...by treating it as an object of experience. — Wayfarer

Of course, under the presumption of physicalism, that's what it is. That doesn't make it any less real, doesn't mean that science isn't interested in it. Science would love to explain subjective experience just like any other form of truth-seeking investigation would. It has its own methods and underlying axioms, just like any other philosophy. I don't see why it's being excluded from the discussion.

Biological reality, as I understand it, is that we are overwhelmingly all the same and that the biological differences between us, as an instructor I had in a college geography class once put it, "are miniscule". — WISDOMfromPO-MO

This is simply not true (or at least wasn't true 100 years ago, thankfully it is becoming more so now). People with hanging earlobes have had no different cultural heritage and history than those with attached earlobes. The two populations have always been mixed and formed part of the same culture. The distinctions identified in race, whilst having no bearing at all on personality, did once indicate very strongly the cultural heritage of that person and so what adopted values they may have.

Nowadays, thankfully, this is becoming so much less the case that to read anything into race would be unfair stereotyping, but our history of oppression and its legacy still means that someone's skin colour gives a statistically more significant indication of the sorts of challenges they've had to face in life than their ear lobes.

It's not just arbitrary. It meant something significant about cultural heritage a hundred years ago, and shameful though it is, it still means something about one's history today.

Science does not seem to be interested in the latter because of this perceived contamination. — Pneuma

What about neuroscience, sociology, evolutionary biology, psychology? Science is extremely interested in understanding subjective experience, it just does it on a presumption of physicalism, a perfectly valid presumption (among others). To say it's not interested is just wrong.

That's an awful lot of unsubstantiated opinion there which, when entirely harmless, is fine, but you've insulted a substantial population of women and, by definition, the majority of men with virtually no evidence.

despite presenting themselves as 'good' people - they actually produce nothing. — TimeLine

Produce nothing by whose standards - yours? What is wrong with producing a comforting and stable partner for someone, or even a transient sexual partner for a single night of mutual enjoyment. What's wrong with having your own beauty (in the eyes of others) as an objective? Not everyone has the intellectual capability to be a CEO, and not everyone buys into the modern crap about productivity. Some people are happy just happy to have sex, raise children, watch the sunrise and 'produce' nothing much by modern standards.

A woman (or man for that matter), is doing less harm just prettying themselves up as a object for someone else's' affection with animal-tested make up than the CEO of the company making the product, who has real power to change things but doesn't in order to impress her colleagues with what a 'productive' hard-headed businesswoman she is.Or are you suggesting that it wouldn't happen under a female CEO?

I dislike this double standard, where people assume they can speak for the whole of woman-kind, and assume to know the motives of the majority of men, when at the same time railing against that very stereotyping when perpetrated by the other party.

Either we have some biological, evolutionary, or sociological evidence supporting a belief that certain groups of people (men and women in this case) have certain characteristics, or, we must admit that we cannot know what most of any group want, or are like. What does not make any philosophical sense is to reject scientific knowledge (reasonable in itself, given the speculative nature at the moment), reject other people's stereotyping, but then claim to know anything about the majority of any group, just from personal experience.

I call myself a Theist because, in a meaningful sense, in comparison to Atheists, I have a lot more in common with some Theists who talk about God, even if some (but not all) of them use “exist” differently from how I do. — Michael Ossipoff

So what do you have in common then? You've talked a lot about definitions, and I've read with interest your exposition of your theism on the thread you indicated, but whilst it has given me a clearer understanding of your beliefs, it has not explained why you think they're closer to biblical-literalists than atheists. It seems a bizarre, and incredibly arbitrary use of the word 'theist' to say that the common feature is that you all use the word 'God' to define the non-material force/entity/experience of widely differing properties. Scientists could just as easily have decided that the Higgs-Boson was what they call 'God' (in fact I think it was even called the god particle for a while), making all scientists theists as well.

I'm unaware of any other proper noun where normal use is for the speaker to simply apply it to whatever they wish to fall into that definition, rather than have it define some collection of things already found in human discourse. We don't decide whatever we think falls into the category 'tree' and get to talk with others expecting that definition to mean something to them. 'God' is already a word that defines certain propositions, it's quite a wide definition, and certainly takes in some non-material aspects, as well as the very anthropomorphic version, but that doesn't mean we can just apply the word to any metaphysical proposition and expect to be understood. You said "No, you’re talking about physics. Of course it’s widely-agreed that there’s a lot of unknown physics. That doesn’t make you a Theist. Physics has nothing to do with Theism, by anyone’s definition.". So how come you're able to apply the word 'god' to whatever metaphysical (or meta-metaphysical, if you like) position you see fit, but say with absolute certainty that I can't apply it to unknown forces in physics? What aspect of the definition of 'god' are you invoking to make such claims?

