Then we simply don’t come to the same conclusion about it. When something happens only because it could never not have happened, and when we react to it as meaningful only in the way that we ever could have reacted to it as meaningful, it’s just not the same [to me] as living in a world where something happens only because some chose freely to make it happen because they believed that other autonomous human beings were free to share their own meaning and understanding of it or to freely choose another meaning and understanding altogether.
When both meaning in and meaning out are inherently in sync with the laws of matter, it’s a whole different kind of meaning from one in which I’m convinced that it is meaningful to me only becasue I have freely chosen to accept one meaning rather than another.
If Jane freely chooses to have an abortion and Jan freely chooses to believe this means she should be arrested for premeditated murder, that’s different [for me] than Jane and Jan behaving as they do and then reacting to those behaviors as meaningful only in the way that they ever could have.
(Here, I’m talking about meaning as in the meaning of our words and ideas, the content of our communication, not the “grand purpose of existence” which I think is a very confused interpretation of “meaning”.)
If, in a wholly determined universe, the “grand purpose of existence”, embedded and embodied in any particular human mind, is only what it was ever going to be, how are distinctions between thoughts and feelings and behaviors here to be made? All aspects of our interactions are just different kinds of dominoes toppling over as they were “designed” to by whatever or whoever brought into existence, existence itself.
But, again, I’ll be the first to admit that I am missing something here. But then I’m back to whether or not I ever had the capacity to not miss it. Is it my fault for thinking this all through incorrectly in a world where thinking anything through at all is just part of the very fabric of reality?
But if that apprehension is embodied only in the illusion of autonomy…
I don’t think the apprehension of meaning is embodied in the illusion of autonomy. As I said earlier, I don’t think there is any illusion of autonomy, only the lack of experiencing our determined state. We infer our autonomy on the rare occasions when we’re being philosophical only by virtue of not being informed by our senses (or any other experience) that we are determined. But this inference can occur quite independently of apprehending meaning in the things we say and communicate to each other.
The difficulty I have here is that your point is entirely abstract. Let’s consider your argument as it relates to the recent spate of bombing scares here in America. From your frame of mind was there ever a possibility that the bomber could have chosen to do something else?
Is there the possibility that how each of us initially reacted to what he chose to do might reconfigure into a different reaction because we are able [autonomously] find a different meaning in it all?
We’re now in the mind of the person creating and mailing the bombs. How is your point above relevant to the choises that he makes?
We are like computers. Computers communicate to each other. A client makes a request to a server for a website. The server apprehends the meaning of the request: the client wants such-and-such website. And it delivers the website. All this without any assumptions on the client’s or the server’s part that they are acting freely or determined (and in fact, they are clearly determined if any machine is).
Okay, but suppose someone uses the computer in order to make contact with websites that offers the “client” access to hardcore child pornography. He is caught doing this and is arrested. It’s in the news and many people recognize him and react to him.
In the tangle of all these interactions was there ever the possibilty of it all unfolding any differently in a wholly determined universe? Now, if it is presumed that mere mortals have some measure of autonomy here, it is easy to imagine any number of alternative sequences. But [from my way of thinking] if mind is just more matter in sync with the “immutable laws of matter”, it just is what it was only ever going to be.
This part:
Okay, but how do we determine and then demonstrate that this isn’t also just embedded in a wholly determined universe? The mystery is still matter able to evolve to the point of becoming mindful of things like this. The part about “dualism”. The ghost in the machine. And, then, for some, the soul.
Indeed, this is a conundrum. I’m not sure how matter evolved to be mindful, but I also don’t think we need to understand this in order to acknowledge that it is so.
Then [for me] we’re back to whether this acknowledgement was ever going to be anything else.
And personally, I don’t think matter did evolved to be mindful; I think mind always existed and evolved into a form that perceives the rest of the universe as matter.
Then [for me] we’re back to the gap between what you think you know is true “in your head” and your capacity to demonstrate that all rational men and women are obligated to think the same.
And to the extent that one is able to believe in this infinite mind is the extent to which one can imagine their own mind somehow being in sync with it. In either a God or a No God world. And that can be a comforting and consoling frame of mind. And that can be the reason [psychologically] that one comes to think something like this in the first place.
We simply don’t know what brought about the existence of existence itself.
Well, I’m saying such a notion is incoherent.
Well, that just begs the quesrion. What does it mean to be coherent given the gap between what you think you know about existence “here and now” and all that would need to be known about it in order to attain a fully coherent understanding of it?
And how coherent will the arguments proposed by the “really smart guys [and gals]” in the physics community today appear to those in the same community 100, 1,000 or 10,000 years from now?
Given all the things we are still really fuzzy about regarding QM, dark matter, dark energy and the multiverse?
And other stuff like this: livescience.com/34052-unsol … ysics.html
From the introduction:
In 1900, the British physicist Lord Kelvin is said to have pronounced: “There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement.” Within three decades, quantum mechanics and Einstein’s theory of relativity had revolutionized the field. Today, no physicist would dare assert that our physical knowledge of the universe is near completion. To the contrary, each new discovery seems to unlock a Pandora’s box of even bigger, even deeper physics questions.
“Redness” and “softness” are attributes of matter evolving into minds. Once all such matter is gone redness and softness goes with it. The crucial question is still the extent to which they were thought up autonomously by minds able to freely choose “blueness” and “hardness” instead.
I think even if we did have autonomy, we wouldn’t be choosing to see red as we do or feel softness as we do. There are some thing we (supposedly) choose and some things we don’t. I choose to kick a rock when I’m angry. I don’t choose to experience stubbing my toe as painful (though it is an experience had by a mind).
And besides, my argument was more about language than the mental/subjective character of “red” and “softness”. To say red is given red conveys the wrong idea. To saying existence was given existence conveys the wrong idea.
Langauage and ideas are just manifestations of the evolution of matter into minds. Unless you or others are able to demonstrate that, what, mind came first?
It still comes down [for me] to whether redness and softness are seen to be more preferable than bluenss and hardness because someone believes they are able to freely make that choice. And that in fact given the actual existence of human autonomy, they were able to.
But we are still back [eventually] to whether these subjective/objective distinctions are or are not just more dominos toppling over given the extent to which mind as matter must obey the laws of matter. Naturally, as it were.
Well, I think if this proves anything, it’s that objectivity is the illusion.
It would seem to be an illusion to me as well in a No God world. Nature, reality, existence etc., just are what they are. With no autonomous minds around to insist that they are other than that.
That would appear to be the whole point of inventing Gods. But how did matter evolve from the Big Bang into a “mind” able to think up Gods?
Again, this can only be fully grasped to the extent to which neuroscientists are able to fully grasp it.
That’s not necessarily true. If I’m right about mind evolving to see matter, then no amount of research in the neuroscience will get us any closer to understanding the true relationship between matter and mind. We are making a false assumption, as far as I’m concerned, about the brain producing consciousness. I believe it is the other way around. I have no proof of this, but it does offer me one scenario that works as an alternative to everything you have proposed.
But then [in my view] this is where we are “stuck”: in figuring out that which either is or is not necessarily true about matter evolving into minds capable of creating an exchange like this one.
And then this part: death.
Once we do go to the grave is our access to the whole truth here gone forever? Or is this eternal mind of yours somehow able to keep us in the game?