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Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
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Posted by 64bowtie on December 5, 2004, at 13:27:15
In reply to Free will conundrum explored, posted by 64bowtie on December 4, 2004, at 12:11:18
I see myself in my history as forming distorted and false beliefs. I remember espousing opinions I am certain now as faulty. How did I do that and remain willing to get up every morning, without babbling and drooling on myself?
Simple. I employed the twin gate guards of denial-and-indecision to protect my ego from any destruction at the hands of new-information-and-knowledge. They filter out all the "bad-stuff"... or do they? They helped me avoid anything new.
For several years I watched myself do this and fail, again and again. When I was in the weekly study groups with David Peck helping form David's new model for chemical/person abuser recovery, things changed for me. I noticed things [what I posted here above] about FREE WILL. I discovered that we have a neurophysiological (normal) process, that forms patterns for us as FREE WILL.
Picture four boxes as quadrants. In each box you can write some details:
...Box 1. We take in good information and don't booger it up. (the best palce to be)
...Box 2. We take in good information and booger it up.
...Box 3. We take in boogered up information and label it as good information. (a messy place to be)
...Box 4. We take in boogered up information and see it for what it is, boogered up and to be avoided.
Addendum: Sometimes we mix information from boxes 2, 3 and 4... Messy!In its entirety, this is free will. I discovered what's simple and elegant here is that I lacked acceptance that I normally operate in all four corners as a matter of course; that sometimes I'm in each of these four corners trying to make sense out of life. Mixing boxes 2, 3, and 4, made my life, not a life but a mess!
What I could never see and accept is that its my choice or perspective of which corner I was viewing new information from at the moment. I'm much more careful today and stay out of boxes 2, 3, and 4.
Acceptance of what is, and willingness to change what ain't, is what I work for daily. I do this while remaining curious about the new stuff I don't know yet, but struggle to see. Today I seek beauty. Its a much better filter than denial-and-indecision.
Rod
Posted by 64bowtie on December 5, 2004, at 13:38:53
In reply to lol, posted by Shortelise on December 5, 2004, at 12:33:16
>
> Would you like to distill your long post into a couple of sentences?
>
> ShortE<<< Today I avoid ugly [nouns]
Rod
PS: ...as to the people type [noun], I avoid people with ugly feelings, behavior, and/or intentions...
Posted by 64bowtie on December 5, 2004, at 13:58:45
In reply to 64, posted by Susan47 on December 5, 2004, at 12:35:24
Posted by sunny10 on December 5, 2004, at 15:23:10
In reply to Re: Oh, Ron, posted by ron1953 on December 5, 2004, at 9:32:54
an aside, sorry folks...
Ron, I think I messed up when answering your babblemail...I didn't understand how it worked and used the reply on my mail instead of using the link... so sorry- didn't mean to ignore you ! Then I didn't realize it for a while...
I'm from PA- outside Philly!
Posted by sunny10 on December 5, 2004, at 15:26:33
In reply to » Shortelise » in one sentence, posted by 64bowtie on December 5, 2004, at 13:38:53
gotta admit- I had to wait for the "short version", too.
But I must say, I agree with the points made and I ENDEAVOR to use Box one, also...
I'm still not past the point when I sometimes can't see what is right before my eyes just because of a past experience, but I AM getting better at recognizing that... Even if it's three days later... oh, well, it's progress, isn't it???
Posted by Susan47 on December 5, 2004, at 21:43:29
In reply to I love you guys, ......us all here ....together (nm) » Susan47, posted by 64bowtie on December 5, 2004, at 13:58:45
Posted by verne on December 6, 2004, at 1:03:26
In reply to Free will conundrum explored, posted by 64bowtie on December 4, 2004, at 12:11:18
I'm not sure how much exploring the free will "conundrum" you are open to when in your later posts you indicate you are on the free-will side of the paradox and never really had any question to begin with.
Martin Luther made the case for no free will in his letters and debate with Thomas More. Mathematicians and scientists have since entered the debate and sided with Luther.
