Something Instead of Nothing

But Biggy, don’t you realize that you might only be saying this because you were never able not to say this?

Ok, it’s just… you seem to really, really, really like to emphasize the laws of matter making us think, say, and do stuff.

See, this is the problem, Biggy. No one knows what kind of response you want. I said I’m not troubled by it (I forget what “it” is at this point, but that doesn’t matter). You asked: what if autonomous aliens pointed out that I could never have not been troubled by it? And you want me to respond to that. Well, ok. I respond that nothing would change. I would still not be bothered by it. The only light this would shed would be that I couldn’t help but to not be troubled by it. Still… I would not be troubled by it.

You seem to expect that the idea of not having a choice in the matter would somehow change things. Like now I am troubled by it.

Yes. If you want to rephrase your question in terms of brain matter evolving from mind, be my guess, but I’d think by now you know what to expect from me–one of those metaphysical limbs.

It says that my particular “I” cannot determine it either.

First of all, I’m not sure what your answer is. Do you just mean the belief that mind evolved from matter?

Second, I wouldn’t put it in terms of “being closer to the truth”. Rather, I would say “making more sense”–and only in regards to specific philosophical puzzles. It’s a theory primarily designed to solve the mind/metter problem, and it has far reaching implications for the nature of existence–ironically, answering the question: why something rather than nothing.

All I claim is that with my theory, the questions of how consciousness comes out of brain matter, and what is existence and how did it come to be, don’t arise. That is, they are answered. But this is different from the claim that my theory is right, that the answers it provides are actually true, that they match the state of reality outside the cognitive picture of reality it paints. I cannot say how close or how far away the theory is to that, or whether the essential nature of reality is such that a cognitive model like my theory can be said to be “close” or “far” from matching it.

Think of it like an riddle: what gets wetter the more it dries? If you think to yourself “a towel” you suddenly have a theory about what the thing is, and that puts the question to rest. However, you could still go to the person who posed the riddle and ask: is it a towel? In other words, you don’t actually know that you got the answer right, you just have a answer that meets the criteria of the question. So you don’t know if the answer is close or far away from the truth, just that it makes sense.

My theory is not designed to answer the question of whether we are determined or free. It’s like asking: how does Einstein’s theory of relativity make it any easier to understand how life began on this planet?

When things are demonstrated one way or another, this changes a person’s “side”. If what relativism says is: X is true according to a person’s “side” (where “side” just means someone’s beliefs, point of view, picture of the world, etc.), and if demonstration has the power to change a person’s side, then X remains true according to that person’s previous side. It’s just that he doesn’t take that side anymore.

According to the geocentric model of the universe, the Sun orbits around the Earth. Today, nobody believes in the geocentric model of the universe. It has been demonstrated wrong, and we have switched “sides”. Still, according to the geocentric model of the universe, the Sun orbits around the Earth.

Something like that. I’ve always thought that a belief in an afterlife was a way of making us feel that reconciliation will come. It’s not just the comfort of knowing that we will never really die, but that everything will be made right somehow. All wrongs done to you, all the misfortunes and missed opportunities, all the unfairness, all the disappointments. A chance to finally get what you deserve (Heaven) or a chance to start over (reincarnation). It’s a way of coping with the unbearable prospect that life just isn’t fair… period.

Here, I’m a lot more closely aligned with your views. I too believe the “I” fragments and disintegrates upon death, but unlike you, I don’t believe in an absolute oblivion. I believe experience continues but there will be no “I”. It parallels the body. The body, after death, decays and rots away. But it’s not as though the matter that makes up the body disappears into a black hole. The molecules, atoms, and elementary particles that make up the body continue to exist and get dispersed into nature–some being carried off by the wind, some being consumed by other organisms, some mixing in with other elements, etc. I believe that there will be a continuum joining our experiences while we’re alive with those of the universe after we die. Our minds will disintegrate into “pieces”, like the body into atoms, and transform into qualities that merge seamlessly with those of the universe, like the molecules of the body merging back into nature. There will be no more experience of “I am gib” or “I remember my childhood” or “I am a computer programmer” or “My favorite food is pizza”–all thoughts and experiences once connected to our individuality or personal identity will be gone–unimaginable experiences that only the universe can have will replace them.

