Then this still marks the biggest gap in our narratives. From my vantage point, if this is true then everything that mindful matter thinks and feels and does is the equivalent of everything embedded in the interaction of mindless matter. The only difference being that “I” am able to grasp this while, say, re the weather, the wind and the rain the lightening bolt are not. But, as with these components of the weather that we call a thunderstorm, my interactions with others unfold as they are compelled to as necessary factors/variables embedded in the design.
In my view, it is huge only to the extent that sometime in the future someone is around able to note how “the new world” came into existence because everyone came to accept Lessans discovery. In the interim, all we really have though is his argument about this hypothetical future. And even here his argument seems to be that the “new world” comes to be only because it could not not come to be. And we become instrumental in that only because we ourselves could not not become instrumental. In any event, you and I will almost certainly not be around to see his discovery confirmed.
But it’s not about rights only if we live in a wholly determined world. Why? Because the pregnant woman does not really have the right to freely choose to abort or not to abort. She only possesses the illusory “right” to do what she is compelled to do in being an essential/integral component of the design.
And you are not? Instead, what it seems that you are really arguing is that the assumptions that you and Lessans make are reasonable and the ones that I make are not. Meanwhile, none of us are able to actually assume anything other than what we must assume!! And, again, to me, this is more the surreality one associates with, say, Alice in wonderland: words meaning only what we say they mean.
And you are assuming that it can be established objectively when human life begins. And you are assuming that this even matters in a world where the embryo/fetus is either aborted or not aborted only as it must be or must not be.
And you speak of this being “left up to the individual” as though the indivualual is in fact not compelled to choose only what he or she must. As though others could actually choose freely not to push their views on others.
And “according to some” aborting the unborn is clearly a hurtful act. After all, neither you nor I would be around today if we had been aborted in the womb. Right?
So we are necessarily back to “according to some” vs. “according to others”. And a “new world” in which this will still be the case because we cannot live in a world where the unborn are both permitted to come to term and are aborted.
Well, it will be to me until I understand how Lessans is able to demonstrate more substantively how we get to this no-rape world…and to that world in which satisfactions regarding issues like abortion and execution come into sync.
And, no, not a God at all. Just one more objectivist.
But all I have to do here is to note that, if what you believe is true, I am once again off the hook. After all, I can only offer you what I must. And how would I go about refuting something that, in my view, he has not been able to demonstrate empirically or experientially. All I can do then is to note the manner in which my own arguments pertaining to identity, conflicting value judgments and political economy seem more in sync with the world in which we live. By citing examples of how I construe them with respect to issues like rape, abortion and execution.
See? First you tell me that something can be done before you get shot. Then you tell me that what does happen [before, during and after you are shot] “is what it is.” So, there is nothing that either you or the intruder could have done before you were shot that would change the fact that you both must do as you are determined to do – thus assuring that you both must do the same after you are shot: only what you must.
Look, if everything we do to keep from getting shot is only everything that we could not not have done to keep from getting shot, then we get shot. Period. Just don’t blame the intruder because he is in the same boat. But if some do blame the intruder and punish him for shooting us don’t blame them either because are all in the same boat. I mean, sans free will, how “in the world” do we get out of it?
The “before”/“after” distinction is still lost on me. What happens is all part of reality unfolding seamlessly, mechanistically, inherently, naturally, organically etc. within the unabridged totality of existence as it can only be.
It’s like the ontological equivalent of a black hole: nothing at all gets out. Just as, through the laws of matter, what goes in must go in. Nothing on the “event horizon” of existence itself is anything other than it could be. You and I are still just an infinitesimally tiny part of it all.
You have provided me with many, many, many excerpts from his writings. And yet nothing that you have provided thus far offers me the sort of empirical/experiential evidence I would need to see in order to entice me to take that plunge. You admit that this sort of evidence [probing the brain “functionally”] is simply not going to be there in his “observations”. It’s just the argument about the observations itself. It’s just speculation and conjecture predicated on the assumption that his observations are true objectively.
But I can’t change my thoughts freely. I still don’t undertand how someone reading this would not imagine that you are arguing instead that I could freely change my mind. And that if I did I would find a more positive way to think about it. In other words, I would come to think about it the way you do. And yet in this determined world we both think about it only as we must.
What I want to believe here is that what I do believe here is something that I came to believe [re dasein] other than as something that I could only have believed going all the way back to whatever clicked the design “on” and set matter unfolding inexorably to the very words you are reading now. So far.
And until you and all of the other objectivists here learn that it may well by your own bubbles that are imperiled in exchanges like this, you will all no doubt go on insisting that your bubble and your bubble alone is the one and only truly objective bubble around pertaining to the nature/meaning of reality/existence itself!!
Talk about a delusion!! To wit:
But: Are you really trying to convince me here…or yourself?
Here I can only leave it up to others to decide for themselves if the cognitive scientists probing the actual brain engaged in the act of choosing, are engaged a more sophisticated and comprehensive manner in which to go about deciding these questions.
And that you must point out that I must be dismayed that I have no free will. All the while insinuating through your inflection that I am the one who is still to blame here for this exchange not culminating in me finally accepting Lessans point of view.
In other words, from my frame of mind you always get stuck here over and again – seeming to be aggitated by something I could not but not think and feel.
Sure, I can agree with this. But we certainly think very differently about the practical implications of this regarding the things we think and feel and do “out in the world” with others. Being correct or incorrect here would seem to be pro forma. It’s almost as though the design has courteously permitted the matter that is the human mind the capacity to grasp that it has no choice but to think and feel and do what it must think and feel and do.
It’s like the design doing me a favor by pointing out the strings that attach the puppet that I am to the stage that is its Reality.
But nobody either grasps or does not grasp it of their own free will. Scientists or not. Philosophers or not. The history of the world will always only unfold as the history of the world could only unfold. Lessans’ discovery and our discussion of it here are in turn just more dominoes toppling over into this inevitable sequence of events.
It’s just that, somehow, a year from now, a decade from now, a century from now, a millenium from now, Lessans just knows that the design will reconfigure into a no-rape world…into a world where all of our satisfactions pertaining to value judgments will come into sync such that all of the behaviors that he deems to be “evil” will be no more.
Why do you suppose that, if my will is free, I will choose what I don’t want? Besides, in a world bursting at the seams with “the agony of choice in the face of uncertainty” we are often in situations in which, whatever we choose, there will be good and bad consequences [from our own point of view…and from the perspective of others]. This is precisely what a determined world would make moot, right?
And you give us “choice” here only in the sense of someone able to describe what we must choose. So, enough scientists must choose to grasp and agree with Lessans’ discovery to set the no-rape world into motion. Meanwhile, you are here instead of there trying to convince us instead of them to bring into fruition that which can only be or not be anyway.
Some achievement. Doing only what we could never have not done anyway.
On the contrary, given all of the terrible things I have experienced or have known [in Vietnam alone!] there are any number of times I wish that I could just let it all go and truly believe these things are “as one with God” or “as one with the only possible world”. To be just a cog in the wheel would be a blessing at times, right? To subsume all the trials and the tribulations of living in this world in Existence itself? You bet I’d welcome it. And over and over again in so many different contexts.
And he would demonstrate the part about not toppling over into the abyss that is nothingness…how?
Hmm. You really don’t see this as speculation/cconjecture rooted in the internal logic of the argument itself. Whereas I see it as the sort of speculation/conjecture that is derived from the emotional and psychological yearning that the world really could be this way. In other words, that it does have a teleology; and that, eventually, the “meaning of it all” will culminate in a virtual paradise on earth.
But: Only if you can get everyone to embrace your own specualtion and conjecture. It’s like you have given us this opportunity so the onus now is squarely on us. You, however, are clearly the “good guy” here. Even though you could not not be.
Sometimes I imagine there might even be a gene for this.
What I haven’t been given is anything that might lead me to conclude that this is not just something that Lessans came to believe “in his head” to be true. That, in fact, he is able to be convincing that it is demonstrable somehow. Objectively, in other words.
And I am fully aware of what objectivists manage to believe “in their heads” in order not to be confused about the certainty of immortality. If not actual salvation itself.
Okay, if it doesn’t, then demonstrate to us that it doesn’t. But demonstrate it such that, based on your argument, we are able to actually confirm it [or important parts of it] empirically/experientially.
But, sure, if you wish to reduce this all down to “faith”, fine. That part is everywhere. After all, until we as a species are actually able to come up with the one true theory and practice of everything, all of us eventually reach the point where we are forced to take that leap of faith. In other words, to close the gap we between what we think is true here and now and all that we would need to grasp in order to be absolutely certain of this. And who among us is really even close to that here at ILP?
Aside from all of the objectivists, of course.
I have explained why. Nothing that you have provided me thus far from the excerpts has convinced me that Lessans is not just one more objectivist who is basing his own “objective truth” on the internal logic of his argument. There is little in the argument however that I am able to intertwine in the manner in which I construe human interactions from within the framework of dasein, conflicting goods and political economy.
Which I than situate in the manner in which – viscerally, intuitively – I take my own leap of faith to free will.
