interesting OP.I will read Hume and Kant if I ever get to either 0 or +1 on the mood scale. Thank you for the recommendations. — Truth Seeker
Right now I am at -2 on the mood scale. Have you ever experienced what it is like to be at -2 or -5 or +5? I have. I have to take 600 mg of Quetiapine XL per night to get to -2 on the mood scale. If I didn't take it, I would be stuck at -5. Have you ever had hallucinations? If you haven't, you won't understand how scary and confusing it is to have one's reality warped by things that are not really there. — Truth Seeker
I will read Hume and Kant if I ever get to either 0 or +1 on the mood scale. Thank you for the recommendations. — Truth Seeker
To what extent are our choices and actions considered "free"?
Are they really ‘ours’? If you look into it, you will see that there may be a sense of choosing but no actual chooser. One way to look at choice is as a process, which starts at the subatomic levels, going to the atomic and molecular and cellular and suddenly “I choose this!”
Who is this ‘I’? If you say, “Me, silly!”, then are you controlling the process of choice from your subatomic level throughout all the other levels? Are you controlling what your atoms, molecules and cells do? Because they’re doing a bunch of stuff before you reach the point of declaring your choice.
Are choices really made consciously? Psychologists would argue that many of them are unconscious. Who, then, is the chooser? I assume none of us have the experience of pulling choices from the unconscious level through to the conscious… Nope, these unconscious choices make themselves. Only after they are made, we may realize what lurked in our unconscious.
Libet’s experiment is quite famous. It showed that choices are made and we actually become conscious of them after they’ve been made. Then, there is a process in the brain of claiming the choice as ‘mine.’ This claiming makes it feel like ‘I’ made the choice, like ‘I’ was in charge the entire time. But, actually, the choice arose and then was claimed as ‘my choice.’
Another interesting angle is this: When I ask you to choose between coffee and tea, keep in mind that both coffee and tea require the entire evolution of the universe to exist. Without the birth of the sun and all the conditions that allow earth to produce coffee beans and tea leaves, and without humans to make beverages from them — that choice wouldn’t be available to you. So the choices you have, you didn’t choose to have them(!). Evolution did. You were born into a context, and all your choices take place within that context. And like you, those who came before were also born into a particular context and did not choose what choices they will have. They had completely different choices than you (depending how far back you go). Go all the way back to the first man, who made whatever choices were available to him. Who originally chose the choices that were available to him?
How free is our choice if we can’t choose what options we have? Our choice is very limited by our context and circumstance. And the mysterious thing is… who put it there? You may say God, you may say evolution. The first man didn’t choose to be, didn’t choose what options will be available to him, didn’t choose anything about himself or his environment. Once he found himself in these pre-existing conditions, he made whatever choices were available from his understanding of himself and the world. But before the first man, was there choice? If you answer that there was no choice in the universe before the first man, then why should choice have started with his appearance? If you there was choice before the first man, then who was it that chose? Randomness? Evolution? God? Either way, it wasn’t man - so at what point did man assume choice? You see, if all is evolution’s doing, then we have no choice whatsoever and never had. Everything is just happening, unfolding, perhaps by laws of nature, and we are one choiceless part of that unfolding. If it’s God, then we are moved as God wills only (and what we think of as our will is really His). Man appeared within a context that he never chose. Evolution or God chose (or randomness). At what point did choice become man’s? What makes us think that we have gained independence? Seeking for the birth of choice kinda makes you wonder if it has any reality to it at all. The fact that we, humans, appear in the universe quite late on, after so much has been established (galaxies and solar systems, and planets etc), and then we claim to be in charge of some part of a process that is so much larger than us and began way before us… This is the same as what I started with - the subatomic, atomic, molecular and cellular levels - only looked at from the side of all the things that we are within rather than they within us. Do you see, we are part of a chain. Can one link on a chain claim to be a true individual, moving as it wishes?
This leads us perfectly into the more Buddhist view, that is an alternative to the evolution/God-is-the-chooser view. It might say it is neither God nor evolution, but interdependence. The existence of any one thing depends on all things. Our movement is not separate from the rest of the universe. It’s all one inter-connected movement, and one has to wonder where, within it all, is there any room for individuality and free will. If everything depends on everything else, then it is all inter-dependent, and that necessarily means there is no independent choice.
But say you’re not convinced and you feel you might have just a tiny bit of free will anyway, to have and to hold. Well is it not quite obvious that our choices are but a result of our genes and up-to-date conditioning? Which are utterly out of our control. Genes, we were born with. Our conditioning is a result of all of our life experiences, and surely we didn’t choose all the life experiences we had. I mean, did you choose to get into that terrible relationship? Or did you simply not know better? It wasn’t in your programming (conditioning) at the time to be able to smell where this relationship was going… You lacked experience at the time. It was your conditioning to go into it. It was only after the relationship ended that, most likely, your conditioning changed. But you didn’t choose who you had become. It happened. Through life experience. Experience that, again, you didn’t choose to have. You thought you were going into a relationship that would make you blissfully happy… You thought that’s what you were choosing. So much for choice when we so often don’t even know what we’re choosing. You may choose to go to a concert to have fun, but you end up crushed by the moshpit, and leave bruised, pissed and miserable. That… wasn’t really your choice.
