“ALL OF SCIENCE IS WRONG LOL” - Harry Binswanger
After reading the linked paper, I can explicitly identify my own view.
There’s a point in the paper where Binswanger explains that certain variations of determinism attribute someone’s beliefs to his sexual desires (Freudian determinism) or to his upbringing (environmental determinism), et cetera, but none of those things constitute a valid reason for believing anything and hence determinism contradicts knowledge.
That passage includes, for one thing, the implicit equation between justification and mental causation (which seems right to me) and, for another, a generalization about all different varieties of determinism.
If I were to provide such a statement for what I’ve been operating on, it would be:
Either a man believes X because it’s supported by reason and because that’s the nature of his psycho-epistemology (rational), OR a man believes X because it’s supported by emotion and because that’s the nature of his psycho-epistemology (not rational).
Essentially, I have thought of the choice to focus as necessitated by psycho-epistemology (instead of sort of quasi-guided by it) because I do equate ‘causality’ with ‘necessity’. I’ve been trying to analyze that but the alternative still just baffles me.
However, since entity-based causality is proper while event-based is not, wouldn’t that be more compatible with pEpistemological determinism than with libertarianism?
Could you please elaborate on that?
After reading the linked paper, I can explicitly identify my own view.
There’s a point in the paper where Binswanger explains that certain variations of determinism attribute someone’s beliefs to his sexual desires (Freudian determinism) or to his upbringing (environmental determinism), et cetera, but none of those things constitute a valid reason for believing anything and hence determinism contradicts knowledge.
That passage includes, for one thing, the implicit equation between justification and mental causation (which seems right to me) and, for another, a generalization about all different varieties of determinism.
If I were to provide such a statement for what I’ve been operating on, it would be:
Either a man believes X because it’s supported by reason and because that’s the nature of his psycho-epistemology (rational), OR a man believes X because it’s supported by emotion and because that’s the nature of his psycho-epistemology (not rational).
Essentially, I have thought of the choice to focus as necessitated by psycho-epistemology (instead of sort of quasi-guided by it) because I do equate ‘causality’ with ‘necessity’. I’ve been trying to analyze that but the alternative still just baffles me.
However, since entity-based causality is proper while event-based is not, wouldn’t that be more compatible with pEpistemological determinism than with libertarianism?
Could you please elaborate on that?
Honesty is volitional adherence to the facts. Dishonesty is volitional non-adherence to the facts, if I can put it that way.
Thank you; that makes sense. I was fumbling to understand how mental causation could be reconciled with libertarianism because non-determinate causality had not occurred to me. I still don’t get that, but I do see how everything else relates to it now.
After reading your post, I have no idea what you are saying or what your argument is.
Physical determinsm must be true since entities behave in accordance to their natures. It cannot behave in any other way. Hence, the idea of cause and effect.
I still have some difficulty with free will, but I guess I am at least a capatibilist. The brain is a physical system, and the mind emerges from its functioning, and since it is physical, everything in it is behaving in accordance with its nature, and the brain is also functioning in accordance with its nature in the only way that it can. It cannot not act based on the physical laws that govern it. That is why many say free will is silly. Your brain couldn’t have done anything else, it had to do what it did.
The way I see it is that although this is so, it doesn’t mean that we don’t have the freedom to choose. Yet, it still bothers me, because the brain itself could not have done anything other than it did. I think it requires a narrower view of what free will is, and we still have it, but just not in any mystical sense that violates physical cause and effect.
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I don’t use any terms related to determinism. It is a word that creates many problems of connotation. There’s causality, that’s as far as I go. Things are “determined” in that what happens is necessarily going to happen. By the information I’ve taken in perceptually and that there is a method - abstractly speaking - always used to make a choice as I did, I will end up making a decision. Things are “nondetermined” in that a decision is not a domino-effect of events. As an active process, decision making needs to be abstracted away from the physical mechanisms.
Connotations aside, can you identify any significant point of disagreement between you and the people conventionally called determinists? The things you’re saying here strongly suggest determinism to me.
One reason why we use terms for philosophical positions is so that we can apply the knowledge we have gained about a philosophical debate to evaluate a position advocated by a specific person. If you don’t adopt the label, then I’m left wondering if you disagree with the determinists somehow.
There is no special causality, or special identity, or special existence. Binswanger is inventing a new metaphysical principle to suggest that some things don’t operate along normal causal laws, and that as an irreducible primary, it can act on matter as non-matter, and itself does things matter cannot. So he’s a substance dualist just like Descartes, where we’re left wondering how this unique non-physical mind interacts with the physical body.
I haven’t read the book, to be clear, but so far I see no value in doing so.
He doesn’t think that there is any problem about how the non-physical mind interacts with the physical body. Things with different properties interact all the time - round things interact with things that are not round, for example. You might think that a non-physical thing cannot interact with a physical thing because there is no surface on the non-physical thing where they can contact, but that is picture thinking rather than a rational objection to the interaction of mind and body.
