Capital Punishment, Feudalism, and Free Will

Blog 20150429

I sent Bill Westmiller a link to Jerry Coyne’s blog on capital punishment for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, which now has appeared in the New Republic.

This was Bill’s response:

“The author doesn't seem to realize that his argument goes both ways.

If the accused had no choice, then the prosecutors and executioners have no choice. He can't consistently argue that there are moral (or even pragmatic) reasons NOT to kill the murderer.

The premise of "hard determinism" is that there are no morals at all, so laws are superfluous: we have to kill or be killed, so there's no distinction that laws can make.”

No matter what the jury decides in the Tsarnaev case, it is obvious that capital punishment is waning in civilized society. In semi-civilized societies, attempts to bring it back have been miserable, costly failures mostly exercised against the powerless. Still, retribution is one of our baser instincts carried out most successfully under feudalism, the bloody remnants of which are still with us. The “feud” in feudalism, as commanded in the Old Testament, involved the taking of an “eye for an eye” in which one was to kill members of another clan whose members had killed members of your clan. Mathematically, of course, the end result would be the annihilation of both clans. But because no two microcosms are of equal strength, one or the other of the clans would get the upper hand, forcing the other clan to surrender its weapons of revenge. As commanded in the New Testament, they would be asked to “turn the other cheek,” perhaps to seek “justice” in some nonviolent way. Despite well-publicized lapses in the still-feudal portions of the globe, this civilizing tendency is becoming mercifully dominant. Like capital punishment, homicide also is on the wane (Pinker, 2011).

What appears to have stimulated Bill to make his outlandish claims is this statement by Jerry:

“But there is no good reason to execute people for retribution, or on the grounds that they made a free choice, with sound mind, to kill someone else. That would imply that we have real libertarian choices. But if you have no such choices, while you might be responsible for a crime, you are not morally responsible. Moral responsibility implies the ability to have done otherwise.”

Now, I have argued elsewhere that morals and ethics simply are maps to proper social behavior (Borchardt, 2007). They define proper responses to various actions occurring within the macrocosm. To break it down in simple terms: If A happens, then the response should be B. I write “should” here because the “proper” response is socially determined. For instance, when we have a child, it is our “responsibility” to nurse that child. But to do so, we must have the ability to respond. The isolated, comatose mother cannot respond, for she does not have the ability to do so. We would not consider her “responsible” for the infant’s eventual death.

The addition of the word “moral” to responsibility is an indeterministic trick. Adding the adjective “moral” to responsibility does not make one any more or less responsible. Society judges each response by comparing it with what it judges to be right or wrong. After all, in some societies, the “moral” response to the birth of certain children might be infanticide. I suspect that Jerry’s objection to the “moral” appellation involves the claims by indeterminists like Bill that there are moral absolutes. That belief goes hand-in-hand with the belief in free will. It is an attempt to give more umph to responsibility, to raise it to a higher, supposedly spiritual level. But moral absolutes, like other absolutes, cannot exist. All morals are road maps that have evolved from previous morals. All morals are relative, because they all are produced as the results of univironmental interactions between people and their environments. Solipsists who claim to have the holy grail of moral absolutivity are merely exercising their dominance of those less powerful. Like the equally hypothetical free will, these absolutes pop out of nowhere. They supposedly are not natural, but supernatural and not subject to cause and effect.

Univironmental determinism is as “hard” as any determinism, because, like any determinism worth the name, it claims that there are causes for all effects. Therefore, free will must be an illusion. Of course, it does not follow that “there are no morals at all” and that “laws are superfluous.” Just the opposite. As Tsarnaeve and ISIS demonstrate, even the most blood-thirsty folks have morals and laws they get from their sacred texts—they just are not the morals and laws we would prefer. We need to understand that those morals and laws were devised for a much earlier society that is now moribund. Modern society will dispose of them, just as it will dispose of other remnants of feudalism such as capital punishment.

References

Borchardt, Glenn, 2007, The Scientific Worldview: Beyond Newton and Einstein: Lincoln, NE, iUniverse, 411 p.

Pinker, Steven, 2011, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined: New York, Viking.

