Think Celestially, Act Locally: a Politics and Religious Controversy Catch-All

I do believe the universe to be largely random, but I'm hard determinist when it comes to human action

I dunno, that seems self-contradictory to me... that the universe is random, except for this supremely complex thing, which isn't?

First off, if you want some clarity on the whole consciousness and free will thing, read "The Ego Tunnel" to get a decent (if controversial) take from a researcher in the field. The simple idea is that consciousness is not as we naively understand it, because our consciousness not only lags well behind the real world, but our decisions, which we perceive as consciously made in the moment, are actually triggered by unconscious mechanisms. Note that this does not mean that rumination or conscious decision-action chains can't occur, just that they are not what we do as the normal mode of operation of moment-to-moment decisionmaking. Those are more like feedback mechanisms than in-the-driver's-seat controls. (Also take a look at Minsky's "Society of Mind" or work descended from it, because that is where neurology is actually pointing us today; mind as society of unconscious motivating elements each competing for our actions.)

For Malor, this does not in any way contradict the randomness of the world. What it means is that our means of reacting to it is first unconscious, then conscious. Random inputs do still change things, but our means of deciding what to do in the moment is not accessible to us. However, over time, we can come to favor one set of possible responses over others through "conscious" feedback.

For Cheeze, it means don't apply classical ideas about free will (we control our thoughts and behaviors directly) to the idea that we don't have conscious understanding about the source of our "decisions". The fact that we rationalize them after deciding unconsciously does not mean that we have no free will in the usual sense; it means we don't understand *why* we made the choices we did, just that we did. And we can build a framework around our choices, to rationalize them, and we can even provide feedback to the unconscious that will substantially change what our actions will be in the future, through the illusion of self. However, there is actually no self; it's all a model that represents us as an actor in the world, so that we can use predictions to better modify our actions in the future.

It's worth noting that in this model, we live as simulations in a VR world presented to us by the brain. We don't actually directly experience the world. Consciousness is an interface between the *mind* and the world. Note also that the brain is made up of many competing constituents (Minsky) and so what comes up to our consciously is often ranked, and competing, and we do have oversight over these competing elements. That is the illusion of self.

We have no more consciousness than a rock. What we have is a simulation that gives us the *illusion* of consciousness. We know it's not real because it's completely mediated by the brain and does not occur in real-time. It's also directly affected by physical problems with the brain.

And it's a very, very useful illusion, because it allows us to plan for the future and give general guidance to our unconscious decision-making engine. But at the same time, it means that decisions like "time to punch this guy in the face" or "I should give a five to this homeless guy" are not, as we think they are, guided by thoughts, but rather by the state of our unconscious mind and brain. In effect, we have free will in the classical sense, since we can *feel like* we're making choices, but in reality, it's our physical brain and its quirks and perceptions that make our decisions and present them to us for action and justification. Free will is a fiction, but it is a *useful* fiction, as are the vast majority of things we believe about our selves.

Anyway, read up on it because the assumptions being made are based on incomplete information.

Robear wrote:

For Cheeze, it means don't apply classical ideas about free will (we control our thoughts and behaviors directly) to the idea that we don't have conscious understanding about the source of our "decisions". The fact that we rationalize them after deciding unconsciously does not mean that we have no free will in the usual sense; it means we don't understand *why* we made the choices we did, just that we did. And we can build a framework around our choices, to rationalize them, and we can even provide feedback to the unconscious that will substantially change what our actions will be in the future, through the illusion of self. However, there is actually no self; it's all a model that represents us as an actor in the world, so that we can use predictions to better modify our actions in the future.

Sure--the idea that those frameworks create another stimulus to go along with all the other stimuli? So you're not in control as classically understood, but you are able influence *something* in the world outside your conscious self? I've heard that. Just, there's no guarantee that the erosion of free will stops at that gap. You might think you're building a framework around your actions, but that framework building could be just as determined as the rest of your actions/decisions.

I'm also not so sure it's the nail in the coffin of religion it seems to be. If that's all free will is, then you know, Jesus Take the Wheel actually starts sounding *more* plausible. There is no guarantee the science show that a rationalizing framework will turn out to be the most effective framework.

