Is there a skeptical/scientific argument against predeterminism?

[SpuriusMaximus]

It's really most philosophically useful to me for the purposes of forgiveness and compassion.

It's hard or impossible to be angry with someone when you understand that if you were them, you would have done the exact same things.

Is it? One of the purposes -- and arguably the MAIN purpose -- of laws and social norms is deterrence. If everything is forgiven, then there is really no reason not to do something evil.

Regardless of whether you think it's deterministic or not, people take decisions for REASONS and even more importantly because of EXPECTATIONS.

E.g., you flick a light switch because you expect the effect to be that the light turns on. If you brought in a tribesman from the Amazons who hasn't learned to expect that cause-effect relationship, they won't even try to look for a light switch.

E.g., if I told you there's free booze and hotdogs at a beach volleyball this weekend, and you're any good at it, you might decide to participate. But if I told you it's in a former minefield, that might change what you can expect and thus your decision.

The same applies to crime and punishment, including civilian liability and social stigma. E.g., the same people who'll screw on a beach on vacation abroad, might not do it near their home town.

Basically deterministic or not, free will or not, deterrence works. If you think people deciding not to do something unlawful don't have free will in that choice, good. All the better, in fact. I see no reason to change that, then.

 

[kellyb]

If everything is forgiven, then there is really no reason not to do something evil.

You see how this sounds like a Christian or theist argument, don't you?

 

[David Mo]

- It doesn't follow that it's inappropriate to blame people for their bad behavior. Under determinism, people don't suddenly become passive inanimate objects. Their decision-making minds are processes. We can and do blame processes for their effects. A medical procedure or industrial control system that causes unnecessary deaths will be blamed for those deaths and altered or eliminated. We can look at precursor processes (such as how the misbehaving system was designed or tested, or a murderer's upbringing) but we still also focus blame on the lethal system or murderer itself.

According to F.B. Skinner, the father of behaviourism and a prominent determinist, blaming for doing evil is useless and even harmful (Cf. Beyond Freedom and Dignity). It is useless because words are powerless against conditioned behaviours. Effective programs of deconditioning are better than well-intentioned discourses. It is harmful because blaming evil creates the illusion of freedom in society and prevents it from doing better things against crime and evil in general.

It seems logical to me. No morality is consistent with determinism.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

You see how this sounds like a Christian or theist argument, don't you?

Hmm? How on Earth do you come to THAT conclusion?

 

[Roboramma]

I'd like to add this blog post by physicist Sean Carroll to the discussion:

https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2011/12/05/on-determinism/

Quantum mechanics is where things get interesting. When a quantum state is happily evolving along according to the Schrödinger equation, everything is perfectly deterministic; indeed, more so than classical mechanics, because the space of states (Hilbert space) doesn’t allow for the kind of non-generic funny business that let non-deterministic classical solutions sneak in. But when we make an observation, we are unable to deterministically predict what its outcome will be. (And Bell’s theorem at least suggests that this inability is not just because we’re not smart enough; we never will be able to make such predictions.) At this point, opinions become split about whether the loss of determinism is real, or merely apparent. This is a crucial question for both physicists and philosophers, but not directly relevant for the question of free will.

The traditional (“Copenhagen”) view is that QM is truly non-deterministic, and that probability plays a central role in the measurement process when wave functions collapse. Unfortunately, this process is extremely unsatisfying, not just because it runs contrary to our philosophical prejudices but because what counts as a “measurement” and the quantum/classical split are extremely ill-defined. Almost everyone agrees we should do better, despite the fact that we still teach this approach in textbooks. Someone like Tom Banks would try to eliminate the magical process of wave function collapse, but keep probability (and thus a loss of determinism) as a central feature. There is a whole school of thought along these lines, which treats the quantum state as a device for tracking probabilities; see this excellent post by Matt Leifer for more details.

