It’s just been a bit weird. When I joined this discussion back in post 300, I thought I was just nitpicking.
The argument of “selective benefit cannot be an explanation if something else would also have selective benefit” (paraphrased) was so obviously flawed, and also not necessary to get to his conclusion, that I thought he’d just say something like “Ah right, maybe that’s not the best argument, but there are also reasons a, b and c…” and we’d move on.
Instead we’ve seen doubling down, tripling down and ultimately nth-ening down.
Anyway, in his last couple of posts I note a couple of critical misconceptions so I am still hoping that this is somehow just a good faith misapprehension.
Then tell me the difference between the following two cases.
Socrates’ mortality is supposedly explained by his being human. For that to be the case, being human must imply being mortal (you can’t be human without also being mortal). If being human were also compatible with being something else (i.e. not being mortal), being human would not explain being mortal.
The human feeling of free will is supposed to be explained by the selective advantage it provides. For that to be the case, this selective advantage must imply having the feeling of free will (you can’t have that advantage without also having the feeling). If having the selective advantage were also compatible with something else (i.e. not having the feeling of free will), having that advantage would not explain having the feeling of free will.
Both are cases of a circumstance A (Socrates being mortal; humans having the feeling of free will) supposedly being explained by a different circumstance B (Socrates being human; the adaptive benefit of (the behavior produced by) having the feeling of free will). Both thus posit an argument of the form ‘B → A, B; hence, A’. This argument is clearly valid. If it is also sound, then B is a good explanation for A, for B being the case necessitates A being the case. But the argument is sound only in the case of Socrates, as the fact that there are other ways of obtaining the same selective benefit means that ‘B → A’, i.e. ‘selective benefit → feeling of free will’, is false.
Or to put it another way, do you think Socrates being human would be a good explanation for Socrates being mortal if it were possible to be both human and immortal?
Well I am not using this terminology at all because I think it is confusing. For you.
I think you are somehow imagining “explanation” mapping directly to “cause”, and that’s not quite right. An explanation relates a cause to an effect, it is not in itself directly interchangeable with a cause.
No-one has said that “selective benefit” causes a trait that is preferential in that environment (indeed this would be Lamarckism, refuted around 200 years ago). The trait exists first, it has some property that is beneficial in that environment, and that trait becomes more prevalent in future populations. If there’s a cause here it is the properties of the environment and the phenomena that caused DNA mutations.
For example, let’s say two giraffes are talking about why they have long necks.
Giraffe A suggests that perhaps it has a selective benefit.
Giraffe B asks the perfectly reasonable question of what is the selective benefit?
Giraffe A hypothesizes that long necks enable them to reach leaves high on the tree that are otherwise inaccessible.
Then Half_Giraffe_Half_Wit appears:
And by this logic, Half_Giraffe_Half_Wit has proven that Giraffe A is wrong. Because of course there are many other traits would enable giraffes to reach higher leaves, like a long trunk, or being able to fly, or being strong enough to knock down trees.
Or do you suppose there’s an error in Half_Giraffe_Half_Wit’s reasoning?
The point of introducing formal terminology was to directly demonstrate the structural equivalence between different examples of (purported) explanations, because you keep confusing the direction of entailment—i.e. giving examples of the same explanandum being entailed by different explanantia, which is no problem for something being an explanation, as refuting my assertion that one and the same expansion must uniquely entail the explanandum. But Ok, if you don’t feel this is helpful, I can drop it.
So let me try a different approach to highlight what part plays which structural role. Taking again the example from above:
Socrates’ mortality is supposedly explained by his being human. For that to be the case, being human must imply being mortal (you can’t be human without also being mortal). If being human were also compatible with being something else (i.e. not being mortal), being human would not explain being mortal.
The human feeling of free will is supposed to be explained by the selective advantage it provides. For that to be the case, this selective advantage must imply having the feeling of free will (you can’t have that advantage without also having the feeling). If having the selective advantage were also compatible with something else (i.e. not having the feeling of free will), having that advantage would not explain having the feeling of free will.
In the above, everything in italics is now the thing-to-be-explained, and everything in bold the explaining-thing. As you can see, the structure is exactly the same in both cases (and in particular, there is no consequent affirmed anywhere, although it seems you’ve finally stopped trying that manoeuver).
Now, just answer me this one question: could Socrates being human explain Socrates being mortal, if it were possible to be human and not be mortal?
