Are You a Determinist?

[Morkeliph]

Determinism is the philosophy that all events and phenomena have identifiable physical causes. According to Webster:theory or doctrine that acts of the will, occurrences in nature, or social or psychological phenomena are causally determined by preceding events or natural lawsand to Wikipedia:Determinism is the philosophical proposition that every event, including human cognition and action, is causally determined by an unbroken chain of prior occurrences. No mysterious miracles or wholly random events occur.Determinists, like myself, contest the concept of free will by arguing that all human behavior can be accounted for by physical events or causes. In other words, hypothesizing that phenomena occur because of spiritual, mental or other unidentifiable causes is foolishness. All events are determined by physical causes. Do not, however, confuse this with fatalism. It is a popular misconception that determinism necessarily entails that all future events have already been predetermined and will necessarily happen (a position known as Fatalism); this is not obviously the case, and the subject is still debated among metaphysicists.

[GenocideAlive]

'Fraid not. Determinism has several extenuating circumstances that are glaringly contradictory enough that I believe there exists some "mental" aspects of human existance.

[Dark_Magneto]

But your brain which controls and comprises all your mental abilities is a physical system itself and is therefore not exempt.

The problem of free will has been around for a long time - since before Aristotle in 350 B.C., St. Augustine, and St. Thomas Aquinas. These guys all worried about how we can be free if god designed the universe and already knows in advance everything we're going to do as per his design.

Nowadays, we know that the world operates according to some fundamental physical laws, and these laws govern the behavior of every object in the world. Look at yourself. We're just physical systems. We're just complex arrangements of carbon molecules. We're mostly water, and our behavior isn't going to be an exception to these basic physical laws. So it starts to look like whether it's god setting things up in advance and knowing everything you're going to do, or whether it's these basic physical laws governing everything, the concept of total "free will" is an absolute illusory sham at best no matter how you slice it.

Think about individuality for example. Who you are is mostly a matter of the free choices that you make. Or take responsibility. You can only be held responsible, you can only be found guilty, or you can only be admired and respected for things you did of your own free will. So the question keeps coming back. And we don't really have a solution to it. It starts to look like all our decisions are really just a charade.

Think about how it happens. There's some electrical activity in your brain, your neurons fire, they send a signal down into your nervous system, it passes along down into your muscle fibers, they twitch, you might reach out your arm. It looks like it's a free action on your part, but every part of that process is actually governed by physical laws, chemical laws, electrical laws, and so forth.

So now it starts to look like the big bang set up the initial conditions, and the whole rest of human history, and even before, is really just the playing out of subatomic particles according to these basic fundamental physical laws. We think we're special. We think we have some kind of special dignity, but that now comes under threat. That's really challenged by this picture.

[GenocideAlive]

But your brain which controls and comprises all your mental abilities is a physical system itself and is therefore not exempt.
I call Shenanigans. My brain doesn't work without energy in the form of electrical and chemical energy, thus is not purely a physical system.

And if you want to get ultra-technical, all things that we are able to see, hear, feel, perceive, etc. are physical. That does not make them equal or even near-equitable in function or capacity.

[Dark_Magneto]

I call Shenanigans. My brain doesn't work without energy in the form of electrical and chemical energy, thus is not purely a physical system.

Electrical and chemical energy are physical substances.

Name some aspect of the brain that isn't rooted in it's physical property.

If something isn't physical in any way, shape, or form on any level, then it can't interact with anything physical and is as good as nonexistent as far as our physical reality is concerned.

[GenocideAlive]

Electrical and chemical energy are physical substances.
Oooooooooooooook. Since you want to be a fuckwit about it, we're going to get technical about it.

Define:

Physical substance.
Physical system.

Then, please connect in a logical series the way that those two have anything to do with ANYTHING related to BEHAVIOR.
--

Don't give me some bullshit about how physical systems are bound by the laws of physics and everything we do is an extension of that--that's the most hollow bunch of strawman horseshit I've ever heard.

Hey guys! We all must obey gravity, and thus everything we do will be in alignment with the properties of nature and gravity. Everything is an illusion under the guise of action when in actually it's just gravity acting on objects. :rolleyes:

Rant:

If it's too much for you to comprehend that behavior consists of something more than a basic set of mechanics, then you need a refresher on biology and a slap upside your pseudo-sophisticated head.

Raw behavioralism is nothing more than a copout for things that can't be explained in human behavior. Instead of addressing and attempting to understand the complexities and abberrations that exist in human behavior, you instead marginalize them and accuse them of being a product of some screwed up portion (oft "undeterminable") of a person's experiences.

Rather than recognize and focus on new understanding, you instead entrench yourself further and further in the basis of what you do understand. You're quickly trapped in your own unwillingness to learn anything with which you aren't comfortable, simply scrabbling to find more and more ways to shoehorn every possible bit of outlying datum into whatever gross category you have prescribed for similar circumstances.

Ultimately you end up with a "science" that amounts to a thousand inappropriately labeled and generalized globs of data that don't really point to much of anything. You stick a bunch of non-sentient low-brainweight ratio creatures in cages, electrocute them when a light comes on and claim to understand the mysteries and sophistication of human thinking. You draw a thousand parallels that amount to a crude, pixelated version of the infinitely graceful reality of human existance. And you have the balls to claim that those operating under the guise of free will are "fooling themselves".

If a person spends their life being arbitrarily beaten and hounded and end up a criminal, it's because of their experiences. But if they happen to turn out perfectly normal, you say that it's some extenuating circumstance involving their past that made them different. As though they had no choice or will in the matter, but rather that they had to or were inevitably driven to such circumstances.

You raise a group of septuplets at age 3 and ask them what their favorite colors are--and you get a mixed bag. Behavioral conditioning? Kiss my ass. You're going to claim that someone sat them down and encouraged them to pick 2 red, 3 blue, 2 pink and a yellow? Oh wait, the subtlties of their 3-year-old life led them down that path.

You put the same kids at an identical fork in the road three times over, and tell me that you can predict with any certainty the path that they take. You can't. The entire concept is ridiculous, but you cling to it because you've got some clever retorts at the ready for plebes.

It's a system, alright. A system of circular logic.

[Dark_Magneto]

Define:

Physical substance.
Physical system.


A physical substance is any material comprised of matter. A physical system is a system that is comprised of matter and has various physical laws that govern the actions of that system.


