Are you arguing for an infinite regress of causes?
Can’t speak for John, but I would[1]. If you have a point to raise against it that does not boil down to “me no likey” in one way or another, I’ll be both surprised but also delighted for the opportunity to finally learn something new regarding the subject. So, by all means, let’s hear it.
Except that I am uncomfortable with causation on some fundamental level as a scientifically viable concept altogether. But the objections raised are usually about the possibility of an infinite chain, not about the meaningfulness of the idea of causal links between events in principle. ↩︎
That is, indeed, the “materialist” view.
This does not entail that free will or agency do not exist, or are illusions.
How is this not clear?
I will also remind you that the issue of free will is no less problematic for people who deny physicalism For instance, it is difficult to reconcile libertarian free will with the proposition that God knows everything you will do before you do it. Sure, there are theological attempts to resolve this problem. But, IMHO, these are neither more nor less successful than attempts to reconcile free will with physicalism.
It’s simple: When you use the term “I” then, under this view, you are referring to nothing more than a particular aspect of the movements of the group of atoms that make up your brain. OK, maybe that isn’t exactly simple, but it should be clear.
Brain death and clinical death are absolutely not the same thing. Failure to appreciate this underlies many of the poor arguments made for dualism by amateurs.
I would guess that applies to 99.9% of people who buy laptops. Are you the exception? If so, please explain how my laptop was made and how it works. I would love to know!
IOW, he is saying laptops are good analogies to brains.
For my part, when I assert that causation is true, I am saying nothing more than that, by using the concept, I am able to make accurate and reliable predications about what I will observe in the world. I can make no metaphysical claims beyond that.
2 Likes
Back to the big bang, certainly. I’m arguing that we live in a universe in which causality is the rule.
Yes, and with that I am (nuances pending) quite onboard. Perhaps my phrasing was strong in that comment. It’s not that I reject causation as a tool, especially in colloquial communication or when dealing with fairly high level abstractions. Rather I find it becomes very hard to pin down with any rigor once one dives into the weeds far enough. And often times the utility of causation as a concept becomes mirky too at such points, and trying to keep it around gets in the way as much as it might have helped earlier.
I wonder, if we were teeny tiny beings for whom most of our experiences operated according to the laws of quantum mechanics, would we have ever come up with the idea of causation?
Then I guess the question is what caused the Big Bang? Now, it seems that you are referring to what can be called horizontal causation occurring through time. But what about hierarchical causation where a given cause borrows its causal power from another one now, which itself borrows its causal power from another one now, etc…This scheme cannot go on indefinitely, because none of the causes operating now has any causal power by itself, for it borrows it from another one. So you have to imagine that a first and sustaining cause exists that brings to life any causal chain operating NOW. This is what Alex O’Connor explains in the video below.
Okay. You guess that’s the question, and I guess it’s not. Where do we go from here?
What about it? Sounds like nonsense to me. What on earth is “causal power”, and why need anything borrow it from anywhere else?
I don’t understand how your explanation entails the statement. Please, complete the argument:
Premise 1: No link in a causal chain has causal power of its own, if it has a hierarchical prior. To the extent to which it exercises causal power, it is borrowed rather from said prior.
- - - enter the rest of your argument here - - -
Conclusion: Therefore, a causal chain cannot have infinitely many links.
Also, please explain what Premise 1 means in practical terms, and justify why anyone ought think that it is true, while you’re at it.
4 Likes
That argument supports atheism:
Hi Gil
It’s interesting that at about 16 minutes in he invokes evolution by natural selection explaining life’s diversity as a basis of his argument against specific Theism.
Well, I should have clarified my view, while quoting someone else. I don’t think thinking is a process only happening in a material brain. Certainly we use our brains in thinking, just as we use our fingers in playing piano. But playing the piano is not only muscles moving fingers.
But you didn’t explain how you make the jump to agency. And to respond to your point, atoms can’t do just anything! They are not omnipotent. So I put thinking in the category of things atoms cannot do, for various reasons, one of them being that everyone (except the enlightened materialist) rejects thoughts and conclusions that are caused by unreasoning causes. They seem to require that real reasoning requires real independence, it is required that it is not a puppet show.