I won't continue the argument here but let me pose the question. If you've been knock-down, struck-by-God self-less, who is calling the shots?
There is nothing about the self and "free will" (which are interchangable) that has eternity in it or will surivive the world. Free Will is a fiction of life on earth.
This is not to be mistaken with the "freedom" the New Testament writer, Paul, talks about. This is a freedom of surrendering the self and will.
The idea that you can "do it your way" and be "cool", from the rat pack to the "say-it-and-claim-it" churches, does not mean you can pack it with you into heaven. You simply can not take it with you. You can't take ANYTHING with you.
Whatever you think you did in your "free will", will perish with you when you die. Perhaps, a monument or two, a few kind words, will survive for a time, but in the end, whatever you dreamed up, and imagined as "free will", is long forgotten. Your "free will" has limited play on earth; imagine how it will do in the afterlife where time is irrelevant?
What you are doing may work in the world but it has no eternity in it.
verne
Posted by GeishaGirl on December 6, 2004, at 2:13:14
In reply to Re: Free will conundrum explored, posted by verne on December 6, 2004, at 1:03:26
I find all of this dialogue very fascinating. However, I prefer the romance of not analyzing consciousness with science. It loses meaning and magic for me the other way. I feel like no one will ever really figure this stuff out for sure. And I don't really want to know for sure. It would take all the fun out of life for me. Too boring. I've always been a romantic at heart, though :)
Posted by 64bowtie on December 6, 2004, at 5:09:32
In reply to Re: Free will conundrum explored, posted by verne on December 6, 2004, at 1:03:26
>
> I won't continue the argument here but let me pose the question. If you've been knock-down, struck-by-God self-less, who is calling the shots?
><<< Verne, I'm not certain how to comment on your question other than to say I've never been nor needed to be "knock-down, struck-by-god self-less". I let God alone to be what God is, and in turn, God let's me alone to be who I always am. This ain't an Oki-stand-off between me'n'God either. The alternative would require magic, since I am the hands'n'feet for God's works in my life.
Shouldn't this be on the Faith board anyway?
Rod
Posted by verne on December 6, 2004, at 9:47:26
In reply to Me'n'God » verne, posted by 64bowtie on December 6, 2004, at 5:09:32
Rod,
I was drinking last night (all week actually) and got a wee bit cranky. (trying to stop) I mean, I would have argued the world is flat just to be cantankerous.
I don't know what I said on the free will question (won't torture myself to read it) but it was probably nonsense. Please ignore it.
Gee, I'm being uncivil to myself this morning.
verne
Posted by partlycloudy on December 6, 2004, at 9:55:16
In reply to Please Ignore My Previous Post » 64bowtie, posted by verne on December 6, 2004, at 9:47:26
Don't you wish there was a Morning-After-Please-Delete!! button?? There's been a few times when I did not recognize what I'd posted as mine...
Sheepish, but sober,
pc
Posted by verne on December 6, 2004, at 10:06:33
In reply to Re: Please Ignore My Previous Post » verne, posted by partlycloudy on December 6, 2004, at 9:55:16
Yeah I do. The next morning I have to do damage control. Got banned for life at one site for my drunken quarreling; at another, I discover my posts were heavily edited by the moderator.
I used to make regrettable phone calls and leave long messages if I got the answering machine. When I ran out of people to call, I started calling foreign countries where it wasn't 3:00am.
Well, back to my hang-over. Brutal this morning. The beer count was too high: 16 or so. My daughter is visiting Wednesday so I must quit today and get back on my feet.
verne
Posted by partlycloudy on December 6, 2004, at 10:28:06
In reply to Morning After » partlycloudy, posted by verne on December 6, 2004, at 10:06:33
Posted by Susan47 on December 6, 2004, at 16:56:44
In reply to Morning After » partlycloudy, posted by verne on December 6, 2004, at 10:06:33
Don't feel badly about your drunken posts, I think that's part of the process here at Babble. DB is kind enough to let us get away with quite a bit, really, when we're off center; maybe he understands? Anyway, I think I need to re-read myself sometimes when I've been off, because it gives me good insight into what substances do to my thinking process. Don't you guys find that too?
