Posts tagged neuroscience.

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The Argumentative Ape: Why We’re Wired to Persuade

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We’re all guilty of flawed thinking because our brains evolved to win others round to our point of view – whether or not our reasoning is logical

HAVE you ever, against your better judgement, nurtured a belief in the paranormal? Or do you believe that gifted rock singers are more likely to die at the age of 27? Maybe you just have the sneaking suspicion that you are smarter, funnier and more attractive than the next person.

If you buy into any of these beliefs, you are probably suffering from confirmation bias - the mind’s tendency to pick and choose information to support our preconceptions, while ignoring a wealth of evidence to the contrary. Consider the idea that rock stars die at 27 - a fallacy that crops up time and again in the media. Once you have heard of the “27 club”, it is easy to cite a handful of examples that fit the bill - Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain, Amy Winehouse - while forgetting the countless other musicians who survived their excesses past the age of 30.

The confirmation bias is just one of a truckload of flaws in our thinking that psychologists have steadily documented over the past few decades. Indeed, everything from your choice of cellphone to your political agenda is probably clouded by several kinds of fuzzy logic that sway the way you weigh up evidence and come to a decision.

Why did we evolve such an apparently flawed instrument? Our irrational nature is very difficult to explain if you maintain that human intelligence evolved to solve complex problems, where clear, logical thought should offer the advantage. As such, it has remained something of a puzzle.

An elegant explanation may have arrived. Hugo Mercier at the University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland, and Dan Sperber at the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary, believe that human reasoning evolved to help us to argue. An ability to argue convincingly would have been in our ancestors’ interest as they evolved more advanced forms of communication, the researchers propose. Since the most persuasive lines of reasoning are not always the most logical, our brains’ apparent foibles may result from this need to justify our actions and convince others to see our point of view - whether it is right or wrong. “You end up making decisions that look rational, rather than making genuinely rational decisions,” says Mercier.

The flip side, of course, is that we also face the risk of being duped by others, so we developed a healthy scepticism and an ability to see the flaws in others’ reasoning. This ability to argue back and forth may have been crucial to humanity’s success - allowing us to come to extraordinary solutions as a group that we could never reach alone.

Mercier and Sperber are by no means the first to suggest that the human mind evolved to help us manage a complex social life. It has long been recognised that group living is fraught with mental challenges that could drive the evolution of the brain. Primates living in a large group have to form and maintain alliances, track who owes what to whom, and keep alert to being misled by others in the group. Sure enough, there is a very clear correlation between the number of individuals in a primate group, and the species’ average brain size, providing support for the “social brain” - or “Machiavellian intelligence” - hypothesis (New Scientist, 24 September 2011, p 40).

The evolution of language a few hundred thousand years ago would have changed the rules of the game. The benefits are clear - by enabling the exchange of ideas, complex communication would have fostered innovation and invention, leading to better tools, new ways to hunt and trap animals, and more comfortable homes. But the gift of the gab would also have presented a series of challenges. In particular, our ancestors had to discern who to trust. Signs of expertise and examples of past benevolence would offer reasons to listen to some people, but our ancestors would have also needed to evaluate the ideas of people they may not have known well enough to trust implicitly.

A powerful way to overcome this challenge would have been to judge the quality of their arguments before accepting or rejecting what they had to say, helping the group arrive at the best strategies for hunting and gathering, for instance. “Providing and evaluating reasons is fundamental to the success of human communication,” says Sperber, who has spent years considering the ways an argumentative mind might ease our way through the “bottleneck of distrust”, as he calls it.

On the one hand, a healthy scepticism would have been essential, leading us to more critical thought. Equally beneficial, however, would have been an ability to persuade others and justify our point of view with the most convincing arguments. It was Mercier who began to wonder whether this need to sway other people’s opinions might explain some of our biases, which might skew our logic but which may nevertheless give us the edge when arguing our opinions. So the pair set about reviewing an enormous body of psychological studies of human reasoning.