No, of course not. I have been quite clear that the relation between the thing-to-be-explained and the explaining-thing must be one of logical entailment, which has nothing to do with material causation. That is, for B to explain A, B must entail A (and B must obtain). Then—and only then—do we know that A, because B.
That having the selective benefit must entail the feeling of free will in no sense means that it must cause it. It simply must be the case whatever has this benefit by necessity also must have the feeling. In the same way, that being human entails being mortal does not mean that it causes it. It just needs to be the case that whatever is human, by necessity, also must be mortal.
You’re not going to comment on the giraffe example? I made it map word for word to your argument. I’m very keen to hear what you think is the critical difference, and why your argument is sound even though the giraffe’s clearly isn’t.
But OK, in the meantime, I’ll give a response to your new example.
Already this is somewhat problematic.
The Socrates syllogism is used to illustrate deductive logic.
Meanwhile an explanation is not merely cause nor merely effect; it’s the whole shebang. It includes the proposition, the observation and the inference. And usually a question; some phenomena that we wish to understand better.
Calling a cause an “explanation” is setting us up for a logical fallacy.
Correct. That’s indeed the information we’re given in the proposition All men are mortal.
No.
Because firstly, as I say, an explanation is the whole shebang. But secondly, and more importantly here, “selective advantage” is an abstract thing that does not exist absent context.
The hypothesis is that the feeling of free will provides some survival benefit to a particular organism in a particular environment due to some property of the trait.
So yes, if we phrase it more accurately like that, then the effect absolutely follows the cause: if there are organisms with the trait of having a greater feeling of free will, and this trait provides a survival benefit for those organisms, then a greater number of those organisms survive.
(there’s an RNG element, but over many generations we can ignore this)
And the conclusion is flawed for the reasons already given.
And it’s just as well, because if this argument worked, then we could never say any trait has a selective benefit, because we can always conceive of alternatives that would also have a benefit.
You would essentially have shut down all evolutionary biology.
Well, I was hoping to get you to be able to answer it yourself; besides, I asked first. But now that you’ve answered my question, I’ll return the favor and answer yours.
First, though, some more important points: this post, I think, marks some progress for the first time in a long time. Finally, you seem to have understood the form of the argument I’m making, and are engaging with it on the proper terms, rather than misunderstanding the direction of entailment. So at least now you seem to understand that I’m not making a childish logical error. You still think I’m wrong, of course, so now you resort to special pleading—sure, explanation usually works that way, but it’s different in the case of natural selection, because of context, or whatever; but that at least gives us a new point of contention.
Now for the points you raised.
Which is what makes it so apt: in order for an explanation to, well, explain, you need to be able to deduce what is to be explained from that explanation. If you want to answer a ‘why’ question, what follows the ‘because’ must entail the 'why’s object—hence, that Socrates is human answers why he is mortal.
But if the familiarity of the example is problematic to you, feel free to substitute any of the other examples—they all have the same structure, after all. Indeed, that’s the reason I introduced this structure: to be able to easily abstract away from the peculiarities and preconceptions any given instance might evoke, and get to what really matters.
‘The whole shebang’ is a bit too unspecific to work with, but let me first note that, again, explanations have nothing to do with cause and effect, per se. That the number 43 can’t be expressed as a product of other numbers is explained, but not caused, by its being prime. And all the elements you claim for an explanation are there (as they are in all the other cases): there’s a proposition, that 43 can’t be written as a product of factors, the observation that all prime numbers can’t be written as products of factors, and the inference that, as 43 is prime, it can’t be written as a product of factors. The question, of course, is just ‘Why can’t 43 be written as a product of factors?’.
(Undoubtedly there are better examples. But the structure is clear enough in this one, and again, it’s important not to let the details of any particular example spoil the view for the background structure—fail to see the forest for the trees, so to speak.)
That I don’t understand at all. I haven’t called a cause an explanation anywhere, but it’s still clear that causes are generally good explanations, even if some explanations aren’t causes. The full set of causes for a phenomenon seems to explain it sufficiently well, answering the question of why it occurs. I also don’t see what sort of fallacious reasoning would follow there—if causes aren’t explanations, that would make an appeal to a cause as an explanation unsound, but not thereby the argument invalid.
Again, I can’t really work with ‘the whole shebang’. Can you make this somewhat more precise?
Then, the argument’s structure doesn’t exclude any context you might like to add as important. It follows through just as well it you replace ‘selective advantage’ by ‘selective advantage in the proper context and particular environment of the organism’. Because it will still be the case that this fails to entail the feeling of free will, because this selective advantage can just as well be attained without it.