Posted by AuntieMel on December 6, 2004, at 17:31:12
In reply to Morning After » partlycloudy, posted by verne on December 6, 2004, at 10:06:33
I have a friend who, when he gets a few too many in him, will start praising "Mick and the boys" (The Stones) and dare anyone to insult the Queen. A couple more and he decides it's time to call his mum (usually around 4am UK time. I don't think he ever gets her, though he's made a whole lot of wrong number calls.
Posted by Mark H. on December 6, 2004, at 20:20:44
In reply to Re: Free will conundrum explored » 64bowtie, posted by alexandra_k on December 4, 2004, at 20:08:55
>> But then if I do not choose my beliefs and desires, if I do not (in effect) choose myself then how is it that I can take ultimate responsibility? There still seems to be no room for free will.
Dear Alexandra,
These thoughts about free will remind me of Dylan Klebold, the teenager who decided to kill himself at Columbine High School and to take as many of his teachers and classmates with him as he could. I think he had free will. I think he could have stopped himself right up until the time that he started pulling the trigger. I don't believe that he was predestined by genes, upbringing or fate to kill 13 people and himself.
More to the point, I acknowledge all the would-be Dylan Klebolds out there who actively choose non-violent ways to deal with their anger and frustration every day.
This is free will in action: people choosing not to act on destructive impulses, in contravention of their instincts, beliefs and desires. Self-restraint may be the ultimate expression (if not proof) of free will.
With kind regards,
Mark H.
Posted by alexandra_k on December 7, 2004, at 3:56:36
In reply to Re: Free will conundrum explored » alexandra_k, posted by Mark H. on December 6, 2004, at 20:20:44
> These thoughts about free will remind me of Dylan Klebold, the teenager who decided to kill himself at Columbine High School and to take as many of his teachers and classmates with him as he could.
Yes, the notion of responsibility (of praising and blaming) does seem to be intimately connected with the notion of free will. B. F. Skinner, on the other hand, thought otherwise, and I shall use him as an example just to show that there is another way we can look at cases like these. He showed (as many others have done) that the libertarian notion of free will is nonsensical, however we should still hold people accountable for their actions. Why are they accountable if they are not free?
Well, Skinner thought that if we deliver a punisher to people who emmit innapropriate behaviour then we decrease the probability that they will emmit that same response in the future in similar situations. This means that Skinner thought that rather than punishing people because they FREELY CHOOSE their actions, we punish them because by making that the consequence of the behaviour we reduce the likelihood that the person will do it again.
Then there is the idea that by locking people up we are actually preventing their future reoffending.
Then there is the idea that other people learn by modelling. We may refrain from doing those same things because of the consequences of that act that we observe vicariously.
In short: just because there may be no free will (in the ordinary sense) it does not follow that we should not praise and blame. Praising and blaming have consequences for future acts, so we should indeed deliver those consequences. (Though, of course strictly speaking we cannot choose either to do this or to refrain from it!)
>I think he had free will. I think he could have stopped himself right up until the time that he started pulling the trigger. I don't believe that he was predestined by genes, upbringing or fate to kill 13 people and himself.
I think that IF something different had happened in his life before the point of the action (for example IF he had had a therapist to talk to, IF he had empathised with his victims) THEN - there could have been a different outcome. But what I do want to say is GIVEN THAT the situation was what it was, he couldn't have done otherwise.
To me, that is what is so tragic about it.
If he had somehow survived that I do think that he should have been prevented from reoffending. He should also have adequate treatment so that he realises that that sort of behaviour is unacceptable (as that might be what tips the balance for next time - either in his case, or in the case of someone modelling him).
> More to the point, I acknowledge all the would-be Dylan Klebolds out there who actively choose non-violent ways to deal with their anger and frustration every day.Yes, that can be a hard struggle for some. It is lucky for them that their genes and environment have resulted in their ability to rise above.
