Ramification in Causality is meaningless lie of the human

Note to others:

Back again to this: Is “the group” here just a device used to expose those that I too am exposing in my own rendition of Will Durant’s “epistemologists”?

What do you think? Should we take him literally? Seriously? Are you convinced that he really does believe what he thinks he means about “the group” here?

Or, sure, is this all just another excursion into pedantry? And is that meant to be ironic as well?

Otherwise…

It’s just more scholastic gibberish in my view. Sure, go to the dictionary and look up the definition [the meaning] of “concept”. Read philosophers down through the ages in order to assess what “the great minds” have concluded [logically, epistemologically] about human “concepts”.

But sooner or later these technical skills are going to be assigned the task of assessing the extent to which “Ramification in Causality is meaningless lie of the human” as an abstract argument is in sync with human autonomy out in a world where concepts like “freedom” and “justice” precipitate ferocious moral and political conflagrations.

To speak of “freedom” and “justice” as concepts revolves around this:

“A concept is a mental abstraction which allows generalization and the extension of knowledge from some known objects to others unknown. It integrates two or more particulars into a common mental unit.”

But take this abstraction out into the world and we’ll find some who assume they are choosing autonomously to allow women the right [the freedom] to abort their unborn babies while others assume they are choosing autonomously to allow all unborn babies the right [the freedom] to live.

What then does “freedom” and “justice” mean here from the perspective of the “serious philosopher”? And how “for all practical purposes” are actual flesh and blood human beings to make the most of these concepts when their values do come into conflict?

The group found the group’s intervention tl and dr. It noticed an unpleasant pedantry in the first lines. So maybe it was just that.

Of course “fun” here [in an essentially meaningless No God world] is no less an existential contraption. What is construed to be “fun” for one particular “I”, may well be anything but “fun” for another.

So we are still faced with estsablishing rules of behavior in any particular human community such that these rules become the existential embodiment of one or another complex combination of 1] right makes might 2] might makes right and 3] moderation, negotiation and compromise.

Which, from my frame of mind, are embedded historically and culturally in dasein, conflicting goods and political economy.

But then this part:

Yes, this is one way in which to think about it. But there are hundreds and hundreds of other ways in turn. And, to the best of my knowledge, none of us are able to demonstrate that 1] their own assessment reflects an optimal understanding of the “human condition” or that 2] their assessment here and now is in fact the embodiment of an autonomous freedom to choose this assessment over any other.

How on earth could I possibly discern with any degree of precision where one stops and the other begins? If I construe “I” here as a propoundly problematinc existential contraption, there seems to be no way in which I can get around this. No way in which to acquire an objective understanding of my own motivations and intentions. That would seem to be all scrambled up in the enormously complex interplay of all the variables from all the experiences I have ever had/known going back to my birth.

Even if someone were hired to videotape my entire life from then to now there would still be any number of factors that would be missed.

And yet, over and again, I note that even this assumption is no less an existential contraption. There may well be the right thing to do. There may well be a God. There may well be a deontological philosophical assessment out there that I have just not come across yet. There may well be a way to determine if this exchange itself is only ever as it could have been.

Instead, I take a particular subjective/subjunctive leap [from day to day] on a particular trajectory, presuming some measure of autonomy, and I live my life stumbling about amidst so much that I either do not know or cannot know.

And then the part about oblivion.

One might could say, “genuine” is a modified conception of the search guided by logos simpliciter. Since the logos type has come to doubt his own ground, that of reason or speech that makes sense, amidst the raging of the last man through the essence of his being. Ergo, reason also admits passion and prejudice amidst the pervading nescience.

The talk of “subjective” presupposes an infallible knowing ground where such determinations are drawn out. Ergo, it is thoughtless if taken as more than a momentary means of the investigation.


This is known since before Plato. It’s Socrates theory of anamnesis applied to “rock, stone or mud”, however, one should recall that this was not done in antiquity, and never taken seriously until the Enlightenment as a subject of study. The group must read the seventh letter, there, is insistence on the reality of the ideas, which are no abstractions. Perhaps one might say: they are the human being, so far as the human being is involved in the adventure of knowing and thinking.


The group says, the group may say much, that if an intelligent man said it, would matter, without saying a thing it understands. Just as one can use a computer with no insight into the fundamental sciences that brought it into being. The many: they say much, much that if a thoughtful one said it would be worthy, and understand nothing. The argie-bargies of common birds, when the rara avis chrips them, bound further.


