What is philosophy?
The Greek philosophia means “love of wisdom.” I think philosophy is about the love of and pursuit of wisdom and truth.
Can philosophy make progress?
We can get closer to the truth and inspire more love for the search for it, so yes. It might be hard to know when we’re closer to truth, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t closer. Whether or not philosophy can make progress depends on your answer to the question of “What is philosophy?” With my definition, it can. With others, maybe not.
Is there a god?
No; I would argue the concept is unintelligible. If we bracket our concerns about the intelligibility of god due to the limitations of our minds, and weigh the evidence in a Bayesian way, I would argue there almost certainly is no god.
Would you get into the Star Trek transporter?
Absolutely not; it’s a murder machine. Your point of view ceases to exist and another person’s begins. In every single way (except for one), that new person is you. But that one difference is why I would never get in it.
Do you have free will?
Not in the sense that our thoughts, desires, personality, and actions are uncaused, rather than a product of our genes and environment. Thoughts simply arise, and we would have to self-cause our own thoughts in a logically impossible way to claim to have a free will, uncaused by prior events. Volitional action can be meaningfully distinguished from involuntary action; coercion is different from uncoerced action; but I hesitate to call voluntary action the product of free will. We certainly have a will, it just isn’t free. Your will is not free from the influence of prior causes. Despite this, I still use free will language, since it’s the simplest shorthand to describe the difference between voluntary and involuntary action. This is no more of a concession than “sunrise” and “sunset” is a concession to geocentrism. In other cases, our lack of information drives the use of free will language. I believe that Laplace’s demon, correcting for the true randomness that may exist at the bottom of our universe, would be able to predict our actions and thoughts without error. Since we are not Laplacean demons, however, it’s easier to simply say that we “chose” to do this or that, since we can’t see our puppet strings, even though they are there. To tie up the loose end on the “true randomness” that may exist: Randomness does not equal freedom.
. . .
You can learn a lot about someone based on their answers to the five questions. These questions are intended to be conversation starters, and they begin to get at your views on naturalism, religion, the self, knowledge, and freedom. What are your answers? Comment below 🙂
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I have to roll my eyes whenever someone says “thoughts simply arise”. As a compatibilist, I believe in a deterministic universe, in which nothing “simply arises”. Yet we get Sam Harris and others ironically suggesting something mystical is going on!
The brain evolved to serve the biological organism’s drive to survive, thrive, and reproduce. It serves individuals of intelligent species by organizing external and internal sensory data into a symbolic model of reality. It performs mental manipulations on this model to more effectively accomplish its biological purpose.
Is the food that I need up in a tree? Then perhaps I can shake the tree, or I can climb the tree, or I can take a stick and knock the fruit down. We hypothesize how each approach might turn out. We experiment to see if we’re right. We finally choose the method that seems most effective, and we survive more often than the creatures that can only act on instinct.
More often than not, we can identify the specific thing that has led us to a thought (e.g., hunger). We study for an exam, because we want to pass the course, because we want to get a job, because we want to buy food, because we want to survive. And how does studying work? We practice associating facts mentally to strengthen the neural links so that we increase the probability that the test question will trigger the recall of the answer.
If “thoughts simply arise”, then we’d never graduate because we’d flunk every exam!
So, please, let’s not introduce mysticism into a deterministic universe.
Oh, and as a compatibilist, I find that free will is a deterministic phenomenon. The operation of “choosing what we will do” inputs two or more possibilities, applies some criteria for comparative evaluation, and outputs a single choice. Given the same person under the same circumstances the choice will always be the same.
The “free” in free will does not refer to “freedom from reliable cause and effect”, it refers to “freedom from coercion and undue influence”. Philosophy has somehow managed to fall for a bait-and-switch definition change, which creates the paradox.
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“If “thoughts simply arise”, then we’d never graduate because we’d flunk every exam!”
This strikes me as a total non-sequitur…I was with everything you were saying until then.
“So, please, let’s not introduce mysticism into a deterministic universe.”
I don’t believe I am. You’re projecting some kind of mysticism onto my words.
“Thoughts arise” is simply a phenomenological description of thought, and by “thought” I mean anything that appears in consciousness (bits of language, hunger, desires generally, etc.). I don’t mind your eye-rolling response because speaking in any mindfulness language induces plenty of eye-rolls; I’m used to it. If you pay attention to your thoughts while you’re studying or deciding what to eat, or your desire to do well in school or your hunger, you’ll notice that these thoughts appear in experience, and it’s mysterious where these thoughts come from. You can’t account for why, when you’re taking your exam, the right answer immediately comes to mind for one question while you draw a blank for another question. You can give a physical account, as you did, but I’m describing the phenomenology of thought, not the physiology.
I can say, “I’m going to think about ham sandwiches right now.” But where did ‘ham sandwiches’ come from? Of all the sandwiches you know, why did you say ham? And why sandwiches, and why foods at all? You could’ve picked cities or movies or any number of things, but you didn’t. This is what I mean when I say “thoughts arise.” It’s not mystical, it’s accurate.
