Determinism and free will

I have a strong interest in the question of free will. The philosophical issues are fascinating, and the implications for our society are enormous. The denial of the reality of free will undermines our basic freedoms and undermines our social order. Aside from the assertion that God does not exist, it's difficult to think of a more destructive assertion than 'we have no free will'.

But what precisely is the debate about free will all about? Here's my understanding of it.

There are two sets of yes-or-no propositions in the debate about free will that form the framework for the debate.

The yes or no propositions are:

Is determinism true?

Determinism is the belief that our actions are necessitated by present and past events, consistent with the laws of nature.

One can describe the determinist position with an x,y graph.  The independent variable (x) is time, and the dependent variable (y) is an option of behavior or thought. There are an infinite number of such graphs, representing the spectrum of options we have available. If determinism is true, then all graphs consist of an unbranched line.  There is only one possibility for future behavior. That option is determined by past events and the laws of nature. Our belief that we have genuine options is an illusion. Our behavior and thoughts are determined.

Indeterminism is the denial of determinism. Indeterminism is the belief that our actions are not necessitated by present and past events, nor by the laws of nature. We have genuine choices, and could have chosen to do other than that which we do.

One can also describe the libertarian position with an x,y graph.  As with determinism, the independent variable (x) is time, and the dependent variable (y) is an option of behavior or thought. There are an infinite number of such graphs, representing the spectrum of options we have available. If indeterminism is true, then all graphs consist of branched lines.  There is more than one possibility for future behavior, and we choose it. That option is not determined by past events and the laws of nature. Our belief that we have genuine options is not an illusion. Our behavior and thoughts are our choice, in some real way.

Of course, indeterminists don't believe that our choices are utterly without influences from the natural world. Any number of natural conditions influence our choices, obviously. We tend to choose differently when we are drunk than when we are sober, etc. But, at a fundamental level. at least some of our choices  are genuine choices. We could have done otherwise, but chose not to.

The second yes-or no proposition is:

Is free will compatible with determinism?

Compatibilism is the belief that both determinism and free will are compatible. All of our acts and thoughts could be determined by past and present events and by the laws of nature, but we could genuinely claim that out acts and thoughts are free to some extent.  Note that compatibilism does not imply anything about the truth of determinism or free will. It merely states that they are compatible in a logical sense.

Incompatibilism is the  belief that both determinism and free will are not compatible. All of our acts and thoughts could be determined by past and present events and by the laws of nature, but then we could not genuinely claim that out acts and thoughts are free to some extent. Note that incompatibilism does not imply anything about the truth of determinism or free will. It merely states that they are incompatible in a logical sense.

As you might imagine, the questions that arise from this issue are protean. I'll post on some of the more interesting ones.  But I raise two questions now:

If hard determinism is true, then can we trust the opinion 'hard determinism is true' to be true? After all, we came to that belief without choice, enslaved to the past and to physics. Why would we credit physics with the capacity to ascertain metaphysical truth?

The other question is this:

If hard determinism is true, why try?  Why do anything? If the future is set according to the past and the laws of nature, then what will be will be no matter what you do. Why make any effort at all? Why not just sit on the couch, open a beer, and let the inevitable happen?

As you might imagine, I'm a libertarian incompatibilist . I believe that free will is real, and that determinism is wrong, and that determinism is incompatible with free will.

The issue is fascinating, and very important.

Joe Biden "not second-guessing' China's forced abortions, sterilization, and femicide.

Joe Biden acknowledges his sympathy with China's one-child policy:

“But as I was talking to some of your leaders, you share a similar concern here in China. You have no safety net... Your policy has been one which I fully understand — I’m not second-guessing — of one child per family. The result being that you’re in a position where one wage earner will be taking care of four retired people. Not sustainable.”

China's one-child policy is a crime against humanity. It is a horrendous intrusion of government into a family's private life, and has led to countless forced abortions, sterilizations, infanticides and abandonment of baby girls (ever wonder why nearly all of the Chinese kids adopted from orphanages by Americans are... girls?). There are tens of millions of girls and women 'missing' in China. Except they aren't missing. They were murdered.

House Speaker Boehner:

“I’m deeply troubled by the comments reportedly made by the Vice President yesterday regarding China’s reprehensible one-child policy, which has resulted in forced sterilizations and coerced abortions and should not be condoned by any American official. No government on Earth has the authority to place quotas on the value of innocent human life, or to treat life as an economic commodity that can be regulated and taken away on a whim by the state.”

Reggie Littlejohn, the president of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers, notes:

[Biden should] “mention the severe women’s rights atrocities that are committed in the name of the One Child Policy – forced abortion, involuntary sterilization and gendercide.”