Then, please connect in a logical series the way that those two have anything to do with ANYTHING related to BEHAVIOR.


First, we postulate that:

A - All physical matter is governed by physical laws.

B - The brain is a physical organ.

If we accept the premises of A and B, then it logically concludes A + B = C

C being that our brains, being physical, are governed by physical laws.


Don't give me some bullshit about how physical systems are bound by the laws of physics and everything we do is an extension of that--that's the most hollow bunch of strawman horseshit I've ever heard.


Reguardless of how unpalatable the implications may be, it stands to reason that everything we do is retrained and regulated by these physical laws. After all, we consist of matter just like everything in the universe; and even though we'd like to be egotistical and inflate our self-importance by declaring ourselves independent from basic physical laws, the reality still remains. Physical objects are governed by the laws of physics.


If it's too much for you to comprehend that behavior consists of something more than a basic set of mechanics, then you need a refresher on biology and a slap upside your pseudo-sophisticated head.

Raw behavioralism is nothing more than a copout for things that can't be explained in human behavior. Instead of addressing and attempting to understand the complexities and abberrations that exist in human behavior, you instead marginalize them and accuse them of being a product of some screwed up portion (oft "undeterminable") of a person's experiences.

Rather than recognize and focus on new understanding, you instead entrench yourself further and further in the basis of what you do understand. You're quickly trapped in your own unwillingness to learn anything with which you aren't comfortable, simply scrabbling to find more and more ways to shoehorn every possible bit of outlying datum into whatever gross category you have prescribed for similar circumstances.

Ultimately you end up with a "science" that amounts to a thousand inappropriately labeled and generalized globs of data that don't really point to much of anything. You stick a bunch of non-sentient low-brainweight ratio creatures in cages, electrocute them when a light comes on and claim to understand the mysteries and sophistication of human thinking. You draw a thousand parallels that amount to a crude, pixelated version of the infinitely graceful reality of human existance. And you have the balls to claim that those operating under the guise of free will are "fooling themselves".


You want to know what's uncomfortable? Seriously having to consider that maybe, just maybe we're a little more restricted than most people care to admit.

Psychologically, people are largely a product of their experiences. It's not any one thing that comprises a sentient person, it's a combination of factors. Physics alone can't generate consciousness, and consciousness alone doesn't create self-awareness. It's all a combination of systems merging together.

Take for example what a little change in brain physiology can do to a person.

It's long been known that specific types of brain damage can cause massive personality and mental changes. Granted, other parts of the brain can be removed without noticeable ill effect on the mind, but so can relatively unimportant parts of other systems be damaged--the knees, heart, etc.--without causing those to fail. And even those "unimportant" parts, when removed, often impair the system's function in more subtle ways than can be easily detected.

In general, the nervous system provides very strong evidence for complete mind-brain dependence (http://www.ebonmusings.org/atheism/ghost.html#part2). Conditions like Alzheimer's disease and amnesia can damage or even destroy parts of the mind in perfect unison with the appropriate brain sections.

"This patient, who suffered damage to both his hippocampus and his temporal lobes (thought to be important for storing memories) at age 46, has total anterograde and near-total retrograde amnesia: he cannot form new memories or recall old ones. He is trapped in a permanent present, a void of consciousness without memory.

Indeed, he has no sense of time at all. He cannot tell us the date, and when asked to guess, his responses are wild--as disparate [as] 1942 and 2013.... This patient cannot state his age, either. He can guess, but the guess tends to be wrong. Two of the few specific things he knows for certain are that he was married and that he is the father of two children. But when did he get married? He cannot say. When were the children born? He does not know. He cannot place himself in the time line of his family life. (Damasio 2002, p. 69-71)
(As Dr. Damasio tells us, the patient's wife divorced him over 20 years ago, and his children are long since grown up and married.) Does this man still have a soul? In what sense is he conscious? He is adrift in a world of darkness, a blank void with neither past nor future, merely an ever-moving present that continually fades from sight."

Damage to the frontal lobes can produce massive changes in both personality and mental abilities. Brain damage can even produce a person who's incapable of acquiring new memories - in effect, a mind trapped in the same time and place, one which will revert to his or her old memories every 15 minutes and nonchalantly ask his loved ones why they've aged so much after 20 years of asking them the same question.

A young priest once suffered a stroke that rendered him incapable of feeling sadness. Formerly compassionate and empathetic to his leukemia-stricken sister, he now made jokes about it and didn't understand why he should feel guilty about it. As his father commented, [i]"... He looks like our son and has the same voice as our son, but he is not the same person we knew and loved... He's not the same person he was before he had this stroke. Our son was a warm, caring, and sensitive person. All that is gone. He now sounds like a robot."

"This wrenching story illustrates how a human property as fundamental as compassion arises from the brain and can be destroyed by altering the brain. A warm, caring, intelligent young man of God, as the result of brain damage, underwent a complete and drastic personality change. He became indifferent to his duties, unconcerned about the potentially fatal illness of a loved one, even light-heartedly joking about it with his grief-stricken parents, who said that he was "not the same person [they] knew and loved", not the same person he had been before his stroke. "

Not only does brain damage harm the mind, but certain bizarre conditions can even produce, for all intents and purposes, two damaged minds for the price of one healthy one.

"Research shows that in such split-brain cases, the brain generates what seems to be two separate consciousnesses. Research on split-brain patients led brain scientist and Nobel laureate Roger Sperry to conclude, 'Everything we have seen indicates that the surgery has left these people with two separate minds, that is, two separate spheres of consciousness. What is experienced in the right hemisphere seems to lie entirely outside the realm of the left hemisphere.'"

I will expand on this particular point below.

Case studies in severed corpus callosum (the "split brain experiment" alluded to above) more or less spell the death knell for the soul. First, a bit of background on what we can learn from the different hemispheres in healthy people:

http://physics.weber.edu/carroll/Wonder/images/split2.gif
Left brain dominates for language, speech, and problem solving
Right brain dominates for visual-motor tasks

"1. Each hemisphere was presented a picture that related to one of four pictures placed in front of the split-brain subject.

2. The left and right hemispheres easily picked the right card. The left hand pointed to the right hemisphere's choice, and the right hand pointed to the left hemisphere's choice.

