Moral consquences of determinism

[kyser_soze]

When I develop my Bene Gesserit powers (on Sunday afternoon doncha know) you're all going to be very sorry indeed.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Just develop martial art skills.

The budo concept of 'no mind' is a sound one – through training, you cut out conscious representation and react directly to the stimulus without 'looking at' it in consciousness first. Thus, it can appear to your opponent that you have reacted to their attack before they even initiated it.

Fucking hard to do, mind.

 

[kyser_soze]

Which is what top sports folks do, especially those who have to return an object travelling toward them quickly (tennis, cricket, baseball). I'd assume it's the same for racing drivers too.

The closest I've come to that have been a few exceptional moments playing videogames, and once when I was skiing - you don't realise it's happened until you come 'back' into your normal headspace, and then go 'OMFG!!' and marvel at yourself...

Being able to do that when you're concious...that's my goal...

 

[littlebabyjesus]

I've experienced it – I'm sure most people have at least for moments.

The trick is consistency – being able to act in that way at will. That's tremendously difficult.

 

[bhamgeezer]

I've experienced it – I'm sure most people have at least for moments.

The trick is consistency – being able to act in that way at will. That's tremendously difficult.

I think the psychological effects of adrenaline may factor to be honest. I certainly have got like this in when playing games and when you zone back into reality its effectively like a drug.

 

[8ball]

I think the right/left wing continuum can often be usefully summarised by the determinism question. Right wingers are almost always believers in 'free will' and responsibility, whereas left wingers allow a much greater role for cultural conditioning (i.e. determinism).

This is the biggest bag'o'shite I've read on Urban in some time.

 

[8ball]

Which is what top sports folks do, especially those who have to return an object travelling toward them quickly (tennis, cricket, baseball). I'd assume it's the same for racing drivers too.

The closest I've come to that have been a few exceptional moments playing videogames, and once when I was skiing - you don't realise it's happened until you come 'back' into your normal headspace, and then go 'OMFG!!' and marvel at yourself...

Being able to do that when you're concious...that's my goal...

It's called being 'in the zone'.

I think your consciousness is changed, but not in a really qualitative way as you can always remember what you did.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

I think your consciousness is changed, but not in a really qualitative way as you can always remember what you did.

No, not necessarily.

There's been some very interesting work recently – it was in New Scientist a couple of months ago – showing that we lay down our memories when our brains have a spare moment. Laying down memory requires a great deal of energy, and researchers discovered to their surprise that brains at rest expend more energy than brains engaged in a task.

In fact, if we are totally engrossed in what we are doing, there is little or no 'downtime' in which to lay down memories and we don't remember what we did. I've experienced this a little bit when concentrating very hard – afterwards, I couldn't have told you exactly what I did.

Basically, if something doesn't enter our conscious representation, it can't be laid down in memory, or at least not in a memory that we could then represent to ourselves as if it were in consciousness. If you like, one way of looking at consciousness is to consider it to be the first layer of memory.

 

[8ball]

Well, you sometimes get the sense of forgetting the journey when you arrive somewhere, but this is usually down to being on 'autopilot'. With being 'in the zone' I find the experience gets at least as far as short term memory. I've never gone down a fast and challenging ski run then thought 'that was fun', then 'what was fun? what am i doing? what are these sticks attached to my feet?'.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

It doesn't quite work like that. You'll not have been 'in the zone' the whole way down, but if you are for any length of time continuously, you won't really be able to remember much of that period afterwards. That's been my experience, and this research certainly supports the idea that for memory to be laid down, conscious representation is needed first.

It's not blacking out, more a sense of a split second action – an amazing return of serve in tennis, say – which, afterwards, you don't really remember doing. You remember immediately after, but not the actual point of making the shot. You have been so totally focussed on the task that your brain has engaged no or hardly any effort in making a memory of it. That's another feeling I've had after being 'in the zone' – a memory that I did some things, but a decidedly vague one.