Consider the confirmation bias. It is surprisingly pervasive, playing a large part in the way we consider the behaviour of different politicians, for instance, so that we will rack up evidence in favour of our chosen candidate while ignoring their competitor’s virtues. Yet people rarely have any awareness that they are not being objective. Such a bias looks like a definite bug if we evolved to solve problems: you are not going to get the best solution by considering evidence in such a partisan way.

But if we evolved to be argumentative apes, then the confirmation bias takes on a much more functional role. “You won’t waste time searching out evidence that doesn’t support your case, and you’ll home in on evidence that does,” says Mercier.

Mercier and Sperber offer a similar explanation for the “attraction effect” - when faced with a choice between different options, irrelevant alternatives can sway our judgement from the logical choice. It is perhaps best illustrated by considering a range of smartphone contracts: people who would tend to choose the cheapest option can be persuaded to opt for a slightly up-market model if an even more expensive, supposedly luxury model is added to the mix (see “Decisions, decisions”).

Playing defensive

According to Mercier and Sperber’s argumentative theory, the luxury option might sway our decision by offering an easy justification for our decision to go with the middle option - we can use it to claim that we have landed a bargain. Notably, the attraction effect is strongest when people are told that they will have to defend publicly whatever choice they make. “In these kinds of situations, reasoning plays its argumentative role and drives you towards decisions that you can easily justify rather than the best decision for you,” says Mercier.

The duo found further evidence from the framing effect, first identified 30 years ago by psychologists Daniel Kahneman of Princeton University and Amos Tversky. In a series of studies, they found that people treat identical options very differently depending on how the options are presented, or framed. One classic experiment asks people to imagine an outbreak of disease threatening a small town of 600 people. The subjects are offered two forms of treatment: Plan A, which will definitely save exactly 200 people, and Plan B, which has a 1-in-3 chance of saving everyone and a 2-in-3 chance of saving no one.

Most people choose Plan A. But they tend to change their mind when exactly the same plans are rephrased with a different emphasis. The subjects are now told that if Plan A is selected, 400 people, but no more, will definitely die. Plan B stays the same: there’s a 1-in-3 chance no one will die, and a 2-in-3 chance that everyone will die. In this case, most people opt for Plan B - the choice they had previously shunned (Science, vol 211, p 453). Kahneman and Tversky explained this inconsistency in terms of “loss aversion”: in the second set-up, the loss of life seems especially salient, so people avoid it. But the argumentative theory offers a new twist, suggesting that participants in these experiments choose the response that will be easiest to justify if challenged. In the first scenario, there is a direct argument for their choice - it will definitely save 200 lives - whereas in the second scenario, they can instead argue that their decision might save 400 people from certain death.

Once again, experiments have shown that people are more susceptible to the bias when they are told that they will have to defend their decision, just as you would expect if we evolved to convince others of our actions (Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, vol 20, p 125). The effect may weigh heavily on the way we weigh up the benefits and risks of certain lifestyle choices - it is the reason that “90 per cent fat-free” food sounds healthy, when a product advertised with “10 per cent fat content” would seem less attractive.

Drawing together all the difference strands of evidence, Mercier and Sperber published a paper in Behavioral and Brain Sciences journal last year outlining their theory (vol 34, p 57). In addition to confirmation bias and the framing and attraction effects, they cited many other seemingly irrational biases that might be explained by our argumentative past, including the sunk-cost fallacy - our reluctance to cut our losses and abandon a project even when it would be more rational to move on - and feature creep, which includes our tendency to buy goods with more features than we would ever actually use.

