My suspicion is that these properties are now epiphenomenal, but were not always so. Consider the pain you feel when you burn your finger. Scientists tell us that you snatch your finger away before you feel the pain, suggesting that the pain is epiphenomenal; but why have we evolved to feel the pain, if it serves no causal function? I think perhaps pain was causal millions of years ago, but then animals evolved a faster response system that by-passes the pain, leaving it as an epiphenomenon. — Herg

So suppose, as you say, that in our evolutionary past pain (qua mental state) served a causal function. Does that mean then that the neurophysiological states that realized this mental state were epiphenomenal? How would that work?

Here is Levada-Center, a reputable Russian research center:Religion and superstition survey conducted in Russia over a number of years.

Self-identified as Orthodox Christian: 75% in 2017

"I know without a doubt that God exists": 25% (2015) - 31% (2017) (cf. 25% between 2015-2017 in the Pew survey - a good match)

So, three quarters self-identify as Orthodox, but only between one quarter and one third are sure that God exists. Indeed, among "Orthodox" the percentage is only slightly higher: in 2017 34% are sure that God exists, and "one out of every eight... doesn’t believe in God or isn’t sure whether God exists."

There is self-identification (which is what authorities care about) and there is belief - not the same thing. And only a small percentage of self-identified Orthodox are actually observant to any significant extent. But that's not unique to Russia. In the US, for example, people will say that they are "Catholic," but oftentimes they mean nothing more than that they come from a Catholic family (which may not have been particularly religious either). "Jewish" self-identification is even less correlated with religion.

But isn't that assuming dualism of some kind? Reason has causal import but reason isn't an immaterial thing as of necessity. Right? — TheMadFool

Well, the argument doesn't explicitly assume any metaphysical stance on the nature of reason; it seeks to challenge determinists (in this context: those who maintain that our actions and thought processes are due only to physical causes) on their own ground.

If logic, reason, etc. are physical things, then they're part of the causal closure in that case, and could indeed have an effect. — Terrapin Station

Right, that would be the identity thesis: the abstract, or the mental just is the physical, or somehow supervene on the physical (and then it's just the matter of "naturalizing" them if you wish to demonstrate the specific connection).

Let's look at Eccle's argument. If the world is deterministic then what we believe isn't within our control. The argument assumes that rationality is not possible in a deterministic world. But we have computers - perfect rational machines - and they don't have free will. — TheMadFool

You are reprising A.J. Ayer's argument in The Concept of a Person (1963):

The statement that one believes a given proposition on such and such rational grounds, and the statement that one believes it because such and such processes are occurring in one's brain can, both of them, be true. The word 'because' is used in a different sense in either case, but these senses are not destructive of each other... This is illustrated even by the example of a calculating machine. The way the machine operates depends on the way in which it has been constructed, but it is also true that it operates in accordance with certain logical rules. From the fact that its operations are causally explicable it does not follow that they are not logically valid. — A. J. Ayer

Note however that this argument only shows that causal determination does not preclude rationality. The argument that determinism is self-defeating usually makes a weaker claim: that there is no necessary connection between physical causality, which produces what we take to be beliefs and other mental states, and the attributes of truth, logic, reason, etc. that we would like to claim for our beliefs. If the physical world is causally closed, then truth, logic, reason, and other abstract things cannot have an effect on it. And if so, then any correlation between the two realms is either fortuitous or due to some inexplicable preexisting harmony. So the argument goes...

By his very belief in universal determinism, the determinist, if he is consistent, cannot interpret his opponent's sentence " I possess free will" to be an actual claim to possess an objective property. This is because if universal determinism is true then the only objective meaning the determinist can ascribe in his opponent's sentences are the physical causes that precipitated them. Therefore the determinist must understand his opponent's sentences to be trivially and necessarily correct in an epistemological sense whatever those sentences are, and to be 'wrongable' only in the conventional sense of disagreeing with the linguistic convention adopted by the determinist. — sime

This sounds somewhat like Popper's argument that says that physicalist (let's call it that to avoid confusion) ontology is too impoverished. But a physicalist need not limit herself to just the "objective" language of physical causes. At least I haven't yet seen a persuasive argument to that effect.

this denial either presupposes free will for the deliberately chosen response in making that denial, which is a contradiction, or else it is merely the automatic response of a nervous system built by genetic coding and molded by conditioning — Eccles

Right. So a determinist cannot interpret his opponent as asserting a contrary epistemological position. — sime

I can't see how you are getting this from the quoted snippet. I think you are just reading into it your own thoughts (which I don't claim to understand).

