Determinism and Choice

[Herbert Gintis <gintis@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Ted says:
...>
>I don't think you can escape the difficulties pointed to in my
>questions by interpreting the materialism underpinning Darwinian
>evolutionary theory in a way that makes randomness an irreducible
>aspect of reality itself rather than of our theories of reality (if this
>is what you mean by disconnecting the materialism involved from
>determinism).  (Some scientists prefer the determinist
>interpretation - see, for instance, Steven Weinberg in
>_Dreams of a final theory_  pp. 37 and 77-85 and E.O. Wilson in _On
>human nature_ chap. 4.).

	Why not? BTW, the non-determinism is not in my interpretation
of evolutionary theory, nor is it in the the theory. It is in the
thing described. This is what is meant by the centrality of random
mutation, and the indeterminacy of the fixation of a beneficial gene.

>You haven't given a role to self-determination - to "choice" - in the
>determination of belief and behaviour when you add an irreducible
>stochastic element to the process of determination.   When we claim
>that our beliefs are the product of rational choice, for example, don't
>we mean something different from the claim that they are to some
>degree random?

	I don't claim our beliefs are _exclusively_ the product of
rational choice. I think that notion is quite indefensible. Why?
Because there are costs to acquiring information. If we were
'rational' we would have to assess these costs. But there are costs to
acquiring the information to assess costs..... Etc. ad infinitum. At
any rate, we don't know enough to say that our beliefs are exclusively
anything.

>If you re-examine what I said, you'll see it was "preferences" rather
>than "choice" that I was taking you as treating as the strictly
>determined product of genes and environment.  By definition, choice
>cannot be such a product.   (You, however, seem to suggest that it
>could be.   Apart from the logical impossibility of explaining choice in
>this way, if the premise of the theory you envisage was true, there
>would be no "we" to develop it since there would be no entities able
>to arrive at their beliefs through rational choice.)
>
	I never said choice is determined by genes and environment.
There may be some other element, or perhaps some random element, or
perhaps God intervenes, etc. Until we have a complete predictive
theory of choice, we can't say it is just determined by this or than
combination of forces.

Herb gintis@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx