Category Archives: Epistemology

Thoughts on the Semantics of Free Will

05 Tuesday Feb 2013

Posted by in Epistemology, Mind, My Philosophy

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Based on some of the comments left on my earlier post about free will ultimately being an illusion, I think I didn’t adequately explain myself. Hopefully this post will help convey my perspective and not just further muddy the waters.

In short… When it comes to human choices, if you can explain why one option was chosen over all the others, then you cannot believe it was a “free” choice. Like a computer, the human brain made the final selection based on the external circumstances and the internal state(s). In other words, given the circumstances and the internal state(s) of mind, the choice was inevitable. On the other hand, if you cannot explain why one option was chosen over the others but you still attribute it to free will; that is an argument from ignorance.

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There is more than one way of looking at free will–more than one way of explaining the process of making a decision or selecting an option. For example, let’s look at the process of selecting one shirt to wear from a whole row of options in your wardrobe.

If you are the average guy, your selection might be based on a few simple rules such as; Is it comfortable, or is it of appropriate quality for the job at hand? While the average guy might narrow his selection down to half a dozen shirts based on these rules, there is a good chance that he’ll choose at random from those remaining options (i.e. grab the closest one at hand).

If you are the average girl, your final choice will likely be the result of the application of a fairly complicated set of rules with no element of randomness at all. Your rules, for instance, might be based on questions like; Does it go well with my pants? Does it go well with my shoes? Does it make me appear slimmer? Is it appropriate for the function I’m wearing it to? Does it make me feel pretty?

There are two different ways of looking at this selection process. The most common way of looking at it is to claim that ‘they exercised their free will and each chose a shirt’. Another way of looking at it is that ‘selections were made based on the application of rules, randomness, or both’.

What if the situation was a little different? What if a man was holding a gun on these people and threatening them with death unless they wear shirts of his choosing. This time, both the guy and the girl will likely select the shirt that the maniac wants them to wear.

Again, there is more than one way of looking at this selection process. Instinctively you might think the couple had no free will–that they were forced by the maniac to wear specific shirts. That is not the case, however. They could have defied the gun-toting madman. The first way of looking at it is that they exercised their free will and made the choice to select the shirts they were ordered to select, rather than to risk death. The second way of looking at it is that they simply made their selection based on external circumstances and internal rules (i.e. man with gun + I don’t want to die = do as he says).

What I’m slowly but surely trying to get at is that one way of looking at the choices we make is to think of them as a selection process that utilizes a set of rules with perhaps an element of randomness involved. You could call this process “free will” and many people do, but it’s not truly free will–it’s a (perhaps unconsciously) calculated selection based on pre-existing internal rules and external circumstances.

Let me use the analogy of computer software here. Suppose that I am writing a computer program and this program needs the ability to choose from several possible options. The outcome of the program depends on which option the program chooses. I can code the software to select from any given options in several different ways. I could code it to select randomly from the available options, I could code it to select an option based on the values of variables within the program as well as data from external sources, or I could code it to select based on a combination of both (rules and randomness). I could even call this section of code the “free will module”.

Now you might argue that the software doesn’t actually have free will–that it makes its selections according to randomness or a set of rules based on the external circumstances and the internal states, or a combination of both, and you would be completely right. That is after all; my argument. It is often useful to refer to the concept of free will but there’s no true freedom of will involved in our decision making process. We are just very complex computers that aren’t quite smart enough yet to understand all of the “rules” written into our “code”.

The first and most common way of looking at choices and the human decision making process, is the concept of free will. The second way of looking at it is that given the external circumstances and the internal state(s) of the decision-maker, the final decision was actually inevitable, and thus; not truly a free choice. At first glance, the second way of looking at it seems more complicated and harder to follow. However, I believe it is a better explanation of the human decision-making process because it removes the complex and under-defined concept of ‘free will’, thereby being overall; a more parsimonious explanation.