You seem to be responding to one word in the title of the thread and nothing else besides.

That's not determinism being self-refuting, i.e. denying or undermining itself through its own entailments - that's just you denying determinism. Not the same thing, and not what the topic is about.

Well, the pop-sci story that I've seen is that at the beginning of the Carboniferous period the climate was warm and humid, but during the later part of the period, as carbon was sequestered from the atmosphere, both the CO2 concentration and the temperature declined to approximately present levels.

At any rate, that's problematic that Popper is conflating materialism/physicalism and determinism (in my opinion as a physicalist who isn't a determinist). — Terrapin Station

This is not an unusual use of the term determinism - at least it was not at that time. Nowadays determinism is most often taken to mean Laplacean causal or nomological determinism, but in the context of the freedom of will and related topics, determinism was sometimes taken to mean something else. Boyle, Grisez & Tollefsen have a nice discussion of it in Determinism, freedom, and self-referential arguments (1972). They give the following definition:

[N]o special interpretive model beyond the interpretive models used to account for natural events and processes is needed to account for the initiation of human actions; an additional interpretive model used to account for the initiation of actions is a needless proliferation of explanatory machinery. Reformulated in terms of our previous description of the ordinary man's understanding of his actions, determinism implies that there is no warrant for a naively realistic interpretation of the experience of choice among alternatives. Determinism, in the sense in which we are concerned with it here, must exclude any interpretation of that experience which involves a claim that there are really open possibilities among which it is up to the agent alone to choose. — Boyle, Grisez & Tollefsen

So determinism is effectively opposed to libertarianism: "explanations of human actions exhibit the appropriate inferential and nomological pattern of explanations found in physical and biological sciences," as opposed to "explanations of action form a unique type of explanation with special logical and methodological requirements distinct from those of explanations in natural science." (Richard Brandt and Jaegwon Kim, "Wants as Explanations of Actions," 1963).

As should be clear, determinism in this sense is compatible with causal indeterminism.

You are right in that Popper does not make such a clear distinction - in fact, he talks explicitly about Laplacean determinism in places. But I suspect that his thinking was motivated more by the other sense, that of explanatory determinism. Nevertheless, both he and Eccles end up betting on causal indeterminism on their quest to escape explanatory determinism - which I think occasions confusion.

I wouldn't put it past a philosopher to write a book about something so utterly banal and obvious, but why would you want to read it?

what people would actually do if science were capable of completely exact predictions of human behavior, and someone were told what they would do next — ernestm

What struck me is that this situation is the same as the quantum observer effect, where particles move unpredictably upon being observed. — ernestm

What people would do if their behavior was accurately predicted is - that's right, they would behave exactly as predicted. Because that's just what you are assuming. The more contentious question is whether the hypothetical situation is at all possible. This question has been debated by philosophers after Dostoyevsky, but it's interesting that Dostoyevsky already wrote about it. I wonder whether he got the idea from someone else or came up with it himself?

As for quantum measurements, they are definitely possible, and some of them are somewhat unpredictable, so that's nothing like that thought experiment.

If not for the "caveat," I would have expected the "no contact at 30 days" group to be 12 out of 12 :)

Of course we can't really provide another hypothetical to counter act his hypothetical that would defeat the purpose of his hypothetical and just avoid his hypothetical. — NakedNdAfraid

Why can't we? Because we don't want to make him feel bad about losing an argument?

When making decisions, we do consider various hypotheticals, but if we are being reasonable, we do some selection according to their plausibility and potential impact. We ignore extremely implausible hypotheticals, as well as unimportant hypotheticals. For example, when you are about to sit on a chair, most of the time you do not take seriously the possibility that someone might yank it from under you. Nor do you consider the price of tea in China. On the other hand, a relatively implausible hypothetical with a potentially very high impact may be worth considering, so there is some risk-reward balancing.

