The Prerational and Premoral Choice to Live

Deleted, duplicate.
(Edited by Dean Michael Gores
on 1/04, 9:00pm)

Post 41

Wednesday, January 4, 2006 - 9:00pm

Michael, very very very good point! : ) My body does automatically work to live, and so does pretty much everyone's (except for the ones that have genomes incompatible with living). Those people usually die before they reach adulthood. Then each person is unique, with different behavioral tendencies, levels of feelings, memories, habits, abilities, and thoughts. Thank you very much. I think I'm a lot closer now to understanding how animals and humans work.

Oh no! Dean thinks that there is a free-will--determinism is a false dichotomy. Or maybe better phrased, until this point in history, free-will has never been defined by a concept that has any meaning.

I am free to do anything that is consistent with reality. My "will" is the part of reality that I am, and I will do what the laws of causal reality will determine from the context of the state I am in. Wether there are random events doesn't matter, all that happens still happens by what the laws of causal reality determines. I think its quite true that it is only possible for my past to have happened as it had, and my future will happen as it is destined to. Since reality is causal and practically infinitely complex, I'll never be able to perfectly predict my future. Not perfect : ). But I can use reason and computers, physics and context, to make ever increasingly better estimates of what will happen. That will be fun! : )

I am free to do anything that is consistent with reality.

But later you say that only one thing will or could happen. So there is no freedom in "free-will" like free beer, or like free to do many actions when you are talking about reality at its fundamentals.

Instead, "free-will" as many people consider it arises when you compare one person to another, or one person to an animal, or one person to a rock, and you recognize that each one is unique, and that one does not have control over the other. The only thing that controls you is the laws of reality, which you are a part of/exist in. My will is free from yours. No one else's will controls mine.

Edit: starting at the blockquote I began talking to my past self. Hahhaha. Yea, I'm sure some of you think I've gone off the deep end. Good night.
(Edited by Dean Michael Gores
on 1/04, 9:28pm)

Post 42

Wednesday, January 4, 2006 - 11:29pm

When you think that life is meaningless and consider doing nothing or ending your life, you feel sad, depressed. You feel sad and depressed because you are thinking that. Your body does it automatically, by evolution/reality/you, unless your body doesn't have that functionality, by evolution/reality/you.

When you think than life is meaningful, worthwhile, and think about performing actions to live long and flourish, you feel happy, excited. Your body does it automatically, by evolution/reality/you, unless your body doesn't have that functionality.

I could say the same things, and be just as correct on:
- Not getting laid, getting laid
- Not having your own children, having your own children
- Ceasing to learn/teach, continuing to learn/teach
- etc. life ruining vs life enriching, unless your body doesn't have the functionality.

If your body doesn't have the functionality, you'll probably die, and you probably won't have children that successfully reproduce.

So, if you want to be happy, you need only think what evolution/reality/you has made trigger happy/sad feelings for you. You can change what makes you trigger happy/sad feelings to a certain extent now, and probably even more in the future as new medical technology comes out, but still, you will always act by how the causal reality's laws determine.

The most funny and ironic thing about me telling you this is that my advice isn't going to change the way you will pre-determinately will think or feel. Or: it has surely changed the way you think compared to how you used to think, but it was inevitable that I would think this, write this, then you read this and act as causal reality's laws determine.

But what are reality's laws? Or in other words: reality is a state that changes. If we are given the current state, what is the smallest set of ideas that can perfectly describe what the next state will be? (or if true randomness is involved, can we provide a perfect probability for each of the possible next states?) "Given a current state" can we determine reality's state perfectly? Maybe estimating a portion of reality's state is good enough, and then what is the smallest set of ideas that can perfectly describe the next state?

Boy did I hijack this thread.
(Edited by Dean Michael Gores
on 1/04, 11:36pm)

Post 43

Wednesday, January 4, 2006 - 11:31pm

Glenn, you wrote,

Right now I'm on Smith's side, but I'm not unwilling to be persuaded otherwise. I had a little difficulty following your arguments, but I thought this part was the most clear (and the easiest to argue against):
A choice presupposes a standard, which is an end or goal that the choice is intended to serve. One always chooses for a reason or a purpose. In that respect, one's choice is a means to an end. Insofar as the end is not an ultimate value, it can be evaluated by an end that is an ultimate value. In the case of Objectivism, a person's ultimate end or "standard of value" in this context is his highest moral purpose, namely his own happiness. It is for the sake of that end or goal that he "ought" to make his choices.
So, if the end is an ultimate value, it doesn't have anything by which it can be evaluated. Therefore, it is outside the realm of evaluation and is pre-moral. By saying that Objectivism chooses a person's happiness as his ultimate end, all you're doing is making being an Objectivist the ultimate end. You're saying "If you want to be an Objectivist, then you must choose your own happiness as your standard of value".