The other way to go is many-worlds, which says that the ordinary deterministic evolution of the Schrödinger equation is all that ever happens. The problem there is comporting such a claim with the reality of our experience — we see Schrödinger’s cat to be alive or dead, not ever in a live/dead superposition as QM would seem to imply. The resolution is that “we” are not described by the entire quantum state; rather, we live in one branch of the wave function, which also includes numerous other branches where different outcomes were observed. This approach (which I favor) restores determinism at the level of the fundamental equations, but sacrifices it for the observational predictions made by real observers. If I were keeping a tally, I would certainly put this one in the non-determinism camp, for anyone interested in questions of free will.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

According to F.B. Skinner, the father of behaviourism and a prominent determinist, blaming for doing evil is useless and even harmful (Cf. Beyond Freedom and Dignity). It is useless because words are powerless against conditioned behaviours. Effective programs of deconditioning are better than well-intentioned discourses. It is harmful because blaming evil creates the illusion of freedom in society and prevents it from doing better things against crime and evil in general.

It seems logical to me. No morality is consistent with determinism.

The problem there is that it seems to assume that your words and actions don't ALSO cause conditioned behaviours. E.g., that, say, Ted Bundy was conditioned by X, Y or Z in his past to kill all those women, but society deciding that it's wrong to kill would totally not also cause a difference in his behaviour.

But, regardless of whether decisions are deterministic or not, they are based on the WHOLE set of available data. Which includes how society will react to it, possible punishments or rewards, etc.

And generally, the decision taking in the brain -- which by now we can even watch in real time on MRI -- is essentially a voting process. The reasons for doing it are weighed against the reasons for not doing it.

Essentially if we all just shrug and go "poor guy, he must have been conditioned to kill those women" and let him get away with it, then he'll just do it again. Because a bunch of reasons not to do it just disappeared from that column.

 

[Cheetah]

It seems that there is pretty solid evidence from GR that SpaceTime is one thing and that from different perspectives we are all long dead and gone and from others we haven't even evolved yet. Determinism rules!
It seems that there is pretty solid evidence from QM that the universe is probabilistic. Hidden variables are impossible. Non-Determanism rules!

I can understand how you seem to lose free will if the future is as unchangeable as the past. You are still making choices and considering multiple options before deciding something, but whatever you end up deciding has, in a sense, already happened.

The problem for me is, how does adding randomness give you more free will? Does having a random element influence your choices make you freer?


Who knows, whatever, all that aside...
From my, a biologist's point of view, determinism doesn't really make sense. For me it comes down to complexity, the complexity of the universe and of life. Life is incredibly complex and brains add a whole new level of complexity. Very complex things have few ways of working and many, many ways of breaking. They are very unlikely to just happen by accident.
The universe does seem to have an origin, a beginning, and if it was deterministic all the complexity we see must have been present from the start. It must have been inherent in the rules and configuration from the moment of whatever quantum fluctuation caused the whole thing to exist.

This seems unlikely, where did all the complexity come from?
If the universe is non-deterministic and choices can be made, the complexity is easily explained by evolution. Evolution drives complexity. Complex life have brains. Brains evaluate the state of the environment and make choices, that's why they evolved.
Seems weird to have all this complexity around and brains making choices if choosing was not important.
Free will rules!

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

Well, if we're talking about evolution, the DNA breaks creating those mutations are still random.

That has nothing to do with free will, way I see it. There is no choice involved in which Nitrogen atom will turn into Carbon 14 (due to interaction with neutrons from the Sun), nor whether it will end up in some DNA strand (brownian motion is still random) or where in it, nor when it will decay and cause a DNA break, etc. There's neither determinism nor free will there, but neither is needed to drive the random mutations part of evolution.

So, yes, complexity does increase.

I'm sure that as a biologist you understand all that. Probably better than I do, in fact.

As for how bigger brains were an advantage, think of it this way: regardless of whether brains are deterministic or have free will, a bigger brain is STILL an advantage anyway. Because the "whatever you end up deciding has, in a sense, already happened", is contingent on having the brain that can take that decision. It doesn't happen in a vacuum. Some synapses have to be connected in a certain way and fire or fire in a certain way, or that decision doesn't happen. Even if someone wants to take that as deterministic, as in the outcome is guaranteed, it's only guaranteed for THAT specific synapse configuration. For another one, something else happens.

E.g., one could believe that both my brain and the brain of my cat are deterministic, but the "predestined" decisions of my cat in any given situation won't be the same as mine.

I mean a kid I grew up with a cat, and presumably we observed the same things happening. In fact, a lot more so than you'd think. I was a very sick kid, I didn't go outside much, and neither did the cat. So whatever happened or was said in that house, chances are both me and the cat observed them. But if you took me at the age of, oh, say, 6 years old, before I started going to school and seeing other things there that the cat at home didn't, my choices in most situations would have been very different from the cat's. Deterministic or not, they were based on a different brain complexity, and the difference in world model that came with it.