The group says, one must have lived five minutes to appreciate the distinction raised. To see it. This is what is raised. The vague thing seen. Not some ultimate defense of it. The group spends too much time displaying its learnedness, concerning points that are wholly commonplace, and thereby avoids following what is raised in the investigation.

The group perpetually uses the word “objective” as a crotchety crutch. The group would appreciate a rethinking of what it means, in speech that makes sense, followed after it, after a comma, when it is used, if it must be.


Then the group admits to talking nonsense concerning its view of Climate Change. The group wastes time on such clowning. Besides, change itself is an “abstract” conception. What does “abstract” mean here? This group is perhaps meaning to produce bad academic jokes, but not good paths for essential thought? Through its endless spite?


Yes, everyone assumes so. Even the group member who wrote that which this now answers. Though, it is also true, all who reflect, can grasp the problem of induction. The group must grasp statement as what shows, as apart from theoretical assertion.

The group would include reality, what one does do, how one lives, into the path, rather than only reflection and theory. Which, again, is not to say reflection and intellect are not real and most alive. Or, that the group knows what they are.

The group is not aiming at propounding the truth, as if rising above opinion, but rather in showing what can be seen. Ergo, several conceptions of fact exist, the group looks at them, rather than raising them as candidates for election. Remembering, they are not only conceptions, but are in life being lived out.

This group answer, it seems, would, show its heart’s center of haughty contemptuousness to the group, & repine in the planetary intellectual anarchy which claims the anarchy is merely a “sideline” of its main road, which, however, is only dreamed to exist. What more does justice say than: this city, where I live, is the center of the cosmos?

Ah, the pseudo-serious philosopher! :wink:

The group says, the answer given is gravely serious. One should learn to speak simply, and actively avoid being complicated. Ergo, what is written “What more does justice say than: this city, where I live, is the center of the cosmos?” lets the essence of the issue be seen.

One can explicate thusly: All human beings, individuals, are part of groups. The groups have peculiar patterns of life. Each favors their own. No way has been shown out of this, especially considering the failure to universalize the Western notion of reason, as a god or way to divine god’s will.

Okay, so how does “one” and/or “the group” connect the dots between that and this:

Only this time [to placate me] bring these points down out of the scholastic clouds and connect them to an existential context out in the world of conflicting goods.

A context most here are likely to be familiar with.

The word “scholastic” and “existential” are bosh talk, indicating a presupposed academic floating above the thinking. It’s just a way the group learned to attack in a classroom. Boring.

What is the specific difficulty? The answer is exceedingly lazy.

“On my plate is a pile of food. It is illogical to take a bite unless I can stuff it all in my face at once.”

I’ll be waiting for your Nobel prize

Almost everything some members of the group write has the form: I don’t get it, therefore it must be nonsense. But, the “I don’t get it” never occurs to them, they lack the self insight. Instead: what is conscience is only: it is nonsense.

No, I don’t think it’s either existential nor a contraption, but the opposite of. It’s the non-existence of a contraption. It’s complete mindlessness and complete lack of purpose. It’s not a tool to employ mindlessness, but the absence of tools.

True, but the condition of purposelessness is the same for each unique activity.

I’m not sure the rule of “no rules” is itself a rule if no thought is ever given to the establishment of such a rule. One who lives without rules never considers whether there should be rules.

I’ve no idea what dasein is.

I have a different comment this time around. I’m inclined to believe that free will exists to the extent that it’s only restrained by probability of outcome instead of “set-in-stone” determination. The “will” is a desire that is manufactured of what exists “now” as a feedback in influencing (but not determining) the outcome of what will exist in the future.

I think there is a will and I think it has certain freedoms since nothing is 100% determined. The will is an illusion to the extent that it’s a product of the stuff in this universe instead of being something abstractly and objectively real (objectively real is an oxymoron anyway).

I think the fact that everything is probabilistic rather than deterministic precludes existence of laws. I’m not even sure duality itself, which is the foundation of everything, is even a law outside of this universe. Maybe there could be triality universes and that would be the law of the land, so to speak. What we call “laws” are really “consistently observed random outcomes”.

That’s a darn good answer, but it still seems there is a difference between the purposeful and purposeless. Can we be purposeful for a purposeless reason? Why do we want to improve? No matter what mark you think you’re leaving on the world, the world is going to end which makes everything kinda irrelevant. At the end of the game, the king and pawn go into the same box. Yet here we are: trying to improve ourselves with some overarching purpose in mind. Is that because the delusion of self-improvement is fun? I, for one, don’t know what to do with myself if I’m not working towards some goal because I’m a product of my raising and my culture that insists I always be productive.

