No, my point is this: What does it mean to speak of “just mindful matter”? Mindful matter is this absolutely extraordinary – astounding – thing. It is the first matter [going back billions of year] that we suspect is able to ponder itself as matter existing in a universe that may or may not be propelled by immutable material laws. And, if it is propelled by the very same immutable laws that propel mindless matter, what then does that mean?
What does it mean to be “responsible” for something in a wholly determined universe? What does it mean to speak of “obligation” in a wholly determined universe?
First of all, to the extent that mind is just more matter embedded in immutable laws, whatever I choose to do is only as it ever could have been.
There are other ways of defining “choice” than “violating the laws of nature”.
Yes, this may well be that important point I keep missing. But if I can only define “choice” here as I was ever going to define it, then that either is or is not in sync with the laws of nature.
But, assuming some level of autonomy, there does not appear to be a way for philosophers to establish a frame of mind such that the manner in which I root morality in dasein and conflicting goods is obviated – subsumed in a moral narrative that all rational men and women are in fact obligated to embody.
There doesn’t have to be. Intelligent men and women all around the world subject themselves to being persuaded by one or another objective-sounding arguments for this or that morality all the time. Unless your brain suffers some kind of critical defect, so can you.
That’s why I always focus the beam here on conflicts in which a “consensus” [the irresistible force in one community] makes contact with another “consensus” [the immovable object in another community].
Take for example the practice of clitorectomies. How do we determine objectively whether this practice is or is not in sync with that which all intelligent men and women are obligated to either embrace or eschew. How do we derive the essential argument that unequivocally transcends historical, cultural and experiential context?
We invented the word “chicken” in the English language because chickens actually do exist. And we invented numbers because sometimes there are more than one of them. So if I say, “take my 2 chickens, put them with your 2 chickens and then you’ll have the 4 chickens needed to pay your debt” that can be understood as objectively true for all of us.
The words exactly correspond to the context. It can never be blatantly false if in fact it is unequivocally true. And it is true in either a wholly detrmined world or in a world where I could have freely chosen not to give you my chickens.
Back then to the part where you are making some important point here that I keep missing.
I merely shift gears to prong 2 and speculate on an exchange in which one of us argues that eating chickens is immoral in a world where we do in fact have some capacity to freely choose not to eat them.
Yes, I see your point that a line is drawn between “is” and “ought”–but when you bring in the argument that we cannot do anything, feeling anything, be convinced of anything, given that it could not have been any other way, I don’t see how the is/ought line is relevant.
But my point is that “is/ought” in a determined universe is but the illusion of “right” and “wrong”, “good” and “bad”. Imagine for example [in a multiverse], entities somehow detached from our own determined suniverse. One observes that some of us choose to eat chickens while others choose not to. But then the other quickly points out that this was never, ever able to be any other way.
All I can return to then is this: I am just not “getting” your point here.
The only difference I see is that when it comes to “ought” questions, the determining laws of nature that operate on our brains seem to force us to arrive at radically different conclusion–we ought to eat chickens vs. we ought to be vegetarians, we ought to allow a woman her free choice to abort her unborn baby vs. we ought to defend the life of that unborn baby–whereas when it comes to “is” questions, the determining laws of nature that operate on our brains seem to force us (with the exception of a few abberations and occasional brain farts) to arrive at the same conclusion.
Still, either way it was never going to be anything other than what, ontologically, per the laws of nature, it was always propelled/compelled to be.
And that is when we probe the extent to which there is a teleological element – which most call God – “behind” it. That’s when we reach the part where a real choice is being made – in the sense that another actual choice was able to be made instead.
Or so it seems to me.
But as I see it, they are still laws of nature that could just as well force us to to arrive at fallacious and delusional conclusions, shared among us all as they may be. This is why I say that the argument about being stuck in a deterministic universe applies even to mathematical logic and concrete sensory experience.
This makes sense to you. But it makes sense to you only because there was never any possibility that it would not make sense to you. So, what does it mean for another to suggest that it is fallacious and delusional when there was never any possibility in turn that they would not say this?
What does that actually mean “in reality”?
Okay, you take that leap to an “objectivism that speaks to you” and you either permit women to choose abortion or you don’t.
Me, I cannot just not believe that both sides make reasonable arguments. I cannot just not be tugged and pulled in both directions.
So, what do you do? You take that same leap but somehow in your head you convince yourself that it was the right one. But it’s the right one only because that is the particular leap that you took.
The part about dasein, conflicting goods and political economy doesn’t go away, but at least you are able to shove them away far eoungh to feel less fractured and fragmented than someone like me. You have been able to construct a psychological scaffold in your head such that it all feels a little less unbearable to you.
My point is that insofar as you are able to do this too (and you are), you are not “stuck” in your dilemma.
Then we understand the meaning of “stuck” in different ways. My meaning revolves around a universe in which I was never, ever going to not be stuck in it. All I can then imagine is this universe unfolding in such a way that “in my head” I come to think/believe that I am not stuck in it. But even that is only as it ever could have been.
So, actually being “stuck” in a universe is just another frame of mind that matter has propelled me to ponder in different — but no less determined – ways.
It would be like someone in, say, North Korea who, at a domino toppling event, created a design that depicted Kim Jong-un as an immoral monster. Now, in a world where human autonomy is a factor, what can we say about his aim such that the manner in which we react to his value judgment is different from the manner in which our senses react to the design itself.
I would simply say that there is a wide diversity of different configurations according to which our brains are wired, configurations that determine how we react to such value judgements. Comparing this to how our brains are configured to process visual information such as the pattern of dominoes depicting Jong-un, there seems to be very little diversity.
But how is this perceived diversity – in either sense – any less entangled in what it/they was/were only ever going to be?
If what I do feel is only as I ever could have felt it, then to speak of that as reasonable is only to further what could only have ever been.
What you are doing here is, at one moment, allowing yourself to see the reasoning of your own views (your nihilism, your arguments about dasein, the reality of your dilemma), and then in the next moment, withdrawing from those views and looking at them as existential contraptions of a brain that could never have not had those views.
From my frame of mind, what I am doing [in a wholly determined universe] is disengaging from one point of view and then engaging another point of view while recognizing that I must recognize that both moments are ever in sync with the only way they ever could have been.
My point is that you can withdraw yourself into this skeptical frame of mind with anything, and that if you ever want to be convinced of something, stop this habit of withdrawing. You know I’m right because, with the exception of these moments when you withdraw, you are convinced of the reasoning of your own views. ← And further, I’m saying that it’s no different with anyone else and their views.
What, in a wholly determined universe, does it mean – really mean – to start and to stop anything?
And if I know you’re right [here and now] then I could never have known anything other than that.
Even if, down the road, the lightbulb goes off, and I finally “get” you, it is only because I was never going to not get you.