A little while back, my friend UnkleE suggested that I should consider some questions that he believes are problematic for atheism as a worldview. He listed 5 questions, and I want to take them one at a time, so they can each get the focus they deserve.
That said, my initial responses to each of these questions may not be very long. Instead, I’d like to use each of these posts as a launchpad for discussion. I know these are issues that UnkleE (and probably many of you) have thought about at length, and I’d like to consider those arguments as fully as possible without subjecting everyone to my own rambling preamble. So, here’s question 1:
Do we have free will? If so, how? If not how can any choice be based on evidence rather than brain processes?
I don’t know.
I’m aware that a number of physicists and other scientists sometimes argue that free will is an illusion. That was shocking to me when I first heard it, but I now realize what they’re saying.
Imagine you could go back in time to a point where a decision was made on something seemingly insignificant. In 1959, Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper died in a plane crash. It’s said that another musician, Tommy Allsup, was going to be on the plane instead of Ritchie Valens, but they flipped a coin for it, and Valens “won.” If you could go back in time and witness that coin flip without interfering, would anything happen differently? Whoever came up with the idea of flipping for it thought of that for very specific reasons that would still be the same if it happened over again. Allsup flipped the coin at a specific level of force, and it flipped through specific atmospheric conditions. Those things would still be the same if you were watching it happen. Valens called “heads,” which he did for specific reasons, even if they were subconscious. In other words, every single thing that happened, even though they were seemingly random, happened in particular ways for particular reasons. If you could replay it over, there’s no reason to think anything would play out differently.
And every decision you’ve ever made, you made for specific reasons, even if the decision was close. If you went back in time and made the decision over again, but only knew the same things you knew at that moment, could you have made any other decision?
There’s no real way to test this, but the thought experiment leads many to conclude that true “free will” is not really possible.
I’m not sure how I feel about that. I do think that if you could replay decisions, it’s unlikely they would ever change. But that’s not really what I think of when I think of free will. Just because I made all my decisions for specific reasons and was “powerless,” in a way, to do anything different, that doesn’t mean that I had no control over the decisions. Thought processes were still firing in my brain as I calculated a number of factors, considered past experiences, estimated probabilities, and tried to predict possible outcomes. I might always come to the same conclusion in the same circumstances, but my mind is still very active in the process.
[H]ow can any choice be based on evidence rather than brain processes?
I think any choice — any good choice — should be using both. Brain processes deal with information, and that’s all that evidence is, so I see them as being very closely related.
Ultimately, I don’t see how this question causes a problem for atheism. I may have more to say about it in the comment thread, but I’ll need to see the case against atheism filled out a bit more before I can really weigh in on it.
Finding Truth 
I guess I did. But I disagree. Your criticism of unkleE is fair enough. My disagreement is more basic. In my view, neither “brain states” nor “mental states” are well defined. So I doubt that this kind of argument can actually get started.
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Hi Nate,
The important thing is not the abortion example, but the logic of determinism and compatibilism. In the past you haven’t been convinced that naturalism/physicalism entails determinism, which in turn entails no libertarian free will. I thought you had agreed with that logic now, but it seems you are still unsure. This is basic to the point I am making, so we cannot really proceed until we understand each other on this. But I’m not sure if either of us want to go round that circle again.
Let me try a different and provocative approach, and make an ambit claim on what I think is happening here.
1. Most atheists believe physical/natural processes and entities are all there is. There is no supernatural and no other “spooky” “woo”, so mind & consciousness arise/emerge from the physical. I think you believe that.
2. But the logic of that leads to determinism. If there is nothing outside the physical/natural, then only physical/natural processes can be used to explain everything, including consciousness and choice, and those processes are described/governed by natural laws (except if there is true randomness). So our choices are determined by the laws of physics = determinism.
3. But determinism is a stark worldview and very difficult to live consistently (some say impossible), so believing in determinism produces cognitive dissonance. Few of us enjoy that. So determinists look for a way out.
4. Compatibilism is that way out. We can redefine freewill from what it would naturally mean to most people (my lawyer friend would talk about the ordinary man in the street) to mean something that can sit with determinism. Then naturalists can feel more comfortable and remove their cognitive dissonance.