But this is just begging the question against the examples I’ve introduced—it simply assumes there is a reproductive advantage that’s due to the feeling of free will, but if that can be achieved otherwise—which is my contention—then organisms having the advantage without this feeling will thrive just as well in the given context and environment.
I note, by the way, that you haven’t actually answered my question, which if you recall was:
If you’re tripped up by the Socrates-example sometimes being used in another context, feel free to substitute any of the other cases, e.g.:
Could @Mijin drinking (however many) beers explain @Mijin being drunk, if it were possible to drink that many beers and not be drunk?
(And if that trips you up due to the fact that different people have different tolerances, and it’s possible for some to drink that much without being drunkt, then you’re free to use another example.)
No, of course not. As I’ve already pointed out, the argument is sound in many cases, because its premises are often true. They just aren’t in this case. So a creature in a well-lit environment that has the capacity to make use of that light will have an advantage over others, because light gives you information (like colors, e.g.) that you can’t attain any other way; so it’s fair to say that they evolved a sense of vision due to the survival benefit this allows.
Furthermore, other traits generally lead to complex phenotypical differences; so the giraffe’s long neck and an ability to push over trees aren’t really substitutable, because both animals will need vast other amounts of difference in calorie intake, muscular structure, body-plan and so on, such that it is vastly unlikely that there is no other relevant morphological difference for selection to act on.
But there’s no such difference in the case of the feeling of free will: natural selection simply doesn’t care about differences of how we feel, it cares about differences in behavior. That’s why a creature with and one without the feeling of free will can behave exactly alike, thus leaving simply no point of attack for natural selection to distinguish between them.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. However, before I tackle your giraffe-scenario, let’s first do two little warmups. To that end, take the example I raised above:
There are two traits—having eyes and not having eyes—which confer the same survival advantage: none. Supposing there are also no additional costs associated with having eyes, we simply have a lack of reason for them to evolve, even though it’d be clearly possible (through some vastly unlikely chain of random mutations, say). So if you’d find a population of perfectly sighted creatures in a dark cave, there is no survival advantage to point to to explain the presence of these eyes: natural selection can’t account for it. Thus, we have that, out of a pool of two creatures with the same fitness, one is chosen—but natural selection can’t account for this choice, because it can’t distinguish between those creatures.
Now suppose you have a population of ancestral creatures, popA, and two varieties with genetic differences, popI and popII. Suppose these are phenotypically indistinguishable, but that each has a survival advantage over the creatures from popA. Over time, we’d expect that popA will be outcompeted by popI and popII. But now, suppose that eventually, you find that only variant II still occurs in the total population; variant I has vanished. Again, we have the situation that out of a pool of two creatures with the same fitness, one is chosen. Can we appeal to natural selection to explain this?
Obviously, we can’t: natural selection acts on the level of the phenotype, and as stipulated, the differences in genotype between popI and popII don’t make any difference in phenotype. Rather, we might appeal to genetic drift to explain the difference: it just so happened.
Now to the giraffe-example. If it is the case that there is a variant that has all the same reproductively relevant advantages (behaviors, abilities, calorie requirements, what have you), then yes, we can’t appeal to natural selection as a reason for why the exitant variety is the OG (the original giraffe) rather than the VG (variant giraffe). Now, obviously this fails to be true for any realistic example: trunks or flying or strength require vastly different support systems than a long neck, and to think that these wouldn’t be selectively relevant simply beggars belief. Very few changes to any complex system can be made that don’t also change lots of other things.
That is, in the vast majority of cases, when we appeal to natural selection as a reason for some phenotypical trait, we’re indeed making a sound argument, so you need not worry about evolutionary biology. (Pace @Riemann, who seems to hold that such arguments are never sound, and that nobody who understands selection or the word ‘because’ would make them.)
But evolution is only sensible to changes in phenotype. Changes in genotype, somewhere along the long causal chain between genotype and phenotype, that don’t affect the phenotype simply are invisible to it. But replacing the feeling of free will with, say, a feeling of compulsion, or just the absence of illusion about our deterministic (+ random) reasoning, does not produce such a change. Hence, selection simply doesn’t see it—if we exchanged the entire human population with modified versions lacking the feeling of free will behind its back, it wouldn’t notice a thing. But then, it can’t possibly be the reason for the prevalence of this feeling. It just doesn’t care. It can’t care!
Directly after I used that phrase I then elaborated that I mean an explanation includes at least the proposition, observation and inference.
