That is, they think all of their decisions were preordained, and then use this to claim that they can’t be held responsible for anything they do.
That is, they think all of their decisions were preordained, and then use this to claim that they can’t be held responsible for anything they do.
How does a hardcore determinist believe in “shouldn’t?” Doesn’t that imply that people have the ability to change their behavior?
My answer changes depending on your meaning but:
Of course. My brain is constantly updating and improving itself. I’m just not ultimately in control of how that process happens. Though that does not mean that I should stop living. I can still experience and enjoy my life, and ‘choose’ to improve it. It’s just that the I that made that choice is a consequence of my brain calculating optimal paths based on a myriad of factors: genetics, culture, circumstance, biological drives, personal history, drugs, etc.
Let’s say you see someone playing in traffic, and tell them they shouldn’t be doing that. They respond, “I can’t not do it, because my brain already made the decision to do it, so I have no choice but to do it.”
Is this person correct? Or do they have the ability to just follow your advice and stop playing? Do they have the ability to ignore your advice and keep playing? If they have the ability to do both, then to what degree can we say that your advice is determining their choice? How can we say that choice is determined if we can also say that they should make a different choice?
We are constantly making and updating our choices in response to new information. Just because the brain decided upon one course of action at one point in time does not preclude it from changing course in the future. That’s just a new choice. All available information is taken into consideration at all points in time.
If our brain can make these choices, then how can we say it is determined to make a specific choice?
By determined, I mean it follows a logical set of rules, not that it is set on a specific action. The idea would be that it was determined to make all those choices because everything else is also following the rules of the universe. Just as it was determined that they play in traffic, so was it determined for me to tell them to stop, just as it was determined for them to listen. They didn’t choose to change their mind, they were always going to change their mind.
That’s what raises my question of when we say someone “should” do something. If what you describe is true, there are not any better or worse choices or actions, there are just actions that are consequences of a previous action.
I’m not sure if you’re familiar of Jelle’s Marble Races, but the general conceit is that marbles are sent down a track or through obstacles while a sports commentator analyzes the race as if observing human competitors. The humor arises from the cognitive dissonance of talking about strategy, risky decisions, athleticism, etc. while the audience is fully aware that these are inanimate objects being acted upon by mechanical forces.
Likewise, talking about what decisions should or shouldn’t do with a worldview that these actions are simply things that happen due to more complex interactions of cause and effect that we can’t immediately see causes a similar sense of cognitive dissonance for me. It seems that human minds and language have evolved to experience a world where our actions do have meaning and that we don’t really experience them in a way that feels deterministic to us.
You brought up the brain a vat thought experiment in another reply, and the answer is similar: even if we are brains in a vat, that’s not how we experience the world. And we don’t really experience the world as a deterministic one, either.
To clarify: are you saying that there is a “you” who is a separate entity from your brain (and the rest of your body?)
Do you see it as your fingers are typing a reply and you’re just watching them do it on their own? You wouldn’t say that you’re the one typing?
I believe consciousness is a result of processes of the brain, and the brain is a very complex machine. It’s hard to say anything too concretely beyond that because I don’t really understand how it works. I live as though the brain and my consciousness are in perfect sync, but I’m unsure how true that is.
There are, for example, experiments where it can be shown that decisions are made before we are consciously aware that we have made them. Others show that severing a nerve between the hemispheres of our brain can result in two independent consciousnesses. Who can say where I end and my brain begins?
Your brain is you, though, just like your hands are you. Whether there’s a lag between the time that imaging detects you made a decision and you say you made one does not change the fact that you’re the one making the decision.
That’s one way of seeing things, and I respect that viewpoint, but I disagree. I primarily view myself as my consciousness; everything else is secondary. How do you know you aren’t a brain in a vat?
I’m a fallibilist: I don’t believe we can know anything for certain. The best we can do is base propositions off contingent statements: “If what I see is reliable, then what I see in the mirror is not a brain in a vat.”
A brain in a vat is not a very useful starting axioms, so I have no reason to give it serious consideration. By contrast, while taking the general accuracy of my own senses as axiomatic eventually leads me to conclude they can be fallible (example: hallucinations,) it is nonetheless a way more useful axiom for deriving a base of contingent knowledge.