So free will, which most naturally means the ability to change the course of events in our brains to something different than the physical brain processes would have produced, is redefined to mean something like being able to act in a way consistent with our wishes (which in turn are actually determined).
To be specific, libertarian free will entails at least these three requirements:
1. A person has the active power to bring about a consequence.
2. The person used their power as a first unmoved mover to actually bring about that consequence.
3. They had the ability not to bring about that consequence.
But compatibilism doesn’t accept any of those statements. So compatibilism still doesn’t allow for not fully determined choice among theoretically possible alternatives, and that is the key conclusion for my “problems”.
These definitions can be fleshed out with considerable rigour (see the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy – where there are several versions of compatibilism), but I believe that is a reasonable generalised summary.
5. Now here is the provocative statement. I think you are feeling the cognitive dissonance. You feel (experientially) we have free will, you want to believe we have free will (not least because you are an extremely ethical person and you want a good basis for moral responsibility), but you recognise that compatibility doesn’t give a really satisfying free will. And so you are finding it difficult.
I suppose you won’t like me saying that, but I hope you won’t be offended. But I think we should probably close this discussion gracefully and give you time (if you have interest) to work out where you stand on these very complex issues. We can live to “fight” another day! 🙂
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Hi AR, you are certainly putting a lot of effort into this matter, which I appreciate. But I fear that you are still directing your effort at points I am not making, which of course you are free to do, but I feel no reason to dispute them. So here are my responses that may clarify further.
”By ignoring my claims, are you conceding that your 3 objections are in fact fallacious, or will you be addressing them in your list of “issues”?”
I don’t think “fallacious” is a relevant word here. I have not yet got to the level of presenting a logical argument, I am simply pointing out what I see as problems and asking for explanations. If I don’t see any reasonable explanations, I may then present a logical argument, but not yet. So, for example, I quote experts because it is often (on a forum like this where space is limited) the quickest way to outline a problem. I have not yet seen an adequate understanding of the problems (quite possibly my fault) nor an adequate explanation of them.
”All that’s needed is that some sequence of mental states can emulate or map onto logical reasoning sometimes–a much weaker requirement.”
If this is your conclusion that you’re prepared to support, then I am happy to go with that. I was trying to see if a stronger conclusion could be supported, but are you happy to defend the alleged problems of compatibilism on that basis?
”unkleE’s Theorem: If Determinism is true, and if brain states and mental states stand in a bijective (one-to-one and onto) correspondence, then all cognitive agents would reach exactly the same conclusions.“
Again, I’m sorry, but you have jumped way beyond what I am saying. I am not making any theorem, I am simply asking for an explanation that is real (i.e. makes sense in our experience) and understandable.
I was quite clear that I was not saying this. I said that if compatibilism is true, our brains would all have evolved slightly differently. We would find some things we all thought similarly on, and some things we didn’t. I didn’t suggest that in itself disproved compatibilism. I said it presented a practical problem. And I still think it does.
And I think that renders the rest of your argument there nugatory, I’m sorry, for it is addressing a wrong assumption about what I had said.
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“3. But determinism is a stark worldview and very difficult to live consistently (some say impossible), so believing in determinism produces cognitive dissonance. Few of us enjoy that. So determinists look for a way out.”
You’ve made this claim a couple of times, but I don’t think it’s true and I don’t think you’ve adequately justified it. I support the determinist position and I certainly don’t feel any cognitive dissonance on the matter. The illusion of free will is arguably beneficial and knowing that it’s an illusion doesn’t create any issues as far as I am concerned.
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Hi Limey,
”In the field of psychology, cognitive dissonance is the mental discomfort (psychological stress) experienced by a person who simultaneously holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values.” Wikipedia.
Each of the quotes below shows a scientist or philosopher saying that freewill is contradictory to their naturalism or science, yet it is a necessary belief – thus simultaneously holding two or more contradictory beliefs = cognitive dissonance.
Cognitive scientist Marvin Minsky: ”No matter that the physical world provides no room for freedom of will; that concept is essential to our models of the mental realm. Too much of our psychology is based on it for us to ever give it up. We’re virtually forced to maintain that belief, even though we know it’s false”
Philosopher Saul Smilanski: [free will] ”is a morally necessary illusion …. vitally important …. to maintain or promote crucial moral or personal beliefs and practices. …. The idea of illusion as morally necessary is repugnant and demeaning …. Nevertheless I do not see any resources left to combat the ethical necessity of illusion in the free will case.”