And, besides, if the design has it in store for me, I either will or will not change my mind. But to call it my mind here is merely to describe the mind and the brain as necessary components of whatever the ontological nature of existence might possibly be.
Although, again, sans God, to speak of a teleology here seems surreal beyond grasping to me.
You’re right about that. I wish I could be here to see this great change, but it’s not up to me.
I don’t mean that kind of right. According to some cultures, women don’t have the right to abort. In the new world, a woman will have the right (the freedom) to do whatever she wants to do, of her own free will (I hope you understand by now that doing something “of your own free will” does not mean your will is free).
Obviously none of us are able to assume anything other than what we must assume, but that does not mean I can’t pull you up on certain things in order to help you recognize what you’re doing in the hope that you will stop.
I never said that. I said that depending on how a person thinks in regard to when life begins will determine his/her thoughts about abortion.
It does matter only if by knowing when life begins (which I doubt we can ever really answer), it would affect our feelings about abortion.
Of course they can’t choose freely, but they can stop pushing their views on others when they realize this isn’t doing them any good. This, too, is part and parcel of the destiny we are meant to fulfill.
Can’t agree with you there. I will not discuss his discovery on death, so please don’t ask me anymore questions.
Of course we can.
How can laws still be needed to proscribe behaviors that will dissatisfy many when there will be no more laws proscribing anything? All you are doing is stating what exists today. You have no conception at all of why all manmade laws that tell people how they must behave will no longer be necessary.
I never said there won’t be dissatisfaction at times. You have yet to understand what he means by “greater satisfaction”. Babies cry because they are dissatisfied until they get their bottle. When I change positions, I am dissatisfied with a position that has grown uncomfortable, so I change position in the direction of “greater” satisfaction. I’m not sure what you mean by perfect equilibrium where everyone is satisfied. This isn’t even how he uses the term.
You obviously haven’t read what I posted. He clearly stated that our values are personal.
Iambiguous, you have not read the book. You have no idea what it’s about. I am not discussing the world in which we live; I am discussing a future world where rape and execution will be things of the past. Abortion will be an individual decision but it will not be common when people are happily married and want a family.
I am only saying that before a shooting takes place, we try to do whatever we can to prevent it. You are assuming that whatever is being done to prevent a possible shooting is incapable of preventing it, therefore when it can’t prevent it we then blame and punish as part of the design. This is absolutely true, but you don’t understand the reason why punishment will no longer be embedded as part of the design that must be, and I cannot seem to get this across to you.
We don’t get out of it, but we do change the trajectory.
That is true, but this change in environment (which is also part of the design) forces a change in behavior. This, too, is all part of reality unfolding seamlessly and naturally within the unabridged totality of existence.
I don’t agree that we are an infinitesimally tiny part of it all. We are a necessary part of it all and our actions DO MAKE A DIFFERENCE even though we could not do otherwise.
Many many many? What does that mean in the context of this book? If the book is 2,000 pages, and I give you 3 pages of excerpts, would you call that many?
I am not out to prove anything to you. I wanted to share something of value, and if you fail to see its value, then that’s how it must be.
I’m sorry you don’t feel special.
I know you cannot freely change your mind to think of this more positively unless you read something that allows you to come to think of it more positively.
The fact that you are unable to insist that how you think and feel about it in your head, here and now, is the objective truth, doesn’t make the truth any less true. It’s really okay if you can’t change the way you think about this. No one is expecting you to.
I don’t want to get into the purpose of existence. My mind, as a necessary component of whatever the ontological nature of existence might possibly be, tells me that there is a purpose to life, especially knowing that we are moving toward the Golden Age of man when there will be no more war or crime. Most people are very dissatisfied with the way things are, but I don’t think they would talk about the world being devoid of meaning if they knew that peace on earth was not only possible, but inevitable.
There is no logical or empirical evidence given in the book for the way it claims human conscience works. It just claims that it works a certain way and leaves it at that.
But, as with our thoughts, emotions and behaviors, our “value” lies only in whatever value either does or does not pertain to the design itself.
But then how can we even encompass this other than in the manner in which I must now type these words and the manner in which you must now read them?
In a sense, it is somewhat analagous to watching an ant colony go about the task of merely existing from day to day. We are back once again to the brute facticity of existence unfolding per se. How are we really any different from the ant colony in a world where both their interactions and our own are but inherent components of a necessary reality?
At least the ants aren’t burdened with the illusion of having created their own community freely. No “agony of choice in the face of uncertainty” there.
Yes, but it is always me who has to change my point of view here…never you. Which is to say that you are never burdened yourself with the weight that is “the agony of choice in the face of uncertainty”. For that to be truly unsufferable our will must be free.
If women have the right to abort in the new world then their unborn babies have the obligation to die. This is what you are saying for all pratical purposes unless, through technology, we are able to transcend the womb altogether. But even here some of the unborn are fated to die. Thus “satisfactions” are in sync only because the unborn are given no capacity to voice their dissatisfaction in being exterminated.
And the fact that I still support a woman’s right to choose an abortion speaks volumes regarding my own “agony of choice in the face of uncertainty”. I don’t have the escape hatch that [in my view] you and others employ.
Yes, but how a person thinks is the only way that they can think. And what they end up thinking is clearly rooted in dasein. And yet, however they do come to derive a particular subjective point of view, there is still no way in which to determine objectively when the unborn does in fact become human. Let alone whether it is objectively moral or immoral to flush it down the toilet.
But if they can’t freely choose whether or not to push their views on others then that [along with everything and anything relating to abortion] can only be “part and parcel of their destiny” as well. Again, there is never any viable exit here. There is only becoming or not becoming cognizant of it. But even this is only as it could be!!
Hmm. Are you suggresting that if either of us had been aborted we might/could/would still be around? Are you suggesting that in some way Lessans is still around?
Explain please. Either Mary can abort the fetus or she is forced to continue on with the pregnancy until the fetus develops fully and is born.
And you and Lessans are able to extrapolate from the world we live in now to this new world…how? Aside from just prognosticating that it will come about when scientists and others read Lessans’ discovery and the design perforce shifts gears.
If in the new world women are not blamed or punished for having abortions because everyone is in sync with the idea that abortions are okay and that no women should be blamed or punished, how is this possible when it seems there will always be folks who are not only dissatisfied that unborn babies are being killed but are downright outraged by it. In fact, many today call it nothing less than a holocaust. How then do these people go away in the new world?
Can I not then claim that this is so because you have yet to convince me that the book is anything other than an accummulation of observations that are backed up by little or no hard evidence? Thus shifting the onus to you?
As for a world in which folks have no choice but to be happily married and want a family? Doesn’t seem at all realistic to me. Nor appealing for that matter.
Still, in a determined world the trying itself is only in the context of “try as you must”. And what I am assuming is that, in a capacity I am not able to fully explain, I attribute what I try to do at least in part to this:
“I” am able to think/choose as I do here because 1] I reflected on it 2] I tried to grasp the context to the best of my ability 3] I tried to weigh the pros and the cons to the best of my ability and then 4] I chose to think/act like this rather than like that.
And what I simply do not understand is how we go from the world that we live in now [with lots of intruders shooting at others or being shot at themselves] to a world where no intruders either shoot or are shot at; and because the design precipitated Lessans who precipticated his discovery whereby the world inevitably goes in the direction of those behaviors he either champions or intead construes to be “evil”.
And I suspect that, until and unless you are able to explain this part more perspicuously [and empirically], there will be lots of folks who continue to imagine the new world to be just an intellectual contraption deduced into existence inside Lessans’ head.
But we change it only because we can never not change it. That’s what I mean by being in the same boat. The boat is never not the design going about the business of unfolding necessarily per the ineluctable laws of matter.
By “tiny”, I was thinking more along the lines of this:
Yes, but you are only really sorry because you could not not be sorry. Right?
Yet that is the way I do see it though. And, therefore, I am seeing it only as I must see it. And while the puppet and the domino are not consciously aware of their part in the whole of reality, they are no less integrated into it as are you and I. And, from my perspective, just as it would be rather peculiar to pat the puppet and the domino on the back for doing only what they could have done, so taking pride in [or feeling special about] the things that we do when we too could not freely have chosen not to do them, is equally pro forma.
Even our conflicting frames of mind here are necessarily so.
Yes, but you leave out entirely the maner in which so many of the choices we are confronted with are encompassed in William Barrett’s frame of mind here:
For the choice in…human [moral conflicts] is almost never between a good and an evil, where both are plainly marked as such and the choice therefore made in all the certitude of reason; rather it is between rival goods, where one is bound to do some evil either way, and where the ultimate outcome and even—or most of all—our own motives are unclear to us. The terror of confronting oneself in such a situation is so great that most people panic and try to take cover under any universal rules that will apply, if only to save them from the task of choosing themselves.
Preference here is cleaved by the ambiguities derived from the complexity of the world we live in. We often do not get everything that we prefer. In fact, democracy and the rule of law is predicated precisely on the moderation, negotiation and compromise that is built right into the legislation we [in the West] must accomodate ourselves to.
What doesn’t make sense to me is to claim that you enrolled in the particular college that you preferred because the particular college that you prefered was the only college you could have preferred.