3. The patient was then asked why the left hand was pointing to the shovel. Only the left hemisphere can talk, and it did not know the answer because the decision to point to the shovel was made in the right hemisphere."

This experiment indicates both sides of the brain are capable of individual thought in some capacity, as if each one had an independent mind.

Courtesy of the Macalester College psychology department (http://web.archive.org/web/20040222012423/http://www.macalester.edu/~psych/whathap/UBNRP/Split_Brain/Behavior.html):

"Before the operation he integrated information between the two hemispheres freely, but after the operation he had two separate minds or mental systems, each with its own abilities to learn, remember, and experience emotion and behavior. Yet, WJ, was not completely aware of the changes in his brain. As Gazzaniga put it: "WJ lives happily in Downey, California, with no sense of the enormity of the findings or for that matter any awareness that he had changed." As previously explained (experiments), words flashed to the right field of vision of patients like WJ could be said and written with the right hand. In contrast, patients couldn't say or write words flashed to their left field of vision [even though they could pick out the object with their hand]."

One brain hemisphere is verbal but has difficulty with certain other functions, while the other can't really talk but has other traits that make up for it. Each of those can, in their own way, identify and describe reality around them, but neither hemisphere has access to the self-awareness or thoughts of the other. Splitting them produces all kinds of anomalous results, like this:

"The patients give evidence of having two differing minds. The best example of this is patient Paul S., whom you read about on the home page. Paul's right hemisphere developed considerable language ability sometime previous to the operation. Although it is uncommon, occasionally the right hemisphere may share substantial neural circuits with, or even dominate, the left hemisphere's centers for language comprehension and production. The fact that Paul's right hemisphere was so well developed in it's verbal capacity opened a closed door for researchers. For almost all split brain patients, the thoughts and perceptions of the right hemisphere are locked away from expression. Researchers were finally able to interview both hemispheres on their views about friendship, love, hate and aspirations.

Paul's right hemisphere stated that he wanted to be an automobile racer while his left hemisphere wanted to be a draftsman. Both hemispheres were asked to write whether they liked or disliked a series of items. The study was performed during the Watergate scandal, and one of the items was Richard Nixon. Paul's right hemisphere expressed 'dislike,' while his left expressed 'like.'"

In light of these and other facts, the idea that the mind is somehow exempt from physical factors is effectively falsified unless one postulates an enormous number of ad hoc hypotheses to salvage it from the data. A modus operandi that tells us nothing about truth, and in fact usually obscures it.

If our minds weren't products of brain physiology and physical influences, people wouldn't suffer Alzheimer's disease, couldn't be anesthetized, wouldn't have radical personality changes caused by tumors, and would, if brain hemispheres were split, either die or show a mysterious, spooky data link was still operating at a distance to make both hemispheres consistent with a single mind.

The difference can best be described as thin-client/mainframe vs. personal computing. In one device, the "consciousness" would run on an inaccessible nonphysical device some separate from the client, getting its instructions from a network connection. Damaging the client (i.e. body) would leave the files and processes (consciousness) on the mainframe as safe as ever, but it would only produce erratic results in the client.

If a part of the client's processor was damaged, you would feel as fine and clear-headed as you usually would, but your sources of input from the physical world would progressively fail until the link was severed, at which point you would experience conscious, total sensory deprivation (assuming no other source of input was provided, this is a nightmarish scenario).

You couldn't lose any memories, personality and self-awareness, because it would be safe and indestructible on the server. At worst, you could only lose the ability to express it to others successfully as the body went, but it would affect all memories equally, not apparently destroy some while leaving others entirely untouched.

As a further analogy, you could destroy your client's ability to present Microsoft Word documents to others, but you could never find that a specific .DOC was missing on the mainframe from damage entirely limited to the client side.

This is not what occurs--in fact, the exact opposite is observed. People really forget things because of brain damage. Chemical changes in the brain can induce depression and other personality changes. Self-awareness itself goes bye-bye if you're knocked on the head, anesthetized or asleep. And, of course, the mind is somehow split in two, directly correlated with physical splits to the brain itself. Thus, there's only one conclusion you can honestly draw from the neurological evidence. You're not some incorporeal entity using a fragile gateway to the physical world - you are the gateway, on which every single aspect of yourself is stored. Once it goes, so do "you." So enjoy it while it lasts.


If a person spends their life being arbitrarily beaten and hounded and end up a criminal, it's because of their experiences.

Largely, yes.

But if they happen to turn out perfectly normal, you say that it's some extenuating circumstance involving their past that made them different. As though they had no choice or will in the matter, but rather that they had to or were inevitably driven to such circumstances.

That person would be an exception. Exceptions can be found in nearly everything. He would be highly predisposed to wind up in the former scenario, but it is by no means guaranteed.

I don't know how I can express this any more effectively, but people don't choose who they are as a person. You can no more choose who you are than you can choose your sexual orientation. It's not some elective thing that you pick out. If you are hetero, it isn't because you've decided that it's better than the alternatives, that's just the way you are and you don't control it. People don't build themselves, their life experiences do.

I can tell you for certain that I would not be the same I am today if not for the internet and these very types of exchanges, which are almost completely absent in any vicinity I have been in the offline world.

You raise a group of septuplets at age 3 and ask them what their favorite colors are--and you get a mixed bag. Behavioral conditioning?

Different people, different brain chemistries, different predispositions.

You put the same kids at an identical fork in the road three times over, and tell me that you can predict with any certainty the path that they take. You can't.

No I can't, because I can't calulate for every little subtle factor that has influenced them throughout their entire life.

I will tell you, however, that if you had an exact copy of that person, right down to brain physiology, what they ate for breakfast, exposure to photons, life experiences, the whole shebang. 2 people that have grown up with the same exact bodies, same neurochamistry, biological cycles, brain physiology, and the same exct stimulus, then when put in identical situations they would make the same exact choices every time because there's nothing that would cause them to choose otherwise.

If I had a quantum computer that could violate the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle and plot the exact speed and location of all particles in the universe then I could tell you exactly what would happen in the future. I could tell you when an asteroid would strike what planet, the exact moment of the next eclipse, when the next major hurricane will be, when California will break off into the ocean, if/when nuclear war will break out, and how many people would survive, the next thing you'll eat for breakfast... everything. It would effectively make me omnicient.