Ah, another instance where you reject my thinking, because you think you have found a nonrational cause: wanting to be important. You are illustrating here exactly what you say people don’t recognize, showing that even you recognize this.
Only we do know what else could be involved! We could, we’re reasoning beings, we embody this, we experience this, it’s part of the human experience, and people accept this, and it’s only by rejecting this possibility that you arrive at the place where the only option is materialism. Again, try saying “my brain cells made me do it” in a court of law, it won’t turn out well, you won’t be exempted because you make this claim.
So then, tell me what it means, don’t just claim my view is mistaken.
But you can’t tell me my view is mistaken, yet you don’t know what it means! How can you tell if my view is mistaken, if you can’t see what the statement means? When you tell someone their calculation is mistaken, it’s because you see the mistake, and know how to get the right answer.
My soul, I would say, “I am a soul. I have a body,” as I heard someone put it. As indicated by out-of-body experiences, where people can observe, for example, doctors working on reviving them, when they are unconscious, and then describe accurately what was going on.
But not every possible explanation is a reasonable one. Surely you don’t think a tornado assembling such a laptop is a reasonable proposal.
So describe it to me! I mentioned the materialist explanation, how is it not like a puppet show? And what is the contradiction? Your case is purely negative here.
So, pantheism? I think you just erased what people mean when they say “I” or “me”, they don’t mean just “this part of the universe.”
I agree, though I think I am the cause of my thoughts, and that’s the end cause, there is no infinite chain of causation. And isn’t your infinite chain basically physics? Certainly we don’t know all of physics, but that’s no reason to conclude that there is no end to it.
Well, that’s the claim in the study mentioned by Wikipedia! But I picked up my NDE book, “Beyond Death”, by Habermas and Moreland, and in their conclusion on the section on NDEs, they write, :”The additional suggestions of Greene and Blackmore concerning the ongoing operation of the NDEr’s brain still fail to relieve their dilemma–for at least two crucial reasons. First, no known biological function can explain the literally dozens of corroborated reports during clinical death, especially remote viewing. Hence, the best NDE reports remain naturalistically unjustified. As a result, evidenced consciousness at the point of death is not magically explained by referring to still-existing brain activity or subjective phenomena. That such confirmed incidents, unexplained by human biology, would occur to the very brink of biological death and then suddenly cease is quite problematic in itself.”
“Second, evidenced information during long absences of heartbeat and measurable brain waves, as well as specific information about dead individuals, all previously unknown, appear to entirely bypass this objection. In other words, in each of these categories, there would be very little to no influence from the NDEr’s brain, even if it was operating at the time.” (pp. 217-218)
But you can explain this, with some investigation. And therefore you can trust it. And sure, you can tell the difference between one that works, and one that doesn’t, but how can you trust a working laptop? That is the question.
But it’s the claim of the materialists here that direction towards survival produced our reasoning!
This is evidence that our thoughts are not all the results of operations in our brain, that is relevant evidence, arguing against the materialist claim.
I believe thinking is something that happens in the soul, and we use the brain in that process. And I can’t explain how I come up with my thoughts, exactly. Neither can you! People are still investigating the origin of consciousness, and they are still mystified.
Seriously? You think it probable, evidently, and where are your calculations, and numbers? But as far as improbability, you may be familiar with Fred Hoyle’s assessment: “A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super intellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature.”
But none of this extended reply actually addresses my point! How can you refer to “me”, if all I do and choose is theoretically completely computable? How does this not essentially erase my existence? There is nothing meaningful to speak of as “me”, I am merely an effect, an epiphenomenon of all the causes that produce my body and my behavior.
And yes, I believe therefore that real choices, and reasoning, must be causally divorced from nature, and I think this is actually the only meaningful way to speak of a “will.”
Suppose you get an anonymous check every month, out of the blue. Wouldn’t you want to know who sent it, and why, and whether they intend to keep doing this?
Yes, most believers aren’t extremists who openly and emphatically reject the entirety of a field of scientific study with massive demonstrable utility based solely on their own deliberate ignorance of all nuances regarding some of the most culturally significant and impactful texts ever put to paper. It is quite interesting that religiosity alone is not sufficient to render one a reality-denying lunatic with no respect for the achievements of others.