And what of those who attend a college they did not prefer either because they could not afford to attend the one they did prefer or because the college rejected their application. In the determined world of course you can always just shrug and say, “que sera, sera.” It was always simply meant to be. So, it really isn’t their fault at all. It’s nobody’s fault. Not in the way fault is understood in a world where the choices you make are free. Where you can be blamed for making the wrong ones. Assuming the options were even actually open to you in the first place.
You will go only where you must go. You acknowledge this over and over again. And how could you possibly get greater satisfaction here instead of in a forum such as this:
Sure, a philosophy forum allows you to approach free will from a different vantage point, but there would seem to be nothing quite like grappling with the complexities of the brain and the mind interacting “out in the world”, than among those who do study it empirically and experientially.
Yes, that is clearly one way in which to assess it. It just does not seem nearly the accomplishment to me.
I don’t “yearn” for a little free will. I make the assumption that it is a factor regarding that which I think, feel and do; assuming further that this can only be understood in the context of dasein, conflicting goods and political economy.
But, like you, all I have is my argument. I don’t have my own accummulation of empirical/experiential evidence to back myself up. Instead, I situate the manner in which I have come to understand [existentially] the meaning of the words I use here “out in the world” of human interactions that come into conflict.
And then I ask others to situate the words that they have come to ascribe a particular meaning to down here in turn. Then we can test the extent to which the words [the language, the logic] we use might have limitations with respect to identity and value judgments. It just seems that, with respect to free will itself, arguments alone would not be nearly enough. Here we really do need to turn [in turn] to the science of brain functioning and the functioning brain as well.
“Abyss” is basically just a subjunctive expression we use to conjure up the emotional and psychological reaction many have in imagining being something for seventy odd years and then dying…and then devolving back into star stuff again for all of eternity. It’s surely a kind of “dark hole” from the perspective of the living. At least from the perspective of those among the living who are terrified by it all. Though, obviously, if the life that you have is a living hell it might all be rather comforting instead. That part is no less embodied in dasein as well.
But again: What proof? His proof about what that might be true post-mortem?
But your logic here does not seem to be attached to much more than a subjunctive longing for a world of “peace and prrosperity for all”. What does not go away though is the manner in which there are many conflicting and contradictory renditions of what that world will actually be. In other words, with respect to the conflicting value judgments that have rent the human species going all the way back to the caves.
At least with the religionists, salvation is attached to a particular God; or, with the rationalists, to a particular ideology. Instead, you imagine this “new world” being predicated soley on others discovering Lessans’ discovery and then in embracing it, thus nudging the design into a paradigm shift whereby all of the behaviors that you deem to be “evil” are replaced with behaviors that you deem to be “good”. Or so it seems to me.
And all of this unfolding in a world where not a single solitary one of us can ever do more than what we must do.
Maybe. But where is the beef? I just don’t see this as the sort of argument that can ever actually be either verified or falsified.
In other words…
Then we can only continue to agree to disagree here regarding the extent to which he does in fact demonstrate/“demonstrate” what he contends is true. I don’t doubt that he believed that his “observations” proved what he had contended his observations must prove if the assumptions he makes about what he observed is true.
But how do others follow through in order to substantiate this? I mean, other than by way of either agreeing or disagreeing with his analysis?
I agree that observations can be truly valuable regarding human interactions. For example, sociologists over the centuries have made observations of human behaviors in crowds and clearly noted how their behavior can in fact be profoundly impacted by being in crowds. Especially in a crowd that is angry regarding, say, something they construe to be unjust.
But how do we then grapple with the question of free will here? And what difference can it make how we react before or after we are in a crowd when from the day of our birth until the day of our death, everything that we will ever do is only as we could ever have done it?
Hmm. How can one speak of a “universal intelligence”, the logic of which tells her that, “the world does have a teleology and that the meaning of it all will eventually be shown to us as we barrel toward the Golden Age of man, an age of peace and prosperity for all”, and then not wish to get into the “purpose of existence”?
Indeed, in the very next sentence you say…
And even here your mind is only telling you what it could not not tell you. In fact, as you then point out, it is all “inevitable”.
Thus it is inevitable in turn that I do not [yet] share your conviction that what you now believe to be true “in your head” you have succeeded in demonstrating to me is something able to be subtantiated much beyond the claims made in Lessans’ discovery itself.
I don’t see it that way. This to me feels like the design is forcing me to line up with its dictates.
They don’t have the agony of choice, but they also don’t have the benefit of options. Although we choose as we must, the ability to contemplate does allow us the opportunity to weigh the pros and cons in any given situation and make a choice (which makes it feel like a free choice because we have options).
It can be truly unsufferable to have to make a choice in the face of uncertainty, but this has nothing to do with free will. I am not even sure how you came to that conclusion.
It is true they don’t have a say. What you are doing is imagining that they would be sad knowing that they are going to be aborted. I can see you have strong feelings about the unborn because you are putting yourself in their place. If you understood his chapter on death, it might bring some comfort to you.
I support women’s rights, but I also struggle with the agony of choice, especially when it comes to making choices that have ethical undertones. Where is my escape hatch?
I think any woman in this situation would be struggling. Because no one can tell us objectively when life begins, it has to be up to the woman. Taking the issue of morality out of it for a moment, it cannot feel good to have to abort a fetus. The good news is that abortion will not be something women will feel they need to do in the new world because the conditions that caused a woman to be in this predicament will no longer be.
Here we have to go back to before the fact. When they learn that imposing their values on others is not in their best interest, their choice will most likely be to stop pushing their values on others.
Sure, and so is the fact that we’re gravitating to a kinder world, only as it must be! And living in a kinder world would certainly make me happier, even though it is by design (which word can be misleading).
No, that’s not what I’m suggesting.
I didn’t mean the same baby. We can live in a world where some people bring babies to term and some abort. How will this dilemma that some women are forced to face stop the new world from coming into existence? Do you think that because people are not all in sync with each other on this issue, that it will be impossible for us to achieve world peace?
But that is exactly how. How does anything get from paper to actual application? The application of this knowledge will cause a 180 degree shifting of gears due to this extreme change in environmental conditions worldwide.
The understanding of his chapter on death may help in how people feel about this issue. In addition, abortions will not occur nearly as frequently because, as I said previously, the reasons that forced a woman to choose this option, as the lesser of two evils, will no longer exist.
I’m trying to spark your interest. The onus is on me to have available his observations and reasoning in Chapter One which then lead to his discovery, and that I have fulfilled. If you can’t even open the book, the onus is on you.
The only thing this law does is prevent people from having their hearts broken by love that is not returned.
I have clarified what he means by the word “evil”. Evil is synonymous with hurt. When seen in total perspective (in a philosophical sense), evil is not evil because we are all doing that which we must do, but that does not mean we have to sit in resignation that there is nothing we can do about this hurt that has such devastating consequences.
Unfortunately, that seems to be a major stumbling block since you, along with many others, refuse to give this man the benefit of the doubt.
Why is this so threatening to you?
Again, why is this so threatening to you? You seem to hate the idea that you are acting in accordance with your very nature which is to choose that which you desire to choose, not that which you don’t desire to choose. I am not even sure how to address your feelings of resignation, when the very thing that causes your despair causes my relief.
I’ll look at it later if I have time. No matter what we, as individuals, compare ourselves to (which could make us look like we are insignificant in comparison), it belies the truth that each of us holds an important bookmark in the fabric of life that is reserved ONLY for us.
It must be felt until it isn’t felt. You can change your mind accordingly, that is, if you see something that makes you think differently about a situation.
The fact that you choose according to what gives you greater satisfaction does not take away from your significance in the world. It adds to it.
You will do what you must do, there is no doubt about it but, unfortunately, there isn’t anything more I can say to spark your interest, so I guess this thread must cme to a close since there are no more participants. I just want you to know that I have no resentment toward you. You are acting in accordance with the laws of your nature (which you understand so well). I did enjoy the conversation in spite of our differences. Thank you for that.
Well, to me that would be like a domino complaining it feels it is toppling over only because the guy who set up the design dictated it. And yet in a wholly determined world this designer set it up that way only because, in being a necessary component of the Design, he could not not have done otherwise.
For you, this seems to be a different [more important] sort of reality. But, for me, it is different only in that the one who sets up the dominoes is cognizant of setting them up while the dominoes themselves are not. But just as the dominoes fall as they must the man sets them up as he must.
But our “options” are to do only what we must do. To do only what we cannot not do. Thus to “weigh the pros and the cons” in the only way that we are able to weigh them is a sham “choice” from my vantage point.
It’s like dreaming that we climbed to the top of Mount Everest, then, upon waking up, taking pride in the “fact” that we climbed Mount Everest!
Isn’t that what our “choices” are in a dream? While dreaming we imagine that what unfolds is of our own volition. But after we wake up we realize it was all just chemical and neurological interactions in our brains.
Then the question becomes this: are the choices we make when we are not dreaming just another material rendition of that?
No, most folks [right or wrong] think that our waking interactions involve some measure of free will.
