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Originally posted by DrUg_Tit0 Now, while I do agree with the first part of your post, I certainly disagree with the second part. Diginut has already expressed most of my opinions on this matter, so I won't have much to add to that. Free choice has nothing to do with reward or punishment. Whether you like to call people's decisions free choice or conditioned response, in both cases they'll consider the consequences of their actions, and in both cases will the principle of reward and punishment lead to the same results. That principle is therefore in no way connected with the free choice agenda. Now, we can move on to what the punishments for unwanted actions should be. The best solution would be that if someone is a serious threat to the society, that person should be removed from it. Smaller crimes are not a serious threat, so they can freely be dealt with in terms of short prison sentences. But, as far as the big crimes go (mass murder, genocides, serial killers...), there should be no way such people should ever be reintroduced into the society. The very actions those people took show that they are not rational and sane beings. There is usually no cure for them, as those people will murder again when they come back from the prison,

agree with that

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and there's definitely no reason why those people should be funded by the society to spend the rest of their miserable lives in a cell. A simple fact is that the needs of the many usually outweight the needs of the few, so it's a choice between two lesser evils. On one hand, we have a poor poor murderer who won't experience the thrills of freedom/life, and on the other hand we have a society where murder goes almost unpunished, something that can lead to desasterous results. Now, regardless of whether you look at these people as conditioned automatons or free willed individuals, there's no reason whatsoever to keep them alive. If their actions are the product of their free will, then it is obvious we are talking to someone who enjoys killing, regardless of the possible consequences. If we are talking about actions that are a conditioned response, we have a person whose genes and society have conditioned him/her to do the very same ting, to kill for pleasure regardless of the consequences. In both cases the solution is the same.

I think there is a reason why these people should be founded by society, you said by yourself that there is no thing as free choice, but yet you want to kill this people who didn't have any choice? if society has failed with those persons lives, they shouldn't be killed. society should take care about them. and no, i don't think it is less deterrent just to take away their freedom than if you should kill them. all people want their freedom (not a life in a prison) so most people won't commit crimes anyway.

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Originally posted by Shakka In my opinion, this is a pretty weak paper. Not because your thesis is necessarily bad, but moreso because you really don't say/argue anything. That which you do argue is incredibly thin.

and still most people understood my point and agreed - there is no free choice.

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I'm trying to remember...did this first part come from The Matrix? It's an oversimplified argument that only exists in a vacuum given only 1 variable such that A+B=C, however the real world has nearly infinite variables and consequences to every action. Some are readily identifiable, some aren't. For example, in Chaos Theory it has been surmised that the result of a butterfly flapping it's wings in China could somehow result in a Tornado in the Midwestern U.S. (Don't ask me how, go read the theory). Even then, doesn't every choice in essence open up a myriad of potential new choices resulting from the initial choice, in essence giving potentially countless other longer term outcomes? There aren't just 2 possible outcomes in any decision(I could choose to go take a plane or take a train, or I could choose to take a boat, or I could choose to simply not go at all, forfeiting the chance of meeting a future business partner, which would open a whole new window of pursuant choices). Bottom line, it's an overly simplistic argument that doesn't seem realistic to me.

it doesn't matter if there are 2 outcome in a decision or if there are 2000000000, we still chose what seems to be the best alternative, and what we think is the best alternative is based upon our experiences / knowledge / genetics, so whether there is 2 possibilities, or 200000000 the outcome is still given.

and no i don't think that's from matrix?!

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You are born with a brain, but it is undeveloped. How you choose to condition it will have a large impact on your approach to decision making. You may choose to sniff glue, kill your brain cells, and then be rendered a vegetable, depending on others to make all of your choices for you. You may also choose to do something else--again, there is always more than 1 alternative which always adds more uncertainty.

but how do you chose? why do we choose something when our brain is "undeveloped" (i don't believe that the brain is undeveloped from the beginning, but still)? when you have a choice, you try to make it as good as possible for you, right? everyone tries that, based on their knowledges and abilities. or can we make choices in any other way than based on our current knowledges and what feels best?

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Not so. It might depend on what the tomatoes look like, how much money he has on him, etc. He may just decide not to purchase any tomatoes. Maybe he buys some tomato seeds and plants a tomato garden when he gets home. You just can't simplify life down to an either/or equation.

yes of course! but still he takes all those things into consideration when he takes the decision!