This whole thread is about dishonest philosophy and I find this kind of language game to be an example of this. As you said, quite rightly, it's all too easy for disagreements to arise simply out of poor definition of terms - 'god', 'belief', 'theist', but the way to avoid that is not only to define your terms first, it is to make some attempt to stick to previously agreed definitions, to not deliberately stray too far from the fuzzy boundaries that previous language use has defined for a word.

To give an example, we have evidence that scientists are discovering new species quite often. It is therefore a reasonable, rational belief that species currently unknown to science probably exist. That does not make it rational to believe in unicorns, or dragons, or jabberwockies. To believe in the actual animal that science has yet to discover is a different proposition to believing that there exists some kind of animal that science has yet to discover.

No religions that I've ever heard of propose merely that 'something' must have created the universe, and then leave it at that. In fact, most scientists think that 'something' created the universe.

Religions specify what that thing is, what it's properties are. Having a religious belief is holding a proposition not just that something created the universe, but that one has knowledge of the properties of that thing.

As I've shown, the properties of that thing have changed radically over time and culture, so religious belief (the belief in the properties of the thing) is culturally defined, and so, for most people, not rationally arrived at.

Not sure why you think those quotes are particularly relevant to what we're talking about. My contention is simply that people aren't stupid and have usually come up with the idea of some kind of Absolute/Creator entity (even if they've had all sorts of gods, spirits, etc., some of which may indeed be mad, bad and dangerous to know). It's not rocket science, it's a rational response to the fact of there being anything at all (though of course that doesn't mean it's correct). — gurugeorge

The quotes are intended to show that the properties of 'god' and 'gods' have changed over time, not with intellectual progress, but with culture. Meaning that people do not 'rationally' arrive at 'god', they just copy what everyone else is doing and saying.

There's two significant premises which it seems we may not share, but I think are essential to any debate about belief ;

1. Belief is a proposition of some sort, it is either something one states to be the case, or something one acts as if it were the case.

2. A belief (partly just as a logical consequence of 1.) has to be in something specific enough to make statements about, or act in response to.

So, accepting these two premises, belief in 'god' is not something unchanging (or gradually being refined) as we would expect with something rationally arrived at, because in order to satisfy that theory, 'god' (the thing bring believed in) would have to be so vaguely defined that we could not properly say anyone 'believed' in him, by the definition of belief above.

Meeting the required level of specificity for someone to justifiably say they 'believed' in God, we would have to conclude that the God they believed in was derived not rationally, but by cultural conformity.

Its not just marketing, look at the newspapers, television programmes, exams, social media. I'd challenge anyone to compare any of the above from 2018 to its equivalent in 1950 and tell me the population hasn't become more stupid. It's all glossy bold colours, pictures, and simple language, more like something you'd expect to see in a primary school than in intelligent public discourse.

Who'd 'like' a photo of someone's dinner? 50 years ago you'd have been laughed out of the room. Now the president of the United States has to condense what passes for intellectual comment into 240 characters so that it fits on a social media platform that's used primarily for teenagers to comment on each other's hair style.

Neither party is especially responsive to the will of most Americans. The parties serve the interests of the funders.

Those are the sorts of threats that face democracies, — Bitter Crank

Depends what you mean by 'threat'.

The population are largely idiots, they've been made that way by companies because otherwise they wouldn't buy stuff. Who'd buy a crappy toaster with a neon light that comes on when it's done even though their old toaster works fine? Who'd buy a t-shirt that's just as good as any other t-shirt just because it's got a tick on it and a famous golfer is paid to wear one like that? You'd have to be an idiot to do either of these things. The point is, since the 20s we've been slowly running out of stuff we actually need or want, so companies have had to rely on selling us stuff we don't need to stay afloat. You'd have to be stupid to buy something you don't even need or want, so it's been necessary for companies to work on making that happen. The result is a population that votes for a president with the mental capacity of a five-year-old.

If by 'threat' you mean threat to the well-being of the population, then I think parties that do not represent the moronic interests of the general public are absolutely essential, rather than part of the problem.

And yet we have no clear framework or set of rituals to guide us in our quest for goodness. Worse, people have a sense of guilt and sin, but no longer a sense that they live in a loving universe marked by divine mercy, grace and forgiveness. There is sin but no formula for redemption.