Just to be clear; I consider the “rules” (that our brains use when selecting from a number of possible options) as being part of our internal state(s). Our internal states are constantly changing as we experience new things and as a result, the choices we make are changing as well. We make different choices than we would have years ago, given similar external circumstances, because our internal states have changed.

Within the context of humanity–that is, when speaking about people and their choices in everyday language, “free will” is a useful concept. When in the wider context of all existence and trying to understand how it all works together, it becomes apparent that free will is an inaccurate oversimplification of the human decision-making process. It becomes apparent that no part of the human mind (e.g. the will), is truly free. All parts are constrained to act in accordance with the laws of nature. The human mind is just another part in the tightly interconnected machine that is the universe. There is no room in  the gears of nature for true freedom.

For the human will to truly be free it would require that the human mind (or a portion thereof) operate independent (i.e. outside) of nature. This does not seem to be the case. The human mind is a part of nature and I have not found any evidence that it somehow transcends it.

In a way, ‘free will’ is simply a semantic artifact that arises from the way we tend to oversimplify the human decision-making process. That being said, it is often useful to use this concept. It is easier to attribute a choice to someone’s free will than it is to analyze the choice, enumerate the external circumstances, and deduce the internal states of the person. “Free will” is useful in everyday language but it is an oversimplification–an example of a sort of lossy semantic compression.

The concept of free will is also helpful in assigning blame and determining intent in morality and law. Saying, “He committed the crime of his own free will,” is just a simple way of saying, “Given the same external circumstances and internal state(s), it is inevitable that he would do it again.” The justice system can then go on to estimate the probability of that person finding himself in the same circumstances and take the appropriate steps (e.g. prison, therapy, etc.), to either reduce the chance that he’ll find himself in the same circumstances, or change his internal state(s) so that he reacts more appropriately when he finds himself in those circumstances again.

That concludes this rambling collection of thoughts on the semantics of “free will”. I hope it has been helpful in conveying the ‘other way of looking at it’.

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The Bible is Ambiguous – No Informative Value

09 Sunday Sep 2012

Posted by in Epistemology, My Philosophy, Religion

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The Bible is ambiguous and most Christians, I believe, can accept that. Given almost any passage, different people give different interpretations of the passage. Even a person who interprets a passage one way may interpret it another way years later. The Bible is an ambiguous text.

My argument is that the Bible, at least all the parts that are ambiguous, does not have informative value. If the authors wanted to convey information, to provide a text with informative value, they would have written clearly, and not in metaphors and parables. Like poetry, most of the Bible is of no informative value. Like poetry, I would argue that religious texts don’t serve to convey information as much as they serve to tease out our own feelings and beliefs. That is how different people interpret the Bible and poetry differently and how a person might interpret a passage one way and then interpret it differently a year later.

One argument that I’ve had to defend against is that the writers of the Bible didn’t intend for their text to be ambiguous. That’s just how they wrote things back then and if we find it ambiguous it’s a failure on our part. I disagree. We can point to any number of earlier writers, Aristotle for instance, who wrote unambiguous text that clearly conveys what the writer meant.

All religious texts that I have encountered are ambiguous, and they must be so to survive. An unambiguous text has informative value that can be compared with reality and tested. A religion based on an unambiguous text that made specific predictions (including dates and times) would either become a part of the body of scientific knowledge or it would be discredited.

There is definitely an allure to ambiguous texts. We don’t completely understand them and so we tend to assume that what they’re trying to say must be wise indeed. Ambiguity is not so much a technique for accurately conveying information as it is a technique for teasing out what you already believe. For that reason, there is some kind of value there–just not informative value.

Semantics Shemantics

02 Saturday Jun 2012

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The statement, “God does not exist,” is perfectly fine when used in normal conversation. Many atheists are heard saying this and they are attacked for it because of epistemological reasons. In the epistemological sense, this statement is not okay because it has not been proven that God does not exist. In fact, it may well be impossible to prove that God does not exist.