It makes a lot of sense to me. It's not surprising if making a conscious representation of experience to be laid down in memory is the most energy-consuming task the brain performs.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Well, you sometimes get the sense of forgetting the journey when you arrive somewhere, but this is usually down to being on 'autopilot'.

Being on autopilot is part of the same phenomenon. What does being on 'autopilot' mean? It means that you're acting without representing the action in your consciousness, so it can't be laid down in memory.

 

[8ball]

My brain may be a little different to the standard, but I find when I'm properly 'in the zone' I can remember what happened but not certain representations, usually there's no visual memory but there is a memory of the thought processes. Basically the feelings of intention and flow of concept get laid down but no sensory data.

 

[8ball]

Being on autopilot is part of the same phenomenon. What does being on 'autopilot' mean? It means that you're acting without representing the action in your consciousness, so it can't be laid down in memory.

My contention is that 'autopilot' and being properly 'in the zone' are different. They've found, with the 'autopilot' phenomenon, that people are on average driving slightly better than normal but worse if something a bit unexpected happens. The same way you can be not conscious of your walking but you'll stumble a bit more on an uneven surface than if you actually saw it.

Being 'in the zone' is where exceptional performance happens, not just 'slightly better so long as nothing goes wobbly'.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

My brain may be a little different to the standard, but I find when I'm properly 'in the zone' I can remember what happened but not certain representations, usually there's no visual memory but there is a memory of the thought processes. Basically the feelings of intention and flow of concept get laid down but no sensory data.

Ah, yes, that makes sense. You're not left feeling that someone else did it. Maybe, as you say, it is better to think of consciousness having been altered rather than being absent – the bits of our conscious representation that we don't need aren't made, essentially.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

My contention is that 'autopilot' and being properly 'in the zone' are different. They've found, with the 'autopilot' phenomenon, that people are on average driving slightly better than normal but worse if something a bit unexpected happens. The same way you can be not conscious of your walking but you'll stumble a bit more on an uneven surface than if you actually saw it.

Being 'in the zone' is where exceptional performance happens, not just 'slightly better so long as nothing goes wobbly'.

They are different, yes, but related.

Driving a bit better than normal on autopilot would be what I'd expect, as you're bypassing a level when making decisions – consciousness inevitably slows down decision-making – and it is precisely because you're doing something very familiar that you don't need consciousness to decide what to do. But of course when something unexpected happens, you do need to make a conscious representation of it to yourself in order to work out what to do – and since your conscious self hasn't been monitoring the situation as you've gone along, it suddenly has a hell of a lot of stuff to sort out.

As you say, being in the zone is where exceptional performance happens, but while you go on autopilot so that your brain can think about other things at the same time, when in the zone, your brain is totally focussed on the task in hand.

In both cases, you're not making a conscious representation of the action, but for very contrasting reasons. It also makes sense to me that there may be pretty much no memory of any kind from autopilot, but some memory of intention from being in the zone, given the contrasting states.

I think we're basically agreeing here.

 

[8ball]

It certainly looks that way.

We can have a good ruck once you release your Grand Unified Theory Of Human Culture upon us, though.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

OK.

 

[goldenecitrone]

I think it's a lot easier to see determinism at work in people you know well, rather than in yourself. You know how they will react, what they are likely to say or do in a particular situation, far better than you can see that at work in yourself. Though those closest to you can obviously see that in you. Wish always makes for good fun.

 

[8ball]

I think it's a lot easier to see determinism at work in people you know well, rather than in yourself. You know how they will react, what they are likely to say or do in a particular situation, far better than you can see that at work in yourself. Though those closest to you can obviously see that in you. Wish always makes for good fun.

I guess you're part of a clique of very predictable people.

 

[goldenecitrone]

I guess you're part of a clique of very predictable people.

I knew you were going to say that.

 

[8ball]

I knew you were going to say that.

 

[goldenecitrone]

Always makes me chuckle.

 

[kyser_soze]

I think your consciousness is changed, but not in a really qualitative way as you can always remember what you did.

