So, in a wholly determined world, how does the human mind wrap itself around the following distinction:
1] The remote control – an inanimate object – is a device programmed to turn on the TV.
2] I choose to use the remote control to turn on the TV.
The remote control has no conscious understanding of what it means to turn the TV on. I do. But I turn the television on only because I could not not have turned it on. Anymore than a properly functioning remote control could not have turned on a properly functioning television.
How am “I” here not then but one more necessary component of this entirely material sequence?
Would not the matter that we call “mind” need to be equipped with a quality that we have come to call “free will” or “autonomy” or “volition”?
Let’s just say that “compatibilists” are able to grasp this sort of thing in a manner that I am not. At least not “here and now”.
…everything that we do is inherently in sync with that which we could only have done. You focus on something because you must focus on it. Matter then unfolds over time as it must creating a new condition prompting you to refocus on it as you must.
It's not a matter whether or not the refocusing is determined, it's [i]what you see[/i] when you refocus. I'm saying that you can only question the validity of what you would see when you [i]refrain[/i] from refocusing.
What I see however is only what I was ever going to see. Why? Because I was never able – of my own volition – to refrain from refocusing.
And here I just go around and around and around.
Thus:
If you are writing only that which you ever could have written here and now and I am reading only that which I ever could have read here and now, pulling back from it is just another inherent component of an exchange that is rooted in whatever brought into existence the immutable laws of matter themselves.
Then you're stuck.
Yes, but am I stuck because I am failing to think this through properly – in a manner such that I would not be stuck? Or is being “stuck” the only thing that I was ever going to be anyway?
More to the point: How do we address it without first having access to whatever it is that is wholly responsible for the existence of existence itself?
Address what? Mind? We have immediate direct access to our own minds. Why do we need access to that which is responsible for the existence of existence itself?
How is the human mind not just but one more component of Existence? What makes it extraordinary is that, as far as we know, it is the only matter able to become conscious of itself as matter encompassing whatever it is that allowed matter to exist.
The question here [as I see it] is the extent to which the mind is able achieve at least some level of autonomy.
Somehow you seem able to yank this conception of “I” out of my own dilemma [if that is what you are doing] but I simply don’t grasp what you are talking about here “for all practical purposes”. Like me, you are out in a particular world embodying particular values that evolved from the complex intertwining of nature and nurture. The part about dasein, conflicting goods and political economy doesn’t just go away for me.
That seems to be because you think all morality is based on one or another "ism".
What I believe is that morality is based on the necessity to create “rules of behavior” in any particular human community. And this is derived from the fact that we come into the world with wants and needs that “out in the world of actual human interactions” come into conflict. Sometimes the conflict revolves around ends, sometimes around means. But each of us has accummlated a “sense of reality” here. I just happen to predicate my own on the manner in which I have come to understand the meaning of dasein, conflicting goods and political economy. And that has precipitated my dilemma above.
Then [obviously] I come to venues like this one in order to explore one or another alternative “sense of reality”. What else is there?
Had the genes and the memes been differrent in your life you might have no compunction at all in raping someone, in hurting someone, in killing someone.
But you're not talking to that alternate version of me. You asked about [i]my[/i] morality.
From my frame of mind, your morality is just another existential contraption. And unless others are willing to acknowledge the extent to which “I” here is just a fabricated concoction rooted existentially out in particular worlds awash in contingency, chance and change, they are able to “think themselves” into believing that their “I” somehow reflects this “real me”, the “me” that has come to grasp the one true distinction between right and wrong, good and bad.
The fact is that given the extent to which there are variables in your life that you do not either fully understand or are not fully in control of, these “alternatives” were always possible, are still always possible. One new experience and your moral sense of reality can become subsumed in an entirely new sense of “reality”.
Thus:
In fact, this is the part of my own rendition of “I” that most disturbs the objectivists. Somehow they must convince themselves that they do the right thing because 1] there is a right thing to do and 2] they do it because they are a good person.
I'm saying I do these things because I feel like it.
And I’m suggesting that the subjunctive “I” is no less an existential contraption.
Then [from my frame of mind] you are entangled in my dilemma. You have just managed to create a greater distance between “I” and “angst”.
YES!!!
But, again, from my frame of mind, this too is no less an existential contraption. To the extent that I am able to nudge others here to my own frame of mind is the extent to which the “angst” may well creep in. After all, I didn’t just wake up one morning and tumble over into my dilemma. And my reaction to it has as well evolved over the years.
I too embrace “whatever works”. I just don’t know if that reflects the optimal frame of mind or if in fact there is an objective argument out there that I am simply not privy to here and now.
Even if there was, I'm not sure how you would accept it given that you haven't yet resolved your problem of our place in a deterministic universe.
That’s true. On the other hand, doesn’t that quandary ever and always hover over all of us?
Matter evolved from the simple to the complex, sure, but how does that really describe this distinction in such a way that we can more clearly grasp the difference between an octopus changing color in order to evade a shark and you or I camoflaging our personality in order to evade someone out to do us harm?
There is the scientific way of explaining it and then there is the philosophical/subjectivist way:
The scientific way would simply be to peer into the octopus’s biology and figure out how the neurons are interconnected and how certain chemicals are released and bound to neural receptors and what neural pathways connect to what glands, organs, parts of the octopus’s body, etc. and finally how that results in the skin changing color. Then we would compare that to what goes on in a human brain that makes us figure out and attempt to camouflage.
But would not the scientists basically do the same regarding human camoflage? We may well just be octopi with brains able to delude oursleves that we are able to be more clever when we trick our opponents. But, really, biologically, isn’t it just the same sequence of matter intertwining only as it ever could have out in any particular world. For any particular species.
The philosophical/subjectivist way is a lot more daunting task. And my theory of mind would simply say that it is driven by an experience that is particular to the octopus and foreign to us--that means we cannot imagine it--but if we could, we would experience it as maybe a desire to camouflage, or an imperative to secrete certain hormones. And keep in mind, what we recognize as "camouflage", the octopus may recognize as something completely different.
Maybe, but I’m back to trying to imagine the sequence unfolding if, unlike the octopi, we do possess some level of autonomy. And, even then, to the extent that we might feel the need [the desire] to camoflage oursleves in our interactions with others there are still the parts embedded in dasein, conflicting goods and political economy.
This doesn't really answer my question. If the "conscience" or "intuition" can be shown to be an experience that arises from specific brain activity, would you still call it an existential contraption?
No, in that case the only “contraption” would appear to be Existence itself.
But then we are back again to this: What does that mean?
But, sure, you can argue that in a wholly determined universe, everything and anything is an “existential contraption”. But how would be define the meaning of a word like “contraption” as it applies to Existence Itself?
I’d wonder then if we could determine if they did so of their own volition.
But then this would apply to any brain part. Indeed, it would apply to any scientific statement. It would apply to you when you think you've identified something definitively. This line of questioning is the ultimate in Cartesian skepticism. You ought even to be skeptical about your own arguments about dasein. <-- Why do you even think they make sense when you only think them because you couldn't have ever [i]not[/i] thought them?
Since my arguments about dasein are clearly just another existential contraption, even if it could be shown that I have some capacity to think and feel of my own volition that it is a reasonable frame of mind, I am still acknowledging that it may well not be.