Free will is an illusion....?

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Juana
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Re: Free will is an illusion....?

#181 Post by Juana » Sun Jul 29, 2012 12:11 am

mockbee wrote:
Juana wrote:
The sad thing is my friends from home doing the same old shit are unhappy and seem to always say "you got out of this and now can visit" I can see how "keeping up appearances" weighs on them.
Do you mean that they never pursued a career that they were capable of and/or had a wife and kids they didn't want and didn't explore their interests or were they just stuck because they never attempted to do anything...?
They always had money they settled down but they have never traveled much (outside of touristy shit) and they just seem burnt out on life. I have experienced a lot of good and bad and I think that they growing up when we were surfing and skating and doing whatever "lost their dinosaur" like in Step Brothers.

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Re: Free will is an illusion....?

#182 Post by mockbee » Sun Jul 29, 2012 12:26 am

Adurentibus Spina wrote:
Yeah. I actually don't agree with Mockbee about forgiveness. I think understanding is far more important (and very different). I was talking to a Christian friend of mine who is a very good philosopher, and I said: "You know, someone once said that Spinoza's ethical philosophy sounds very Christian, and I think there's a sense in which that's true, but instead of 'Forgive them, they know not what they do.' Spinoza has changed that into 'Understand them, so that we can know why they do what they do. And fucking fix it.' And that makes a huge difference.
This is interesting. I actually don't think enough bad stuff has ever happened to me to really understand the full ramifications of 'forgiveness'..... And I hope I am lucky enough for it to stay that way. I have certainly been to some very low and dire places in my own life, but those times I surely inflicted on myself.

The worst trauma I have endured, not self inflicted, has been at the hands of some individuals on a particularly nasty trip to Canada and at the hands of some nasty New Zealanders....... not your typical culprits. :lol:

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Re: Free will is an illusion....?

#183 Post by Juana » Sun Jul 29, 2012 12:37 am

NEVER... TRUST... A... KIWI

:lol:

But seriously I had way to much fun with a bunch of people from NZ and then when I went to my friend's parents bed and breakfast close to Lake Pupuke I had a blast.. but those fuckers took pictures!!

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Re: Free will is an illusion....?

#184 Post by Hype » Sun Jul 29, 2012 8:23 am

Well, for one, it doesn't make any sense to forgive a psychopath. It adds nothing, and it may just not be physically possible for your brain to pull that off.

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Re: Free will is an illusion....?

#185 Post by Artemis » Sun Jul 29, 2012 2:56 pm

From the 'We Fucking Love Atheism' site...

Image

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Re: Free will is an illusion....?

#186 Post by Hype » Sun Jul 29, 2012 3:13 pm

The problem with the concept of 'forgiveness' is that it's ambiguous.

In one sense,
Forgiveness (1): Person A forgives Person B for some act, Φ, if Person A simply ceases to be in a state of resentment or anger toward B with respect to their having done Φ.

In another,
Forgiveness (2): Person A forgives Person B for some act, Φ, if Person A now recognizes Φ as (no longer or never having been) worthy of condemnation, offense, resentment, anger, or whatever, and as a result, absolves Person B of having done any wrong, or of being responsible for it, anyway.

They're easy to mix up. The difference is clear though: in the first case, the change in Person A is with respect to Person B, not necessarily the act, and it doesn't necessarily imply any change in the moral value of the act. In the second case, the change in Person A is with respect to the act, Φ, and only to Person B derivatively, because the moral value of Φ has changed.

But in ordinary use, it's often not clear how it's being used.

So say someone murders your family member, and years later, they come up for parole, and at the hearing you say "I have forgiven him." It seems most likely that you mean Forgiveness (1), since it would be much harder to believe that you had ceased to see murder as worthy of condemnation.

But Forgiveness (2) is really the sort of thing that changing one's attitude with respect to free will might have, if you see it the way Mockbee seems to. The idea being: well, they couldn't have not done it, and so we should always forgive it. But of course this would only change the moral value of the act if a person's being free mattered for moral value. I don't think it does.

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Re: Free will is an illusion....?

#187 Post by Artemis » Sun Jul 29, 2012 3:20 pm

My understanding is that the person who wishes to be forgiven must ask for it. I guess that implies the person accepts and acknowledges that they've done something wrong.
Last edited by Artemis on Sun Jul 29, 2012 3:29 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Free will is an illusion....?

