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[RyanS]

Hello:

There is an argument that I have heard more than once from naturalists that proposes that hard determinism is a necessity. As I do not adhere to this view, and I am merely regurgitating what I know of the argument, I am relying on your knowledge of the topic to both fill in the gaps where I have left them and to respond accordingly. It seems to be a somewhat common argument, so I do not doubt your familiarity with the idea. The argument goes something like this:

All there is to life is matter and its interactions (this premise is asserted). Matter behaves in a predicable, necessary fashion, insomuch as to be describable by a series of laws, equations, and the like. For example, if one were to release a boulder from the top of a hill, it will -- if the conditions are replicated precisely -- follow the same path down the hill every time. As human minds are simply the interactions of chemicals and electrical signals, the outcomes of neural processes are subject to natural laws just as much as any non-sentient object. Therefore, as the boulder has no control of the path by which it tumbles down the hill, man has no control over what it is that he chooses, for any 'will' that man has to act on is the product of physical processes that are as rigid and unopposable as the law of gravity. Man, then, has as much free will over the choices he makes as the boulder does over its rapid descent down its hill: none whatsoever.

I hope that I have provided enough of an argumentative skeleton to evoke the more philosophically rigorous line of reasoning for this position. How do you respond to this argument philosophically, scientifically, evangelistically, or otherwise?

Thank you,
-Ryan

[jimwalton]

Ryan,

Thanks for writing. I've encountered this argument many times, but it doesn't hold for at least three reasons. Let's take the boulder illustration. (1) Chaos theory shows us that predicting the exact track of the boulder down a hill on any given run is simply impossible. It will never run down the hill in exactly the same way twice. Therefore it's not a matter of simple "hard determinism," can't be, and never will be. Irregularities and unpredictability are always going to be at play. (2) The Butterfly Effect shows us that there are too many factors involved in any given phenomenon such as the boulder rolling, such that any accurate predictability (other than "down") is impossible. (3) The fact that the world (and the cosmos) are dynamic rather than static environments precludes hard determinism. There are always obstacles, unpredictabilities, and unknown causal factors that show hard determinism to be an illusion and not reality.

Notice the condition: "if conditions are replicated precisely..." Here's where the argument falls apart. In a dynamic system, there is no such thing.

But secondly, let's deal with this illusion of "As human minds are simply the interactions of chemicals and electrical signals, the outcomes of neural processes are subject to natural laws just as much as any non-sentient object." Here's a quote from Understanding Scientific Theories of Origins, p. 51:

"A reductionist materialist might object that intelligence is ultimately the product of the same basic physical processes that produce everything else in the universe. That is, intelligence is reducible to brain functions, which in turn are reducible to the processes chemists and physicists study. But this objection will not do, because we then would have no grounds for trusting intelligence. If intelligence is the product of physical and chemical processes that don’t aim at truth, cannot understand, and are incapable of making judgments, then reason is unreliable. Physical processes don’t lead us to meaning, judgments, values, and logic (entities that do not exist in the subatomic, chemical, biological, or molecular phenomena). This reductionist-materialist objection is self-defeating."

The movie "The Matrix" picked up on this pretty easily: "Is reality just electrical signals interpreted by your brain? If reality is more than that, then the truth is not dependent just on physical processes."

I'll throw one more quote at you, this one from Richard Swinburne (The Existence of God pp. 162-166):

"It is said by some that there are no distinct mental events—mental events are just brain events. There are two forms of the doctrine of reducibility of mental events to physical events. One is behaviorism—the view that all talk about a person’s thoughts, feelings, etc. is analyzable in terms of talk about his actual or possible behavior. This position has largely been deserted in modern science.

"The alternative position is mind-brain identity theory: all thoughts are brain states.

"But while brain events occur in the brain, we do not normally think of mental states as having any very exact location. It would be odd to say that my thought that today is Wednesday occurred 2 mm below such-and-such a spot.

"But mental events are not identical with brain states. Identity theorists say that brain states and mental events occur simultaneously and correlate, but they are not identical. Brain events are the firing of synapses, but mental events are phenomenal properties of blueness, loudness, pain, meaning, etc.

"We cannot describe the world fully if we use only terms denoting physical properties. … There are mental events that are not analyzable exclusively in non-mental terms."

Hopefully those help. We can talk more as you wish.