To me, it has everything to do with it. If you make a choice and then pull back and think, “this is the only choice I was ever able to make” any suffering you might have felt while making it is then subsumed in what you could only have chosen. You can’t think to yourself, “I should have thought more about it”…or “I forgot to include x, y and z in my calculation”. Or, if you do, that too is wholly contingent upon the inherent trek of the design.
In the world we live in today, the unborn don’t have to be sad or terrified or angry that their life is going to be snuffed out. There are plenty of men and women amongst us [who were not aborted] who are more than willing to feel these things for them.
And my quandary is that I put myself in the place of the fetus who is aborted and in the place of a pregnant woman who is forced to give birth. Conflicting goods, right?
And I will be comforted to the extent you/Lessans are able to demonstrate to me that death is not oblivion.
It’s embodied in whatever psychological comfort/consolation you are able to experience in rooting everything you think, feel and do in necessity…in the belief that you are at one with the design. In other words, that you are in fact doing what you must do in order to wholly “participate” in this one true [and only possible] reality.
I still have no idea how in the new world we are not faced with the same conflicting goods. If Mary is satisfied aborting her unborn baby, many will be dissatisfied that she did not choose to bring it to term. And, as long as folks have conflicting renditions of what a peaceful world ought to be, some will be satisfied and some dissatisfied with whatever the world actually is. For example, is a peaceful world more compatable with capitalism or socialism?
In other words…
Death comes later. In the interim we still have to live in a world where women do become pregnant unintentionally. And many will then endure the agony of choice in the face of uncertainty because they may well be tugged in both directions: abort, give birth, abort, give birth.
How “in the world” does Lessans’ argument/discovery make that go away? Aside from imagining this new world “in his head” – where it just does.
You are compelled to spark my interest. And I am compelled [thus far] to resist it. So, to even speak of an “onus” in a wholly determined world is to speak of frames of mind [yours and mine] that are already entirely integrated into this exchange itself. Which is entirely integrated into what must be.
As long as everything that we think and feel and do is “must” “must” “must”, there really is no burdon at all. There is only an obligatory need to either feel it or to foist it off on others.
But some are resigned that there is nothing they can do [either in the world today or in the new world] because there is nothing that they can do – other than to do what the design compels them to do. And behaviors that hurt some do not hurt others. In fact, behaviors that devastate many may bring enormous satisfaction to a few. War profiteering for example. Or any other moral/political quandary in which many are satisfied going only in one direction while many more are satisfied going only in the opposite direction.
I am simply unable to grasp [yet] how “in the world” Lessans makes that go away. Aside from “in his head”.
I’m not threatened by it. Or no more so than you are threatened by the prospect of actually having some capacity to choose freely. In fact, as I noted previously, there is always that part of me that wants [yearns] to believe that I might someday be able to just dump all of this confusion, uncertainty, ambiguity etc., in God…or in some objectivist intellectual contraption like determinism.
The difference between you and I being that my own resignation and despair here are but two more existential leaps that are rooted in dasein. In my view [still] your “relief” is derived largely from this: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=185296
It is a frame of mind that allows you to reduce everything down to the “objective truth”. One of but hundreds and hundreds of renditions we come across in places like this. All of them said to be absolutely true because all the folks who believe that they are are absolutely convinced of it. And, then, if this happens or if that happens, someday we will all believe it.
I think I understand the part where, in being at one with the design, the design and I are in sync with the immutable laws of matter unfolding only as they necessarily must unfold. But that still leaves me no options other than the ones I am fated to employ. Including the one I employ now: not ruling out entirely the possibility that mindful matter is free. Or at least that “mine” is. How then could I be misunderstanding what you are trying to tell me here about the true nature of determinism when I am only understanding what I must about it?
That’s always been the option I have never been able to employ. But I would never be expected to employ it until I am fated to understand it. And I am fated to understand it only when [if] you are fated to succeed in enabling me to.
True or not it is the statement I was compelled to make. Only there’s a part of me that did not feel compelled to make it at all. A part of me thought that I had, of my own volition, considered what you had said and than forged my own [subjective] reaction to it.
And if I am not condemned now in this moment to react only as I must – given the manner in which “I” am but matter enscounced within its inexorably unfolding laws – how does one explain my moment to moment choices as something other than involving at least the spark of free will? At the moment I am typing these words. Now it is a new moment and I am typing these words. When am I ever able to type something other than the words that I must type? What “moment” is that?
But are we not all exactly the same in that, while interacting, we are engaging behaviors that we must engage? My “gifts” are no less determined than yours. And if someone thinks they are more special than others then from her point of view they are. But their points of view are the only ones alloted to them in that they are [they must be] in sync with the design.
You didn’t only because you couldn’t. In other words, not because you might have preferred a different one but, after weighing the pros and the cons of each, freely chose X instead of Y or Z.
Is it though? In a wholly determined world? If the entirety of all individuals applying/enrolling in college is an inherent component of the design then no one escapes this. No choice is other than it what it must be.
How would this work then for all practical purposes? In the new world there are still going to be only so many colleges able to choose only so many applicants. Students will be satisfied or not satisfied accordingly. Just like now. If not through critical judgment how would colleges decide who is enrolled and who is not?
But you don’t choose freely to feel satisfied either. You feel satisfied because you must feel satisfied. That’s what we always come back to in this determined world: what can only be.
But neuroscientists are making an attempt to understand the part about “in our head” as it relates to those instances [moments] when we do make a choice to do this instead of that. And, again, the irony is that many of them tend to embrace what I believe you are trying to argue here.
But you notice that the discussion does not get around to the profound implications of this re the manner in which we acquire an identity or the implications regarding morality.
And just as astrophysicists have barely begun to grapple with the meaning of the very, very big and the very, very small, so neuroscientists have barely just begun to explore the relationhip between the human brain and the human mind. There is still much more that needs to be known. And that is still before we get to the part about the ontology of existence/reality itself. The unknown unknowns that have not even occured to us yet.
As far as I am concerned, this is just one more gigantic assertion on your part. You have yet to demonstrate that it is true such that others can perform experiments in order to test it, in order to verify or falsify it, in order to replicate the conclusions, in order to make predictions regarding human behavior.
In fact all you do predict is that someday scientists and philosophers and others will come to embrace Lessans’ arguments and this new world will be born. Not that any of this could ever have been other than what it could only have been once the design turned “on”.
I can only point out how incredibly vague this is. What clues? What observations? How would I be able to take those clues and observations and implicate them in my own death? How would they instill in me the sort of consolation they seemed to instill in him? And Lessans is still dead, right? There is no “afterlife” in a determined world, is there?
Not until I understood what this “peace” consisted of. What behaviors would be sanctioned? What behaviors would be prohibited? In fact, this sort of quandary reminds me of that old Star Trek episode about the “spores”: hulu.com/watch/283854
Paradise, sure. But at what cost? And what is this all about anyway but the conflicting arguments that often revolve around capitalism and communism. The role of the individual in society. The role of the government and the “state”. In other words, grappling with the very notion/nature of human “freedom” itself.
And, aside from your argument that the new world comes into existence when we all think like you and Lessans do, you offer very little empirical evidence that such a world can evolve from the world we live in now. It’s all just basically idealistic to me.
On the other hand, you really have no way in which to determine if this is true or not. One of us will put it to an end by simply refusing to post further on the thread. Or one of us may simply be unable to continue the exchange. For example, one of us could die.
It will end only when it must end, right? And only for whatever reason that it must end. In this regard, you and I either are or are not dominoes toppling over or puppets jerked about on a string.
Anyway, I challenge anyone reading this to devise an argument [or propose an experiment] that would enable us to finally grasp this objectively once and for all.
It is true that there is no point in complaining (the domino) over the fact that he couldn’t help himself but to fall over, but this does not mean that just because we are reacting only as we must react that we cannot change the trajectory of where humanity is headed. In fact it is because of determinism that this is even possible.
The dominoes aren’t aware, but humans are. Like you said earlier, humans are aware of the fact that they are only doing what they must. Maybe this is actually how it was intended by the designer (the creator, the universal intelligence, the Source, whatever you want to call it) to be because it is this very awareness that the answer to a better world lies.
Most folks do believe that our waking interactions involve some measure of free will, but to think that we are only chemical and neurological brain interactions, although everything we do involves the brain, is also misleading because it reduces us to no more than a computer. I don’t think computers can feel love, empathy, or compassion in the truest sense. Yes, they can be programmed to react a certain way but can they actually feel these emotions? I don’t think so.
That is true, and in some ways it is comforting to know that there was no other way you could have reacted. Looking back in hindsight isn’t about blaming oneself for doing what one could not not do; it is just a way to see if next time you could make a better choice based on what you have learned.
He does demonstrate why we’re born again and again but I will not put the rest online as it will only cause more confusion. Small snippets don’t work in something as profound as this.
Psychological comfort doesn’t have to be based on fallacious thinking. Could it possibly be that my psychological comfort comes from the truth? You seem to insist that my comfort must be an intellectual contraption. You are so convinced of this that you won’t allow me to continue. Could it be that it is you that is caught up in an intellectual contraption that is causing you (no fault of your own) to feel pessimistic?
There may always be differences of opinion in these grey areas, but I think most people will agree that a world without war, crime, hatred, poverty, or preventable accidents would be a pretty good start.
