I believe Sam Harris is going in the wrong direction here as is the guy doing the NeuroLaw. They’re valid pursuits for hypothetical reasons but for them to declare non-existence of free-will is premature. Many of our predictable patterns are predictable because we chose to behave in predictable ways for social reasons.
—
A man convinced against his will is of same opinion still. If you were at a neutral starting position, I would go through the points but it would be an uphill climb with diminishing returns given the starting point you’re at. [at the very least, you express an uncritical interest in his viewpoints]
—-
This is what I mean. You perceive the system he presents as perfect and infallible. From that standpoint, for me to attempt to dissuade you would be an exercise in futility, not due to lack of contrary points but due to a lack of expressed neutrality on your part.
=====
I just finished reading “Mathematics and Plausible Reasoning: Patterns of Plausible Inference by Polya G.” and I’ve moved onto “Reasoning about change : time and causation from the standpoint of artificial intelligence by Yoav Shoham”, so that’s where my brain is at.
===
The concept of the inevitability of where you’re at right now in your thinking. From the Sam Harris standpoint, you couldn’t be thinking any other way than how you are.
—-
He’s talking about the beauty of systems-thinking and in that, I agree, just not his final conclusions and where they go from there.
===
The leap of faith required. Some people gladly go from 0.9 to 1. I see it as a rounding error that has pragmatic value for some purposes but not all.
====
As a boy, I was diagnosed with anxiety. Never took medicine for it but at 11, I went to biofeeedback and guided meditation. Even prior, I learned to ‘pause and think’ to correct a stutter. As the years went on, my interests have been introspective, looking at ways to make that ‘gap’ larger, not so much a pause in time but rather the efficiency of that ‘gap’ that’s available from continuous introspection.
Still working on it.
====
If the only degrees of freedom I have is to wiggle a pinky, I will wiggle, even if I have all the constraints of prior histories bearing down upon me doing otherwise.
====
The complexity of the systems involved is tremendous. I’ve had an interest in connecitonism since I first learned about it in 1990 and have studied it on and off through the years. Prior to that, in high school, it was theoretical physics (was going to be my major but thankfully the profeessor was unavailable, bringing me into developmental psychology instead).
Were my choices contingent upon a selection of interests I had ‘tendencies’ to gravitate towards based upon some events in my own personal history and influenced my decision making processes? Sure.
But nobody else was there in those decision-making processes and nobody else has that personal history.
====
[I’m grateful for the choices I did not make in life or could not make. As alternate histories they would have been different and I would have been fine, but there is no other possible world I would want to be in than this one right now, typing this very message]
====
A compatible philosophical notion that suits both your and my philosophies would be https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modal_realism . This would allow for both to be true, the only question being: How close is your or my possible world to the actual world?
====
[responsivevoice_button voice="US English Male"]