Likewise, the statement, “Santa Claus does not exist,” is perfectly fine in ordinary conversation but it’s not okay in an epistemological argument because it has not been proven in the strict sense of logic that Santa Claus does not exist.

When somebody says, “Santa Claus does not exist,” their statement is epistemologically suspect. But what the person really means is, “The available body of evidence does not warrant a belief in the existence of Santa Claus.” The latter statement is fine in the epistemological sense but the first statement is not. The first statement is fine in normal conversation because we are used to taking shortcuts in everyday language. It is the same way with the atheist’s proclamation that, “God does not exist.”

Before you rail on the atheist for making epistemologically suspect claims, perhaps you should consider what the atheist really meant. Before you claim that atheism is an untenable position because it asserts a nonexistence claim, perhaps you should consider what it really means.

The Nonexistence of Undetectable Things

01 Friday Jun 2012

Posted by in Epistemology, My Philosophy

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Why is there no proof of God’s existence? If you ask a Christian this question, you get a barrage of “proof” that after a little digging, turns out to be nothing but faith.

However, some of the Christians I have met (I even entertained this idea at one point in time as being the reason I couldn’t find proof of God’s existence) claim that there is no proof of God because God is in principle, undetectable.

The idea goes something like this… God transcends time, space, and even the universe itself. Our science instruments are limited to the universe, so that’s why we can’t detect God. We will never be able to detect God because our instruments will always be limited to the natural things that are lurking about in the universe. Since God can exist and be undetectable, we must take it on faith that he does exist.

Something that can in principle never be detected, is by definition, nonexistent and I’ll explain why in the next few paragraphs.

We detect things by the way they affect other things. For example, we directly detect the moon because of the way it reflects particles of light. We also indirectly detect the moon by the gravitational force that it exerts on the Earth and its contents.

The only way that something cannot in principle be detected even indirectly is if it has no effect on anything else in the universe. In other words, it cannot have mass because then it would exert a gravitational force which could in principle be detected with gravity gradiometers. It cannot have any sort of electrical charge because then it could in principle be detected with a variety of electromagnetic detectors. For any other property of something that exists, there could in principle, be designed a detector which detects that property, otherwise the property isn’t real. In other words, the only way that something cannot in principle be detected even indirectly is if it has no real properties.

And let’s not forget statistical analysis. Even if something real could not be detected by scientific tools, if it affects real objects or events, then its influence could, in theory, be statistically calculated using our knowledge of the affected objects or events and our knowledge of how the universe works.

In conclusion, the idea that something could be said to exist and at the same time be undetectable in principle, doesn’t make sense. It is a contradiction. On the other hand, if you decide to drop the idea that God is in principle undetectable while maintaining that he does exist, then the burden of proof is on you. If you claim the existence of something which has heretofore not been verified, then it is your burden to propose a method of detection that would reasonably prove its existence.

Before the Beginning of Time…

02 Wednesday May 2012

Posted by in Epistemology, My Philosophy

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The word “before” is commonly defined something like this, “During the period of time preceding a particular event, date, or time”.

Let us consider, for a moment, the question; What was before the beginning of time? This question is relevant to many Christians because they believe that God existed before time and that God created time. Their answer to the question is, “Before time, there was God.”

Many Christians also believe that time will end and after that, the good people go to heaven and the bad people go to hell. It is the belief of many Christians that time itself is a small portion of eternity. They might imagine eternity as being a line that stretches infinitely in both directions and that time is only a small section of this line. A section that has beginning and end.

The Christian’s beliefs about time do not make sense and here’s why; Logically, you cannot refer to ‘before the beginning of time’ or ‘after the end of time’. Any statement that does this, is nonsensical – it’s logically senseless.

