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From: ellis@chips2.sri.com (Michael Ellis)
Newsgroups: comp.ai,talk.philosophy.misc
Subject: Re: Free will and responsibility.
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Date: 12 Jun 89 07:29:50 GMT
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[[ I have forwarded this to a philosophy newsgroup 
    where it might be more pertinent -- mce ]]

> Brian Colfer >> me

>1) Behaviorism is only useful as a limited laboratory methodology.

>>Problems happen when a narrow technical methodology with 
>>worthwhile but limited results starts being dictated as
>>some kind of a priori truth. 
>> Until behaviorism can come up with hard results,
>> your're just blowing hot air.

> There are many examples of real world successful applications 
> of behaviorism which have helped many people...
> The best example which has worked in every case I have heard about
> is in the application of behavioral analysis to the problem of 
> phobic responses.  Until behaviorism this problem plagued many
> people but now it can be cured. Other applications include
> promoting energy and water conservation and in increasing 
> safe behavior at the work place.

    Nobody denies that behaviorism does not provide us with limited but
    useful results, and to that extent behaviorism is wonderful. The
    point is that its results are *extremely limited*. And there are
    fairly strong reasons to suspect that they will always be *extremely
    limited*. See Chomsky's review of Skinner's _Verbal_Behavior_ for
    starters: Either Behaviorism cannot account for language, or else
    it must use mentalistic constructs in disguise. Catch 22.

>2) Evidence for free will is found in internal observation.
>
>> ... beliefs, thoughts and desires are causal determinants of
>> human action .... The evidence is plentifully available in the
>> form of 1st person experience...

> This is classic dualist retort.

    One needn't believe in mental substance to believe in mind unless 
    you are some kind of substance ontologist. The only dualisms I see are
    formal (what extensional logics can deal with versus what requires
    intensional logic) and epistemological (what is public versus what is 
    private). 

    "Physical substance" itself is increasingly becoming an incoherent
    idea. The future of reductionism is not very bright.

> The problem is then just shifted
> to where do beliefs, thoughts and desires come from.  

    That's another question. You have skirted the issue of what beliefs
    and desires actually are.

>I am affirming a) that beliefs etc. are causes and b) that
>they are important to the person experiencing them.

    You mean to say that the beliefs and desires of your lover aren't
    important to you? I say (b) is just baloney if by that you mean
    they are important *only* to the person experiencing them. They are
    important to anybody who really cares about you. Furthermore, they
    are important to anybody who cares about what is indeed true. Even
    the "strong AI" dream of building a robot that passed the Turing
    test would need to be able to manipulate formal objects that 
    represented the beliefs and desires of others as well as its own.

    Stop confusing epistemology with ontology.

>I also am saying that they are scientifically unimportant since
> 1) there is nothing we can do about them directy (we can only change
>    the things that control them) and 

    That's like saying I can't drive a car since I can't control it
    "directly", say, by psychokinesis. Anyway, whenever I will something
    I am as close to "directly" doing something as I'd ever care to get.

    It is just a fact that my desires almost always control my actions.
    Will just is a desire that is controlling my current action. This is
    explicandum, not explicans. I want to know how it happens.

    To say this is "scientifically unimportant" is most presumptious indeed
    coming as it does from a discipline with as low credibility as behaviorism.
    There are other competing scientific theories with other claims about
    what counts as "scientifically important" besides behaviorism. 

> 2) we can only have direct access to our own experience and no one
>   can ever have direct access to our experience.  In fact we actually
>   only observe the effects of our brain since there are no significant
>   sensory neuron receptors in the brain.

    But that is no reason whatsoever why science cannot correlate 1st
    person "subjective" reports with neurophysiological findings. In
    fact, I'd go so far as to say that these amount to the some of the
    most interesting scientific facts uncovered to date (such as the
    Penfield experiments).

    It is just this information that promises to be the most valuable
    from my perspective: We have this interior mental life. What can
    science tell us about it?
 
    Your reply is to say "Nothing at all. Science isn't up to the task"
    
    I say "Baloney!". Any science worthy of the name must investigate the
    phenomena or else remain silent about them.

>3) The assumptions of materialistic determinism is fundamentally
>   undermined by quantum-mechanics. BTW this is the argument 
>   Douglass Adams uses to allow for all sorts of metaphysical
>   phenomena. (Adams is the author of Resteraunt at the end of the 
>   universe etc.)

    I make no metaphysical claims. I only want an honest account of the 
    phenomena. Cross me off your list of metaphysical crazies.

> Boy this is a tough one.  I don't know enough about QM but I
> think that it addresses observations at the very macro reaches of 
> our observations and at the extreem micro levels we find it impossible 
> to predict the events.  From what I understand QM does not cancel
> Newton or Einstien but describes our limits to predict the subatomic 
> extremities of our universe.   I am talking about the the vast 
> range in between. 

    QM + chaos theory provides just the rigorous scientific argument needed
    to blast away any claims of deterministic mechanism for sufficiently
    complex systems, of which the brain easily counts as an example.

    Chaos theory predicts global sensitivity to minor fluctuations
    *everywhere*. QM provides minor fluctuations *everwhere*.
    Determinism loses. The real problem is how we manage so well to
    control our actions in spite of all this metaphysical randomness.

>  Materialistic determinism works as the starting
> assumption when confronted by a new disease and it would be silly 
> to think otherwise.

    No doubt deterministic theories are the best working hypothesis for
    the technical specialist who, lets face it, knows practically nothing
    about what's really going on. After all, we want to find predictive laws.
    If and when they have a theory that successfully predicts the way people
    do behave better than folk psychology, and when they have shown us how
    beliefs and desires really do cash out into neurophysiological terms, 
    then these methodological claims (these are currently just methodological
    heuristics, not even scientific findings themselves, and absolutely not 
    proven facts, remember?) will be worth taking seriously as a priori claims.
    
>4) The main threat of behaviorism is that it is systematic control.
>> It doesn't matter one whit to whether one's actrions are ...
>>... determined ... as long as they're not determined by the *intentional
>> manipulation* of another *conscious* being.

> It would seem that any part of society would fall under this,
> laws, schools, jobs and any where else ones behavior is being
> directed by others.

    Manipulation isn't just wrong, it's counterproductive. It is not treating
    a person honestly. Admittedly, there may be criminally or mentally
    deranged people for whom such manipulation might count as the lesser evil
    where honest approaches fail. And there may be people who rationally 
    consent to such treatment when they know they have lost rational control
    of their own actions, as in the case of addictions.

    You seem to confuse "behavior direction" with "convincing the other to 
    act". Only one who doesn't believe in beliefs and desires could fail to
    see the difference.

> If you say that *any* of these are ok then you are saying that 
> behavior control has a place in society. 

> If you say that *all* of these are bad then you are merely a 
> radical anarchist and there is no place for society.

    If laws, schools, and jobs don't treat people as rational agents
    is it any wonder so many of us are just bozos? 

    Maybe there isn't any place for me in a society, if that be one of bozoes.
        
>As a retort to Hilary Putnam's thesis about Functionalism ... it seems
>that the human brain is more of an open system than is a Turing Machine.

    That's precisely one of Hilary Putnam's points if I am not mistaken.

-michael