I think the existential contraption is in trying to understand anything: it’s the gnosia instead of the agnosia (conceptual vs the nonconceptual (faith)). Do you beat your heart by existential contraption? You have no concept (gnosia) how you beat your heart, but you just do it (agnosia). Likewise in living.

What’s right is relative to a goal, which is arbitrary.

If there is a god, it is continuous with this universe. Things that exist relative to us cannot exist outside this universe. Things outside this universe could not be things we could interact with or have knowledge of; if we could, those things would not be outside our universe.

I posit that if the universe were rewound and begun again, this conversation would have very little chance of being as it is.

“I think the fact that everything is probabilistic rather than deterministic precludes existence of laws.”

Where did you come up with that law? I mean determination? I mean er :arrow_right:

It just occurred to me as I was writing. It’s not a law that there are no laws, as there certainly could be, but in order to have a law, something would have to enforce the law.

It would take me a while to explain why having a law would undermine having anything. The point is the pointlessness because how could an optimal solution be found if restrictions were placed upon the form the solution should take? So absolute lawlessness is a requirement for any truth to manifest.

Unless it is a self enforcing law… something nature enforces upon itself?
It could have for a cause only that no other possibility is ever as likely to occur.
I agree that there can not be absolute laws that aren’t touched by existence.

Definitely truth can’t come as an effect of law unless the law is true. But I wonder isn’t truth a law?

Anyway explain it if you will because I am an anarchist.

Yes but I don’t call that a law. I believe what happens, happens as a result of what happened prior. It’s not a law, but a probabilistic outcome favored by prior conditions. For instance the first life probably could not reproduce. Probably, it popped into existence and died a bazillion times and probably that is happening today as well. Clearly reproduction is an advantage since the lifeform is not as reliant upon random chance to exist, but this advantage isn’t a law, but the most probable outcome. There is nothing insisting reproduction be an advantage, but it just was.

There is also no law saying heat must flow from the hot object to the cold, but it’s astronomically unlikely that heat would ever flow from the cold to the hot.

Video about that

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YM-uykVfq_E[/youtube]

I don’t think truth can be a law because a law would exist before the truth could be determined. Truth is an effect; a determination; a result and not a driving force insisting things be so. The sun doesn’t rise because it’s 6am, but it’s often true that the sun does rise at that time. Truth is the result and not the cause.

Truth is a property of a concept, and truth itself is a concept rather than an actual thing, so truth is a concept of a concept, which is second-order fiction. We can only think in terms of concepts which aren’t reality, but what is reality can’t be conceptualized, but we allude to what is real with concepts. I forgot who it was in particular, but one of those fancy-pants chinese sages said “Those who know, don’t say; those who say, don’t know.” It’s just illustrative that what is real can’t be conceptualized (cut into pieces, quantized, abstracted and still maintain relevancy). Whatever is, just is, and there is no underlying force determining it because if there were, the whole show would be pointless. And that’s the point that would take me a long time to articulate.

An analogy is a news article with a comments section. Any news that doesn’t have comments is liable to be fake news because it’s the unrestricted comments that substantiate truth. As soon as censorship takes hold, we have no mechanism to guarantee truth. As soon as someone asserts a truth and therefore censors those who disagree, the truth that is asserted can never be substantiated. It is only when there are no laws (restrictions) that truth can manifest as truth.

Likewise with the universe: if we first start with a law presupposing how things should be, then truth can never be known. Truth will always be relative to that first condition, which was the law. And so what would be the point of having a law then? If having a law taints our data, then why have it? What if we have a law that all coin flips must land heads? What would be the point of flipping the coin? And if we do flip the coin, then why have the law? So if there were laws, there would be no point to anything since the point to everything is to discover what we don’t already know… not to presuppose and become a lifeless mechanism in a deterministic show which is completely pointless.

Okay, but isn’t there still a kind of law in the fact that things don’t tend to follow from things that are happening afterward, or at the same time? Also, what is the difference between a law and a rule? But as a rule a happens from b, but not because it is against the rules to do something else. I think Im with you.

Well, that actually explains transgender. A lifeforms popped into life without the proclivity to reproduce, but with the proclivity to do something wildly different with its sex organs.

