Our condeming nature, or is it religion that's brought it out of us?

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mentalgymnast
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Re: Our condeming nature, or is it religion that's brought it out of us?

Post by mentalgymnast »

dastardly stem wrote:
Mon Feb 22, 2021 3:01 pm
mentalgymnast wrote:
Fri Feb 19, 2021 9:25 pm


I wonder if Victor Frankl would agree. He makes the argument that all humans do have free will, it just takes a certain kind of person to exercise it, and make the choices that others around them do not. He found that purpose is what drives people. He found that there was a strong relationship between “meaninglessness” and criminal behaviors, addictions and depression.

https://www.studymode.com/essays/Viktor ... 90802.html
https://www.pursuit-of-happiness.org/hi ... or-frankl/

So at least at the level where we choose purpose over meaninglessness we have free will. It’s not an illusion.

At least in the concentration camps it wasn’t.

Free will as an illusion, I think, is a dangerous position to take. But if you take accountability out of the picture and make some other tweaks, I can see why you might flirt with this idea.

Regards,
MG
The issue we have here is humans are more complex than this. Of course feelings of meaninglessness can lead to criminal and harmful behavior. Religion seems to get a win here because it's so dominant. But we fail to acknowledge people find meaning outside of religion all the time. And, it may be that people feel meaninglessness because others are telling them without religion there is no meaning. You seem to suggest this all shows fee will plays a factor. But your view doesn't account for much in terms of humanity. What drives someone to addiction? Well, of course it's different for everyone. The problem is if a meth addict, we'll say, has a chance to relive his life, with every single parameter the same, he'd get addicted to meth every time. Every environmental factor from his birth remains given him without choice. If his mom is addicted to meth, and he eventually gets addicted, well, he didn't choose his mom, nor her situation. He also did not choose his genes and hormones. He didn't choose his brain and how it's wired. Its all put upon him. And from his birth on, his brain is fed data from the environment around him. You may think he has a choice freely to choose whatever he wants. But he's limited to the options given him whenever faced with a decision. And each time he's deciding something it's a factor of what he is. If his brain settles on something, the options and reasons presented are those which he's been fed. They aren't more than that because you have a feeling that anyone can choose whatever they want. No, we're all just limited to what's been given us.

Extend this thinking to the rest of us and its easy to see free will is an illusion.
I’m afraid I’m not quote the determinist that you are. That everything is cause and effect with little or no real choice involved. Folks have gone round and round on this topic. May I suggest a podcast you might like to listen to in its entirety?

https://www.skeptic.com/michael-shermer ... an-people/

In the latter half Michael and Jason have a short discussion on free will. It’s worth the listen. Michael is more or less deterministic. Jason is not. You might enjoy it.

Regards,
MG
Lem
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Re: Our condeming nature, or is it religion that's brought it out of us?

Post by Lem »

Physics Guy wrote:
Mon Feb 22, 2021 6:27 pm
I don’t think our synapses and instincts are controlling us: they are us....
Excellent point.
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Re: Our condeming nature, or is it religion that's brought it out of us?

Post by Moksha »

mentalgymnast wrote:
Mon Feb 22, 2021 6:58 pm
In the latter half, Michael and Jason have a short discussion on free will. It’s worth the listen. Michael is more or less deterministic.
Image
Jason - It's free will, damn it!!! | Michael - Nuh-uh!!!
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dastardly stem
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Re: Our condeming nature, or is it religion that's brought it out of us?

