Archive for September, 2010

I would love to believe that we have all posses’ free will. Furthermore, I venture to speculate that many of you would love believe the same thing. After all, if we are living a life that was determined before we drew our first breath what is the point? Why live in this grief stricken world where man strikes out against man and young girls are sold for sex if we have no control over ourselves and by extension over anything else? If the horror is true and free will is a non-existent we are effectively puppets on strings, every movement manipulated.
Many of us are psychology majors and from intro have heard of the nature/nurture debate. A nature stance is similar to Thomas Hobbes belief that humans are machines. We are born with a certain blue print that makes us who we are in virtually every respect as a machine is constructed with a blue print that determines its function. A nurture stance is similar to John Locke and his “blank slate” where we are born into this world with a blank blue print and our experience writes on it and determines what we will become. Which of these two do I believe in more strongly? Well, both and neither.
On the nature side, studies have shown that the temperament of an infant can be observed and that observed temperament is consistent over time, suggesting our personality to be innate. Moreover, when one looks at twin studies the data is more shocking displaying that prediction of countless aspects of one twin can be made accurately by simply looking at the other twin. Even more shocking to the Christian, Dr. McAnulty mentioned in class that susceptibility to believe in God can be linked to biological functioning in the brain!! How crazy is that!! (I would like to see that study by the way Dr. McAnulty) On the nurture side, we can look at studies like those that Bandura performed where children learn by mirroring other children; the experience determining what was learned. We can also look at the familiar Pavlov experiments of conditioning. It is then, as you have heard before, a combination of nature and nurture that makes an individual who he or she is.
My point is not to teach you what you already know, but to ask a question. If biological make-up is one part of the puzzle and experience the other part, is there any room left for free will? Every person is born with a particular blueprint (nature) and then experience works within that blueprint (nurture) to create the person. Therefore, the person seems to have no choice in either the blueprint that was provided or the scribbles made on it by experience. The biggest reason that this debates weighs heavily upon me is because I believe in God, but I also believe that every human is a product of his or her environment within the context of his or her biological make-up. We certainly cannot choose our biology and while, to some extent, we can choose our environment our biology almost determines how we will act within that environmental context that we have chosen (to go even further, our biology may even make the choice of what we choose to be our environment.)
In Light of all this, it seems as though I do not believe in free will, but I actually do not because of logic, but because of desire; I want to believe in free will. Most of this has to do with the unfortunate reality of the hell. I would love to pretend that there is no such place and I wish more than anything that everyone would spend eternity with Christ, but scripture makes it obvious that I pretend and wish in vain. Christ would not tell us to enter through the narrow gate if there was no wide gate that leads to destruction that many enter through. In the end, I choose to believe in free will because I refuse to believe in a God that creates people to go to hell. God creates a man with the biological make-up that is not favorable to believing in Him. Then God allows that man to be put into an environment that is also unfavorable to believing in Him. However, God still sends that man to hell because the man never believed (How could he?). If God creates men or woman like this, I do not want God to be my God. God cannot be a good God if this is true. Therefore, while I believe that nature and nurture leave little room for free will, if any, I make room because a shear unwillingness to believe that God would send people to hell simply because they were products of a crappy set of genes and an equally crappy environment.
I thought this music video is funny in reference to “puppets on strings” from my first paragraph: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZfsmLP2T3Q

In my mind Descartes is one of the greatest thinkers of all time. When I was first shown his ideas and his way of determining certainty it revolutionized my life. The idea that you can determine certainty through yourself was beyond my comprehension. But I never realized how profound the rest of his ideas were before. The other day in class when we discussed in more depth his thoughts I was amazed. It never occurred to me that his philosophy could be applied to psychology. But the more I thought about it the more it made sense and fit into what all my professors and mentors have been saying since I got to college: we need to discover the truth on our own. People can show us the way, but we really need to discover it on our own. This is probably old news to everyone else, but it really struck me. No one else can force you to understand “Cogito ergo sum”, it’s all up to you to decide to figure it out. We all talked about truth a lot with the last unit and Plato, but this also is a big part of it. It doesn’t matter who tries to enlighten us or take us out of the cave, whatever the cave may be, but until we decide we’re willing to leave the cave and find the Truth, it’s all for nothing. This gives us more independence. I’m going out to try to find truth, no one can bring it to me.

I was reading in the book about Friedrich Nietzsche, and I started
thinking about his ideas on determinism vs free will. His view that we
are only “potentially free” got me thinking about the movie Donnie
Darko. In this movie the protagonist, Donnie Darko, is at a party with
his peers when he begins to see a bubble like tube come out of his
chest and go set a path for him to follow. Donnie acknowledges this
tube and follows it along throughout the house. This tube represents
the path Donnie will take. Donnie chooses to follow the tube possibly
out of curiosity to see where it will lead him. Donnie is different
from the rest of the people at the party because he can see where he
is destined to go, but he accepts it and follows the path laid before
him. The movie doesn’t show him breaking away from the path, which
would lead us to presume possibly that although we can be aware of
where we are destined to go, we cannot influence this in the end. In
Nietzsche’s view I believe Donnie would be considered an enlightened
slave. He follows a path which he did not choose, but was shown to
him. For this reason he is a slave. If Donnie were to break from the
path laid before him he would not only be enlightened, but also free.
I think the free will vs determinism debate depends on perspective. I
think from our perspective free will would be the most obvious choice,
since we are not inherently controlled. On the other hand from God’s
perspective I believe determinism would be the clear choice. From
God’s perspective all events which occur in our life could be viewed
as being on a map, and can be traced and found where our behaviors and
everything about us is rooted from. To sum this up I believe we do
have free will to an extent, but in the end I think we will do
whatever we do in this life and so I believe we are thus incapable of
escaping the grasp which destiny holds on our lives.