Another important thing in a rational decision making is to be consistent about which hypotheticals you include into consideration, and not give them preferential treatment for irrelevant reasons. So if someone asks you: "What if the Gay-Hating God punishes gays in the afterlife?" you are quite in your rights to retort: "What if the Straight-Hating God punishes straights in the afterlife?" Because both are equally valid, albeit extremely remote hypotheticals, at least if you are not a believer in either the Gay-Hating God or the Straight-Hating God.

Arguments to the effect that determinism (and/or materialism/naturalism/physicalism) is self-defeating* abound. In The Self and Its Brain Popper cites biologist J. B. S. Haldane's argument (later retracted) from 1932: "...if materialism is true, it seems to me that we cannot know that it is true. If my opinions are the result of the chemical processes going on in my brain, they are determined by the laws of chemistry, not of logic." He traces the argument even further back, all the way to Epicurus: "He who says that all things happen of necessity cannot criticize another who says that not all things happen of necessity. For he has to admit that his saying also happened of necessity." **

* Either in the sense that it is self-contradictory, i.e. it implies its own falsity, or more commonly, in the sense that it undermines rationality, and therefore cannot be rationally justified, even if true.

** Popper acknowledges one (rather week) objection to such arguments, which he addresses, but it is not the objection that Churchland makes, contrary to what he says in his reply to her (Is Determinism Self-Refuting, 1983).

Here is C. S. Lewis, writing in 1947:

Supposing there was no intelligence behind the universe, no creative mind. In that case, nobody designed my brain for the purpose of thinking. It is merely that when the atoms inside my skull happen, for physical or chemical reasons, to arrange themselves in a certain way, this gives me, as a by-product, the sensation I call thought. But, if so, how can I trust my own thinking to be true? It's like upsetting a milk jug and hoping that the way it splashes itself will give you a map of London. But if I can't trust my own thinking, of course I can't trust the arguments leading to Atheism, and therefore have no reason to be an Atheist, or anything else. Unless I believe in God, I cannot believe in thought: so I can never use thought to disbelieve in God. — Lewis

James Jordan in Determinism's Dilemma (1969) identifies and critiques a version of the argument in Kant, as well as in a few more recent writers. Here is his own emendation:

Suppose we are asked to accept the proposition that all our rational assessments have sufficient - not just necessary - causal conditions. In order to show that we ought to believe this, someone would need to produce evidence which is seen to conform to criteria of reasonable trustworthiness and which is recognized to confer, by virtue of some principle of deductive or probable inference, certainty or sufficient probability upon it. But if the proposition is true, this could never happen, for it implies that whether anyone believes it and what he considers trustworthy evidence and acceptable principles of inference are determined altogether by conditions that have no assured congruence with the proposition's own merits or with criteria of sound argumentation whose validity consists of more than that we accept them. Whether we believe the proposition and what considerations we undertake before making a decision depend simply on sufficient and necessary causal conditions that logically need not be, and quite probably are not, relevant to the issues involved in assessing propositions for truth and arguments for validity. If our rational assessments are conditioned solely by factors whose exhaustive statement would omit mention of the recognized accordance of our deliberations with criteria of trustworthy evidence and correct inference, then the recognition of the relevance of these criteria is either inefficacious or absent. Of course, one still might occasionally believe what is true, but this would always be the out come of happy circumstances, never of reasoned investigation. And if this is true of our rational assessment of any argument, it is true of our attempts to determine the strengths and weaknesses of any argument for the proposition in question. If the latter is true, any argument for it is self-defeating, for it entails that no argument can be known to be sound. — Jordan

Alvin Plantinga's Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism (EAAN) is of the same nature. It takes on the more specific claim that our cognitive faculties arose by way of natural evolution, with no supernatural guidance, but its thrust is basically the same. A similar argument was given earlier by William James. Having been revived by Plantinga, EAAN has spawned its own body of literature.

I have come across dozens more papers discussing the thesis, often in the context of the freedom of will (by those who are impressed by incompatibilist arguments).

Have you looked into Husserl? — sign

No, I stick with analytics; continentals make my cat-brain hurt :razz: Although the clarity of analytic philosophers can be deceptive (when it is not trivial). For example, I still don't have any clear idea of how "interactionism" is supposed to work: exactly how those worlds and levels are supposed to be affecting each other? Popper doesn't really explain.