It's a system, alright. A system of circular logic.

Circular logic is saying that we're completely independent and free-willed because we say we are.

People can lay claim to this "free-will" concept (which most don't really understand) all they like, but demonstrating it is another matter entirely. They never fully realize that they are a slave to their own will (which they didn't get to sit down and customize), victims to their brain physiology (which they had no part in designing), and held hostage by psychological predispositions (that they never had a real choice about).

You think people with OCD's like spending all day touching doorknobs, counting tiles, dragging their feet over cracks in the sidewalk, or washing their hands for 3 hours every time they go to use the bathroom?

[Morkeliph]

Whoa! What set you guys off?

I think you're misunderstanding the science of behavior analysis, which I might add was not the topic of this thread in the beginning. We were discussing determinism, which is the philosophical standpoint that all phenomena have physical causes. Anyway, addressing the topic of the science of behavior:Raw behavioralism is nothing more than a copout for things that can't be explained in human behavior. Instead of addressing and attempting to understand the complexities and abberrations that exist in human behavior, you instead marginalize them and accuse them of being a product of some screwed up portion (oft "undeterminable") of a person's experiences.First off, what you talking about behaviorism or behavioralism, because the two have significant differences. A little reference to wikipedia could illustrate the difference better than I could here.

Now, you accuse behaviorism (if that is indeed what you are talking about) of being a cop-out for things that cannot be explained. I'm afraid I don't see where you are drawing this from. If anything, it is a vast improvement over the highly speculative accounts provided by the psychodynamic or other cognitive approaches. What behaviorism accomplishes is a search for the actual causes of behavior rather then just labeling or describing behavior. Further, you accuse behaviorism of marginalizing "the complexities of human behavior" and again, I'm not sure where you are drawing this from. If anything, it is the opposite that takes the cop-out by assigning causality to hypothetical mental processes, such as the ego, the LAD, or self-concept or self-efficacy. Rather than explain behavior, these terms make inferences about behavior from behavior itself.

The cognitive metaphor of memory processes (encoding, storage, retrieval, rehearsal, etc.) is popular in psychology. Tulving explained that remembering an event involves mental encoding of the event and subsequent retrieval of the information from memory due to reactivation of the encoding operations. He proposed that encoding results in a memory trace or representation of the past event. The memory trace becomes manifest when combined with retrieval processes. Thus, memory research has emphasized how encoding produces mental representations that in turn aid retrieval.

An explanation of remembering based on inferred mental processes is unacceptable in a science of behavior. Unless the mental processes have direct evidence, encoding, mental representations, and retrieval are inferences from remembering itself. When mental processes are inferred from remembering itself, they cannot be used to explain it---the explanation is said to be circular.

Rather the assigning causality to hypothetical mental processes to explain remembering, behavior analysts look to behavior-environment interactions, in the form of contingencies of reinforcement, to understand remembering. White explains:Remembering is not so much a matter of looking back into the past or forward into the future as it is of making choices at the time of remembering. The [behavioral] approach treats remembering as a process of discriminating the relevant events from the alternative possibilities. That is, the discrimination is not made at the time of encoding, or learning, but at the time of remembering.

This example on remembering is used merely to illustrate a point. Behaviorism is aimed solely at determining the causes of behavior rather than copping-out with fancy labels and elaborate stories, such as those presented by information-processing theories.

Addressing the issue of free will:Ultimately you end up with a "science" that amounts to a thousand inappropriately labeled and generalized globs of data that don't really point to much of anything. You stick a bunch of non-sentient low-brainweight ratio creatures in cages, electrocute them when a light comes on and claim to understand the mysteries and sophistication of human thinking. You draw a thousand parallels that amount to a crude, pixelated version of the infinitely graceful reality of human existance. And you have the balls to claim that those operating under the guise of free will are "fooling themselves".Even if we assume, for the moment, that there is even such a thing as free will, its effects on behavior are obviously limited. Taking your own example, a child raised in an unstable environment is likely to lead an unstable life. If this child had free will, in the truest sense of the notion, then despite his environment he would live a highly successful and stable life, but this is not the case. Children in poor social environments develop poor social skills, and these skills limit their possiblities. Where is freedom of choice in that?

The point is, regardless of free will, behavior is the product of its environmental and genetic history. The very fact that when we manipulate the environment of an organism in certain ways that we see the organism's behavior respond in particular ways, consistently, suggests that behavior is at least in part determined by physical causes. Your attempts of belittling the use of animal research and animal data is offensive, especially coming from one who puts on to be a dyed-in-the-wool evolutionist. The aim of behavioral research with animals is to find general principles of behavior across species, and these are exactly what we find. Even predictions of your economic behavior are extrapolated from animal models of behavioral economics.

[GenocideAlive]

First, we postulate that:

A - All physical matter is governed by physical laws.

B - The brain is a physical organ.

If we accept the premises of A and B, then it logically concludes A + B = C

C being that our brains, being physical, are governed by physical laws.

Reguardless of how unpalatable the implications may be, it stands to reason that everything we do is retrained and regulated by these physical laws. After all, we consist of matter just like everything in the universe; and even though we'd like to be egotistical and inflate our self-importance by declaring ourselves independent from basic physical laws, the reality still remains. Physical objects are governed by the laws of physics. OK, so our brains are governed by physical laws. Let's recap: logically prove how this has anything to do with behavior.
You want to know what's uncomfortable? Seriously having to consider that maybe, just maybe we're a little more restricted than most people care to admit.

Psychologically, people are largely a product of their experiences. It's not any one thing that comprises a sentient person, it's a combination of factors. Physics alone can't generate consciousness, and consciousness alone doesn't create self-awareness. It's all a combination of systems merging together. Yes, I've agreed with Mork in several different aspects of this in multiple different threads. I am, however, at a point where I feel this extremism is being carried well beyond its reach.
Take for example what a little change in brain physiology can do to a person.

It's long been known that specific types of brain damage can cause massive personality and mental changes. Granted, other parts of the brain can be removed without noticeable ill effect on the mind, but so can relatively unimportant parts of other systems be damaged--the knees, heart, etc.--without causing those to fail. And even those "unimportant" parts, when removed, often impair the system's function in more subtle ways than can be easily detected.

