Posts
Comments
Sorry for the delay in replying. No, I don't have any objection to the reading of the counterfactual. However I fail to connect it to the question I posed.
In a determined universe, the future is completely determined whether any conscious entity in it can predict it or not. No actions, considerations, beliefs of any entity have any more significance on the future than those of another simply because they cannot alter it.
Determinism, like solipsism, is a logically consistent system of belief. It cannot be proven wrong anymore than solpsism can be, since the only "evidence" disproving it, if any, lies with the entity believing it, not outside.
Do you feel that you are a purposeless entity whose actions and beliefs have no significance whatsoever on the future? If so, your feelings are very much consistent with your belief in determinism. If not, it may be time to take into consideration the evidence in the form of your feelings.
Thank you all for your time!
You brought up the counterfactualism example right here, so I assumed it was in response to that post.
Actually you brought in the counterfactual argument to attempt to explain the significance (or "purpose") of an approach called consequentialism (as opposed to others) in a determined universe.
A deterministic universe can contain a correct implementation of a calculator that returns 2+2=4 or an incorrect one that returns 2+2=5.
Sure it can. But it is possible to declare one of them as valid only because you are outside of both and you have a notion of what the result should be.
But to avoid the confusion over the use of words I will restate what I said earlier slightly differently.
In a deterministic universe, neither of a pair of opposites like valid/invalid, right/wrong, true/false etc has more significance than the other. Everything just is. Every belief and action is just as significant as any other because that is exactly how each of them has been determined to be.
If delusions presented only survival dsiadvantages and no advantages, you are right. However, that need not be the case.
The delusion about an afterlife can co-exist with correct cognition in matters affecting immediate survival and when it does, it can enhance survival chances. So evolution doesn't automatically lead to/enhance correct cognition. I am not saying correctness plays no role, but isn't the sole deciding factor, at least not in the case of evolutionary selection.
Just to clarify, in a deterministic universe, there are no "invalid" or "wrong" things. Everything just is. Every belief and action is just as valid as any other because that is exactly how each of them has been determined to be.
Large useless brain consumes a lot of energy, which means more dangerous hunting and faster consumption of supplies when food is insufficient. The relation to survival is straightforward.
Peacock tails reduce their survival chances. Even so peacocks are around. As long as the organism survives until it is capable of procreation, any survival disadvantages don't pose an evolutionary disadvantage.
Sounds like a group selection to me. And not much in accordance with observation.
I am more inclined towards the gene selection theory, not group selection. About the only species whose delusions we can observe are ourselves. So it is difficult to come out wth any significant objective observational data.
Although I don't believe the Jews believe in their chosenness on genetical grounds, even if they did, they aren't much sucessful after all.
I didn't mean Jews, I meant human species. If delusions are not genetically determined, what would be their source, from a deterministic point of view?
The elaborate hypothetical is the equivalent of saying what if the programming of Alice had been altered in the minor way, that nobody notices, to order eggplant parmesan instead of fettucini alfredo which her earlier programming would have made her to order? Since there is no agent external to the world that can do it, there is no possibility of that happening. Or it could mean that any minor changes from the predetermined program are possible in a deterministic universe as long as nobody notices them, which would imply an incompletely determined universe.
Forming and holding any belief is costly. The time and energy you spend forming delusions can be used elsewhere.
Perhaps. But do not see why that should present an evolutionary disadvantage if they do not impact survival and procreation. On the contrary it could present an evolutionary adavantage. A species that deluded itself inot believing that its has been the chosen species, might actually work energetically towards establshing its hegemony and gain an evolutionary advantage.
An example would be helpful. I don't know what evidence you are speaking about.
The evidence was stated in the very next line, the Darwinian evolution, something that is not required to describe the evolution of non-biological systems.
What is the difference between respecting physical laws and not violating them?
Of course, none. The distinction I wanted to make was one between respecting/not-violating and being completely determined by.
Physical laws (and I am speaking mainly about the microscopical ones) determine the time evolution uniquely. Once you know the initial state in all detail, the future is logically fixed, there is no freedom for additional laws. That of course doesn't mean that the predictions of future are practically feasible or even easy.
Nothing to differ there as a definition of determinism. It was exactly the point I was making too. If biological systems are, like us, are completely determined by physical laws, the apparent choice of making a decision by considering consequences is itself an illusion.
Consequentialism doesn't require either. The choices needn't be principially unpredictable to be meaningful.
In which case every choice every entity makes, regardless of how it arrives at it, is meaningful. In other words there are no meaningless choices in the real world.
I program computers successfully too :-)
Sure. So consequentialism is the name for the process that happens in every programmed entity, making it useless to distinguish between two different approaches.
if, counterfactually, you did something else, ...
How could it happen? Each component of the system is programmed to react in a predetermined way to the inputs it receives from the rest of the system. The the inputs are predetermined as is the processing algorithm. How can you or I do anything that we have not been preprogrammed to do?
Consdier an isolated system with no biological agents involved. It may contain preprogrammed computers. Would you or would you not expect the future evolution of the system to be completely determined. If you would expect its future to be completely determined, why would things change when the system, such as ours, contains biological agents? If you do not expect the future of the system to be completely determined, why not?
Are you claiming that the human species will last a million years or more and not become extinct before then? What are the grounds for such a claim?
Or we could pick a partciular species of dinaosaur that survived for a few million years and compare to humans.
Do you expect any changes to the analysis if we did that?