As far as Eccles's contribution to the debate, the passage that Churchland quotes is the extent of that particular argument - not very illuminating, to be sure. Dr. Eccles, a Nobel-winning brain scientist and an old-fashioned Cartesian dualist, devotes the rest of the article to a detailed discussion of the neurophysiology of the brain and his thoughts about mind-brain interaction.

The argument that Popper makes in The Self and Its Brain (1973)* is that by committing to determinism you forfeit any claim to rationality; in particular, you cannot support your belief in determinism by a rational argument. Thus, determinism is self-undermining (not self-refuting). This argument does not provide you a reason to think that determinism is false. It only purports to show that you cannot possibly have a rational reason for believing determinism.

* The book was written in collaboration with Eccles, but they wrote two of the three parts independently, and Churchland's references in that book are to Popper's part.

Note that by determinism Popper means both causal determinism (the idea that "physical theory, together with the initial conditions prevalent at some given moment, completely determine the state of the physical universe at any other moment"), and more generally, "mechanical determinism," materialism, or physicalism - all of these terms are used interchangeably. His main challenge is to the idea of the causal closure of the physical world, or "World 1":

First, there is the physical world - the universe of physical entities...; this I will call "World 1". Second, there is the world of mental states, including states of consciousness and psychological dispositions and unconscious states; this I will call "World 2". But there is also a third such world, the world of the contents of thought, and, indeed, of the products of the human mind [such as stories, explanatory myths, tools, scientific theories (whether true or false), scientific problems, social institutions, and works of art]; this I will call "World 3"...

One of my main theses is that World 3 objects can be real...: not only in their World 1 materializations or embodiments, but also in their World 3 aspects. As World 3 objects, they may induce men to produce other World 3 objects and, thereby, to act on World 1; and interaction with World 1 - even indirect interaction - I regard as a decisive argument for calling a thing real. — The Self and Its Brain

Popper argues that all of these "worlds" exist and causally interact with each other. (And even within each world there are still more worlds, or layers, that likewise exhibit both upwards and downwards causation.) World 2 emerged from World 1 in the course of biological evolution, and World 3 emerged from the other two. But this order of emergence does not reflect the hierarchy of causal relationships between the worlds, because once they emerge, they begin to strongly interact with each other in every direction.

As for the argument that Churchland criticizes, it proceeds from Popper's rejection of epiphenomenalism: the idea that the mental is causally inert and does not interact with the physical world - which to him means the same thing as to say that the mental is not real. And this leads him to conclude that "if epiphenomenalism is true, we cannot take seriously as a reason or argument whatever is said in its support.".

The proof of this thesis is offered in the form of a lengthy dialogue between a Physicalist and an Interactionist, but my impression is that the idea of self-defeat, declared beforehand, does not come through clearly in that dialogue. Popper once again endeavors to defend the reality and indispensability of his World 3 - the world of ideas - and once he is satisfied that he has thrashed his imaginary opponent on that point, he declares victory.

I suppose a sketch of the argument would look something like this:

1. If the physical world is causally closed (this thesis Popper variously labels as materialism, physicalism or determinism), then it follows that the world of ideas is causally inert. (Some alternatives, such as the identity thesis, are rejected in separate arguments.)

2. Take any proposition, such as 1 + 1 = 2, or indeed the proposition that affirms the truth of physicalism. To what does it owe its truth? Both the proposition and any arguments in support of its truth are abstract ideas. But the physicalist only has the physical world at her disposal to make the argument. Nor can the abstract be reduced to the physical. Thus it follows that the physicalist cannot rationally support her own position.

More later.

Simple question? Why would you think you could replace a word, here, without loss of meaning? — Anthony

Because I mistook what you wrote for an argument. I have since realized my mistake. Carry on.

When consciousness itself isn't entirely understood, in what way wouldn't it be prevaricating trying to assert a machine can be conscious? — Anthony

Substitute anything else for "consciousness" in the above sentence and you'll realize how absurd it is.

When motion itself isn't entirely understood, in what way wouldn't it be prevaricating trying to assert that something can be moving?

When kindness itself isn't entirely understood, in what way wouldn't it be prevaricating trying to assert that someone can be kind?

