Something Instead of Nothing

I think it’s more than simply word games with iambiguous…

I think he’s field testing synthetic philosophy built in an lab, that is going to be used to make drones over the world.

I find it very interesting his projection on me: he calls consent violation (the most visceral feeling all beings have in existence) “a world of words” “not down to earth”. synthetic philosophies will always suffer projections and contradictions. He is the world of words he’s accusing me of.

I’m more terse with iambiguous because I do not appreciate his psychopathic intent to circumvent living philosophy.

Meaning what exactly? Either the words that we choose to encompass an argument about “something instead of nothing” can be connected somehow to the lives that we live or they can’t.

That’s what we are really grappling with here: the day to day lived relationship between words and worlds.

Well, in that case there’s not much then that any particular human mind can’t speculate is true.

It makes for fascinating discussions, sure, but sooner or later what you think is true [or what you think you know] “in your head” is either able to be substantiated or not. After all, where you draw the line between reason and faith isn’t likely to be where others will. Instead, what is exchanged by and large are assumptions. Intellectual contraptions as it were.

But we have no way of establishing definitively if the verification process is not in itself merely an inherent manifestation of a determined universe. If mind is just brain and brain is just more matter, it would all seem to be essentially/objectively intertwined in whatever laws might exist that makes matter – necessarily – what it is and always will be.

Yes, that is how most make the distinction. But if the distinctions made were never able not to be made by each individual they are “for all practical puorposes” distinctions without a difference. I think and feel this way about it. You think and feel that way ablout it. But neither one of us were ever able not to.

Originally? In a world where all matter [mindful or otherwise] interacts necessarily as it only ever could, how is this distinction in and of itself not just but one more intrinsic manifestation of Existence.

Again, to the extent that I understand you, you make a distinction here that I am simply unable to grasp. That “separation” we make is in turn just another manifestion of matter intertwined in what we call “existence” or “reality”. Some think that they note this distinction/separation “freely” but that is only an illusion built into however one goes about explaining how physically/materially/phenomenally brains configured into minds given the evolution of life on Earth.

Well, in a wholly determined universe, my certainty is only as it ever could have been. As for QM back to this:

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.

And that was only 118 years ago. Do you really imagine that a 1,000 years from now physicists will be coming to the same conclusions about QM that are being made today?

This entails understanding things about the emergence of consciouness and mind that is still beyond our grasp. And, again, you need to note a particular context involving particular minds choosing particular behaviors. Aspects of which are construed to be more or less intelligble from particular points of view.

If significance and meaning pertaining to the interactions above are essentially in sync with all the other domioes toppling over onto each other in the march of matter through time, how is your explanation [and my failure to understand it] not just another teeniest and tiniest part of it all?

I can only assume here you are making an important point that I keep missing. But: was there ever any capacity on my part not to miss it? Am I actually “destined” to get it at some point in the future? Would anything at all here have ever been other than what it is if either of us had some measure of autonomy?

I don’t know. And to the best of my knowledge, no one else seems to either. We just take our existential “leaps” to one or another frame of mind.

To you maybe. But if how you think you understand all of this here and now is the only manner in which you were ever able to think you understand all this here and now, well, that seems pretty significant to me.

How is this not just another intellectual contraption in which words define and defend each other by going around and around tautologically in presumptuous circles? The logic doesn’t seem to be connected to any empirical interactions such that experiments and predictions can be made. Such that others can replicate them pertaining to other physical interactions out in the world that we live in.

How do the points mainfest themselves in nature manifesting itself in turn through “natural laws”?

This is the part that still completely baffles me. You seem to be acknowledging the possibility that, in a determined universe, I was never not going to avoid the question. But my point instead is that I was never not able to avoid the question.

Yes, that is still avoiding the question, but, well, come on! I’m back in a world in which we know that the Terminator was never able not to attempt to kill Sarah Connor, but we are still justified in calling his behavior immoral in a world where we were never able not to do so.

Note to others:

What crucial component of “compatibilism” am I missing here?

If the manner in which I think and feel about my own subjective experiences is the only manner in which I was ever able to think and feel about them “here and now”, what exactly would be established in making yet another attempt? Wouldn’t that in turn be just the next series of dominoes to topple over in this exchange? In what constitutes the wholly determined trajectory of my own particular “I” from the cradle to the grave?

