From: Bob Felts on
Curt <curty(a)free.fr> wrote:

> On 2010-05-26, Bob Felts <wrf3(a)stablecross.com> wrote:
> >
> > Yes, I read it. Were I to channel Dirac, I'd say "it's not right. It's
> > not even wrong." Moral behavior arises out of everything we do, because
>
> I'm not sure what it means to "channel" somebody, but I think the "not
> right, not even wrong" line is attributed correctly to Wolfgang Pauli,
> not Dirac, if by "channeling" Dirac you meant you were quoting or
> paraphrasing him (and even if you didn't).

You're right, it was Pauli. Don't know why Dirac was stuck in my head.
Thanks.
From: Raffael Cavallaro on
On 2010-05-25 09:41:55 -0400, Bob Felts said:

> Just curious, but why? Truth isn't decided by numbers, is it?

The truth of what most people *actually do believe* is in fact,
determined by the numbers of people who actually do believe that thing
(no surprise there!).

I've never once said I actually agree with these people who believe in
a soul that gives them free will or that such a belief is true.

Articulating a deterministic, compatibilist position is articulating a
kind of "free will" that such people (who are billions in number) would
definitely not consider to be real free will. I understand completely
that *you* consider such a deterministic thing to be free will - I'm
just saying that what *you* believe about free will is more or less
irrelevant *to them*, since they define free will as being
*non-deterministic*, moral choice, exercised by an immortal,
non-physical soul. The compatibilist "free will" strips out one of the
essential features of *their* notion of free will - i.e., the word
"free" in free will means "non-deterministic."

Again, I think our positions are irreconcilable. You think the concept
of free will can be reformulated to be compatible with determinism; I
think it is an inherent part of the *definition* of free will that it
is non-deterministic. We are talking about two separate things, using
the same term (i.e., "free will"), so there's really no point in
continuing; our positions are *definitionally* irreconcilable.

warmest regards,

Ralph

--
Raffael Cavallaro

From: Bob Felts on
RG <rNOSPAMon(a)flownet.com> wrote:

> In article <1jj2env.bhkk2z1l5wzb4N%wrf3(a)stablecross.com>,
> wrf3(a)stablecross.com (Bob Felts) wrote:
>
> > > > > > Theologians deal with axiomatic systems just as much as
> > > > > > logicians do.
> > > > >
> > > > > That may be, but their axioms a.k.a. holy texts are not
> > > > > constrained by objective reality
> > > >
> > > > That's simply not true. You are defining "objective reality" to
> > > > exclude a very objective phenomena.
> > >
> > > "Phenomena" is plural. You mean "an objective phenomenon." And I
> > > call shenanigans for claiming this without saying which objective
> > > phenomenon you're referring to.
> > >
> >
> > Intelligence.
>
> Oh, puh-leez. This is comp.lang.lisp. This is the Church of Church's
> (as in Alonzo) thesis.
>

See my response to Don on this. It's always "an invisible pink
unicorn"; never "an invisible _intelligent_ pink unicorn".
Some people have found this very short work of fiction to be
interesting: http://stablecross.com/files/AI_Quadtych.html

> > > > > > Since morality exists only in minds with creative power
> > > > >
> > > > > But that's not true. If you think it is then you have completely
> > > > > missed the point of Axelrod's work.
> > > > >
> > > >
> > > > It is absolutely true. Axelrod started with an arbitrary "ought"
> > > > (selfishness is good), and lo and behold, discovered that people act
> > > > in a way to maximize their selfishness.
> > >
> > > No. You are as wrong about this as Ralph is about QM. What Axelrod
> > > discovered is that behavior that appears structurally similar to what
> > > we call moral behavior can arise from processes that obey the laws of
> > > Darwinian evolution. There is no "ought" about it.
> > >
> >
> > Of course there is. There is an "ought" to _everything_. There is
> > nothing that _is_ about which we cannot say "this ought/ought not be".
>
> Oh? Ought the earth rotate on its axis?

Ought the earth to rotate at all? Who sez?

> Ought the stars shine in the sky?

One day they won't. Why now?

> Ought I point out that your position is untenable?
>

Ought I point out that unless this is a certain Monty Python skit that
an argument isn't just contradiction? Not only did I just give you an
existence proof of my claim, the process should be obvious. You're
quite used to applying skepticism of what is claimed to be; do the same
thing with what is. Let your imagination run wild.