One reason why we use terms for philosophical positions is so that we can apply the knowledge we have gained about a philosophical debate to evaluate a position advocated by a specific person.
I don’t hold a position of determinism or not, the term isn’t accurate for my position. I talk about free will on an abstract level, I do not equate it to what occurs on a level of concretes. That also applies to why I am not a reductionist - generally determinism is a form of reductionism where all phenomena are adequately explained by summing up component parts down to some fundamental level. Abstraction is important, yet I won’t take a non-determinism position where some things are fundamental yet non-physical, namely, two fundamental “types” i.e. a dualist view. Nor will I say there are even two fundamental “types” of properties i.e. a property dualist view. Even more, I reject indeterminism, where causality is random essentially. So I reject any kind of view of causation besides the law of causality where entities necessarily act according to their identity.
You might think that a non-physical thing cannot interact with a physical thing because there is no surface on the non-physical thing where they can contact, but that is picture thinking rather than a rational objection to the interaction of mind and body.
That is literally magic. I need SOME real-world link so that non-physical can interact with physical. Descartes had the pinneal gland. Round things are physical, and while roundness is non-physical, it is always inherently part of a physical entity. If consciousness is inherently part of anything in reality, then it is constrained by physical laws, just as roundness is constrained by physical laws, and the wildly complex non-physical phenomena like biological respiration. We can abstract away physical laws, sure, as long as we remember those laws didn’t really disappear.
The quoted passage above shows that the conclusion was assumed at the start: “What one cannot do is “explain” the choice to focus (or not to) in the sense of specifying some antecedent factor that MADE one choose the way one did. This fact constitutes a philosophical problem only for those who equate causality with necessitation.” The whole QUESTION is if there are antecedent factors that necessitate the way one chooses. There is no explanation of this, hopefully it’s explained further in the book. The problem is that although he shows free will need not contradict causality, there is quite a bit of science to discuss before Binswanger can say that antecedent factors cannot necessitate choosing to focus.
Not that science is “more important”, but because the level of analysis here is detailed. There is good reason Rand wanted to study math and neurology [what nowadays we’d just call neuroscience] to understand man’s mind better - deeper questions require deeper knowledge of reality. I think Peikoff said Rand wanted to study that, but I don’t recall if she wrote it down or what. There’s also good reason why modern philosophy of mind is basically now a hybrid of philosophy and science - I don’t know if it’s possible to distinguish “cognitive scientist” and “philosopher”.
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It seems, in the end, that it is impossible to articulate and defend determinism without concept-stealing, since determinism implies the impossibility of knowledge, and that is also impossible to scientifically articulate how an immaterial, non-physical entity, can have physical effects. So,free will is axiomatic as it can not be denied without the implementation and premise of a volitional mind, yet, as of now, there seems no way to explain the making of the “magic”.
It seems, in the end, that it is impossible to articulate and defend determinism without concept-stealing, since determinism implies the impossibility of knowledge, and that is also impossible to scientifically articulate how an immaterial, non-physical entity, can have physical effects. So,free will is axiomatic as it can not be denied without the implementation and premise of a volitional mind, yet, as of now, there seems no way to explain the making of the “magic”.
It is impossible for an immaterial, non-physical entity to have physical effects, period. This is the realm of the supernatural: God, ghosts, magic, ESP, etc. Non-material entities exist insofar as they are enabled by concretes, but we abstract away concreteness for purposes of concept formation. As for free will, it too is an abstraction. Epistemologically, free will and consciousness are irreducible, but metaphysically, they are not separate “things” of a special type different than concretes or matter even.
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There is no such thing as a “non-material entity” and Objectivism only deals with one type of materialism, the kind that denies consciousness, in it’s literature
There is no such thing as a “non-material entity” and Objectivism only deals with one type of materialism, the kind that denies consciousness, in it’s literature
Clarification: when I said “non-material entities exist insofar…”, it was probably better to say “in a sense, we could say they non-material entities exist [for the reasons I gave], but non-material existent makes more sense if we want to talk about abstractions”. Entities are supposed to be concrete and directly perceived. You can’t directly perceive your own consciousness unless somehow there is a consciousness outside you have access to.
After reading your post, I have no idea what you are saying or what your argument is.
I’m not laying out any argument. The more I think about it, the less I feel prepared for such a thing. Earlier in this thread though I found it difficult to clearly and precisely articulate what my opinions actually were; I was rectifying that. The only factual point I wanted to convey was that, regardless of whether it corresponds to reality or not (there remain loose ends therein, for me), my initial beliefs weren’t comparable to the generalized “determinism” that Rand and Binswanger discussed.
Epistemologically, free will and consciousness are irreducible, but metaphysically, they are not separate “things” of a special type different than concretes or matter even.
Peikoff’s analysis of the Uncertainty Principle, quoted earlier in this thread, comes to mind.
I reccomend Diana Hsieh’s paper Mind in Objectivism on this topic:
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