On a surface reading, most people I describe this to say it sounds relatively peaceful (although some don’t)–the thought of “becoming one with the universe” sounds kind of like a “heavenly” experience–but formally speaking, I always say that what the experience is like is totally unpredictable. It may be blissful, it may be hell. It may be something completely unimaginable. So formally speaking, I don’t know how I should feel about this. It’s a big fuzzy question mark in my mind.

In fact, it takes an incredibly dark side according to which we ought to be terrified of death and strive to stay alive as long as possible. According to this view, the universe gave way to evolution as a means of escaping itself, of creating organisms that could function relatively independently from the rest of itself, and thereby maintaining an inner microcosm sheltered from the outer macrocosm, a sanctuary in which to rest from and forget the pain of being existence… at least for a short while.

Biggy, have you ever considered that your pain might be due to something as simple a bad brain chemistry? Maybe you’re brain just isn’t producing enough dopamine. I mean, we all fall into bad moods. We all get depressed. And we always attribute it to something–the first things our brains can reach for–some will blame their misery on politics, some on the state of war and poverty we see the majority of the world in, some on their family, how they were never loved, some on their job and how under-paid or under-appreciate they are. But then they have better days. They have a good night sleep and wake up in a better mood. Still, that doesn’t change anything. The world is still full of war and poverty, they still have the same job, their family hasn’t changed… but someone, now in a better mood, they shrug it off and say: life goes on, or: yeah, it’s all pretty bleak, but there’s hope that things will get better. You know how it is when you get drunk, right? All of a sudden, life is great and you love everyone around you. Did life really change in the course of a couple hours of drinking? Did everyone around you suddenly become that much more lovable? Or did your brain chemistry just change. You wonder why I could agree with everything you say yet not be troubled by it. Might it not be just differences in our brain chemistry? Maybe happiness has absolutely nothing to do with the state of the world, or whether we have the answers to the most profound metaphysical questions, but rather just what kinds of juices our brains our cooking.

If you think there might be anything to this, you might want to see a doctor about medication. ← Just something to think about.

We’re going in circles…
Allow me to try and summarize what has been said between us thus far in the hope that we can make progress.

Given determinism things can and will only play out one way… there is no possibility of anything big or small to be or have been any different.
But unlike fatalism, in determinism everything that does happen determines what happens next…

So imagine a row of dominos… you knock down one and then you watch the causal chain knock down all the others, the outcome is a foregone conclusion.
I say that if we take ourselves to be “one of these dominoes” it would not be inaccurate to say “we knocked down the the next demino”… that without us the outcome would be different.

Your response to this seems to be to question whether or not our role in this scheme ever was a matter of “choice”… since we could not have done any different
To which I respond by saying that our ability to do otherwise is irrelevant to it being a “choice”… it’s our will that makes it a choice…
And while you can argue that we could never have wanted anything other than what we wanted, I would argue that it was no less what we wanted.

We cannot be free from ourselves…

It’s how we are put together. It’s our navigation tool… we model the world and we simulate the forces at play in order to predict the outcome of our actions, then we “elect” the actions that have simulated results that are preferable to us.

It’s a process in our brains… given determinism the result of that process may well be predictable… but the process still takes place.

My exchanges with you have consisted of any number of questions and answers. And statements. And when you accuse me of having nothing to say about what you write, I’ve learned to just reconfigure that into not having said the thing that you would say instead.

But, okay, let’s zero in here on the specific thing you say that I ignored.

This?

Until the word and the defintion and the meaning are implicated in questions [contexts] such as those I raised above, what are we really pinning down?

Pick one of them and we can explore the actual existential parameters of the word “rational”. In other words, how people actually use the word “for all practical purposes” in discussions and debates relating to the lives they live.

All I can do here is to appeal to others:

What crucial point is he noting here that I keep missing? As it relates to connecting the dots between the words “rational” and “abortion” and “moral obligation”.

It’s almost [to me] as though his posts have now become an exercise in irony.

We can say [or believe] anything. But how is it then noted that one definition allows us to demonstrate that any particular abortion either is or is not moral?

What might that “clear” definition be? Or, again, are basically talking about Saint’s “definitional logic” here?

Clearer? In what sense? In what context? Or are things always “clearer” with regard to issues like Communism when others think about it in exactly the same manner that you do?