[Scape211]

This is a completely separate angle, but could we also include near death experiences (NDEs) into this? I've heard a few people talk about NDEs in a way that was surprising and backs up the idea that our brain or the physical sense of our brain/chemicals/etc is separate from the mind. For example, check this video (about 13 or 14 minutes in): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWSG5okmUr8

Dr. Gary Habermas uses a couple examples of NDEs where someone is either dead or has an out of body experience where they acquire data, come back to life, then remember said data. It isn't just arbitrary data either, it's data from other rooms or areas that they wouldn't get from just lying on the med-bed. Does this show that there is definitely a difference between the brain and the mind? Those under hard determinism would likely find a way to write this off or say they are recalling this data from a previous encounter somehow, but it's another point that could be discussed.

[jimwalton]

While I consider some NDEs to be legitimate, skeptics lump them all together and write them off as brain chemical activity. Well, of course they're brain chemical activity. The question is: Is that all they are? I agree with you that some of them defy explanation as "previous stimuli" or as hallucinations.

[Scape211]

Very true. It's hard to work it into the discussion sometimes. They chalk it up to the same grounds as miracles. Dr. Gary Habermas earlier in said video talks about how those opposing Christianity kind of say similar things for the resurrection in that we appear to have data that is ok or possibly accurate, but since the conclusion defies what they view as normal (meaning miraculous) its not really believable. Thats always the hard line people don't want to step over and where the bias just wont go beyond.

In honesty this is not something I often reach for in discussion since people tend to roll their eyes, but if you go deeper it can lead here if it helps.

[RyanS]

Hello:

While I understand and could argue the idea that reductionist materialism strips the foundation upon which we can trust intelligence (even Darwin at the end of The Origin of Species lamented that, if what he had concluded is true, then he has no reason for why to trust the conclusion), I do not think the rest of what you wrote provides sound objection to the idea. Or, if it does, I am simply missing it. So, permit me to clarify a bit.

I concede fully that I erred in writing the argument. It is evident to even a child who tries to rebalance his/her fallen block tower that conditions cannot be replicated. However, the argument is better described as "if the conditions were to be replicated precisely", which avoids the pragmatics of the claim, by using the imperfect subjunctive. Though, the argument that I am citing has no interest in staking claim to our abilities to predict physical events. Rather, it solely claims that everything in the universe, including mankind, consists of physical matter and changes via physical processes. It is not a worldview that hopes to catalog all universal events from its conception until its demise, since it is clear that nobody could accomplish such a task. Rather, the proponent of this line of reasoning would argue that, since humans only consist of matter, and matter reacts in physically rigid ways, the human brain is only a chemical stew that, from each electrical signal and hormonal release, necessarily causes more electrical signals and hormonal releases. This point is entirely contingent on the idea that matter strictly behaves in a causal way, which is not a point that I can refute, and I have not seen a refutation of (Kochen and Conway come to mind, but I would need to hear that explained to me if you care to refute this argument from their perspective). While I could be content with the question "how can we trust our cognitive faculties if matter does not aim toward truth?", I am looking for a way to counter the assertion that all there exists to a man is matter and physical processes. Or, if I have clarified the argument for you, feel free to answer it however you wish. For whatever reason, this argument is perfectly intuitive to me, but I am incapable of transferring that understanding to others.

I also would like to ask how to counter someone who is a strict hard determinist. One can bring up the question, "why is there a justice system? If we are just products of causal reactions, then there is no 'morality' to speak of. Why, then, do we hold people to a standard of morality?", but I would imagine that the hard determinist would counter with, "because it was determined that we would have such a system". Any such philosophically probing question can be met with that refrain. While I have yet to meet a consistent hard determinist, you certainly have more experience than I do. How do/would you talk to someone who is coherent in their deterministic views?

Thank you,
-Ryan

[jimwalton]

Ryan,

Possibly some of my quotes were off the mark, then, given your reply, but what I said from Understanding Scientific Theories of Origins still speaks to the point, I think. The reductionist-materialist position is ultimately self-defeating because we can't trust that its presuppositions even by cause and effect can lead to its conclusions. I also somehow thought that Swinburne's argument addressed your concern.

"We cannot describe the world fully if we use only terms denoting physical properties. … There are mental events that are not analyzable exclusively in non-mental terms."

To me it's like arguing that Picasso's Guernica is just paint and canvas. Certainly it IS just paint and canvas, but certainly it's NOT just paint and canvas. Or that Beethoven's 9th Symphony is just notes played by instruments. The physical realities, which is undeniably all there is, cannot begin to explain the resultant work, and therefore the physical realities are NOT undeniably all there is. It's a paradox, for certain, but not less true than the idea in geometry that parallel lines eventually meet in infinity.