> > Here's how it's done. Why is the product of Darwinian evolution more
> > moral (better) than a course of action based upon deliberation?
>
> Ought I point out that this is a straw man?
>
> Darwinian evolution isn't "better" than anything, it's just how we got
> here.
>

And yet you went to the trouble to write a post on "Morality without
God" which used the PD as a basis for moral behavior. Morality is
concered with what we _ought_ to do. As you wrote, you can say, "my
morality comes from a moral intuition wired into my brain by evolution
according to Axelrod's model". That is, "what I think is good comes
from the wiring in my brain as produced by evolutionary mechanisms".
Part of that is motherhood and apple pie, and it has commonality with
what I said: that "morality exists in minds with creative power". But
you left out the "creative power" part, which means you've missed out on
the essence of what's going on, since that's where "ought" comes from.

But explaining why something is doesn't explain why it ought to be that
way. You try to do that by giving three reasons: it changes over time
(why is this good, again? It matches what is? Is-ought fallacy); it
embraces religion (but in an extremely odd way by defining God as the
product of man, instead of vice versa); and transcendence of short term
needs (except that it doesn't work for the Kobayashi Maru variant I gave
above). What you really should have said is that "this theory gives me
warm fuzzies because it allows a paradigm that I favor to explain more
of what I see."

The bottom line is that you're trying to justify an inherently selfish
way of living. If something is done for someone else, it's only for
what you get out of it. Selfishness is immoral. Didn't your mother
teach you that?

> > Are you a slave to your genetics?
>
> Part of me is. Part of me isn't. This is one of the interesting things
> about being human -- we're hosts to two different kinds of replicators:
> genes and memes. They interact with each other in very complicated
> ways. Writing an essay about this is on my todo list.

Would you be so kind as to post a link in comp.lang.lisp when you get it
done? I'm very interested in knowing which part of you is a slave.
Maybe the will? Maybe your ego? Are you a slave to your sense of self?
"I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul"?

[...]

> > > > What should the prisoners do?
> > >
> > > This is a one-shot prisoner's dilemma with a somewhat different payoff
> > > matrix than usual, since the payoff for cooperating is zero (death)
> > > regardless of what the other player does. Figuring out the "correct"
> > > action in this case is left as an exercise.
> >
> > That was the whole point, wasn't it? Alexrod's experiment is useless
> > for this.
>
> I would say "less applicable", not "useless." But as you say, pototo,
> patoahto.
>
> And your point would be...?
>

How do you figure out what the right thing to do is? Can science answer
the question? (Hint: it can't, any more than science can say which
value one roll of a die will turn up. It can say it has to be 1-6, and
it can say that over time a unbiased die will show vaules at certain
probabilities. But it can't say "for this roll it ought to be 3").

We can argue over the mechanism in our brains that gives rise to
creative power; whether it is some form of randomness (hence the above
example); or whether it comes from some metaphysical "soul" stuff (which
I can only model on randomness). I try to stay worldview-neutral when
discussing these things; but it has to be taken into account.

> > > Moral behavior only arises in an iterated PD where the number of rounds
> > > is not known in advance. Did you bother to read the post I referred you
> > > to?
> >
> > Yes, I read it. Were I to channel Dirac, I'd say "it's not right. It's
> > not even wrong." Moral behavior arises out of everything we do, because
> > we can (and do) compare every is to multiple oughts.
> >
> > Furthermore, are you saying that if you were alone, that any action you
> > took would be moral? You don't even judge yourself?
>
> Being alone is a red herring.

On the contrary. It's an important boundary condition.

> I can have an impact on other people (and they in turn on me) even if we
> are not in close proximity. Witness what is happening in the Gulf of
> Mexico right now. But yes, anything that you do that doesn't have a
> negative impact on someone else is moral.
>

So you don't consider the impact on _yourself_ to be a moral issue?
Fascinating.

> How in the world did we get on this topic?
>

Because our notions of good and evil creep into almost all arguments.
We can't escape this, and we do it so much that we do it without
self-reflection -- we don't know that we are doing it. It happened, for
example, in trying to define free will. It happened with the
introduction of "utility" as a measure of the goodness of philosophy.
It happens with the topic of theodicy (since you mentioned that in one
of your posts on your blog). Theodicy is a particularly interesting
subject, since it typically boils down to two incorrect notions. The
first is that there is a standard of good and evil to which both God and
man must adhere. God is not good because He doesn't measure up to that
standard (whatever the heck that standard is supposed to be). The
second is that "God does things I don't like, therefore He isn't good."
That's the really interesting one.