The paper has caused quite a stir since it was published. Jonathan Haidt, a moral psychologist at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, believes the theory is so important that “the abstract of their paper should be posted above the photocopy machine in every psychology department”. Mercier and Sperber’s ideas dovetail neatly with Haidt’s influential view that our moral judgements stem from our gut reactions to moral transgressions, and not from rational reflection. In one example, Haidt and Thalia Wheatley of Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, showed that hypnotically inducing the feeling of disgust leads people to make harsher moral judgments, even in cases when no one has done anything wrong - supporting the idea that emotion rather than logical reasoning drives morality (Psychological Science, vol 16, p 780). We still spend masses of time arguing about the morality of certain situations - whether we are considering a friend’s infidelity or debating the “war on terror” - but according to Haidt’s research, we are simply trying to justify our gut reactions and persuade others to believe our judgments, rather than attempting to come to the most just conclusion. “Moral argumentation is not a search for moral truth, but a tool for moral persuasion,” says Haidt.

The idea that we evolved to argue and persuade, sometimes at the expense of the truth, may seem to offer a pessimistic view of human reasoning. But there may also be a very definite benefit to our argumentative minds - one that has proved essential to our species’ success. Crucial to Sperber and Mercier’s idea is the fact that we are not only good at producing convincing arguments, but we are also adept at puncturing other people’s faulty reasoning. This means that when people get together to debate and argue against each other, they can counterbalance the biased reasoning that each individual brings to the table.

As a result, group thinking can produce some surprisingly smart results, surpassing the efforts of the irrational individuals. In one convincing study, psychologists David Moshman and Molly Geil at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln looked at performance in the Wason selection test - a simple card game based on logical deduction. When thinking about this task on their own, less than 10 per cent of people got the right answer. When groups of 5 or 6 people tackled it, however, 75 per cent of the groups eventually succeeded. Crucially for the argumentative theory, this was not simply down to smart people imposing the correct answer on the rest of the group: even groups whose members had all previously failed the test were able to come to the correct solution by formulating ideas and revising them in light of criticism (Thinking and Reasoning, vol 4, p 231). There is also good evidence that groups are more creative than individual lone thinkers (see “Genius networks: Link to a more creative social circle”).

Collective intelligence

Given that the skills of the individual members do not seem to predict a group’s overall performance, what other factors determine whether it sinks or swims? Anita Williams Woolley of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, helped to answer this question with a series of studies designed to measure a group’s “collective intelligence”, in much the same way an individual’s general intelligence can be measured by IQ tests. The tasks ranged from solving visual puzzles and brainstorming ideas to negotiating how to distribute scarce resources.

She concluded that a group’s performance bears little relation to the average or maximum intelligence of the individuals in the group. Instead, collective intelligence is determined by the way the group argues - those who scored best on her tests allowed each person to play a part in the conversations. The best groups also tended to include members who were more sensitive to the moods and feelings of other people. Groups with more women, in particular, outperformed the others - perhaps because women tend to be more sensitive to social cues (Science, vol 330, p 686).

Such results are exactly what you might expect from a species that evolved not to think individually, but to argue in groups. Mercier and Sperber do not believe this was the primary benefit of our argumentative minds, though. “We think that argumentation evolved to improve communication between individuals, helping communicators to persuade a reticent audience, and helping listeners to see the merits of information offered by sources they might not trust,” says Sperber. “As a side effect, you get better reasoning in a group context.”

Others aren’t so sure, believing instead that improved group reasoning drove the evolution of our ability to argue. “If reasoning works so much better in a group context, then why shouldn’t it have evolved for collective reasoning, given that we are a social animal?” asks philosopher Keith Frankish of the University of Crete in Greece, who nevertheless remains undecided on the issue.

That is not to say that group thinking does not backfire occasionally. “The problem is that in many high-stakes situations, vested interests and emotions run high,” says Robert Sternberg, a psychologist at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater. This is especially true when groups of like-minded individuals focus on emotionally charged topics. “In these situations, people egg each other on to more extreme positions, while more moderate thinkers are chased out,” says Sternberg.

This can all too easily lead to dangerous “groupthink”, in which dissent is stifled and alternative courses of action are ignored, often resulting in disastrous decisions. When Irving Janis developed the idea of groupthink in the 1970s, he used it to explain catastrophic group decisions such as the escalation of the Vietnam war under US president Lyndon Johnson. Today, the same perils can be seen in the decision to invade Iraq despite the lack of compelling evidence for weapons of mass destruction.