While catching up on some daily news last week I noticed a link to a news story on the bottom of the page and clicked on it.  The story was entitled “Who is a Family? New Study Tracks Shifting US Views”  I clicked on it and read with much interest the finding of the story.

Associated Press: Who is a Family?

To summarize the report it shows that more and more Americans are able to define a non-married couple as a family unit.  ILolt goes on to show that more and more Americans are showing an increased recognition of unmairried gay couples as  being a family unit.  The part of the report that I found interesting was the showing that there is still a solid core resistance group that states that a family can only be defined by the marriage of a man to a woman.  Of this group more than 70% considered a pet to be a full fledged member of the family and recognized those pets to have full family rights.  It was interesting that they could extend the title of “A member of the family” to a pet however not to an unmarried or homosexual couple.  This made me wonder what the concept of family would be in the renaissance amongst such people as Descartes and Martin Luther.

It is interesting to note that Luther felt that a union between a husband and wife could be just as capable as doing God’s work than that of a celibate individual which would show a belief in companionship and unity.  An American viewpoint of family consists on monogamy and remaining faithful in that marriage as a solid cornerstone to a  marriage.  However, Luther didn’t hold to this ideal stating that if a wife persistently denies her husband then a husband should seek out other women, he even suggests the maid.  It seems that.

Descartes viewpoint of “I resolve to seek no other knowledge than that which I might find within myself, or perhaps in the great book of nature”.  This viewpoint being a very personal and self fulfilling goal, It would seem most likely that the idea of the family during the renaissance would have take a back seat that the idea and the discovery of the individual.

While some views that Locke held were way off the mark (such as having your children sleep on hard beds, rather than soft to toughen them up) many seem like common sense to me. I find it interesting that he was actually introducing a new way of thinking concerning education. Locke believes that learning should be enjoyable and if this is so, children will want to learn outside of the classroom. Children only dislike school and like playing because they are not forced to play, and they are forced to go to school. Again, common sense. When I was young, my parents always made reading seem like so much fun. I picked out books and we read as a family. This was always a favorite activity of mine. It was only later when I was required to read for Accelerated Reader that I began to think of reading as a chore.

While I agree that making learning enjoyable is the ideal when teaching students, I also can see how this could be counterproductive. Part of Locke’s idea is that you should never force a child to learn. What do you do when a child gets frustrated because he cannot master a task? Without my parents encouragement to keep on trying even when I was frustrated, I would have never mastered fractions, spelling, etc. It is my belief that if you do not force (I think a better word is encourage) some children to learn, they may never develop to their potential.

I was searching for videos and thought this guy was funny. What a singer!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpCK0V48tCc

Free will versus determinism is one of the biggest topics of this section, and I believe it to be of limited practical importance becasue iether way we are going to follow whichever view is correct. If we truly have free will, then we can just continue arguing for all time if we so desire, but that would accomplish nothing. On the other hand, if we all operate under pre determined circumstances, then we are supposed to argue over the topic for however long each one of us argues over the topic and whatever happens in the end was alwasy going to happen so it still doesnt really matter. It is easy to see how the debate itself serves no real purpose in advancing the Kingdom of God or serving any other purpose except personal gratification. However, concerning the topic of personal gratification, I have come to a conclusion on the matter. My belief is that we all have free will to operate our lives in whatever way we see fit, but because God is omniscient, he already knows everything that we will ever do, therefore making an illusion of determinism. Another way to look at the situation is with the analogy of flipping a coin. What side lands face up on a coin is in no way a random occurance; if all influencing factors are known in exacting detail it can easily be determined prior to its landing. An example of how much you would have to know would be like what follows: force applied to the coin, speed of rotation, terminal velocity, distance dropped, weight distribution, wind resistance, and many more on an almost interminable list. All of these things are far too miniscule for us to be able to determine, but due to God's omniscience, He can know the end result of anything. God knows everything about our biology, everyhting about how we think, and everything about everything around us; it stands to reason that he could then know everything about how we would react to any given situation. In this sense it can be said that our actions are determined, but I arue that they are not determined, just known. That knowledge in no way limits our choice, but rather incorporates it. No qualm can be held with this for of determinism in regards to a violation of free will, because free will is fully functional.

Last Friday Dr. McAnulty brought up Skinner and an interview he gave about free will.  I actually ended up finding it because we had watched it in Dr. Shewmaker’s Child Psychology class.  Operant Conditioning   So go ahead and click the link to watch it.