No, that's not what I'm saying. True, there is nothing else by which an ultimate end can be evaluated, because it is an end in itself. But that doesn't mean that it is outside the realm of evaluation, for it is a self-evident value. Pleasure or happiness is self-evidently a value to the person who experiences it, just as pain or suffering is self-evidently a disvalue to the person who experiences it. Granted, it makes no sense to say that one "ought" to pursue one's own pleasure or happiness, because there is no further end or goal for the sake of which one ought to pursue it. One's pleasure or happiness is an end in itself. It only makes sense to say that one ought to do something if it is a means to an end. The (ultimate) end itself is that for the sake of which one ought to make one's choices. For instance, if you tell me that I ought to do X, it would be reasonable for me to ask why? What I would be asking is, for what end or goal ought I to do it? In other words, what will I get out of doing it? What value will I achieve?

If I ask you why I should want to be an Objectivist, you might come up with a reason, but then that becomes the "ultimate end". If you want to terminate this, I think you have to have an ultimate end that is pre-moral.

This is a slightly different question; it is not strictly speaking a moral question, but a broadly philosophical one. If I say that you "ought" to be an Objectivist, this is a different sense of "ought"; it is a logical or philosophical, rather than teleological or ethical, sense of the term. It falls under the realm of "What you 'ought' to recognize as true" rather than "What you 'ought' to do" or "How you 'ought' specifically to act." But even here, to say that you "ought" to recognize a certain philosophy as true presupposes a further end or goal that you are endeavoring to satisfy--namely, the correct identification of reality. In any case, no choice that a person faces can be viewed as pre-moral, for every choice is between two (or more) alternatives whose relative merits must be evaluated in order for the choice to made. You cannot make a choice, if you don't evaluate it as (in some sense) better or more valuable than the alternative, which implies that the choice is a means to an end--the end being the value for the sake of which the choice is made.

- Bill

Post 44

Thursday, January 5, 2006 - 2:39am

Dean:

Oh no! Dean thinks that there is a free-will--determinism is a false dichotomy. Or maybe better phrased, until this point in history, free-will has never been defined by a concept that has any meaning.

Right. The usual argument you hear is: "I know by introspection that I have free will, that I can choose freely between different alternatives". What really happens is that you can't predict which choice you will make. The freedom of "free will" is freedom by ignorance. It's similar to the randomness by ignorance when throwing a die, which is an action that can perfectly be described by deterministic classical mechanics. It's the fact that we're unable, in practice, to predict the outcome of the throw (and the fact that in a long series of throws every face of the die will turn up approximately an equal number of times) that we can use the die as a random number generator.

If you've made your choice (say choice "A"), you may still feel that you could have made choice B instead. But that is a meaningless statement, like "I could have been Napoleon". The fact is that you didn't choose B and you are not Napoleon. Now suppose you repeat the experiment and this time you choose B. Doesn't that show that you really are free to choose? No, as this is a different experiment which inexorably leads you to choose B. Compare with the throwing of a die: the first time 3 turns up, the second time 4 turns up. That doesn't mean that any number (1-6) can turn up, the whole die-throwing sequence is completely deterministic, so 3 and 4 each had to turn up, we only didn't know that in advance.

Post 45

Thursday, January 5, 2006 - 5:02am

For non-information theorists, "perfectly random" means: given a set of potential future states S, no matter what information you have about the state of reality now or up until the point that one of the future states in S happens, you are unable to correctly adjust the probability that each state in S could happen. In other words, in a "perfectly random" situation, its impossible to get a better idea of what will happen in the future. Of course, to be consistent, the sum of the probabilities of states in S happening must be equal to 1.

Some might also include that the number of states in S must be greater than one, and that at least two of the states in S have a probability of happening greater than 0. Otherwise you could say that every S that has one state of 100% probability is a "perfectly random" future possibility. It makes mathematical sense to leave this out of the definition, or include it, I don't really care whether you include this in the definition or not, but I think its important to specify whether you are including it when you say "perfectly random". Why? Because it would have a vast impact on what is considered "perfectly random". So from now on, whenever I say "perfectly random", I will include "at least two of the states in S have a probability of happening greater than 0" in the definition.