#188 Post by Hype » Sun Jul 29, 2012 3:28 pm

Artemis wrote:My understanding is that the person who wishes to be forgived must ask for it. I guess that implies the person accepts and acknowledges that they've done something wrong.
Ah! For whatever reason I was focusing on the act of forgiving, rather than on the state of being forgiven!

Another sense:

Forgiveness (3): Person B has been forgiven only if they ask for it (perhaps in either sense (1) or sense (2), it's not clear) and either the person who was wronged, A, or some representative(s), C (D, E, F, etc.) act according to either Forgiveness (1) or (2) [perhaps whichever sort B wanted].

It seems possible to have *some* or partial forgiveness, without being totally/completely forgiven.

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Re: Free will is an illusion....?

#189 Post by Artemis » Sun Jul 29, 2012 3:48 pm

For me it really depends on what the situation is and the type of person.

For example, in my father's case he never believed he was doing anything wrong. When I went to the shelter one time to drop off some clothes for him, the social worker I talked with there said that my father totally minimized the situation with my mother and said that she created a drama for nothing. :yikes:

I can understand and accept he had problems, but I never forgave him or his actions. As I mentioned earlier, I am no longer angry and have moved on from that time of my life. Forgiveness doesn't have anything to do with it, nor is it necessary, imo. I think for some people, they believe they must do this act in order to free themselves. If it works, that's terrific, but I think it's self delusion. I mean for the big things like murder, rape, abuse, etc.

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Re: Free will is an illusion....?

#190 Post by Hype » Sun Jul 29, 2012 3:52 pm

Artemis wrote:For me it really depends on what the situation is and the type of person.

For example, in my father's case he never believed he was doing anything wrong. When I went to the shelter one time to drop off some clothes for him, the social worker I talked there said that my father totally minimized the situation with my mother by saying that she created a drama for nothing. :yikes:

I can understand and accept he had problems, but I never forgave him or his actions. As I mentioned earlier, I am no longer angry and have moved on from that time of my life. Forgiveness doesn't have anything to do with it, nor is it necessary, imo. I think for some people, they believe they must do this act in order to free themselves. If it works, that's terrific, but I think it's self delusion. I mean for the big things like murder, rape, abuse, etc.
I agree. There's no sense at all in which you should forgive either him or his actions. At the same time, that doesn't necessarily imply feeling only one thing toward a person (be it hatred or anger or fear or sadness). We can have complex sets of emotions that might seem contradictory, but are directed at different things.

By the way, your father sounds just like my grandfather (who was a Polish/Ukrainian Jewish immigrant). There was a big thing between him and my family that he was never forgiven for, and to his death he never acknowledged (because I really don't think he was capable of seeing it this way) that his actions/attitudes were part of the cause of our basically being estranged.

It can be depressing, but it's just the way things go. :jasper:

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Re: Free will is an illusion....?

#191 Post by Hype » Sun Jul 29, 2012 5:35 pm

https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/29/opin ... l?src=recg
July 27, 2012
Did Your Brain Make You Do It?
By JOHN MONTEROSSO and BARRY SCHWARTZ

ARE you responsible for your behavior if your brain “made you do it”?

Often we think not. For example, research now suggests that the brain’s frontal lobes, which are crucial for self-control, are not yet mature in adolescents. This finding has helped shape attitudes about whether young people are fully responsible for their actions. In 2005, when the Supreme Court ruled that the death penalty for juveniles was unconstitutional, its decision explicitly took into consideration that “parts of the brain involved in behavior control continue to mature through late adolescence.”

Similar reasoning is often applied to behavior arising from chemical imbalances in the brain. It is possible, when the facts emerge, that the case of James E. Holmes, the suspect in the Colorado shootings, will spark debate about neurotransmitters and culpability.

Whatever the merit of such cases, it’s worth stressing an important point: as a general matter, it is always true that our brains “made us do it.” Each of our behaviors is always associated with a brain state. If we view every new scientific finding about brain involvement in human behavior as a sign that the behavior was not under the individual’s control, the very notion of responsibility will be threatened. So it is imperative that we think clearly about when brain science frees someone from blame — and when it doesn’t.

