Mikey Refutes Determinism -upbeat version

Dedicated to those determinists who don't know the difference between influence on thought & behavior & determining thought and behavior.

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• free
• will
• determinism

[MSlapik]

That doesn't make any sense. The human mind is still rational, it can still have insight into the nature of existence, even if its actions a determined by the environment. If all you can say about his theory is that according to it, Skinner was determined to come up with it, it still holds. That says nothing about how logical the theory is, just about how it came to be. It is the theory that should be critiqued, not the way that it came to be. The theory holds.

[dawgie102]

In Skinner there is no such thing as the human mind.

Weare a biological robots.

Conscious thought cannot be explained by matter.Thinking must be from a differnt type of being,although extrinsicly dependent on matter in humans.Experience of your mind is the most direct truth u know. Determ.only posits matter which contradicts this:THAT we ARE aware.We reason.

The lower (matter) cannot give rise to the higher (thought. THE END

[enclave2k1]

First, stating we are a product of environment and heredity does not mean that there is no such thing as objective examination of evidence. This is the claim you made and it is fallacious. This would be a false dilemma/ false dichotomy. One can be a product of environment and heredity and still use evidence to come to a conclusion. Evidence is a product of ones environment and therefor no contradiction is made.

[enclave2k1]

The rest of your argument assumes that he is claiming we can not use objective evidence and therefore the rest of your argument is null as it is based on a false premise.

[dawgie102]

I am showing his absurdity!

[dawgie102]

We can say h. and e. influences us, however that is different than determining us.. Determining renders human thought and action absurd, as some modern philos. claim anyway

[MSlapik]

Besides, even if thought were on a higher plane, every input is still "lower" matter, and thus every thought is not only influenced, but with every input, determined by the "lower matter." However, I still don't agree with the statement thought is "higher" than matter. read my other comments for why.

[MSlapik]

The fact that we can discern certain parts of our deterministic universe shows that human thought does have insight into truth. If the chain reactions of atoms can be predicted if one knows every variable, as in simple chemical reactions, why not the whole universe.

[MSlapik]

It does NOT make human action absurd, just determined. That is all it is, determined. Human thought can still be logical, insightful, for the human mind is insightful, that fact that the universe is deterministic is irrelevant.

[MSlapik]

All the imputes are still physical, still known. Even if their not all physical, they still exist, actions are still determined. There is no evidence to support the allegation that the human mind is exempt in some way from the laws of physics. (What your saying is that it chooses actions, there is not a action- reaction, but rather the action is determined. The atoms of the human are no different than the actions of a table.

[MSlapik]

I could give you plenty of examples. If thought and conscious were a phenomenon resulting from the nature of the brain, (far more reasonable than coming up with all this stuff about a spirit and soul with no evidence supporting it.) If matter exists in the way that science supports, determinism is correct. But even if it doesn't, freewill still most likely does not exist.

[MSlapik]

Well, first of all, even if it is separate from matter, every single input is physical, which would end out not only influencing, but knowing every input, one can know the output. But then again it is irresponsible to create some elaborate reasoning for something unknown if there is a simple explanation.

[enclave2k1]

So while the universe is not deterministic in the strictest sense, we really don't know how much these effect the human mind. Regardless this quantum randomness is just that, random. So at worst Skinners idea would be corrected to heredity, environment, and some randomness. While this couldn't be duplicated by a machine (see Laplace's demon) we in no way can attribute thought to 'free will'. This is my argument.

[enclave2k1]

I agree somewhat. Determinism was proven incorrect in the 1920s-1930s by the Bose-Einstein equations. They proved that there is background fluctuations within our universe (on the order of 1/2ħv or 1/2 * plank length * frequency). This accounts for randomness we see on an atomic level when observing particle decay (see Schroedinger's cat experiment) and the probabilistic nature of electrons (see dual slit experiment)