You may think you chose to read this, but Stanford scientist Robert Sapolsky would disagree. He says virtually all human behavior is beyond our conscious control.
It has a paragraph with the explanation: Basically he says our behaviors are driven by our brain chemistry, genetics, and biases formed by prior events. Every decision we make is a culmination of those things. We think we’re in control, but we’re really just following a pre-ordained script.
Can’t decide if I’m onboard with that. Definitely not onboard with letting criminals off the hook for bad deeds. If your “brain script” leads you to kill, you just need to be removed from society. Sorry.
While we can identify influences that have common outcomes, the fact that there are different outcomes at an individual level supports free will. Free will does not mean you are free from influence, just that there is an opportunity to make a choice.
Poverty leading to increased crime does not result in everyone in poverty committing crimes.
Different outcomes at an individual level supports the idea that individual humans are not exact copies existing in the exact same environment. If on the other hand different outcomes does support free will then the fact that electrons put through the same process (influences) can end up with different spin-states means that electrons have free will.
that there are different outcomes at an individual level supports free will.
Well I think their argument is that this doesn’t follow. To have variation between individuals all you need are different influences over the time leading up to the measured outcome. That basically everyone is assured essentially unique genetics and a unique existence from conception (no two people occupy the same body, apart from twins briefly) guarantees that everyone has unique influences.
So the question then is what is the relationship between influences and behaviours and can we measure whether variations in the former are sufficient to explain variations in the latter.
All of which excludes the argument that many people basically lead to similar outcomes under similar influences.
This is where I suspect the scientist’s thoughts/theories will fall down. In the end, it seems to me we need a complete or at least pretty good theory of consciousness to truly get to bottom of this. We don’t. Arguably we’re pretty clueless on how any sophisticated cognition works all the way up from biochemistry to behaviour. So I’m not sure how certain anyone can be either way.
I mean, I am on board with that. There probably isn’t free will.
But, we should continue to jail those not following society’s rules. If we could jail hurricanes so as to not cause damage, we would—why is jailing a person any different?
Definitely not onboard with letting criminals off the hook for bad deeds. If your “brain script” leads you to kill, you just need to be removed from society. Sorry.
Yea the article wasn’t particularly thoughtful. As you say, justice can simply preventative without being punitive. But on balance, aiming for rehabilitation can still make some sense even without compassionate anti-blame arguments. There are limits to how much we want to keep people out of society and it costs money, so prisoners will return to society at some point.
So what’s the best approach for preventing harm? If a blame-worthiness approach premised on free will is fundamentally false, or at least not correct enough, then ideas about punishment and deterrence would likely be ineffective compared to more rehabilitation based approaches.
There’s always been one piece of this that has bugged me. I’d like to hear - from someone who is familiar enough with both neurons and quantum theory - an explanation on why thoughts are physically too big to be influenced by quantum randomness.
The quantum scale is characterized by an action comparable to the Planck constant, hbar=6.6x10-16 eV s. A quick wikipedia search tells us that the typical electric impulse needs at least 25 mV (from -70 mV in the resting state to -55 mV in the threshold), and lasts around 1 ms, giving an action of 2.5x10-5 eV s, which is 300 billion times larger that the quantum noise.
If your “brain script” leads you to kill, you just need to be removed from society
If you accept strict determinism, the fact that killers should go to prison is one of the “biases formed by prior events” that will determine that most people won’t become killers. Which in turn determine us as individuals in a society to create and enforce justice systems.
So you believe, that if you would rewind time to a specific choice you made, you would be able to make a different choice, even though your brain and your surroundings are in the exact same state as before?
Or do you believe your choices to be originating from somewhere else than your brain?
if thought truly is entirely deterministic, then it’s surely both sufficient and necessary that you could build a machine that, given the state of the universe as input, could fully simulate what your answer to any given question would be
but if you suppose that, then you basically run into an issue very similar to the halting problem
you put your subject in the room with your magic machine, tell them to disagree with whatever the machine spits out, then tell the magic machine to predict what they’re going to say after they’ve been told the result of said prediction
whatever the machine spits out, there’s nothing stopping your subject from just disagreeing
Not sure that’s fair. The basics of his thoughts seem to be outlined … the article clearly states: behaviours are always primed by experience, history, state and genetics all of which are beyond our control, and so if our behaviour is not within our control we have no free will.
I don’t think there’s anything really there about hardline determinism and I’d bet his basic view is pretty compatible with some form of chaos based individualism.
Removed by mod
It also says determinism means we can’t treat people differently based on their actions, which is just a complete non sequitur.