Everything about us as humans can be explained in of physical terms, undoubtedly, and every notion beyond that can be reduced to "Well, it's still explainable in physical terms." Assuredly every we see or do has a basis of science and physicality, and yet we know that science has its limits. Physics doesn't explain the power and beauty of music. Paint doesn't explain art. When it comes right down to it, biology can't reach what makes us human: consciousness, love, wisdom, despair, grief, discernment. These realities—and they are not just emotions or social constructs—betray the limitations of reductionist materialism.

Dr. Niel Nielson put it this way:

"If he decided to be a pure determinist, then he's not a pure determinist. If he's a pure determinist, then he does not believe it for rational reasons. He believes it because he was determined to believe it. It is impossible to believe it for rational reasons. The only way you can believe in determinism for rational reasons is if determinism is false. If determinism is true, then it doesn't make any sense for him to say that determinism is true, because if it is true, then you are assuming there are rational reasons for believing it. Fine, believe it, but if you're right, then your position is no better than the opposite, rationally, because you believe people believe things aside from any rational basis.

"If, as a determinist, you cannot distinguish between right and wrong on moral grounds, then you can't distinguish between true and false on rational grounds, and so you can't say determinism is true. Your conclusion that determinism is true is of the same worth that murder is wrong, because the same casual forces that generate in me the belief that murder is wrong generates in you the belief that determinism is true. One position is no stronger or weaker than the other. That means I have no reason to believe that determinism is true. And if it is true, I can't believe it for rational reasons; I can only believe it because it is an effect working in me. So if you're right, you're wrong."

I attended a conference called "Free Will in a World of Neuroscience," where the speaker was Dr. Warren Brown, neuropsychologist. By the end of his third lecture, while he was drawing conclusions, he was saying that complex, nonlinear, highly interactive aggregates become systems through adaptive self-organization that are causal in their own right. Dynamic realities reach beyond reductive physicalism and perceiving everything as cause and effect because dynamic systems create new possibilities that were not part of the original system. He used an illustration of ant colonies to show that such colonies have causal properties that are not entirely attributable to the capacities and behaviors of individual ants, i.e., emergence. What causes ants' work is not the ants themselves, but the emergent patterns of activity. Then he related the human brain to the ant analogy, but far outstripping it. Whereas an ant brain has 250,000 neurons, the humans brain has 100 billion, with 100 trillion synapses. He says that what happens in thinking, deciding, consciousness, memory, language, representation, belief, etc. are emergent dynamical systems that are not reducible to the elements from which they came. “The higher level of organization, whether thermodynamic, psychological or social, possesses a qualitatively different repertoire of states and behavior than the earlier level, as well as greater degrees of freedom.” These processes cannot be described by cause-and-effect alone, because the brain does things in the progression of development not explainable by biology or neuronal activity.

> I also would like to ask how to counter someone who is a strict hard determinist.

I think Nielson's refutation makes a lot of sense. If they are strict, hard determinist, it is impossible that they came to that conclusion on a rational basis. The position is self-refuting. If we are the products of reductive materialism alone, one cannot arrive at an understanding of that position, let alone subscribe to it, for rational reasons. Therefore the position is absurd.

Kai Nielsen, an atheist philosopher who attempts to defend the viability of ethics without God, in the end admits, "We have not been able to show that reason requires the moral point of view, or that all really rational persons, unhoodwinked by myth or ideology, need not be individual egoists or classical amoralists. Reason doesn’t decide here. The picture I have painted for you is not a pleasant one. Reflection on it depresses me . . . . Pure practical reason, even with a good knowledge of the facts, will not take you to morality."

[RyanS]

Hello:

You have not only thoroughly set forth an argument that demands the rational person to reject strict, hard determinism, but you also provided me sufficient foundation to argue such to other people. For that, I thank you. Though, while you have accomplished both tasks marvelously, I am still confused about the meat that actually addresses the hard determinists' view. Could you please expound on the following quote and concept:

> dynamic systems create new possibilities that were not part of the original system. He used an illustration of ant colonies to show that such colonies have causal properties that are not entirely attributable to the capacities and behaviors of individual ants, i.e., emergence. What causes ants' work is not the ants themselves, but the emergent patterns of activity.