In light of these and other facts, the idea that the mind is somehow exempt from physical factors is effectively falsified unless one postulates an enormous number of ad hoc hypotheses to salvage it from the data. A modus operandi that tells us nothing about truth, and in fact usually obscures it. You're basically pointing to disease and brain damage as being mitigating factors of behavior. They certainly are--if you shoot something in the leg, the leg no longer functions; this is obvious. But the problem isn't in the fact that a simple machine no longer functions properly when you damage it, it's that behaviorism is a basis of "backwards-prediction" methodology. You run a series of tests, then get results. After the results, you announce why everything that occured did so.

However, if given any particular set of subjects, none of you can predict their behavior in any reliable consistency. If you're such a master of the brain and human behavior, why is that? Why are you unable to do anything but give statistical guesstimates?
That person would be an exception. Exceptions can be found in nearly everything. He would be highly predisposed to wind up in the former scenario, but it is by no means guaranteed. So basically what you're saying is that exceptions are everywhere, but you cannot account for them with behaviorism. Sounds like good system to me. :rolleyes:
I don't know how I can express this any more effectively, but people don't choose who they are as a person. You can no more choose who you are than you can choose your sexual orientation. It's not some elective thing that you pick out. If you are hetero, it isn't because you've decided that it's better than the alternatives, that's just the way you are and you don't control it. People don't build themselves, their life experiences do. Sexual orientation is largely being swayed towards genetic determinece, according to more recent studies in mice; which you seem to endorse. You're of course, more than welcome to explain why twins frequently come out with extremely different personalities when they have "no choice" as to their personage as based on their birth. Or even better, predict their personalities and behaviors. But you can't. You can only say this:

No I can't, because I can't calulate for every little subtle factor that has influenced them throughout their entire life.

I will tell you, however, that if you had an exact copy of that person, right down to brain physiology, what they ate for breakfast, exposure to photons, life experiences, the whole shebang. 2 people that have grown up with the same exact bodies, same neurochamistry, biological cycles, brain physiology, and the same exct stimulus, then when put in identical situations they would make the same exact choices every time because there's nothing that would cause them to choose otherwise. Which has never been proven in even the remotest sense. It's purely your belief--backed or supported by no evidence by any human studies during any point and time.

It's completely unproven or unproveable--but you seriously attempted to pass it off as some kind of naked fact. You can't even prove that the same person given the same life would make the same decisions--which seems doubtful. I acknowledge that perhaps they would, but I also acknowledge that perhaps they would NOT.

For the same reason that I am an aethist/agnostic, I am also refuting you now: because no-one knows, and you claim to have the answers and are willing to stand up and trumpet it like a total fool. You are touting a system of circular logic, just like your opponents.
If anything, it is a vast improvement over the highly speculative accounts provided by the psychodynamic or other cognitive approaches. What behaviorism accomplishes is a search for the actual causes of behavior rather then just labeling or describing behavior. And if you ask me, "better than crap" isn't much of which to be proud.

[Morkeliph]

Interestingly enough, you seem to be missing the point of behaviorism and behavior analysis. No one is caliming to be able to predict exactly what an organism will do at any given moment. What behavior analysis attempts to do is discover basic principles that govern behavioral trends. Especially when it comes to operant behavior, we cannot predict with 100% certainty what an organism will do in a particular situation at a particular moment, and behaviorism has never purported to be able to. But, we can talk about behavior is terms of probablity of occurence, or rate of occurence, and observe how particular environmental manipulations affect that rate of response.

Secondly, you suggest that behavior analysis uses a backwards-prediction methodology. It is more than obvious that you haven't read much of behavioral research, and more importantly, that I have been unclear in my presentation of such to you. Researchers in the experimental analysis of behavior take a natural science approach to studying behavior. That is, we make hypotheses, maniplute an independent variable, measure changes in the dependent variable, and report the results. I think if you will follow this link (http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/tocrender.fcgi?journal=299&action=archive) to various articles out of the Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior and read a few abstracts, you will see what I'm talking about.

Really, I guess I'm not seeing your objection to behaviorism clearly. It seems that I haven't done a good job of explaining what behaviorism really is. Perhaps this link (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behaviorism) will do a better job.

[GenocideAlive]

Interestingly enough, you seem to be missing the point of behaviorism and behavior analysis. No one is caliming to be able to predict exactly what an organism will do at any given moment. What behavior analysis attempts to do is discover basic principles that govern behavioral trends. Especially when it comes to operant behavior, we cannot predict with 100% certainty what an organism will do in a particular situation at a particular moment, and behaviorism has never purported to be able to. But, we can talk about behavior is terms of probablity of occurence, or rate of occurence, and observe how particular environmental manipulations affect that rate of response.
D_M is, and that's what's pissing me off. He's been hinting at it for a while, and he outlined it pretty clearly here:
I will tell you, however, that if you had an exact copy of that person, right down to brain physiology, what they ate for breakfast, exposure to photons, life experiences, the whole shebang. 2 people that have grown up with the same exact bodies, same neurochamistry, biological cycles, brain physiology, and the same exct stimulus, then when put in identical situations they would make the same exact choices every time because there's nothing that would cause them to choose otherwise.


-----------------------------------------------
Secondly, you suggest that behavior analysis uses a backwards-prediction methodology. It is more than obvious that you haven't read much of behavioral research, and more importantly, that I have been unclear in my presentation of such to you.

Really, I guess I'm not seeing your objection to behaviorism clearly. It seems that I haven't done a good job of explaining what behaviorism really is. Perhaps this link (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behaviorism) will do a better job.
Meh, more importantly I muddled the definitions in my brain and didn't bother to educate myself properly. It's no more your fault that I'm fucking up than D_M's "IF A = B AND B =/ C THEN C = D" roundabout babble pissing me off.

Permit me to finish my rabid attack of D_M, read up on differentiation, and then re-concluding my opinion before earnestly re-engaging you in the exact field to which you're referring.

[Dark_Magneto]

For the same reason that I am an aethist/agnostic, I am also refuting you now: because no-one knows, and you claim to have the answers and are willing to stand up and trumpet it like a total fool. You are touting a system of circular logic, just like your opponents.
And if you ask me, "better than crap" isn't much of which to be proud.
It's called deductive reasoning. If the universe restarted all over again with absolutely no changes whatsoever, then it stands to reason that the course of events wouldn't change either seeing as there is nothing that would cause them to turn out differently. That means that the Earth would still be formed and develop life, Shoemaker-Levy would still crash into Jupiter, 9/11 would still happen, and we'd still be here debating on whether or not things would have turned out differently.