Again, read the book, Metzinger does far better with his ideas than I do. It's not a terribly long book.

The reason it is a big deal for religions is that it shows that there can be no conscious soul, no continuity of conscious without the brain, and no ongoing "self" to be the object of belief. It's all generated by the brain, and when the brain ends, we end. Not only that, but the "spark" that makes us human turns out to be an evolved illusion, a useful tool incrementally available in many other animals, and not divinely given at all.

And yet life is still crammed with meaning somehow.

As to "Jesus Take The Wheel", remember, our consciousness overlay is actually functional and useful. What is the value in stripping that off in a time of crisis? There is some; you could reduce reaction time if you're not holding yourself back consciously. But that also happens automatically, and taking yourself out of the loop in a crisis means you're depending on learned behaviors from the past. If you've got them, great - fighters know that thinking in a fight is a problem and they program "muscle memory" and train their unconscious to do the violent thing without thought. But if you are just "putting yourself in Jesus' hands" while the car spins on the ice, well, your learned behavior might be "close my eyes and scream", which, you know, might not be the best one. There's no evidence for a spirit that will swoop in and take over your body for you...

On the larger scale, though, in terms of calming emotions and reducing internal conflict, things like mediation and mindfulness could help by turning off aspects of consciousness that can get *too* noisy or complicated. Still, it's a trade-off between that and the constant learning and feedback we do via our consciousness. You may "feel better" with that stuff turned down, but are you as functional for non-emergency situations? Kind of not, since you're "experiencing" without reacting so much.

Robear wrote:

Again, read the book, Metzinger does far better with his ideas than I do. It's not a terribly long book.

Maybe. I just wonder if it's a book in a line of evolution (no pun intended) in thinking about this stuff that will someday be seen as a product of a Free Will of the Gaps moment.

The reason it is a big deal for religions is that it shows that there can be no conscious soul, no continuity of conscious without the brain, and no ongoing "self" to be the object of belief. It's all generated by the brain, and when the brain ends, we end.

The kind of religions we are talking about already believe there is an entity that exists in some way outside the strict rules of time and space. If you can already believe the kind of things those religions are about, it's not much of a stretch to think that God means there's a way for your brain to never end.

Not only that, but the "spark" that makes us human turns out to be an evolved illusion, a useful tool incrementally available in many other animals, and not divinely given at all.

And yet life is still crammed with meaning somehow. :-)

That's the thing--it doesn't just erode religion, it erodes any philosophy that divides us from the animals too starkly. A lot of ways of thinking about humans will have to be radically rethought, not just the religious ones.

Robear wrote:

As to "Jesus Take The Wheel",

Heh, sorry--I didn't mean it so literally. I meant that if we are only framework builders, maybe it's more effective to build frameworks you believe in as a religion. That if you are religious you might more easily influence your actions and subconscious thoughts.

Cheeze_Pavilion wrote:

Robear wrote:

Again, read the book, Metzinger does far better with his ideas than I do. It's not a terribly long book.

Maybe. I just wonder if it's a book in a line of evolution (no pun intended) in thinking about this stuff that will someday be seen as a product of a Free Will of the Gaps moment.

Nope. It's not that. Again again, read the book.

The reason it is a big deal for religions is that it shows that there can be no conscious soul, no continuity of conscious without the brain, and no ongoing "self" to be the object of belief. It's all generated by the brain, and when the brain ends, we end.

The kind of religions we are talking about already believe there is an entity that exists in some way outside the strict rules of time and space. If you can already believe the kind of things those religions are about, it's not much of a stretch to think that God means there's a way for your brain to never end.

It is *entirely* a stretch to think that, because the brain is a physical thing subject to physical rules. And the self is directly manufactured by it. You can believe in magic, but at that point, your religion is no longer telling about the real world.

Not only that, but the "spark" that makes us human turns out to be an evolved illusion, a useful tool incrementally available in many other animals, and not divinely given at all.

And yet life is still crammed with meaning somehow.