From my frame of mind, the part about subjective experiences is embedded existentially in the components of my moral philosophy out in the is/ought world.

A tactic? As though pointing out that there is certainly a gap between what either one of us think we know about these relationships and all that there actually is to be known about them, isn’t just plain old common sense!

Are you actually suggesting that, in regard to what you speculate about here and in your book, this gap is not really relevant at all?

But my point here is that I have no capacity myself to “really believe” any of my own speculations. At best “here and now” they can seem reasonable to me. But “I” am no less the embodiment of the gap I point to.

Exactly!!!

The real distinction here then is between the overwhelming preponderance of human beings who 1] don’t think about these things at all or 2] fall back on one or another God/religion, and that teeny, tiny percentage of folks like us who do think about them.

But thinking about the questions is one thing, actually imagining that our own answers are the right ones, another thing altogether.

You will either continue this exchange in an effort to further persuade me of your conclusions or you will conclude that you have gone about as far as you can and move on to others.

If so, no problem. Lots of folks here have taken that route. And, sure, that may well say more about me than them. I never dispute that.

All I can do [while waiting for godot] is to move on to the next one myself.

Now all I need then is someone able to convince me that any of this was ever really within my capacity to change, to reconfigure into something else. Otherwise I can only assume that I had no actual capacity at all.

Much like everyone else in other words.

How ironic. Over and again I keep trying to persuade him to bring his own words out into the world that we live in. For us though that revolves more around the issue of objective morality.

On this thread, he just posted this:

You tell me:

How is this post not just a bunch of words that some might even construe to be gibberish?

Did I really choose to eat cornflakes instead of scrambled eggs because it was within my capacity autonomously to weigh the situation freely and come to the conclusion that this time, cornflakes?

Or was I always going to choose cornflakes then because that “choice” was the only one wholly in sync with the laws of matter?

I merely insist with him that we take quandaries like this out into the world of conflicting goods.

You forgot the part where it’s all about me getting the philosophy chicks. :wink:

Note to Gib [and others]:

What really, really important point am I missing here? Make sense of it all for me.

I’ll address another one of iambiguouses tricks

(Iambiguous, read my post above your last one that I’m replying to)

You’re synthesizing endless doubt, that logic can only be infinitely regressive, even if people give you axiomatic solutions, you just say, “well is that what people will say a million years from now?”

And in a million years, iambiguous will say, “well is that what people will say a trillion years from now?”

Ad infinitum.

Like I said, I think iambiguous is like the manufactured war on terror that never ends, he’s trying to use synthetic philosophy and rhetoric built in a lab (beta testing it) for a one world government.

I’ve seen mind viruses like this before.

Really, my thanks to anyone able to demonstrate he is not just making this stuff up as he goes along. Or [worse] that he isn’t.

My own personal opinion is that it is posters of his ilk who have driven most of those who truly do love philosophy out of here. The Kids. Intellectual drivel by and large. Post after post after numbing post. Garbage for the most part.

Or, perhaps, the problem here is really posters of my ilk.

The bane of all “serious philosophers”?

Unless of course I’m wrong.

Isn’t that interesting ? You didn’t respond to the content of my post. Namely, the infinite regress troll that you do.

Sorry about that: :banana-dance: :laughing: :laughing: :laughing: :laughing: :laughing: :laughing: :laughing: :banana-dance:

Lol

Ahh… I see.

So here’s the deal people.

Unless you can construct a non zero sum, non consent violating reality …

Well… let me back up.

Logic is more powerful than god. And logic is not aware of itself.

People who weaponize philosophy will be damned by their own spirits.

I come as a witness to having been through this before.

It is not my curse, it is a curse you place upon yourselves.

Admittedly, this actually is something instead of nothing.

If you count barely.

Seriously, though, do you honestly believe that this post encompasses a coherent point of view? Or are you just jerking my chain? Or maybe mocking the sort of philosophy that is, in fact, largely incomprehensible in regard to the lives that we actually live from day to day.

Or are you just being ironic?