You haven’t addressed this point, but it is critical because one of the key errors that you are making is in trying to label one particular term in an argument – e.g. Socrates is human – an explanation. But in itself, it’s nothing.
How so? Can you reference the actual words I used – that we are specifically talking about the context in which some humans have a trait of feeling they have free will and that this trait confers a survival benefit?
It’s pretty much a tautology that this would lead to natural selection of that trait so good luck showing how it doesn’t actually follow.
That’s the hypothesis. It’s not an assumption, it’s a claim, which in a normal conversation we’d then discuss the evidence and arguments for. We can’t get there because you’ve stopped everything with a flawed logical argument.
If there is another trait that can provide exactly the same benefit then yes, organisms will thrive equally well, by definition. This is not an argument against the trait evolving due to being beneficial as I have explained countless times.
As I say, in any given ecological niche different organisms may solve the same problem different ways; uniqueness of solution is not a requirement in evolution.
Of course I did. I said this:
So if P, then necessarily Q. You can’t have P and ~Q. But this is nothing to do with the dispute here. It’s a complete straw man that anybody is disputing basic deductive logic.
I’ll reply to the rest in a separate post in another time, because once again I think you’re trying to overwhelm me with firefighting, when the dispute is actually very simple:
Does the possibility of other, equally beneficial traits exclude the possibility of a trait more beneficial than the status quo being selected by the environment? No.
I habe, at least using my best guess at what you meant by ‘proposition, observation, and inference’:
I have made very clear what I consider an explanation to consist of:
Etc.pp.
I have also used the term ‘explanans’ to refer to the part ‘Socrates is human’, in order to disambiguate—which I dropped on your objection, so now admonishing me for failing to properly distinguish matters here is a bit odd.
Nevertheless, it’s also completely clear what’s meant by saying that ‘Socrates is human’ explains that ‘Socrates is mortal’ in everyday speech: we have a question, ‘Why is Socrates mortal?’, which is answered by ‘Because Socrates is human’. This leaves the background nomological statement ‘all humans are mortal’ implicit, but generally doesn’t lead to confusion unless you’re really looking for it.
I don’t know what you’re asking of me, here. I mean, sure I can use those words: ‘in the specific context in which some humans have a trait of feeling they have free will and that trait confers a survival benefit, that survival benefit could also be obtained absent the feeling of free will’, but that’s of course just a trivial example of specification—something true in general will also be true in any specific case. ‘Water is wet’ implies that ‘water is wet in the specific case of a puddle outside the Town Hall building at 4:35 pm on a Tuesday’, so why bother with all that?
And, well, there just isn’t any reason to accept the hypothesis! After all, selection doesn’t care how we feel, it only cares how we act. So feeling free and acting a certain way, versus acting the same way without any feeling of freedom, is just one and the same for selection. So it can’t select one over the other!
Ok, so just to be on the same page here: you are saying that Socrates being human would not explain Socrates being mortal if being human did not entail being mortal. Correct?
Again, this is not the argument I’m making. A trait that springs up randomly and is beneficial certainly will out-compete other, less adaptive traits, whether there are other equally beneficial traits possible or not. But if there are such traits, we can not point to selection as choosing—and thereby explaining the presence of—that particular trait! There simply is no way for it to make that choice, as there is not even any difference between the options!
Consider a colorblind person selecting their evening attire. They have two formal suits, each of which would be superior over the jeans-and-shirt. Their only difference is in their color. Suppose they grab the red one: would you think it is right to say that they chose the red suit? I think that would be very odd, since color was no factor whatsoever in their choice. The reason the person ended up with the red, rather than the green suit is not their choice—they simply selected a suit, and the two options exclude one another, and thus, only one could be realized.
It’s the same with natural selection. It selects for fitness, for reproductive advantage; it’s blind to anything that doesn’t make a difference there. So we ended up with the feeling of free will in the same way the colorblind person ended up with the red suit: only one of a set of exclusive options can be realized, but it’s not the case that this specific one was selected. Again, there simply is no difference for selection to act on between the options!
Firstly, we’re talking about a trait being more beneficial than the status quo.
If it were the case that there are some humans with merely the feeling of free will, and some humans with actual free will then you could have an argument that there is “no way for it to make that choice”. That’s not the hypothesis though. The hypothesis is that there is no trait of actual free will.
Secondly, again, I think you’re still seeing “selection” as an abstract thing absent context. And then your argument is that “selection” doesn’t inherently point to “feeling of free will”. But the hypothesis is actually a specific scenario, with the “choice” happening within that scenario, not as some ethereal thing.
