Materialism, idealism, free will and god.

Great Debates
41

[QUOTE]

To inquire after the meaning or object of one’s own existence or of creation generally has always seemed to me absurd from an objective point of view. And yet everybody has certain ideals which determine the direction of his endeavours and his judgments. In this sense I have never looked upon ease and happiness as ends in themselves-such an ethical basis I call more proper for a herd of swine. The ideals which have lighted me on my way and time after time given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. Without the sense of fellowship which men of like mind, of preoccupation with the objective, the eternally unattainable in the field of art and scientific research, life would have seemed to me empty. The ordinary objects of human endeavour–property, outward success, luxury - have always seemed to me contemptible.

[QUOTE]

The quote from Einstein was from his ‘The world as I see it’ and he was referencing happiness as an end where swine is used as a comparison because they live a life seeking base pleasures.

Einstein would perhaps agree with Aristotle over the view that pleasure is derived via whatever action or goal is acquired (even depriving oneself of pleasure by being temperate is pleasourous) and that seeking base pleasures from the body are not proper, rather ‘truth, goodness, and beauty’. Goodness is perhaps subjective, the same can be said of beauty. These should be ends which man explores in order to live a good life, this is more important to him I suppose than simply beign piggish and striving for general euphoria.

He later says “Nevertheless we all feel that it is indeed very reasonable and important to ask ourselves how we should try to conduct our lives. The answer is, in my opinion: satisfaction of the desires and needs of all, as far as this can be achieved, and achievement of harmony and beauty in the human relationships. This presupposes a good deal of conscious thought and of self-education.”

So perhaps by beauty he means beauty by harmony, in quality relationships, etc. It isn’t an ethical treatise but his take on the meaning of life and determinism is interesting

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I have had a tough time pondering his explanation for the absurdities associated with a celestial being and the meaning of life.

He, in essence, is against a pursuit because a God cannot reward or punish his creation when they themselves act due to neccessity. Man is just one species and a meaningless speck in the finite universe which most believe has an end (the sun will get too close I think). It is absurd to think our determinist actions… in which we act to fufull desires or to prevent unwanted circumstances… have any relationship whatsoever with something else…when taken into the general outlook… “what is the goal or meaning of man and the meaning of nature” it loses meaning to Einstein but he doesn’t elaborate. He simply says it is “unreasonable to assume somebody whose desires are connected with the happenings.”… happenings being nature.

So it is unreasonable and arbitrary to assume a being has anything whatsoever to do with the happenings of our determinist nature. I’ve been confused because I’ve been questioning man’s belief in a God. This belief is perhaps an action in thought, thus it is the fufillment or prevention of desired or undesirable consequences, it is in line with our nature. A belief in God and the search for meaning are properties unique to mankind, it is something I think must be explored.

It is also absurd to think a God’s desires match up with our determinist fates… we are like worker bees where we carry out our business on our day-to-day lives, ignoring certain things and never acting away from our own desires…you describe it as a game. I believe this is what he means by determinist but I’m not sure, I uncovered his philosophies just recently.

42

No worries! I never even consider the possibility of anyone thinking I’m anything short of enlightened.

Now, to the ass. The entire problem is, as suggested by wikipedia, overly abstracted. Allowing for the probability that such a problem would ever occur (There’s tons of aspects to every choice, not only should bales of hay be equally distant and equal of size, the ass may have preferances as to which way the wind is blowing, how rough the paths are, how green the grass growing alongside is, etc), but also “mind” is no independently existing eternal phenomenon. Different minds might very well solve such a problem in different ways. I don’t have a cite, but I’ve heard that flies that can’t make their way out of a dark room, starts going forward (obviously), up, and to the left.
My assumption is that the general way a human mind would solve ass-like situations (including those that only looks like a choice between two equals, but has differences that even the unconscious mind might very well be aware of), is by a hierarchy of preferances. For example, air, hunger, sleep, warmth, (…), the choice with polkadots, whatever’s to the left, etc.
I also concieve that although a person would be able of choosing something that satisfied his lower needs to a certain degree, above something that satisfied a higher need significantly less, at the lowest levels, needs would be evaluated step by step. Fulfilling need #314 wins over fulfilling need #315, #316 and #486, etc.
Anyway, the real answer is that the mind is too complex for a “paradox” such as Buridan’s ass. No need to invoke a free will just yet, at least not on that basis.
You might have made some more points, but I’m off for now.