This is arguably the problem that got us into this mess in the first place. Go to church, sing the hymns, ask for forgiveness and you get an eternity of pleasure: abandon Church, work out your own ethics and deny God and you get an eternity of punishment. At no point is the punishment/reward first and foremost linked to good, moral behaviour. The Christian Church, throughout the period of increasing technology the author refers to, is primarily about obedience, not care for your fellow man. The redemption the author is referring to comes from prayer, worship and begging for mercy. What we need is compassion and abstinence, not worship and prayer.

Your definition of ”Theist” leaves out some self-declared Theists. — Michael Ossipoff

People can't just declare themselves something and insist that the world changes its definitions to suit them. If you do not believe God 'exists' in the normal sense of the word, you are an atheist. That may be because you are a materialist and have no room for 'god', or because you are a strong dualist and so believe in a realm outside of material existence. Either way, you do not believe 'god' exists. That is the definition of an atheist. You can't just change it because you'd prefer to be called a theist.

…because you devoutly believe that all of Reality is definable, verbally describable. — Michael Ossipoff

No, it's because I consider it a logical nonsense to say you believe in something but be unable to define what it is. It simply doesn't make sense. If you cannot define what it is, what you have is a feeling or a sensation, not a belief. I suggest you look up belief in the SEP, you will find that pretty much every definition requires some form of proposition, either verbal or in action, to be defined as a belief.

You are misusing the words 'theist' and 'belief' simply to dodge having to admit that you don't really believe in God. A 'theist' is someone who believes in the existence of god, a 'belief' is a propositional statement or functional attitude. If we can't stick to normal English how do you expect to maintain a discussion?

By your definition of 'Theism', I'm a theist too because I definitely don't think we've discovered every form of existence (there are probably at least seven more dimensions for a start), and so other things are bound to 'exist' in ways we can't perceive. But so is just about every scientist and atheist I know, the word becomes pointless.

By your definition of 'belief', I have beliefs that I can't define because I definitely have feelings and sensations that are not the result of logical thought, but again I don't know a single person who claims not to have. The word becomes pointless.

If you're just going to make up definitions to suit your argument, then it's going to be impossible to discuss anything with you.

Anyone who wants to evaluate or criticize a position needs to specify it. — Michael Ossipoff

Theism - "Belief in the existence of a god or gods, specifically of a creator who intervenes in the universe." (OED).

Theists must either have no definition for this 'God' or 'Gods', in which case they are believing in something simply by name, which I find to be ludicrous; or they claim some knowledge about the properties of this 'God' or 'Gods', in which case they are making knowledge claims. In this second case they have either postulated the existence of an entity which cannot be falsified where no such entity is required to explain the phenomenon we experience; or they have accused atheists of lying and presumed that we all have experiences which require explanations not yet covered by existing observable forces. Either way is an inefficient means of obtaining knowledge.

All three of these exhaustive options require the suspension of efficient critical thinking. The absence of effective critical thinking allows all sorts of false and harmful political messages to gain popularity.

So yes, it is perfectly possible to criticise all theists, be cause all theists share some common features otherwise they would not be classifiable as a group.

You may well disagree with these criticisms, but it's ridiculous to suggest that I should enquire as to the nature of every single theistic belief in order to make any judgements about them with sufficient certainty to post on a philosophy forum. I can reach perfectly logical conclusions, with sufficient certainty to talk confidently about them simply from the fact that all theists believe in a god or gods. If they don't, they're not theists.

Here's the anthropologist David Eller on tribal religions;

"Every religion does, of course, contain ideas of and about nonhuman and superhuman agencies in the universe; however, not all of these agencies are equally “agentive,” that is, not all equally have “personalities” or “minds” or “wills.” This is another reason why Tylor’s venerable definition is insufficient: not all religions have supernatural beings."

"...gods are not always particularly good or moral, nor do they always take an interest in human affairs."

I think you're clutching at straws trying to make a set of extremely disparate religious beliefs fit a model which conveniently explains the widespread adoption of monotheism in rational terms. An impartial overview of religious variety through geography and history simply doesn't support this.

Status and adequate pay will get the jobs done now, where as in the victorian period, the attraction was mostly pecuniary, and maybe not much career choice. — Bitter Crank

That's what I meant, without UBI we can get these jobs done for a pittance, with UBI we're going to have to pay people more and improve their job satisfaction in order to get them done. Both of these things cost a lot of money, so that cost needs to be included in the calculations. It's no good just using the simple payments as our only expense in the process. Where are the millions we now have to spend on street cleaning, waste handling etc going to come from, because people certainly aren't going to do them for a bit of extra pocket money?