It’s like if I hypothesized that my ex-girlfriend scratched my car. Your argument is something like “That hypothesis is flawed because any number of things could have equally scratched your car, and ‘vandalism’ doesn’t entail ‘ex-girlfriend’”.
Of course it doesn’t!
The hypothesis of “ex-girlfriend” is unproven until we can provide supporting evidence, but not logically flawed.
I don’t know what you think pretending that this is somehow the first time I’ve said something like that gets you, but I’ll just note it’s not:
Obviously, this is also no help for the argument, I would’ve hoped this is clear by now. But I guess that was only a fool’s hope. That the colorblind person ends up with the red suit does not mean they selected the red suit: color played no part in their selection. Likewise, the feeling of free will plays no part for natural selection.
But I’ll hold off explaining this further until you’ve had a chance to address the points you said you’d wanted to get back to.
To be honest, by this point, I knew that the closest we would get to an admission of error would “Oh that’s what I meant all along”.
The passage you just quoted doesn’t support at all the idea that you understood and agreed that the fact that we can conceive of multiple positive traits doesn’t mean that a single trait cannot have been selected by the environment relative to the status quo. Whereas other quotes (including the one that made me join the discussion), clearly say the opposite:
And indeed now:
It’s embarrassing that you think this analogy is in any way analogous to the situation of a trait that has a survival benefit relative to the absence of that trait.
Nah I’m done. Shame on me x100 for not realizing what @Babale and @Riemann figured out much earlier in this thread.
Well see, I still think we’ve been making progress. You seem to realize that you haven’t got a leg to stand on, so you:
Declare yourself the ‘winner’, which I just am unable to admit due to my inherent intellectual dishonesty…
…mount a personal attack against my intellectual abilities…
…and finally, stage a huffy exit, completing the trifecta—you totally would address all my points, if only that weren’t so far beneath you!
But contrary to you, I’m not ‘in it to win it’. All I’ve ever done is patiently try to explain a very simple matter to you—that a selection process blind to the element it supposedly selects can’t be appealed to as explaining why one out of a set of equivalent options is selected. In this respect—though obviously not in others—the colorblind person ending up with the red, instead of the green suit is exactly analogous to us ending up with an illusion of free will, instead of a feeling of compulsion, say.
That doesn’t mean that the colorblind person can’t end up with the red suit, and that we can’t end up with a feeling of free will entirely due to natural forces, so these:
Are in no conflict whatsoever. The colorblind person can’t differentiate between the red and the green suit, so if they choose one at random, it’s fallacious to say that they chose the red one—the color is simply not a factor in that choice. You might chalk it up to randomness, or accident, but not to a selection being made. Consider that if they’d ended up with the green suit, you could make the same argument—so it must both be true that they select for the red and the green one, which is mutually exclusive.
Likewise, suppose we had ended up without a feeling of free will. Then you could run exactly the same argument, and claim that natural selection explains why we end up with no feeling of free will. But if selection could explain just as well why we end up with a feeling of free will and why we end up without it, it obviously explains neither! We could run this entire debate in that counterfactual world, with you arguing that the absence of a feeling of freedom was selected due to its adaptive benefit, and me pointing out that since selection doesn’t act on the level of our feelings, but on that of our actions, that’s simply mistaken. But I fear that also in that world, I would not have any more success in making this clear to you.
Free will is the capacity of individuals to make their own choices and take actions without being externally coerced or predetermined. It’s the belief that, when faced with options, individuals can choose one path over another, and are therefore responsible for their decisions and actions. This concept is central to discussions about morality, ethics, and personal responsibility
I would say “choice” rather than “free will since I consider free will an incoherent concept, as I’ve said elsewhere. With that caveat no, I wouldn’t, you might as well just exterminate humanity and be done with it at that point. Humans who can’t make choices are just remote controlled automatons. And that’s presuming the mind controller doesn’t just make people eat their own fingers or something like that, just because they can and no one can stop them.
“Bring about world peace with universal mind control” is “supervillain plot” level stuff. And I’d expect it to have about the same results as a supervillain winning.
Would accepting a hyper-addictive drug that makes you into the slave for life of whomever can supply it be an example of “free will”? Whether you have “free will”/choice beforehand, you won’t afterwards.
I would say if you know all the fact before hand then taking it would be a free will choice even if that choice means you will no longer have free will in the future.