43

Translation: I only enjoy arguing with people kind enough not to point out internal contradictions in my statements. Otherwise I feel like and ass or I end up defending ideas and concepts that even I find idiotic, like dead werewolves floating outside my perceptions. It’s unpleasant and I know when I’m about to lose points.

Reasons are causes that bring about effects. “I choose this because of that.” This is not a middle road. This is causality, also known as determinism.

Your choices here are still based 100% on a combination of your biology and your past environment, neither of which you chose. You’re a power hitter only if you can be, a finesse strategist only if your biology and past environment allow it and you don’t perceive a better option. You relegate yourself to either the front office or the announcer’s booth because you perceive one, the other, or something else in your best interest at the time, again based on your biology and environment. What else is there?

44

This seems to be the logic shared by Einstein but I’m not fully comprehensive of such a thing.

Take for example tomorrow. I have no idea what my desires will be in the morning and which action I will take. Perhaps tonight I will have a grand dream and rise with a smile, perhaps a nightmare and I’ll rise to do something else, maybe I’ll wing it and just go to pee first. The future is uncertain to me but it is determined in that my dreams constitute the supressed thoughts of my day, Frued viewed dreams as ‘wish fufillers’ which is partly similar.

But my understanding is the world is determined because I’m self-determined to be self-preserving.

In other words I’ll always carry out my desires looking to preserve my existence the best I can and seek happiness, but I have no idea what that will be now. If it is determined, what my desires are now determines the desires I’ll have for tomorrow, and I’m just a continual ‘cause and effect’ chain that never ends, quite a different way to think of life.

I think what’s more intriguing about this theory is men become like bee’s. Man is disposed to desiring happiness and being self-preserving, he will act according to these desires, just like the innate desires of a bee. They will protect the queen and go about their work, they won’t look to shop for new bee-hives or kick back on Sundays after they indulged in flower pollen. They also don’t readily get depressed and go off into the rain and jeopardize their lives. It seems like they are almost like us, humans won’t ever eat their own shit unless the man has a psyhcological perverse nuance, and man will always be interested in his own affairs. “He must do what he does”.

I’d like to think that the uneducated man has hope of future enlightenment, he isn’t disposed to living a life of base pleasure forever not capable of higher faculty pleasures. This man is doomed to live a meagre life through no fault of his own, he was simply determined and died determined. I must admit me wanting to believe such a thing doesn’t make it true, I would like to believe Jesus of Nazareth died for man’s sins and I’m given the oppurtunity of eternal life via paradise, but this would be through sheer want and not evidence.

45

Interesting thread. I’m rather amazed that folks are arguing for free will - the idea that it doesn’t exist is something that I would consider obvious. There’s nothing about our biology that allows anything other than an inevitable progression of chemical states as far as I’ve researched. Is there an argument for free will that doesn’t boil down to the rhetorical?

Drop a ball and it falls, then bounces. It’s trivial to predict the result. Ditto with a nerve cell firing based on its synapses - if one knows enough information a priori it’s just a matter of physics and chemistry as to what happens next. On the nuts and bolts level, this is how it works; from the flow of water and energy to virii, cells, and the eerily Turing-like actions of DNA molecules.

For large n it’s computationally infeasible to make a direct prediction, but if it’s a quantum universe where all measureable quantites are granular (and indications point that it is), then it’s possible to have all the information in principle - although it would take a machine the size of the universe to store it all.

Quantum tunneling may seem like an issue against a physical argument for determinism and it is, but one would have to demonstrate that it can be controlled to use it in support of free will. Stated another way - random influence (if indeed it is random - but indications point that it is) is not choice.

Anecdote ahead.

It’s pretty common for people to forget what they wanted to talk to me about. I tell them to go back to where they were when they thought of the thing they wanted to say, and after doing so they always remember.

Naturally I try to avoid thinking about the issue much, it’s a trifle scary that we’re just apparently meat computers in a world that God left on auto-pilot - perhaps scarier still that this century we’ll likely build better minds than our own by scaling the mechanisms.

I imagine that an argument with a super-intelligent computer about free will would collapse into a shouting match in which both, rightly, accuse the other of being just mechanical constructs that make letters appear on a screen.

Enjoying the thread, BTW…

46

And results would be calculated in real time. I suppose the only way to gather information would be to somehow find out what the properties of the singularity before the big bang logically must have been, and take it from there. Of course, that’s not exactly giving our fortune-telling machine a head start over reality.