And based on their particular situation, they will pick the decision that they believe will best serve them.
He doesn’t, except for the fact that the situations that have led women to go this route will no longer arise.
I’m not foisting it off of anyone. If someone doesn’t want to learn what it’s about, it’s really okay.
The conception you have of determinism, I believe, is at fault here.
To say that determinism is some objectivist intellectual contraption is false because that’s not what it is. It is an objective truth.
I do not reduce everything down to “the objective truth”. I know this is an objective truth based on accurate observation. You are right in that not everyone can be right but that does not mean that Lessans wasn’t right. Your logic is flawed. I hope you stop comparing him to others whom I don’t know and don’t know what they are convinced of. You have to judge each claim on their own merit.
to be cont…
I think I understand the part where, in being at one with the design, the design and I are in sync with the immutable laws of matter unfolding only as they necessarily must unfold. But that still leaves me no options other than the ones I am fated to employ. Including the one I employ now: not ruling out entirely the possibility that mindful matter is free. Or at least that “mine” is. How then could I be misunderstanding what you are trying to tell me here about the true nature of determinism when I am only understanding what I must about it?
That’s always been the option I have never been able to employ. But I would never be expected to employ it until I am fated to understand it. And I am fated to understand it only when [if] you are fated to succeed in enabling me to.
True or not it is the statement I was compelled to make. Only there’s a part of me that did not feel compelled to make it at all. A part of me thought that I had, of my own volition, considered what you had said and than forged my own [subjective] reaction to it.
And if I am not condemned now in this moment to react only as I must – given the manner in which “I” am but matter enscounced within its inexorably unfolding laws – how does one explain my moment to moment choices as something other than involving at least the spark of free will? At the moment I am typing these words. Now it is a new moment and I am typing these words. When am I ever able to type something other than the words that I must type? What “moment” is that?
But are we not all exactly the same in that, while interacting, we are engaging behaviors that we must engage? My “gifts” are no less determined than yours. And if someone thinks they are more special than others then from her point of view they are. But their points of view are the only ones alloted to them in that they are [they must be] in sync with the design.
You didn’t only because you couldn’t. In other words, not because you might have preferred a different one but, after weighing the pros and the cons of each, freely chose X instead of Y or Z.
Is it though? In a wholly determined world? If the entirety of all individuals applying/enrolling in college is an inherent component of the design then no one escapes this. No choice is other than it what it must be.
How would this work then for all practical purposes? In the new world there are still going to be only so many colleges able to choose only so many applicants. Students will be satisfied or not satisfied accordingly. Just like now. If not through critical judgment how would colleges decide who is enrolled and who is not?
But you don’t choose freely to feel satisfied either. You feel satisfied because you must feel satisfied. That’s what we always come back to in this determined world: what can only be.
But neuroscientists are making an attempt to understand the part about “in our head” as it relates to those instances [moments] when we do make a choice to do this instead of that. And, again, the irony is that many of them tend to embrace what I believe you are trying to argue here.
But you notice that the discussion does not get around to the profound implications of this re the manner in which we acquire an identity or the implications regarding morality.
And just as astrophysicists have barely begun to grapple with the meaning of the very, very big and the very, very small, so neuroscientists have barely just begun to explore the relationhip between the human brain and the human mind. There is still much more that needs to be known. And that is still before we get to the part about the ontology of existence/reality itself. The unknown unknowns that have not even occured to us yet.
[/quote]
This is just a repeat of what you continue to espouse; that Lessans couldn’t have made a major finding because neuroscience (the only science you deem worthy) is in its infancy.
I’m being to get unnerved.
Enough is enough. I can’t get through to you which is how it must be.
I can only point out how incredibly vague this is. What clues? What observations? How would I be able to take those clues and observations and implicate them in my own death? How would they instill in me the sort of consolation they seemed to instill in him? And Lessans is still dead, right? There is no “afterlife” in a determined world, is there?
Not until I understood what this “peace” consisted of. What behaviors would be sanctioned? What behaviors would be prohibited? In fact, this sort of quandary reminds me of that old Star Trek episode about the “spores”: hulu.com/watch/283854
Paradise, sure. But at what cost? And what is this all about anyway but the conflicting arguments that often revolve around capitalism and communism. The role of the individual in society. The role of the government and the “state”. In other words, grappling with the very notion/nature of human “freedom” itself.
And, aside from your argument that the new world comes into existence when we all think like you and Lessans do, you offer very little empirical evidence that such a world can evolve from the world we live in now. It’s all just basically idealistic to me.
This discovery will be confirmed valid one day, and people will eventually listen. Right now there are philosophers who could care less what I say he discovered because he was an unknown. There is a lot of arrogance especially among this generation.
I’m not disputing that the choices we make change the trajectory of the future. I’m merely noting [over and again] that we “choose” only what we must in a determined world. And, thus, “because of determinism” everything is as it can only be. Our past, present and future were determined from the moment the laws of matter came into existence. We just don’t have a clue as to why they did. Or why they did the way they did and not some other way. We don’t even know if the laws of matter have a beginning at all.
And mindless matter was around for literally billions of years before evolving into “mind”. At least on this teeny, tiny rock circling this hum drum star in but one of billions and billions and billions of galaxies out in the vastness of “all there is”.
As for the “awareness” itself leading to the “better world”, who gets to say which behaviors make for a better world? After all, in being aware, we can only note the existence of particular social, political and economic parameters of human interaction at a particular historical juncture. But who gets to judge them when, in the new world, there will still be folks who are both satisfied and dissatisfied with the very same behaviors!
But how does one really distinguish what we think, feel and do in our dreams from our waking thoughts, emotions and behaviors? Sans free will, they still would seem to involve matter interacting with other matter only as matter can interact with other matter.
Now, dreams we clearly recognize as being beyond our control. They are instead an autonomic function of our brain. But are not our waking interactions autonomic functions of the design? We possess only the illusion of freely choosing what we think, feel and do. Then folks like you make the distinction between those who are or are not cognizant of this. But being or not being cognizant still does not change what must be.
My reaction here is always the same: You are comforted because you must be comforted, you look back because you must look back, you blame yourself or not because you must blame yourself or not; and the “next time” is like all the other times before: you choose only what you must choose. And it is better or worse only from a point of view. Better for Mary perhaps to choose an abortion but not better for the fetus. Or not better for the father whose own satisfaction was riding on the child being born. Or not better for her parents who attached their satisfaction to having a grandchild.
Instead, all they might have [all they can have] is the comfort of knowing that everything happens only as it must in the only possible world.
As I noted above, if you are actually able to provide an excerpt from his book that prompts me to believe that maybe he really is on to something significant pertaining to life after death, I will read the book from cover to cover…and over and over again. But if the excerpt you provided above is any indication of a “demonstration” of this, we are far, far apart regarding a substantive meaning of that word.
How can one think fallaciously if one thinks only as one must think? I can’t make the leap that you apparently do beyond that. And I freely/“freely” admit that I am not able to express my point of view here as anything other than a subjective narrative embedded in dasein and in whatever the ontological nature of existence/reality might possibly be. Human psychology [and our emotional reactions to what we and others think and do] would seem no less ensnared in necessity. No exit at all then until we are dead and gone.
And then the profound mystery of being/nothingness becomes all the more problematic still. At least for mindful matter.
Based on their particular situation as undertood from their own particular subjective point of view. A point of view that, given new experiences and new sources of information, can change dramatically. After all, the world of contingency, chance and change doesn’t go away in any world, old or new. That always “arises” right?
The only thing that does seem to stay the same in a determined world is that we only do [can only do] what we must do.
And yet until you are willing and able to integrate Lessans’ discovery into a proposition/proposal that does enable others to verify/falsify it empirically/experientially…or replicate it…or make predictions about human behiaviors that are not off in some distant “new world”…how can I not see it as an intellectual contraption? An “analysis” predicated by and large on the cirular logic he makes pertaining to the manner in which his argument is linked solely to his observations?
Observations that are predicated by and large on the manner in which you have come to understand them “in your head”. And you have come to understand them the way you do “in your head” because that is necessarily in alignment with your argument regarding the absense of free will. In my view, you need to come up with ways in which others can verify/falsify your claims more, well, substantively.
But I am not arguing that Lessans argument is not the one objective truth regarding free will. I am simply pointing out that you assert his discovery is objectively true but provide very little substantial evidence to confirm that it is. And I compare this with other objectivists because they all insist that, on the contrary, to the extent that Lessans does not share their own alleged objective truths, his truths are wrong.
What intrigues me here then is the manner in which this might instead be more a component of human psychology. In particular, the way in which psychological defense mechanisms are accummulated in order to rationalize such things as “the real me” or “objective morality” or “the one true God” or one or another “political ideology”.
That’s your alignment, not mine. I am only suggesting that Lessans’ discovery is a major accomplishment only to the extent to which he is able to link his argument/observations to the sort of empirical/functional experiments that neuroscientists are conducting on actual human brains. You are either able to accomplish this or you are not. But, sure, if you argue that such a juxtaposition is not even necessary to confirm Lessans’ work, okay, fine. That is what you sincerely believe. I would only point out that, in my opinion, you are not likely to gather many more adherents if you stop there.