Earth Day and Univironmental Determinism

Blog 20150422 

Earth Day and univironmental determinism have much in common. Remember that the old scientific world view was systems philosophy, which sprung from the myopic outlook that our species was born with. Although we are still in our juvenile stage of development (see figure below from TSW), we are slowing gaining maturity. Part of this growth involves looking outside ourselves, thinking “outside the box,” as they say. Earth Day is such a celebration. True, as microcosms we are important, but the macrocosm (the environment) is equally important. Thinking only of ourselves will not do. Our continued existence requires a univironmental analysis. We need to give up systems philosophy, which considers portions of the universe to be isolated and unaffected by the rest of the universe. Perpetual growth is not an option.

The wonderful pronouncements made on Earth Day focus attention on the macrocosm: our limited resources, the aesthetics of our surroundings, and the treatment of other species as well as the members of our own. This reaching out process may be seen in the theorizing about the universe itself. Contradictions within the Big Bang Theory are now leading systems philosophers outside that box too, what with their oxymoronic speculations about “parallel universes” and “multiverses.” It is somewhat ironic that we are finally moving toward the realization that the universe is infinite at the same time that we are finally realizing that Earth’s resources are finite.

There is another side to Earth Day that is not celebratory: the Doomsday tendency. There is a bit of truth in the pessimistic view. After all, the Sixth Assumption of Science, complementarity (All things are subject to divergence and convergence from other things), implies that each microcosm (xyz portion of the universe) comes into existence as an assemblage of other things and eventually will go out of existence through dispersion. For each of us, “the end is near,” as the sidewalk prophets say. So from time to time indeterminists warn of the eminent extinction of Homo sapiens by its own hand. Thankfully, these chicken-little prognostications eventually fade away. We no longer have to worry about the “population bomb,” “nuclear winter,” “global cooling,” or “running out of food” as the cause of our eventual demise. That is scheduled to occur in about five billion years when the Sun reaches the end of its life.

Global demographic transition (from Borchardt, 2007, Fig. 12-3).

Ref:

Borchardt, Glenn, 2007, The scientific worldview: Beyond Newton and Einstein: Lincoln, NE, iUniverse, 411 p. 

Matter and Time

Blog 20150415 

Dave had this comment on my “Time is Motion” Blog:

“I've always thought of time as a camera recording everything coming to be and ceasing to be, the ceaseless movement of matter. The camera being this precise moment -- now - a fixed point. If there was no movement down to the atomic and sub atomic levels the very notion of time would be irrelevant.”

Thanks Dave for your insight. Although time is really not a camera, I get the idea. In a sense, a picture freezes motion, which is time. The corollary is that if all motion stopped, all matter would disappear. This is another way of stating the Fourth Assumption of Science, inseparability (Just as there is no motion without matter, so there is no matter without motion).

This should help us confront the silly idea of time dilation. We might “dilate” the photo we took through enlarging it, but we could never do that with the motion that the camera cannot photograph. We can dilate the photo and the matter it depicts because those items have xyz dimensions. They exist, but motion does not. This “connection” between matter and motion is a necessity for the existence of the universe. This is also why a finite particle cannot exist. Such a particle would have to be filled with “solid matter,” which could not have anything within it that was in motion. Such a particle would defy the rule that motion is required for matter to exist. That is why we define matter as that which contains other matter, ad infinitum, per the Eighth Assumption of Science, infinity (The universe is infinite, both in the microcosmic and macrocosmic directions).     

The Soul of Regressive Physics

PSI Blog 20150408 The Soul of Regressive Physics

Lately, I have been having a series of email and Blog exchanges with a delightful chap who goes by the handle of Captain Bligh. We agree on a lot of things, but one of his ideas is especially baffling to me. That is his suggestion that matter can be produced out of motion. In other words, he believes that I am too strict in adhering to the Fourth Assumption of Science, inseparability (Just as there is no motion without matter, so there is no matter without motion).[1] My bafflement can be summarized in this simple question: How can there be motion unless something moves? What the good Captain is proposing is what I call “matterless motion.” How anyone could entertain such a preposterous idea is of interest to me, as I am always interested in the root causes of things. Now, I think I have it figured out, although Bligh and compatriots probably would not agree.

Life is so wonderful that most of us wish to continue far longer than our mortal life expectancy says we should expect. The matter of which our bodies consist tends to lose integrity as we age, with the ultimate insult occurring at death. Religions have offered a solution to this problem in the form of a “soul,” that supposedly continues our existence after we die. Many imagine that this “entity” will travel to a place of immeasurable happiness or torment. Believe it or not, this idea of the soul played a far greater part in the “regression” in physics that occurred at the beginning of the 20^th century than is generally acknowledged.