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Surely you can't believe that an election would be that predictable? If that were the case we could've avoided the whole Florida Recount issue and Chad would still be a cool name.

hmm, how could the florida recount have been avoided if we knew how people made their choices? people's knowledges changes, and so does the election results.

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Plenty of people are able to move from one class to another--it depends on a lot of their decisions, as well as plenty of other variables such as timing, and even other intangibles that they have no control over (like luck).

yeah, a lot are, but most people stay, why is that?

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Do go on, I have yet to get the point/see a convincing example that proves that choice does not exist and that a specific set of outcomes must always accompany a particular choice.

if you still not understand, i will take some more complex examples.

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Sounds like typical leftist victimization in order to avoid personal responsibility. Certainly this can't be how you actually think?

you shouldn't try to avoid personal responsibility, personal responsibility is good for the ones that fix it, but the ones that cannot have to be taken care of. if everyone was born equal, and there was such thing as free choice, then i would probably think like you, but now, that's not the case.

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Sure there is. I just chose to write a scathing review. Possible outcomes: I could get flamed, I could get a sensible reply, I could get no reply, I could get banned, or nothing might happen. I certainly can't predict what you'll say in response, though I have a good idea since we've debated before and I know your stance on several issues. There is plenty of free choice.

you didn't choose to write this review because you knew how i would answer, you chose to do that for many reasons. probably you like to argue (gen/env thing), you answered as you did probably because you have grown up in a family with parents that support a right government, your family is probably rich, you attended good schools, you have meet most right supporting people in your life etc etc.

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Originally posted by trancaholic I see no flaws in your logic, but, assuming that you are right, I would like to reverse the argument and ask: Are there such things as "individuals"? Or, equivalently, do each of us possess an essence? If our decision making is merely a function of previous experience and some constant factor defined by the brains we are born with, then how do we become individuals? To me, an individual is something with its own preferences and which is distinguishable from other individuals by its acts. But, as we just established, these preferences and choices are deterministically related to our biological starting point and experiences, so how can we in any way claim them to be "ours"? We are as little individuals as we have free choice.

for me, a individual is a person with unique properties. even though you do not _really_ have free choice, you still are a unique person, a individual.

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Originally posted by St_Andrew I think there is a reason why these people should be founded by society, you said by yourself that there is no thing as free choice, but yet you want to kill this people who didn't have any choice?

Well, diseases and natural disasters don't choose whether they'll appear or not, but we still try our best to eliminate them.

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if society has failed with those persons lives, they shouldn't be killed. society should take care about them.

It's not always the society. It is often the genetics that make people agressive and violent. And the society shouldn't pay for someone's corrupted genetic code.

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and no, i don't think it is less deterrent just to take away their freedom than if you should kill them. all people want their freedom (not a life in a prison) so most people won't commit crimes anyway.

It is a milder deterrent to take away someone's freedom than it is to kill that person. Freedom always exists, but in different amounts. You can't do anything you want, but you do have some choices. Imprisoned people have their choices reduced, but they can still make some. If a person is killed, there's no more choice ever again.

___________________
1+1=10

I think you also have to pay attention to the fact that "free/freedom" is a relative term.

No matter how much freedom there is, you can always take it to a greater extreme. I think it was Skinner that described true freedom as an unattainable ideal, you'd have to be living in a vacuum, you'd have to be free from any environment or surroundings - in effect, you'd have to be living outside reality.

But who wants that kind of freedom? I suppose the closest you could come to that is to be the last surviving man on earth after a nuclear holocaust. I'm sure everyone agrees that society would come to a screeching halt if we tried to attain that kind of "free choice."

St. Andrew, the problem with your philosophy as that you're looking at the choice of an individual in hindsight. There is never any choice, never any randomness after something's already happened. Even though a person's actions may be the result of their environment and their brain, the action they take is completely unpredictable until after the fact. And I do mean truly unpredictable, because the set of variables governing an individual's behaviour is infinite. And that, I argue, is choice, simply defined a different way. If other people can't predict our actions in foresight, then in hindsight we made a choice.

The postmodernist philosophy of free choice is mostly a form of philosophical and intellectual masturbation that doesn't have much practical use. If "true" free choice is an unattainable ideal, then we have to redefine "choice" to reflect something that is a physical reality in order to form a coherent argument that has any practical use. The no-free-choice argument as a lead-in to the extreme left liberal laissez-faire philosophy is not very logical and has been debunked in the past. We can talk about it philosophically, but trying to apply it politically is basically a dead-end street.