The truth is that the next thing comes, whatever it is, regardless of what it is you think you’re choosing for yourself. I remember in India always asking for no spice in my food, and receiving enough spice for 7 people in my dish anyway. I “chose” no-spice, life gave me extra spice. If we really had choice, we would feel in control of our lives and of ourselves. There would be no addictions. Things would go our way. Life wouldn’t surprise us with curve balls constantly. We would know exactly what we’re getting into every single time we made a choice - we would know what we’re choosing. But even that we don’t know. Our choices are much more like guesses. Maybe it will lead to what we want, maybe not.
Let’s face it, we’re not in control. And the process of decision-making only feels real, but is actually a result of a false sense of separation from the whole.
BUT… there are good news at the end of it all. You ready? The good news is this: It’s freedom we want, not free will. “What?,” you say, “they’re one and the same!” No, no, no, not at all. Free will - choice - is bondage. Being not-separate from the whole, is freedom. It is the sense of separation that makes you constantly desire something other than what is. This is rarely ever good enough, you want THAT (whatever your THAT is). And you hope that having choice will enable to get what you want. We think freedom is being able to have something, like have the life we want. But it is the desirer that is the cause of suffering to begin with. Wanting what isn’t rather than what is, it attaches to these desires, these outcomes - and suffers, for it decides it is not complete until the desire is satisfied. But, of course, the death of one desire is the birth of the next. And on it goes. And thus one feels never fully and truly satisfied. UNTIL… one sees the absurdity and is happy with what is, as it is. This is the realization of non-separation from life. The realization that there is no ‘you’ to choose anything, for ‘you’ are a part of the whole’s (life’s) movement. THIS is freedom. Not-wanting. Not being troubled by choice and the search for THAT rather than THIS, what is.
Choosing occurs. But no chooser there is. (In Yoda-speak).
This is a very human thing to say.In a way, everything is pointless. — Truth Seeker
However, brain activities are not dumb physical processes. — Truth Seeker
The human brain is the product of billions of years of evolution. It doesn't function the way clouds do. It has responsive feedback systems that are self-correcting to make sure that the model of reality generated by the brain is accurate enough for the organism to survive and reproduce in the real world. — Truth Seeker
We have no way of knowing the degree of correlation between accurate representations of the world, and evolutionary success, so we cannot assume from evolutionary success that our brains are accurate.
Quantum decoherence is a fundamental phenomenon in quantum mechanics where a quantum system loses its quantum properties, like superposition and entanglement, due to interaction with its environment. This process effectively makes the quantum behavior of the system unobservable, making it appear more classical. Here are some key factors that cause quantum decoherence:
Interaction with the Environment: Quantum systems are incredibly sensitive to their surroundings. Even minimal interactions with external particles or fields can cause a quantum system to decohere. This includes interactions with photons, air molecules, or even stray electromagnetic fields.
Loss of Isolation: Quantum coherence, which is the maintenance of quantum states like superposition, requires that the system be isolated from external influences. In practical terms, complete isolation is nearly impossible to achieve, and any exposure to the external environment can lead to decoherence.
Entanglement with the Environment: When a quantum system interacts with the environment, its quantum states can become entangled with those of the environmental particles. This entanglement leads to a redistribution of the quantum information into the environment in a way that can no longer be controlled or observed by examining the system alone.
Thermal Interactions: Temperature and heat are forms of kinetic energy associated with the motion of particles. At higher temperatures, the likelihood and intensity of interactions between the quantum system and its environment increase, leading to faster decoherence.
Measurement and Observation: The act of measurement can lead to decoherence. Measuring a quantum system often involves some form of interaction with it (like photons impacting electrons), which can cause the wave function to collapse to a particular state, effectively causing decoherence.
Decoherence is one of the major challenges in developing quantum technologies, such as quantum computing and quantum cryptography, as it limits the ability to maintain and manipulate quantum states over time.
The workings of the brain create perceptions, thoughts, emotions, actions. None of these things are dumb physical processes. — Truth Seeker
That's not true. If an organism's brain can't produce an accurate enough model of its environment it dies from environmental hazards or predation. — Truth Seeker
We can choose to think about a specific topic but the thoughts arise unconsciously. — Truth Seeker
We subject our thoughts to analysis to work out if the thoughts are rational or irrational. A cloud is not sentient. A cloud has no control over the wind. We are sentient and we can control which topic we choose to think about. — Truth Seeker
Quantum decoherence stops quantum indeterminacy from creating macroscopic indeterminacy. At macroscopic levels, events are still deterministic. If you toss a coin, whether it lands on its head or tail depends on the forces acting on it. — Truth Seeker
What if we took the Stern-Gerlach experiment and extended it, so that when a particle's spin is up, a gun is fired at a wall, and when it is down, it isn't fired. Wouldn't that be an example of quantum indeterminance having macro effects?