That's the thing--it doesn't just erode religion, it erodes any philosophy that divides us from the animals too starkly. A lot of ways of thinking about humans will have to be radically rethought, not just the religious ones.

We've had forms of that philosophy for over 200 years now, I think this is just another part of the slowly shifting balance between religious and secular worldviews.

Heh, sorry--I didn't mean it so literally. I meant that if we are only framework builders, maybe it's more effective to build frameworks you believe in as a religion. That if you are religious you might more easily influence your actions and subconscious thoughts.

Yes, but shift it towards the world-view of an Iron Age or even Bronze Age framework, complete with all the lack of understanding that implies.

Robear wrote:
Cheeze_Pavilion wrote:

Robear wrote:

Again, read the book, Metzinger does far better with his ideas than I do. It's not a terribly long book.

Maybe. I just wonder if it's a book in a line of evolution (no pun intended) in thinking about this stuff that will someday be seen as a product of a Free Will of the Gaps moment.

Nope. It's not that. Again again, read the book. :-)

We'll see. I might come to some different conclusion about what the book is saying if I do.

The reason it is a big deal for religions is that it shows that there can be no conscious soul, no continuity of conscious without the brain, and no ongoing "self" to be the object of belief. It's all generated by the brain, and when the brain ends, we end.

The kind of religions we are talking about already believe there is an entity that exists in some way outside the strict rules of time and space. If you can already believe the kind of things those religions are about, it's not much of a stretch to think that God means there's a way for your brain to never end.

It is *entirely* a stretch to think that, because the brain is a physical thing subject to physical rules. And the self is directly manufactured by it. You can believe in magic, but at that point, your religion is no longer telling about the real world.

Well...yeah! That's what a lot of religions do. They tell you about some world beyond that which is accessible by science. Sure it's a stretch, but that's what religion is--if it wasn't a stretch, we'd just call it science!

Not only that, but the "spark" that makes us human turns out to be an evolved illusion, a useful tool incrementally available in many other animals, and not divinely given at all.

And yet life is still crammed with meaning somehow.

That's the thing--it doesn't just erode religion, it erodes any philosophy that divides us from the animals too starkly. A lot of ways of thinking about humans will have to be radically rethought, not just the religious ones.

We've had forms of that philosophy for over 200 years now, I think this is just another part of the slowly shifting balance between religious and secular worldviews.

I'd disagree, in that we've never had as strong a form as this which shifts the balance not just from religious to secular, but to a very specific subset of secular worldviews.

Heh, sorry--I didn't mean it so literally. I meant that if we are only framework builders, maybe it's more effective to build frameworks you believe in as a religion. That if you are religious you might more easily influence your actions and subconscious thoughts.

Yes, but shift it towards the world-view of an Iron Age or even Bronze Age framework, complete with all the lack of understanding that implies.

I don't think I'm getting this one. Maybe I'm being unclear. If our free will is limited to building frameworks, building an accurate framework isn't enough. It's about building an *effective* framework. So building a religious framework would not be as accurate, but it might have a bonus to effectiveness that makes it the best choice for stimulating us into acting the way we want.

The "free will is building frameworks" stuff implies that there is an actual self that is doing things. There is not.

Thomas Metzinger wrote:

We have the subjective experience of controlling our behavior, and we also have an experience of mental self- determination, controlling our attention, our mental state and all of these things. As modern science shows, some of these inner experiences may not be fully veridical, but just adaptive. Perhaps some of them are also efficient self-fulfilling prophecies. It may be functional to have the robust experience that you are in control, but from the thirdperson perspective of science, it seems that such experiences may not reflect the truth of our nature. What really happens is perhaps best described as an agent-free process of dynamical self-organization. This process has many layers – from the bodily to the social – and it manifests itself in itself, through conscious experience. Whenever we don’t understand something, we hallucinate a little man right into reality: a computer that suddenly “acts up”, weather gods causing thunder and throwing down lightning bolts, invisible demons causing diseases, Cartesian Egos that deliberately think their very own thoughts. It may work for a while, but it also causes considerable confusion. The self is not a thing, but a process.