___________________
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hehe...you said intellectual masturbation

I think you're correct about B.F. Skinner, though I don't remember that clearly some of what I took in philosophy.

Is making a decisiion based on the action of something random(flipping a coin, rolling a die) free choice? It's not affected by nature, nurture, your benifit/detriment analyis or anything else besides which way the coin lands.

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Originally posted by Nadi Is making a decisiion based on the action of something random(flipping a coin, rolling a die) free choice? It's not affected by nature, nurture, your benifit/detriment analyis or anything else besides which way the coin lands.

Actually, the way the coin lands is - theoretically - determined by the angle and velocity you choose to flip it by, as well as the density and movement of the air in the room you flip it. Similar argument goes for the dice, and we again (theoretically) have a deterministic choice.

You may say that although the choice is deterministic it is not *predictable*. But that hinges on our ability to predict - which I will claim to be a function of our mental capabilities and experiences, too. E.g. I know how much one of my friends wants a particular item, and I choose to give it to him as a birthday present. I can predict that he will be happy - although someone who do not know my friends desire and what the present contain will have a harder time predicting that. Someone from another culture, where people do not exchange wrapped gifts, would be even worse off at predicting the reaction of my friend.

Don't know if that made any sense, but now I have typed it, so I might as well post it.

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Originally posted by St_Andrew for me, a individual is a person with unique properties. even though you do not _really_ have free choice, you still are a unique person, a individual.

It is interesting that you write "unique properties", as it is quite a vague definition. I assume that you do not mean the acts of the person, as these are not freely chosen by him (cf. your own argument). I furthermore assume that you do not mean physical appearence, voice etc., as these could be altered due to surgery or accidents, yet that thing we call a person would remain. So what do you mean?

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Originally posted by Nadi Who knows. I don't think its important because the majority of society believes there are and I dont think theres really anyone who could really comprehend and accept us all being numbers. We have to live under the assumption that there are individuals regardless of whether or not it is correct.

Quite to the contrary I think that the existence of individuals/essences/souls are relevant to the latter part of Andrews argument. As I understand his reasoning, it goes something like this:

We do not have free choice. Therefore, the "individual" is not really responsible for the choices he or she make - or alternatively, if we punish him, it will be because of his initial brain structure and the experiences he has had - both factors that "he" cannot help being subjected to.
I don't know if I'm stepping out of bounds here, but it seems like he's advocating that the person/individual is more or less a slave to his brain and experiences: A helpless soul trapped in an automaton?

If, by my argument, you accept that the line of reasoning provided for non-existence of free choice also eliminates the existence of a soul/individual, then his cause ceases to be.

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Originally posted by trancaholic Actually, the way the coin lands is - theoretically - determined by the angle and velocity you choose to flip it by, as well as the density and movement of the air in the room you flip it. Similar argument goes for the dice, and we again (theoretically) have a deterministic choice.

Although we shouldn't forget the Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. If you look at the coin while it's flipping, you can never be absolutely sure of the way it will land.

___________________
1+1=10

I largely agree with Diginut's statements however, let me add one note.

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originially posted by diginut I think you also have to pay attention to the fact that "free/freedom" is a relative term. No matter how much freedom there is, you can always take it to a greater extreme. I think it was Skinner that described true freedom as an unattainable ideal, you'd have to be living in a vacuum, you'd have to be free from any environment or surroundings - in effect, you'd have to be living outside reality.

But do we not make an initial "choice" to undergo such experiences? Essentially, we can either choose to remain in a vacuum and remain uninfluenced by all factors, or we can decide to live in an ever-evolving/affecting environment and thus bear responsiblity for the effects of our choice to be affected? For example, if I make the initial choice to hang out with gangs all the time such that the lifestyle influences my ability to make "uninfluenced" choices, shouldn't my initial "choice" to involve myself in that lifestyle be the accountable factor? Then let's go back further and state that my choice to involve myself with a gang was influenced by my choice in friends to hang out with ... then that "choice" is the accountable factor in my ultimate choices later in life? As we go back in time I'm sure we would find that our "choices" in life become less and less influenced by our environment. Therefore our free choice in life is a summation of "free" choices that we have made since consciousness and therefore are ultimately "free".