The only way, even in theory, that things could change is if something was altered. If everything stays the same then everything stays the same. Nothing changes because there's nothing prompting the change. It's like if you had a time machine and went back in time but didn't change anything at all. It stands to reason that since nothing changed in the past, then nothing should be altered in the present, correct?

Can it be proven? No. At least not yet. It's merely a thought exercise since we don't have time machines or quantum computing. But if you think that things would still turn out differently provided the same exact conditions down to the smallest detail, then I would like to at least examine your reason behind thinking so.

So to answer the original question of whether I am a determinist or not, I would have to say that I am, in a sense. The course of events is going to play out a certain way (which is currently unknown, but theoretically knowable) due to everything being like it is. The way things work and the way everything currently is and the actions that take place will determine the future. If one could calculate for every single factor in the universe, then it should be possible to determine the future.

But this isn't taking into account for the seeming randomness of quantum mechanics. Some people say "I know enough contemporary physical theory to know it's not really like that. It's really a probabilistic theory. There's room. It's loose. It's not deterministic. And that's going to enable us to understand free will.". But if you look at the detail, it's not really going to help because what happens is you have some very small quantum particles, and their behavior is apparently a bit random, they sort of swerve. Their behavior is absurd in the sense that its unpredictable, and we can't understand it based on anything that came before. It just does something out of the blue according to a probabilistic framework. But is that going to help with freedom? I mean, should our freedom be just a matter of probabilities, just some random swerving in a chaotic system? That starts to seem like it's worse.

So the real question you have to ask yourself is this: What is freedom/free will?

What factors make our will "free"? How many restrictions or autonomous actions must their be in order for a will to be considered not free?

[GenocideAlive]

It's called deductive reasoning.
Of which, isn't, never has been claimed, and cannot be claimed to be accurate to any extent. Deductive reasoning is a method of developing a working hypothesis--not a way to skip experiments and shortcut to the conclusion. You remember that, right? The Scientific Method?
If the universe restarted all over again with absolutely no changes whatsoever, then it stands to reason that the course of events wouldn't change either seeing as there is nothing that would cause them to turn out differently.
Random events don't produce consistent outcomes that's the entire basis of a random event, right? You can argue that a random event repeated with exactly the same circumstances will produce the same result--but such does not exist. You can never repeat any instance in time as time isn't a controllable factor. Thus, what you're arguing as "standing to reason" is something that can never be proven.
So the real question you have to ask yourself is this: What is freedom/free will?

What factors make our will "free"? How many restrictions or autonomous actions must their be in order for a will to be considered not free?
Well, according to you, we have absolutely zero. I contest that heartily.

[Dark_Magneto]

I'm playing Devil's advocate to some extent. I don't believe that all our actions have been predetermined by some outside entity, but I do think that there are many factors which go a long way toward influencing the choices that we make which appear to be products of "free will".

But the question still remains. What is this "free will"?

[GenocideAlive]

I'm playing Devil's advocate to some extent. I don't believe that all our actions have been predetermined by some outside entity, but I do think that there are many factors which go a long way toward influencing the choices that we make which appear to be products of "free will".
I'll take that as a retraction. I'm not really interesting in splitting hairs for the definition of "free will" for purposes of your education, though. Unless something more pertinent comes up, I consider my onus abated.

[Dark_Magneto]

Dictionary.com defines free will as:

The power of making free choices that are unconstrained by external circumstances or by an agency such as fate or divine will.

You will find many such instances in life where your choices are constrained by external circumstances.

[Modred]

You will find many such instances in life where your choices are constrained by external circumstances.
Existentialist reasoning would argue that no external circumstance can force you to make a certain decision. In theory, you can simply choose to contradict any circumstance you are given. This does not mean that such a contradiction will be easy or probable, only that it is possible. As such, you cannot blame your decision making on external forces and you alone are responsible for what you do.

And no, I do not consider myself a determinist, at least to the extent of believing everything is the result of some chain of prior occurances.

[Tissue]

But this isn't taking into account for the seeming randomness of quantum mechanics. Some people say "I know enough contemporary physical theory to know it's not really like that. It's really a probabilistic theory. There's room. It's loose. It's not deterministic. And that's going to enable us to understand free will.". But if you look at the detail, it's not really going to help because what happens is you have some very small quantum particles, and their behavior is apparently a bit random, they sort of swerve. Their behavior is absurd in the sense that its unpredictable, and we can't understand it based on anything that came before. It just does something out of the blue according to a probabilistic framework. But is that going to help with freedom? I mean, should our freedom be just a matter of probabilities .

Actually quantum mechanics deals with randomness or probability due to the utter inability to both detect and measure certain quantum phenomenon. For instance the path of an electron around a nucleus cannot be predicted or indeed found at all...no one has succeeded in observing an electron on its true flight path as the mere act of detecting it changes its path...rather probability clouds predict where it could be at any one point. Quantum mechanics is random but not in the way you have described above.

Then again there is chaos theory which uses microscopic models to predict macroscopic systems such as weather, diffusion of gases and other systems which are traditionally hard to predict. Only in chaos theory is there something occuring which is truly random. Particle physicists can predict the path when two subatomic particles collide with each other using simple "snooker ball" momentum equations. They cannot work out the diffusion of gases as there are too many factors for them to consider; the calculations needed to work out the brownian motion of each individual particle and the compilation of the mass, velocity and position in space would be mind boggling. Thus it is said that it is random.

Random events don't produce consistent outcomes that's the entire basis of a random event, right? You can argue that a random event repeated with exactly the same circumstances will produce the same result--but such does not exist. You can never repeat any instance in time as time isn't a controllable factor.

For instance is rolling a dice on a table truly random? The factors involved would be the coefficient of friction the dice’s and table’s surface where they would both contact each other, the bounciness of both said objects, the torque, velocity, gravitational constant and viscosity of air. This is hard to calculate so it called random, because as far as the user is concerned it is random. However, if exactly the same action and conditions are reproduced, exactly the same action should occur. People don’t behave randomly; it just seems like it because there are far too many factors we can ever know about. They can only be predicted to a certain extent.