 

[dann]

It's a thought experiment. Those don't need to be possible to illuminate a principle.



All of those things very well might play a part, among other causes/reasons.

But one of the most common "causes/reasons" when people make decisions is their intentions - even when they make bad og even self-defeating ones.

Of course.



I just think we compute things differently at different times for a variety of reasons.
Do you take issue with this hypothesis?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_theory_of_mind

Yes, I do. And for almost the same reason I take issue with most of the fears of an AI apocalypse. Whenever people talk about developing consciousness, they tend to forget that intention came before consciousness (and before intention probably feelings like [Frankenstein mode]pleasant/unpleasant: sunlight: good, darkness: bad; warmth: good, cold: bad; sustenance: good, lack of sustenance: bad[/Frankenstein mode].) Will and consciousness are definitely connected, but they are different things.

Again, it's a thought experiment. If you could just answer the question instead of misclassifying the thought experiment as a hypothesis and then complaining about its impossibility, you might at least be able to meet me where I'm at so we could discuss it.

OK, but your thought experiment is like a self-fulfilling prophecy: You have two persons who are exactly identical, and then you ask if they can be different. And of course they can't. Your construct doesn't allow it: They have to be exactly the same. Can they sit down and reach different conclusions? No, they can't because even different conclusions are something that they'll experience and in your thought experiment that is as impossible as random mutations that would make their genetic makeup different. You have eliminated the possibility in your thought experiment. That's why it's wrong from the very beginning.

Again, I was just trying to engage you in the thought experiment - thinking of someone you know who took a fantastically dangerous path in life which panned out poorly for them...the sort of person most people have no sympathy for and just write off under the banner of "they brought it all upon themselves."

It changes nothing: The bad outcome may have been intended, or circumstances may have led to it. Whatever.

Obviously it's your decision, but your decision was as caused as any other things which happens in this world.

Yes, but again the most common cause of decisions is people's intentions, and they aren't determined by Newtonian or even Einsteinian laws. You know where the Earth is going to be in a thousand years in relation to the other major celestial bodies in our vicinity if nothing interfers with their orbits. In so far, you could say that it's pre-determined. You don't know what Trump is going to Tweet tomorrow. (But it's a pretty good guess that it will be something stupid.)

The person who decides to stand on the hill to watch the lightening storm makes that choice based on a combination of genetics (things like this, in this case, perhaps), previous experiences (maybe as a child you saw an amazing lightening storm which made you want to see more with ever better vantage points for forever after), and current environment (there was a storm, and hill to look at it from, right there, right then.)

Again: You're not omnipotent, so very good and well-thought-out decisions may have disastrous consequences, and very stupid ones may work out to your advantage. Not on average - that's why evolution tends to work - but in specific cases. The wise choice would have been to stay in your car, but then it was hit by that truck instead of by lightning ...

In discussions like this, I usually point out the following, which is not a thought experiment. It's reality:
We know from physics and chemistry how matter behaves, but if matter is organized into the shape of a squirrel or a sparrow, it no longer behaves the way you would expect matter to behave: The squirrel runs up the tree, away from the centre of gravity.
And if matter is organized into the shape of a human being, it may consider that running up trees the whole time may be a waste of time and energy.
A human being still obeys the laws of nature, but it doesn't act the way matter is supposed to act according to those laws. That's why we leave those fields of science behind and move on to medicine, psychology and the social sciences when we want to know why people do what they do.

 

[Chanakya]

@Chanakya
The problem there is that an argument from analogy is only as good as the analogy. And I'd say unfortunately yours is fundamentally broken.

You first build a hypothetical superman butterfly that can cause tornadoes, something which doesn't exist on Earth (it's just a very hyperbollic metaphor,) yet try to keep the premise that, see, on Earth we can predict tornadoes. Yes, we can, but only because such butterflies don't really exist. You haven't shown in any form or shape that that would still be the case if some butterfly could randomly cause hurricanes across the globe.

Here, let me give you an example of the same kind of reasoning where it's more obvious what's wrong with it:

- imagine that by some mutation, someone with actual psychic mind-control powers were born. Kinda like Professor X, if you will.