“China’s One Child Policy causes more violence to women and girls than any other official policy on earth. To merely mention the economic consequences is to turn a blind eye to the terrible human suffering caused by forced abortion. Chinese women are literally dragged out of their homes, strapped to tables and forced to abort.”

“The Chinese Communist Party boasts that it has “prevented” 400 million births through the One Child Policy. That’s greater than the entire population of the United States. Most of the births “prevented” are girls. There’s an entire nation of women not living in China today because of gendercide – the sex-selective abortion of baby girls. This gendercide gives rise to human trafficking and sexual slavery, within China and from many surrounding nations,”

Biden has long been a supporter of the UN Population Fund, which has promoted the brutal population control policies for decades. Tom McClusky of the Family Research Council notes:

“UNFPA was defunded throughout the George W. Bush Administration, but funding was restored when President Obama took office. Since then, $105 million in taxpayer funds have been allocated for UNFPA despite their participation in China’s brutal policy. Cutting off funding to UNFPA will save money, but more importantly it will save lives”.

New Jersey Republican congressman and pro-life leader Chris Smith wrote Secretary of State Clinton:

“Since 1979, brothers and sisters have been illegal in China as part of the barbaric one child per couple policy. And for 30 years, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) has vigorously supported, funded, defended, promoted, even celebrated these massive crimes against humanity. The uncontested facts are these: Any Chinese, Tibetan, or Uyghur mother without a birth permit is put under coercive pressure to abort – if need be, she is physically forced to do so. All unwed moms are compelled to abort. In what can only be described as a search-and-destroy mission, disabled children are aborted as part of a nationwide eugenics program.”

Of all of the manifestations of materialism and atheism in our world today, the population control movement is perhaps the most odious. It is a clear crime against humanity.

The materialist/atheist assertion that human beings are merely evolved animals without inherent transcendent dignity has consequences. In China, it is a femicide of historic magnitude.

Victor Davis Hanson on our sick society

Victor Davis Hanson has a superb essay on a terrible murder and its meaning:

Snapshot of a Sick Society

We protect the evil living and dismiss the innocent dead.

Quite often a brief news story sums up the collective pathologies of postmodern American society. Here is a recent tragic news item from my local paper, followed by some commentary:

Police call slaying of Hanford woman a random act

Posted at 06:04 p.m. on Thursday, July 28, 2011

By Paula Lloyd / The Fresno Bee

A woman found slain at a Hanford car wash this week was killed randomly when a 17-year-old gang member happened to see her while taking a walk, Hanford police said Thursday.

Denise McVay was washing her car — something she did several times a week — early Tuesday morning before work.

The teen was wandering the streets after leaving a party when he saw McVay at the Royal Car Wash on Garner Avenue at about 5 a.m. and decided to kill her, police said.

The teen “simply wanted to kill somebody that night” and McVay, 49, was “in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Capt. Parker Sever said. “It was a purely random act.”

The teen stabbed McVay several times and slit her throat.

The teen took McVay’s money and her car, Sever said, and drove to the home of a fellow gang member, Mauricio Ortiz, 18, of Hanford. Sever said the teen was covered with blood and told Ortiz what he had done.

Ortiz helped him ditch the car at Tachi Palace Casino and went with him to Visalia Mall, where the teen used McVay’s money to buy clean clothes, Sever said.

The teen, whose name was not released because of his age, was booked into the Kings County Juvenile Center on suspicion of murder. Ortiz was booked into the Kings County Jail on suspicion of being an accessory after the fact.

Hanson notes:

In our present society, an able-bodied young man of 17 has leisure to walk about at 5 a.m. after a night of partying, while a hard-working woman squeezes in such an early morning moment to wash her car in order to appear presentable at work.

Note, furthermore, that our society has no compunction about letting the world know the identity of Ms. Denise McVay, who was horribly murdered and left dead on the pavement of a car wash. But it is worried that we might learn the name of the “17-year-old gang member,” also known as an anonymous “teen.” Yet why are we, as a society, more sensitive to disclosing the identity of a gang-member and suspected killer than of a slain productive worker?

In the transition from a shame culture to a guilt culture, America has become a confused society that values the sensitivities of the felonious living far more than respect for the law-abiding dead...

I have no doubt that in the next two years a good deal of society’s capital will be invested in this unidentified youth and his named accomplice. Preliminary hearings, state-paid public defenders, an array of psychiatrists, and periodic proclamations from the defense team about particular childhood traumas suffered by the killer — all to be followed by years of legal counsel, further psychological examinations and treatment, and of course, if there is a conviction, nearly $40,000 a year in incarceration expenses — as our fast-paced society races onward and upward, without much thought of one productive citizen, Denise McVay, washing her car in the early morning on her way to work. None of us are exempt from such terrible arithmetic, and we now must live with the realization that tomorrow morning any one of us could be written off as either unlucky or unwise in our demise, while the rights of our killer would be obsessed over.