You're consistently repeating the same nonsense over and again;

1. Atheists are not allowed to draw any conclusions about theists because they have not met them all, nor listened to the exposition of every single one of them, whereas you are allowed to draw conclusions about atheists, psuedo-scientists, any group you don't like, based solely on your prejudice. 'Common' is still an unwarranted conclusion, by a long way. There are an estimated 500,000,000 atheists, at a standard 95% confidence, you would have to have experienced 9604 of them just to get a statistically significant sample. You have definitely not met enough atheists do define what is 'common', not even statistically, let alone accurately.

2. You keep insisting that drawing conclusions based on a small sample is unnecessary because there is no harm in holding theistic beliefs of the type that I have encountered (my sample). This is subjective, if you want to argue about the potential harms from the theistic beliefs I have so far encountered, then lay out that argument. Just presuming that your conclusion on that matter must be right and so defeats my right to draw conclusions in unjustified as yet.

3. I'm not sure why you keep insisting on using the word 'bigot'. It doesn't matter how you define it it never covers any of my behaviour. I am only obstinate in your opinion, because you think I should be adopting your views, it is only prejudice in your opinion, because I see it as a legitimate and necessary conclusion. Using the word 'bigot' is therefore an unnecessary personal attack, not an objective fact.

I can already tell you have no interest in using this discussion to refine your arguments, but simply to engage in a bit of atheist-bashing. I'm not going to indulge you any further.

No.

I juxtaposed sex, a biological fact, and gender, a role a person plays. Nothing more, nothing less.

Somebody then suggested that races--white, black, Native American, etc.--are roles just like man and woman are roles, and I showed how that is false. Nothing more, nothing less. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

Oh, well in that case I apologise for misrepresenting your argument. I thought you might have some logical point to make that had not been properly understood, but you are, in fact, as completely wrong as JSG has outlined.

In what way is the selection of reproductive organs to define two sets of people not arbitrary, but the selection of skin colour (and connected racial genetics) is arbitrary? As far as I can see they are both just biological features of the body. It's true we might have divided society by height, or earlobe size, but those features have always been mixed so there's no historical reason to. We divided people on the basis of sex because their roles are forcibly different in at least one aspect (men cannot bear children). We have, in the past, divided the population along the lines of race because it signified a different cultural origin and so a potentially different set of behaviours. We have never had any reason to divide society by height, or ear lobes, so we never have.

So, to the extent that the roles for 'man' and 'woman' derive from biological features, they remain relevant to society. Like any role, personal autonomy should be paramount and if a man wants to adopt a woman's role, or vice versa, there should be no barrier to them doing so, but neither would it be honest to say the roles are entirely cultural.

The roles assigned to race, on the other hand derived from the historical fact that race was a signifier of cultural origin. Not only is this no longer true, but the roles related to that cultural origin never derived from any causally linked aspect of that culture.

I agree with you, therefore, that a post-racial culture is possible (indeed probable), whereas a post-gender culture is not, but not, it seems, for the same reasons.

Will is an energetic force just like any other force in nature. The Mind produces and stores it in the body by normal process of eating, drinking, and breathing. The body is a tool of the mind. — Rich

And you know this how?

Well that then is a rational choice rather than free one. — bahman

Yes, that's the point. The dilemma you're outlining arises because there is no such thing as free will by the definition you are using. No-one could ever possibly choose the 'worst' option because simply by doing so they have shown that it is, by some metric, the 'best' option. We cannot do other than act according to our will. The only remaining free-will question is from where do we get our will? - from some non-physical realm, or from our previous thoughts/senses.

Incorrect. You offered a theory to explain their objections. — Michael Ossipoff

Show me. Either quote me the passage from my posts that offered an explanation for their actions or stop making convenient straw men because you've nothing else to say on the matter.

So it’s a reasonable conclusion that all that is “sensible” is definable — Michael Ossipoff

If you read my sentence with any honesty you will see it clearly states that it is reasonable to argue that believing in something un-defined is not sensible. I have made no claims whatsoever about the set 'all that is sensible'. The set I'm making claims about is 'all that is believed'. You really need to learn how to parse object-subject distinctions in normal sentences.

But when drawing a conclusion from a limited source, one mustn’t apply it to a larger group of people. — Michael Ossipoff

So when stepping out in front of a moving train, you wouldn't get out of the way because your conclusion about what will happen next is only drawn from a limited source, after all, the proportion of the trains you've seen is tiny compared to the group of 'all trains'?