» The quote from Richard Swinburne that distinguishes mental events and brain events.

I did not understand either of those points, semantically or argumentatively. To start, maybe we could sort out definitions. What is a mental event v. a brain event? What is emergence and emergent patterns of activities? Why do either of those two refute/make less plausible the idea of hard determinism? If there is more that you think would help with understanding these concepts (I know very little in the fields of neuroscience and biology), then I would love to hear it.

Also, are there any books that you could recommend on the topic of refuting hard determinism, or free will in general?

Thank you,
-Ryan

[jimwalton]

Ryan,

Thanks for continuing the conversation.

> Could you please expound on the following quote and concept:

dynamic systems create new possibilities that were not part of the original system. He used an illustration of ant colonies to show that such colonies have causal properties that are not entirely attributable to the capacities and behaviors of individual ants, i.e., emergence. What causes ants' work is not the ants themselves, but the emergent patterns of activity.

Warren's point was that the components (causal factors) of the original system can't fully explain the effects we see in the emergent system. An analogy might be: if we put eggs, flour, milk, and sugar together and get cake, we can make that work in our minds. But if we put eggs, flour, milk, and sugar together and get green beans almandine, we're left without a cause-and-effect string to follow. Now, that analogy is a bit extreme and not exactly accurate to the case at hand, but it gives the idea. If we have mental synaptic firings and chemical reactions, none of that can fully explain in any scientific sense things like consciousness, intuition, reasoning, reliable truth assessments, and free will. In any given system, we should be able to follow the line back to its causal components: cake can be the result of eggs, flour, milk, and sugar. But if we compare matter and energy (the alleged source of all things) to consciousness, reasoning, and free will, we have a disconnect. To argue that consciousness came from non-consciousness, informational data from organized data, truth claims from the "random" processes of natural selection and genetic mutation, personality from chemicals, we are bridging too many chasms without evidence except "well, I guess it happened that way because here we are!"

Swinburne, again, has a great quote about that:

An objector may claim that it’s serendipitous, since if the universe had not been this way we would not be around to comment on it. Thus we could not possibly find anything else. This conclusion is clearly a little too strong, for there is a great deal more order in the world than is necessary for the existence of humans. So we could still be around to comment on it if the world were a much less orderly place than it is.

But it’s more than that: the argument fails totally. Consider this analogy:

Suppose a madman kidnaps a victim and shut him in a room with a card-shuffling machine. The machine shuffles 10 packs of cards simultaneously and the draws a card from each pack and exhibits simultaneously the 10 cards. The kidnapper tells the victim that he will shortly set the machine to work and it will exhibit its first draw, but unless the draw consists of an ace of hearts from each of the 10 packs, the machine will simultaneously set off an explosion that will kill the victim, in consequence of which he will never see which cards the machine drew. The machine is then set to work, and to the amazement and relief of the victim the machine exhibits an ace of hearts drawn from each pack. The victim thinks this extraordinary fact needs an explanation in terms of the machine having been rigged in some way. But the kidnapper, who now reappears, casts doubt on the suggestion. “It is hardly surprising,” he says, “that the machine draws only aces of hearts. You could not possibly see anything else. For you would not be here to see anything at all if any other cards had been drawn.”

But, of course, the victim is right and not the kidnapper. There is indeed something extraordinary in need of explanation in 10 aces of hearts being drawn. The fact that this peculiar order is a necessary condition of the draw being perceived at all makes what is perceived no less extraordinary and in need of explanation. The teleologist’s starting point is not that we perceive order rather than disorder, but that order rather than disorder is there. Maybe only if order were there could we know what is there, but that makes what is there no less ordinary and in need of explanation.

The universe is characterized by vast, all-pervasive temporal order, the conformity of nature to formula, recorded in the scientific laws formulated by men. These phenomena, like the very existence of the world, is clearly something “too big” for science to explain. If there is an explanation of the order of the universe, it can’t be a scientific one.

