Two questions about free choice
A. You said in the debate with Aviv that determinism cannot be disproven in practice. But I was thinking of a scientific experiment that I think could disprove it:
There is a British man named Clive Wearing who, due to an illness, cannot remember anything and he cannot create new memories at all. That is, he is able to remember the last 30 seconds and no event that has ever happened to him other than that (so every few seconds he is sure that he has just woken up from a 30-year sleepover). His Wikipedia – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clive_Wearing
You can put him in the exact same external conditions many times, let him make a ‘choice’, and see if he always chooses exactly the same thing.
B. Regarding intuition for moral judgment – in the debate you agreed that it developed evolutionarily, but you still said that it represents something real in reality, that there really is justification for moral judgment, and hence there is free choice. Why say that? This intuition would certainly have developed even in a world without free choice and without justification for moral judgment. So how can you conclude from its existence about free choice?
Discover more from הרב מיכאל אברהם
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Discover more from הרב מיכאל אברהם
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
I have noticed that in all debates about choice versus determinism, the discussion always revolves around the possibility of choice and seems to remain undecided. I suggest trying the opposite. Is deterministic thinking possible? Let's assume that every decision a person makes is a derivative of all kinds of past data (genetic, cultural, experiential, etc.) which, with the help of some algorithm, are translated into a decision that is accompanied by the false feeling (a "cover version") that this decision was made not because of those data but for the sake of something else.
What can we say about this model? Let's assume that this is the case. If so, all human decisions are always a response to some interpretation of past data. If so, there can be nothing fundamentally new in any human decision. What is not supported by a simple observation of reality. I am sorry that I so easily gave you such a fertile ground.
You are confusing thinking and judgment with a value decision.
As for your argument, I didn't understand what it was useful for. Indeed, there is nothing new there. So don't be sorry, you didn't do anything. 🙂
“You are confusing thinking and judgment with a value judgment.” Let's say. And what difference does it make? I talked about the possibility of describing all creative human thinking by a deterministic process. So you are claiming that there is nothing fundamentally new in the idea of the relativity of time or the uncertainty principle? I can make do with this screenshot from the video “The Two-Foot Determinism Bluff” that I am making. But I would have preferred a more serious and less deterministic response.
Leave a Reply
Please login or Register to submit your answer