2 Likes
I would love an answer to this question. As someone who has had their ability to think interrupted by illness (covid-19), the idea that cognition is independent of the physical brain makes no sense to me.
Further to this, if consciousness is independent of the physical brain even to the point of physical death, why is unconsciousness a state that a person can be in? Especially in cases of physical trauma.
3 Likes
Okay. So what part of the process, specifically, is (a) demonstrably happening, and (b) demonstrably not happening in the brain?
I’ll endeavour to express explicitly what I do and do not think. I made no claims of the probability. You did. I am unwilling to defend claims I did not make, so I shan’t.
Sure. As I predicted, of course your only reply is a quote, although I am disappointed to see one that does not actually present an estimate of the probability you claimed wsa too low. Perhaps you can read the original source of the quote in place of the creationist material you grabbed it from and eventually find an actual number. In that case you can go on and present what calculation based on which observable data did your authority of choice arrived at their estimate with? Until then, your claim remains supported all with an exasperated “Seriously?” and nothing else.
If, in your opinion, being “an epiphenomenon of all the causes that produce [your] body and [your] behavior” is meaningless, that is truly sad, and as sympathetic I am to existential doubts of this sort, I am not trained to help with problems like it. I cannot provide you with a sense of personal meaning. To me, this is not meaningless, neither about myself nor about you. But no feelings either of us have about this changes the facts of the matter.
Yeah, this is something I don’t think we’ll see eye to eye on. For me, a choice must be one rooted in past experiences and the personality it formed, and the desires so developed, and in a consideration of the consequences. Something that is independent of all of that is not a meaningful choice to me, it is just a random glitch. It certainly is not an expression of any will, if the person and everything that makes them what they are is not involved in it.
Suppose you elect to not ignore the question that addresses the point you invoked an analogy for. Suppose you try not to bring in yet a new analogy in an attempt to deflect from the point, and instead make any attempt to actually address it. How much more progress could we be making in this discussion, if you engaged earnestly with it and with some focus…
2 Likes
Because no one but the enlightened materialists believe this? And I need you to explain how free will is free, if we are moving at the behest of purely natural forces.
I’ve always thought this absurd, I expect to work today, I know I will likely do this, but that doesn’t erase my freedom in this decision somehow. And does this work on a scale? The more likely I know a decision to be, the more I remove freedom from it? “He always orders apple pie for dessert, therefore he must do so, somehow.”
It is straightforward, if not ultimately simple, but the quote I gave from Chesterton earlier comes to mind: “As an explanation of the world, materialism has a sort of insane simplicity. It has just the quality of the madman’s argument; we have at once the sense of it covering everything and the sense of it leaving everything out. Contemplate some able and sincere materialist, as, for instance, Mr. McCabe, and you will have exactly this unique sensation. He understands everything, and everything does not seem worth understanding. His cosmos may be complete in every rivet and cog-wheel, but still his cosmos is smaller than our world. Somehow his scheme, like the lucid scheme of the madman, seems unconscious of the alien energies and the large indifference of the earth; it is not thinking of the real things of the earth, of fighting peoples or proud mothers, or first love or fear upon the sea. The earth is so very large, and the cosmos is so very small.”
That’s why I added “for my purposes”, certainly I don’t insist they are identical.
Along the lines of what I said to someone else, we have a good notion of the construction of laptops, from making things ourselves, and have reasons to believe we can get good answers to how it works, by investigation. If we thought there were no answers to these questions, we would be suspicious, for good reasons. It helps to view the diploma on the wall at the dentist! Though we also will check reviews.
People here claim that, but they cannot tell me how what I am saying is an analogy, instead of two applications of a principle.
But using the concept of causation does not somehow give you an ability to make predictions! You don’t get abilities by believing something. And just the fact that your predictions and your thoughts are caused, does not give you reason to trust them, either, you need to know if the causes have other directions and destinations than accuracy. I say they do, if your brain results from evolution.
Fallibility makes an enormous difference here. You do not know that you will work today, and it’s not about how likely it is to go this way or another. If God knows right now which way things will go, then that means that the future is already, right this moment, factual. That there can be knowledge of it. Not just a well-educated guess that happens to be confirmed a lot of the time, but actual knowledge of something that is really a fact, even before it comes to pass into the present.