Unfortunately, our research shows that clear thinking on this issue doesn’t come naturally to people. Several years ago, with the psychologist Edward B. Royzman, we published a study in the journal Ethics & Behavior that demonstrated the power of neuroscientific explanations to free people from blame.

In our experiment, we asked participants to consider various situations involving an individual who behaved in ways that caused harm, including committing acts of violence. We included information about the protagonist that might help make sense of the action in question: in some cases, that information was about a history of psychologically horrific events that the individual had experienced (e.g., suffering abuse as a child), and in some cases it was about biological characteristics or anomalies in the individual’s brain (e.g., an imbalance in neurotransmitters). In the different situations, we also varied how strong the connection was between those factors and the behavior (e.g., whether most people who are abused as a child act violently, or only a few).

The pattern of results was striking. A brain characteristic that was even weakly associated with violence led people to exonerate the protagonist more than a psychological factor that was strongly associated with violent acts. Moreover, the participants in our study were much more likely, given a protagonist with a brain characteristic, to view the behavior as “automatic” rather than “motivated,” and to view the behavior as unrelated to the protagonist’s character. The participants described the protagonists with brain characteristics in ways that suggested that the “true” person was not at the helm of himself. The behavior was caused, not intended.

In contrast, while psychologically damaging experiences like childhood abuse often elicited sympathy for the protagonist and sometimes even prompted considerable mitigation of blame, the participants still saw the protagonist’s behavior as intentional. The protagonist himself was twisted by his history of trauma; it wasn’t just his brain. Most participants felt that in such cases, personal character remained relevant in determining how the protagonist went on to act.

We labeled this pattern of responses “naïve dualism.” This is the belief that acts are brought about either by intentions or by the physical laws that govern our brains and that those two types of causes — psychological and biological — are categorically distinct. People are responsible for actions resulting from one but not the other. (In citing neuroscience, the Supreme Court may have been guilty of naïve dualism: did it really need brain evidence to conclude that adolescents are immature?)

Naïve dualism is misguided. “Was the cause psychological or biological?” is the wrong question when assigning responsibility for an action. All psychological states are also biological ones.

A better question is “how strong was the relation between the cause (whatever it happened to be) and the effect?” If, hypothetically, only 1 percent of people with a brain malfunction (or a history of being abused) commit violence, ordinary considerations about blame would still seem relevant. But if 99 percent of them do, you might start to wonder how responsible they really are.

It is crucial that as a society, we learn how to think more clearly about causes and personal responsibility — not only for extraordinary actions like crime but also for ordinary ones, like maintaining exercise regimens, eating sensibly and saving for retirement. As science advances, there will be more and more “causal” alternatives to intentional explanations, and we will be faced with more decisions about when to hold people responsible for their behavior. It’s important that we don’t succumb to the allure of neuroscientific explanations and let everyone off the hook.

John Monterosso is an associate professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of Southern California. Barry Schwartz, a co-author of “Practical Wisdom,” is a professor of psychology at Swarthmore College.

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Re: Free will is an illusion....?

#192 Post by mockbee » Sun Jul 29, 2012 10:08 pm

mockbee wrote: Regarding the guy who steals $100 every week from you; I have a question.... Why wouldn't you take the first experience as a lesson and modify your actions to avoid future occurences? Hmmmmmmmm..... Every time we get angry we are missing an opportunity to learn something.........Being angry is our own personal mini protest against the entire universe and everything that is and always will be......who's going to win that one.....? :noclue:
Hype, I understand what you are saying about 'forgiveness' and I would probably back track on my original statement that I forgive everyone for all future events [I think I was just in a good mood and hadn't felt too terribly wronged lately..... :hehe: ] But what is your stance on anger? Is there ever a purpose for it, outside of maybe instigating a positive action. Surely, action needs to be taken when a hostile event is unfolding, but that doesn't necessitate anger, I don't believe. A person who is infringing on another person's rights can be stopped verbally or physically without anger. Surely it is a difficult ideal, but I am wondering if you think it is a good ideal to strive for. I just don't see anger as ever being advantageous, if one can avoid it...... :noclue:

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Re: Free will is an illusion....?