Okay, this is from Skinner "Beyond Freedom and Dignity". He also had a go at writing a novel "Utopia" which is on creating the ideal society through altering reinforcement contingencies. "1984" was a reaction to the notion of such a society. I think there is a commune type place in the US where people have tried to realise Skinners vision, however.
Just for the record, I am not a Skinnerian.
I believe that the ordinary concept of freewill is contradictory and thus we cannot have that. Basically, something in our notion needs to give if we want to accept that
- people have free will
- having free will means that one could have done otherwise
- the physical state of the world at one instant causally determines the state of the world at the next instant.
- if the physical state of the world determines the behavour, then the behaviour could not have been otherwise unless the physical state of the world had been different.(and the introduction of quantum indeterminacies doesn't help us with free choice - see my other post.)
Now it may not help my case that I have picked probably the most extremist anti-freewill person to assist me with my case.
I believe that FIRSTLY we need to do conceptual analysis to figure out what we mean (or really what we should mean by 'free will') e.g., as Dennett does in "Elbow Room: Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting". Then the challenge becomes accounting for how it is that that arose out of the purely physical world (e.g., through the processes of natural selection as talked about in "Freedom Evolves"). But that is just my 2cents worth. I think we can have both - but it does involve changing the concept first. Maybe its cheating, but maybe the only way to solve the problem of how free will is to dissolve the problem.
Do away with free will as 'could have done otherwise' and headway can be made.
Yours respectfully.
Posted by alexandra_k on December 7, 2004, at 4:04:48
In reply to Re: Free will conundrum explored » Mark H., posted by alexandra_k on December 7, 2004, at 3:56:36
Posted by Mark H. on December 7, 2004, at 14:09:40
In reply to Re: Free will conundrum explored » Mark H., posted by alexandra_k on December 7, 2004, at 3:56:36
> Do away with free will as 'could have done otherwise' and headway can be made.
Dear Alexandra,
Thank you for your thoughtful reply. I'm probably not up to fully understanding your argument. I'm sure I used to be much smarter.
Clearly, you understood what I meant. "Could have done otherwise" and especially "can choose to do otherwise" are at the core of my experience and understanding of free will.
I'm reluctant to ask (out of respect for your time), but how would doing away with this concept of personal responsibility allow for headway to be made?
Best wishes,
Mark H.
Posted by alexandra_k on December 7, 2004, at 20:04:21
In reply to Re: Free will conundrum explored, posted by Mark H. on December 7, 2004, at 14:09:40
ok. If having free will requires that we COULD HAVE DONE otherwise, then it turns out that we have no free will. Science has simply shown that to be empirically false. e.g.,
The notion here is that your conscious experience of free choice is causally irrelevant to producing the behaviour you emmit. Science has shown it to be so. (I should perhaps say that some have attempted to critique this interpretation of Libet's experimental results, but I buy it.)
So IF having free will means that one could have done otherwise THEN it follows that we have no free will. Skinner was right :-(
There is no progress to be made on the problem on this analysis of the concept of free will, because it turns out that freedom is an illusion and we do not have it.
BUT - Surely we have free will! If we want to retain that then...
free will cannot mean that we could have done otherwise. Sure we have a phenomenological experience of making a free choice, but science has shown us that that experience occurs AFTER we have already started to move in the way that we eventually consciously experience as having 'decided' to do. The conscious experience of making a decision is causally irrelevant as the 'decision' has already been made.
So now we need to look at what we should mean by free will. Now you might want to say that nobody forced that guy to kill all those people. Nobody was holding a gun to his head. We usually say that people are not free if they are prevented from acting on their beliefs and desires because of environmental restrictions. So here being free is relative - if you can act on your beliefs and desires without others preventing you or making you do something then you are free in a sense. e.g. the person in jail is not 'free', whereas we are.
Then there is the case where (according to Hume anyway) kleptomaniacs are not free because they are in the grips of a compulsion. Here the idea seems to be that they have a first order desire to steal, but they also have a strong second order desire - they wish like anything that they did not have that first order desire to steal. Here they are a slave to their first order desires and so (according to Hume) they are not free. But then if someone had the first order desire to steal and their second order desire was that that first order desire was fine - well then they are acting freely.