> > > > > > we can logically deduce that it is sufficient, even if not
> > > > > > always necessary, that differences of moral opinion can be
> > > > > > settled by terminating the mind that holds a contrary position.
> > > > >
> > > > > Of course. It is tautological that any conflict can be settled by
> > > > > destroying one or more of the entities that are in conflict. But
> > > > > that's not a particularly interesting or useful observation.
> > > >
> > > > Of course it's useful. We wiped out the neanderthals. Should we
> > > > have?
> > >
> > > According to what quality metric? "Should" can only ever be decided
> > > relative to some quality metric.
> > >
> >
> > I believe that's the point I've been making.
>
> Then you've been making it very badly.
>

I've never claimed to be the most eloquent of people. I really do wish
I were a better wordsmith.

> > > > > > In this case, might does make right.
> > > > >
> > > > > Only if your quality metric is the absence of conflict.
> > > >
> > > > In the presence of moral conflict, how do you show which side is
> > > > right?
> > >
> > > How do yo know either side is "right"?
> > >
> >
> > That's what I'm asking you. I've made the claim that science cannot
> > answer that question, since it deals with *is*, not *ought*. Don Geddis
> > disagreed. Got a scientific answer?
>
> Yes, but it's complicated, and I can't do it justice here. But I'll be
> writing about it on my blog in the coming weeks.
>

As I said previously, let me know when you get it posted. I suspect
that you'll take an arbitrary "ought" (e.g. "we (really I) ought to
survive) and will derive subsequents oughts. We rarely argue that two
plus two ought to equal four, since it's a product of combining a
certain set of axioms with a certain set of logical operations. We
rarely argue that the sky ought to be blue (or the earth should rotate),
since that's the way it is; but that's due to a lack of imagination on
our parts. Picking an arbitrary "ought" and creating a construct on top
of that is like building on sand. You simply can't cast an arbitrary
ought into concrete, any more than you can say "on this roll, this 1000
sided die ought to show 456". Unless the creative power of our minds
is, in fact, deterministic. But I don't suspect you'll be showing that.


From: Bob Felts on
Raffael Cavallaro <raffaelcavallaro(a)pas.despam.s.il.vous.plait.mac.com>
wrote:

> On 2010-05-25 09:41:55 -0400, Bob Felts said:
>
> > Just curious, but why? Truth isn't decided by numbers, is it?
>
> The truth of what most people *actually do believe* is in fact,
> determined by the numbers of people who actually do believe that thing
> (no surprise there!).

Well, sure. I agree completely. But believing doesn't make it so.
Which I think you'd also agree with.

>
> I've never once said I actually agree with these people who believe in
> a soul that gives them free will or that such a belief is true.
>

Again, I agree with you. I appreciate your attempts to step in and out
of worldviews and being able to argue within different ones.

> Articulating a deterministic, compatibilist position is articulating a
> kind of "free will" that such people (who are billions in number) would
> definitely not consider to be real free will.

Perhaps you confused me with someone else? At the very outset of this
thread I stated that I don't believe that man has free will (although I
didn't explain why).

> I understand completely that *you* consider such a deterministic thing to
> be free will - I'm just saying that what *you* believe about free will is
> more or less irrelevant *to them*, since they define free will as being
> *non-deterministic*, moral choice, exercised by an immortal, non-physical
> soul.

I understand that. However, what makes the choice is, IMO, irrelevant,
whether it is an "immortal non-physical soul", or a meat machine
containing a random number generator.

> The compatibilist "free will" strips out one of the essential
> features of *their* notion of free will - i.e., the word "free" in free
> will means "non-deterministic."
>

I almost agree. The words "non-deterministic" are problematic, since it
means "capable of being determined". I already chided Ron and Don for
using knowledge assymetry in their definitions of "free" will, since
knowledge is not predestination. I'd prefer to use the term
"determined/non-determined." After all, in the worldview your using as
an example, God determines/does not determine people's choices, even
though the people may/may not be able to know God's choices.
From: RG on
In article <1jj3f74.150oc7skfxkhsN%wrf3(a)stablecross.com>,
wrf3(a)stablecross.com (Bob Felts) wrote:

> And yet you went to the trouble to write a post on "Morality without
> God" which used the PD as a basis for moral behavior.

My essay does not "use PD as a basis for moral behavior." It uses PD as
the basis of a scientific model of how moral intuition can arise by
Darwinian evolution. Until you understand the significant difference
between my actual thesis and your straw-man recasting of it you may as
well go argue with yourself.

BTW, this is the THIRD TIME I have had to point out to you that you are
raising a straw man. It's really getting tiresome.

rg