Philosopher James Rachels: ”aspects of our behaviour which we previously thought were matters of free choice are really the products of deep, genetically controlled forces …Humans may fabricate all sort of other reasons for what they do, but these are mere rationalisations”
Edward Slingerland: [No one] ”can help acting like and at some level really feeling that he or she is free …. we need to pull off the trick of …. living with a dual consciousness …. There may well be individuals who lack this sense [of feeling they are free], and who can quite easily conceive of themselves and other people in purely instrumental, mechanistic terms, but we label such people “psychopaths”.”
Richard Dawkins (asked whether his views on moral responsibility were inconsistent): ”I sort of do, yes. But it is an inconsistency that we sort of have to live with, otherwise life would be intolerable.”
Albert Einstein: ”human beings in their thinking, feeling and acting, are not free but are as causally bound as the stars in their motions. …. I am compelled to act as if free will existed because if I want to live in a civilised society I must act responsibly.”
Computer scientist Eric Baum says the arguments against freewill are ”airtight. But …. it’s much more reasonable and practical for my genes to build me believing in free will”
Philosopher John Searle: ”The problem about compatibilism, then, is that it doesn’t answer the question, ‘Could we have done otherwise, all other conditions remaining the same ?’, in a way that is consistent with our belief in our own free will. Compatibilism, in short, denies the substance of free will while maintaining its verbal shell.”
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Neil: A “brain state” can be thought of as a “snapshot” of all the neuronal synaptic connections in a brain, and the accumulated levels of activation in every neuron, and knowledge about how neurons accumulate these in order to fire electrical signals after a certain threshold, etc. An example that approximates this would be an fMRI showing brain activity (via blood flow) of someone’s brain while they’re listening to music, etc. As defined, “brain states” are strictly physical states and their existence is not controversial.
While we don’t have the computational resources to measure each individual state of each synaptic connection (there are 10^10 of those) they can in principle be measured (and they may well be in the not so distant future as computer power and storage capabilities continue to exponentially increase).
“Mental states,” on the other hand, are labels that we give to our subjective experiences arising from these physical brain states, and they may not have a reality in the same way that brain states do.
As far as I’m concerned, “brain states” can be said to be “real” just by the way they’re defined, and by the fact that brains exist, and we can agree to disagree that they exist. I think they’re a useful concept when talking about consciousness and LFW, and I was responding to someone who brought them up.
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ooooo quote mining, awesome!
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You asked for evidence, and I showed you examples of people feeling the way I described. How else should I provide that evidence except by quoting people?
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unkleE: No problem, these are complex issues and I find exploring them enjoyable.
You say “fallacious” is not “the relevant word” because you “have not yet presented a logical argument.” OK, are you saying that what you’ve been presenting so far is “illogical” and shouldn’t be taken seriously until you label your statements as “logical”? What are your statements meant to be so far, poetry?
Statements don’t have to be put in syllogistic form to be “logical” nor for someone to spot fallacies in them. You say you’re pointing out “problems” and asking for “explanations.” I’ve done that with your “problems” and I even named the fallacies they incur. Choosing to ignore them sounds like a bit of a cop out to me. If your “problems” are fallacious then they disappear and are of no consequence. If you don’t think I correctly identified the fallacies in your “problems,” you could explain where I’m wrong. You could start with just one of them.
Your “quotes from experts,” if they’re unsupported, are “Quote Mining” and “Arguments from Authority,” and you can keep doing that all day long and they’ll continue to be fallacies and be of no consequence. I can quote experts that refute your experts all day long too, but why bother?
So far you’ve presented:
(1) A conflation of Determinism with Compatibilism and it’s not clear which one you’re trying to find “problems” with as you go back and forth between the two.
(2) An equivocation between the ontology and the epistemology of LFW, where you switch back and forth between “there cannot exist physical states which can give rise to reasoning” and “I’m incredulous that Natural Selection can produce such physical processes.” Whether they exist vs. how they can arise by natural means are separate questions.
(3) A confusion between what seems real to us and what actually is real.
(4) A question-begging assumption that “free choice,” in a libertarian sense, is real. This is precisely what’s being debated.
