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The illusion of volition(AKA free will)

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Tsiklon

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It wouldn't matter to anyone if it was proven to be unchosen. They would just be sent to a differenent kind or prison. Just because a condition is unchosen, that does not mean that the unchosen attribute needs to be tolerated. I don't tolerate certain animals despite their lack of choice in their ways.

I could easily see pedophilia as a neurological problem of sorts,

Then they deserve political rights from the government and chemical treatment from the medical establishment, because this is the amoral model which has been adopted by our society..

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It's already too late. This society has firmly adopted the genetic/chemical driven model of "unchosen" behavior, so it is only a matter of time before physical brain characteristics are identified and rights are established.

Science already accepts that there are unchosen desires - that doesn't mean acting on them should be tolerated. Desires and whims shouldn't guide choices.

You have just answered this question with a "yes".

You're equating homosexuality and pedophilia again - they are not the same. Not even remotely close to being the same. Acting on one violates rights, the other doesn't.

Edited by thenelli01
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Then they deserve political rights from the government and chemical treatment from the medical establishment, because this is the amoral model which has been adopted by our society..

Well if it is possible the criminally insane could be made to work towards paying for their own treatments. In its own weird way this could end up being part of their treatment.

I do think that prisoners who have commited violent crimes should attempt to pay for their own livelyhood.

No one is arguing your straw man though.

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No, they're not. You admitted so yourself, when you used the word "deserve". Amoral people don't use the word "deserve".

The use of the word "deserve" in that context was a facetious one, for the government grants political rights irrespective of morality. And this is their template:

1. Declare a choiceless congenital condition.

2.Grant it political rights.

3.Treat it with chemicals.

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The use of the word "deserve" in that context was a facetious one, for the government grants political rights irrespective of morality. And this is their template:

1. Declare a choiceless congenital condition.

2.Grant it political rights.

3.Treat it with chemicals.

What are you basing this off of? I doubt anyone in the government does this.

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1. Declare a choiceless congenital condition.

2.Grant it political rights.

3. Treat it with chemicals.

Whoa, I didn't know Brave New World came true yet. Where'd you find soma, and where can I get some?

This is barely on topic, and I have no idea what chemicals has to do with volition here, unless you are attempting to claim some sort of substance dualism where the mind is wholly nonphysical and essentially mystical.

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I have no idea what chemicals has to do with volition here

Chemicals are the answer when the reality of the existence of volition is denied.

unless you are attempting to claim some sort of substance dualism where the mind is wholly nonphysical and essentially mystical.

I'm claiming that the physical processes observed in the brain are symptoms, and not causes.

If you claim that the mind is wholly physical, then then there is no such thing as free will, and the answer to every problem known to man lies in finding just the right chemicals to ingest.

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What are you basing this off of? I doubt anyone in the government does this.

Not necessarily directly, but government does promote faith in the narcoculture. Millions of people are prescribed psychotropic drugs to manage their "moods". And millions of parents drug their "ADHD" kids. In my opinion, this is only treating symptoms, not causes.

Once the existence of free moral choice to either do good or evil is denied, something else has to rise to compensate for that denial of reality. In the case of the US, it's the narcoculture which has become that compensation for people's failure to govern their own behavior.

Edited by moralist
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If you claim that the mind is wholly physical, then then there is no such thing as free will, and the answer to every problem known to man lies in finding just the right chemicals to ingest.

The most basic processes in the brain take place at the atomic level and are best described by quantum physics which is a non deterministic theory. We have a head full of q-bits.

ruveyn1

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Not necessarily directly, but government does promote faith in the narcoculture. Millions of people are prescribed psychotropic drugs to manage their "moods". And millions of parents drug their "ADHD" kids. In my opinion, this is only treating symptoms, not causes.

Once the existence of free moral choice to either do good or evil is denied, something else has to rise to compensate for that denial of reality. In the case of the US, it's the narcoculture which has become that compensation for people's failure to govern their own behavior.

Oh that.

Well I don't think it is a matter of philosophy. Drug companies want to sell drugs and will enlist whoever they can to help them do that. It has nothing to do with determinism.

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Of course you have free will. If you didn’t you would not have been able to review several ideas on the subject and choose which one to investigate further. Nature, revelations, God(s), or anything did not impose the direction on you, you choose to review it and choose which idea to support. Cute intellectual constructs don’t change the basic fact that this is observable and easily provable. In fact, if you did not have free will you would have just absorbed the first idea you heard like the proverbial billiard ball and this “article” would have simple supported the so called momentum your helpless brain already had on the subject.

In fact, free will is a prerequisite for all advance knowledge. Man would not even know what free will is without the ability to integrate the complex knowledge to come to such a high level of understanding. That requires the ability to choose and ignore facts as part of integrating facts into a concise whole.

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Oh that.

