Freedom is a necessary pre-requisite for love or the discovery of truth or even simple respect. Should Free Will be found not to exist, and that all human life is actually nothing more than the sterile byplay of mechanical determinism, in that same moment everything that makes life worth living would also vanish. Love cannot be love if it is forced; it is reduced to nothing by the mere attempt. One could not discover truth; in a deterministic world what we consider to be true is nothing more than what we are programmed to believe. Respect must vanish; there would be nothing to respect a brave man for if he never had the option of not being brave.
There are a couple of interesting and important things that necessarily go along with this. In politics we must ever remember that governments exist to serve the people. While it is necessary for governments to restrict freedom in certain ways (through laws), the goal must ever be to increase personal freedom. In personal relationships we must always remember that it is only through freedom that the possibility of love or basic goodness exists. If we move to restrict freedom then we are also moving to restrict all of the things that go along with it.
In the Free Will argument, which I will probably address directly at some point, as with a great number of other arguments it is possible to hold either of two positions without immediately obvious logical inconsistency. However, if you have a choice between two options, both of which may be equally valid, why ever choose the one that is obviously worse?
- Torq
- Some of these short essays have been written to form a coherent philosophical and theological whole. Some are just my efforts to struggle through concepts which I have found particularly difficult or interesting. Either way, I welcome comments on or criticism of my philosophy and ideas.
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22 Discussion Points:
Luckily for us, we are all programmed to believe that we are "free", just as we are programmed to call the dude "brave" for saving that hot blonde, drowning in the lake.
Consider how much nicer you are to that hot chick at the cash register... you know the other line was shorter, but you picked it anyways. We're all in it for ourselves (because we're progammed that way... Don't worry, it's a 'good' thing)
Nathan Holsapple
Although there are some cultural differences, we are also programmed to have similar ideas of what bravery and beauty are.
And in the retail world, I don't give a hooey if that guy in the line is nice and free or not. The job is still a prison for me, thus I don't care about him. Sure, he's free to choose my line, but I'm stuck behind the register like a stinkin' rat. He might as well be a heckler in the market pointing at the woman in the stocks.
Excuse my cynicism (and perhaps my tangent), but someone mentioned freedom and retail in the same space, which is one of the biggest oxymorons I have ever seen.
Well,
If you're programmed to think we're free or brave, why aren't we programmed to think we're programmed?
Can you see where that leads?
(No you can't because it leads nowhere.)
There are lots of weird things about our brains. We are also programmed to see patterns in random shapes, like clouds and rock formations.
Just as an example, the man in the moon looks like Steve Woodard.
Yes, all that is true (and in that case, darlin') but in no case does it negate the reality of human freedom. Of course we are "wired" to see patterns, or better yet, wired for rationality. But if the rationality were ONLY the wires, then how could anyone (rationally) say that we are wired? You need to be able to step back from your wiring to recognize the wiring.
"Evolutionary psychology" has its place in our humanness, but a very small place. Using it as an explanation for human thinking ties you up in a very tight circle, with no where to go.
Freedom is the precondition for rationality.
I am not sure that our seeing patterns in apparently random blurs of colors and shapes is programming. I actually think that this is more what the brain has learned to do. If you think about it, all you ever see, hear, smell, touch or taste is an incredible missmash of thousands of competing signals. When I realize that the object that I am looking at is actually a computer monitor it is because I know what a computer monitor is, my brain has learned that this particular pattern represents a tv monitor. This is why we see shapes in the clouds, it is learned pattern recognition.
To illustrate the point: infants do not have depth perception, everything appears to exist in a wash of color. After several months (six or so) the child begins to realize that the things which she can touch are closer than those she cannot and so depth perception is learned.
Dad, (and anyone else):
I'm wondering if saying we're programmed must include saying we're all programmed the EXACT same way. It seems differing opinions brings out arguments much more & delivers a more complete understanding when it is all said & done. Is it possible there is a reason one person may be 'programmed' to belive he is programmed, while another may be programmed to believe he isn't?
Nathan Holsapple
Hi Nathan,
You can work out the "programming" model with greater and greater subtlety, but you cannot escape the logical circularity in the model. IF our thoughts are truly programmed, and not free, then the thought you are currently expressing (that we are programmed) must also be programmed, and not free. Your belief in human programming cannot be said to be true or false, but is only the result of your programming. In fact, all beliefs must necessarily fall into this same dark little hole.
Rationality requires freedom. Or, as Matthew said it, freedom is the pre-requisite for any discovery of truth.
You've taken a leap in your third sentence. Belief in the programming does not have anything to do with whether it is true or false.
I could program a computer to believe that it was programmed. That would not mean it was not programmed.
If you accept the idea that human thinking is ultimately programmed, and not free, then you must subject your own thinking to that same model. You are not free to think you are free. This is the inescapable consequence of this model.
So, descriptions of an idea as being "true" or "false" are irrelevant.
This must -- necessarily - - include your own ideas. So, there you are: in a nasty little hole.