Even though thinking things through in groups can go awry, some researchers believe it is high time to make better use of our argumentative brains for collective reasoning. For the past decade, Neil Mercer, an educational psychologist at the University of Cambridge has been leading the “Thinking Together” project, which explores collaborative reasoning and learning in the classroom. His work shows that when children think together, they engage with tasks more effectively, and use better reasoning as they solve problems. The results are striking in science and mathematics problems; not only do groups often do better on these task, but individuals who participate in group reasoning also end up doing better in their exams in these subjects. Similar improvements can be seen in the kinds of non-verbal reasoning tasks used in IQ tests. “Kids can learn to see group reasoning as a kind of enlightened self-interest that benefits everyone,” says Mercer.

His work suggests a few pointers to get the best results. Group reasoning was most productive when the children were asked to engage in “exploratory talk”, he says, where ideas can be openly aired and criticised, and when they entered the task with the clear goal of seeking agreement, even if this goal remained elusive.

Although such collaborative forms of teaching have gained some measure of popularity in recent years, Sternberg believes educational systems are still too focused on developing individual knowledge and analytical reasoning - which, as the research shows, can encourage us to justify our biases and bolster our prejudices.

“We believe that our intelligence makes us wise when it actually makes us more susceptible to foolishness,” says Sternberg. Puncture this belief, and we may be able to cash in on our argumentative nature while escaping its pitfalls.

Written by Dan Jones

#biology #cognitive science #neuroscience #science #psychology #evolution #the brain

∞ May 29, 2012

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One gene helped human brains become complex

When it comes to brain development, slow and steady wins the race. A single ancestral human gene that made two copies of itself may have helped the evolution of our large brains 2.5 million years ago, as our ancestors were diverging from australopithecines.

Paradoxically, it seems the effect of the extra copies was to slow down individual brain development. This allowed time for neurons to develop more and better connections with one another.

Gene duplications are rare in human history: only about 30 genes have copied themselves since we split from chimps 6 million years ago. Few have been studied, but those that have encode genes that are very exciting, says human geneticist Evan Eichler of the University of Washington in Seattle. Many are involved in brain development.

#biology #neuroscience #genetics #science #evolution #anthropology

∞ May 04, 2012

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via newscientist.com

But even if the human mind were made of soul-stuff, nothing about my argument would change. The unconscious operations of a soul would grant you no more freedom than the unconscious physiology of your brain does.
If you don’t know what your soul is going to do next, you are not in control. This is obviously true in all cases where a person wishes he could feel or behave differently than he does: Think of the millions of committed Christians whose souls happen to be gay, prone to obesity, or bored by prayer. However, free will is no more evident when a person does exactly what, in retrospect, he wishes he had done. The soul that allows you to stay on your diet is just as mysterious as the one that tempts you to eat cherry pie for breakfast.

Sam Harris (Free Will, p.12)

#atheism #neuroscience #religion #free will #determinism #philosophy #sam harris

∞ April 29, 2012

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The Trust Molecule ›

Why are some of us caring and some of us cruel, some generous and some greedy? Paul J. Zakon the new science of morality— and how it could be used to create a more virtuous society.

Could a single molecule—one chemical substance—lie at the very center of our moral lives?

Research that I have done over the past decade suggests that a chemical messenger called oxytocin accounts for why some people give freely of themselves and others are coldhearted louts, why some people cheat and steal and others you can trust with your life, why some husbands are more faithful than others, and why women tend to be nicer and more generous than men. In our blood and in the brain, oxytocin appears to be the chemical elixir that creates bonds of trust not just in our intimate relationships but also in our business dealings, in politics and in society at large.

