What do you keep living for? Is there a specific person, goal, or idea that you work for? Is there no meaning to life in your opinion?
Context: I’ve been reading Camus and Sartre, and thinking about how their ideas interact with hard determinism.
What do you keep living for? Is there a specific person, goal, or idea that you work for? Is there no meaning to life in your opinion?
Context: I’ve been reading Camus and Sartre, and thinking about how their ideas interact with hard determinism.
I think you’ve got a really interesting take on morality, but for me it really falls down on the biological level. Robert Sapolsky was the writer who convinced me, and his argument goes something like this: no neuron in the brain ever fires of its own accord - its always caused by something that we can agree is out of our control, namely our environment, upbringing, culture, genes, etc. Even if these don’t directly cause neurons to fire, then they create the factors which do - hormone secretion, what neural pathways form as our brains develop. And we can say that our consciousness is bounded by our material brains because of the changes to people who undergo lobotomies or similarly experience losses to parts of their brain, for example Phineas Gage. So, based on this, as our experience of consciousness is tied to the firing of neurons in our physical brains, and that is out of our control, we can say that we don’t truly have agency. This means that no one is ever truly free to make a decision or not, and that, to my mind at least, means it cannot have been their fault if they did something wrong.
Thank you for the thoughtful response. It clearly draws the path of compulsive behaviours and its certainly true what is perceived as good or bad is a moving target based on societal norms and we’re more often faced with the illusion of agency rather than true power over our actions.
If you’re interested in challenging your view I’d invite you to look into psychology revolving around recovering addicts. There is some very interesting information there. More often than not it the self reinforcing pathways that que cravings never go away but buy making changes to some of the areas you mentioned that compel the neurons to fire ie their “environment” they’re able to manipulate their physical behaviour to ones that better align with their sense of self.
Agreed the bag of worms we’re wading into is a challenging one but we must acknowledge that individuals can have competing motivations that trace down to the biological functions that reinforce them. Which ones win out can be manipulated by internal and external influences.
Thank you for indulging me it’s fun to RP as someone who could participate in philosophical discussion
Philosophical RP is a great way to spend time, no doubt about it :)
I think that the behaviour seen in recovering addicts can actually be explained by how human (and other primates!) brains have evolved to be separate from other mammals. We have our animalistic impulses thanks to our nervous system, but our prefrontal cortex regulates them, essentially acting as the voice of reason. For example, a recovering alcoholic’s limbic system might encourage them to drink, but by recovering the alcoholic has reinforced the strength of their prefrontal cortex, and that means that the neurons it fires are able to override the impulses created by the limbic system.
It seems to me that this does create a bit of space for doubt, but that, as these areas of the brain are developed as a response to our genes and our environment, we can still say that their relative strength throughout our lives is determined, which, to me, removes responsibility, and so removes any inherent morality.
It’s a great topic to discuss, thanks for taking the time to!