How would our brains have evolved differently on Compatibilism? That we all “think somethings similarly and other things not” is precisely what we observe; if it doesn’t “disprove” Compatibilism, exactly how is that a “practical problem” for Compatibilism? How do you “still think it does”?
I could go on picking at unsubstantiated and confused statements, but it seems, to no avail. It seems that Ark was prescient after all. 🙂
All I can ask is for you to please present your logical case for… whatever it is that you’re trying to propose.
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limey: You’re absolutely right. Even if all these authors believed what unkleE wants them to believe, that would not make their belief true. In fact, it is not true that:
Not only are these quotes not substantiated (which makes them fallacious Arguments from Authority), but they’re wildly misinterpreted and recruited for a purpose the poor authors clearly did not even intend, so this is classic and shameless Quote Mining.
unkleE is confusing illusion with reality and cognitive dissonance with actual contradictions in reality. Cognitive dissonance refers to a psychological discomfort from holding beliefs about apparently self-contradicting realities. None of these authors are experiencing cognitive dissonance because they’re very clear in separating illusion from reality.
For example, we may find it useful to hold on to the illusion that the Earth is stationary so we can go about our lives building houses and riding bicycles, but in reality we know that the Earth is actually spinning and rotating around the Sun at great speeds. These are not self-contradicting because one is recognized as the perceptive illusion that it is, and the other is recognized as physical reality. If we didn’t recognize that one of them is an illusion and thought it was actually real, this would lead to us believing that there is an actual contradiction and hence cognitive dissonance. But we know one is an illusion and the other is real, so there are not two different realities, but one, so there’s no cognitive dissonance.
Likewise, even if LFW does not exist, we may “feel” like it does, and may find that “feeling” useful, while at the same time realizing that it may well not exist. There is no cognitive dissonance here; it disappears once you realize that in fact, “perception is NOT reality” and once you’re able to separate the two, and identify illusions for what they are, and separate them from reality, something that unkleE apparently finds difficult.
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Nate: If I may be so bold as to interject into unkleE’s comment to you, I’d like to clarify some (of the many) points that appear incorrect or confused to me.
Naturalism leads to Determinism, this is true, yes. Determinism says nothing about our “intuitions” or our “illusion of free will,” etc. Determinism is completely neutral about our “intuitions,” and it is (or is meant to be) a statement of fact about reality, not about how we might experience it through our “feelings.” Compatibilism is Determinism PLUS an attempt to explain our “sense, intuition, feeling, illusion” (whatever you call it) of libertarian free will.
It is not true to say that “believing in Determinism leads to cognitive dissonance” anymore than believing that the Earth spins on its axis leads to “cognitive dissonance.” This is because we recognize our sense of the Earth seeming stationary as a perceptual illusion while at the same time recognizing the reality that the Earth is, in fact, moving, despite our “feeling” to the contrary. As long as we recognize illusions for what they are and as long as we keep them separate from reality, no cognitive illusion results.
Compatibilism is not “a way out” of (a non-existing) cognitive dissonance, it is an attempt to explain our “sensation” of (libertarian) free will while not falling into the trap of confusing an illusion with reality.
unkleE accuses naturalists of using Compatibilism to “feel more comfortable while removing their cognitive dissonance.” This is really rich, coming from a theist. No such comfort is sought, quite the contrary. If comfort were the goal, naturalists wouldn’t be naturalists, and would embrace all kinds of vapid, comfortable delusions and become, well, supernaturalists, and possibly believers in the “God of the philosophers” (certainly not in the nasty villain of the Bible, as that would not be comforting either). What is sought is an honest effort at explaining the facts about the world, including our own cognitive illusions, comfortable or not.
unkleE claims that Determinism is a “stark claim.” Why? Because of some “feeling” that we may have about consciousness and having “libertarian free choice.” Again, this is rich. Determinism relies only on the natural world, something that even unkleE agrees exists. On the contrary, LFW tacks onto Naturalism, in addition, uncaused, non-physical, unexplained, non-explainable, unfalsifiable “spooky” forces that are somehow pulling the strings and somehow interacting with the physical world via our brains through an as-yet-unidentified “spooky” process. No attempt is made to give any explanation as to how this “interaction” with the existing physical world can come about, nor even any authentic explanation about how it explains our “feelings,” other than “Goddidit and that’s the way it is.”