Post by dastardly stem »

mentalgymnast wrote:
Mon Feb 22, 2021 6:58 pm
dastardly stem wrote:
Mon Feb 22, 2021 3:01 pm


The issue we have here is humans are more complex than this. Of course feelings of meaninglessness can lead to criminal and harmful behavior. Religion seems to get a win here because it's so dominant. But we fail to acknowledge people find meaning outside of religion all the time. And, it may be that people feel meaninglessness because others are telling them without religion there is no meaning. You seem to suggest this all shows fee will plays a factor. But your view doesn't account for much in terms of humanity. What drives someone to addiction? Well, of course it's different for everyone. The problem is if a meth addict, we'll say, has a chance to relive his life, with every single parameter the same, he'd get addicted to meth every time. Every environmental factor from his birth remains given him without choice. If his mom is addicted to meth, and he eventually gets addicted, well, he didn't choose his mom, nor her situation. He also did not choose his genes and hormones. He didn't choose his brain and how it's wired. Its all put upon him. And from his birth on, his brain is fed data from the environment around him. You may think he has a choice freely to choose whatever he wants. But he's limited to the options given him whenever faced with a decision. And each time he's deciding something it's a factor of what he is. If his brain settles on something, the options and reasons presented are those which he's been fed. They aren't more than that because you have a feeling that anyone can choose whatever they want. No, we're all just limited to what's been given us.

Extend this thinking to the rest of us and its easy to see free will is an illusion.
I’m afraid I’m not quote the determinist that you are. That everything is cause and effect with little or no real choice involved. Folks have gone round and round on this topic. May I suggest a podcast you might like to listen to in its entirety?

https://www.skeptic.com/michael-shermer ... an-people/

In the latter half Michael and Jason have a short discussion on free will. It’s worth the listen. Michael is more or less deterministic. Jason is not. You might enjoy it.

Regards,
MG
Don't be scared. Its really tough to escape the feeling that we can freely choose. But reason wins out again.
“Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos
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Physics Guy
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Re: Our condeming nature, or is it religion that's brought it out of us?

Post by Physics Guy »

Reason isn't as bad as it sometimes seems. I think that we are our synapses, or rather that we are the algorithm-like pattern that they form. It's also my working assumption that synapses and molecules and all that stuff changes and moves deterministically. But that doesn't seem to me to mean that free will is an illusion. It's not an illusion: it's just how it feels when a synaptic pattern does stuff, when you are the synaptic pattern.

Saying that free will is an illusion is to me like saying that fire is an illusion because it's really just molecules separating and recombining, emitting and absorbing electromagnetic radiation, and flying around bumping into other molecules.

Of course fire really is all just that. The bright hot flickering thing that we call "fire" is not a fundamental thing the way electrons are (though even electrons start to look complicated if you can get picometer resolution). What we think of as fire, though, is still perfectly real. It's how molecules undergoing combustion are, when there are a whole lot of them.

The forest is made up of trees but if you only see the trees and not the forest then you're not really understanding trees, either.

The wind is just molecules zipping around, deterministically. It doesn't have any choice where it blows. The dynamical system is really chaotic, however. Unless you have a mind-bogglingly impossible amount of information about the precise instantaneous state of all those molecules, where the wind blows is quite unpredictable. At the level of description of air and wind, as opposed to molecules, the wind bloweth where it listeth.

That's true about trees, wind, and fire. I think it's true about us.
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Re: Our condeming nature, or is it religion that's brought it out of us?

Post by Lem »

Moksha wrote:
Mon Feb 22, 2021 11:48 pm
mentalgymnast wrote:
Mon Feb 22, 2021 6:58 pm
In the latter half, Michael and Jason have a short discussion on free will. It’s worth the listen. Michael is more or less deterministic.
Image
Jason - It's free will, damn it!!! | Michael - Nuh-uh!!!
:lol: I really need to not read you late at night. You're giving me nightmares, dude.
dastardly stem
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Re: Our condeming nature, or is it religion that's brought it out of us?

Post by dastardly stem »

Physics Guy wrote:
Tue Feb 23, 2021 8:31 am
Reason isn't as bad as it sometimes seems. I think that we are our synapses, or rather that we are the algorithm-like pattern that they form. It's also my working assumption that synapses and molecules and all that stuff changes and moves deterministically. But that doesn't seem to me to mean that free will is an illusion. It's not an illusion: it's just how it feels when a synaptic pattern does stuff, when you are the synaptic pattern.

Saying that free will is an illusion is to me like saying that fire is an illusion because it's really just molecules separating and recombining, emitting and absorbing electromagnetic radiation, and flying around bumping into other molecules.