I was once asked by a very close friend of mine why I felt like I needed God in my life. Indeed, why does the vast majority of the earth claim to believe in a “higher power” of some type? He asked me to contemplate an existence where it was universally accepted that there never was and never will be a god. After I thought for awhile in silence he said something to the extent of, “That’s right, you can’t even contemplate it. Our world has been so shaped by the various gods we have created, that a world without them is incomprehensible to our minds. Our need for a god or gods is instinctual to our very core.” He then went on to explain how he thought the world would look if humans had never had that seemingly universal need for God. It was one of the most thought-provoking, if not entirely mind-blowing, discussions I have ever had.
Anyways, talking about Descartes in class lately really brought this memory to the surface of my mind, particularly his thoughts on innate and derived ideas. Is the need for a God in our lives an innate idea that is programmed into our minds? Or, could it be a derived idea from different experiences we have had that have led us to believe in the existence of a higher power?

Descartes is a very fascinating individual for me in the sense that he is trying to view the world totally from the point of view of Thought. He gets a lot of bad rep because of this, because most people then just assume that Descartes is out to show that faith is then uneeded because of a lack of physical proof, however it is actually quite the opposite. Rene Descartes does believe in Cogito Ergo Sum or, “I think, therefore I am,” but it is because of this manner that he proves the existence of an almighty, perfect creator, or God. This can be reference, by the way, in his works titled, “Meditations,” which takes some digging to get the full argument, however I feel it is well worth both the research and read.
He first starts with what he considers the Formal Argument, in which he states the world and the ideals behind it involving the perfection, worth, and judgment of an object and it’s purpose and flaws. in this argument there are two realities,; a formal reality and an objective reality. In the formal reality, it is what we as the thinkers perceive and judge something into a finite summary of how useful it is, skillled, some of it’s flaws, etc.. The Objective view is then the actual usefulness, flaws, skills, and all the rest. All this comes together to judging people, places, and things. However, you can’t put God into this category. In fact, God in all aspects is infinite, therefore there cannot be a finite view of God. Then in the objective reality, God is perfection, so there is nothing that God can be compared to that would show any of this that we could possibly understand. I personally feel this goes back to something I heard a couple years back, “imagine how God really is to you. Put him in that box of what you think he is. Do you have it? I bet it’s wrong. In fact, all of our thoughts are wrong, and way off. God is so wonderous, poweful, loving, and father. He’s not just that, he is THE wonder, THE power, THE love, and THE father. He is what all these terms are compared to.” It even deepens God’s roots by asking, “How do we know what perfection is? This idea cannot have just popped in our head if only by experience?” God had to have imbdued our souls and minds with what IS perfect, and the only way to do that is to have experienced something perfect to know that perfect existed, and thus God was our experience. A Perfect God created us.
Descartes then goes into a Cosmological Argument, which takes on the question, “How do I exist?” he states that it is safe to assume that we have not existed the whole time, we had to have been born, therefore we had to be created. We can also say that we did not create ourselves, at least not physically, because if we had then we would have worked out all the imperfections we feel we have, and therefore make a perfect being to our liking. Our parents certainly did not directy make us, because they would have, in turn, created us in their thought of perfection. However, God created us, because he is perfect and he created us as lesser, imperfect being in our thoughts because to him we are perfectly made. This is further supported when you think about when we create something. It is never perfect, especially nowadays when we try to create artificial beings who can work and perform tasks and give off theimpression of adaptive and sentient thought. They still lack emotions and vital organs that we have, so we can never fully create something, only something in our IMAGE, which is what God did.
These two arguments not only validate the perfection and existance of God to me, but also validate Reason. Descartes may not have had the most accurate thoughts, or the most practical, however he did have some of the more inspirational ones.

How far does free will go? I was talking to my roommate about this the night before we talked about it in class. We discussed how people often say that they are looking for The One. Did God make one person for each of us? If so then do we really have power over our life if God will make us choose this one person? Maybe God knows what choices we will make with our lives and based off of that he knows who we will ultimately chose and makes a person that will fit the choices that we make in our lives. My roomie talked about how when you say that God meant for you to be with a specific person that she thinks it is like saying that all of the events in your life happened in order for you to meet this one person. But is this really the case? What if the person who is made for you goes against God’s will (because I would assume that if I have free will that the other person would too)? Personally, I would not agree that all of the events in my life have led up to me meeting one particular person.

If our free will is limited then is it still free will? I feel like the answer to that would be no because we are not given full control of our own lives. And why would God make so many other people available to us if he had already chosen the one? Why would he not just create us to have some overwhelming feeling of finding the one when it happens. (Now I am not married and may not have found the person so I am not one hundred percent true that I would not know when I had found the one.) I feel like this is just another one of those small details that make our life what it is. If God is not concerned in the minor details of our lives but instead is interested in how we use our talents to help other people, then I feel like something like choosing a mate would not be on his top priorities. Unless perhaps, our mate is suppose to somehow influence the rest of our life and possibly change the course of where we are headed.