Known primarily as a female reproductive hormone, oxytocin controls contractions during labor, which is where many women encounter it as Pitocin, the synthetic version that doctors inject in expectant mothers to induce delivery. Oxytocin is also responsible for the calm, focused attention that mothers lavish on their babies while breast-feeding. And it is abundant, too, on wedding nights (we hope) because it helps to create the warm glow that both women and men feel during sex, a massage or even a hug.

#neuroscience #science #the brain #oxytocin #morality #ethics #philosophy

∞ April 29, 2012

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Free Will and “Free Will”

How my view differs from Daniel Dennett’s.

I have noticed that some readers continue to find my argument about the illusoriness of free will difficult to accept. Apart from religious believers who simply “know” that they have free will and that life would be meaningless without it, my most energetic critics seem to be fans of my friend Dan Dennett’s account of the subject, as laid out in his books Elbow Room and Freedom Evolves and in his public talks. As I mention in Free Will, I don’t happen to agree with Dan’s approach, but rather than argue with him at length in a very short book, I decided to simply present my own view. I am hopeful that Dan and I will have a public discussion about these matters at some point in the future.

Dan and I agree on several fundamental points: The conventional (libertarian) idea of free will makes no sense and cannot be brought into register with our scientific picture of the world. We also agree that determinism need not imply fatalism and that indeterminism would give us no more freedom than we would have in a deterministic universe.

#atheism #sam harris #daniel c. dennett #free will #determinism #philosophy #neuroscience #science

∞ April 22, 2012

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via samharris.org

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Distinct ‘God Spot’ in the Brain Does Not Exist, Study Shows

ScienceDaily (Apr. 19, 2012) — Scientists have speculated that the human brain features a “God spot,” one distinct area of the brain responsible for spirituality. Now, University of Missouri researchers have completed research that indicates spirituality is a complex phenomenon, and multiple areas of the brain are responsible for the many aspects of spiritual experiences. Based on a previously published study that indicated spiritual transcendence is associated with decreased right parietal lobe functioning, MU researchers replicated their findings. In addition, the researchers determined that other aspects of spiritual functioning are related to increased activity in the frontal lobe.

#neuroscience #science #the brain #religion

∞ April 19, 2012

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via sciencedaily.com

God is in The Neurons

#neuroscience #science #the brain #psychology #religion

∞ April 16, 2012

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Take a Backdoor and I'll Still Shut it in Your Face ›

go-bright-light:

Hello guys,

Thought I’d do a text post on the subject of free will… I was going through my dashboard and saw a debate about free will and God going between an atheist and a Christian.

What I saw, specifically, was the atheist seemingly criticizing God for letting evil exist, the Christian answering that God must allow it to because he honors human free will - which is a very effective reply, by the way - and then the atheist returning with “neuroscience has proven that free will does not exist.”

It is an ineffective argument. You are conveniently using one sense of the word evil to make your argument. In saying, “god allows evil to exist because he honors free will,” you are essentially speaking of an imagined right to do evil. Yet we were both speaking of evil in the broadest sense possible. We weren’t merely speaking of murder, robbery, rape, etc. We were speaking of evils done against children; we were speaking of suffering. Give me examples of children who wish to suffer and I’ll grant your argument. Give me examples of people who wish evil to be done unto them and I’ll grant your argument. Let us assume there’s free will, would it be your will to allow someone to harm you? How can god honor two opposing free wills, namely your assailant’s intent to harm you and your desire not to be harmed? Those questions cannot be answered in accordance to your stance; however, they can be answered in accordance to mine. The only reason any of us desire safety is because we want to avoid pain at all costs; we want to avoid suffering at all costs. This desire stems from experience(s) and that experience produces that desire for safety and when needed, protection. My explanation fits perfectly with the findings of Neuroscience; moreover, it allows for seemingly opposing wills to exist. However, they are not wills, they are desires produced by the respective experiences of the two individuals.

I’ve seen this course of argument before; it is not exclusive to these two gentlemen whose intellects were so vigorously grappling here on Tumblr.

First I’d like to briefly address the atheist side in this argument, then talk about the assertion that there is no free will.