#193 Post by Hype » Sun Jul 29, 2012 10:24 pm

mockbee wrote:
mockbee wrote: Regarding the guy who steals $100 every week from you; I have a question.... Why wouldn't you take the first experience as a lesson and modify your actions to avoid future occurences? Hmmmmmmmm..... Every time we get angry we are missing an opportunity to learn something.........Being angry is our own personal mini protest against the entire universe and everything that is and always will be......who's going to win that one.....? :noclue:
Hype, I understand what you are saying about 'forgiveness' and I would probably back track on my original statement that I forgive everyone for all future events [I think I was just in a good mood and hadn't felt too terribly wronged lately..... :hehe: ] But what is your stance on anger? Is there ever a purpose for it, outside of maybe instigating a positive action. Surely, action needs to be taken when a hostile event is unfolding, but that doesn't necessitate anger, I don't believe. A person who is infringing on another person's rights can be stopped verbally or physically without anger. Surely it is a difficult ideal, but I am wondering if you think it is a good ideal to strive for. I just don't see anger as ever being advantageous, if one can avoid it...... :noclue:
I agree with you about the emotion of anger -- the raw reaction we have when we perceive something we do not like or do not want infringing on our ability to do what we want. It doesn't accomplish anything in itself, since destroying the thing in our way, if it could be done, could be accomplished without the anger, and the anger only clouds our ability to see what the most effective course of action is for actually getting what we want. It's a net-negative, activity-wise.

But there is another thing we call 'anger' (something like 'justified anger' or 'justified hatred' [hatred is just a species of anger directed at specific objects]), sometimes, which might be better called 'empathetic recognition of a wrong'. This is the kind of thing where people say "I'm angry at all the homophobia that exists in the world." -- they're not really angry, in the sense that they're not really feeling a raw emotion as a reaction to some specific situation. We just call it by the same word. But this kind of 'anger' is fine, so long as it involves truth.

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Re: Free will is an illusion....?

#194 Post by Juana » Sun Jul 29, 2012 11:34 pm

I stopped holding on to grudges along time ago. Anyone that has wronged me was in a bad spot in their life and hopefully they have got that together now. Anger/hate is a cloud and stops you from being who you are in most cases.

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Re: Free will is an illusion....?

#195 Post by Hype » Sun Jul 29, 2012 11:44 pm

Juana wrote:I stopped holding on to grudges along time ago. Anyone that has wronged me was in a bad spot in their life and hopefully they have got that together now. Anger/hate is a cloud and stops you from being who you are in most cases.
The book "Of Human Bondage" by Somerset Maugham is about that kind of anger. (A kid with a club-foot gets teased mercilessly, and it turns him into a pretty shitty human being).

The title of that book, btw, is a reference to Spinoza's Ethics. :nod:

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Re: Free will is an illusion....?

#196 Post by Juana » Sun Jul 29, 2012 11:58 pm

Well (aside from waiting in some instances) I try to stay on an even keel, I find people that hold on to grudges usually are just very unhappy and who wants to live that way? I figured that my energy was better spent trying to do something with my life rather than live on hate or hope some "karma" happens to someone else. I do have some strong beliefs but hoping for something bad to happen to someone that was obviously in a bad enough place to wrong you in the first place is a very bad thing IMHO. I believe those thoughts are bad for the soul and make shitty people in general and it makes a cycle.

I've been drinking so sorry if that does not make sense. :drink:

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Re: Free will is an illusion....?

#197 Post by Matz » Mon Jul 30, 2012 7:13 am

mockbee wrote:
mockbee wrote: Regarding the guy who steals $100 every week from you; I have a question.... Why wouldn't you take the first experience as a lesson and modify your actions to avoid future occurences? Hmmmmmmmm..... Every time we get angry we are missing an opportunity to learn something.........Being angry is our own personal mini protest against the entire universe and everything that is and always will be......who's going to win that one.....? :noclue:
Hype, I understand what you are saying about 'forgiveness' and I would probably back track on my original statement that I forgive everyone for all future events [I think I was just in a good mood and hadn't felt too terribly wronged lately..... :hehe: ] But what is your stance on anger? Is there ever a purpose for it, outside of maybe instigating a positive action. Surely, action needs to be taken when a hostile event is unfolding, but that doesn't necessitate anger, I don't believe. A person who is infringing on another person's rights can be stopped verbally or physically without anger. Surely it is a difficult ideal, but I am wondering if you think it is a good ideal to strive for. I just don't see anger as ever being advantageous, if one can avoid it...... :noclue:
I think it can be incredibly advantageous, as it can be the ultimate driving force. But it can also crush a person. It all depends

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Re: Free will is an illusion....?