If there was a parallel universe with the exact same earth as when you was first conceived do you think that you would have taken different actions? No, you would do exactly the same actions, the same mistakes, good and bad deeds, because all the conditions are the same. If there was some differences, where would the cause of the new behavior come from otherwise. An explanation would be from the soul or some other unquantifiable reason.

Sure you cannot predict exactly what an organism will do at any exact moment but if you had all the factors under consideration, surely you can. Of course you cannot know all the factors since it would be impossible as the factors are huge…larger than prediction the random movement of particles of gas, but If you could you would.

Personally I believe in fatalism but Morkeliph has said not to confuse this with determinalism at his first post so I won’t discuss this as to not confuse the issue.

[GenocideAlive]

For instance is rolling a dice on a table truly random? This is hard to calculate so it called random, because as far as the user is concerned it is random.
You answered your own question. I'm sure if you want to get nitty-gritty, the word "random" applies to any effect to which we are unsure or unable to determine the cause. It may be due to complexity, problems with perception, or some other such myriad of factors.

I am ultimately unconcerned with whether or not "true randoms" exist within inanimate objects, because Life (more specifically, behavior) is markedly different from these things. It may someday be possible to manipulate the decisions someone makes by directly altering their brain's physicality, but even then an understanding of how a brain physically makes decisions isn't the same as why.
If there was a parallel universe with the exact same earth as when you was first conceived do you think that you would have taken different actions? No, you would do exactly the same actions, the same mistakes, good and bad deeds, because all the conditions are the same. If there was some differences, where would the cause of the new behavior come from otherwise.
Prove it. You can't. Stop pretending that deductive reasoning = fact.

[Dark_Magneto]

I was also going to make that point.

"Random" is only to the extent that you can't determine the outcome in advance. For instance, when you tell a computer to generate a random number, it uses a "seed" in which to base it off of. Usually involves the system uptime, current time, date, values in registry, or things to that effect. The most random you can get is by using an antennae and basing the seed from sampling static through the air. But even then you can see it isn't truely "random". If you think about it, nothing is because it's all based on conditions or factors that came before it.

I also think that the human mind is like this. The human mind is a big sponge that absorbs sensory input all around it. It is incapable of coming up with anything truely "original", as anything it concocts will be a result/amalgam of some idea or experience or stimulus it has recieved somewhere along it's lifetime.

You can't imagine colors that exist outside the light spectrum because you've never seen them. A man who has been completely blind his whole life has no concept of colors, because he has never experienced them before.

So everything you do, in essence, is based on things that came beforehand. So as you can see we're really not as unrestrained and free of thought as some may think, because all we really do is remix prior input.

[Tissue]

For instance is rolling a dice on a table truly random? This is hard to calculate so it is called random, because as far as the user is concerned it is random.

Wow...just wow...a qoute totally taken out of its context, missing all the totally relevent information in the middle. Please stop your shameful effort at being misleading. BTW I added an "is" somewhere in the qoute so it would make more grammatical sense.

The normal practice is that if you miss a huge chunk of text out of a qoute you add "..." to signify this.


Prove it. You can't. Stop pretending that deductive reasoning = fact.

Deductive reasoning is the basis for fact. You ask the impossible and ask for me to prove that the same actions would occur if the condition are the same.

Considering that I have already explained why the same actions will occur if the condition are the same, please explain why you would not think the same actions would not occur if the conditions are the same.

[GenocideAlive]

Wow...just wow...a qoute totally taken out of its context, missing all the totally relevent information in the middle. Please stop your shameful effort at being misleading. BTW I added an "is" somewhere in the qoute so it would make more grammatical sense.

The normal practice is that if you miss a huge chunk of text out of a qoute you add "..." to signify this.
So ignore the content and instead just bitch about editing. After all, it's an editing forum.
Deductive reasoning is the basis for fact.
FALSE. WRONG. INCORRECT. ERROR. DO NOT PASS GO.

Facts are generally as determined by the scientific method. Observation, Hypothesis, Experiment, Conclusion. Deductive reasoning isn't an all-purpose SKIP EXPERIMENT GO TO CONCLUSION pass; it's a method of derriving a hypothesis.

While sometimes deductive reasoning ends up being correct, it is the experiment that ultimately proves that the reasoning was correct. You cannot skip the Experiment and assume you're correct. Or you can, but you'll be more of a laughingstock than you are now.
You ask the impossible and ask for me to prove that the same actions would occur if the condition are the same.
If it's impossible to determine, why are you claiming to know?
Considering that I have already explained why the same actions will occur if the condition are the same, please explain why you would not think the same actions would not occur if the conditions are the same.
I don't know, and you don't know. I can prove both.

[Dark_Magneto]

If the actions that cause a specific event or action are repeated and exactly the same on every level, then there is no mechanism by which the outcome would be different.

If you put Lincoln back in the movie theatre with John Wilkes Booth on the balcony with the gun, absent any sort of change introduced into the equation, Lincoln is going to get shot in the head and die.

All you're doing in that instance is recreating something that already happened the exact same way it happened with no deviations whatsoever.

If the recreation deviates from the original, then something obviously changed. No change in the scenario = no change in the outcome.

For all intents and purposes, the recreation is indistinguishable from the actual event. The reason you can't tell which is which is because there is no difference. You're just setting the same thing up twice.

[Tissue]

Facts are generally as determined by the scientific method. Observation, Hypothesis, Experiment, Conclusion. Deductive reasoning isn't an all-purpose SKIP EXPERIMENT GO TO CONCLUSION pass; it's a method of derriving a hypothesis.

While sometimes deductive reasoning ends up being correct, it is the experiment that ultimately proves that the reasoning was correct. You cannot skip the Experiment and assume you're correct.


So then you agree that deductive reasoning is the basis for fact. Deductive reasoning is the well, reasoning for the scientific method. You told me to stop pretending that deductive reasoning = fact and I said that it is the basis for fact and in return you conveniently supported me.

If it's impossible to determine, why are you claiming to know?
What exactly am I claiming to know? Determinism is a philosophical proposition and I posted my thoughts on why I am in support of determinism.

I also outlined some misconceptions about quantum physics and chaos theory that D_M originally posted but he has by far posted for more in depth information that you have.