If machines truly were sentient — Anthony

I am not sure why you wrote that string of remarks in response to my post. I didn't opine on whether machines were "truly sentient." All I said was that words have meanings that we give them. There is no law that says that the word "intelligent" can only imply "true sentience," forever and ever. This word has been used in other senses for a long time. Moreover, I don't know if there even was a time when the word exclusively referred to the totality of sentience, as you insist, rather than some aspect of it.

Some words are just names for things well-known. Other words, terms-of-art, are invented words, or invented meanings for existing words, and the words themselves or meanings thereof really cannot be understood without already understanding the thing the word refers to. To refer to a machine as intelligent is the use of the word "intelligent" in just that latter sense. — tim wood

I think the word "intelligent" is widely used in a more general sense of exhibiting complex, responsive, behavior, well suited to a purpose so that it should not even be considered to be a term of art.

We are the masters of our language, not the the other way around; we create meanings. If we apply the word 'intelligent' to something other than a human being, then that is what the word means. And supposing that the origin of this meaning is anthropomorphic, as you seem to assume, so what?

OED gives this as one of the secondary meanings for 'intelligent':

(of a device or building) able to vary its state or action in response to varying situations and past experience.

What exactly do you mean by "determinism" here? Are you using a strict physicalist definition, or some loose metaphorical one, as in "business as usual"? I am asking because what you say about people acting "out of character", "enlightenment," etc. doesn't seem to have much to do with physical determinism.

I am trying to prove that we can act freely even if we choose not to most of our lives. — Jamesk

Your proof, as far as I can see, consists in redefining what it means to "act freely." To paraphrase Russell, this method of redefining words has many advantages; they are the same as the advantages of theft over honest toil.

The core of what you are saying consists in the observation that most of the time people "sleepwalk" through life, but sometimes they do something "out of character." (Like that mother of four who one day, for no obvious reason, killed all of her children... Oops! Bad example.) Which is true enough, but also a banality.

I don't communicate via Facebook, but I wasn't writing about myself. That Facebook plays an outsize role on the Internet for just some "social media site" cannot be denied if you haven't been living in a cave for the last decade.

Just want to add that Facebook is not just one website among many, one product offering among many. In some parts Facebook is pretty much synonymous with Internet, which makes it more like a utility, for better or for worse. So what Facebook does (or does not do) is not just a private business decision - it has a global social impact.

Now that you guys have figured out how to make a subsection less visible, I would suggest adding another one besides The Lounge. Right now The Lounge doubles as a place for relaxed and off-topic discussion, as well as a dump for threads that don't fit moderators' standards in other forums, which makes for a weird mix. I would rather see a dedicated "dump" subsection (you could give it a more polite name, like "Not quite philosophy" or something).

I could live for a million years and I wouldn't be too old for college girls. — Terrapin Station

Only if those girls study paleontology in college. Then you would be quite a find!

If there is a problem, it is an overall quality of discussion across topics. There are some specialized topics that have a certain knowledge barrier for entry, e.g. discussions focused on specific philosophical works; those discussions tend to be of a higher quality. And then there are topics that are both widely engaging and without any apparent prerequisites for participation - and that is where the overall quality is lower, for understandable reasons. Religion is just one example. Free will would be another.

Is it a empirical fact or quite possibly an illusion? That’s my whole argument. — Yajur

It is an empirical fact.

You are going at it backwards. The first thing you need to do is to ask: What is free will? And think very carefully about how you are going to answer that question. Instead, you kind of assume that you know what it means, based on how the words sound to you. And as a result, you end up talking about some simplistic artificial concept that doesn't apply to anything in the world.

So you proved that "free will" in your sense does not exist. But so what? It's an absolutely useless result, since your sense does not concern anyone but yourself.

So, you are not free with respect to your carb consumption. — Yajur

You are not "free" in one narrow sense, but that sense has little relevance to what we usually think of as exercising free will. Case in point - your own example. Everyone would agree that if you have the luxury to choose what you eat, and no one intervenes to limit your choice, then your choice is free. Now, this is an empirical fact. The task of the philosopher is to make her account of free will consistent with that fact.