There cannot be a ‘before’ the beginning of time. The word “before” implies the passage of time but when used in reference to the beginning of time, we are basically asking, “What happened in that period of time before there were periods of time?” It’s a bit like asking, “What is north of the north pole?” or “What was I doing ten years before I was born?” The question is logically nonsensical – it is an example of an invalid question. For the same reason, there cannot be a ‘after’ the end of time.

The idea of eternity is also logically problematic for Christians. Most Christians believe there was a beginning of time, there will be an end of time, and there is eternity. It is however, logically impossible to have all three. You cannot have eternity if there is a beginning of time and an end of time.

It is not uncommon for people to ask what was before the beginning of time, or what was before the universe or the multiverse. It’s not that we don’t know the answer to the question, it’s simply that there is no answer. There cannot logically be a statement that truthfully answers that question, given our definitions of the terms used.

That doesn’t make us feel any better about it, of course, but there you have it.

Belief Systems: Coherency, Completeness, and Reality

18 Wednesday Apr 2012

Posted by in Epistemology, My Philosophy

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Something that you believe is obviously a belief. To be more precise, a belief is a statement about the universe that the holder believes to hold true. The sum of all the things that you believe is your “belief system”. And, once again, to be more precise, a belief system is the sum of all statements that the holder believes to be individually true.

Everybody has a belief system. Without it, we wouldn’t have any way to make sense of anything from the smallest question such as ‘why does water flow downhill’, to the biggest of questions such as ‘what is the meaning of life’.

So what defines a good belief system and how could one belief system possibly be objectively better than another? There are three qualities of a belief system that are very important; coherency, completeness, and reality. I will explain these ideas in some detail below although not in the order just given.

Reality

The individual beliefs in a belief system must comport with reality. It is possible to have a completely fantastical belief system, only if you’re unlike most people (i.e. you’re completely insane).

What I mean is that your beliefs must agree with what you see in reality. If you stub your toe really hard and you firmly believe that you did not stub your toe, then your belief does not comport with reality (and you are most likely insane).

Such a belief system is useless because it does not help you make accurate predictions about the future. Life is all about making accurate predictions. For our entire lives, the sun has risen every morning. Based on this evidence, we form the belief that the sun will always come up in the morning. Based on this belief, whether or not we think about it, we make the prediction that the sun will come up tomorrow morning.

If for some reason, the sun stops rising in the morning, then our belief that the sun will always rise in the morning, does no longer comport with reality. When that happens we are forced to discard the belief and search for a new one. Perhaps we’ll revise our belief to ‘the sun sometimes rises in the morning’. If after a long period of not even that happening, we would be forced to revise it even further, to something like, ‘the sun used to rise in the morning’.

Coherency

Coherency is about how well one’s beliefs make sense when more than one at a time are considered. A coherent belief system is a belief system in which all the individual beliefs fit together in such a way as to create a solid whole. A belief system that contains contradictory beliefs is not coherent.

For example, suppose you held the bizarre belief that all Mennonites are weird. You also hold the belief that a certain friend named Sam is a cool dude and is not at all weird. Then you find out that Sam is a Mennonite. Suddenly you realize a contradiction in your belief system. On the one hand you believe all Mennonites are weird and on the other hand you believe that one Mennonite is not weird. These two beliefs do not fit together. Taken one at a time, they might make sense, but taking both at the same time results in a logical contradiction.

An incoherent belief system is bad. If you hold contradictory beliefs in your belief system it must logically be the case that at least one of your beliefs does not comport with reality. It is false. This tends to cause confusion and cognitive dissonance – neither of which are good attributes to possess in this complex life.

Finding contradictions in one’s belief system is actually quite common for the serious thinker. That’s because we are all operating on incomplete information. None of us knows everything and no matter how strongly we believe in something, new information could pop up which totally disproves our belief. Finding a contradiction can actually be a refreshing experience because it gives you the opportunity to explore intellectually and perhaps to happen upon bigger truths.

