A Sample of Robin's Writing.

[packbat]

Awhile ago, my dad (^z) suggested that I should crosspost some things I write in other places to here. He had said it back when I was active on the Dominic Deegan forum, but now that I am posting on the Internet Infidels Discussion Board, I feel that my posts might actually be of some interest. Thus, I show you the most recent post I made in IIDB.


Some background: This post was made in response to an assertion (which I quote a phrase of in my opening question) that human reason could not exist in a deterministic or random-deterministic universe. The subject had been raised a few posts earlier; this was the first in which I made any in-depth arguments.

Any machine constructed from such pieces will certainly devour human reason? I disagree most vehemently. I suspect you might be interested in some of the debate going on in the field of artificial intelligence. A number of the arguments for the "Strong AI" position also apply here. However, in the current case, a few more apply as well.

(Before we begin, let us agree that we, in fact, are people, thinkers, and moral agents. I do not believe that is a controversial position.)

One such argument is: We think with our brains. If you like, I can add the rest of the nervous system to that - there is plenty of evidence to the effect that the spinal cord learns actions as well - but my point is that our minds are made of meat. More importantly, we have some knowledge about how this meat from which our mind is made operates. In fact, what we know establishes almost certainly that our minds are deterministic.

Therefore, there obviously isn't a contradiction between our minds being deterministic and our being moral agents, since both are true. At best, phrases like "moral agent" simply have a slightly different meaning than we thought they did.


Upon reconsideration, that isn't a particularly convincing argument. More importantly, it doesn't deal with the more important question, which is "why". If the world (and us within it) is entirely deterministic (or random-deterministic), then why are we people, thinkers, and moral agents?

I don't know. I haven't thought it through. But here's an analogy, if you'll bear with me a little longer.

Consider a novel. A novel is completely deterministic; unless an outside force acts upon it, the words aren't going to change, either in order or in nature. Thus, when you read Moby Dick (for example), it will always begin with "Call me Ishmael" - never "My name is Ishmael" or "Call me Herman". Nevertheless, in some limited sense, it still makes sense to refer to Ishmael as a moral agent, person, even thinker, in spite of this. Granting this, it would be absolutely reasonable to grant at least that much credit to people in the real world, would it not?