#198 Post by mockbee » Mon Jul 30, 2012 7:23 am

Matz wrote:
mockbee wrote:
mockbee wrote: Regarding the guy who steals $100 every week from you; I have a question.... Why wouldn't you take the first experience as a lesson and modify your actions to avoid future occurences? Hmmmmmmmm..... Every time we get angry we are missing an opportunity to learn something.........Being angry is our own personal mini protest against the entire universe and everything that is and always will be......who's going to win that one.....? :noclue:
Hype, I understand what you are saying about 'forgiveness' and I would probably back track on my original statement that I forgive everyone for all future events [I think I was just in a good mood and hadn't felt too terribly wronged lately..... :hehe: ] But what is your stance on anger? Is there ever a purpose for it, outside of maybe instigating a positive action. Surely, action needs to be taken when a hostile event is unfolding, but that doesn't necessitate anger, I don't believe. A person who is infringing on another person's rights can be stopped verbally or physically without anger. Surely it is a difficult ideal, but I am wondering if you think it is a good ideal to strive for. I just don't see anger as ever being advantageous, if one can avoid it...... :noclue:
I think it can be incredibly advantageous, as it can be the ultimate driving force. But it can also crush a person. It all depends

I can definitely agree with the 'driving force' part with anger......... but I wouldn't say anger really leads to advantageous results......unless, it was just a real lucky set of circumstances......... emotions in general are never real good to follow in order to gain advantage... I mean look at elite athletes, always cool as cucumbers when under pressure.

Emotions are always the result of actions, not instigators. Sometimes we get real caught up in that loop though..........A thought always has to proceed an action.

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Re: Free will is an illusion....?

#199 Post by Hype » Mon Jul 30, 2012 7:46 am

Anger as an evolved mechanism can be literally 'advantageous' in the sense that it can prevent an organism from harm it would otherwise befall by tricking an aggressor into thinking it is less powerful than the angry organism. But this only works in the very short-term, and only works sometimes. Given our current world, it is far more advantageous for those not in very poor circumstances (such as mafia/gang members) to plan our futures very carefully, and rely on political/social institutional arrangements (which come from the newer evolutionary mechanisms of the frontal lobe) to protect us, rather than relying on older evolutionary mechanisms that come from the reptilian amygdala.

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Re: Free will is an illusion....?

#200 Post by mockbee » Mon Jul 30, 2012 7:57 am

Image


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:love:



I miss my little guy............. :cona:

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Re: Free will is an illusion....?

#201 Post by Hype » Mon Jul 30, 2012 7:59 am

mockbee wrote:Image


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:love:



I miss my little guy............. :cona:
:lol: :pat:

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Re: Free will is an illusion....?

#202 Post by Pure Method » Mon Jul 30, 2012 9:17 am

Sorry, I've been camping this past weekend and missed much of the developments in this thread. Catching up this morning (now afternoon) has been a real pleasure (actually, Artemis, I was briefly in your neighborhood, Spedina and Eglinton, a couple blocks from Casa Loma :lol: dropping off a friend - I would have reached out but we were literally only there for 45 minutes. Ate at a place called mashu mashu. very middle of the road falafel. FYC [where c = curiosity] I was camping in Algonquin Park).

anyway, I have a question about consciousness (*may I add that I like Hype's understanding of the term and believe it applies here) and chemicals. I have previously (perhaps in another thread) mentioned a book by Catharine Malabou What Should We Do With Our Brains? http://www.amazon.com/Should-Brain-Pers ... ne+malabou

The book is written very engagingly, though I must admit that I have only read selections for class.

Proceeding to my query: in that review of Dr. Harris' book, the reviewer explicitly states that "it's all chemicals" in reference to choice, consciousness, free will and the like. BUT CLEARLY, we have been arguing how circumstance, environment, and thus, culture have a massive effect on the brain's development, and more obviously from an outsider's perspective, the pattern of thought employed by an individual. So, as Malabou argues, some neuroscience has an emphasis on a determinist understanding of the development of consciousness - though, since we (as a society, not as individuals) have the ability to change massively influential factors through voting (theoretically) and policy (say, eliminating housing projects and promoting true mixed use/income development) - consciousness is malleable. Primer, fin, query: Is our consciousness malleable? If our environment greatly affects the way we think and act, then must we accept that patterns of thought and deed are not, in fact, set in stone, but open to possible amendment?