Einstein’s overthrow of classical mechanics was not a revolution in physics—it was a counterrevolution. Per inseparability, mechanics assumed that the universe consists only of matter in motion. The opposing indeterministic assumption, separability, accepts the idea that motion might occur independently of matter, much in the way religious followers might imagine their immaterial souls leaving their physical remains. The shock endured by religion in the latter half of the 19^th century via Darwin, Marx, and science in general swung the determinism-indeterminism pendulum too far to suit the faithful. The “overthrow” of classical mechanics by Einstein really was a step backward, away from the principle that all was matter in motion. By avoiding strict adherence to that principle and accommodating religious (i.e., indeterministic) assumptions, Einstein’s relativity gained wide acceptance among the faithful, formerly faithful, and credulous.

Most of the best scientists are atheists,[2] but many were indoctrinated in various religions as children, with the concept of the soul being unquestioned. The mechanical details involving the soul always are vague. Souls, being only imaginary, are not amenable to scientific investigation or even clear thinking. Those supporting the soul hypothesis certainly would not agree that the universe displays only two phenomena: matter and the motion of matter. Unfortunately, there are vestiges of the idea of separability even among the most staunch atheists. Once we have dimly accepted the matter-motion estrangement, even if it was in the distant past, it can always rise again as a subconscious notion. Thus, when Einstein proposed his theory of relativity, it was welcomed with open arms by the religious, the anti-materialists, and the naïve popular press. Its inherent contradictions and lack of common sense apparently were not a problem for those used to such in their sabbatical lives. Experiments claiming to support the theory were always interpreted from the indeterministic point of view (e.g., starlight passing the Sun bent due to refraction was seen instead as proof of its particulate nature being influenced by gravitation caused by curved empty space and clocks flying around Earth in jets).[3]

The regression produced by relativity involved “immaterial fields,” “mass-less particles,” and objectified light and time.[4] Like ghosts and souls, these were envisioned as things that are not things. They do not contain matter, but are envisioned to be localized, being here and not there and capable of movement. In particular, the motions exhibited by gravitation and magnetism were not produced by material objects one could see or easily detect. In regressive physics, separability reigned supreme.

The Soul Barrier

To progress beyond relativity, we must overcome the “Soul Barrier,” which like the Great Wall of China, prevents critics from rejecting the indeterministic assumption of separability and its claim that motion can occur without matter. When I was religious, I never even considered what a soul actually could be. True, we learned some mechanics in physics class, but we certainly were not encouraged to apply that approach to everything. Although anyone with eyes can see that our surroundings consist of things and that many of these things are in motion, it took me a long time to truly realize how the universe works. As a mental construct, the Soul Barrier fades when we hold fast to our belief that there are only two basic phenomena: matter and the motion of matter. Then, endless debates about whether or not Einstein’s mathematically defined fields actually are immaterial and therefore devoid of aether, whether a particle could be mass-less, whether time was a thing or dimension, and whether light was both a wave and a particle at the same time become pointless.

Once more, the antidote to the “Soul Barrier” is the deterministic assumption of inseparability. Along with it and the rest of the “Ten Assumptions of Science,” you can better understand physics and avoid the silly proclamations currently being foisted on the populace. At least, you will be able to steer clear of the craziness to which believers in relativity are prone. Hopefully, you will not be as extreme as the physicist from Mexico who once told me that I did not exist, but that the event of my birth did. You won’t believe that mass can be turned into energy, construed as matterless motion, travelling ghost-like through aetherless empty space.[5] You won’t believe, as does Lawrence Krause,[6] a leading cosmogonist, that motion could produce matter out of nothing via “quantum fluctuations.”  In other words, you won’t believe in the creation of the entire universe out of nothing, in opposition to the long-standing Fifth Assumption of Science, conservation (Matter and the motion of matter can be neither created nor destroyed). If you wish to rid the world of relativity and the Big Bang Theory, you must cross the Soul Barrier first. Dawdling behind that barrier is a pointless waste of precious time. In particular, you must choose between the deterministic concept of aether and the indeterministic concept of matterless motion.

---

[1] Borchardt, Glenn, 2004, Ten assumptions of science and the demise of 'cosmogony' ( http://www.scientificphilosophy.com/Downloads/TTAOSATDOC.pdf ): Proceedings of the Natural Philosophy Alliance, v. 1, no. 1, p. 3-6.