Of course fire really is all just that. The bright hot flickering thing that we call "fire" is not a fundamental thing the way electrons are (though even electrons start to look complicated if you can get picometer resolution). What we think of as fire, though, is still perfectly real. It's how molecules undergoing combustion are, when there are a whole lot of them.

The forest is made up of trees but if you only see the trees and not the forest then you're not really understanding trees, either.

The wind is just molecules zipping around, deterministically. It doesn't have any choice where it blows. The dynamical system is really chaotic, however. Unless you have a mind-bogglingly impossible amount of information about the precise instantaneous state of all those molecules, where the wind blows is quite unpredictable. At the level of description of air and wind, as opposed to molecules, the wind bloweth where it listeth.

That's true about trees, wind, and fire. I think it's true about us.
It is interesting. I think the explanation you offer is precisely the type of explanation philosophers and scientists interested on the topic would say to justify their conclusion of determinism. Instead of saying fire is an illusion they'd say fire is random and chaotic or it is determined. It seems random, or chaotic because we can't easily follow it's pattern. But every movement it makes is determined by that which is feeding it. If there were an all -knowing power, usually talked about as Lapace's deamon, able to know and predict the activity of every molecule in any given room, the fire movements would be predictable by that all-knowing one. If so that which appears chaotic would prove to be determined. And yes, on that, that principle is not only true for fire but also for us.

If there were something out there able to see every factor going into each of our decisions, then they would prove to be determined, each time, influenced by our genetic make-up, the capacity of our brains, the experience of our lives, the environment in which they've been nurtured...I mean all of that. That would suggest every decision we make is based on all the factors added up, interacting upon us, built into our genes, hormones and fed to our minds. If, on that principle, one person's life could be mapped out with a correct understanding of that person's biology, how the environment effects that person's biology, how experience factors in, and what feeds that particular mind over time, then we can start to predict the types of things that person would do. We already do that in some ways. We suggest things like environment has a very real impact on how people turn out. We suggest a person's biology and genetics factor into what that person becomes.
“Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos
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Re: Our condeming nature, or is it religion that's brought it out of us?

Post by huckelberry »

dastardly stem wrote:
Mon Feb 22, 2021 2:42 pm
huckelberry wrote:
Fri Feb 19, 2021 9:15 pm


Stem,
I wonder if you are aware that over the past 2000 years the view that people do not have freewill and for the sort of reasons you present has been the majority view in Christian understanding. Examples like Luthers" Bondage of the Will" or Johnathan Edwards "On Free Will" agree with and expand on the arguments against free will which you present.
As far as I'm aware their arguments would be more along the lines of humans are weak, foolish, and carnal by nature and can't really will to do good, follow God or accept his salvation without his help. That is a far cry for which I'm arguing. It may be seen as the exact opposite.
It has been a majority view but not the only possible view.
I don't think it's been the majority view. but I grant it's there, but it does not square with the reasoning I laid out, as I see it.
I think it should be noted that whether people believed a free will exists or not they have agreed that society needs to make some laws about acceptable human actions and some sort of sanction against destructive and harmful behavior. A persons awareness of sanctions becomes part of the mental machinery creating a decision. Instruction in better values and how some actions result in better results than others also becomes part of the machinery causing decisions to be made by human organisms.
I agree. For some reason it appears, so much so, that our accepted need to separate and sanction people who have displayed harmful behavior is also seemingly accepted as a good measure for which us to judge and condemn. My querying is a wonder if we can fully accept our need for a safe and healthy society, eschewing that which would disrupt it, and yet find in ourselves an understanding of where harmful behavior comes from so much so we eliminate another harmful behavior which is revenge, or some sort of delight in seeing others suffer for their sins.
I think that better understanding of the relationship of choice of actions and results is necessary for all people to live whether there is a nonmaterial soul or not. Better understands helps to determine better choices. Freewill is irrelavant, might just confuse the proper decision making process that all mammals make.