As far as Brown's explanation, which is actually what you asked for, he uses emergent systems sort of in the same sense Mike Behe speaks of irreducible complexity in biological organisms. Brown says that complex systems can adapt to the point where they become irreducible causal systems in their own right. What emerges is not reducible to the characteristics of the input components. Here are some bullet points from my notes:

The Dynamics of Complex Systems:

• A complex system self-organizes when pushed far from equilibrium. The human brain is a complex system as well.
• Elements entrain (bind) each other into larger patterns of interactivity that interface with the environment. Ants can do any task, but they specialize. What causes ants’ work is not the ants themselves, but the pattern of activity. In the human brain, any particular neuron is entirely dependent on its place in the network of interactivity.
• Large perturbations of the system cause reorganization (adaptability). Destroy an ant nest, and they will reorganize themselves and adapt. Humans adapt to new situations, incorporation some elements of previous adaptations, but sometimes new systems emerge.
• A continued reorganization creates higher and higher levels of organization and adaptability. There are more parts of my universe that I occupy and can deal with to meet the new challenge. “Catastrophes” cause systems to reorganize.
• Self-organization based on environmental feedback means that system organization embodies meaning.

Thinking, deciding, consciousness, memory, language, representation, belief, etc. are large dynamic patterns of brain activity that constrain the ongoing lower-level physiological phenomena whose activity constitute the brain patterns themselves. Therefore the causal properties of patterns are not reducible to the elements. They are emergent.

Self-Determination in Dynamical Systems:

• Constraining variation of consistent parts paradoxically increases possibilities for the system (i.e., greater freedom).
• Systems increasingly respond (act) from their own point of view. It’s not totally driven by stimuli in the environment, but it’s related to its adaptive history and (in humans) its social history.
• System organization embodies meaning.
• Ongoing adaptations means higher and higher levels of meaning can be expressed in behavior. (think of childhood development)

“The higher level of organization, whether thermodynamic, psychological or social, possesses a qualitatively different repertoire of states and behavior than the earlier level, as well as greater degrees of freedom.”

Hopefully that helps.

> What is a mental event v. a brain event?

As I remember, a brain event was chemical activity in the brain and the firing of synapses as the brain worked. It's the physiological activity of the brain. A mental event, by contrast, is a memory, an intuition, etc.

> What is emergence and emergent patterns of activities?

"Emergence" is used to describe characteristics that are more than the sum of their parts. Maybe think of it this way (even though this analogy is flawed and inadequate, to some extent): human beings build a computer, made of wires and magnetic surfaces that can store sequences of information and particular collections of 1s and 0s. But then somewhere along the way the computer's capability to process information emerges into a capability to truly think (hyper-charged AI) beyond the capacity of its programming. It begins to create information, something it was never designed to do, which its programming can't explain, and which wires and magnetic surfaces aren't capable of. And now, based on its ability to think, it (on its own) joins with other computers who are doing the same thing and they begin to specialize. The subsequent technology that emerges is capable of things each computer on its own was incapable of.

Hopefully you can see what I'm getting at. If we play this analogy game long enough, we will end up with systems that can't be explained by wires and magnetic surfaces.

Now, this is exactly what scientific naturalists claim occurred. The problem is that there is no evidence for such a chain of events. As a matter of fact, the evidence takes us in a different direction—that the systems in place now could not have come from the components, no matter how long the chains are an no matter what happened, like green beans almandine from eggs, milk, and flour.

> Why do either of those two refute/make less plausible the idea of hard determinism?

As per Niel Nielson's quote from last post, hard determinism, when played through logically, is both self-contradictory and absurd. And, secondly, the systems that are now extant betray that no process could have brought them about (e.g., reliable truth assessment that came from components and systems unconcerned with truth and unable to process truth).

> are there any books that you could recommend on the topic of refuting hard determinism, or free will in general?

I've gotten these things I keep telling your from a raft of sources, as I've been crediting along the way. I'm not aware of a single source. I'll bet such a book exists, since just about everything does exist; I just don't know what they are. Sorry.

[RyanS]

Hello:

I have finally arrived at a more comprehensive understanding of the faults of the argument that I have reported. Never again shall I, as an ambassador to Christ, be stumped with this argument! So, of course, thank you very much for your patience and willingness to dialogue for the sake of clarification. I do have one final, simple question, though.

I can imagine that, in an informal debate, the person who asserts hard determinism would question why it is that consciousness is an emergent thing. However, if I wield well the conversation, then I should never end up in such a spot, since it seems absurd for the one who claims consciousness-from-no-consciousness to be the skeptical one in the interaction. Regardless, to whom goes the burden of proof regarding consciousness as an emergent or non-emergent thing? Would it be wrong to assert that the hard determinist has to defend how electrical signals across brain tissue would create consciousness? Or, is it the case that consciousness as a causal output is an incoherent idea, and such is demonstrable in a non-analogous way?

Thank you,
-Ryan