After all, I have had folks in the past string me along with this sort of thing. I looked like a fool responding to stuff that was being conveyed in a completely unintelligible and meaningless manner. Deliberately, in other words.

Is that it?

On the other hand, if your points actually are brilliant, I’ll be the first to apolgize. Well, after someone is able to explain to me why they are.

Let me explain this a little better.

If you’re a well informed person, you will know that taking a machete to your arm will chop it off.

I tell you the truth.

As you plead for others for chopping your own arm off, that you don’t know why it occurred. They won’t care. In this way, when your soul gets mangled by weaponizing philosophy, people will not care.

Among other things, define “better”. :wink:

I’m using it here in a utilitarian manner.

I’m telling you in no uncertain terms the cold hands of logic upon you. You still think this is some type of game. Games are ornamental in males, when males use ornamentation, it strangles the whole species.

I’m not going to destroy life to get a female to consent to sex with me. I already know the punishments. Just like chopping your arm off with a machete, I am no longer stupid there, or much of anywhere. Deal with it. You call me a kid. My processing speed is so much faster than yours that I can process thousands of years of cognitive age in a day.

And you know what. I’m beyond wanting followers, I’m trying to reconstruct existence itself. I’m using a biofeedback system to perfect my reconstruction.

Read my last post…

viewtopic.php?p=2712275#p2712275

The problems I’m working currently are about continuity of consciousness, narrative continuity and object permanence with hyper dimensional mirrors.

And to be honest, compared to that, you are twiddling pencils in your fingers.

I have to absorb and listen to every soul in existence, every moment of every day, and you wouldn’t even feign to imagine the shit that crawls out from under the woodwork. I put my spirit, not just my life, on the line, every moment of everyday to make life better for all existents forever.

It’s very hard work, and everyone wants to abuse you for it. It’s not a complex, it’s actually true.

We are? I thought we were just dabbling in a bit of abstract philosophy. Well, if you want an alternate method than science to resolve the determinism vs. free will problem, try philosophy (I guess). But of course, that don’t work either, does it. I guess we’re hooped!

That’s fine with me.

The point of separating out different meanings of “freedom” is to be able to talk about a kind of freedom that isn’t mutually exclusive with physical determinism (that’s why they call it compatibilism). If you perform an fMRI scan on a person who is asked to perform some action out of free choice, you will find deterministic operations going on in his brain. What I’m calling “psychological freedom” is simply the psychological state of making a decision to do, say, or think something and finding that this decision is carried out just as intended. ← But no one said this requires rising above the laws of nature as they would play out in the brain. It’s just a type of brain state that leads to certain behaviors.

It is, but I thought you needed some clarification on the distinction between metaphysical freedom and psychological freedom (weren’t you asking about that?).

So is your inconsistency.

And how is it you know what they will come up with 1,000 years from now? You could say this for anything you don’t want to concede in the argument. I’m telling you what quantum physicists are telling us today. But because it doesn’t fit with your deterministic picture of the world, you get to fluff it off with another one of your denial tactics? In your words “there’s not much then that any particular human mind can’t speculate is true.”

What this tells me is that you cherry pick. If I point to evidence that suggests our world may not be fully deterministic after all, you jump ahead 1,000 years when scientists will allegedly (re)discover a Newtonian clockwork universe. But if I agree with you that the world is fully deterministic, you don’t even bring up the fact that this view of nature was debunked that same 118 years ago (ironic that you brought up that quote).

The truth is, we don’t know if the world is fully deterministic or not. That you cling to such a view despite your alleged self-professed ignorance on the topic tells me you don’t know how to follow your own nihilistic perscription.

Ah, so there is more to understanding consciousness and mind than what you’ve lead on. If there is more to grasp about the emergence of consciousness and mind even in a non-deterministic context, then determinism can’t be what makes it decidedly problematic (though it probably doesn’t help).

Don’t think too hard about this. It’s not that important a point. We just disagree on the compatibility of meaning with determinism. You say: no freedom, no meaning. I say: no freedom, yes meaning. My run down on psychological determinism above was just to show how you could have meaning with determinism. When you respond: yes gib, but even your explanation is a part of the deterministic chain that governs the course of events, I read that as: but it’s still determinism. And I think: yes, that was my point.