I agree with you that the picture of a God hoping to get hell properly filled is a picture jof god unworthy of the title.
I'm glad we agree and I enjoyed how you worded that.
Stem,
Right after posting my comments I had second thoughts about saying determinism has been the majority view. It would be very hard to measure out. More importantly it need the clarification that I was referring to theologians and universities not people sitting in pews. The characterization which you propose.( weakness and limitations of the flesh etc) is a description for sermons and Sunday school. I mentioned two books describing a mechanical determinism . In theology such considerations become part of seeing how God determines the events in the world and determines how things work out in the end. I have read the two books I mentioned though quite a few years ago so only have a general memory of them.My memory says Luther pursues both versions (weak flesh and determinism). The Johnathan Edwards book is straight mechanical determinism.

I think I am in sympathy with your aim to pointing out reasons we should be more understanding of peoples errors and poor choices. We should also find ways to choose to refrain from revenge and punishment designed to pleasure the revenge urge.

I think Physics Guy made good clarifying comments. I was thinking of a simple related observation. Sometimes freewill arguments say there is no self controlling the biological functions which are making the decisions that an organism does while living then complain that the self is controlled by the biological functions. Instead it should be remembered that the self is the biological foundations and makes choices and learns things all the time.
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Re: Our condeming nature, or is it religion that's brought it out of us?

Post by huckelberry »

mentalgymnast wrote:
Fri Feb 19, 2021 9:25 pm
dastardly stem wrote:
Fri Feb 19, 2021 5:22 pm
I can't help to think we need this mindset to move us forward in our society--this notion that free will is but an illusion to us.
I wonder if Victor Frankl would agree. He makes the argument that all humans do have free will, it just takes a certain kind of person to exercise it, and make the choices that others around them do not. He found that purpose is what drives people. He found that there was a strong relationship between “meaninglessness” and criminal behaviors, addictions and depression.

https://www.studymode.com/essays/Viktor ... 90802.html
https://www.pursuit-of-happiness.org/hi ... or-frankl/

So at least at the level where we choose purpose over meaninglessness we have free will. It’s not an illusion.

At least in the concentration camps it wasn’t.

Free will as an illusion, I think, is a dangerous position to take. But if you take accountability out of the picture and make some other tweaks, I can see why you might flirt with this idea.

Regards,
MG
Mentalgymnist,
You reminded me of Frankel's book which I thought quite strong and helpful when I read them some time ago. I found my copy yesterday and spent some time rereading. It has simple but effective observations about finding meaning in experience, beauty, love and suffering as well as accomplishments.
huckelberry
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Re: Our condeming nature, or is it religion that's brought it out of us?

Post by huckelberry »

mentalgymnast wrote:
Mon Feb 22, 2021 6:58 pm
(reply to Stem)

I’m afraid I’m not (.) the determinist that you are, That everything is cause and effect with little or no real choice involved. Folks have gone round and round on this topic. May I suggest a podcast you might like to listen to in its entirety?

https://www.skeptic.com/michael-shermer ... an-people/

In the latter half Michael and Jason have a short discussion on free will. It’s worth the listen. Michael is more or less deterministic. Jason is not. You might enjoy it.

Regards,
MG
I started listening to this conversation between Michael Shermer and Jason Hill and was put off expecting political propaganda. Though I skipped some I found later comments applied well to this discussion. It started with both referring to the image some claim to see that America is so racist that the freedom of Black people is not functional. Jason Hill says that is a destructive misrepresentation because he a black immigrant has been able to do well. He thinks that determinism is an almost mystical oppressive blanket burying black freedom to invent and succeed. Of course he has a point. In America ,even during slavery times, some blacks have found freedom and success. Their success should be respected.(I think there are very few liberals so fanatical not to understand this)

I think with some thought both some understanding of racist limitations on black freedom can be seen as real while at the same time respect for blacks succeeding beyond those past barriers should not be forgotten.

Michael Shermer made a fairly clear summary of the problem. He observed we all live in a network of strict cause and effect yet we learn ways in which we can manipulate the network. We learn ways to create limited freedom within the constraints and walls we find ourselves in.
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