I said that of two almost identical species with same quantity of cognition (measured by brain size or better its energy consumption or number of distinct beliefs held) which differ only in quality of cognition (i.e. correspondence of beliefs and reality), the one which is easy deluded is in a clear disadvantage.
Unless the delusions are related to survival and procreation, don't see how they would present any evolutionary disadvantage.
Well, what I know about nature indicates that any physical system evolves in time respecting rigid deterministic physical laws. There is no strong evidence that living creatures form an exception.
Actually there is plenty of evidence to show that living creatures require additional laws to be predicted. Darwinian evolution itself is not required to describe the physical world. However what you probably meant was that there is no evidence that living creatures violate any physical laws, meaning laws governing the living are potentially reducible to physical laws. Someone else looking at the exact same evidence, can come to an entirely different conclusion, that we are actually on the verge of demonstrating what we always felt, that the living are more than physics. Both the positions are based on something that has not yet been demonstrated, the only "evidence" for either lying with the individual, a case of generalisation from one example.
Back to your argument, you seem to implicitly hold about cognition that p(correct|deterministic)<p(correct|indeterministic),...
Not at all. I was only questioning the logical consistency of an approach called 'determinist consequentialism'. Determinism implies a future that is predetermined and potentially predictable. Consequentialism would require a future that is not predetermined and dependent on choices that we make now either because of a 'free will' or 'randomness'.
I didn't read them in one day and not all of them either.
I 'stubled upon' this article on the night of June 1 (GMT + 5.30) and did a bit of research on the site looking to check if my question had been previously raised and answered. In the process I did end up reading a few articles and sequences.
If the cognition was totally incorrect, leading to beliefs unrelated to the outside world, it would be only a waste of energy to maintain such cognitive capacity. Correct beliefs about certain things (like locations of food and predators) are without doubt great evolutionary advantage.
Not sure what kind of cognitive capacity the dinosaurs held, but that they roamed around for millions of years and then became extinct seems to indicate that evolution itself doesn't care much about cognitive capacity beyond a point (that you already mentioned)
Can you explain the meaning? What are the former and what are the latter beings?
You are already familiar with the latter, those whose consciousness is biologically determined. How do you expect to recognise the former, those whose consciousness is not biologically determined?
My program didn't know in advance what options it would be presented with, but it was programmed to select the option that makes the most sense, e.g. the determinist worldview rather than the mystical one.
You couldn't possibly know that! Someone programmed to pick the mystical worldview would feel exactly the same and would have been programmed not to recognise his/her own programming too :-)
Like a program that receives an array as input and finds the maximum element in it, the output is "predetermined", but it's still useful.
Of course the output is useful, for the programmer, if any :-)
Likewise, the worldview I chose was "predetermined", but that doesn't mean my choice is somehow "wrong" or "invalid", as long as my inner program actually implements valid common sense.
It doesn't appear that regardless of what someone has been programmed to pick, the 'feelings' don't seem to be any different.
Of course! Since all the choices of all the actors are predetermined, so is the future. So what exactly would be the "purpose" of acting as if the future were not already determined and we can choose an optimising function based the possible consequences of different actions?
Do your choices have causes? Do those causes have causes?
Determinism doesn't have to mean epiphenomenalism. Metaphysically, epiphenomenalism - the belief that consciousness has no causal power - is a lot like belief in true free will - consciousness as an uncaused cause - in that it places consciousness half outside the chain of cause and effect, rather than wholly within it. (But subjectively they can be very different.)
I don't equate determinism with epiphenomenalism, but that even when it acts as a cause, it is completely determined meaning the apparent choice is simply the inability, at current level of knowledge, of being able to predict exactly what choice will be made.
Simple Darwinian survival ensures that any conscious species that has been around for hundreds of thousands of years must have at least some capacity for correct cognition, however that is achieved.
Not sure how that follows. Evolutionary survival can say nothing about emergence of sentient species, let alone some capacity for correct cognition in that species. If the popular beliefs and models of the universe until a few centuries ago are incorrect, that seems to point in the exact opposite direction of your claim.
It appears that the problem seems to be one of 'generalisation from one example'. There exist beings with a consciousness that is not biologically determined and there exist those whose consciousness is completely biologically detemined. The former may choose determinism as a 'belief in belief' while the latter will see it as a fact, much like a self-aware AI.
In other words, the 'choices' you make are not really choices, but already predetermined, You didn't really choose to be a determinist, you were programmed to select it, once you encountered it.
Thanks! I read the links and sequences.
I used the word choice, but 'free will' do as well.
Was your response to my question biologically determined or was it a matter of conscious choice?
Whether there is going to be another response to this comment of mine or not, would it have been completely determined biologically or would it be a matter of conscious choice by some?
If all human actions are determined biologically the 'choice' is only an apparent one, like a tossed up coin having a 'choice' of turning up heads or tails. Whether someone is a determinist or not should itself have been determined biologically including all discussions of this nature!
It was an interesting read. I am a little confused about one aspect, though, that is determinist consequentialism.
From what I read, it appears a determinist consequentialist believes it is 'biology all the way down' meaning all actions are completely determined biologically. So where does choice enter the equation, including the optimising function for the choice, the consequences?
Or are there some things that are not biologically determined, like whether to approve someone else's actions or not, while actions physically impacting others are themsleves completely determined biologically? It doesn't appear to be the case, since the article states that even something like taste for music, not an action physically impacting the others, is completely determined biologically.