That’s not my concern. This is simply the answer to your question. Philosophy is notorious for touching on topics that aren’t empirically verifiable. This is one of them.

Plato’s cave analogy is very fitting here. You can think of matter as the shadows cast on Plato’s cave wall, and the objects that cast the shadows as the experiences had by the universe that matter represents (the representational relation is quite the same; matter represents the universe’s experiences like the shadows represent the objects in Plato’s cave).

The light which makes the shadows possible would be analogous to meaning. All experiences are meaningful, and this gives rise to what I call “flow” or “entailment”—the metamorphosis of experience from one quality to another. This is nicely represented by the flow of energy in matter, and in the brain, the flow of signals from one neural centre to another. When Information impinges on the eye, signals are sent to the occipital lobe at the back of the brain. This is where vision occurs. Then signals are propagated to higher cortical regions so that we can recognize more complex and abstract features—such as shapes, 3D cues, movement, and identities. Signals will further propagate to other brain regions so that we can think and feel about the things we see (or sense in any other way). Physically, we see a flow of energy. Subjectively, we experience a change in experiences. This change is driven by meaning. The meaning is each experience “entails” the meaning in the next. Experience A means experience B. <— The logic of experience. This “entailing” of one experience by another is represented by physical laws—one physical event “causing” another.

When we observe a fire, we see the flickering of flames, hear the crackle, and feel the heat. All this is possible because of the flow of physical energy—light, sound waves, and the heating of the air around the fire. Even before this energy flow impinges on our senses, it represents the entailment of experience—this time had by the universe, not us. All physical events between the flickering of flame and the stimulation of our senses represent experiences of some foreign quality being had by the universe. The way these physical events change represents the way the experiences morph from one quality to another, driven by meaning and entailment, until they finally take the form of a visual, auditory, or tactile sensation. <— That experience is represented by the signals that enter our brains from the sense.

Natural law is like the observation of repeating patterns in the shadows. If the prisoners in Plato’s cave notice repeating patterns in the shadows, they might come up with a concept similar to natural laws. But obviously, these patterns are themselves representation–not of objects per se but repeating patterns in the activity of those objects, which someone free to roam about the cave might identify as the real natural laws. In the case of my theory of experience, this would be analogous to patterns of entailment between experiences–qaulities of experiences which consistently entail the same subsequent qualities (similar to a syllogism: the two premises “Socrates is a man,” and “All men are mortal,” consistently entail “Socrates is mortal”… and they do so because of what the premises mean).

I realize this is not the answer you’re looking for, but it is the answer. You and I, Biggy, are like the prisoners in Plato’s cave. I’m trying to convey to you a theory about what creates the shadows. I have to bring in concepts like “objects” and “light”. You don’t understand so you ask: explain these “objects” and “light” in terms of the shadows. And I try to tell you that I did: the objects and light create the shadows, but beyond that, they don’t exist as shadows. If I could, I’d throw up my hands and say: what else can I tell you?

I think it’s the “compatible” part.

Woaw, hold on there now. While I grant your helpless role in a deterministic universe, I do not grant that your responses to my questions are themselves natural laws–as though your first response will inevitably be your every response. People change their minds all the time. They give different responses on different occasions. If on one day, they feel like avoiding a question, they can turn around and decide to answer the question the next day. You’re not special, Biggy, you can change your mind too. If you persistently refuse to answer my questions, that’s only stubbornness, not a law of nature. All you need is to want to answer my questions and you will.

Not to you answering my questions. Whether a tactic you use to avoid a question is common sense or not is completely irrelevant. Most tactics depend on some truth or common sense in order to be used (otherwise, they’d be totally ineffectual). What makes it a tactic, as opposed to simply a statement that helps the discussion move forward, is that your motives in using it are other than to help the discussion move forward–you’re trying to avoid answering a question which you know would put your main points into doubt.

(You need to read Nietzsche.)