You see, it is characteristic of a morally bankrupt society to be absorbed with the evil living without much remembrance of the more noble dead. The former gang member and his family by all means must not be embarrassed; the dead woman is reduced to being “in the wrong place at the wrong time.”Enough said.

I'm not going to invoke the Christianity/atheism debate here except for this point: civilized society is based on personal and cultural morality, and cannot be maintained effectively merely by law. Strict laws and locking up criminals can help-- witness the dramatic reduction in crime rates in the 90's when we took a stronger law-and-order approach compared with the idiot liberal 'rehabilitation' approach to violent crime of the 60's and 70's.

But a free society can only be a safe civilized society if there is a bedrock of moral values at the most basic level-- the individual and the family-- that transcends statutory law. There is little doubt that this teen killer had minimal formative instruction and examples of basic morality from his family, or his school, or anywhere. How much do you wanna bet that he grew up without a father in a family in which no one worked and support came from government checks?

The rate of family disintegration in our society is catastrophic, and accounts for a very large fraction of our crime and misery. The fading of a widespread conviction that morality is objective, rather than a matter of personal opinion, adds greatly to the breakdown. Christians have been fighting these plagues for a long time, because they know that integrity of the family and respect for objective morality is the cornerstone of civilization.

We are losing our sense of sin. If anything, nowadays our only sin seems to be... to believe in the reality of sin. It's almost diabolical.

Aquinas' First Way

I've discussed the cosmological arguments a bit before on this blog, and I've noted a very interesting exchange between Catholic philosopher Ed Feser and Darwinist mathematician Jason Rosenhouse. There is probably more confusion, misdirection, and outright deception about the cosmological arguments for God's existence than any other aspect of the Christian/atheist debate.

First, some basics. There are a number of logical arguments for God's existence. The 'big five' are:

1) The  cosmological arguments (in 3 varieties-- Prime Mover, First Cause, and Necessary Existence)
2) The argument from perfection (Aquinas' Fourth Way)
3) The argument from teleology (Aquinas' Fifth Way, sometimes called The Argument from Design)
4) The ontological argument
5) The argument from Moral Law

The arguments above take many forms, some more rigorous than others, and some of the arguments share structure and may even dovetail. Many philosophers have noted that the ontological argument has substantial commonality with the cosmological arguments, although it does not appear to be so at first glance.

I believe that all of the arguments are valid. 1-3 above are Aquinas' Five Ways. I believe that Aquinas' versions of the cosmological arguments are the most rigorous.

I believe that the cosmological argument, especially in the form of the Prime Mover argument (Aquinas' First Way), is irrefutable.

The cosmological arguments share a structure. They are based on the impossibility of an infinite regress of essentially ordered causes. I'll explain what that means.

It is important to understand that these arguments as formulated by Aquinas are highly structured deductive arguments that proceed from quite specific premises and reach deductive conclusions. Most popular versions of these arguments, even by professional philosophers, misrepresent them, and nearly all atheist 'refutations' of the arguments are aimed at a bastardization of the arguments and have no validity whatsoever. Once you understand the argument, you see that the atheist 'refutations' are nonsense.

The actual arguments are tightly reasoned, and have not been refuted.

Aquinas' First Way


Aquinas' First Way, called the argument from motion, is based on Aristotle's Prime Mover argument, and follows it in all important details.

Its premises are:

1) The universe is eternal in the past.

Now of course Aquinas did not believe that the universe was eternal in the past. He believed that it had a moment of creation. But he did not believe that it could be logically demonstrated that the universe had a finite past, so he assumed that the past was infinite.

Aquinas had the remarkable habit of prefacing his arguments with assumptions that would make it maximally difficult for the proof to succeed. And then he made it succeed.

Notice that the assumption of an eternal past means that the First Way has nothing-- n-o-t-h-i-n-g-- to do with the Big Bang. If you are reading a critique (or defense) of the cosmological argument, and the interlocutor mentions 'Big Bang', stop reading and go on to someone who understands the argument.

People who invoke the Big Bang to refute or defend the cosmological arguments don't understand the arguments at a very basic level.

2) Motion means change. It does not mean translation in space. The latin word for change (motus) historically has been translated into English as 'motion'. It does not mean motion in the sense of movement in space, but in the sense of change of attributes. A green leaf turing brown is 'in motion'.

3) Change in the natural world is hylemorphic, meaning that natural change involves a transition from potency to act. These are technical terms used by scholastic philosophers, and to understand the argument, you must understand the terms:

Act: the actual thing. A crumply yellow leaf is 'in act' for yellow and for crumply. It is not 'in act' for blue, or liquidness, or for a host of other attributes it does not have.