The very embodiment of the objectivist mind. Though even here [on this thread of late] assuming this mind is arguing autonomously.

No, not if you just assume that “characteristic thoughts of rational people” are always in sync with your own thoughts about it.

Or, again, sure, I’m missing your point.

You want to have a discussion but you can’t or you won’t even pin down the meaning of one word. A word which you use repeatedly. A word on which “demonstrations” and “obligations” hinge.

What does ‘rational’ mean?

Is this your own rendition of repartee? :wink:

It is precisely what might be the case here that philosophers and scientists and theologians have been grappling with since matter first evolved into minds like theirs. Or since mind first evolved into matter, as you seem to suggest.

Actually, what I like to emphsize most of all is the gap between what any particular one of us might claim to know about the relationship between the laws of matter and the things we think, feel, say and do, and all that actually can be known about the existence of existence itself.

The only kind of response I expect is one that either nudges my own thinking in the direction of that response or it doesn’t. The alien is pointing out that you had no capacity to not not be bothered by it. But that changes nothing, true.

The difference however [from my frame of mind] is the hypothetical assumption that the aliens can choose autonomously to be or not be bothered by something. Thus if you were somehow able to leave the planet earth and be in a part of the universe where the human will is not just on automatic pilot, you would grasp the disctinction more clearly.

It’s like the folks in Flatland. They are compelled to view the world through two dimensions. But there actually does exist a three dimensional world. And for all we know [re string theory] there are many more dimensions besides.

If nothing changes other than in the manner in which it must change in a wholly determined universe what does our choosing to change something mean? Our minds are matter able to broach it. Mind-boggling matter in other words. Unless there is in fact a component of mind able to choose autonomously.

Matter into mind or mind into matter, what really changes? What you and I think about it either “metaphysically” or “psychologically”, is either within our capacity autonomously or it isn’t. But how “on earth” do we go about determining that given either assumption?

And that would seem to be where all of us are stuck. We can only determine it to the extent that the human mind is even capable of determining why there is something instead of nothing. And why this something and not another.

It’s just that we are among the few folks around the globe who give it a go. Most just leave all this stuff to God. We create these fascinating discussions, but some of us speculate on how futile it all might be. And that’s beofre the part about oblivion. Or the part about the is/ought world.

Any answer that I might give may or may not be subsumed in a universe that allows for only one answer. And that answer may or may not be in sync with the answer. Though almost certainly not.

I just speculate that this is the case for all the rest of us too.

And “belief” is always my point. That gap between what we believe about the relationship between mind and matter and all that we cannot possibly know about it given all that can be known about it if the human mind is even sophisticated enough to know something like that.

And then I like to point out the gap between a “general description” such as this and attempts to bring words of this sort out into the world of actual human interactions.

Okay, fair enough. I can’t possibly ask more of you than this. You are making an attempt to grapple with it. And, as a result of that, I might in time learn from it. Or not. I’m just hopelessly ambivalent [here and now] about whether the things that I choose, I choose autonomously such that I will have learned from it only because I freely chose the right things. The things that allowed me to learn from it.

Again, I can only respect that. It’s just that, in regard to that which most intrigues me philosophically – how ought one to live? – I have to grapple in turn with whether or not I was ever even really free to be intrigued by that.

Thus, from my frame of mind, matter from mind or mind from matter…what’s the difference re dasein, conflicting goods and political economy?

But in the either/or world [assuming there is one] there is a right side and a wrong side to choose. One’s answer is relative to that which can in fact be demonstrated to be the case for all rational human beings. With human minds, however, one can still be convinced that the wrong answer is the right answer “in his head”. And, most crucially, he behaves in accordance with what he thinks is true. And it is human behavior that precipitates actual consequences.

It’s just that given my own assumptions in the is/ought world there does not appear to be an essentially/necessarily right or wrong answer from which to choose.

But here [far and away] God is the belief of choice for sustaining comfort and consolation among the true believers. And it really isn’t necessary at all to even demonstrate His existence. That’s the whole point of having faith in Him. Either through one or another religious denomination, one or another Kierkegaardian leap or one or another rendition of Pascal’s wager.

Instant karma in the next world.

