I'm Thinking About....Free Will

Julian Bagnini on Q&A May 16th (?2016). Wow he makes so much sense on free will and so little sense on Muslim extremism.

“…we hear a lot about how human beings are kind of just biological machines and just biological robots and that our behaviour is being determined merely by the operations of our brains. Now, the problem with those statements is that they're almost entirely true if you take out the justs and the merelies, all right? Then it's suddenly not so scary. Because I don't know about you but I'm pretty confident I am, indeed, a biological machine, if that's what an animal is, right, and I'm also pretty sure that what is driving my thought, the sort of hardware, as it were, underlying the software of the mind, is the brain. So I'm quite comfortable with the idea that, yes, I'm fully part of nature and, in a way, I'm operating under nature's laws but does that mean I have no free will? Well, only if you think free will is some kind of magic which enables us to stand outside of nature and create our own identities from scratch. Who thinks that? We all know we take after our parents, for better or for worse, and so forth. So I think we just have a more modest idea of what free will is and it relates to the political actually. You're free to the extent your choices are genuinely yours, that they're not being coerced upon you, that you've had the opportunity to reflect upon them and think about them. Now, if underlying all of that is biological machinery, I'm quite relaxed about that.”

Is there no free will - “only if you think free will is some kind of magic which enables us to stand outside of nature” – brilliantly said

Free will for Bagnini here is just free choice, a political free will, an ability to simply act as one intends to without coercion or interference (?from the state, ?anyone). This is a watered down “free will” and one that Sam Harris says is not the free will that people labour under the illusion of.

“no matter what you know about the processes that underlie it, everything we do can only be a consequence of a combination of two things: nature and nurture. Exactly what the balance is, who knows, but what other thing could it be? What would it mean for you to make a choice which had nothing to do with nature or nurture? That would be to make a choice that came from nowhere. That wouldn't be valuable free will. That would be just kind of a random decision generator, right?”

Oh god. So good. Did I write this?

Is the idea that, as we gain more scientific understanding of inheritance and neuroscience that there is little room for a magical version of free will, scary?

“Well, people are scared but I don't know why because, as I say, for all the time there's been human beings people have said, "Oh, look, he’s just like his mother, just like his father," right? But when people say, “Oh, you’re doing that because of your genes," it's suddenly scary but it’s exactly the same thought in scientific terms, isn't it?

Awesome.

Still Tony Jones doesn’t get it so he has to ask again..

“I mean, don't humans inevitably meet forks in the road of their lives where free will dictates which way they go? “

Bagnini patiently explains (again..!) (Is Tony Jones getting dumber?)

“I think the important thing is that if you think of free will as some absolute capacity to leap free of your conditioning and your experience and make a choice in a vacuum, that's not what happens at the fork in the road. You see, I think free will is something you can have more or less of. It’s the more you are able to reflect on what you do, to make the decisions for yourself rather than to be coerced by this, the freer it is. And so what happens at a fork in the road is there’s a sense in which at that particular moment, given your life experience to date, it is inevitable you're going to go one way or another. But the point is that point of inevitability has been reached as part of kind of your own story. So, you know, some people say that can't be free will but I think the alternative is just some kind of magical fantasy of just being able to escape the normal run of the universe and create ourselves from nothing.”

Could he say it any more clearly people…!!!

Naw...!

I get some nice letters from patients...

I wish I had absolute control over the vomiting. Sometimes no matter what you do, patients vomit. So...it's nice when they don't. 😉

I was recently asked this question....

"Do you know of any natural therapies I can take to help me sleep?"

You're smiling I know. 

I replied - "Um....remain caffeine free, don't eat late, get your OSAS treated"

Ok no I didn't...

I mumbled something about not knowing much about "natural therapies".

I should have said this:

"I don't know much about "natural" therapies. I prefer to take medicines that are carefully regulated, and that have effects and side-effects that are diligently quantified."

So there. But that would have been unnecessarily unpleasant, don't you think?

What I would like people to know is this:

Many people say they take "alternative medicines" because they are "natural", which on it's own is thought to be good (another topic for later), but also because this is perceived to make them safer (ie less or no side effects or toxic effects). In general however, there are very few effective drugs that have absolutely no side effects, "natural" or otherwise. A more realistic interpretation is that medicines that have no side effects have little or no actual effect, beyond placebo. 