Now, you tell me: Which one is the “starker” of the two claims?
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Responding to AutonomousReason:
Do we take that snapshot at 10000 pixels per cubic inch, or at 1 million pixels per cubic inch?
We talk about computer states. But when we do that, we follow well established convention as to what should count as a state. We do not have corresponding conventions such as would allow us to talk of brain states.
Similarly for mental states. Beliefs are said to be mental states. Philosophers seem to think that my head is chock full of beliefs. But I think there are very few beliefs there. I strongly disagree with the idea that “knowledge is justified true belief”.
When it comes to talk of brain states, and talk of mental states, we literally do not know what we are talking about. There’s a lot of “feel good” talk, but it doesn’t actually say anything.
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Neil: First, let’s get the agreements out of the way: I basically agreed with you that “mental states” are not actually “real” in the physical sense, and I said from the outset that it is practically impossible (with current technology) to measure brain states, even if they exist. But that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. We can’t measure the quantum states of every molecule in a glass of water, but that doesn’t mean the ensemble of quantum states does not exist, it only means we can’t, at present, measure them all. It also doesn’t mean that we can’t make inferences based on our knowledge that these molecular quantum states exist, and throw our hands up in the air and say “we can’t possibly know what we’re talking about.” Science wouldn’t have gotten very far with that attitude.
Also, spatial resolution (3-D pixels per cubic inch, etc.) would not be the appropriate unit to use. Instead, you’d probably want to use synaptic connections, their strengths, and neuronal states (which wouldn’t have to necessarily be represented spatially but relationally). Time resolution would also enter into the measurement, as signals travel in nerves at rates comparable to the speed of sound (much lower than in digital computers) although much of what’s going on is asynchronous, so this could be difficult also.
I have said nothing about the definition of knowledge as “justified true beliefs;” epistemology is tricky and is a whole other subject.
I disagree with your last paragraph, but again, we can agree to disagree. It doesn’t much matter to whether LFW is real or not. I believe science has demonstrated, as much as science can demonstrate anything, that LFW does not exist, “brain states” or not.
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They (brain states) don’t exist until we define them. And we do not have any good idea on how to define them.
Even if you could take a brain, and come up with a good systematic way of defining brain states for that brain, it likely would not work for the next brain. Brains of different people are different. Even brains of identical twins are different.
We can, and do, define quantum states. So this analogy does not help at all.
Agreed. But my point stands — there is no appropriate unit to use.
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Neil: Definitions aren’t required for things to exist. A thousand years ago we hadn’t defined asteroids, yet they existed. But anyway, many people have defined “brain states.”
Yes, brains of different people are different, and can be in different “states.” 🙂
I didn’t say “define,” I said “measure.” Actually, we cannot measure the several dozen or so quantum states that describe a water molecule for all 10^23 or so that would be in a glass of water. We could in principle, but not in practice with present technology.
“There is no appropriate unit to use.” Actually, that doesn’t follow. Yes, the units you chose are inappropriate, but that doesn’t mean no appropriate units could ever be found. Is this what you’re saying?
P1: If Neil chooses incorrect units for a measurement, then no units could ever be found or exist.
P2: Neil chose incorrect units for a measurement.
C: Therefore no units can ever possibly be found or exist. 🙂
Units are arbitrary anyway, Neil. And definitions are not arguments, so there’s little sense in arguing against them.
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Eric,
I want to try and understand your case before addressing it. Are you, as I predicted in my very first comment, essentially raising a form of the EAAN by saying that we can’t see how natural selection would yield physical systems (brains) that are truth-directed logical processing faculties? In doing so, are you presupposing a transcendent “true laws of logic” that exist independent of brain processes?
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Hi Travis, are you back?
“Are you, as I predicted in my very first comment, essentially raising a form of the EAAN by saying that we can’t see how natural selection would yield physical systems (brains) that are truth-directed logical processing faculties?”
As I have been saying to AR, I am not yet making any argument, simply discussing the implications of determinism and compatibilism and asking for explanations of what seem to me to be obvious dilemmas for compatibilism posed by the scientific evidence. There are some similarities to the EEAN, but I haven’t got anywhere near that far yet.
“In doing so, are you presupposing a transcendent “true laws of logic” that exist independent of brain processes?”