Ah, then we suffer the same affliction. I too know what it’s like to not really believe my own speculations (which is why I have so much trouble answering your question about how I close the gap between what’s true in my head and what’s true out there). However, from what I gather, the difference between you and I is that you’re plagued by this while I’m at peace with it. I feel like we’re reading from a book–each a reflection of the thoughts that run through our minds–we both recognize our books as just words on paper with (possibly) no bearing on the reality outside the book. You’re bothered by this and wonder what then is the point of reading. I’m not bothered as I still think the book is a good read.

And I’m still curious what your book says, but alas, to you there’s no point in reading it (except the parts you want to read).

Hey, if you don’t want to take responsibility for your denial and your avoidance of my questions, be my guest.

Well, I can see what he’s saying. He’s raising Aristotle’s law of non-contradiction–a thing can’t be and not be at the same time. If you choose to eat cornflakes, you can’t, at the same time, chose to not eat cornflakes.

But I understand your point to be a little border than that. You’re saying that if you choose to eat cornflakes, you were always going to choose to eat cornflakes from the dawn of time (thus it wasn’t really a choice).

Iambiguous, as I’m stating in another thread.

Numbers aren’t objects that can hit you over the head. You’re not going to ever say, “look here’s where the number 4 is!” Try bringing that down to earth! I don’t insult you when you use numbers.

I’m simply using your own logic and rhetorical style.

Consent violation is much more solid than a number, yet you wave it off as so abstract as to only be a world of words. You can try to jab at me every moment you get. It’s obvious to everyone who’s been reading these exchanges that I have demonstrations against your abstractions, and all you’re really left with as content to ALL of your posts, is insults.

Gib, I already addressed that point in my post.

If I choose cornflakes, it couldn’t have happened any other way AT THE POINT Of choice, this doesn’t necessarily imply that no choice was made.

Even in the instance that we have agency, at the point of choice, it can be interpreted as determinism, because now it can’t be or ever could have been made differently. To say this only means determinism as iambiguous is doing, is being intellectually dishonest

Another way to say this is that once a choice is made, the probability field collapses to zero

So you did. And I interpreted it in just the way you stated. That’s the law of non-contradiction.

Biggy has a different idea in mind (I think). He’s coming from physical determinism where everything–even the choices we make in the future–are pre-determined.

I don’t know if he’s right–the world may be fully determined, or it may not be–but I think you’re right: when you choose to do X, you can’t also choose to do not-X.

The point of my post, is that it’s certainly indeterminant…

Iambiguous cannot tell me for certain that a choice wasn’t made with agency just because the probability field needs to collapse.

Why on earth was a complex human language invented in the first place? Well, given the evolution of life on earth we are equipped biologically to create it. Other species of animals may have more or less complex sounds that can be created to more or less impart information to each other. But nothing like ours. Still, what all such sounds have in common is the communicating of practical information about the world around us. Information allowing us to sustain our existence: acquiring food, water, shelter and protection. Sounds/words conveyed that facilitate reproducing the species.

The part about exchanging abstract philosophy came considerably later. And only for our own species. Philosophers talk about that which it is rational or logical to say. That which we either can or cannot know. But the bottom line [mine anyway] will always revolve around the extent to which we either can or cannot connect the dots between the words we use and the world we live in.

We can think and say and feel almost anything about “something” and “nothing”. About mind and matter. But what can we demonstrate to others is true or not true in regards to a particular context?

And, sure, if all one is interested in is exchanging “worlds of words” that conjure up some really fascianting possibilities [and discussions], fine. My “thing” here, however, is always in connecting those speculations to that which others have to say about the existential relationship between identity, value judgments and political power.

And, on this thread, probing the extent to which we can ascertain whether these exchanges are autonomous or not. Going back eventually to an understanding of Existence itself: Why something instead of nothing? Why this something and not another?

If exchanging conjectures embedded largely in intellectual contraptions is more someone else’s “thing”, there are always going to be plenty of folks around in places like this to go in that direction.

But if all we do talk about here is only that which we were ever able to talk about here, what kind of “freedom” is that?

We make choices based on the assumption that, unlike the choices that hedgehogs and rats and spiders make, ours are “thought out” and not just the biologically imperative. Most are convinced we have the capacity to choose something else entirely. But what if that is in turn just an illusion built into human psychology built into the laws of matter.