Drawing conclusions about a larger group of people, based on your experience “so far” with a smaller group, is bigotry. — Michael Ossipoff

No it is not. That's why I provided you with a dictionary definition of 'Bigotry', so that you can stop misusing the word.

it’s really common for Atheists to be on the offensive, in organizational activities, and in forums. That isn’t an unfair assessment. It’s common knowledge. — Michael Ossipoff

And again, it's OK for you to make generalisations about atheists based on the ones you've experienced, but not for me to draw conclusions about theists based on exactly the same metric. I can't believe the level of hypocrisy.

without a necessity like that which justifies avoidance of tigers. — Michael Ossipoff

No, they think there is a necessity, you just don't agree with them. Most atheists that I have heard the arguments of think Theism is harmful because of the rejection of critical thinking that goes along with it. You may not agree, but it's disingenuous suggest they don't have a reason.

I have no objection to theistic metaphysics, it is an entirely reasonable option. What I do object to is the deception that the possibility of such metaphysics somehow justifies a particular religion, and the suggestion that atheists have no right to act on their sincere feelings that certain theistic beliefs could cause harm.

What I took issue with in your post is the use of 'most religious people'. I agree that there are some religious people who rationalise their belief in a deity, but I'm really not at all convinced that 'most religious people' do this. That's my point about the imposition of one culture on another in war. It really indicates that 'most' religious people simply adopt whatever belief system their culture has, it gets replaced by a new belief system when one culture conquers another. If people really did just arrive at their fundamental beliefs rationally, why would there be such a huge number of animists among tribal people (virtually no mono-theists), why would there an increasing number of atheists in the modern period as cultural conformity in belief has weakened?

If you're arguing that the majority of religious people freely arrive at the fundamental tenets of their beliefs by rational analysis (an omnipresent, omnipotent, all-good/perfect, all-knowing, creator), then why are there so few examples of such a figure in tribal cultures? Why such a massive surge in such beliefs post Christianity, and then a decline in such beliefs post-enlightenment? Are you suggesting that people's free rational faculties have changes over time for some reason?

Surely the simplest explanation for the changes in (even fundamental) religious beliefs over time, is that they're cultural. One or two influential thinkers rationalise some world-view and the vast majority of the population simply adopt it because it's "the done thing", without giving it more than a moment's thought.

At the risk of sticking my neck out into dangerously un-PC territory, I think maybe what WfPOMO might be saying is that there is arguably a male role that is derived from some set of rationally justifiable beliefs about being male, whereas the 'white' role is only stereotypes, nothing more than the pursuit of power evident in all humanity which, means that, by virtue of historical power plays alone, whites have largely adopted expressions of power where they can. Nothing about being 'white' directly caused them to do this.

A 'male' role is arguably, not a role a woman would adopt even if they could. According to the logic behind it, its largely to do with greater average physical strength and the inability to suckle children. So, the theory goes, women would not adopt the typical male roles because they are not, on average, stronger, and they can suckle children. I'm not saying I necessarily agree with this argument (although I have a great deal of sympathy for it), I'm just saying there is one.

With race, however, whilst a few extreme racists exist who have ideas about racial differences leading to behavioural differences, most people who exhibit 'white' stereotypes do so by virtue of the historical context alone, meaning that had history taken a different route, blacks would have adopted this role instead.

So the argument is, nothing about their 'whiteness' causes them directly to adopt this role, whereas something about a man's 'male-ness' causes him to adopt the roles he does.

Still waiting to hear what determined/caused determinism. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

I don't think any determinist claims to have 'solved' the puzzle of the ultimate cause, but that doesn't make determinism wrong. No metaphysics solve this puzzle. If the world had a creator, then who made God and gave him the properties he had? Maybe God created the universe, made it entirely deterministic and then immediately ceased to exist. Maybe time did not exist until matter so there was no 'before' determinism and so nothing determined determinism because there was no such thing as cause and effect before it.

We cannot solve these problems within our own frame of reference, but that's common to all metaphysics, I don't see how determinism is any different.

One's utterances can reduce to their causes without being vacuous. Even under causal reference, if we presume that the 'baptism' and affirmations of meaning have determined a state of the subject's brain then his utterances refer to that state, either by descriptive (preferably) or even causal reference, at a stretch.

So I'm struggling to see why you think such statements are vacuous.

Unless a determinist asserts retro-causality (which would seem to nullify his position), I don't see how it is possible to both accept what the determinist says and to understand his sentences as being future-referring. — sime

Yes, I see how you arrived at your statements with regards to reference, given a causal reference theory, what I'm saying is that you do not have to adopt a causal reference theory at all. If your references are merely descriptivist, or even mediated, but in some non-causal way, then a sentence can refer to a determined future by reference to the predictions of the users, which are a current state.

1) Causal determination implies that the causal theory of reference is true. — sime

Not sure how you've derived this, so you might need to expand. There are many critics of the causal theory of reference who are determinists, John Searle for example.