---, 2004, The ten assumptions of science: Toward a new scientific worldview: Lincoln, NE, iUniverse, 125 p.

[2] Larson, Edward J., and Witham, Larry, 1998, Leading scientists still reject God ( http://www.scribd.com/doc/2430168/Leading-scientists-still-reject-God#scribd ): Nature, v. 394, no. 6691, p. 313; Stirrat, Michael, and Cornwell, R, 2013, Eminent scientists reject the supernatural: a survey of the Fellows of the Royal Society: Evolution: Education and Outreach, v. 6, no. 1, p. 33.  (http://www.evolution-outreach.com/content/6/1/33)

[3] Borchardt, Glenn, 2011, Einstein's most important philosophical error, in Proceedings of the Natural Philosophy Alliance, 18th Conference of the NPA, 6-9 July, 2011 ( http://www.worldsci.org/pdf/abstracts/abstracts_5991.pdf ), College Park, MD, Natural Philosophy Alliance, Mt. Airy, MD, p. 64-68.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Borchardt, Glenn, 2009, The physical meaning of  E=mc² ( http://scientificphilosophy.com/Downloads/The%20Physical%20Meaning%20of%20E=mc2.pdf ): Proceedings of the Natural Philosophy Alliance, v. 6, no. 1, p. 27-31.

[6] Krauss, Lawrence Maxwell, 2012, A universe from nothing : why there is something rather than nothing: New York, Free Press.

Critique of TSW Part 28b The Last Chapter

Blog 20150401 

Bill suggests that without free will, the natural world would be fatalistic. Like most indeterminists, he relies on the Myth of Exceptionalism to claim that science, particularly in the form of univironmental determinism, can say nothing about the evolution and character of human consciousness and sapience. Finally, Bill awaits arguments that presumably would get him to become a univironmental determinist overnight. We will not be holding our breath in anticipation.  

I am ever so grateful to Bill Westmiller, whose comments are marked "BW: ". The quotes marked “TSW: “are from "The Scientific Worldview" and my comments are marked "[GB: ".

The Last Chapter (Part 2 of 2)

BW:

F. Biopoesis has been proven false, while abiogenesis is an unmitigated truth, even if not demonstrated.

[GB: Either term is correct according to Wikipedia: “Abiogenesis or biopoesis is the natural process of life arising from non-living matter such as simple organic compounds.” “Abiogenesis” is now more popular than “biopoesis” (414k vs. 12k Google results), so I will use that in the future. Sorry, but neither of them has been proven false and neither of them is “unmitigated truth,” since there is no such thing except in the heads of indeterminists who hold fast to absolutism.]

BW:

G. UD doesn't provide any "scientific solutions" to consciousness or ethics; it is inherently fatalistic.

[GB: False. Univironmental determinism is the only correct way to understand both topics. It is founded upon the assumption that there are material causes for all effects, which is a basic requirement for providing “scientific solutions.” As always, your free will hypothesis denies that we, as exceptions, are not governed by the same material interactions that govern everything else in the universe. I have explained consciousness in enough detail to encourage any reasonable person to consider it as the motion within the brain. Of course, it is a special project of indeterminists to use the infinite complexity of such motions to claim that only a supernatural explanation would be sufficient. You can believe that all you want, but in practice, such as in psychiatry, the material causes are sought in order to provide solutions to mental illness. And as I have also explained endlessly, ethics are road maps that are guides to the behaviour that allows us to survive within society. None of this is fatalistic. I define fatalism as the belief that only the macrocosm (our environment) controls what happens to us and solipsism as the belief that only the microcosm (ourselves) controls what happens to us. In truth, what happens to us is controlled by our interactions with our environments. Even if one believed that the natural state of the universe is “inherently fatalistic,” the adoption of supernatural thought as a remedy would still be useless.]

BW:

H. Rejection of "exceptionalism" is poorly defined and untrue by common definitions.

[GB: The Myth of Exceptionalism is the belief that humans are not subject to univironmental determinism, the universal mechanism of evolution stating that what happens to a portion of the universe is dependent equally on the matter in motion within (the microcosm) and without (the macrocosm). That is perfectly well defined, although indeterminists have tried to escape that reality by proposing that we have some “super” natural character that would allow us to step out of the universe and its laws of physical existence.]  