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Originally posted by trancaholic We do not have free choice. Therefore, the "individual" is not really responsible for the choices he or she make - or alternatively, if we punish him, it will be because of his initial brain structure and the experiences he has had - both factors that "he" cannot help being subjected to. I don't know if I'm stepping out of bounds here, but it seems like he's advocating that the person/individual is more or less a slave to his brain and experiences: A helpless soul trapped in an automaton?

I was actually arguing with Andrew about this in another thread (which will never end). In my opinion, adopting such a philosophical believe is extremely dangerous. While we exclude personal responsibility and accountability for an individual since he supposedly does not have "free" choice, we also exclude that individual's ability to make choices. As you stated, there is no individual, only a helpless soul slave to a their brains and experiences. Therefore, according to this degree of thought, humans should NOT be extended the privelidge of choice since their choices in life are ALWAYS predetermined and unchangeable. Therefore, a superior system should be set in place (an all-knowing 1984 style of government or a super computer) to make choices for the individual since the individual will inevitably make the wrong choice. Or even going one step further, why not set up a eugenics program to eliminate the mass of humanity who are born with the propensity of gravitating to the wrong choices as a result of their brain chemistry?

I argued that freedom and accountability go hand in hand ... either you grant the individual the benefit of the doubt that they possess "free" choice and invoke accountability on their part for the choices that they make, or you eliminate their freedom of choice.

At any rate I've learned one thing from this discussion ... there really IS a short jump to totalitariaism from the extremist positions of either ideaological sides

___________________
Retro ...

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Originally posted by trancaholic You may say that although the choice is deterministic it is not *predictable*. But that hinges on our ability to predict - which I will claim to be a function of our mental capabilities and experiences, too. E.g. I know how much one of my friends wants a particular item, and I choose to give it to him as a birthday present. I can predict that he will be happy - although someone who do not know my friends desire and what the present contain will have a harder time predicting that. Someone from another culture, where people do not exchange wrapped gifts, would be even worse off at predicting the reaction of my friend. Don't know if that made any sense, but now I have typed it, so I might as well post it.

It makes sense, but unfortunately for you, it is false.

First of all, Tito gave mention of the H. uncertainty principle which is one of the central tenets of modern science - specifically it refers to the relationship between the position/velocity or momentum/energy of a particle, and it states that the more you know about one variable (position), the less you can know about another (velocity). Now, I'm not going to give a physics lesson here, but the point you have to understand is that the uncertainty principle is not a technological or knowledge limitation, it is a basic principle of science which states that no technology could ever be made to measure both - it's impossible.

So, literally, a true prediction could never actually be made. Making a prediction would require knowing an exact state of matter, and on a quantum level, this is not possible. When you go to a macro scale - i.e. a coin, or the human brain, there are certain instances in which you know that the matter will interact in a certain way, and you can figure out, for example, which side the coin will probably land on or whether or not your friend will like the gift. But there is always a certain amount of uncertainty because there is an infinite set of variables that can never all be taken into account, and ultimately, your prediction is nothing more than a probability - it may be a 99.9999% probability, but it is still a probability.

This is why weather forecasts are misleading. It's why cars and computers break down. It's why you'll be walking down the street one day and trip over your own feet for some unknown reason. I know a lot of people have trouble with the concept of infinity, but try to understand - infinity is not a number, it is by definition the lack of any countable number. So when we are surrounded by an environment - an infinite set of variables and influences - no prediction could ever be made with 100% certainty.

The problem is, you're trying to apply a rather scientific concept (determinism) to a philosophical abstract without knowing the scientific foundation. Yes, we can model behaviour. Yes, some people may have a better ability to "predict" a certain thing than others - but no one, ever, could create a rock-solid model that would predict the behaviour of every individual particle in the universe - and hence, nobody could ever predict all the actions of individual human beings.

So I am sorry to say, I do not accept your argument here - human beings are random at the core, not determinstic, and randomness implies an a priori choice - one can always say a posteriori (after the fact) that no real choice was made, but unfortunately, we have to obey the principles of causality. We can't see into the future, and we have to structure our behaviour accordingly - based on modelling, randomness, and choice.

Choice is a linguistic term - as a word, it doesn't have any concrete meaning. It's a model, and in this case, a far better model than determinism. Let's stick with it.

___________________
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2009-06-18 - DJ Annoying @ People Need To Know Where I'll Be
2012-11-32 - DJ Insufferable ɸ Or At Least the Stalkers I Complain About
2048-06-66 - Spastic & Whocares ¶ Although I'm Actually Flattered
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