Well I don't think it is a matter of philosophy.

I agree. It's a moral issue.

Drug companies want to sell drugs and will enlist whoever they can to help them do that. It has nothing to do with determinism.

Drug companies only respond to the what people demand, and they demand that chemicals be formulated and marketed which will solve all of their personal problems. The idea that all brain activity is solely chemical and that drugs can control any behavior and compensate for any mood has become the dominant paradigm of this society. And it's rise can be directly linked to the decline of the idea that people are personally morally accountable for their free choice of how they behave.

Edited by moralist
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Are they random processes?

Most likely. Attempts to find "hidden variables" which are deterministic causes unable to be observed have led to contradiction. For example the physicist J.S.Bell derived a set of inequalities that would be satisfied by particle which have interacted and become "entangled". If reality is local (interactions with in a time t limited to factors no more than t*c distant, where c is the speed of light) these inequalities would hold. However real live genuine reproduced experiments show that these inequalities are violated and the predictions of quantum mechanics are corroborated by these experiments. quantum mechanics is predicated on probable outcome hence not deterministic.

See:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell%27s_inequality_experiment

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_uncertainty

ruveyn1

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Chemicals are the answer when the reality of the existence of volition is denied.

I'm claiming that the physical processes observed in the brain are symptoms, and not causes.

If you claim that the mind is wholly physical, then then there is no such thing as free will, and the answer to every problem known to man lies in finding just the right chemicals to ingest.

So, if the mind is wholly physical, and there is no such thing as free will, by what means does man discover the answer to any problem, much less an identification of the right stuff to ingest?

Conversely, since there is such a thing as free will, are you concluding that the mind is something more (or less) than wholly physical?

Edited by dream_weaver
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So, if the mind is wholly physical, and there is no such thing as free will, by what means does man discover the answer to any problem, much less an identification of the right stuff to ingest?

I'll be happy to leave that question for those who hold the amoral solely chemically driven brain model of human behavior to answer.

Conversely, since there is such a thing as free will, are you concluding that the mind is something more (or less) than wholly physical?

Yes. While I completely agree that the brain functions by chemical reactions and that they remain completely true to all of the physical laws governing them... I also hold the view that they are initiated or catalyzed by something else... the mind. Common speech idioms allude to this self reflective subject/object quality: "I was just talking to myself", or "...so I said to myself". Something is obviously talking while something else is listening to, and most importantly, ~considering~ what is said.

When Ayn Rand refers to "man's mind" or "reason" or "objectivity", in my view she is referring to someting other than the physical brain alone.

Edited by moralist
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true volition may, by definition, be incapable of being proven. maybe it can only be proven false and once you do that you're out like a light.

It's axiomatic--you can't prove it in the sense of deriving it logically from something else (because the process of logical identification depends on it), but you can validate it, in the sense of pointing out the things that lead to the recognition of it existing.

You have to be pretty naive to think that volition means the ability to choose free from any constraints. Of course there are constraints. The existence of constraints doesn't mean that you lack the ability to direct your consciousness within those constraints, though.

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So, if the mind is wholly physical, and there is no such thing as free will, by what means does man discover the answer to any problem, much less an identification of the right stuff to ingest?

Conversely, since there is such a thing as free will, are you concluding that the mind is something more (or less) than wholly physical?

Either way, what you call MInd (the name of an object) and I call Minding (the name of a process) is the effect of the brain which is a physical entity right down to the ground floor.

A physical brain can produce non-deterministic effects.

ruveyn1

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I'll be happy to leave that question for those who hold the amoral solely chemically driven brain model of human behavior to answer.

And I'll be quite content to let them prattle amongst themselves. :)

Yes. While I completely agree that the brain functions by chemical reactions and that they remain completely true to all of the physical laws governing them... I also hold the view that they are initiated or catalyzed by something else... the mind. Common speech idioms allude to this self reflective subject/object quality: "I was just talking to myself", or "...so I said to myself". Something is obviously talking while something else is listening to, and most importantly, ~considering~ what is said.

When Ayn Rand refers to "man's mind" or "reason" or "objectivity", in my view she is referring to someting other than the physical brain alone.

And what laws, pray tell, does the mind, as you distinct from the brain functions, function by?
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Either way, what you call MInd (the name of an object) and I call Minding (the name of a process) is the effect of the brain which is a physical entity right down to the ground floor.

A physical brain can produce non-deterministic effects.

ruveyn1

Considering that causality is the law of identity applied to action - if it is the brain producing the effects, how does the brain not determine the effects?
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And I'll be quite content to let them prattle amongst themselves. :)

And what laws, pray tell, does the mind, as you distinct from the brain functions, function by?

Moral laws.

The mind of man, which Ayn Rand held in such high esteem, is what gives us the objective self reflective rationality to be aware that we are morally accountable for our behavior.

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