First you’d like to be biased and then support your bias, albeit in futility.

Maybe some of you, as I enumerated the course of argument, observed the gaping hole in the atheist’s argument. Did you notice that he assumed the existence of God in order to attack His allowance of evil, and then when the Christian brought up free will, switched back to his nihilistic, absurdist - not absurd, but absurdist - worldview that free will is an illusion? This does not compute. If you temporarily assume that God exists for the purpose of attacking God, you must also temporarily assume the Christian doctrine that free will is real. You can’t concede one but not concede the other. Otherwise you are not attacking Christianity but only one part of Christianity, a fake Christianity that says that free will is an illusion - substituting other parts of real Christianity with your atheistic worldview which clearly does not work.

Yet later you say that if an Atheist is to argue on theological grounds, he/she must accept that he/she is in his/her opponent’s territory. That does not compute. Of course I would have to assume god exists given Niko’s arguments. I have to address his arguments based on his reality.

This is entirely unrelated, but I’ve told you before and I will not repeat it: I am not a nihilist. Utilizing a sweeping generalizing in attempts to make a point doesn’t help your case. Contrary to popular belief, Atheism does not lead to nihilism and we did have this discussion before. As I recall, that ended with you walking away with your head down whilst waving the flag of defeat.

Christian doctrine of free will? Do you mean the Arminian doctrine of free will? Have you suddenly cancelled out the Calvinist view? Have you suddenly ignored the verses that support predestination? For instance:

¹⁶ Your eyes saw my unformed body;
all the days ordained for me were written in your book
before one of them came to be.

Psalm 139:16

When considering that verse, how can you call free will a Christian doctrine? Assuming god existed, that verse would shut the door on free will. All the days were written prior to their occurrence; therefore, that expressly implies that all of your failures and successes would already be decided, including your ultimate fate. The verse would also demonstrate cruelty on god’s part. Them who enter heaven or are damned to hell would also be predetermined. My nonacceptance of his Gospel would be clearly written in his book. So would other peoples’ denial of Christ and his Gospel. You wanted a theological argument; you got one! Your religion does not grant free will.

In summary. Atheists. When you are debating a Christian not on science or the existence of God but on theology, on the nature of God, you are fighting on your opponent’s turf. You must criticize their ENTIRE worldview - which includes the doctrine that free will is real - and not just one part of their worldview.

This is the section I was referring to. To be quite honest, I don’t think you read the entire thread between me and Niko. That alone demonstrates your biased nature. I argued on his turf as I argued on your turf. No Christian is capable of dismissing predestination for the Bible is clear on that. Moreover, I don’t believe we were arguing on the existence of god. Had that been the case, he would have been severely outmatched. I have enough evidence against your god to effectively bring you to your knees; unfortunately, you may not be praying but rather pleading for the evidence to be false. Too bad it’s far from. We were debating concerning free will and from what I remember, I addressed his points. I addressed only his points; I didn’t deviate from the discussion. Therefore, whatever I replied with was in direct response to whatever he presented.

Now, to deal with the assertion that free will is not real.

I found it curious that he cited neuroscience articles to support his statement that free will is not real, as though it was not already an established conclusion based on his worldview. By that I mean that he felt obligated to scientifically prove the fact that free will is illusory, not realizing that it is self-evidently true if his worldview of nihilistic materialism is true. If he’s right, and we’re all just molecular constructs dancing to the laws of chemistry, physics and DNA, then of COURSE free will cannot exist.

Straw manning. Again, you refer to me as a nihilistic materialist. You do so in order to prop up your argument. Ah, how sweet it is to see this post and reveal to your followers how biased this post is. Back to the matter at hand. I cited articles because it seemed to me that Niko didn’t have a good grasp concerning free will as it relates to neuroscience. Moreover, I posted the articles as support for my argument since I’m not a nihilist. According to findings in the field of Neuroscience, there is no free will. Furthermore, according to your religion, there is no free will. Am I dismissing the Arminian perspective? Absolutely not. I am judging based on which ideology garners more support; predestination takes the cake without scintilla of doubt.