As you must then, right? But that, in my view, does not get you any closer to establishing the validity of Lessan’s discovery in the minds of all those folks it will need in order to shift the design closer to the new world.
This, in my view, is where I have the advantage in exchanges like this. I almost never become really exasperated when others do not “get” me – or “get” my arguments.
Why?
1] because they are not inside my head thinking and feeling the things that I do based on the life that I have lived and the manner in which my experiences [and relationships and sources of information] have predisposed me to think about these relationships as I do existentially “here and now”.
2] because they do not think of human interactions in the context of dasein, conflicting goods, political economy and the paradox that I see embedded in this particular frame of mind.
3] because they do not make the distinction that I do between those things that can be grasped [and shared] objectively – math, the laws of science, empirial fact, the logical rules of language etc. – and those relationships that seem more embedded in subjective points of view.
4] because I clearly recognize the gap between what I think about all of this “in my head” [here and now] and all that I would need to know in order to situate this in the context of an actual ontological/teleological understanding of existence/reality.
That’s true. But what could possibly be more arrogant than any one particular mere mortal insisting that, with respect to questions this inherently/profoundly mysterious and problematic, they have discovered the one true objective understanding?
Anyone will tell you that a better world is a world in which they find more comfort, security, and satisfaction. So to most people a better world would be a world without war, crime, hatred, theft, poverty, and accidents. We do get to ponder these things.
The majority of the world will be happy when war ends. The majority of the world will be happy when there is no more crime. Even if there are still folks who are both satisfied and dissatisfied with the very same behavior (like abortion), it won’t stop the new world (a world without war, crime, and hatred) from coming into existence.
That is very true but it is our awareness and intelligence that separate man from other animals, and it is this mindful matter that is allowing us to change the trajectory. It doesn’t change the fact of what must be AFTER THE FACT. When I say “after the fact”, I mean that before any action is done, we have a choice. Based on all of our experiences up to that point, our heredity, and the pros and cons of what we are about to choose based on those factors, we make a decision. It is true that nothing escapes determinism, but there is no way to know what antecedent conditions will arise that will compel a change in the trajectory of our lives.
This new world does not mean there won’t be times we are dissatisfied over some else’s decision. It is the woman’s body and in this situation the choice would be hers.
The fact that you were so premature in how you judged this chapter, I am not going to post anymore [in the direction of greater satisfaction].
You can’t help what you think but that doesn’t mean what you think is accurate. I may think that I’m a bird. That doesn’t make me accurate just because I couldn’t help but think this.
Our emotions are no less ensnared, but wouldn’t you rather be happy than sad if you could change your perspective? What if your pessimism is based on a lie? Wouldn’t you want to change it? Right now you are defending your worldview as if it is the more rational argument. I disagree although I do agree that we do things based on our personal narratives.
Profound nothingness is your imagination going in a negative direction.
Well said.
There is no circular logic here. Can you explain his discovery?
Proof of the pudding is in the eating. The final analysis will be that this law works exactly as he described. Just because he could not test his knowledge on no free will in a world of free will does not mean that this knowledge should be thrown into a scrap heap and disregarded.
You are correct in that everyone can’t be right. Lessans happens to be right regarding determinism, and to the extent that these objectivists do not share his own “alleged” objective truth, their truths are wrong.
I cannot do what you demand in order for you to quell your skepticism. If everyone is like you in that regard, this knowledge may never be brought to light because they will have already closed their minds to any further investigation.
No it won’t, but I am human and have human emotions. Sometimes I get unnerved by people’s unwillingness to grant him the benefit of the doubt by taking the necessary time to read the actual text in its entirety. That is a prequisite for any meaningful discussion.
I “get” you and I get your argument.
I sympathize with you because I do understand your struggle.
You didn’t know this man. You have no idea how knowledgeable he was. He never said he discovered the one true objective understanding regarding anything other than what he discovered to be true, and that is that man’s will is not free. And, yes, he was a mere mortal who had tremendous analytical ability.
But over and again I keep pointing out that, with respect to most conflicting value judgments, we have always lived in a world where some folks link comfort, security and satisfaction to one set of behaviors while others link them to an opposite set of behaviors. Abortion, execution, hunting, gun laws, animal rights, gender roles. And on and on and on.
The absense of war may well be an unjust peace. And some argue that since property is theft, any behaviors aimed at dismanting it leads necessarily to a better world. Indeed, some argue that capitalism itself ensures perpetuating a world in which the wealth of some is predicated on the poverty of others.
Nothing that Lessans argues in my view makes any of this go away. He simply projected into the future a world that he would have wanted to live in while he was still around.
I still don’t see how this accounts for the distinction that folks who posit free will make regarding the stuff of our dreams and the stuff of our waking interactions. If, in a determined world, matter is matter is matter, the choices we make in the waking world are still on autonomic pilot per the design. Basically, from my own understanding of a wholly determined world, we really are just more sophisticated ants – creatures somehow able to be consciously aware that what we choose is embedded in the illusion that we freely choose A instead of B.
But, really, just as the behaviors we “experience” in our dreams are merely chemical/neurological interactions rooted in the laws of materialism, so too are the choices we make in our waking interactions. Given the tenets of determinism how are they substantively different?
[b][i]“It is true that nothing escapes determinism”[/b][/i].
Once this is asserted all that is left is a description of the choices that we could only have made. No other choices were ever even possible.
Or so it would seem to me.
And if we are not satisfied with the behaviors of those who either perform or obtain abortions, one of the options is to blame them and to punish them. After all, if there are no sanctions for performing or obtaining abortion, what incentive is there to not perform or obtain them?
In fact, those who argue that punishment should be meted out here argue that within the woman’s body is the body of what would have become a new-born baby. And that, in fact, none of us would be around today if our own body had been aborted in the womb.
First of all, if I was premature, it was only because I could not not be premature. And you are not going to post anymore only because your satisfaction is in turn dervived entirely from your necessary functions in the design.
Thus [as always] we are both off the hook. But I suspect that you will choose to post no more here because Lessans does not provide any arguments that can in fact be verified or falsified empirically. The “truth” rest instead on an analysis of the observations that he makes. And the analysis consists of the sort of circular logic that all objectivists employ in venues like this.
Yes, I have always concurred that in a determined world we can choose to think that something is true when in fact it is not true at all. But in a determined world we did not choose freely of our own volition to think this. That is precisely why in a determined world everything we think [and feel and do] is necessarily excused beforehand. In fact, even to the extent that others do blame or punish us for thinking something that is not true, they were equally compelled to do so. Then we just go around and around and around in the inevitable spiral that matter takes to propel us into the only possible future.
This exchange itself being merely a necessary component of that.
But what does it really mean to “change” your mind when you could not not have changed it? Or not changed it other than in the manner in which you must change it? Being happy or sad in a determined world is simply what we are. Period. Better to be happy than sad, sure, but better to live than to die. But both are destined to be when and what they were ever meant to be.
My pessimism is based on the manner in which I think about human interaction within the parameters of dasein, conflicting goods, political economy and the dilemma embedded in dasein. And I like to think that I derived this point of view from this:
“I” am able to think/choose as I do here because 1] I reflected on it 2] I tried to grasp the context to the best of my ability 3] I tried to weigh the pros and the cons to the best of my ability and then 4] I chose to think/act like this rather than like that.
But I readily admit I have no way in which to determine objectively if this is true. From my perspective, neither one of us is able to pin this down other than by way of making certain assumptions embedded in arguments. But it is precisely the veracity of these assumptions that neuroscience is trying to pin down empirically and experientially by utilizing the scientific method. Re such technology as fMRIs.
More to the point, will you take his discovery to those who do explore the functioning brain engaged in the act of choosing? And then perhaps convince them that the explanations he gives for rejecting free will can in fact be confirmed beyond all doubt objectively.
And then, who knows, this might be the spark that enables them to take it even further and explain how this facet of existence/reality is necessarily intertwined in the ontology of existence/reality itself.
Hmm. Think about it. Wouldn’t it be ironic if I sparked you to spark them to prove that you are right and I am wrong? Knowing that I could not have done otherwise?
I’m sorry, but I am still unable to wrap my head around the logic [or lack thereof] of that!
But there is no pudding here to eat. There is only Lessans’ description of it. There he is observing the folks eating the pudding and then insisting that they had no choice [no free choice] but to eat pudding instead of cake.
And, once again, I am not arguing that his discovery should be disregarded or consigned to the dustbin of history. I am merely asking you to demonstrate more substantively why free will itself should be consigned to the dustbin of history.
To wit:
Yes, I have heard this over and over and over and over and over and over again from one or another objectivist.
And that is precisely why I suspect these sort of “truths” are better able to be understood as but psychlogical defense mechanisms.
And I would argue that [b]if only subconsciously[/b] this is less important to you than the fact that you may well go to the grave comforted and consoled by the knowledge [“in your head”] that he and you were at one objectively with the “whole truth” here. You will perhaps take solace in the fact that you never once chose anything other than what you must choose.
Whatever that can possibly mean as solace.