- so someone could end up in court accused of a crime they were mind-controlled into doing

- IRL we can deal just fine with claims of mind control by dismissing them in court

- therefore we wouldn't need anything special to deal with that psionic mutant, we can just keep dismissing such claims

But actually the premise at the third step is true ONLY BECAUSE the previous two steps have never been shown to have ever happened. If that objectively changes, then so would the way we deal with it.

Apologies for the belated response!

Absolutely, I realize my analogy was lopsided, in as much as it was based on hyperbole, as I'd said myself in that earlier post of mine.

But I don't think you really need some kind of super-butterfly here. I was referring to that chaos theory meme, that suggests that a butterfly flapping its wings in Mexico may end up affecting how (or if) we end up with a hurricane in Texas. Of course, it is my understanding that this is not literally the case, which is why I said it is probably hyperbole. Still, the principle stands: a large number of such trivial events may well end up having a non-trivial effect on the weather. And that complexity is what makes weather forecasting such a challenge, beyond a point. That complexity is why you cannot make exact weather predictions for every part of the globe six months ahead, because making such crazily complex models is beyond us.

Now since you mentioned mutations resulting in hemophilia, the obvious counter-example that comes to mind is some mutation that gets a butterfly to flap its wings, or not, at some particular time.

If we can go back to your fictional Asimov reference: Something like Seldon's psychohistory can, in theory (and in fiction!), let us arrive at probabilistic predictions of the consequences of the Czar's hemophilia, but cannot really speak to the mutation causing the hemophilia itself. That is your argument, correct? In other words, to use Asimov's fictional structure, it can let us arrive at probabilistic predictions consequent to The Mule, but cannot help us with actually speaking of the actual occurrence of the Mule's mutation.

Thus with weather systems: As far as butterfly wings flapping and their effect on weather systems: a sufficiently complex model can -- much like psychohistory -- let us, in theory, work out probabilistic meteorological models consequent to butterflies' wing flaps, but they cannot really let us speak to the initial event, the flapping of the wing itself, since that is based on genetic factors equally as unpredictable as the hemophilia mutation.

I don't know, I don't see any difference between the two. Sure, there's a difference in degree of complexity (given that human beings are far more complex than molecules, and human society far more complex than weather) -- but, as I see it, there is no essential difference.

So, unless you're saying that that complexity itself is what you're basing your different opinion of human society on (when compared to weather systems), I don't see what your point is here. And if indeed you do base your argument on that complexity, well then I for one am in complete agreement. I believe that the free will argument can reasonably be made not in absolute terms, but only in pragmatic terms, basis ad hoc complexity level threshholds (with us humans favoring a human-level threshhold, for obvious reasons).

Well, sure. You created a definition where you tautologically have no free will. If it's random it's not free will, if you have reasons, it's still not free will. You defined a set that tautologically and trivially is empty. Which is why I call it a useless derail. It doesn't add a single bit of information about anything.

You disagree with kellyb's definition. What definition do you yourself favor, then?

In arguing about free will, what is it that you yourself are arguing for or against, what exactly does free will mean to you?

It's really most philosophically useful to me for the purposes of forgiveness and compassion.

It's hard or impossible to be angry with someone when you understand that if you were them, you would have done the exact same things.

Indeed. That is how I view the free will discussion myself.

I see the absence of free will as a tautological consequence of a materialistic paradigm. No big deal, really.

The only thing that sets apart a human being from other simpler systems is our level of complexity, that's all.

And the reason I find this concept, this paradigm, this argument, useful, is because it lets one realize that ultimately human beings are no different, really, than a car -- in the sense that there is no ultimate free will, therefore no ultimate responsibility, so that "punishment" per se is a senseless idea.

Sure, I favor building in deterrence. Obviously. Even strong deterrence, if appropriate. And also behavioral correction.

But, coming to our penal systems (or indeed how we informally think of how we, as individuals, are to respond to others), it makes sense to think of understanding people, it makes sense, certainly, to build in deterrence, even very strong deterrence if appropriate to influence behavior a priori (as well as correctional strategies post some crime). But "punishment", in the sense that we generally understand it, seems to me as senseless as a child angrily kicking the table legs that tripped her up, or someone kicking a car that's spluttered to a stop in the middle of nowhere at a particular inconvenient time.

