Posted on by Abe Austin

What We Are, Fundamentally- The Result of Determinism

Determinism Again)

Yesterday I spoke of the physical-materialist theory of determinism, which maintains that all of our behaviors and “choices” are actually predetermined programming. The stimuli to our senses come from an environment that we cannot control, and our reactions to those stimuli are dictated by the preset mapping of the synapses within our brains.

Input + Function = Output, and because the Input and the Function are controlled, so is the Output.

Free will and control are only illusions that arise from the fact that the environment and the brain mapping are so complex that we cannot predict the outcomes before they occur. But just because we mortals can’t predict those outcomes, doesn’t mean that they aren’t predestined. The things that we do are simply the things that we were always going to do.

Moral License)

If this theory is true, though, then I cannot be responsible for anything that I do. I might feel as though I make my own choices, that I wrestle between decisions, but that’s simply my computer-brain evaluating between two programmed priorities, until it finally settles on the option that its biological algorithms were pre-weighted towards. I was always going to come to the conclusion that I was going to come to, and I am no more responsible for coming to that conclusion than a domino is guilty of falling when pushed.

Thus, if I decide to kill another person, there was no alternative to that outcome. There was no option for me to have chosen otherwise. I might have chosen differently if I had been born to a different environment, or if I had a different composition of the brain, but the function and the parameters were already set, and so I simply had to give the only possible output: murder.

And if I were to go around proselyting for this worldview, and the logic of it were to incite a person to decide there was no morality and that he truly was permitted to do anything and none of it would be his fault, and if he were to then go out and planted bombs that killed hundreds of innocent schoolchildren, well it couldn’t be helped because his mind was already such as to take the input of my words and derive those predestined conclusions. And it couldn’t be helped that I inspired him to do those things, because I was also predestined to make those arguments. And though it may appear to the outside world that I had influence and he had choice, even though everything in our natural perception and experience screams at us that such is the case, it would all be a lie and an illusion. The creation of that terrible, bloody would have been necessary and unavoidable.

Common Sense)

The horrifying conclusions of determinism are reason enough to reject it, but even more important than the unacceptable nature of its ends is the fact that it defies so much of our common sense that we have to conclude it isn’t true. Like I said in the last paragraph, everything in our natural perception and reason tells us that we actually do choose what we do, and that the evil are guilty, and that people can decide whether to live as good or evil.

Determinism asks for an even greater level of blind faith than any system of religious morality. It not only asks us to trust its claims, but to do so against all of our perception and reason. It asks us to deny the apparent and obvious reality to accept an unprovable and theoretical one. Everything natural and instinctive about us protests that is a lie, and that would explain why its ends are so horrific and destructive. A reality based upon a lie can only end in obliteration, for a lie is the inversion of reality.

Posted on by Abe Austin

What We Are, Fundamentally- Deterministic Machines

The Materialist Position)

I have previously criticized the materialist position, which is that only the material exists and is real. In the physical-materialist view there is no metaphysical reality, such as soul or spirit or transcendence. Debates between the material and the immaterial viewpoints are often based on interpretations of the human experience. The materialist must maintain that even the things that are typically not associated with matter have their origins within it. For the materialist view to be correct all thoughts, feelings, convictions, hopes, and anguish must have an explanation in atoms and protons and minerals.

Many critics of materialism have pointed out the horrifying conclusions that follow when we strip morality and emotion of their spiritual origins. I would like to emphasize a few of these points, observations that have only been briefly mentioned elsewhere, but which deserve the special attention that I will bring to them with this series. I will start today by defining one of the core beliefs of materialism, and tomorrow I will make my critique of it.

Deterministic Machines)

The theory that describes how a person can make choices under a physical-materialist worldview is called determinism, which asserts that there actually is no choice at all. In a physical-materialist view, humans possess no free will. They are nothing more than deterministic machines, and all that they “choose” to do is actually predetermined by their chemical construction and environment.

Each one of us is born with certain synapses and pathways already formed in our brains. That is the programming that determines what behavior we will exhibit in response to certain inputs. The inputs come from the environment that we live in. If the temperature is cold, our brain interprets that fact and executes whatever reaction is programmed as a response.

Since the environment is out of our control, and since the initial state of our brains is formed before we are born, we have no control over what inputs and reactions will come into and out of us. It has all been predetermined, and we are simply reactive beings, constrained to behave in a way that is outside of our own control.

Even if we change our programming, we only do so in predetermined ways. So if a child is pre-programmed to touch a hot stove, and is burned, and then remaps his brain to not do that anymore, he does that remapping as a pre-programmed reaction to feeling pain. Thus, even the changing of one’s mind is predictable.

And we predetermined machines are perfectly capable to interacting with one another by hooking up our cognitive inputs and outputs to form a larger machine. What you say to me you are predetermined to say, and how I respond I am predetermined to respond, and the same for you, and then the same for for me, back-and-forth, until one of us terminates the conversation because we are predetermined at that point to do so. And what each of us takes away from that conversation will be exactly what we are predetermined to take away.

Commentary)

This model may sound very strange, very different from how we perceive our day-to-day experiences, but it is the only logical conclusion once one decides that only the material is real. So long as there is nothing but matter, choice and free will can only be an illusion, a perception that is ironically pre-programmed into us, just like everything else.

Tomorrow I will discuss the absolute license this theory gives to all immoral and unethical behavior. In short, if everything we do is predetermined, if we have no choice over our own actions, then we are not responsible for any evil that we might do. There is no blame for even the most horrific of crimes, because the people that did those things only did so because they were predetermined to do so. Come back next time where I will discuss this even further.