And this, in my view, is precisely why objectivists react as they do to my own argument here. I am arguing less that their own particular narrative is wrong and more that right and wrong itself here may well be beyond our reach. At least insofar as it pertains to conflicting value judgments. And to my argument that human identity is basically an existential contraption that we fabricate and refabricate all the way to the grave.
I already explained that abortion is not going to be a common practice. With better contraception, financial security, and happier relationships, people will want their babies. Even if a mother decides this is what she wants to do, it is up to her, even if other’s disagree. There will be no more executions because there will be no more murders. People will not desire to hunt just for the sake of killing unless there is a justifiable reason (e.g., for food), but no one is going to judge what others do and don’t do. That is a condition of becoming a citizen. Animals deserve to be treated humanely. When people are not hurt, they will, in turn, lose the desire to intentionally hurt animals. It has been shown that children who hurt animals have been hurt themselves. As far as gender roles, most women are the main caregivers of babies, and most men provide for their family. But this is not going to be an issue because it will be left up to the individual couple. Finally, how can there be gun laws when there will be no more laws telling people what they must do, or else? People will be controlled by a higher law (their conscience), not by a manmade law. If people do own a gun, they will want to be very careful to protect children from getting their hands on it not because of the fear of punishment, but because of the burden of guilt they would feel if a child got hurt or killed.
We’re not talking about capitalism. Every one will have an equal chance to get ahead. I am not talking about an unjust peace. I am talking about a just peace where there is no discrimination.
There will always be conflicts in values but this is not going to stop this new world from coming into existence. Can you imagine a world where there will be no need for locks because no one would desire to take what belongs to you? There is concrete evidence that this kind of world can be attained.
There is no real difference in the sense that we are controlled by determinism. In our dreams we can do, say, and experience things that we could never do in our waking life even though everything we do, say, and experience in either a dream state or a waking state is a chemical/neurological interaction. This fact does not turn us into sophisticated ants even though we cannot help but choose what we must choose. Ants have no ability to ponder, meditate on, consider, think about, question, ruminate, contemplate, decide; and even though this ability is also part of the design it does offer us a choice, although not a free one.
Without determinism we could not achieve this new world. We would be free to hurt people indiscriminately. In the new world the only possible choice will be not to hurt others with a first blow. No other choice would be possible.
People who want abortions will find ways to get them, even in a back alley. Sanctions only force the procedure to go underground and hurt women because they get abortions in filthy conditions. We have progressed beyond that.
You were never on the hook. I was just stating why I’m not posting any more of that chapter.
Whatever! You can think as you must.
But you are missing the very core of this discovery. And you think you are in the position to tell me that this is just a projection of what the author wished the future would be? The fact that everything is necessarily excused beforehand is one side of the two-sided equation. You are missing the other side entirely. You never answered me when I asked you what is his discovery? Do you even know?
That was not my question. Stop dodging it. I asked you a straight forward question: what you would prefer, to be happy or sad?
So if you have no way to determine whether your thinking is accurate, why wouldn’t you try to be neutral, or have faith that eventually neuroscience will find something that will confer what Lessans has already discovered? At least you will be happier in the process.
More to the point? You still have yet to answer me directly. Can you explain this discovery? You know you can’t because you don’t know what it entails yet you challenge me as if you know.
His observations do confirm beyond all doubt that will is not free. If you know anyone in this field, let them know about the book. I would love to have people in this field investigate his proof of determinism.
I don’t see the irony at all. Even though your suggestion might prove you wrong, I’m sure you would get a certain amount of satisfaction knowing that it was your input that helped to bring this about.
This book is a blueprint of how to achieve world peace. How this facet of existence/reality is necessarily intertwined in the ontology of existence/reality itself may interest some people, but it has nothing to do with the fact that this law can accomplish what everyone has been trying to find a solution to. Even if you aren’t sure because he didn’t prove it to you empirically, isn’t this something worth investigating? This discovery was borne out of philosophical thought, but ironically it is the philosophers who are the the most resistant to exploring this knowledge.
Yes, it is his description of it, which you reject before even reading his description.
It is impossible to have determinism and free will. They are opposites and as such you cannot have both. He has substantial evidence which you are completely ignoring.
You are creating a stumbling block that is preventing me from moving forward. You have made up your mind, accused me of being an objectivist, and have judged this work prematurely without giving it a fair and balanced review. I personally think you are too entrenched in your way of thinking to be objective.
Because they don’t have the answer regarding morality. All they are doing is pointing in the direction of determinism. Although Lessans has proved that man’s will is not free, this is not the discovery; it is the gateway that leads to the discovery. You have taken a very pessimistic view of determinism, which compels you to hope beyond all hope for a little bit of free will.
It is unimportant to know how everything fits into the ontology of existence/reality itself in regard to this discovery and what it can accomplish.
And I have stated over and over that when seen in total perspective there is no right and wrong in the sense that we cannot help but do what we are compelled to do, even if it hurts others as a consequence. The term evil (hurt), however, can be made into an objective standard because it is referring to what the majority of the world considers evil (i.e., to be murdered, shot, raped, kidnapped, tortured, starved, or mowed down by a drunk driver). You may want to listen to this Ted talk by Sam Harris.
No, in my opinion, you have merely asserted these things. You have not at all adequately explained to me how all of this must unfold given the manner in which I argue that conflicting goods embedded in abortion [and in execution and in all of the other conflicting value judgments noted above] would seem to forever be among us. And, if they are, satisfaction and dissatisfaction will always revolve around the same set of behaviors. And, if some are dissatisfied with those who perform/obtain abortions, they will seek to punish those behaviors.
Instead, you extrapolate from Lessans’ discovery this transcending “conscience” that we would all seemingly be at one with, obviating the need to blame and to punish women for killing their unborn babies.
But, again: How would we be able to test/replicate [empirically, experientially] Lessans’ predictions about all of this?
How is this not just another idealistic assertion regarding what you believe to be true “in your head”?
In a world where an actual means of production must exist in order that the goods and the services we need to subsist from day to day are manufactured and distributed, decisions will have to be made regarding how this gets done…and who gets what. And throughout all of human history there have been [at times] brutally conflicting political narratives regarding how to accomplish this. And wealth and power have invariably been the deciding factor in “resolving” these conflicts.
Now, from my point of view, the only thing that Lessans seems to have contributed to this discussion is this: that all of the choices that have ever been made by all of the men and women up on the stage that is “existence”, could only have been what they necessarily must have been.
But: Once we become cognizant of the fact that we have absolutely no free will at all regarding the future…only then will that future become a veritable paradise on earth.
Or, rather, that’s how I have come to understand your argument so far. And your point then being that this is in fact the only manner in which I could ever have come to understand it.
That is, if I understand you in a world where I can only understand you as I must understand you.
You seem to be acknowledging here that everything we do – either while dreaming or awake – is derived from inherent chemical/neurological components of the design. That, in other words, these interactions are derived in turn from the ubiquitous laws of matter. And, while I don’t know if ants dream, it would seem these same chemical/neurological variables pertain to their existence as well.
Bottom line then [mine]: If everything we “ponder, meditate on, consider, think about, question, ruminate, contemplate and decide” is no less rooted in the same laws of matter that compel the behaviors of the ants, then we are just more complex biological, organic mechanisms in the design.
But: We can know that we are and the ants can’t.
Yes, but women who want abortions want abortions only because they must want abortions. And the people who want to stop women who want abortions from having access to them must stop them only becasue that is what they must want as well.
And whether we live in a world where women are able to go to a hospital and obtain a safe abortion or are forced to go the much more precarious and dangerous back alley route, what doesn’t change is that in aborting her unborn baby she is killing it. And that the only alternative to this is to live in a world in which she is forced to give birth against her will.
Now, if Lessans has an argument that makes this go away, I haven’t heard it yet. Or, sure, he has made this argument, and I have failed to understand it.
But since I could not not fail to understand it [here and now] I can just shrug and say “que sera, sera.”
Again: I’m off the hook. Or, as you suggest, I was never on the hook in the first place.
Meaning that I must miss the very core of this discovery. How can that not be the case?
Is not his discovery [in a thread called [u][b]Determinism[/u][/b]] that we do not have free will? Is that not the discovery’s bottom line?
And if, in fact, everything that we think, feel and do is necessarily excused beforehand, what can the other side of the equation be but just one more component of this?
I would rather be happy than sad. Although sometimes in particular moods feeling sad is just what I want to feel. I can even luxuriate in it in particular frames of mind.
But: What makes me happy may very well make others sad. And that will revolve around the behaviors we choose “out in the world” of actual human interactions. Then what?
Who gets to decide which behaviors should be permitted and which behavior should be prohibited? In a world where folks on both sides of the divide can provide reasonable arguments for permitting/prohibiting the behavior. Re abortion and all of the other conflicting value judgments we have discussed above in a world of conflicting goods derived from subjective points of view derived from dasein.
But there are in fact ways to determine if what I think about many things is accurate. For example, things embedded in mathematical and scientific laws. Propositions that either do or do not conform to the logical rules of language. Assertions about the world we live in that either can or cannot be confirmed empirically.