2) The causal theory of reference implies that signification of future events is the signification of past events in disguise.
3) Therefore if S is true, its meaning is fully determined by past events and refers only to past events. — sime

You've way overstated the causal theory here, it's only semantic, if you want to extend it to all of the 'meaning' of a statement you'll have to explain how you've made that jump.

Finally your conclusion at 5 doesn't follow at all by necessity from your previous premise, at least not without further exposition.

One of course can argue that one can choose worse option when he practice his freedom. — bahman

Yes, but they'd still have to have some reason to do so wouldn't they? Maybe they think it would be beneficial to choose the 'worst' option just to prove a point about free will, in which case they've identified some benefit in 'proving a point about free will' and so acting to bring about that benefit is not the 'worst' choice any more is it?

I've yet to hear a convincing definition of somebody making a choice which is other than the one they have previously decided is best, for whatever convoluted, confused, sub-concious or mistaken reason.

Eh? You can believe what you want without proof because you are free to ignore opposing positions when they offer proof? — apokrisis

You seem to have misunderstood the scientific process. Theory - Try to disprove theory - If unsuccessful, maintain theory.

The evidence you cite is not proof, it is some evidence. There is a significant difference between 'some evidence' and 'proof'. Proof requires that the evidence is true by necessity, it cannot be explained any other way. Proof is not something a handful of enthusiasts believe in, it is something the entire scientific community agree on. That biology depends on randomness is not one of those things.

Show me a single biology textbook which states that life depends on randomness. — Pseudonym


Peter Hoffman has written a really good book - Life’s Ratchet: How molecular machines extract order from chaos. — apokrisis

Peter Hoffman is a physicist, not a biologist, so if he's written a biology textbook I'd be very surprised, but that's not what this discussion is about. You're claiming proof, not a theory, not that some evidence exists, actual proof. How has is the fact that one single physicist has written a book vaguely related to it constitute proof?

In Mark Haw's review of Life's Ratchet he states "Life's Ratchet starts, like my own book Middle World (Macmillan, 2007), with a somewhat revolutionary premise." Note the words 'revolutionary' and 'premise'. Not "Hoffman's book states what all biologists already agree with and can be taken pretty much as the standard text on the subject"

Life's Ratchet has just 50 citations on Google Scholar. Hoffman's paper on nucleation and growth of copper on TiN from pyrophosphate solution has double that. It's hardly that standard go-to text on the subject.

Would you think it better if I were to follow your approach of just making up my own shit rather than offering arguments based on actual philosophical and scientific positions? — apokrisis

Are you seriously suggesting that there are no scientists or philosophers who believe in any form of determinism? None who believe that free-will does not exist? That the entire Scientific and philosophical community have adopted the approach of Pattee and Hoffman wholesale without criticism? Determinism is a philosophical position. That neural states are directly causal is a scientific position. That is why the matter remains open.

Sure we could debate Pattee when you are up to speed on the biosemiotic position I’m citing. — apokrisis

This is a standard cop out for people who cannot adequately defend their position, to simply accuse their detractors of not understanding the issue - "when you've finished my reading list we can have a discussion".

Summarise what Patte is saying in your own words and I will attempt to offer counter arguments. If my counter arguments are wrong, explain why they are wrong, in your own words. If you can't be bothered to do that, then this is not a discussion.

But it's simply untrue to claim that religious beliefs aren't based on evidence. — gurugeorge

I think you might make that statement about the fact that religious beliefs exist, but not about the actual religious beliefs themselves. 'Religious beliefs' and the belief in a creator of the universe are often conflated but they are not one and the same. A religion states that "There is a creator of all things...", not as a metaphysical answer to a question, but as a necessary precursor to the crucial part which is "... and he said you should do the following..." The second part is what makes a religion, the first is a metaphysical position about causality and time, many atheists have a position on that question.

So in assessing the extent to which religious belief stems from evidence, we need to examine, not the evidence that the universe exists, and so by law of causality needs a creator, but the evidence that, their particular book represents the desires of that creator, or the 'best' way to live, or some other metric regarding why that particular set of instructions and statements of historical fact has been chosen over any other.

Given the cultural and historical progress of religious belief, I think you'd have a hard time proving that such choices had anything to do with evidence. Was there some 'evidence' against the Roman gods of Olympus that meant people no longer believed in them? Did someone demonstrate by any means that Valhalla does not exist? Or is history a story of advancing (often in very bloody battles) the 'culture' of one religion over another which was then adopted, quite sensibly, by the population, largely out of a desire to socially conform, more than occasionally out of fear for their lives.