As with many things, what Robear said.

Metzinger's book is ground-breaking and quite accessible. He's got another one for philosophers that is much more in-depth and technical.

Robear wrote:

The "free will is building frameworks" stuff implies that there is an actual self that is doing things. There is not.

Thomas Metzinger wrote:

We have the subjective experience of controlling our behavior, and we also have an experience of mental self- determination, controlling our attention, our mental state and all of these things. As modern science shows, some of these inner experiences may not be fully veridical, but just adaptive. Perhaps some of them are also efficient self-fulfilling prophecies. It may be functional to have the robust experience that you are in control, but from the thirdperson perspective of science, it seems that such experiences may not reflect the truth of our nature. What really happens is perhaps best described as an agent-free process of dynamical self-organization. This process has many layers – from the bodily to the social – and it manifests itself in itself, through conscious experience. Whenever we don’t understand something, we hallucinate a little man right into reality: a computer that suddenly “acts up”, weather gods causing thunder and throwing down lightning bolts, invisible demons causing diseases, Cartesian Egos that deliberately think their very own thoughts. It may work for a while, but it also causes considerable confusion. The self is not a thing, but a process.

Okay, but I said it in terms of a self building frameworks because you said:

And we can build a framework around our choices, to rationalize them, and we can even provide feedback to the unconscious that will substantially change what our actions will be in the future, through the illusion of self.

So where does free will fit into all this? As I read Metzinger's interview, the belief in free will might only be adaptive. He says "Perhaps some of them are also efficient self-fulfilling prophecies." But perhaps not. Perhaps they are only efficient prophecies in that they help sustain the illusion of self, and that illusion allows for those processes to interact with each other in ways that are more efficient for long-term survival.

As he writes in another passage there:

One thing we are all beginning to understand is how self-deception can be adaptive. Probably evolution has built some stable forms of self-deception right into our conscious self-models. One important function is mortality denial, I guess. We like to believe in an innermost essence or core, because it allows us to deny our finitude, or at least leave an open door of hope for life after death. And that’s also why it’s not going to go away. I think the folk-psychological, folk-metaphysical notion of self is going to stay in our everyday life and in our culture.

What is to say that free will of any kind is not a stable form of self-deception?

Paleocon wrote:

The simple idea is that consciousness is not as we naively understand it, because our consciousness not only lags well behind the real world, but our decisions, which we perceive as consciously made in the moment, are actually triggered by unconscious mechanisms

This is more or less what I was trying to say, upthread, that the subconscious makes most of our active decisions, and the conscious mind chases along after, making up stories about why we did things.

I've seen it described somewhere this way: consciousness, trying to see the real decision mechanisms, is like the beam of a flashlight, trying to see the dark.

We can use our consciousness to make decisions, to override our habits and automatic decision making. I believe we do have free will. It just takes a lot of work. If there's no struggle, you're on autopilot, and you're not exercising free will.

What if you had evidence that showed that your decisions were made before you consciously even thought about making them? That's what current research is showing. Metzinger proposes a philosophical framework in which to fit that new understanding.

Like I said, read the book.

Reminds me of Sam Harris and his take on free will.

Robear wrote:

What if you had evidence that showed that your decisions were made before you consciously even thought about making them?

My decisions about what to do with that evidence would have been made for me before I even consciously thought about making them. ; D

That's what current research is showing. Metzinger proposes a philosophical framework in which to fit that new understanding.

Like I said, read the book. :-)

Maybe. From the interview, I think I'll wind up with a different understanding of what he's saying than you did.

Can I ask what "thinking celestially" means? Because celestial, to me, is just a reference to space/stars.

And the original post doesn't have a lot to say about the intent of the thread otherwise.

NSMike wrote:

Can I ask what "thinking celestially" means? Because celestial, to me, is just a reference to space/stars.

And the original post doesn't have a lot to say about the intent of the thread otherwise.

This was a quickly-made thread to prevent one of those "boy, I sure hope this train doesn't go to Cleveland!" situations by giving the derail its own line.

