What do you think of Scott Adams?
I have never liked the man. I find the Dilbert cartoon to just be snarky and pointing out the obvious. The funny thing is I watch him everyday while I make breakfast.
Adams has clearly swallowed the determinist Kool Aid. His concept of a simulation is mansplaining. It is an attempt to explain determinism to the uninitiated. To the masses too stupid to not realize that freewill is just persuasion or cultural propaganda. That religion and patriotism are hoaxes.
My question for people like him is if they believe that random chance is all that is required to evolve the human brain then why would they think that a similar process didn't evolve freewill. Why would they accept money and baseball as real but not freewill? The answer to me is clear, responsibility. People, especially highly intelligent people, do not like the responsibility freewill imposes.
There is an obvious reciprocal relationship between intelligence and freewill. The more you know the more responsible you are and the more responsible you are the more likely you are to want to know. Denying freewill breaks the knowing responsibility loop. Rejecting the evolved nature of religion has a similar emotional benefit.
Intelligence ironically makes cognitive dissonance an art form that reduces emotional pain.
The demands of civilization are harsh, they are at odds with our instincts or emotions. Being intelligent doesn't make you less instinctual. It just opens up more options. One of those options is to hide your emotions from yourself. To refuse to see your own motivations. We are evolved to be liars and the best lies are the ones we have convinced ourselves of. Therein is the art of persuasion.
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Feel free to reply to any comment by clicking the "Reply" button.We are evolved to be liars and the best lies are the ones we have convinced ourselves of.
Isn't that just an expression of "determinism"? Like we are inevitably on the road to perfidy.
FrankZeleniuk
Level 8
Mar 12, 2021
0
Not if you are religious. Who actually lives by their own ideology? Original sin is knowing, it tracks the evolution of freewill as a cultural technology. No technology is perfect.
@wolfhnd It seems to me you are digging a deeper hole by arguing both sides of the fence.
Let's say, Eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge is original sin, since, as you say, original sin is knowing. Would you argue then that it were not the original sin? It is, because then you have gained the knowledge of good and evil and now there can be sin. Before one partook of the fruit all creation was good.
You ask whether freewill can evolve just as a brain can evolve.
Freewill is a metaphysical property that doesn't evolve. It is one of those ethereal properties of the human spirit, much like integrity, honor, trust and faith. These are not properties of the brain.
Does that help at all or am I out to lunch?
No your logic is great.
What I'm arguing is that "properties of the human spirit, much like integrity, honor, trust and faith" may be real in the sense that a religious person would believe. I can't make a determinant argument either way on that. What I can make a determinant argument over is that freewill is a necessary pre condition for integrity, honor, trust and faith to be real. Unless your willing to throw out integrity, honor, trust, and agency and dignity you will have to maintain freewill metaphysical or not.
There are a lot of highly intelligent people today that are willing to say that nothing metaphysical is real. Those are people that for the sake of maintaining there political positions cannot allow freewill to be real in any sense. The fact that they are usually intellectuals with a profound sense of their own rationality almost comical. The deterministic view that we are all zombies is incompatible with rationality. By extension the social engineering their political positions requires at odds with their philosophical foundations. The question isn't free but how free and in what sense.
The question of metaphysical evolution can be clearly resolved by studying the history of mathematics. Math is entirely abstract putting it squarely in the metaphysics court. Formal logic as well. How the proponents of incompatibalism get around that is that they are evolved systems but they then cannot argue that freewill isn't a valid evolved system. Where do they get the agency to keep one and throw the other out?
As I have said before I'm not particularly interested in truths. Truth transcends metaphysics into a more "spiritual" realm. Facts are sufficient for the pragmatic. The facts are sufficient to support that we are not zombies living in a simulation in my humble opinion.
All I really know about Scott Adams the person is that J Micheal Straczynski - the writer, creator, and showrunner for the sci-fi series, "Babylon 5" - thought enough of him to give him an in-person cameo in the show, where - humorously - he posed as a man looking for a dog and cat that were plotting to take over the world, an obvious reference to Dogbert and Catbert.
As for philosophy, I fear I'm too low-brow to concern myself with most philosophy. To me, the world is too imperfect to worry about theoreticals. I mean, socialism - on paper - is a great philosophy; were it breaks down is that it fails to account for the human condition, that is, that people are imperfect.
Alysandir
Level 7
Mar 12, 2021
1
The man points out the obvious that most people refuse to see. He is very useful.
I'm not a big fan of philosophy myself but as Steven Weinberg points out it takes philosophy to fight philosophy.
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