Potency: an attribute that a thing does not have, but could have, under the right circumstances. A green leaf is in potency for yellowness. It is not yellow (it is green), but under the right circumstances, it could be yellow (when autumn comes).

All change in nature is elevation of potency to act. Change is when a thing actually becomes something that it had the potential to become. An acorn changes to an oak tree. It had the potency to be an oak tree, and that potency was actualized.

A thing is not in potency for just anything. An acorn is not in potency to be a cougar or an ocean. And potency only refers to natural change, not man-made change.

4) Cause is by priority, not by time.

Causation in the First Way refers to causation in the sense that something is responsible for holding another thing in existence. It does not mean that one thing necessarily started another.

An example would be a stack of books. The cause of the top book being on the top is the book below it. The cause of the book below it is the book beneath it, etc. This is what is meant by cause in priority, as distinguished from cause in time.

Now the cause of the bookstack in time is another matter : that would be the authors of the books, the printing press, the person who stacked the books, etc. Cause in time is not the cause on which the Prime Mover argument depends.

Aquinas' First Way has to do with cause in priority only, and has nothing to do with cause in time.

5) Essentially ordered causal series vs accidently ordered causal series.

Causes in priority are essentially ordered causal series. Causes in time are accidently ordered causal series (these are technical terms in scholastic philosophy).

An essential series of causes is a series in which the continued existence of all of the causes is necessary for the series to exist. Holding a hammer and hitting a nail is an essential series of causes: the nail, the hammer, my hand, my muscles, my nerves, my spinal cord, my brain must all simultaneously exist for the series to work. Cut the nerve, remove the hand, etc, and the series stops.

An accidental series is a causal series in which the continued existence of all of the causes in not necessary for the series to exist. An example is a family tree. You were 'caused' by your father, who was caused by his father, who was caused by his father, etc. But the causal series can go on even if your ancestors are dead. The continued existence of all causes in the series is not needed for the series to exist.

Aquinas' First Way refers only to essential series in nature, and not to accidental series.

This is Aquinas' First Way:

1) Change in nature is elevation of potency to act.

2) Potency cannot actualize itself, because it does not exist actually.


3) Potency must be actualized by another, which is itself in act.


4) Essentially ordered series of causes (elevations of potency to act) exist in nature.


5) An essentially ordered series of elevations from potency to act cannot be in infinite regress, because the series must be actualized by something that is itself in act without the need for elevation from potency.


6) The ground of an essentially ordered series of elevations from potency to act must be pure act with respect to the causal series.


7) This Pure Act-- Prime Mover-- is what we call God.

Now Aquinas believed this argument for God's existence to be the strongest of his Five Ways. He spent hundreds of pages in Summa Theologica and Summa Contra Gentiles explicating it and showing that the Pure Act is consistent with the Christian concept of God.

You can see that the retort "so what caused God" is idiotic. What Aquinas and Aristotle demonstrated is the need for a Prime Mover at the source of all change in nature. The Prime Mover itself (Himself) must be unmoved. There cannot be infinite regress in an essentially ordered series. The "what caused God" retort is a confession of ignorance of the actual argument. The conclusion (not the premise) of the argument is that there must be an unmoved mover at the foundation of nature. Since nature is defined as 'that which changes', the unmoved mover is supernatural.

Feser's discussion in Aquinas and The Last Superstition is invaluable.  Here's another nice succinct demonstration, and here's another version of the argument by people who understand it.

I'll post soon on each of Aquinas' Five Ways.

Global warming scientists appeal to new constituency-- people who think that aliens are watching them.

Just when you thought that global warming science couldn't get more batsh*t, it does:

New Study: Aliens Could Attack to Stop Global Warming

As Allahpundit says, "It's come to this." I'm not sure what's worse, taxpayers funding a CDC warning and emergency preparedness plan for a zombie apocolyse, or this:

A team of American researchers have produced a range of scenarios in which aliens could attack the earth, and curiously, one revolves around climate change.

Global warming climate change  is the secret password. There are other secret passwords- "evolution" is one of them. It identifies you as one of the in-group in science. No matter what your paper is about, if you link your boring trivial study to climate science ("the evolutionary modulation of magnesium in dog feces is impaired by global climate change...") you've made friends and influenced people. It's like casually mentioning Justin Bieber's hair at the 7th grade girls' table in the school cafeteria.

They speculate that extraterrestrial environmentalists could be so appalled by our planet-polluting ways that they view us as a threat to the intergalactic ecosystem and decide to destroy us.

I'd be more concerned if aliens read the Global warming-aliens paper. That might be a genuine reason to stomp on us. No intelligent life here.

The thought-provoking scenario is one of many envisaged in a joint study by Penn State and the NASA Planetary Science Division, entitled "Would Contact with Extraterrestrials Benefit or Harm Humanity? A Scenario Analysis."