That's baggage we can do without. Not having to think in terms of "punishment" is, I believe, healthy, both at the individual level, as well as at the level of society.

 

[Chanakya]

... your thought experiment is like a self-fulfilling prophecy: You have two persons who are exactly identical, and then you ask if they can be different. And of course they can't. Your construct doesn't allow it: They have to be exactly the same. Can they sit down and reach different conclusions? No, they can't because even different conclusions are something that they'll experience and in your thought experiment that is as impossible as random mutations that would make their genetic makeup different. You have eliminated the possibility in your thought experiment. That's why it's wrong from the very beginning. ...

I think what she's getting at is (at least that is how I myself view this) that if you were born -- Godwin alert !! -- if you were born with Hitler's exact circumstances and Hitler's exact genetics, then you couldn't have acted any differently. You too, then, would have done the exact same things as Hitler.

And that's because there isn't a separate "you" at all! Hitler's body-mind complex is all that he was. Much like a car, except a great deal more complex (and also not quite "designed" by someone).

Sure, this is not a big deal, in as much as it follows trivially and tautologically from a materialistic paradigm, as I said earlier. But where this idea is useful, is it lets us view even a Hitler without any need for "punishment" per se.

So, if we caught hold of Hitler, then we'd see what we'd need to do to correct his particular mental kinks. If we couldn't correct those kinks adequately, then we'd see what we'd need to do keep society from him. And we'd also see what we'd need to do to build in ample deterrence to prevent future Hitlers and future minions of Hitler. But what we wouldn't need -- not even for a Hitler -- is "punishment", per se, as the word "punishment" is generally understood, not even for his particular heinous crimes.

Seeing things in this perspective appears healthy to me, both at the individual level, and at the level of society. So much less baggage that way.

 

[Cheetah]

As for how bigger brains were an advantage, think of it this way: regardless of whether brains are deterministic or have free will, a bigger brain is STILL an advantage anyway. Because the "whatever you end up deciding has, in a sense, already happened", is contingent on having the brain that can take that decision. It doesn't happen in a vacuum. Some synapses have to be connected in a certain way and fire or fire in a certain way, or that decision doesn't happen. Even if someone wants to take that as deterministic, as in the outcome is guaranteed, it's only guaranteed for THAT specific synapse configuration. For another one, something else happens.

Your argument is circular. You are taking it as a given that we exist in the universe as part of immutable spacetime and that since we are performing complex behaviors we need complex brains in order to do so. It does not explain where the complex behaviour or the brains come from.

We know that the universe started very hot, dense and uniform and evolved to it's current complex state over time. If the universe was deterministic it also means that all that complexity was already there at the start. It must have been inherent in it's properties and the laws that govern how it changes over time.
A deterministic universe cannot generate it's own complexity, everything has to be there from the start as part of the recipe so to speak, before the baking even starts.
A non-deterministic universe on the other hand is free to follow simple non-deterministic rules and therefore generate it's own complexity by exploring multiple possible options of how to evolve.

Just my personal take.

 

[kellyb]

But one of the most common "causes/reasons" when people make decisions is their intentions - even when they make bad og even self-defeating ones.

But you intentions are caused, too. People's intentions are often based on their beliefs and feelings, and beliefs and feelings are caused.

Yes, I do. And for almost the same reason I take issue with most of the fears of an AI apocalypse. Whenever people talk about developing consciousness, they tend to forget that intention came before consciousness (and before intention probably feelings like [Frankenstein mode]pleasant/unpleasant: sunlight: good, darkness: bad; warmth: good, cold: bad; sustenance: good, lack of sustenance: bad[/Frankenstein mode].) Will and consciousness are definitely connected, but they are different things.

I don't think you can have intention without consciousness, and which came first is not known, to my knowledge.
I think will is probably one manifestation of consciousness.

OK, but your thought experiment is like a self-fulfilling prophecy: You have two persons who are exactly identical, and then you ask if they can be different. And of course they can't. Your construct doesn't allow it: They have to be exactly the same. Can they sit down and reach different conclusions? No, they can't because even different conclusions are something that they'll experience and in your thought experiment that is as impossible as random mutations that would make their genetic makeup different. You have eliminated the possibility in your thought experiment. That's why it's wrong from the very beginning.

Well, they could be argued to possibly be different. It just requires a supernatural explanation - different souls, divine intervention, or something like that.