The only way out of the hole is to assume - - to presuppose - - that human thinking is ultimately free.
Of course, you cannot "prove" that human thinking is free. You have to presuppose it.
Your choice: the nasty little hole, or the open air.
*nods* As you can see this is sort of where I had to leave off in my other Post. I thought I might be able to push past the dual nature of it but, as I am sure you noticed, my ending is weak. Ultimately I can't see how we can logically prove free will, I sort of think we will have to HOPE that is true.
If all our thoughts are totally fixed before we have then then we do really have to give up on any idea that they might really be true. Truth goes out the window along with everything else. If we were really programmed then the thought that we were programmed could be no more true than any other programmed thought. Truth and falsity do not apply to programming.
I suppose this is no more than repeating the Good Reverend's point!
I'm not really sure where you're getting these ideas from...whether an idea is true and whether that same idea is programmed have absolutely no relation to each other. Because a thought is programmed does not make it any less true.
Your affirmation that a statement "cannot be said to be either true or false, but only the result of your programming" is what is irrelevant; to use Megan's example, I could program a computer to find out what 2+2 is. The fact that it was programmed to answer "4" does not make its answer any less true.
I almost said "In the same way, whether my ideas about freedom are programmed or not does not affect their veracity," but of course that would not be true. You get the idea though.
To use your example with the computer. What if I programmed that computer to think that 2+2= 13, and a different computer to think that 2+2=5. Which computer is right? They would both be under the impression that they were correct but you and I would know that they really were both wrong.
In the same way, you are saying that you are programmed (which is something that you are programmed to say) but cling to the idea that you can somehow have knowledge of truth.
Do you see what I am saying? It is not that there is absolutely no possibility that some minuscule part of our programming may or may not be ultimately true, it is that we could never know if it was. You are the computer who thinks 2+2=9. You can no more have knowledge of your being right or wrong than the computer could.
So if I'm understanding you, you prefer to believe something that is not provable because it is the only way you can believe that you are right?
Would it not be better to admit that this is something that we will likely never know?
It seems to me that you're saying that knowing you're right is more important than actually being right. I've been thinking that knowing you're right is irrelevant, and only actually being right matters.
Is this an accurate assessment of the situation?
There are realities that cannot be proven, but must be pre-supposed, in order to prove anything at all. One of these realities is logic. You can't prove the laws of reason, because you need to use the laws of reason to prove anything, and you would therefore have to presuppose the validity of the laws you are trying to prove.
Another one of these realities is human freedom.
So, to answer Megan, the reality Matthew is exploring is not something we can pretend we "will will likely never know." We know our freedom more certainly than we know anything else.
To answer Ben, without presupposing human freedom, the whole concept of right and wrong are completely without basis.
Right and wrong as moral standards, perhaps (although I'd have to think about it more to even agree with that).
Truth, no. Right and wrong as correct and incorrect, no.
Right and wrong as correct and incorrect also depend on human freedom.
Let's extend the programming model. Computers have programming to work out correct answers, which appears to contradict the "necessity of freedom", but remember that WE do the programming! There is a free agent, in back of the apparently mechanistic process.
Without a free agent, there is no such reality as right or wrong; there is just "what happens". So, I change your dollar into three quarters; it happens: the result of my programming. You expected four quarters: the result of your programming.
There is no "judge", above the programming, to decide which programming is true! So, get used to being short-changed.
Yes that is exactly right. If we say that there is no free will then we have to give up on the silly idea that anything we say has any bearing to truth at all. We have to agree that things that seem fundamentally true, math for example, are not true. They may SEEM to work, but then we only SEEM to have free will. We have to stop even using the word truth, because it is ultimately meaningless.
Meg: The question really doesn't have much to do with what we know and don't know it is what is possible to know! Programming precludes the possibility of truth.
Ben: I see your point but the loss of freedom precludes truth in all things, not just the intangible areas like morality.
To note the circle that the Good Reverend mentioned earlier, I am sure that you can see that one of the things that we cannot say are true is the proposition that we have no free will. The argument eats itself.
You needn't "decide" which programming is true - unless you have adopted the idea that truth is subjective since I've been away. Truth is truth whether we or anyone else decides on it or not.
If you're arguing that we can't know if it's true, so we shouldn't bother trying, then this is a different discussion.
I would say that truth is not subjective (if it were then this whole conversation would be a waste of time!). I agree, somethings are ultimately true and this is totally irrelevant to whether or not we actually think it is true or not.
The problem is that if you have five things that you think are true and you have to acknowledge that you are unable to say if any of them are true or false then you clearly have to stop pretending that any of them are true. They are simply arbitrary things that you happen to believe. If there is a "Judge" who is in possession of free will, as the Good Reverend has implied, then the "Judge" would have the ability to know which of them were right and which wrong, but you would not.
You see you have to CHOOSE between a correct answer and an incorrect. If there is no choice then there is (for you) not correct or incorrect, only what you happen to believe.
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