The study is indeed thought-provoking. It has provoked thoughts such as:

1) 'Why are we paying for this sh*t?'

2) 'Why do we let crazy people publish in science journals?'

3) 'If  I see one of the authors walking toward me, should I walk, or should I run, to the other side of the street?'

It divides projected close encounters into "neutral," those that cause mankind "unintentional harm" and, more worryingly, those in which aliens do us "intentional harm."

Not bad for speculation about something for which there is not a shred of evidence. One is just as justified in publishing a paper about 'Etiquette in e-mail correspondence with Garden Fairies' or 'Negotiation strategies with the Sandworms of Dune'.

Extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI) "could attack and kill us, enslave us, or potentially even eat us. ETI could attack us out of selfishness or out of a more altruistic desire to protect the galaxy from us. We might be a threat to the galaxy just as we are a threat to our home planet," it warns.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the authors' speculation is that aliens have exactly the same concerns as... a trio of lefty-green scientist assh*les. Who knew that aliens are... are... liberals. Just like climate scientists! Convergent evolution. I would add that space aliens may also express concerns about Rick Perry's exaggerated economic record in Texas. And aliens seriously hate Sarah Palin.

Perhaps the wisest strategy to protect ourselves from liberal environmentalist aliens is to encourage more batsh*t scientific papers about the global warming apocalypse. When I was in college in New York City (during the crime wave of the 1970's), some of my friends planned to act crazy if they saw someone who looked like a mugger, on the theory that even people prone to assaulting you are likely to leave you alone if they think you are crazy. We should engrave this whack-job paper on a Carl Sagan-type plaque and blast it into space. My hunch is that aliens--even lefty green kook aliens-- would leave really crazy civilizations alone. We could dodge the apocalypse by convincing an alien menace that we were all liberals.

One such scenario is the stuff of many a Hollywood blockbuster, a "standard fight-to-win conflict: a war of the worlds." But another might resonate more with fans of Al Gore's documentary film "An Inconvenient truth."

Maybe Gore can interest fans in investing in his new AAMSHF (Anti-Alien Military Defense Hedge Fund), available by formal prospectus only. He's made hundreds of millions off hawking AGW scam investments. Time to move on to other pastures.

It speculates that aliens, worried we might inflict the damage done to our own planet on others, might "seek to preemptively destroy our civilization in order to protect other civilizations from us."

 We should offer Al Gore as a sacrifice. Maybe it will placate them.

Apparently, the study was conducted with a scientist affiliated with NASA, but is not sponsored or produced by NASA itself.

NASA is involved in its own AGW scamming, but hasn't formally diversified to AGW-SETI scamming just yet.

This stuff is easy to satirize, but it is a window into science, circa 2011. The public's reaction should be straightforward:

No individual who had anything to do with this cr*p 'science' should ever again have any funding from any public source. All three authors should be fired for publishing gross pseudoscience, the journal editors should be fired and driven out of science, as should the reviewers.

If these jerks want to push their b.s. materialist-atheist-nature religion, they can do it on their own dime. Maybe they can get grants from the Church of Scientology. Scientologists could give global warming kooks personal assurances from Xenu that there will be no alien attack.

The people who push this garbage are hucksters and frauds, and taxpayers should cut them loose.

Sam Harris and the bizarre implication of denying free will

Jerry Coyne quotes and comments Sam Harris on free will:

[Harris] Do we have free will? Answer: no. “The problem is free will is just a non-starter, philosophically and scientifically. Unlike many other illusions, there is no way you can describe the universe so as to make sense of this notion of free will.

You can describe the universe so as to make sense of free will. Classical philosophers did it quite nicely (Aquinas: Summa Theologica 1.83.1, Quaestiones disputatae de malo 6). The free will "problem" is largely a consequence of idiotic materialism and scientism. But Harris has such a deep buy-in to this nonsense he doesn't understand that there are quite coherent ways of understanding free will.

[Harris] Now there are many people who have artfully changed the subject and tried to get a version of free will that makes some scientific sense. [JAC: so true!] But this is not what people actually mean by free will. What people mean is that they—their conscious selves—are free to chose their actions You choose what you want; you choose what you will to do. . . they still feel that at every moment, there is freedom to choose. Now what can this mean? From the position of conscious awareness of your inner life, this can’t be true. Everything you’re consciously aware of, at every moment, is the result of causes of which you’re not aware, over which you exert no conscious control.”

Huh? "Everything you're consciously aware of.. is the result of causes of which you're not aware, over which you exert no conscious control'? Does that mean that Harris made that statement without being in conscious control? That would explain its incoherence!