I don't know, and you don't know. I can prove both


What exactly don't you or I know? What are you claiming to be able to prove? Your answer don't make any sense. Please answer why you would not think the same actions would not occur if the conditions are the same. No swearing please.

[GenocideAlive]

So then you agree that deductive reasoning is the basis for fact. Deductive reasoning is the well, reasoning for the scientific method. You told me to stop pretending that deductive reasoning = fact and I said that it is the basis for fact and in return you conveniently supported me.

Yes, much in the same way that the world being flat for 2000 years and the earth being the center of the universe was on the basis of deductive reasoning. I supported you beautifully. /sarcasm
What exactly don't you or I know? What are you claiming to be able to prove? Your answer don't make any sense. Please answer why you would not think the same actions would not occur if the conditions are the same. No swearing please.
I thought the quote clarified to which I was referring. You cannot prove that the same world, given the same circumstances, would occur the same way. Thus I can prove that you do not know anything regarding to repeatability of the "same world" experiment. Equally, I don't know either.
I also outlined some misconceptions about quantum physics and chaos theory that D_M originally posted but he has by far posted for more in depth information that you have.
RELEVANCE PLZ...behaviorism is topic, not quantam physics.

[Tissue]

You cannot prove that the same world, given the same circumstances, would occur the same way. Thus I can prove that you do not know anything regarding to repeatability of the "same world" experiment. Equally, I don't know either.

I thought I explained this but I'll outline it again. Determinism is a philosophical proposition and I posted my thoughts on why I am in support of determinism. Determinism itself is nothing more than a hypothesis which cannot be proved or disproved at the moment. It is in essence a thought experiment, often used in philosophy. Of course you cannot recreate a universe which is the exact same replica as a certain moment of time but if you could what would you expect to happen. The exactly the same actions. Dark_Magneto gives a good example and explains this rather eloquently:

If the actions that cause a specific event or action are repeated and exactly the same on every level, then there is no mechanism by which the outcome would be different.

If you put Lincoln back in the movie theatre with John Wilkes Booth on the balcony with the gun, absent any sort of change introduced into the equation, Lincoln is going to get shot in the head and die.

All you're doing in that instance is recreating something that already happened the exact same way it happened with no deviations whatsoever.

If the recreation deviates from the original, then something obviously changed. No change in the scenario = no change in the outcome.

For all intents and purposes, the recreation is indistinguishable from the actual event. The reason you can't tell which is which is because there is no difference. You're just setting the same thing up twice.

We both give our beliefs and opinions in support of determinism. Now please give your support and beliefs against determinism rather than saying that I don't know and you don't know. This is the realm of philosophy...nobody knows; all we have are the ways we think. I am not trying to change your opinions, I am just explaining the cause of mine and defending it.

RELEVANCE PLZ...behaviorism is topic, not quantam physics.

I used quantum physics to help explain the finer points of probability which you yourself brought up. I'll not post the whole reasoning again but outline the last point. Probablility only seems like probability because to an outside observer such as you, you cannot take in all the conditions possible. In reality, the conditions are set up so only a certain action will occur no matter what. In the end I can use quantum physics in my argument as we are made up solely of particles, and the interaction of particles determine our thought processes and our movements.

Edit: Edited some of the grammer

[GenocideAlive]

I thought I explained this but I'll outline it again. Determinism is a philosophical proposition and I posted my thoughts on why I am in support of determinism. Determinism itself is nothing more than a hypothesis which cannot be proved or disproved at the moment. We both give our beliefs and opinions in support of determinism. Now please give your support and beliefs against determinism rather than saying that I don't know and you don't know.
I'll take this as a retraction. You've come a long way for "my beliefs are true because I have tried-and-true deductive reasoning to make them infalliable."

My participating in this discussion has been solely to keep it a discussion, rather than a diatribe by those that believe in Determinism attempting to annex such words as "fact", "truth", and other facades for their opinion. D_M claimed he was playing "Devil's Advocate" as his copout, and now you're quoting him doing so as your copout.

I'm not as concerned with your excuses as I am the fact that you no longer purport to be in possession of some monopoly on the "facts" of Determinism.

[Dark_Magneto]

The only thing I'm really trying to get across here is that if you set up the same exact scenario, then the same outcome logically follows.

It's like adding 2 and 2 together. Logically, the answer will be 4 when we attempt to add these two numbers.

I do not find it speculative in the least bit to conclude that 2 + 2 will equal the same thing as it did 100 years ago.

All we're doing here is setting up the same scenario that gave us 4 as an answer originally. If 2 + 2 is to equal anything other than 4, something new has to be added to the equation. Failing that, the outcome will be the same.

Same thing with e = m c2. If we work out the equation again, the outcome will be the same. It's nonsense to assume otherwise.

It has been said that one of the hallmarks of insanity is doing the same thing over and expecting different results.

[Prozerran]

From a standpoint of behavior, it's not as simple as a math equation. Just because there are stimuli acting upon an individual doesn't necessitate that they behave a specific way based on that stimuli in every instance. Sure, we can say that if we go back in time and recreate the Lincoln Assassination that it would happen the same exact way, but unfortunately that is not provable.

This is where statistics and physics try to invade, because with this fruit basket of sciences seemingly supporting your philosophy, you claim to have a viable theory and philosophy. Unfortunately, it's apples and oranges that have no relation to one another, and what the philosophy borrows from those sciences is merely more theory. We get to the point where the entire philosophy is a convoluded mess of endless theory and little truth.

Realistically, determinism only holds water when looking in retrospect. Sure, it's rational to conclude that 9/11 would still have happened, it's a historical event, and we understand the conditions that led up to it. But that's a far, far cry from stating we have no free will in making a decision because of certain conditions. Behavior is just as random as it is rational.

[GenocideAlive]

The only thing I'm really trying to get across here is that if you set up the same exact scenario, then the same outcome logically follows.
And likewise, "the only thing I'm really trying to get across here" is that what "logically follows" isn't equitable to truth, nor is it a reliable indicator.

QED, the theory that the Earth is flat, the theory that the Sun revolves around the Earth, etc. etc. You can have all the predictions, "logic", and "deductive reasoning" you want, it proves nothing and it means nothing without a successful, repeatable experiment.

[Dark_Magneto]

Of course. That's just what the theory predicts. Until we get quantum computing or time-travel capabilities, it will remain a thought experiment just like the grandfather paradox.