P.S. I have greatly oversimplified Malabou's work here to serve my own purposes.

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Re: Free will is an illusion....?

#203 Post by Artemis » Mon Jul 30, 2012 9:47 am

Pure Method wrote:(actually, Artemis, I was briefly in your neighborhood, Spedina and Eglinton, a couple blocks from Casa Loma :lol: dropping off a friend - I would have reached out but we were literally only there for 45 minutes. Ate at a place called mashu mashu. very middle of the road falafel. FYC [where c = curiosity] I was camping in Algonquin Park).
wow you were close to my place. i am about a 15 minute walk from there, or 5 minutes in the car if that. in the future, i would suggest King Falafel on Bathurst, right by Eglinton. It's not very nice inside but the food is fantastic! It's run by some Moroccan ladies. Really good shwarma and to die for baklava.it's done a little bit differently in the form of a roll instead of the typical triangle/diamond shape.

hope you had fun camping. i heard algonquin is really dry this year - no fires allowed. :wave:

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Re: Free will is an illusion....?

#204 Post by Pure Method » Mon Jul 30, 2012 11:12 am

Artemis wrote:
wow you were close to my place. i am about a 15 minute walk from there, or 5 minutes in the car if that. in the future, i would suggest King Falafel on Bathurst, right by Eglinton. It's not very nice inside but the food is fantastic! It's run by some Moroccan ladies. Really good shwarma and to die for baklava.it's done a little bit differently in the form of a roll instead of the typical triangle/diamond shape.

hope you had fun camping. i heard algonquin is really dry this year - no fires allowed. :wave:

yeah, I love it up there. A lot of the eastern access points were closed due to active forest fires. we saw a bunch of planes flying around, checking for fires and the like. Still beautiful! And I got to visit my old summer camp, which was/is always neat. :thumb:

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Re: Free will is an illusion....?

#205 Post by Hype » Mon Jul 30, 2012 11:16 am

Pure Method wrote:Proceeding to my query: in that review of Dr. Harris' book, the reviewer explicitly states that "it's all chemicals" in reference to choice, consciousness, free will and the like. BUT CLEARLY, we have been arguing how circumstance, environment, and thus, culture have a massive effect on the brain's development, and more obviously from an outsider's perspective, the pattern of thought employed by an individual.
I don't understand the 'but' you employ at the start of your second sentence. Do you take 'it's all chemicals' and environmental/cultural effects to be distinct? Why? To me they are one and the same thing conceived on a larger or smaller scale. The presence of lead in the environment of a fetus born before unleaded gasoline was mandatory just *is* the cause of the chemical reality inside the skull. So what?

Okay, you go on to try to say what...
So, as Malabou argues, some neuroscience has an emphasis on a determinist understanding of the development of consciousness
No. It all does. All science is deterministic, in the sense that it seeks explanation via mechanism. Without mechanism, science has nothing. Any purported neuroscience that doesn't seek a mechanism for consciousness is not doing neuroscience but engaging in speculative nonsense.
though, since we (as a society, not as individuals) have the ability to change massively influential factors through voting (theoretically) and policy (say, eliminating housing projects and promoting true mixed use/income development) - consciousness is malleable.
It's malleable even if we don't do those things. It's malleable with medication and physical activity too. I don't see how this matters.
Is our consciousness malleable? If our environment greatly affects the way we think and act, then must we accept that patterns of thought and deed are not, in fact, set in stone, but open to possible amendment?
Yes, our consciousnesses are malleable. (Why were you speaking in first-person plural there?)

Of course patterns of thought and deed are not, in fact, set in stone. Who the hell said they were? Certainly not neuroscientists. I think you've confused determinism with fatalism. I think I said earlier in the thread that people do that a lot and that they shouldn't. (I also say explicitly "Determinism is not fatalism." in a paper of mine you just recently read...)

So yes, patterns of thought and deed are open to possible amendment, but not necessarily just through changes in the macro-environment. Sometimes there need to be micro-changes (via medication, surgery, or intense and very specific practice.)

What were you trying to get at here?

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