[Coyne] Sam goes on to explain, in light of this notion, why we should not be nihilists; why we need to do something instead of existing passively. I am 100% on board with his answer, and am glad that he sees through those philosophers who, through redefinition, try to save “free will” by simply ignoring what nearly everybody thinks is free will. It’s time to admit—and that means telling the public—that contracausal free will doesn’t exist, and to coin a new term for those philosophical forms of “free will” that aren’t contracausal.

Gibberish. The absurdity of denying libertarian free will is evident in this observation:

The philosophical problem of free will is linked to the issue of hard determinism. Hard determinism is the view that all of our acts are completely determined by natural processes. A way to understand what this means is to imagine a Cartesian graph with the x-axis as time and the y-axis as some quantifiable variable that we "choose"- such as the number of calories in the lunch I choose to eat today, or the number of miles I choose to drive when I'm on vacation, etc.

If my "choice" occurs at time zero, and hard determinism is true, then there is one and only one possible line extending forward in time. I stress: hard determinism means that there is only one possible future. At every time x, y is determined. Every x maps to one and only one y. That's what hard determinism means.

If I have libertarian free will, then beginning at time zero there are many different possible lines extending to the right-- different possible futures-- representing different values of y (choices) at the same value of x. The graph of free choice over time looks like a horizontal bush that branches at time zero (now).

Now consider this: if hard determinism is true, and I have no libertarian free will, then there is one and only one value my 'pseudo-choice' can take at each time in the future. Therefore, no matter what I choose (or think I 'choose'), the future will be what it will be.

Therefore, why choose to go to work in the morning? My future salary (the y axis) will be the same regardless. There is only a single line.

Why choose to eat? My future health (the y axis) will be the same no matter, because it's determined and I have no libertarian free will to alter it.

Why write a blog post defending determinism? It won't affect the future in any way.

You see the point. Following the logic of hard determinism, we can't choose, so why do anything? What will be, will be.

Now of course, as you might imagine, a few materialists have spotted this catastrophe for hard determinism, and propose 'compatibilism', which is the view that determinism and free will are compatible.

The difficulty with compatibilism is obvious: if our acts are determined entirely by natural law, we cannot have free will because we have no control over natural law.

I'll post more on free will and determinism in a while. It's a fascinating question, and nicely demonstrates the idiocy of materialism/scientism.

Meanwhile, my suggestion to free-will deniers like Coyne and Harris is: just chill. Stop writing your inane blogs, stop pushing your idiotic philosophy. The future is determined, and you have no choice. Just sit back, chug a cold one, spend the day in your underwear, watch old movies. The future is determined.

Que sera sera, materialists.

'What drowned polar bears?...I don't know what you're talking about...'

The global warming hoax is unraveling at a brisk pace.

Global Warming Link to Drowned Polar Bears Melts Under Searing Fed Probe

by Audrey Hudson 

08/11/2011

Polar bears drowning in an Alaskan sea because the ice packs are melting—it’s the iconic image of the global warming debate.

But the validity of the science behind the image—presented as an ignoble testament to our environment in peril by Al Gore in his film An Inconvenient Truth—is now part of a federal investigation that has the environmental community on edge.

Any effort to ascertain truth should have the environmental community on edge.

Special agents from the Interior Department’s inspector general's office are questioning the two government scientists about the paper they wrote on drowned polar bears, suggesting mistakes were made in the math and as to how the bears actually died, and the department is eyeing another study currently underway on bear populations.

'Mistakes in math' are so common today.

Biologist Charles Monnett, the lead scientist on the paper, was placed on administrative leave July 18. Fellow biologist Jeffrey Gleason, who also contributed to the study, is being questioned, but has not been suspended.

The disputed paper was published by the journal Polar Biology in 2006, and suggests that the “drowning-related deaths of polar bears may increase in the future if the observed trend of regression of pack ice and/or longer open-water periods continues.”

It galvanized the environmental movement that led to the bear’s controversial listing in 2008 as threatened, and it is now protected under the Endangered Species Act.

Although the four dead bears cited in the paper were observed from 1,500 feet during flights over the Beaufort Sea, and the carcasses were never recovered or examined, Gleason told investigators it is likely the creatures drowned in a sudden windstorm that produced 30-knot winds, not for lack of an ice pack.

Amazing. One of the founding tropes of global warming hysteria was based on 4 dead bears observed from 1500 feet following a storm with 30-knot winds. It's obviously global warming.


Time to change world economics and governance!

“We never mentioned global warming in the paper,” Gleason told the investigators, according to the transcript.

Right. Why would anyone imagine that this statement:

“drowning-related deaths of polar bears may increase in the future if the observed trend of regression of pack ice and/or longer open-water periods continues”

had anything to do with global warming. People can be so silly.

Gleason told investigators that reaction to his and Monnett’s paper was overblown and spun out of context.