It still seems truth would have to exist before a law can really apply, as a backbone of laws. But I agree that if you want to reasonably argue about truth you need to state some specific case and argue that it is a true case. On the other hand The Truth can maybe be accomplished in some way, like Jesus said I am the truth and the way and the life, I thought that was a badass statement for sure and then people took this for true and actually lived their lives because of it, every decision was based on it, even to horrific deaths like that dude who wanted to be crucified upside down because he wasn’t worthy of undergoing the same punishment as Jesus. Thats totally insane but true. I am more “troubled” lets say by these questions than more theoretical truth value computations, I wonder why the hell things are true that don’t seem very likely at all. Maybe truth is more of a how than a what or why. My uncle alway use to say the most fundamental truths are methods. Badass methods, thats what Id trust most, tried and true. Maybe trust and truth are actually the same. But then thats a law, yeah that was what Hume was about I guess but whats the point of thinking if you don’t ever expect to arrive at a concrete rule or something, something you can use? But again then law is an accomplishment and not a condition. Someone also said that God is an accomplishment. It sounds like all order is admirable. Our solar system was totally lawlessly forged, and now it is the law that gives flow to the waters and changing sunlight. And in this cosmic constitution small lawless creatures can pop up that relate to the original lawless precondition.

Maybe the only way something can follow from lawlessness is by setting itself as the law. Like a straight line escaping a black hole. But how can that happen?

Maybe law is what happens when more than one beings are forced to occupy the same space. Not like, exactly the same space, but say the same room or the same pool of gravity where they need to be influencing the others without being destroyed. Or whenever that manages to happen, the law is what made it happen. So law is a balance.

That means law is time. Regular progression happens only inside a law. So economic growth only happens within a law and I guess crime doesn’t pay because it has a cut up timeline unless the crime sets the law, then all the pay from time comes into the timeless crime’s hands.

Its Sunday, if youre wondering.

Oh you mean a law governing the direction of time? If time went backwards, how could you tell? If B comes from A, then the sequence of events is A then B, but if you experience it backwards, it would still be that B came from A. Think about it… if you went back in time, you’d have no knowledge of the fact that you went back in time. So at timeslice B you’d say “Ah, B happened!” then at timeslice A you’d say “I wonder what will result from A”.

There is no causality because in order for there to be, you’d have to explain how one thing affects another thing. But if one thing can affect another thing, then they are not 2 things, but 1 thing. And if there are no things, then there is no causality. If there is no causality, then your question has no meaning.

What does “happening afterward” mean? After what? After a moment in time? Well how long is that? So we draw the line thinner and thinner until we find there is no time in which for anything to happen. Who was the guy (zeno or meno) who argued it was impossible for an arrow to ever hit a target because if the arrow is in motion, then it doesn’t exist since there is no place in time where it is. Or something like that.

Just the connotation or context. It depends how you use the words.

But both laws and rules are something enforced by authority. If there is no authority, then what we think are laws or rules are really just observed regularities.

Life that pops into existence wouldn’t have sex organs. That’s what I’m saying… the organs would have to be selected for. Reproduction itself would have to be selected for because it competed better than life that didn’t reproduce.

The latest hypothesis is that life formed from rocks and almost certainly still forms today in the same way. The clay particles that break off of rocks have the perfect structure for self-assembly of molecules… they provide a little tunnels for molecules to bounce around in and form chains. And plants eat rocks ya know. Then animals eat plants.

Oh I see what you’re saying… there would have to exist something to make a law from. But existence itself is relative. Nothing exist on its own in the middle of nothing because it would have no context or contrast to give it meaning. Every truth must be relative to something and even that truth must be relative and so on forever. We’re looking for the most fundamental thing and we’re never going to find it because we can’t use the thing we’re looking for to find the thing we’re looking for. That’s what the chinese describe as searching for the ass you’re riding or putting your glasses on so you can find your glasses.

I think what Jesus was referring to was the names of the temples or something like that. Each were named “the way, the truth, the life”. You have to be on guard for distortions in the bible.

Truth is relative. 1+1 = 2, but 1 male + 1 female = 1 baby or maybe a whole litter, or 1 matter + 1 antimatter = zero. So truth depends on the context.

I resonate with that since I can’t remember the quadratic equation, but I remember how to derive it. The method is more important than the triviality. Once I learn the method, I don’t need the facts since I can regenerate them.

Watch out that trust is not appeal to authority.

You got it!

Energy radiates from black holes as hawking radiation. Actually, it’s very hard to enter a black hole since most things are accelerated, ripped apart, and flung across the universe. To actually enter inside, you’d have to be on a straight line trajectory with the center and have a lot of luck not to get knocked off course.

But yeah, laws exist because there are no laws saying otherwise. If we’re in the jungle, the biggest guy makes the law. The solar system formed of no laws and now it’s the law. It’s the golden rule: the one with the gold makes the rules.