Here of course all there is, is someone [anyone] asking you to demonstrate that what you believe is true is in fact true. And then to the extent that this might provide some measure of “comfort and consolation” – peacefullness – for some and not for others. But it’s still more than I am able to conjecture: “I” desintegrating back into star stuff. Not completely gone, but, come on, who is kidding whom.

If there is any comfort at all for me it resides precisely in that unimaginable gap between what “I” think I know here and now and all that must be known in order to know for sure.

There is only dying and finding out or dying not finding out.

Thus…

Yeah, sure. Grappling with this necessarily takes us in many directions. On the other hand, the same could be said about our pleasure. About anything we think, feel or do. In a wholly determined unverse in which mind is brain is matter in sync with those alleged immutable “natural laws” nothing is not going to be subsumed in necessity.

Clearly that is one way to look at at. Just as there are clearly other conflicting narratives. But how does that fit into “I” interacting with “we” interacting with “them” interacting on this particular planet in this particular solar system in this particular galaxy in what may or may not be this particular universe going back to something instead of nothing going back to the reason it is one rather than another going back to or not going back to God.

But there it still is: the profoundly problematic mystery that is mind. The human mind especially.

But who really knows how many extraterrestrial minds might be out there who could take this exchange in directions that none of us have ever even imagined. Perhaps never could have imagined.

Okay, I am typing these words here and now because I chose to do so. I chose to do this rather than watch a movie or take a nap or make a sandwich. But, in your view, this is not the same as holding to the fatalistic belief that “all events are predetermined and therefore inevitable”?

Even though “I” am embedded in what must happen given the laws of matter, “I” am compelled in turn to convince myself that without “I” there was no possibility of anything big or small being any different than they in fact had to be.

“I” am in sync with the universe. And even after “I” am dead and gone, the matter that constituted my mind is still a part of the universe.

And that’s consolation enough?

Maybe. But I am still unable to really wrap my head around the difference.

The quandary however would seem to revolve more around the extent to which it can be determined that in choosing to set up the dominoes in one way rather than another, “I” was either doing this with or without some measure of autonomy.

I’m still back to this: the dominoes were set up by me but I was never really able to set them up other than as I was compelled to given that the matter embedded in “I” is no less in sync with the laws of matter than the matter embedded in the dominoes.

All I can say is that this assessment “works” for you in a way that it does not for me. Calling something that we could not have done otherwise a choice is like arguing that the heart chooses to beat. That the heart “wanted” to beat.

This is just another intellectual contraption to me.

Again:

“Apply this to yourself. Describe how it is applicable regarding your own interactions with others. How are you stuck or not stuck given the extent to which you can grasp why you chose some things but not others.”

Let’s bring the discussion out into the world of actual flesh and blood human interactions. We choose different things. Why? And how are these choices understood differently by those who embrace determinism, by those who embrace fatalism and by those who embrace autonomy.

If you google “rationality in philosophy” you get this: scholar.google.com/scholar?q=ra … i=scholart

So, down through the ages, any number of very, very intelligent minds have grappled with pinning down what “rational” means.

My own philosopihical bent however revolves more around taking these technical, epistemological, scholastic meanings out into the world of human interactions such that we can discuss and debate the extent to whether particular things that we think, feel, say and do can be described as rational or irrational.

And then the extent to which these descriptions are or are not only that which we were ever able to convey in what may or may not be a wholly determined universe.

To me rational means something that can be demonstrated to be true for all of us. Going all the way back to an understanding of why there is something and not nothing. And why it is this something and not another.

Yeah, I can google stuff but I was trying to get information from you.

Determined or non-determined would appear to have nothing to do with the meaning of ‘rational’.

I will assume that by “something” you mean thoughts and actions since objects can’t have the property of being rational.

Right away, you have the problem with ‘demonstrations’. It’s difficult to demonstrate a lot of things. For example, you can’t demonstrate advanced mathematics and science to people who are not intelligent enough to understand it, even if those people can be considered ‘rational’ in every respect. So who are you demonstrating it to? Other mathematicians and scientists. Right? The demonstration is only accessible to a small group.

Also, it’s usually difficult to demonstrate perfectly ordinary events. If I say that I say a deer on the road today, then without photographs, video or other witnesses, I have no way to demonstrate it. Does it mean that it’s an ‘irrational’ statement? No.