If religions are adopted largely on the basis of evidence, then why the inquisition, the crusades, Jihad, the slaughter of tribes in the colonies? It all sounds a bit bloody and unnecessary if people are just going to convert as a result of a convincing argument.

I'm hugely in favour of UBI, but I don't think it's without its serious problems, for example, how are we going to get all the less desirable jobs done? Who on earth would opt to clean sewers just to get a bit of extra spending money?

I think discussion of the uncertainty about what represents the 'best' choice is missing the point of the OP. The point was not to say that free-will becomes useless because we know what is best for us, it's saying that it becomes useless because we think we know what's best for us and as rational beings we would always select that option, therefore something constrains our choices. As Schopenhauer says, we can do what we will, but we cannot will what we will.

So the question really comes down to whether there exist any choices we might make where the answer is not in any way pre-determined by preferences we had before the choice. 'Mind-reading' acts rely on the fact that even something as seemingly random as picking a random number are actually influenced by pre-existing ideas. We rarely pick the lowest, middle or the highest in the specified range, we think odd numbers are more 'random' than even numbers for some reason. The numbers 3 and 7 seem to occur more often than they would if they were truly randomly selected.

If we can't even pick a random number without our pre-existing mental state influencing it towards one decision out of the supposedly 'free' choice, then I don't see much hope of demonstrating that our important choices in life are anything other than determined in advance by the dispositions we already have.

As I have outline repeatedly, philosophy is about finding coherent justifications for beliefs, if you think you can actually 'prove' a metaphysical position then you have not read a sufficient quantity of philosophy. You are trying to justify your belief in some type of free-will, and you can do so using the epistemic cut Pattee talks about. I'm trying to justify a belief in a compatibilist version of free-will and I am doing so by citing the absence of any necessary evidence to the contrary.

We can debate, in the hope of refining each other's justifications, to make them better, but the moment you start suggesting that your evidence makes indeterminism materially necessary, you are no longer debating refinements in justifications, you're evangelising. Why should I provide a detailed neurological outline of the way in which one state transfers to another? It is sufficient justification for me to maintain my belief that no-one has yet provided a testable, pragmatically true, proof that neurobiology does not proceed deterministically, it is not incumbent on me to prove that it does in order to justify my belief.

Statements like;

If you were familiar with biology, then you would find that life actually depends on randomness. — apokrisis

are just nonsensical to produce as if they were 'facts'. Show me a single biology textbook which states that life depends on randomness. Try putting "life depends on randomness" into a Google Scholar search and see how many technical biological papers turn up on the topic. The answer is none (at least not for the first few pages I looked at. Top result at the moment is in fact a mathematician who states specifically (about apparent randomness in nature) "I would go so far as to suggest that most of the randomness that we commonly experience arises from these two factors—complexity and independence." Try 'role of randomness in biology'. The top result is a PlosOne article outlining the debate. Key word there being 'debate' i.e not settled fact.

If all you're going to do is suggest that anyone who continues to disagree with you after the presentation of one article must be closed-minded and have no interest in hearing challenging positions, then you might as well go door-to-door proselytising. This site (as I understand it) is for actual debate.

You do realise how utterly pointless it is on a philosophy forum to just say, "you don't get it, it's all written down here" and then point to your preferred commentator. Is Pattee widely considered to be the world authority on how to think about biological systems? No.

If we can't maintain an argument where each post presents counter arguments to the prior post then there's little point in continuing. We might just as well refer each other to the SEP entry for the position we're arguing.

what ensures that neurons behave deterministically if you are claiming it is information and not physics? — apokrisis

I'm not claiming it is information, as opposed to physics, in the same way as my example with the sentence would not be considered either information or words, it is both. 'Information' is just a word we give to the effect of one physical state on the physical state of our brains. There's no necessity for it to be non-physical.

However if it is our free choice about what programme code to write, what rules to create, then the freewill issue can’t be solved by pointing to that kind of machine determinism. — apokrisis

This doesn't demonstrate anything without begging the question. The computer is used as an example of our brain, a metaphor, once it is running a calculation. In the real world you obviously have to have a programmer, but does that programmer have to have free will? Are you suggesting that it would somehow be impossible for a computer to program another computer?

But in answer to your direct question I don't think it's at all inconceivable that the laws of chemistry and physics could dictate the subsequent state of our neurons based on their prior state and the new electrical and chemical stimuli they receive.