No, I haven’t presupposed anything. I am asking questions and suggesting problems. I guess I am building on a comment in a book on neuroscience I read some years ago (Alwyn Scott, Stairway to the mind): “Although dualism cannot be disproved, the role of science is to proceed on the assumption that it is wrong and see how much progress can be made.” I am asking whether that assumption is working out.
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Hi AR,
”Not only are these quotes not substantiated (which makes them fallacious Arguments from Authority), but they’re wildly misinterpreted and recruited for a purpose the poor authors clearly did not even intend, so this is classic and shameless Quote Mining.”
I’m going to start here because this is a clear accusation which I believe is quite wrong and offered without substantiation. You could have asked me for references rather than argue from a lack of references to an accusation (after all, this is a blog, not an academic paper, and my comments are already long enough).
But you have chosen to make the accusation, so I want to challenge you to either substantiate it for at least half of the people I quoted, by giving the reference that I have used and you have presumably read (I hope so!), and your justification for accusing me of wildly misinterpreting them. Or else, I ask you to withdraw the accusation.
I will say again, I have references for all of them, I have read the references for most of them and I am confident I have not misrepresented them in using their words to establish that they find dissonance between what their science or philosophy tells them and their experience as human beings of apparent freewill.
I will further ask you the same question I asked Limey. I claimed that believing in determinism leads to cognitive dissonance, Limey challenged me to justify that statement, so I defined cognitive dissonance and then gave a number of examples of academics saying that they recognised or felt this dissonance between what their science or philosophy told them and what we are all “compelled” to believe to live as humans. So I was offering evidence for my original statement. That isn’t “fallacious”, it is what is required to justify a statement. If referencing wasn’t allowed to justify statements, then most science and history would grind to a halt.
So before we go on, can you please justify or withdraw your accusation, and explain how you think the use of acadcemic references as evidence is fallacious? Thanks.
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unkleE: Let me start by saying that, although I’m direct and blunt, I don’t intend anything to be directed personally, only at arguments (or statements), which I think are fair game. You strike me as a very nice fellow who is eloquent and intelligent; I simply, if vehemently, disagree with your statements (so far). I believe that I’ve shown respect for you as a person, even while disagreeing with almost everything you’ve said.
In fact, I’ve taken great interest in everything you’ve been saying, read it carefully, and, to my mind at least, found a number of flaws with your “problems and objections” against Naturalism, Determinism, and/or Compatibilism, which I think render your “problems” moot. You have not taken the time to address these “flaws” in kind, but have chosen to ignore them, yet continue to repeat that there are real “problems.” As such, my challenges stand, and I’ll continue to repeat that those “problems” are nonexistent, until you address and disarm the fatal “flaws” that I’ve identified in them. You say that you have yet to state actual arguments and have built anticipation that they’re coming. That’s not the way I see it–and I’m not even sure what your statements could be, if not arguments–but fair enough, I look forward to your “actual” arguments.
“this is a clear accusation which I believe is quite wrong and offered without substantiation. You could have asked me for references rather than argue from a lack of references to an accusation (after all, this is a blog, not an academic paper, and my comments are already long enough).
It is an accusation against your faulty method of offering arguments and evidence, yes. The burden is not on me to ask you for references–you’re the one quoting. But this is not relevant, because I never questioned the source of your quotes, and I still trust that you got them from proper sources.
Here’s the rub: When you select a quotation that you claim supports your conclusion without offering any other support for this claim (either how the author arrived at this quote which, allegedly, agrees with your conclusion, or how you would arrive at it), far from supporting your claim, it is an Argument from Authority. Surely we can agree that this is a fallacy? I’m convinced that it is a fallacy and, unless proven wrong, will point it out every time I see it; we can let the readers decide for themselves if it is or not. BTW, this is a charming habit of religious apologists that doesn’t fly with anyone else, and doesn’t help their case one bit.
Here’s another rub: When I read those quotes carefully, I don’t see in them the “cognitive dissonance” that you ascribe to them, in fact, quite the contrary. This is the point that I made before, and it’s important: A recognition of an illusion does not lead to cognitive dissonance, and does not lead to “embracing delusion,” quite the opposite. It is the lack of recognition of an illusion that can lead to delusions. I stand by my claim (accusation, if you will) that you have not shown that these authors have cognitive dissonance, nor that they are somehow “embracing a comforting delusion.” The burden is on you to demonstrate your own accusation of them, not just selectively quote them while running with your own unsubstantiated interpretation. This demonstration you have not done by selectively quoting them.