IOW, I suspect that a definition of ‘rational’ based on demonstration is not workable.

Then there is the difference between true/false statements and rational/irrational statements. A rational statement may well be false.

Again, that seems to have nothing to do with meaning of ‘rational’.

Well fatalism discounts your actions and choices as being deterministic of your ultimate fate… that some things were always meant to be, whether you ran into traffic every chance you got or only sat at home playing video games, those fated things would happen.

Determinism states everything that happens is determined by everything that happened before… so your thoughts, actions and choices would very much play a role in determining your ultimate fate, but those same thoughts, actions and choices would too have been determined by previous thoughts actions and choices as well as the influences of the outside world etc.

People who believe in autonomy as distinct from determinism/randomness believe themselves to be supernatural, imposing their will on the natural world through their bodies but remain, partly, apart from and immune to the influences of the natural world and thus remain autonomous. They have trouble reconciling neurological disorders, the effects of drugs and brain chemistry with this view and often contort themselves into odd shapes to try and maintain it… either by denying those things and instead claiming other supernatural forces at play, claiming that such brain manipulations only make it difficult or impossible for us to command our bodies, but our will and mind remain intact or some other such invention.

Now having said all that…

I have to ask you… what is the minimum requirement for a choice?

Let’s say a man has a woman and her baby held hostage at gunpoint and gives you two options, which you magically know to be true:

  1. He shoots you, then he kills both of them right here and now in front of you as you bleed out
  2. You ask him nicely… and he will let them go, hand you the gun and turn himself in to the police

Now you could argue, that those are only options if we discount you… you being who you are and having the values that you do, would (I hope) “chose” option 2 every single time without fail. That this is a foregone conclusion and would be perfectly predictable to anyone who knew you in the least.

Yet those are still options, no?
and that remains a choice, no?

So let us say that we take ourselves to be part of our brains…
You may ask yourself, should I go make myself a snack or sit here and read MMP’s post, given determinism are those even choices?
If we discount your character (in this case those brain parts), do you have options about what to do next?
The answer is yes (even given determinism)… but just like the example above, if we knew your character well enough… the choice would likewise be perfectly predictable.

You suggest that this seems like a trick of language… but I honestly fail to see how.
The one making the choices is YOU… So if your character should turn out to be immaculately definable and thereby perfectly predictable… how does that in any way change the nature of choice?

amazing, it is best post of the forum. ( for me only ) leave everyone is side. cuz ( lol ) im not any supreme being in the heart of everyone else. ( including ants and 8.4 million forums of life )

And I told you above:

To me rational means something that can be demonstrated to be true for all of us. Going all the way back to an understanding of why there is something and not nothing. And why it is this something and not another.

Note to others:

Can any of you make sense of this? How does one discuss the question of human autonomy without bringing it out into the world that we live in? Without making at least some attempt to differentiate between that which is deemed to be or not to be rational thinking, feeling, saying and doing?

What really important point here is he trying to yank me in the general direction of understanding? And how is that point in turn yanked down from the clouds of abstraction and rendered meaningful to the lives that we live?

I mean that in the minds of all of us are things that we believe are true and things that we claim to know. And as long as you don’t interact with others, you can go to the grave smugly believing and knowing these things.

Though, sure, for some there’s the part about God. The part where He judges what you think you believe and know on the other side of the grave.

Now, as soon as you interact with others, however, there’s the possibility that what you think you believe and know is not what they think they believe and know.

So, for all practical purposes, what else is there but our capacity to demonstrate [in whatever manner] that which it appears all rational men and women would seem to be obligated to believe and know. How else could we possibly interact socially, politically and economically in the least dysfunctional manner?

But then we’ll still need a context, right?

It’s just that on this thread there is also a discussion revolving around whether any of these posts were ever able to be anything other than what they are.

For example, reconfigured given that at the time of posting we could have freely chosen to change our minds about something and posted something else entirely.

True. Some things are considerably more difficult to demonstrate than others. But my point is that in the either/or world a demonstration is always possible. Why? Because the objective truth is either one thing or another. Then it’s just a question of a mind like Newton’s reconfiguring historically into a mind like Einstein’s reconfiguring historically in a mind like…?

Ah, but then there’s the is/ought world, right?