What set them into their starting conditions? DNA. what set that to be chemically the way it is? Your parent's DNA and the chemical and physical environment in which the two chromosomes paired (which determine any errors). Go back far enough you get to the first DNA molecule made they way it is by the chemical and physical environment, caused ultimately by the physical laws governing the universe, all the way back to the big bang. Beyond that, who knows?

So at some point you have to be able to say in what way you think the neurobiology of brains is informationally deterministic. What does such a claim mean? — apokrisis

As above really, it means that the next physical state of all the neurons in the brain is determined by the prior physical state of those neurons plus all the universe interacting with them. The change from one state to the next being determined by the laws of physics, which themselves are determined by the initial state of the universe.

You seem to be confusing determinism with omniscience. No-one said anything about a human being ever actually knowing what is going to happen next, only that it is determined by the previous state of the universe. No-one had even claimed that this determination should be by virtue of physical laws (though many do claim that). The claim of determinism is solely that somehow the state of the universe in the next moment is determined by its state in the previous moment.

Determinists are not claiming to have sufficient knowledge of the physical laws which cause one state to progress to the next, nor that such knowledge could ever be practically obtainable, only that such laws exist and that they do cause ons state to proceed to the next in a determined manner.

I'm not suggesting that such a world-view is irrefutable, very few world-view are, but that it is an entirely reasonable, well supported and pragmatic approach which has yet to be disproven.

The French for "how many?" is 'combien', one word. The French for "why?" is 'pourquoi', originally two words. "What?" doesn't even have a direct translation into French, being variously 'que', 'quoi', and 'qu'est-ce que'. I don't think the French have a radically different way of viewing the world to us, so I don't see how the singularity of a question like "why?" indicates that it is in some way more significant than, say "what colour?".

So fill in the blank. The next word I’m going to write is the word ... — apokrisis

There is not information in that sentence to tell me what the next word you're going to write is, the information to tell me that is in your brain and the state of the entire universe around you, which is why I can't possibly predict it, but that doesn't mean it's not there. The sentence I used as an example contained within it at one moment (just before I wrote the second 'tells') the information you needed to know what its state would be the next moment (exactly the same but with the word 'tells' added. I don't see what you're finding so hard to understand about that.

So how would you go about measuring the state that is a collection of neurons?

Or in a collection of transistors in a computer.

And how would you know what the previous state was and the next state was of either. — apokrisis

I imagine in much the same way as the sentence "the next word I'm going to write is the word 'tells'", tells you exactly what state my post will be in next. The state of my post up to that pont contains the information you need to determine the state it will be in next.

…or could it be that maybe they’re tired of people who presume to speak for them? — Michael Ossipoff

I didn't speculate on their motives, only reported their actions.

…while claiming that positions, beliefs or faith that you don’t know, must be undefined — Michael Ossipoff

Again with this? Show me where I claimed that theist beliefs are all undefined. I claimed that it is a reasonable conclusion (among other equally reasonable conclusions) that to believe in something that is undefined is not sensible. I've made no claims at all about whether each and every theist's belief is or is not undefined.

Fine. Draw conclusions about the beliefs of the people who have told you their beliefs. Limit your conclusions to them. — Michael Ossipoff

Show me where I have not admitted that my conclusions are drawn from a limited source.

Yes, and it’s common. It’s called bigotry. — Michael Ossipoff

No, bigotry is defined as "intolerance towards those who hold different opinions from oneself." it has nothing to do with drawing conclusions based on a person's experience so far. I have not advocated intolerance on the basis that someone's belief is different to mine, not ever.

Drawing conclusions about the beliefs of people other than the ones whose beliefs you’ve heard about.
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Well, but what other Atheist activity is there? — Michael Ossipoff

Unbelievable. Literally in the same couplet you criticise the conflation of 'all theists' and then immediately make a presumption about 'all atheists' do you even know what hypocrisy means?

It’s easy to make a sloppy irrelevant analogy. — Michael Ossipoff

It's easy to simply state an analogy is sloppy and irrelevant without actually presenting an argument as to why... apparently.

Why do you assume it does? It was merely meant to be an example of what might be true. — BlueBanana

Thank you for re-asserting my intention. I sometimes wonder if I'm typing in a different language from the extent to which my comments get misinterpreted. It's reassuring that at least some people, on some occasions, understand them.

As JSG says, violence is justified in hindsight, which is why I'm no utilitarian. To my mind one has to ask oneself whether the act is an example of a virtuous person. One simple way of doing this which I use when teaching ethics is to ask if we would make a film where such a person was the hero. This question used to make a lot more sense many years ago before filmmakers decided that everything had to be 'gritty', but it still works for most people. Would the hero of our film smash up shops owned by people who had nothing to do with the regime they're fighting against?