BW:

I. Aristotle, Rand, and libertarianism are frequently misrepresented.

[GB: So sorry about that. I admire Aristotle greatly—he was the greatest scientist to precede Newton and was one of the first to propose the infinite subdividability of matter. My only objection to his work was his idea of absolute chance, which was a contradiction of causality and uncertainty.

I only included a reference to Rand as an example of an analysis burdened by a huge microcosmic mistake—similar to the free will hypothesis itself. A scientific, univironmentally balanced view would have emphasized selfishness and altruism equally. I realize, of course, that the purpose of her book was political, not scientific, so in that respect, one could consider it a misrepresentation. She was merely taking sides with regard to the eternal political question: “Should we do it together or apart?” In politics, we should be free to argue the case for either approach. Rand and her libertarian friends have some strong arguments for doing things apart, while others have strong arguments for doing things together. The answer to that question can be known only by experiment. Science can never give a fixed answer to that question because the univironment keeps changing. Here are the paragraphs deemed to be “misrepresentations”:

“With this philosophy we can be "our own chemists"; we can gain the feeling of "controlling our own lives." Because we realize that the self and the world form an inseparable univironment, we can avoid viewing personal success or failure microcos­mically, as something independent of our surroundings. For us, the answers to human fulfillment do not lie solely in The Virtue of Selfishness,[1] Winning Through Intimidation,[2] or Looking Out for #1.[3] We realize that we cannot wreak havoc with the macrocosm without wreaking havoc with ourselves. The macrocosm always beats back.” (p. 312)

^[1] Rand, Ayn. The Virtue of Selfishness. New York: New American Library, 1964.

² Ringer, R.J. Winning through Intimidation. Los Angeles: Los Angeles Book Publishing Company, 1974.

³ ________, Looking out for #1. New York: Fawcett Crest, 1977.

“The rules of ethics are resistant to change just as they are changeable. Puritans need not fear the release of the untrammelled human spirit, just as libertarians need not fear the permanent stifling of their desires.” (p. 263)]

BW:

J. Consciousness as not the unique human trait; you totally ignore sapience.

[GB: Many other animals have consciousness and sapience (wisdom, intelligence, etc.). Just ask your dog or cat about that.]

BW:

K. Given your off-handed rejection of Free Will, you can't account for innovation, ethics, emotions, art, or beauty.

[GB: The hypothesis of uncaused free will adds nothing to any of those topics. Each can be studied by scientific methods that trace the causal chain that produced them. None of them just pop out of nowhere without physical causes.]

BW:

L. Equating ethics with altruism isn't argued or justified, nor even questioned.

[GB: Sorry, but it never occurred to me that the relationship between ethics and altruism needed justification. Ethics generally are considered to be the rules for getting along with others. Anything we do to acknowledge others and their needs might be construed as altruistic, while anything we do to ignore others and their needs might be construed as selfish. Obviously, a solitary individual would have no need for ethics or altruism.]

BW:

M. The "Univironmental interactions" you describe are standard Newtonian or conservation laws.

[Agree. Except for the inclusion of the Eighth Assumption of Science, infinity (The universe is infinite, both in the microcosmic and macrocosmic directions), neomechanics is the same as classical mechanics. That inclusion, however, produces some profound interpretations that dispense with much of the indeterministic nonsense (immaterial fields, matterless motion, extra Euclidean dimensions, explosions from nothing, etc.) now common in the regressive physics that followed the overthrow of classical mechanics in the 20^th Century. In addition, univironmental determinism is careful to treat both the microcosm and its macrocosm equally, eschewing the microcosmic mistakes inherent in today’s systems philosophy, which brought its archetype: a finite universe with nothing outside of it.]

BW:

So, overall, I agree with 90% of your propositions, but less than 60% of your arguments for them.

The book has been very helpful to me in clarifying my own views and I'd be happy to discuss any of these reservations whenever you'd please.

[GB: Bill, thanks so much for all your work reviewing "The Scientific Worldview." I am happy to be one of the few authors who ever gets the kind of detailed feedback you have so kindly provided. It is rare to find anyone nowadays with a knowledge of physics and philosophy who will entertain a re-evaluation of long-held, cherished interpretations of mainstream physics and cosmogony. You also have helped me to clarify my views and my writing in ways that will help future readers, many of whom no doubt have similar concerns and beliefs. Thanks also for conducting your review in a relatively civil fashion. Also, in the future, I would be pleased to hear of any arguments that might be useful for convincing you to become a full-fledged univironmental determinist.]

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