If the future is factual in the present, then there is a definitive answer as to what will occur to it, and there is no actual freedom of choice between options. This simple version of omniscience amounts to a form of fatalism and precludes any libertarian notions of free will such as you favour. There are no logically coherent ways of avoiding this, and what theologians do instead is argue that much subtler and weaker forms of either omniscience or free will or both can still reasonably qualify for their respective label.
Yes, well, but your purposes are not the purposes of the sources you cite. When they speak of clinical death, they, as a matter of fact, do not mean an occurrence that involves the death of the brain. And you choosing to not give a damn that there is a distinction there does not in fact erase it, nor changes how people who care about whether the things they say are true use the terminology in question.
Correct. Using a concept, however, is not the same as believing something. So your point is moot. What Faizal is saying here is that the language of causation has a utility, that the concept, how ever foggy it may get if poked at too harshly, is not entirely meaningless. This has nothing to do with whether or not anybody “believes” it, what ever that even means.
My guy, your “reason to trust” our predictions and thoughts is that they are literally uncaused. You think a choice is meaningful if it is divorced from nature, you say we can trust our reasoning because to at least some extent it is produced by a ghost instead of a machine that operates with consistency in at least its comport with the laws of physics. What room have you to complain about the trustworthiness of clockworks, when literal unpredictable magical woo is what you think can be trusted all the more?
3 Likes
That’s certainly a question, though one irrelevant to the current thread.
No idea what you think that means. Borrowing? Not acquainted with that function. Brings to life? Whatever does that mean?
I don’t know what you mean by “the jump to agency”. I certainly don’t know how the brain produces thoughts, if that’s what you’re talking about. Then again, you have no idea how the soul produces thoughts. At least I know that brains exist.
Back to that again? Once more, your argument is that atoms don’t reason, therefore collections of atoms can’t reason, and atoms aren’t wet, therefore collections of atoms can’t be wet.
What does “real independence” mean. And stop with the puppet show nonsense already.
No, as always, you have it backwards. I reject your thinking because it’s nonsensical in itself, and I try to imagine a reason you would hold these nonsensical beliefs. Why do you so consistently get everything backwards?
Please stop with the logorrhea. If you have an argument to make, just make it. If you don’t, throwing meaningless collections of words won’t help.
It’s at the end of a chapter on genetics, and you can find the book here:
Nothing in the surrounding context is about free will or how consciousness works or any such thing. The closest you get is that our basic drives, emotions, and such are all evolved.
I can at least tell you that you don’t know what it means and have made no attempt to find out. But I did make such an attempt; it wasn’t hard.
Great. How does your soul arrive it its plan? How does a soul operate?
Note that in addition to not needing a brain, your soul also doesn’t need eyes. Do eyes even work without souls to do the real seeing? How many of our organs are superfluous, with the soul doing all the real work?
True. But in order to allow that it’s possible you have to accept that a laptop consists of matter. If it’s possible for natural selection (or a tornado, even) to assemble a thinking mind, that thinking mind must also be made of matter. The improbable part in that, if any, is the assembly, not the operation. You are consistely confuse about the difference, and it’s consistently getting in your way.
In every way. For one thing, there’s no puppeteer. And as has been explained to you so many, many times, in this puppet show metaphor you need to explain how the puppeteer works, and we end up with an infinite regression of homunculi.
The contradiction results from your confusion between the assembly and the operation of a mind.
No. Where did that come from?
I think we’ve established that you have no idea what people mean or what the “I” actually is or how it works.
So you’re the uncaused cause? How can you make a reasonable decision if that decision comes out of nowhere?
Again, it’s hard to determine what you’re trying to say.
At this point, I’m doubting whether you have correctly understood the claim, because you seem not to understand the difference between brain death and clinical death.
As usual, when you say a word like “therefore” or “so” or “thus”, it seems not to mean what it means to other people. There was an example.
Because that’s the definition of “working”.
Not survival: reproduction. And of course inheritance is built into the concept. The question is nonsensical because laptops don’t do any of that, though organisms do.
So basically you have forgotten, if you ever know, what you were responding to.
4 Likes
We choose according to our natures. Is that not consistent with reformed theology?
2 Likes