What’s the odds that this author is up to some heinous shit in his free time and this is just a philosophical cover?
It has a paragraph with the explanation: Basically he says our behaviors are driven by our brain chemistry, genetics, and biases formed by prior events. Every decision we make is a culmination of those things. We think we’re in control, but we’re really just following a pre-ordained script.
Can’t decide if I’m onboard with that. Definitely not onboard with letting criminals off the hook for bad deeds. If your “brain script” leads you to kill, you just need to be removed from society. Sorry.
While we can identify influences that have common outcomes, the fact that there are different outcomes at an individual level supports free will. Free will does not mean you are free from influence, just that there is an opportunity to make a choice.
Poverty leading to increased crime does not result in everyone in poverty committing crimes.
Different outcomes at an individual level supports the idea that individual humans are not exact copies existing in the exact same environment. If on the other hand different outcomes does support free will then the fact that electrons put through the same process (influences) can end up with different spin-states means that electrons have free will.
Well I think their argument is that this doesn’t follow. To have variation between individuals all you need are different influences over the time leading up to the measured outcome. That basically everyone is assured essentially unique genetics and a unique existence from conception (no two people occupy the same body, apart from twins briefly) guarantees that everyone has unique influences.
So the question then is what is the relationship between influences and behaviours and can we measure whether variations in the former are sufficient to explain variations in the latter.
All of which excludes the argument that many people basically lead to similar outcomes under similar influences.
This is where I suspect the scientist’s thoughts/theories will fall down. In the end, it seems to me we need a complete or at least pretty good theory of consciousness to truly get to bottom of this. We don’t. Arguably we’re pretty clueless on how any sophisticated cognition works all the way up from biochemistry to behaviour. So I’m not sure how certain anyone can be either way.
I mean, I am on board with that. There probably isn’t free will.
But, we should continue to jail those not following society’s rules. If we could jail hurricanes so as to not cause damage, we would—why is jailing a person any different?
Yea the article wasn’t particularly thoughtful. As you say, justice can simply preventative without being punitive. But on balance, aiming for rehabilitation can still make some sense even without compassionate anti-blame arguments. There are limits to how much we want to keep people out of society and it costs money, so prisoners will return to society at some point.
So what’s the best approach for preventing harm? If a blame-worthiness approach premised on free will is fundamentally false, or at least not correct enough, then ideas about punishment and deterrence would likely be ineffective compared to more rehabilitation based approaches.
There’s always been one piece of this that has bugged me. I’d like to hear - from someone who is familiar enough with both neurons and quantum theory - an explanation on why thoughts are physically too big to be influenced by quantum randomness.
Very back-of-envelop calculation:
The quantum scale is characterized by an action comparable to the Planck constant, hbar=6.6x10-16 eV s. A quick wikipedia search tells us that the typical electric impulse needs at least 25 mV (from -70 mV in the resting state to -55 mV in the threshold), and lasts around 1 ms, giving an action of 2.5x10-5 eV s, which is 300 billion times larger that the quantum noise.
Well, that’s simultaneously both very enlightening and kind of depressing. Thanks for spreading the knowledge.
If you accept strict determinism, the fact that killers should go to prison is one of the “biases formed by prior events” that will determine that most people won’t become killers. Which in turn determine us as individuals in a society to create and enforce justice systems.
Removed by mod
So you believe, that if you would rewind time to a specific choice you made, you would be able to make a different choice, even though your brain and your surroundings are in the exact same state as before? Or do you believe your choices to be originating from somewhere else than your brain?
if thought truly is entirely deterministic, then it’s surely both sufficient and necessary that you could build a machine that, given the state of the universe as input, could fully simulate what your answer to any given question would be
but if you suppose that, then you basically run into an issue very similar to the halting problem
you put your subject in the room with your magic machine, tell them to disagree with whatever the machine spits out, then tell the magic machine to predict what they’re going to say after they’ve been told the result of said prediction
whatever the machine spits out, there’s nothing stopping your subject from just disagreeing
I now imagine the machine long time doing nothing and then spitting out “This is taking too long, i am going home!”.
Maybe you couldn’t but I’m different, sorry bout it
So you are exempt from the laws of physics?
That’s correct, sucks you have that constraint
Not sure that’s fair. The basics of his thoughts seem to be outlined … the article clearly states: behaviours are always primed by experience, history, state and genetics all of which are beyond our control, and so if our behaviour is not within our control we have no free will.
I don’t think there’s anything really there about hardline determinism and I’d bet his basic view is pretty compatible with some form of chaos based individualism.