As "celestial" can mean "heavenly" its just a play on the phrase "Think Globally, Act Locally."

BTW, for those interested in the study of consciousness, the Conscious Entities blog is well-regarded. (And yes, Metzinger's stuff is critically mentioned there.)

Robear wrote:

BTW, for those interested in the study of consciousness, the Conscious Entities blog is well-regarded.

That pic of the Bad Bot is awesome. I'm yoiking it for an icon!

Malor, there is an ongoing debate about whether free will needs indeterminate brain activity to be useful, or whether useful forms of free will exist in deterministic brains. Short summary (not from the above page) - Metzinger tries to move towards this philosophical libertarianism, but falls back on deterministic/free will compatibilism as more consistent with his ideas.

I'm more in the latter position, so far.

I'm convinced that the moral fears of social conservatives are largely based on what they'd do if they had the chance. They seem to assume (from personal inclination, according to some) that humans are lying cheating thieves who will loot the world the moment backs are turned, and they need to be kept in check by the threat of severe punishment.

(I've had conversations with some of my more conservative, religious friends - like Old Testament husband/family roles types - about how without the fear of God and the law, they'd just feel free to do anything they want to anybody. I mean, seriously? How do they sleep at night? Although I guess it's great if you want to feel like a hero for not, like, stealing stuff all day...)

Anyway, this idea popped while I was reading the Brexit thread, so rather than derail it, I put it here.

Robear wrote:

I'm convinced that the moral fears of social conservatives are largely based on what they'd do if they had the chance. They seem to assume (from personal inclination, according to some) that humans are lying cheating thieves who will loot the world the moment backs are turned, and they need to be kept in check by the threat of severe punishment.

(I've had conversations with some of my more conservative, religious friends - like Old Testament husband/family roles types - about how without the fear of God and the law, they'd just feel free to do anything they want to anybody. I mean, seriously? How do they sleep at night? Although I guess it's great if you want to feel like a hero for not, like, stealing stuff all day...)

Anyway, this idea popped while I was reading the Brexit thread, so rather than derail it, I put it here.

IMAGE(http://api.ning.com/files/QfF46QZjDE4Zaz4VQvShngGBfmPgZ1bR*L9y*Gh0L1Utj05hy9po*9gRkgACoBw5P7s7iBfTwnlmuSj7HETpHqH3DNF0hF74/PennJilletteOnWhyHeIsntRapingandKillingEveryone42715.jpg)

Robear wrote:

I'm convinced that the moral fears of social conservatives are largely based on what they'd do if they had the chance. They seem to assume (from personal inclination, according to some) that humans are lying cheating thieves who will loot the world the moment backs are turned, and they need to be kept in check by the threat of severe punishment.

Given how conservatives in political positions tend to behave, looting from their constituents and improving their stock portfolios with insider info...yes.

Robear wrote:

(I've had conversations with some of my more conservative, religious friends - like Old Testament husband/family roles types - about how without the fear of God and the law, they'd just feel free to do anything they want to anybody. I mean, seriously? How do they sleep at night?

For they cannot sleep unless they have done wrong;
they are robbed of sleep unless they have made someone stumble.
For they eat the bread of wickedness
and drink the wine of violence.

-- Proverbs 4:16-17

There are times when the Bible really nails it.

Malor wrote:

There are times when the Bible really nails it.

Three times, at least!

And yet, these are folks who have been exposed heavily to the teaching taught about in Proverbs 4 (and which, remember, is based on the OT idea of deeds and rituals keeping one right with God, rather than on the idea of Grace.) So in the religious context, we have to believe that they *chose* this path. In modern terms, we'd say their brain structures and life experiences have given them a wider interpretation of morality than the baseline.

Anyone have any studies on the percentage of self-centered people vs those who are community focused? I have seen numbers from the mid-teens to as high as 1/3, but I believe the studies show that a tendency towards behaving well towards those around us is more common than not. (And that makes sense, since we have lived in communities for up to 200,000 years or more.)

We are not perfect, of course, but neither are most of us by default "evil", as Proverbs puts it.