It is a common tactic for debaters (think atheist versus Christian) to attack the coherency of the other person’s belief system in an attempt to find and display a contradiction in the opponent’s belief system.

The important thing is that you remove the contradiction. Think about the conflicting beliefs because one of them must logically be false. Are all Mennonites really weird? Is Sam really a cool and completely non-weird guy? In your investigation into the basis of your opposing beliefs you may just stumble onto something new. Perhaps not all Mennonites are weird after all!

Completeness

The last quality of a belief system is “completeness”. This idea is related to how big your belief system is. Are there still questions that you don’t know the answer to? Of course there are! Our belief systems will probably always be incomplete but yours can be more complete than your neighbor’s.

The completeness of one’s belief system can be deceptive. This is particularly true when it comes to religion. Believing that God does literally everything is a pretty damn complete belief system isn’t it?

Well, no because as it turns out, this belief system actually just skips over everything. Take earthquakes for example. Years ago, many people thought God caused earthquakes and that was that. This idea was an explanation for earthquakes but it was useless. It was of no help in predicting earthquakes nor in gaining a better understanding of the overall workings of our planet. Nowadays we know about plate tectonics – how the plates move about on the Earth’s surface, grinding against each other, pressing against each other, and suddenly releasing tension. This explanation of earthquakes is more complete – it is more useful. It helps us predict earthquakes, it helps us gain a better understanding of how the Earth works as a whole, and it even helped explain several things in evolutionary theory that had previously been mysteries.

Updating Your Belief System

We are often given new information. Our job is to analyze that information and ask ourselves if it makes sense with what we can see of reality. If it does, we need to ask ourselves if it is coherent with our existing beliefs? If so, the information is quickly incorporated into one’s belief system but if not, the information must either be discarded as false or one’s belief system must be revised.

When it comes to larger chunks of information (such as the theory of evolution), it is wise to take a little more time to ensure that everything in the set of statements actually coincides with reality. If it does, then we need to check the internal coherency. Do all the statements within the set, make sense when taken as a whole (remember to disregard your own beliefs through this process)? If it comports with reality and has good internal coherency it is time to see how well it would fit with the rest of your belief system. If there are conflicts then things start getting interesting. On the one hand you have a scientific theory that explains reality quite well but on the other hand it doesn’t fit with your beliefs about the nature of reality.

Now you need to start thinking hard. Could you modify your existing beliefs enough so that evolution could fit inside without causing coherency problems? If so, would the resulting belief system be better than your current one? Would it be more coherent? More complete? If so, there’s only one viable option. Revise your current belief system enough so that you can import the new segment.

When I first studied the evidence for evolution I marveled at the how well it explained some of questions that I had often wondered about. It appealed to me because it mirrored reality so well and it was so much more complete than my existing beliefs on the subject – that God created man and all the animals. However, I couldn’t be expected to just drop the idea of God entirely. My beliefs about him were entwined with all the other beliefs in my belief system. So I started wondering if I could believe in both. As it turns out, I could – as soon as I re-interpreted the Bible as more of a metaphorical work than a literal work.

Rarely does a person’s entire belief system change overnight regardless of how much evidence is thrown at the person. It is often easier to live with contradictory beliefs than it is to completely switch a belief system. This is particularly true for belief systems that are well established in a person’s mind. I’m referring to religion and how it is often indoctrinated starting at a very young age.

Judging from my own experiences, I believe it is essentially impossible for a firm Christian to become an atheist in any short period of time (despite having been born atheist, mind you). For me the whole process took about 10 to 12 years.

So if you are intent on changing someone’s belief system – don’t try to do it overnight. Work on one or several beliefs at a time rather than the whole system at once. You increase your odds of eventually succeeding.

Note: In this last section, I have approached the issue of updating one’s belief system from the perspective of someone watching your mind (metacognition). When it happens to yourself, it will not seem quite this analytical. In fact, many of these steps will be taken by your mind without you even realizing it.