Any "medicine" that you put into your body has to interact with your body (via receptors) to have an effect. If it can do this (produce a desired effect, pharmacologically) it can also cause side effects, and if you take enough of it, toxic effects. Herbs and spices are not magically different in this respect. 

There are also ideological reasons people like "natural therapies" such as a general suspicion of Big Pharma and Rich Doctors. Strangely the same people are not at all worried about the motives of Big Woo (large companies that fleece their customers into buying mostly worthless "alternative" rubbish). 

Anyway, you could always try sticking a lighted candle in your ear! Sounds sensible to me.

(you can probably pick one up from your local Pharmacy)

A gem from Steve Novella

"Motivated reasoning is what most people do most of the time – start with a desired conclusion and then find reasons to support it (humans are very good at that). However, the whole point of philosophy is to rise above this tendency and follow strict rules of logic, while the point of science is similar but also to follow the evidence."


http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/the-motivated-reasoning-of-egnorance/#more-3506

Morals and Evolution

Peter Singer on what evolution might teach us about our moral judgements.

http://www.themonthly.com.au/peter-singer-does-understanding-evolution-help-us-understand-ethics-3036

Criticism of Sam Harris - his response:

http://www.samharris.org/site/full_text/response-to-critics/

Is there a naturalistic fallacy? Does Sam Harris fall into it?

Evidence for Non-Existence

There is an excellent blog here at http://rationesola.blogspot.com

In this blog entry http://rationesola.blogspot.com/2010/11/is-it-rational-to-believe-in.html the author makes a convoluted case for the improbability of Christian (and general) supernaturalism. I don't know if the author is male or female, so I'm taking a purely 50/50 (and possibly slightly politically correct) punt that she is a female. I will correct this if required should I obtain evidence of that necessity!

She makes the following point about the rationality of holding a belief in the Christian supernatural realm that is bread-and-butter agnosticism (and with which I fully agree):

Even if we granted, for the sake of argument, that the Christian supernatural realm might exist, the evidence, in this situation, is so bad that withholding belief in the existence of such a realm (or of any other) would be the only rational position available.

More importantly, like any good agnostic, she doesn't overstate the case:

It is important to note that this is not the same thing as saying that it is rational to believe that a supernatural realm does not exist. That position is not justified by the evidence: so far as that goes, it might well exist. 

And finally, but almost superfluously: 

But equally, just because we cannot confirm that a supernatural realm does not exist, doesn’t make it rational to believe that it does exist.

She is making the point that it is not rational to believe in something without evidence.

But then, in a footnote:

Another way of putting this is to speak in terms of probabilities. The absence of evidence for X doesn’t rule out the possibility that X could still exist. But it does make the existence of X highly improbable. So is it rationally acceptable to believe in something which, so far as the evidence goes, is highly improbable? 

Here is a glimpse of the the probabilities argument, elegantly graphed in Dawkins' The God Delusion, for positive atheism (for want of a better description) http://crtopherthinks.blogspot.com/2010/04/positive-and-negative.html

For if the absence of evidence for X makes X highly improbably and prompts the question "so is it rationally acceptable to believe in something which, so far as the evidence goes, is highly improbable?" then it equally suggests "is it rationally acceptable to NOT believe in something NOT existing, the existence of which, so far as the evidence goes, is highly improbable?"

In this quote the Solo Rationalist (yes yes I know....) appears to contradict her earlier point implying it would be less than rational to suggest the supernatural realm does not exist on the absence of evidence for its existence. In the probabilities argument, the absence of evidence makes it's existence highly improbable, and thus it's non-existence highly probable (since the probability coin can have only two sides). In this case it would seem quite rational to claim a belief in the non-existence of the supernatural, since to not believe in the non-existence of something that is highly improbable, is irrational!

I only make this point because many argue that agnosticism is the most rational position. And indeed on the face of it one must ask what constitutes evidence for the non-existence of something. Perhaps the probability concept will help me. I'm gonna think on it! BTW I don't mean to suggest that rationesola unknowingly contradicted herself. The footnote applied to an earlier part in the post than the part I initially quoted.

The Patient Atheist

http://faith-theology.blogspot.com/2010/09/tomas-halik-atheism-and-patience.html

My comment.