Determinism would seem to have little or nothing to do with that. Whether or not we have free will does not make an understanding of reality needed to invent this extraordinary computer technology go away.
My point is that the accuracy of the assertion “free will does not exist” is still being explored by neuroscience. And that the verdict will always be predicated on the gap between what science has discovered about the functioning brain choosing “here and now” and all that would need to be known in order to determine if that assertion is in fact true objectively.
My point then is never that your point is wrong. It is only that we simply do not know yet. And, of course, that Lessans’ assertion that we have no free will seems [to me] to be predicated only on “observations” that science may or may not be able to test empirically and experientially.
He “predicts” this “new world” but he gives us no way in which to substantiate it much beyond accepting the conclusions he has come to with respect to his observations.
And here you are asking me if I know of any scientists willing to consider his discovery…and then to integrate it into the “scientific method” that folks like Feynman espouse above.
You then insist that his book is “a blueprint of how to achieve world peace.”
A word of advice…
I wouldn’t go there if and when you do take his discovery to the scientists. I’d focus more on the extent to which he is able to demonstrate that in fact free will does not exist.
I note this because once you go in the direction of things like “world peace” you begin to focus more on how we ought to behave. And that is all about conflicting political narratives from my frame of mind. In other words, from either/or behaviors you quickly become entangled in is/ought behaviors. And that can become a whole other contraption.
Unless, of course, nothing that we insist that we ought to do is anything other than what we could only have insisted that we ought to do. Then [I suppose] you don’t even have to consider the sort of behaviors prescribed or proscribed in the “new world”. As long as there is “world peace” anything goes. Why? Because it is the only thing that ever can go.
Well, I still see a significant gap between the point I raised above and the point you make here. You still provide no substantive/substantial evidence [empirical/experiential] to back up Lessans’ claims. You simply assert that he has this evidence.
But I certainly agree that if we live in a wholly determined world free will would seem to be just an illusion such that matter was somehow able to evolve into a mind able to grasp this but still not able to grasp it freely.
Or: Until you are willing to acknowledge that perhaps it is you who are creating the stumbling block preventing me from moving forward, we will forever be spinning our wheels here; going around and around in same circles…circles that consist of the conflicting assumptions we make regarding the precise nature of what it means for flesh and blood human beings to choose/“choose” something.
At least the neuroscientists are utilizing considerably more exacting methods from which to explore this. And, again, they clearly seem to be confirming the absense of free will.
So far, anyway. But I suspect there still is that gap between what they have discovered to date and all that still needs to be discovered in order to know beyond all doubt what is in fact true here. And none of them [that I know of] are predicting that because we are utterly lacking in the freedom to choose what we think, feel and do, we are on the cusp of a world brimming with peace and prosperity for all.
Okay, make it objective with respect to abortion. Make it objective in a world in which “we cannot help but do what we are compelled to do, even if it hurts others as a consequence.”
You tell me: What do the majority of people in the world consider to be “evil” when a woman aborts her unborn baby? And what do the majority of the people in the world consider to be “evil” when pregnant women are forced to give birth?
And how do the majority of the people in the world imagine we will ever be able to interact in a “new world” where these conflicting goods somehow come into sync such that blame and punishment will cease to exist with respect to the conflicting value judgments that swirl around the reality of abortion out in the real world that we actually live in.
And not in some ideal world that we wish existed – just as it does in our heads.
You seem to be enamored by your analysis, almost as if you have made some kind of major revelation. Every determinist knows that ALL that has ever happened had to happen exactly as it did, but you are missing the core of this discovery.
When anyone says a person has the right to do something, they mean that the person is entitled to do something because it is his or her choice, no one else’s.
This is not a contest.
You can’t seem to open your mind to the fact that this discovery is not an assumption, therefore all we’re doing is going round and round the same mountain with no progress in sight.
I am not assuming this.
You’re right. It can only be either aborted or not aborted only as it must be or must not be. You are using this example as a reason to believe that there is no way to prevent war and crime.
Of course a person is compelled to choose only what he or she must choose. What does that have to do with the fact that all forms of violence will be prevented in the new world.
But there is nothing they can do about it if someone wants to abort, right? I would be here but not with the personal characteristics that define “me” as I am now.
And this conflict will not go away as long as women feel that abortion is their only choice. This conflict in values will never stop this new world from coming into existence because this law has the power to stop people from desiring to commit murder without any justification.
With any discovery, you have to apply the knowledge for it to work. There is nothing Presto about it. It will require the world’s nations to get the Great Transition started, which will take time.
The only objective truth he is proclaiming is that man’s will is not free.
I don’t know how many times, and in how many ways, I need to explain that there will always be conflicting value judgments in these grey areas. The only difference is that no one will force a mother to give birth against her will. You keep talking about executions. How does this come into play when no one will be executed as a means of punishment?
That is true. Women are not going to be punished for what others consider to be “wrong”. But this can only occur as people transition to becoming citizens of this new world and signing an agreement never to blame or punish. This new world has to start somewhere, and the transition is analogous to a rocket that needs thrust to get into orbit.
Has the design gone bonkers? I answered you already. Scientists who see the validity of this knowledge won’t need to replicate it to prove that he was right, but it can be done.
Because the demonstration is absolutely spot on. It was not just in his head, or my head for believing it. This is skepticism that has gone too far.
I understand that, but you are not understanding how this law extends into the economic system. He wrote a 100 page chapter on this. Without economic security these principles cannot work because self-preservation is the first law of nature.
That is false. That we are cognizant of the fact that we have no free will is only the gateway to this discovery. IT IS NOT THE DISCOVERY.
Conflicting values in certain areas will continue to exist, but that does not mean that the major evils such as war, crime, poverty, etc. will continue to exist. You cannot equate one with the other. Your reasoning is not accurate.
Likewise, I have noted time and again how, in asserting this, you have not shown us the manner in which this can then be demonstrated empirically and experientially to be true. Whereas I argue that the reason there are now conflicting value judgments is because they are rooted in conflicting goods: some insist that the babies ought to be born, others insist that the women ought not to be forced to give birth.
How then will these conflicting goods not also exist in the “new world”? After all, if no one forces the woman to give birth her baby dies. And that will surely dissatisfy some to the point that they will then wish to punish this behavior.
And, circularly, no one will be executed in the new world only because everyone has come to embrace Lessans’ discovery. But the only reason everyone has come to embrace Lessans’ discovery is that they must come to embrace it. And they must come to embrace it because Lessans’ discovery and the design are at one. Around and around the reasoning goes.
None of this, however, is demonstrated much beyond you merely asserting that it is only what can ever be. Well, in the only opinion I can ever have now, anyway.
The conflicting goods embedded in capital punishment are still the same: justice for the family of the murdered victim or justice for the family of the man to be executed. How does that go away?
Now, if I understand you, it all becomes subsumed in this new “universal conscience” derived from the new understanding that we will all have about these things once Lessans’ discovery is understood by everyone to be the way these things can only be understood. Even though the fact that this is not understood in the world today is also the only way these things could ever actually have been understood today.
You argue that scientists can in fact confirm Lessans’ discovery but that they won’t need to once they see the validity of his observations. But how is this any less just another assertion? And how will they see this when you stay here rather than go there?
This may well be true. But I will continue to raise my objections until I am satisfied that we are on the same page regarding what can in fact be construed objectively as an actual demonstration.
Note to others: If you do believe that this demonstration has been made, please, by all means, offer up your own assessment.
Okay, what is his argument regarding how we achieve “economic security” such that peace and prosperity will become available for all in the new world? How in particular is this to be accomplished given the clearly entrenched arguments embedded in conflicting goods that revolve around assumptions that revolve around opposing assessments of the capitalist and socialist political economy? How for all practical purposes will their contradictory narratives be subsumed in this new “universal consciousness”?
For example, what will the actual existential relationship be between the individual in society and the role of the government pertaining to behaviors prescribed and behaviors proscribed. With regard to, say, conscription or property rights or the separation of church and state. Or, sure, abortion or execution.
But our ability to understand anything is not something that we choose freely to understand. We understand only what we must understand. The ants of course undertand none of this “philosophically”. But they are no less compelled to do what they do than we are. The design here is [of necessity] all. There is only recognizing this as you do or not recognizing it as me and the ants don’t. The ants however are never able to contemplate it in this way at all. But otherwise aren’t they just like us?
Yeah, that’s the distinction: we are aware that we choose our behaviors while the ants by and large are much closer to the brute facticity embedded in those autonomic chemical and neurological interactions.
But, just like the ants, we do only what we cannot not do. So, are we then better off or not being aware of the consequences of what we choose? Well, that depends on whether the consequences bring us pleasure or pain. Still, in any event, the behaviors that we choose, the pleasurable or painful consequences they bring and our subjunctive reaction to that is all of a whole. It is always a reflection of the laws of matter ineluctably spiralling into the fated future.
Nothing can escape that. Why? Because the design encompasses the totality of reality/existence itself.
As far as I can tell, this is where you stopped re my 2/15 post.
The fact that everything is necessarily excused beforehand is one side of the two-sided equation. You are missing the other side entirely. You never answered me when I asked you what is his discovery? Do you even know?