This is a little odd, because here we are saying that the person is free when their first and second order desires are in synch - but in the 'could have done otherwise' sense of free will, we never freely chose those beliefs and desires (neither the lower or higher order ones).
But then that is irrelevant to this conception of free will
Don't get me wrong, many problems remain. I just considered it to be progress because we need to decide what we mean by freedom, and well, if we want to be free then we need to define it in such a way so that we can have it!
Now that was a confusing ramble.
I am sure I used to be more lucid...
Posted by 64bowtie on December 8, 2004, at 0:48:49
In reply to Please Ignore My Previous Post » 64bowtie, posted by verne on December 6, 2004, at 9:47:26
Posted by 64bowtie on December 8, 2004, at 1:00:14
In reply to Re: Free will conundrum explored » alexandra_k, posted by Mark H. on December 6, 2004, at 20:20:44
Posted by alexandra_k on December 8, 2004, at 13:49:14
In reply to Go gettem Mark!!! Thanks!!! (nm) » Mark H., posted by 64bowtie on December 8, 2004, at 1:00:14
I realise that I missed your point.
I am so in the grips of a theory that I find it hard to think laterally about some problems.I hope you don't find my rambling to be disrespectful.
Posted by Mark H. on December 8, 2004, at 19:51:03
In reply to Re: Free will conundrum explored » Mark H., posted by alexandra_k on December 7, 2004, at 20:04:21
Still thinking about what you've written... not ignoring you!
Mark H.
Posted by Mark H. on December 9, 2004, at 18:38:20
In reply to Re: Free will conundrum explored » Mark H., posted by alexandra_k on December 7, 2004, at 20:04:21
Dear Alexandra,
Even if my neurons start firing or my muscles start moving before I am conscious of having made a decision, my ability to affirm and renew that decision repeatedly in the future (or to make a different decision) is suggestive of free will. Free will takes place within a larger context, certainly, and subject to the constraints of the environment, which is inclusive of personal biology, upbringing, beliefs and life experiences, among other things.
Personal freedom may be an illusion in the ultimate sense, then, but it exists within relative reality, doesn't it? Ask anyone who has successfully quit drinking. Resisting a compulsion -- or making an altruistic choice -- requires going against something akin to instinct. Absent free will, who would ever donate a kidney or do without food in protest of an injustice? Freedom is being able to change the implementation or direction of that neuronal impulse that preceded thought or action.
Perhaps we can neither prove nor disprove the existence of free will, and it becomes a matter of belief. To whatever extent, we are free to choose our beliefs based on the experiences they are likely to create for ourselves and others. If a belief in "no free will" leads me to nihilism and despair (or illusions of not being accountable for my actions), then it is not a very helpful belief. If a belief in "free will" makes me more optimistic, and I conduct myself in ways that make me a more compassionate person, then that belief is useful, even if it is empirically false.
I've done a little editing for a Skinnerian behaviorist, and I find that my personal belief about behaviorism is that its premises are flawed but its effects are often laudable. So I have no problem practicing the techniques of cognitive-behavioral therapy, for instance, and benefit from doing so, even though I reject the idea that negative thoughts necessarily precede negative feelings.
You wrote: "We need to decide what we mean by freedom, and well, if we want to be free then we need to define it in such a way so that we can have it!" I couldn't agree with you more.
My clumsy analogy is that we are like captains of ships at sea, bound to the water, traveling in agreed-upon shipping lanes, dependent on our schedule and crew, yet we still control the helm. Whether we deliver our cargo on time or run the ship aground depends on the freedom we have to influence the outcome. To loop back to where I began, isn't freedom to influence the outcome a practical definition of free will?
At another level, I think your thoughts on free will and mine likely converge in religion, but I doubt I'm smart enough to go there with you. I really enjoy the way you think and express yourself, and I appreciate the time you invest in these discussions.
With kind regards,
Mark H.
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