I am aware that this is a blog, not an academic conference. But surely, good arguments can still apply here? Nate can correct me if I’m wrong, but is the point of this blog to spout unsupported assertions and fallacies all day long and expect not to be challenged?
“I am confident I have not misrepresented them in using their words to establish that they find dissonance between what their science or philosophy tells them and their experience as human beings of apparent freewill.
I am not so confident. A straight-forward reading of the quotes themselves does not support your assertion. The burden is on you to demonstrate your accusation of those authors (that they are in a state of “cognitive dissonance” and that they’re “embracing delusions because it is comforting;” these were the conclusions you “drew” from these quotes, even if now you’re softening your conclusions a bit). But this would take us way off course from the topic here (is LFW real, are there “problems” with Determinism, Compatibilism, Naturalism?) into what some authors think, which would, again, demonstrate at best what some authors may think and would still be an Argument from Authority which doesn’t address the topic.
“So before we go on, can you please justify or withdraw your accusation, and explain how you think the use of acadcemic references as evidence is fallacious? Thanks.”
This is a Straw Man, unkleE. I never stated that proper use of academic references is fallacious. I’m saying that your use of references is improper–and yes, fallacious–for the reasons stated above. Quote Mining does not make, nor substitute for, proper use of academic references. That claim (accusation, if you want to call it that) still stands.
I’ll comment on your second-to-last paragraph on another post.
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unkleE:
And I will continue to claim that believing in Determinism does not necessarily have to lead to “cognitive dissonance” anymore than believing that the Earth is actually moving has to lead to “cognitive dissonance.” Recognizing that the apparent contradiction (that we “feel” like we have LFW, that we “feel” that the Earth is stationary) is an illusion (and therefore not actually true and is not an actual contradiction) removes the cognitive dissonance, because we realize that we do not hold contradictory beliefs! I read those authors’ quotes as stating upfront that, while they recognize their own feeling of LFW, they have clearly identified it as an illusion and I don’t see that they are necessarily experiencing the psychological state of “cognitive dissonance,” nor of “embracing comforting delusions,” like you claim.
Science runs like a well-oiled machine (it is, arguably, the single most successful pathway that humanity has ever found to apprehend truths about reality), but not because of arguing from examples, or from Arguments from Authority or, even worse, from Quote Mining, but from presenting fallacy-free arguments and evidence. Without substantiation, a quote is not a conclusion.
I think I’ve identified a new fallacy:
“Argument from Cognitive Dissonance (a Fallacy): When a person believes a statement that results in the person’s own state of cognitive dissonance, then that statement must necessarily be false.”
This is a fallacy because (1) cognitive dissonance refers to beliefs, not to logical truths, and (2) a person’s belief has nothing to do with the truth value of the content of that belief. Therefore, a person’s psychological state of “cognitive dissonance” may have no bearing on logical truths outside that person’s set of beliefs.
A person can believe things that are true. A person can believe things that are false. (In Doxastic Logic this is called an “Inaccurate Reasoner,” which we all would do well to recognize that we are, lest we might become “Conceited Reasoners.”) A person may simultaneously believe some statements that are true and other statements that are false. In fact, a person might even simultaneously believe two statements that contradict one another, one of which is actually true and the other false. (In Doxastic Logic, again, this would be called an “Inconsistent Reasoner.”) If a person actually realizes this, i.e., if a person is aware that his beliefs are self-contradicting, that would lead him to experience “cognitive dissonance.” Does that imply that, if one of the statements happens to be logically true, then it must not be logically true? No, of course not. It means that the person holds one “false belief” about the statement that happens to not be true, and one “true belief” about the statement that happens to be true.
The content of that particular “true belief” will remain true regardless of his “cognitive dissonance.” To remove his “cognitive dissonance” he would have to discard belief in one of the two statements (hopefully the false one), not necessarily both. But whether “cognitive dissonance” is removed or not, the actual truth value of the content of the “true belief” will remain unchanged.