But are we really just molecular constructs dancing to the laws of chemistry, physics, and DNA? Clearly I don’t think so.

I believe in both a metaphysical “mind” and a metaphysical “soul” which I don’t think are the same thing. Of course right now I am focusing on the mind.

You believe? Please, do show me the evidence for both. Please, do tell me when god infused us with a “soul” and a “mind”. In other words, at what point in the evolutionary process did god decide to grant us a mind and a soul? I don’t believe in Christian metaphysics. There is no evidence for it. Moreover, most of it is hijacked. Nonetheless, that doesn’t prove the concepts true; generalities simply prove the semblance of individual thought processes. All religious concepts and experiences are explained well via a knowledge of the human psyche. There’s no need to go further than that.

The atheist - deconversionmovement I believe it was - was looking into the brain - a physical organ made of nerve fibers, membranes, and neurons - to find that intangible, mysterious force of life which allows us to be self-aware and to exercise an independent will. And when, inevitably, he could not find it, he triumphantly declared: “free will is an illusion! it’s all a lie. I can’t determine it by science and measure it and put it on a slide under a microscope, therefore it can’t possibly be real. QED!”

Straw manning yet again. When did I make such proclamations? When did I declare myself a scientist of any sort? This goes to show that you didn’t read the argument; Niko made this exact argument. Again, provide evidence for your “intangible, mysterious force of life which allows us to be self-aware and to exercise an independent will.”

But the reason he is not finding the source of free will is because he has already assumed that the mind does not exist. Where do I think the “mind” came from? God. There is no other explanation for our scientifically unreachable, enigmatic ability to be ontologically autonomous and self-commanding as we are.

Yet all of that is bunk. We are not autonomous and we are not self-commanding.

Read:

Watch:

This is another example of how atheists bring their worldview into their interpretation of the evidence, rather than letting the evidence determine their worldview. Instead of saying, “Ok, well humans are clearly self-guiding and self-aware which doesn’t make any sense scientifically, so humans must not be mere biological beings,” he ignores the evidence and instead says, “since I already know that humans are mere collections of atoms, and since I know that the mind doesn’t exist, therefore free will is an illusion.”

May I ask for intellectual honesty? Where exactly did I say such things. Point us to where I said exactly that. You are concocting supporting points for a futile view. It’s appalling, but then again, why do I continue to have such high expectations? Most Theists who debate me know better than to debate me. Thus, they turn to insults and accusations to help themselves feel better. Unfortunately, I’m not into childish games. Support your arguments; if not, don’t bother making them.

And a couple more questions, if you DO believe that free will is an illusion.

If free will really is an illusion… why are you trying to make me agree with you? You’re trying to persuade me, which requires that I have a conscious choice regarding which viewpoint I will take.

Yet again, you are showing a complete disregard for the arguments I’ve already made. Experiences are the deciding factor. We are not the decision maker; our experiences make the decision. Therefore, I am giving you a new experience — one where your cherished beliefs are challenged and refuted. If you ever “choose” to become an Atheist, it will be because of experiences like these or due to the experience of research. That was exactly my response to Niko. I am not an Atheist because I chose to be one; I am an Atheist because my experiences have been consistent with Atheism. Furthermore, my experiences when researching Christianity were ultimately the deciding factor. Had I not considered the actual truth value of Christianity, I would have undoubtedly remained an ignorant Christian.

Remember, if free will is illusory, then all “should’s” absolutely and irreversibly vanish. Since our free will to choose between a good and bad choice is nonexistent, it makes no sense to say that we “should” choose one over the other… and yet here you are saying that I “should” look at the neurological evidence and accept that free will does not exist… this does not compute. In fact your entire worldview crumbles under this light, your worldview which says that we “should” not believe in God, that we “should” respect the rights of women, that we “should” appreciate the universe for what it is and not “make up ****” to make us feel happier.