Now he says that. Why not over the past 15 years, when his paper was being constantly used as a prop for global warming hysteria?

“I think these sorts of things tend to mushroom, and the interpretation gets popularized,” Gleason said. “Something very small turns into this big snowball coming down the mountain, and that's, I think, what happened with this paper.

Gleason concedes that the study had a major impact on the controversial listing of the bear as an endangered species because of global warming.

Golly, I guess it did. 

“As a side note, talking about my former supervisor, he actually sent me an e-mail at one point saying, ‘You’re the reason polar bears got listed,’” Gleason said.

Monnett now manages $50 million in studies as part of his duties as a wildlife biologist with the Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement.

A good man to trust with the public's money.

Investigators are also examining Monnet’s procurement of one of those research studies on polar bears conducted by Canada's University of Alberta, as well as the “disclosure of personal relationships and preparation of the scope of work,” according to a July 29 memo from the Interior Department's inspector general’s office.

In particular, investigators are asking questions about the peer review work on Monnett’s drowned polar bear paper, which was done by his wife, Lisa Rotterman, as well as Andrew Derocher, the lead researcher on the Canadian study under review by the inspector general's office.

A paper on which restructuring of world civilization was based was reviewed by the author's... wife. Peer 'Dear' review: 'Did you like the paper, dear?'

Monnett is being legally defended by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), which posted the interviews the inspector general's office conducted with both scientists on its website.

PEER calls Monnett’s work “groundbreaking research,” 

The investigation is breaking ground for 'global warming science' burial.

and says the investigation is a political attempt to “impugn his observations on polar bears’ vulnerability to retreating sea ice.”

The facts are impugning the research.

“With each interview, it becomes more outrageous that government funds are being spent on this crackpot probe while paying Dr. Monnett’s salary to sit at home,” said Jeff Ruch, executive director of PEER.

How about the government funds spent on this crackpot science? We're safer paying climate scientists to sit home and shut up. It's like protection money.

“This seven-page paper, which had undergone internal peer review,

His wife.

management review

His buddies. 

and outside peer review coordinated by journal editors

Scientists who stood to gain financially from the publicity and funding generated by the research. 

, galvanized scientific and public appreciation for the profound effects that climate change may already be having in the Arctic,” PEER said in another statement in support of Monnett.

Four dead bears observed from 1500 feet "galvanized scientific and public appreciation..."

Eric Holder’s Justice Department has already declined to pursue any criminal prosecution in the probe, but the scientists still face possible administrative action for any wrongdoing, the inspector general said in the memo.

Shouldn't the Justice Department decide on a criminal probe after the conclusions of the investigation are published?

With investigators suggesting his research is collapsing, Monnett was defensive in the interview, and asked for the inspectors’ credentials to question his work or second-guess his calculations.

'As to count 2, we the Jury, find the defendant guilty of breath-taking arrogance'.


This b*astard was spending our money on cr*p science. We damn well have the right to ask how he spent it.

For example, there was some confusion as to whether it was three or four dead bears used in the calculation to determine the ratio of survival, and whether Monnett assumed that four swimming bears seen the week earlier were the same polar bears recorded as dead in the next survey.

They were dressed the same, so he figured...

The statistic in question was the percentage of bears likely to survive when swimming in a storm—Monnett estimated it to be around 25%, whereas investigators put the number at more than 57%.

Close enough for climate science, right?

“Is there a potential we made a mistake, and the peer reviewers didn’t catch it? Possibly,” Gleason said.

His wife had a headache, and missed it.

If the scientists had reported the 57% figure, investigator May said, “how people were taking this and exaggerating the results, probably may not have happened in terms of the world taking your study as attributing [the drownings to] global warming.”

Translation: 'if you hadn't fabricated the data, people might not have paid so much attention to your study'.

After nearly two hours of Monnett defending his work to investigators, Ruch from PEER asked the officials to explain what allegations are being made against Monnett.

'You're a fraud' is the allegation.

May said they are examining the “wrong numbers,” “miscalculations” and “scientific misconduct.”

But that's just what climate science is all about.

“Well, that’s not scientific misconduct anyway,” Monnett said. “If anything, it’s sloppy.”

Why is it that 'sloppy' climate science always seem to exaggerate global warming, rather than understate it? Funny that '"sloppy" only goes in one direction...

“I mean, that’s not—I mean, I mean, the level of criticism that they seem to have leveled here, scientific misconduct suggests that we did something deliberately to deceive or to change it,” Monnett said.

Yep.

“I sure don’t see any indication of that in what you’re asking me about,” Monnett said.

Keep looking.

The actual survey Monnett was conducting when he observed the dead bears in 2004 was the migration of bowhead whales. Investigators questioned how he later obtained data for a table listing live and dead polar bear sightings from 1987 to 2004.