So, there. Even if you could substantiate that all of those authors are experiencing “cognitive dissonance,” you have done nothing to prove or disprove the truth value of the statements that allegedly cause them “cognitive dissonance.” Does believing in Determinism lead to “cognitive dissonance” in some people’s set of beliefs? Possibly, yes, if they’re not very reflective (as you seemingly accuse those authors to be). Does that mean that therefore Determinism must be objectively false? No.
Now, can we get back to the topic of whether or not LFW, Determinism, Compatibilism, Naturalism are true?
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Hi Eric,
Won’t be back home until tomorrow night but I currently have Wi-Fi and a phone.
I’m not sure where to go from your last comment. Can you try clearly stating one problem or question regarding the need for LFW to support rationality and then we could focus the discussion on that singular topic?
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Hi AR,
I appreciate that you have tried to explain yourself and respond in a friendly way. I will try to do the same, but it seems before we can get back to the topic, we need to do some explaining and bridge-building. Here’s my thinking, split into three comments to keep them shorter ….
1. It isn’t my business to tell you how to participate in discussions on a blog, but I think you tend to forget that this is a blog and not an academic journal. I find it difficult that you address many minor matters in great (and sometimes, it seems to me, irrelevant) detail, and even more difficult that twice at least you were addressing arguments I wasn’t making, and I had to correct you. That means that there is an enormous amount of words coming at me that isn’t addressing what I think are the main issues, and my eyes (metaphorically) tend to glaze over. And so, if there is something that is important, I may well miss it, and then you think I am avoiding you. If you want me to answer a critique, can you please keep it all shorter and to the point, and we can enlarge on matters if we need to.
(cont)
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2. You are so enthusiastic to denounce logical fallacies, as I find so many enthusiastic atheists/agnostics are, that the charge is made at all sorts of inappropriate places. “Argument from Authority” is a common example, and you and Limey have made that charge. Specifically, on several occasions when I have quoted an apparent expert to support what I am saying, you have dismissed what I said as a fallacy.
Now it ought to be obvious, as I have already said, that this claim of a fallacy is often wrong-headed. In science, no-one can prove everything they say from first principles, it would take a whole library. So scientific papers reference and quote experts who the authors think have established certain points, to save time and build a basis for what they want to say. It happens in historical papers too, and I imagine in law as well.
There is nothing fallacious about this.
In fact, it is necessary and good practice.
Further, even in formal logical argument, each proposition has to be justified, and often that justification comes from expert opinion. For example, if I make an argument for God from the apparent design in the universe, I would include a proposition something like “The ‘fine-tuning’ of the design is almost impossible to have occurred by chance”. The only way to justify that statement is to quote the expert conclusion of a cosmologists and/or statistician, and it would be totally inappropriate to shout “fallacy” at that. The only proper response, if you disagreed, would be to show that my expert wasn’t expert, or find another expert who said the opposite. That is why I generally search out a number of experts so I can be surer that I have a true conclusion.
In my brief discussion with Limey, I made claims that people feel dissonance. How on earth am I going to back that up if I don’t quote people saying or showing the feel dissonance? The claim to fallacy is especially irrelevant, and even counter-relevant, here.
Now I am going to appeal to authority to further make this point. I have looked up the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy on this matter as I regard it as a good, well-respected and expert guide to philosophy. So you know, these are the pages:
Fallacies
Logical Fallacies
Informal Logic
Also Wikipedia on Argument from Authority
These references make it clear that the original definition of the fallacy of appeal to authority was not as you are using it, without qualification, but of an argument from someone without expertise who was given authority they didn’t deserve. They also make it clear that the appropriate way to deal with an argument from authority is not to simply shout “argument from authority = fallacy!” but to show that the person isn’t expert, or isn’t speaking with good knowledge, or is contradicted by other experts.
So please, let’s not have all these bald claims of “fallacy”, but let’s discus why you think I am wrong.
(cont)
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Sorry Nate, I omitted the closing bold tag after “accusation”. Can you correct please to make it easier for everyone to read. Thanks.
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Responding to AutonomousReason:
Well, yes they are.
Definitions are not required for the existence part of that. They are required for the thingness part.
That illustrates my point. A thousand years ago, asteroids were not things to the people at that time. Because we have defined them, they are things to us.
My objection to talk of brain states, is that brain states are not things.
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