Edit: "truely random" = "perfectly random"
(Edited by Dean Michael Gores
on 1/05, 5:07am)

Post 46

Thursday, January 5, 2006 - 5:36am

So more on "free-will":

Lets say we have three distinct entities, A, B, C.
Lets say that all A, B, and C exist in reality at the same time, and that all of reality is interdependent on itself. (Some very reasonable assumptions, consider electromagnetic forces.)
Lets say that it is known that B has a set Sb of known future possible states.
Lets say that it is known that C has a set Sc of known future possible states.

Free-will is this: compare the rate of change of probabilities known in Sb and Sc, as we increase/decrease information known about A. If B has more "free-will" than C, then when we increase/decrease in know information about A, the rate of change in probabilities known in Sb will be less than Sc. Also, the impact on Sb would be greater than Sc when you increase the same amount of information known about both B and C.

So if A is you, B is me, and C is a piece of dice, in most contexts its pretty safe to say that I have more free-will than the dice. In fact, dice has extremely less free will: 6 options, of about 1/6 chance or less evenly distributed known Sc if you plan on how you will interact with the dice. I, on the other hand, am way more unpredictable, even if you know yourself perfectly and plan exactly how you will treat me.

Post 47

Thursday, January 5, 2006 - 11:06am

In fact, dice has extremely less free will

Finally! Something upon which we can agree.

Post 48

Thursday, January 5, 2006 - 11:37am

Excellent rejoinder (post 43), Bill.

Ed

Post 49

Thursday, January 5, 2006 - 12:41pm

ahem...

Free will pertains only to living organisms with brains. Dice are not alive. Dice have no brains.

Free will is not an entity. It is an attribute. Specifically speaking, a capacity resulting from awareness. To be aware, you must be alive and have some kind of brain.

Michael

Post 50

Thursday, January 5, 2006 - 9:26pm

Michael, do you agree with my conjecture about what free will is?

I'd say real dice have "free-will"... but its so close to no free will that you might as well say it has none. On the other hand, what if we were to compare chimpanzees to humans? Or humans to future humans? Or chimpanzees to other man-shaped mammals? Or to other mammals? Or to birds? Or to reptiles? Or to amphibians? Or to fish? Or to single celled eukaryotes? Or to plants... back up the other way to the venus flytrap? Or back down to the prokaryotes. Further down to abiogenic molecules. Or even the parts of the abiogenic molecules... or plain old oxygen, or the electron.

From my mathematical definition above, there is a huge scale of free will. And yes, to have any measurable amount of free will (compared to the amount that an average men has), you have to be actively integrating reality and making insightful decisions. Currently I know it goes from practically none all the way to the most productive men on earth such as Bill Gates or the creators of Google, FedEx, etc.

Think about men of the future, who will be exponentially more insightful then current men. They will laugh at how we thought we have free will, compared to the amount of free will they have (which will be exponentially higher).

Edit: have you ever met someone and realized that you could predict pretty much everything they will do? Would you say that you have more free will then they do? How about a person whom you can almost never predict? How come women want unpredictable men (who are also great guys)? How come men want unpredictable women (who are also great gals)? That was fun. Duh, that's why women want unpredictable men!
(Edited by Dean Michael Gores
on 1/05, 9:39pm)

Post 51

Thursday, January 5, 2006 - 11:22pm

Dean,

How can dice have free will when they have no will at all? I am not talking about randomness, which is another thing altogether.

And yes, lower life forms do have a graduating descending scale of volition - the scale accompanying brain capacity. And I am pretty sure you could not call the action-reaction to stimuli of living beings without a brain as "free will," volition or capacity to choose.

On the other end, I have seen another silly idea promoted around here at times that animals have no faculty of volition at all - that they only function as programmed. However, within the things they can choose, they do.

"Free will" is only free within the confines of reality - which includes the limits of the living being's own capacity to distinguish things.

Michael

Post 52

Friday, January 6, 2006 - 12:23am

Michael,

The dice's "will" is the part of reality that it is, and it will do what the laws of causal reality will determine from the state it is in. The dice's will is pretty much just to stay structurally intact. All it can do is be, act, and react. It's electrons, protons, and neutrons will push and pull, move, etc. Bonds will break or bend. Its surface will absorb light, reflect, and diffuse light. It is made pretty much out of one material, and few bond types that are quite inert.

My "will" is the part of reality that I am, and I will do what the laws of causal reality will determine from the state I'm in. My electrons, protons, and neutrons will push and pull, move, etc. Bonds will break or bend. But my body is incredibly more complex than the dice. I, my body, does way more than that-- through the laws of reality of course (yes, I'm talking about laws like conservation of energy, laws of inertia, electromagnetics, mechanics, etc.).