Yeah, but not how you did it; for example, and sticking with skiing, the time I managed to get 'in the zone' I can remember the run, I can remember the feeling of elation at the end of it, but I cannot remember any of my body's movements - even immediately afterwards. This as opposed to other black runs where I've got clear recollection of how and where I turned, where I could have improved my technique etc.

 

[kabbes]

Here's a question: how do you make a decision? To go left or to go right? To take the drink when offered or not to? To try out a new academic course or not?

Is it pure logic? If so, given your logical model and given input paramerers, there is only one choice to be made and therefore there is no free will involved.

Is it instinct? In which case, there is no conscious thought and there is no free will involved.

What is it within the decision making process that allows for you to choose in a completely free sense?

 

[Jonti]

Did you have to say that? Is that what you're telling us? And if so, why?

Oh, you just can't help it, I guess.

Have a nice day, now!

 

[kabbes]

I'm certainly saying that there might be something intrinsic to my psychology and physiology that made it inevitable that I would make that post.

How can I identify my own decision-making process? I cant step out of my own psyche.

 

[Jonti]

Well, if your and my responses are both "inevitable" then there is hardly any point in any discussion. That position is, I daresay, philosophically unassailable, but sterile.

But practically speaking how would you go about proving that kind of assertion? How would you give it any kind of real meaning? I'm not at all sure that can be done.

Any attempt to replicate "you" to test whether "you" would always make the same response under the same circumstances would be (allowing such an attempt to be possible, even in theory) doomed to failure. A critic need only say, "but the two kabbes cannot be identical, for look! they behaved in a different manner in the same situation". In other words, that approach is in danger of turning on a semantic point about the meaning of identity and self-identity.

But the real issue is empirical. Regardless of whether the process is inscrutable or not (and I think it is) the question is whether there is indeed "nothing new under the sun", or whether something new comes into being as a result of one's choices and decisions.

 

[kabbes]

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that the question is soluble. And I don't think that it renders discussion pointless or life stale. Just because it is inevitable that I will act in a certain way, doesn't mean that I know what way that will be until I'm actually in the situation. Just because it is inevitable that you will answer a question a particular way, doesn't mean that I know what way that will be until you say it. Even if everything that will ever happen has already been predetermined (and I'm not saying that it has by any means!), we only experience the passage of time in one direction so the future is still unknown to us.

As I also said earlier in the thread, I'm not actually that interested in the philosophical implications of the idea, only the social ones. I think that if free will is considerably less free than it first appears then it is the death knell for the kind of hard-line Thatcherism that dominates right-wing thinking. It means that you can't just leave people to it and expect them to choose wisely. It means that you have to engineer the kind of society where they will simply inevitably make the wise choice.

 

[Knotted]

I almost agree with kabbes. I think that just because people can be understood in causal terms in principle does not mean this is necessarily the best way to understand people. What determinism does do is it counters the idea that all our choices are best seen as being acts of free will. Sometimes people are predictable and do things against their own best interests. OCD, addiction, procrastination etc. The assumption that choice=free will is not always helpful. The idea of free will is a practical idea. It is a way of looking at people as objects with their own intentions, it is a short cut. If in a particular context free will loses it's pragmatic value then why assume it? We can view a choice in different, complementary ways. People who believe in free will as opposed to determinism (whatever this absolute 'free will' is) have a narrower understanding of human behaviour/cognition. That's all there is to it.

 

[Jonti]

Of course, one has to be able to engage with the objective social conditions and choose to act to transform them. There is simply no way for any kind of progressive politics otherwise, regardless of what brain-dead academic "marxists" seem to imply with their crass and naive accounts of materialism.

And I'd agree that the right has wrong-footed the left on the issue. We can choose, and we like to exercise choice. It's not right-wing to see that's attractive.

But I'd suggest the false choices of Thatcherism ("everyone can be their own pension fund manager") are a different kettle of fish altogether. Political discourse is not about ferreting out the truth; it is only about gaining and retaining power. The politician asks "what is truth?" because they have no use for it at all; the truth, to such as these, is simply what people can be persuaded to swallow.