If you say that the alternative possibility must be under the libertarians control, then what exactly is the libertarian controlling that is not determinative? — Relativist

You gave one possible answer in your preceding paragraph:

If I make a choice based on my prior beliefs and dispositions, isn't that choice under my control? That seems to be the case irrespective of whether our free will is libertarian or compatibilist. — Relativist

That is indeed the line pursued by some libertarians. You control your choices in virtue of them being your choices. Control, according to this view, is not causal control.

OK, but any factor under the agent's control seems determinative, which falsifies LFW. — Relativist

It is widely recognized that there are two main aspects to free will: alternative possibilities and agent control. Most of those who affirm free will are obliged to account for both of these aspects, and libertarian free will advocates are no exception.

Your proposal to go to war over fake news suggests the knee-jerk reaction of a right-wing authoritarian. The priority is not so much to deal with the situation as to punish the transgressor, no matter the cost and the consequences.

As to actually addressing the problem, you have to accept the reality that many problems cannot be successfully resolved - as in Mission Accomplished! - only mitigated or contained at best. In the end you have to choose between the least of evils, and the choices are often far from obvious. Sometimes the least worst option is to do nothing. I am not saying that this is the case here. I don't know what the best approach to deal with information warfare (as Russians themselves like to refer to it) would be.

Education (counter-propaganda) and exposure may help to mitigate and contain, but not every such effort is going to be successful, and some may even be counterproductive. Simply debunking lies can actually have a blowback effect, as some studies suggest.

Political pressure? Sanctions? I have a feeling that these are the kinds of direct responses that are easy to sell to your domestic audience, because they show that you are doing something and being firm. But do they actually work? I am not so sure.

War? Are you fucking nuts?

Be ware that MU's "definitions" are his own. If for some reason you want to know what MU thinks about mathematics (or anything else for that matter), then by all means read what MU has to say about it. If you want to know something about the subject as such, look elsewhere.

You proposal would benefit from some examples, followed by an argument to the effect that such instances are the norm. Right now I don't see that at all. There are, I am sure, instances where a successful innovation was the result of a fortuitous infidelity in the process of replication, but I don't believe that is very common, let alone the norm.

I personally wouldn't use Nietzsche, Freud, and Jung as authorities on consciousness; I put more trust into more modern psychology and cognitive science, and philosophy of mind even.

Anyway, I think you are conflating consciousness with awareness. We are aware of only a few things at a time, but our conscious activity covers a lot more ground. So it is awareness that is a "surface phenomenon," but awareness is only a small part of consciousness.

Russophobia — Wallows

That's a Russian propaganda term, which in practice means any word or action by an outside actor or an opposition figure that rubs the Russian leadership the wrong way. Russophobic is an update of the Soviet-era go-to term Anti-Soviet, which was used just as freely by Soviet leadership and propaganda.

People can only be fooled so many times. — Wallows

You couldn't be more wrong. Everything we've learned indicates that people can be fooled as long as they are willing to be fooled, which is most of the time.

Lies between nations is more difficult. Perhaps some war.... — tim wood

Oh sure. There's no problem that a little hot war won't fix. It's been working out great up to now, so why not do it more often?

We all like to moan about how awful our leaders are, but when you read something like this, you realize that it could've been a lot worse...

I've read one physicist claiming that this means that existence, time, space, everything must be finite, because infinite sets are logically contradictory, as you can apparently change their ratios by changing the order in which you look at them. — Fuzzball Baggins

I wonder who would say such a thing. Where did you read this?

What do you guys think? Anything wrong with my reasoning? Anything I've missed? — Fuzzball Baggins

Yeah, you missed, or rather forgot, your own argument showing that some measures just aren't well-defined. This doesn't imply anything logically contradictory, of course, only that not every measure that you care to describe is well-defined.

The measure problem in cosmology is not that you can't come up with some well-defined measure - there is no lack of candidates. The problem is in coming up with a physical justification for a specific measure - and that's a scientific problem.

Yeah, his communication skills leave much to be desired, in more ways than one. I am not going to bother with him any further.

Wasn't Strawson saying that we are not ultimately responsible for our actions? This seems to be a radical claim, and it has huge implications for human concerns. At least I think so. — Noah Te Stroete

Yes, he is saying that we are not ultimately responsible. But Strawson's ultimate responsibility is not the same as what we usually think of as moral responsibility. To paraphrase Dennett, it is not the moral responsibility worth having. It is irrelevant to our concerns.