You could probably uniquely describe the state of a dice perfectly down to the most finite detail (I'm talking every single proton, neutron, and electron position, bonds, all in 3D etc.), and fit this information on a modern hard drive (using lossless compression like bzip2 because its mostly repeated bonds, repeated information).

To give you an idea of how complex I am, I bet you couldn't uniquely describe the state of the smallest cell of my body with all computer storage made yet to date (again even after using a lossless compression like bzip2). And that's just one cell (though most of the positional information has probably already been stored simply by getting all of the information from one cell).

You could accurately model how dice behaves with most any computer.

Its more difficult for a computer to model how a single protein would interact with another molecule. A single protein and molecule! How many different proteins and molecules are there in my body? How do they interact with each other? They do it through the laws of reality-- but its incredibly complex, and what you end up with after all that is Dean the emotional, value holding, choice making, self-acting to maintain itself and values part of reality, me, my being, myself.

You look at a simple machine like a lever, and your like, that's a machine! Then maybe a lever and a spring, and your like, that's a more complex machine that can do more things. Look through the evolutionary tree, from abiogenic molecules to humans. It makes so much sense that we are extremely^extremely^extremely^extremely^... complex machines. Its nothing to be ashamed of or sad about. I think its amazing. Look at what reality can do with such few simple laws!

==============

I just realized that I can write my post in my email interface, and use its very very easy to use spell checker, and then post the text here! Ah, that is so much better then looking each word up on google.

Post 53

Friday, January 6, 2006 - 12:33am

Dean,

OK, I'll play

(blowing - 7 or 11! Poppa needs some new shoes!)

(throw, then dramatic pause...)

Dayaamm! Snake eyes!

What is your definition of life? A bigger and better machine? Or something separate, with a nature that includes some things machines can't do and limitations machines don't have?

Michael

Post 54

Friday, January 6, 2006 - 3:26am

Michael,

A "Life form" is a part of reality that maintains itself over time, improves itself, and probably has to reproduce too because critical parts break. If all critical parts break in a simular set of life, that set goes into extinction. The individual is the smallest most unique set. Every individual is unique.

Through it's course of life, it will have to use its surroundings in "good" ways to make sure this happens. Life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action. You try to increase the reliability of your parts, and have backup parts to keep you going, try not to have any one single part that breaks that would cause you to not be able to continue the process of self-sustaining and self-generated action!

Life on Earth has been becoming exponentially better at living.

Things break... machine parts! Critical parts break, you die! You stop the process of self-sustaining and self-generating action!

Thanks again Michael, you are driving me into making so many discoveries! And no, I don't expect to die! Woot woot! Haha, I've won so many bets! Well, unless I die by a freak accident or destroys a critical part of me that I have no backup system for.

Post 55

Friday, January 6, 2006 - 3:36am

Which means that yes, I expect life to be all over the place in the universe. Won't it be fun to meet intelligent beings from other solar systems 1000s of years in the future? I can't wait!

And I'll make my own computer program plants and animals too. Then you'll totally believe me. And the world will never be the same. The life software will help save rationally selfish/altruist people, because it will be running on more reliable logic machines than our neural networks! (Resulting in more rational life.)

And plus the whole revolution of the man-computer interface, and then redesign of the human body, etc.. etc.. Lots of incredible things to look forward to in our lifetimes! (Well, that is if you want to live.)

Post 56

Friday, January 6, 2006 - 4:18am

Michael:

Free will pertains only to living organisms with brains. Dice are not alive. Dice have no brains.

A die as an inanimate object has no free will, but it's something different if the die is a part of a choice-making machine (man, or a mechanical device). As free will is nothing else than the possibility of choosing between alternatives, such a system has a certain (very tiny) amount of free will. Sometimes people will delegate their own free-will choice making process to a die (or a coin if the choice is binary), when the usual weighing of pros and cons doesn't result in an unequivocal choice.
(Edited by Calopteryx Splendens
on 1/06, 4:19am)

Post 57

Friday, January 6, 2006 - 4:31am

Michael:

What is your definition of life? A bigger and better machine?

A very sophisticated machine that can replicate itself.

Post 58

Friday, January 6, 2006 - 4:37am

"replicate" to a degree. No two life forms are the same, or ever will be the same. Humph. Unless reality somehow loops, and then you could say that the same thing exist in many places through time.

Post 59

Friday, January 6, 2006 - 4:59am