So, the two main questions would seem to be 1] is this true? and 2] if it is, how could matter become conscious/mindful of itself as matter in exchanges like this one?

How on earth do we come to grips with this in any other way than as we are always meant to? Or, sure, not meant to?

Even using the word “compatible” here would seem to be only as it ever could have been used in a wholly determined universe.

In other words, how is this part…

…not just inherently [necessarily] ensconced in the only reality there could ever have been?

If what any of us “say” about any of this is just “a type of brain state” and the brain itself is just more matter in sync with whatever brought matter into existence in the first place, well, what exactly does that mean in regard to the words we choose to sustain this exchange?

Again and again: I admit the problem here may well be my own incapacity to grasp your point in a world in which I do in fact have the autonomous capacity to grasp it if only I could.

On the other hand, how are “intellectual freedom”, “psychological freedom” and “metaphsical freedom” in the brain not analogous to a battery, an alternator and a starter in an automobile engine.

Yes, the brain is able to make the sort of choices that brings into existence the parts of an automobile engine. But just as the parts of an automobile engine interact only as they ever could, so do the parts of the human brain.

There’s a part here I can clearly recognize as different. But there is also a part that thinks, “it’s a distinction without a difference”. Why? Because whatever the parts of anything, they were never, ever going to not interact as nature intended.

Then, of course, this: Is there an aspect of nature that can in fact freely intend things? Which most call God.

Exactly!!!

I don’t know. But my point revolves more around the extent to which what we think we know now and what they’ll think they’ll know then is only ever what the minds of men and women were ever configured to know by the laws of matter.

But who doubts that a 1,000 years from now this knowledge will be considerably more sophisticated?

But I do not have a deterministic take on these relationships. I’m just not sure. Meaning I’m just not sure if I could ever have not been unsure.

But look what is at stake here.

For example, your take on mind over matter [encompassed in your book] is either the result of autonomous thinking, or thinking that was never able to be anything other than what it could only have been. You accomplished only what you never could have not accomplished.

Which is why I suspect that folks whose lives are in the toilet [for whatever reason] can take comfort in a determined universe, while those who go on to accomplish considerably more are going to be wary of it. Success that is thought to be earned or success that is seen to be just another bunch of dominoes toppling over onto to each other mechanically is hardly the same thing, right?

Again, choose a context in which human interactions unfold. Note for us the evidence you subscribe to indicating that the choices being made are not determined. And the part about the irony you note is unclear. The quote notes the gap between what any particular generation thinks it knows about the laws of nature and what subsequent generations come to update considerably. I merely point out that this is likely to continue on into the future. But: is the past, the present and the future here anything other than what only ever could have been?

And that is what philosophers and scientists and theologians have been grappling with now for thousands of years: The part where matter becomes mind and the extent to which mind as matter is or is not in sync with immutable laws. Or in sync with one or another God.

This is ridiculous from my point of view. My frame of mind here is entirely ambiguous and ambivalent. More to the point: how could it not be given that I [like you] are grappling with these things while profoundly, problematically embedded in the gap between what we think we know about these relationships and all that can be known about them?

And, in my opinion, you are starting to steer the exchange in the direction of making me the argument. I’m the problem here. You have patiently explained to me a more reasonable manner in which to think about these things but I won’t come on board.

And, sure, I’ll be the first to admit that the problem may well be my own inadequate intellectual capacity. Either inherently or not.

Of course determinism is still “decidedly problematic”. Just as is human autonomy and free will. And the last thing I am going to be here is an objectivist about it.

All I ask of folks here is that they bring their speculations about it out into the world of actual human interactions. And not merely exchange general descriptions embedded in worlds of words.

As for this part: :angry-banghead:

The assumption here seems to be that while this is a reasonable reaction of yours in regard to my point of view, the same can’t be said regarding my own reaction to yours.

Whereas I am the first to admit that no mere mortal on planet earth has actually succeeded in pinning the whole truth down here. Hell, the human mind may well not even be able to.

In a determined universe, we think [can think] only as hard as we were ever going to think. But, so much more importantly [to me], what we think and the meaning that we think that we impart to others is also only as it was ever going to be. Thus to make the distinction that you do is just another inherent manifestation of nature unfolding.