Just because a thought experiment leads to only one conclusion doesn't make it wrong, either. It just means that the thought experiment solidly demonstrates the point.

Yes, but again the most common cause of decisions is people's intentions, and they aren't determined by Newtonian or even Einsteinian laws. You know where the Earth is going to be in a thousand years in relation to the other major celestial bodies in our vicinity if nothing interfers with their orbits. In so far, you could say that it's pre-determined. You don't know what Trump is going to Tweet tomorrow. (But it's a pretty good guess that it will be something stupid.)

"It can't be predicted with current technology, or even technology we'd ever be able to create" is a different thing from the position that thoughts, feelings, and behavior are actually free from causation.

In discussions like this, I usually point out the following, which is not a thought experiment. It's reality:
We know from physics and chemistry how matter behaves, but if matter is organized into the shape of a squirrel or a sparrow, it no longer behaves the way you would expect matter to behave: The squirrel runs up the tree, away from the centre of gravity.
And if matter is organized into the shape of a human being, it may consider that running up trees the whole time may be a waste of time and energy.
A human being still obeys the laws of nature, but it doesn't act the way matter is supposed to act according to those laws. That's why we leave those fields of science behind and move on to medicine, psychology and the social sciences when we want to know why people do what they do.

Yes, that which happens in the world of minds, with memories, emotions, beliefs, instincts, etc is very different from things like rocks interacting with gravity.

That does not mean that minds and what happens within them are uncaused, though.

 

[kellyb]

I think what she's getting at is (at least that is how I myself view this) that if you were born -- Godwin alert !! -- if you were born with Hitler's exact circumstances and Hitler's exact genetics, then you couldn't have acted any differently. You too, then, would have done the exact same things as Hitler.

And that's because there isn't a separate "you" at all! Hitler's body-mind complex is all that he was. Much like a car, except a great deal more complex (and also not quite "designed" by someone).

Sure, this is not a big deal, in as much as it follows trivially and tautologically from a materialistic paradigm, as I said earlier. But where this idea is useful, is it lets us view even a Hitler without any need for "punishment" per se.

So, if we caught hold of Hitler, then we'd see what we'd need to do to correct his particular mental kinks. If we couldn't correct those kinks adequately, then we'd see what we'd need to do keep society from him. And we'd also see what we'd need to do to build in ample deterrence to prevent future Hitlers and future minions of Hitler. But what we wouldn't need -- not even for a Hitler -- is "punishment", per se, as the word "punishment" is generally understood, not even for his particular heinous crimes.

Seeing things in this perspective appears healthy to me, both at the individual level, and at the level of society. So much less baggage that way.

Exactly!

 

[kellyb]

The universe does seem to have an origin, a beginning, and if it was deterministic all the complexity we see must have been present from the start. It must have been inherent in the rules and configuration from the moment of whatever quantum fluctuation caused the whole thing to exist.

This seems unlikely, where did all the complexity come from?

I'm not sure the complexity was necessarily always there - just the potential for it.

Seems weird to have all this complexity around and brains making choices if choosing was not important.
Free will rules!

Choosing is important, even if what you ultimately choose is caused and not free.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

Your argument is circular. You are taking it as a given that we exist in the universe as part of immutable spacetime and that since we are performing complex behaviors we need complex brains in order to do so. It does not explain where the complex behaviour or the brains come from.

Not really, no. I don't think it's immutable myself, but even if it were, it would be as a chain of cause-effect events, not in the same way as the script for the next Star Wars movie. The latter will happen regardless of whether you cast someone else in the role, or move the action to another place, or cut some event in between to save some budget. The former won't. You cast another creature with more or less brains in the same role, and the chain goes in a completely other way from there.

But basically all I'm saying is that you still got that brain because of evolution, not because of some fairy godmother. Less adapted creature X died and more adapted creature still thrived. Maybe it was predictable or maybe it won't, but you still can't just skip steps there.


Or to put it otherwise, you just seem to be confused about the time axis. It still flows in one direction, regardless of whether the actions are predictable or not.

You can say that in a METAPHORICAL sense it's as if something already happened from the start, but that's just metaphor. In the real world, it didn't ACTUALLY happen from the start. Or to use your exact quote, "whatever you end up deciding has, in a sense, already happened" again is so only in a METAPHORICAL sense. No, in the real world it didn't already happen. Confusing metaphor for reality is the falacy of reification, nothing more.