Yes, that's a fascinating thought experiment! What you're describing is a hypothetical scenario where the outcome of a quantum event at the microscopic level (the spin of a particle in the Stern-Gerlach apparatus) directly influences a macroscopic event (the firing of a gun).
In such a scenario, if the particle's spin determines whether the gun is fired or not, and if the spin is truly subject to quantum indeterminacy, then the firing of the gun would indeed seem to be influenced by quantum randomness. If you repeated this experiment many times with identical setups, you would observe a statistical pattern where approximately half the time the gun fires and half the time it doesn't, mirroring the 50/50 outcome of the particle spin measurement.
This concept highlights the intriguing aspect of quantum mechanics where seemingly random and unpredictable events at the quantum level can potentially lead to observable effects at the macroscopic scale. It's worth noting that while this thought experiment is intriguing, actual implementation would be extremely challenging due to practical constraints and the delicate nature of quantum systems at the macroscopic level. Nonetheless, it serves as a thought-provoking illustration of the foundational principles of quantum mechanics.
I think that we have no reason to think they're reliable under a deterministic framework and we have reason to think they're unreliable under that same framework. Namely: Every other physical process is not rational, how come our brains just happen to be?
Perception requires some sort of energy. Sight, hearing, etc, all require different organs which consume energy. Which means evolution has to find what are the most beneficial things to perceive in compairson with how much they take to perceive. It's not like creating an omniscient being is just as "cheap" materially and in terms of food intake as creating something that sees much less. Spiders are almost blind and they survive just fine.
It is well known our brain doesn't perceive everything. We don't perceive UV, we don't perceive microwaves, we don't have that ability that birds have to detect the magnetic field produced by earth's core to know which direction is north (despite it being a very useful ability, considering how impactful compasses are).
Since we cannot perceive what our brain doesn't perceive (by definition), we cannot know how much we do perceive or how much it is altered by our brains (we know our brain alters perceptions, or else how would optical illusions arise?) So I don't believe the argument from evolution works when you take into account that there is a cost for exact perception which might not be worth the payment. What do you think?
See, what's what I think, but you tell me there is no "choosing" at all.
If you contend that we can control what we think about, then we can't be running deterministically right? How can we be in control if everything we think is predetermined?
I understand that there are compatibalist views which support both free will and determinism, but you stated multiple times that you don't believe in those, and that we'd need freedom to have any choice, and so any responsibility. For the last couple of paragraphs though you suddenly mentioned "choice" a dozen times. I'm confused...
There is nothing irrational about any physical processes e.g. clouds forming shapes. What shapes a cloud forms is entirely deterministic. It occurs due to the laws of physics acting on matter and energy. So, your claim “Every other physical process is not rational” is false. — Truth Seeker
Sight is not the only way to create a model of one’s environment. — Truth Seeker
I agree that our brain doesn’t perceive everything. It doesn’t have to perceive everything for humans to survive and reproduce. It has to perceive just enough about hazards such as falling off cliffs or getting eaten by lions to ensure our survival and reproduction. — Truth Seeker
Yes, your thought experiment about connecting the trigger of a gun to the spin of subatomic particles is interesting. However, that is not how the macroscopic world works. — Truth Seeker
A dualist doesn't have to deal with this issue, since they can maintain that rationality comes from the immaterial "mind" or "soul" or whatever they call it. Neither does an idealist. However a naturalist determinist does, since he has to concede that:
A- Atoms aren't rational (in the sense that we are not justified in believing any statement uttered or written by any random assortment of atoms... like a cloud for instance)
B- Somehow our brain (a collection of atoms) IS rational — khaled
The way clouds behave and the way brains behave are due to their structure. A cloud can't assess whether 2+2=4 or 2+2=5 is true. We can. The reason we can assess it is due to the complexity of the human brain which is due to our genes, environments from conception to the present, nutrients from conception to the present, and experiences from the womb to the present. — Truth Seeker
I didn't claim that humans are rational. — Truth Seeker
Quantum decoherence is the reason the macroscopic world does not exhibit the superposition, indeterminacy, and entanglement that exist in the quantum world. Can you show me even one instance when macroscopic objects have exhibited superposition, indeterminacy, and entanglement? — Truth Seeker
What evidence do you have that souls exist? How does an immaterial soul grant organisms rationality? How does an immaterial soul interact with a material body? How would idealism make us rational? — Truth Seeker
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