“Should” isn’t a matter of choice. “Should” is merely a term. Your experience will decide whether or not you consider the evidence. Either you will lean on your indoctrination or you will accept the challenge at hand.

Respect the rights of women? Seems that you have an issue with that. Nonetheless, you “should” respect their rights. You “should” be in awe of the universe rather than believing in unsubstantiated nonsense. Nevertheless, your experiences will decide whether or not you do any of that. This entire section failed to support your case.

In the end, “free will is an illusion” is an inherently nonsensical statement, because if it is true, you are contradicting yourself by trying to persuade me of it.

Persuasion wasn’t really my intention. Rather, my intention was to address a falsehood. Niko was throwing the word around as if it actually existed. Ultimately, people like me will not persuade you; we may simply provide experiences that lead you to considering the case against free will or alternatively, the cases against your religion.

Another reason it is inherently nonsensical is that you did NOT arrive at the conclusion “free will is an illusion” because of some logical process or because of rational thought, but because you were genetically and chemically predestined to do so.

I arrived at the conclusion because my research was the deciding factor. My research was a series of experiences that have led me to conclude that there is no free will. Moreover, my experiences when reading the Bible have led me to conclude that your religion doesn’t grant free will. Hopefully you take a look at the videos and read the articles. Otherwise, you won’t have a clue concerning what I’ve said.

Atheists who see these gaping logical holes may try to back out and say, “Ok, I guess free will IS real after all.”

Yeah great; beat yourself across the chest and act as if your argument was ever that strong. My response has proven you wrong. Neuroscientists have conducted numerous experiments, but through them all, they arrive at the same conclusion: there is no free will.

Doesn’t work. In an absurdist worldview, free will is necessarily an illusion. There can be no such thing as an independent will or self-awareness because will and self-awareness cannot be created by blind chemicals. And if free will is nonexistent, everything you’ve ever believed in and said is profoundly and absolutely meaningless. And this is but ONE regard in which atheism is self-refuting and self-defeating.

Back to straw manning. I have no absurd, nihilistic point of view. Your generalizations have failed. Everything I trust in and say isn’t meaningless. Again, it is guided by my experience. Let me make it simple for you: the only reason I’ve drafted this response is because I read what you had to say on the matter. Had I not read what you’ve written, I would have never responded. Likewise, had you not read at least some of the original thread, you would have never drafted your post. Therefore, free will had nothing to do with your post.

One regard? What are the other reasons why Atheism is “self-refuting” and “self-defeating”? Provide me with your ‘evidence’, but take heed, I have quite the case against your beliefs. I think you know better than to go there.

Well those are my thoughts on the topic. Feel free to reblog with comments or counterpoints! I am always open to discussion. Thanks for reading.

No counterpoint needed. You should have addressed me to begin with. You probably figured this wouldn’t get around to me. Unfortunately for you, it did. My counterpoints have been made. Consider the evidence, address me properly, or keep silent. I could care less which option you choose via your divinely granted, intangible, and ultimately nonexistent free will. In any case, you decided to take a backdoor and it was still shut in your face.

#atheism #christianity #religion #free will #determinism #neuroscience #philosophy

∞ April 13, 2012

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Cooperating Mini-Brains Show How Intelligence Evolved

Working together can hasten brain evolution, according to a new computer simulation.

When programmed to navigate challenging cooperative tasks, the artificial neural networks set up by scientists to serve as mini-brains “learned” to work together, evolving the virtual equivalent of boosted brainpower over generations. The findings support a long-held theory that social interactions may have triggered brain evolution in human ancestors.

“It is the transition to a cooperative group that can lead to maximum selection for intelligence,” said study researcher Luke McNally, a doctoral candidate at Trinity College Dublin. Greater intelligence, in turn, leads to more sophisticated cooperation, McNally told LiveScience. [10 Fun Brain Facts]

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Image Info: It may take a big brain to handle a big group of friends.

Image Credit: Jezper, Shutterstock