 

[David Mo]

The problem there is that it seems to assume that your words and actions don't ALSO cause conditioned behaviours. E.g., that, say, Ted Bundy was conditioned by X, Y or Z in his past to kill all those women, but society deciding that it's wrong to kill would totally not also cause a difference in his behaviour.

But, regardless of whether decisions are deterministic or not, they are based on the WHOLE set of available data. Which includes how society will react to it, possible punishments or rewards, etc.

And generally, the decision taking in the brain -- which by now we can even watch in real time on MRI -- is essentially a voting process. The reasons for doing it are weighed against the reasons for not doing it.

Essentially if we all just shrug and go "poor guy, he must have been conditioned to kill those women" and let him get away with it, then he'll just do it again. Because a bunch of reasons not to do it just disappeared from that column.

Skinner affirms that familiar or social pressure determines the behaviour. Therefore a person can be influenced if he is blamed by a parent or a friend. But this is not due to moral reasoning but to personal or social influence. Therefore this personal influence can be used in more efficient ways than moral sermons.

Determinism does not imply any kind of too compassionate morality. Quite the opposite.
If either what matters is only efficacy or morality is only a weaker way to modify the behaviour, aggressive means are justified over compassionate ones. If a brutal beating is more efficient than reasoning, go and beat your son until you got tired. If cutting off the hand of the thief in a public square prevents robberies, go and cut off hands, take off eyes, heads and every else you need to.

If efficiency is the rule, there are no limits to violence. It is not a comfortable conclusion for the determinist.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

Well, sorta. Actually it turns out that violence may be the wrong answer, that is, unless you actually want to create a psychopath. But otherwise, sure, do what works.

I'm just not sure what difference does determinism make. The same things still work or don't work, they still really only have a probability to work, and you still can't control all variables. Whether it would be actually deterministic if you could control them all, or there's some wiggle room on top of that, it's still just an academic discussion as long as you never will be in such a position.

 

[David Mo]

Well, sorta. Actually it turns out that violence may be the wrong answer, that is, unless you actually want to create a psychopath. But otherwise, sure, do what works.

I'm just not sure what difference does determinism make. The same things still work or don't work, they still really only have a probability to work, and you still can't control all variables. Whether it would be actually deterministic if you could control them all, or there's some wiggle room on top of that, it's still just an academic discussion as long as you never will be in such a position.

Applying euthanasia to mentally deficient persons is not academic. Hitler did it. Condemning to 500 lashes to alcoholics is not academic. Taliban did it. And they work: mental deficient persons were no longer a burden to the State and the alcoholism rate in Afganistan under talibans was one of the lowest in the world.

Should a determinist defend them? Since they are more effective than any measure taken under moral considerations...

"The same things still work or don't work, they still really only have a probability to work"
This sound just the opposite to determinism.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

Applying euthanasia to mentally deficient persons is not academic. Hitler did it. Condemning to 500 lashes to alcoholics is not academic. Taliban did it. And they work: mental deficient persons were no longer a burden to the State and the alcoholism rate in Afganistan under talibans was one of the lowest in the world.

Should a determinist defend them? Since they are more effective than any measure taken under moral considerations...

The presupposition there is that they actually are more effective, but that would first have to be proven. Otherwise the whole argument is unsound.

"The same things still work or don't work, they still really only have a probability to work"
This sound just the opposite to determinism.

Why? It can be deterministic for the variables you control, but those you don't control can still cause deviations.

Take a medieval crossbowman for example. There is nothing random in how a crossbow works. It applies the same force in the same direction every time, and everything involved is WAY too large for any quantum randomness to come into play. Yet if you can't control the wind, variations in bolt mass, slight deformations of the quills or head, etc, and you can get spectacularly random results. I can link you to someone describing an actual shot with a swallowtail head bolt (hunting bolt, basically) that went down, then sideways, then up again along the flight path.

It's still deterministic from the point of view of the forces involved, but where on the target it will actually hit, if at all, is as good as random for the subset of variables you even know, much less control.

Same with education, really. Unless you lock that person up in a room where you can control all they see or hear, 24 hours a day, there will be a pseudo-randomness in the results you get for the same action. Just because there are a lot of variables you don't even know, much less control.