Oh, do you mean 'how he obtained data during a time he wasn't doing the research?'

“So how could you make the statement that no dead polar bears were observed” during that time period? May asked.

“Because we talked to the people that had flown the flights, and they would remember whether they had seen any dead polar bears,” Monnett said.

Climate scientists are meticulous about their control groups. 'Hey Joe, see any dead bears in the last couple of years?'

Asked whether he had any documentation to back that up, Monnett said that he did not.

Documentation? Are you kidding? This is climate science. They won an Academy Award, ya know!

“Science is about making the best case you can to test your hypothesis,” Monnett said. “You assemble your arguments and your data, you put it out there, and you see who’s going to knock it down.”

They're knocking it down now, pal.

“And surprisingly, nobody, you know, knocked this down in any way. Everybody was just kind of like, ‘Oh, yeah, four dead polar bears. Okay, that’s kind of cool,’ ” Monnett said.

Is Monnett a scientist or... or... a Valley Gurrl?

Dr. Rob Roy Ramey, a biologist who specializes in endangered species scientific issues for Wildlife Science International, Inc., reviewed Monnett’s paper as well as the inspector general's interviews for HUMAN EVENTS and said that the authors made unwarranted assumptions and large extrapolations based on a single event.

Climate science.

“They did not know if the polar bears actually drowned, they assumed that they had drowned. There were no statistical tests, just extrapolations made with no accounting for measurement error,” Ramey said.

Climate science.

“The paper gives the appearance that rigorous surveying was done for polar bears, when it was not,” Ramey said. “They were flying at 1,500 feet with the purpose of looking for bowhead whales, which are much larger and easier to spot.”

Climate science. 

Ramey also says he sees a conflict of interest for Monnett’s wife to be part of the internal peer review, and questioned the awarding of a contract to Derocher, who also participated in the peer review.

Climate science.

“That’s not impartial,” Ramey said. “It’s really important that peer review be truly independent. If they can’t be, then everyone has to state their conflict right up front.”

Climate science.

“I think it’s very illustrative of the problems with government research on endangered species, and raises the question as to whether government should be in the business of science,” Ramey said.

Excellent question. The proper role of government in science, just like the proper role of government in finance, may be to criminally prosecute scientists who lie. The 'honor code' in science is in tatters. Increasingly it is clear that science needs proctors, and federal prosecutors would fit the bill nicely.

Numerous studies contributed to the bear’s listing as a protected species, including the paper on polar bear drowning, which was cited in the Federal Register’s proposed rule.

In making the announcement May 14, 2008, to protect the bear under the Endangered Species Act, the Interior Department said the listing “is based on the best available science, which shows the loss of sea ice threatens and will likely continue to threaten polar bear habitat.”

And when are the Interior Department bureaucrats who listed the polar bear as endangered without reading or scientifically evaluating the junk science behind it going to be fired?

The Interior Department said it would modify regulatory language “to prevent abuse of this listing to erect a backdoor climate policy outside our normal system of political accountability.”

Wow. Remarkably candid.

As part of the Endangered Species Act listing, the department said work would continue with scientists to monitor polar bear populations and trends, as well as the effects of oil and gas operations in the Beaufort Sea region.

Real science required real scientists. A endangered species, is seems.

“Power, money, authority and recognition come with listings on the endangered species list,” Ramey said.

Increasingly, "power, money, authority and recognition" is becoming the only basis for government-funded science, especially in certain fields such as climate science.

Investigators conducted a second interview with Monnett on Tuesday. PEER said in a statement afterward that his “2006 peer-reviewed journal article on drowned polar bears remains the focus of the inquiry.”

Myron Ebell, director of energy and global warming policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, said that the government is expected to “spend trillions of dollars to save the world from global warming on the basis of what a few scientists say.”

There's nothing wrong with basing decisions on what scientists say. Just listen carefully to what the scientists say, then do the opposite. You'll probably be right.

“There needs to be due diligence, and we need to challenge and investigate every single claim. The public expects that,” Ebell said. “But we find over and over that shoddy science has been put forward, and in some cases, dishonest and manipulated science, and they say, ‘Trust us,’ ” Ebell said.

“It’s extremely irresponsible.”

I'm astonished (and delighted) by the integrity of the folks investigating this fraud. It's the tip of the iceberg (pardon pun).




Notice the lack of outrage on the so-called 'pro-science' blogs. Where is the NAS? Where is the AAAS? They habitually back the fraudsters. This should make any real scientist furious. This fraud, aside from its intrinsic evil, is besmirching the name of science and damaging the credibility of the many scientists who are honest and competent.




Real scientists need to speak up, denounce the frauds in their midst, denounce the junk science in their midst, and demand integrity in science. 

Some fields, such as climate science, are cesspools.