I also respect your compatibilism, and I think I agree with everything else you said about it, but you might need to spend some time with the folk. In my experience, most people believe in free will, and they don’t just mean “free from coercion.” I’m coming off of an hours-long debate with a couple people who believe in libertarian free will, and they certainly don’t think that free will just means “free from coercion or undue influence.” They really think there’s another option besides “determined” or “random,” (or some combination of the two).
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Sorry if I misunderstood your “thoughts simply arise”. Harris puts it this way “”–I cannot decide what I will next think or intend until a thought or intention arises. What will my next mental state be? I do not know–it just happens. Where is the freedom in that?” I’ve heard others who follow him suggest “thoughts just arise out of nowhere”. And that’s why it suggested mysticism to me.
And that’s an example of how the source of a thought can often be discovered, with a little thought, and the “mystery” resolved. It’s my impression mentalists (magicians specializing in hypnosis, etc.) can often prime a subject to select a specific number by exposing him to several subliminal suggestions during a conversation prior to asking them to think of or write down a number.
There will be a reason why “ham sandwich” appeared first when a person is asked to think of a sandwich. It may have been the last sandwich you ate, or simply the last sandwich that you thought of prior to the question. Each time you remember something, it activates and strengthens those neural paths, making that item or experience more likely to be recalled.
Long story short, thoughts don’t simply arise. When you ask yourself a question, a number of neural links related to the subject will be activated, and the strongest link will be selected first. At least that’s how I understand it.
My determinism also assumes that random and chaotic events are problems of prediction, not problems of unreliable causation.
I’m inspired by William James’ “Pragmatism” lectures. In Lecture II, “What Pragmatism Means”, he says this:
“The pragmatic method is primarily a method of settling metaphysical disputes that otherwise might be interminable.” … “The pragmatic method in such cases is to try to interpret each notion by tracing its respective practical consequences.”
(James, William. Pragmatism (Dover Thrift Editions) (pp. 16-17). Dover Publications. Kindle Edition. )
Free will has a practical, operational meaning. It distinguishes between a person autonomously choosing for himself what he will do, versus a person being controlled through coercion (e.g., gun to the head) or undue influence (e.g., mental illness, hypnosis, authoritative command).
The thoughts that arise during free will begin with some problem or issue that requires us to make a decision. We then imagine different ways to solve the problem or resolve the issue. We apply some criteria of comparative evaluation, and based on that evaluation, we make our choice. When we act upon that choice we gain new experience which informs our future choices.
I believe that the Libertarian position is a natural reaction to the Hard Determinist casting reliable cause and effect as a boogeyman that takes control over everything they do. That boogeyman sends the theist to seek refuge in the supernatural, and the secularist to seek escape through quantum indeterminism.
Ironically, reliable cause and effect is a prerequisite for all of our freedoms, because without it, we could never reliably cause any effect, and would have no freedom to do anything at all! So it cannot be reasonably viewed as a boogeyman robbing us of our freedom and at the same time the mechanism of all our freedoms.
The middle ground is that biological purpose and intelligent reasoning are the most significant causes of our choices, and that the purpose is integral to what we are, and the reasoning is something that we do.
So, that which is in control, our genes and our experiences, also happens to be “us”. What they control, “we” control. There is no “us” that is separate from the stuff of which we are made, the beliefs and values we hold, the genetic dispositions, the past life experiences, and all the things that make us uniquely us, are what we call “us”. To say that “they” are in control is identical to saying that “we” are in control.
And that’s how the paradox is resolved.
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I would like to just make one correction. You “believe” in a deterministic universe. Everybody seems driven to believe something (it’s a troubling foible of the human psyche) then hold that belief like it’s a truth, or fact. Belief among humans is somehow respected as a virtue, while in reality belief should be a temporary state that dissipates upon truth. The idea that you believe something as many others before, but has never come to fruition means that belief is errant and should now be abandoned. How much time should one hold to a belief (such as religion is a belief) without confirmed results? Reality is much more observable and less berounding guesswork. Believing determinism doesn’t make it anything at all.
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I think we all HOPE that we live in a rational world, one of reliable cause and effect. If something good happens, we’d like to understand why, so that we might experience it again. And if something bad happens, then we’d like to understand why, so that we might avoid it in the future.
Determinism seems to be a logical corollary of reliable causation. However, we do need to avoid drawing mistaken implications, such as the erroneous idea that something other than us is making our choices for us. Our choices may be predictable, but they remain our own choices.
We are the single object in the physical universe that is performing the calculations and judgments that result in our deliberate actions.
By their nature, living organisms have a stake in how things turn out. Inanimate matter does not. We experience and have an interest in the consequences of our choices and our actions.
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I agree. And until someone proves otherwise, I am calling my own shots. We may not have complete control over the freewill button, but we can direct our learning in a way decisions be mostly our own. We don’t t control all of the input but we can choose what to foster and point ourselves in various interesting directions and avoid too much “belief” which is the seedbed of division and tribalism.
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Belief is like the Sun. Skepticism like the Rain. Too much of either can be harmful.
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