Meaning in which there was never any capacity on our part to mean something else?

Obviously. But: how obvious is it in turn that there was never really any possibility that it could have been of concern to you?

Yes, but this one is a particulary Big Question. It revolves around the extent to which anything that we think, feel or do was ever within our capacity to not think, feel and do.

Or you can think of matter as encompassing everything that Plato had ever done — this being the only manner that he could ever have done it. Inside the cave, outside the cave. Darkness, light. Shadows, the objects casting them. Ultimately, it’s all the same stuff interacting as it only ever could have.

But: If that’s not the case, to what extent can actual autonomous men and women learn lessons from Plato’s philosophy. For all practical purposes. Which parts are we able to freely concur with and which parts are we able to freely reject. And, most important of all to me, how are his ideas to be integrated into the lives that we live from day to day.

In particular, relating to my thing here: How ought one to live in a world of conflicting goods?

In regard to this part however…

…you’re right. This is not the answer I am looking for. Why? Because it is basically just another intellectual contraption to me. It’s not really about understanding actual human interactions unfolding in a particular context construed from conflicting points of view. In noting the material interactions in the brain [chemical, neurological] when we experience something, we are still at a loss in understanding whether this knowledge includes or precludes human autonomy.

We just don’t know.

After all, in a determined universe, what does it mean for all practical purposes for us to speculate about where the shadow end sand the light begins? It will happen only where it was ever always going to.

Once my own mind begins to acknowledge the possibility of that, however, then it seems reasonble to assume that all of my subsequent thoughts feelings and behaviors become merely the next dominoes in line. Just like yours.

Still, my own mind [here and now] is not able to sustain any degree of certainly at all about this.

Okay, but if this exchange itself is “imprisoned” in the laws of matter unfolding only as the laws of matter necessitate, then the arguments themselves are only as they necessarily could have been.

Around and around we go. If I change my mind only because my mind [as brain matter] was only ever going to change in sync with the laws of matter, what is that change but more of the same?

At times, you strike me as someone who, in charging others with not answering your question, is more concerned instead with others giving you the right answers. Your answers. Also, the assumption seems to be that my wanting to is within my capacity. If I really wanted to, I would. Even though I am still not certain that my wanting to do anything is embedded in what is deemed by some to be my “freedom of choice”.

Let’s try this: Note what you construe to be the most important question here that I have not answered.

How does any of this make the gap between what you and I think we know about these relationships and all that can be known about them go away? Until that is grasped how on earth would anyone be able to determine if and when the discussion is moving forward.

Think, for example, of sending astronauts to the moon. A hundred years ago, what the human race knew about building a rocket and a capsule that could accomplished that, was not up to the task. But over the decades that gap was closing. Increasingly, we could determine if if the discussions moved forward because the science and the technology really did become demonstrably more sophisticated. And then we reached the moon. Mission accomplished.

But how much closer is the human species to bridging the gap between what we know here and now about human autonomy and all that there is to know in order to in fact demonstrate once and for all that we possess it.

And that’s before we get to the part that most interest me: the relationship between human autonomy and human morality.

And, come on, what could Nietzsche tell us definitively about that?

What are you suggesting here…that while acknowledging that, like me, you recognize the gap between what you think is true in your posts here, and all that can be known about existence itself may be significant, you’re “at peace” with that?

Okay, then good for you. Me, I can’t imagine a sense of equillibrium or equanimity here given that gap. I can only resign myself to the fact that soon enough I will tumble over into the abyss that is oblvion and be bothered by it no more.

I don’t myself imagine some God or some transcending “mind” up there/out there that “I” will somehow become a part of. It’s still just an essentially meaningless world on this side of the grave and the obliteration of “I” for all time to come on the other side.

Unless, of course, someone here can persuade me to think otherwise.

Okay, but to what extent was my choice to either eat or not to eat cornflakes [like my choice to either post or not to post these words here] within my capacity to not make?

For me compatibilism seems to revolve around the assumption that a choice has been made and a meaning has been concocted for that choice — but there was never any possibility of it ever being any other way.

Thus, from my frame of mind, Ecmandu can take comfort in the fact [if it is a fact] that there was never any possibility of him not posting what he does.