I have addressed this point before. Yes, even in the either/or world we would still need a God around. And that is precisely because mere mortals are not themselves omniscient. There are any number of perfectly rational beliefs that are beyond our demonstrating.

For example, look at how many juries believed that sending someone to death row was the right thing to do because they believed he was guilty “beyond a reasonable doubt”. Then it was determined later [with new evidence] that he is innocent.

Mere mortals will always be constricted in this sense. But the crucial point [mine] is that there is in fact an objective truth able to be determined by the right minds in the right set of circumstances. Joe was murdered or he wasn’t. Jim committed the murder or he didn’t. The fact that different people have conflicting beliefs about it doesn’t make the truth go away. But that’s why Gods need to be invented. He knows EVERYTHING!

But let’s shift the discussion back to the deer. The deer in the road having been intentionlly shot and killed by a hunter instead accidentally by a car. Is the killing and consumption of deer a rational behavior? What might be the objective truth here?

Okay, but we will still need an actual context in order to substantiate what we think we believe or know.

I can only assume here that you are making a point that is beyond my comprehending.

The word rational came into existence here on planet earth when the human brain evolved to the point where it could find that word useful in subsisting from day to day. Do this, don’t do that if you want to stick around. And then eventually the minds of men evolved to the point where philosophy was invented and the word rational became a component in the epistemologists toolbox. The part embedded in all of the discussions here: scholar.google.com/scholar?q=ra … i=scholart

But how on earth [and throughout the rest of the universe] could this not somehow be connected to an understanding of why there is something instead of nothing, and why it is this something and not another?

Okay, let’s leave it there.

I’ll let you figure it out if you think that it’s important.

Would I? What’s the difference between how the illusion of free will feels and how the real thing feels? What is it about the real thing that would make the distinction more clear?

So you’re saying there’s things about the real thing (real free will) that we who don’t have it can’t even imagine?

It means we aren’t really choosing (not rocket science).

Be my guest.

Thank you!!! :smiley:

That’s right. So it comes down to that which is powerful enough to persuade a person to change his or her mind, and that which will never be powerful enough to persuade a person to change his or her mind.

Weren’t you just asking out of curiosity?

Biggy, I was being serious. Put your questions aside for a sec, and give what I said some thought. It’s one of the rare moments when I’m trying to help you. Take it. Although you’ve most likely thought of this tons of times before, you also keep bringing up the fact that you feel stuck in this dilemma of yourself, that life is not made peachy and rosy by it. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you’re depressed. See a doctor. Maybe you need medication. I’m not bringing this up as just another statement to be thrown into the philosophical mix. I’m serious. If you’re as bothered by this as you claim to be, I think you need help.

For all practical purposes, this is basically a distinction without a difference to me. If I was never able to not run into traffic or sit at home playing video games, what difference does it make what we call it? If my “thoughts, actions and choices” are determined by my previous “thoughts, actions and choices” are determined by my previous “thoughts, actions and choices” are deterrmined by going back through the evolution of life on earth going back to whatever brought into existence the existence of existence itself, then it all seems to be unfolding only as it ever could have.

Again, the difference being that no matter is quite like brain matter. That’s still the main quandary to me. How can – how did – matter evolve into minds able ponder such things as this?

Well put. But, in my view, it still doesn’t pin down whether or not these “thoughts, actions and choices” are in sync with a brain wholly in sync with the laws of matter.

“Magically know to be true”? I don’t really understand your point. Mine is this: that whatever I choose, I am either not able to not choose it, or I am able to act autonomously on the values I have accumulated existentially and make what most will insist is the “right” choice.

Let’s consider a hypothetical I raised with Gib…

Imagine that earth is in a part of the universe where everything – everything – is wholly determined by the laws of matter. Aliens from a part of the universe where autonomy prevails note the option that I chose. They are freely debating among themselves whether that was the right thing to do while pointing out that in making the choice myself, I was never really “metaphysically” able to choose other than what I did. But: my brain/mind has deluded me into thinking that “psychologically” I freely chose either 1 or 2.

Why not? Mindless matter interacts only as it must. It doesn’t choose to act. But mindful matter embodied in the brain is able to convince itself that it can and does choose among multiple options.

But if it was only able to convince itself to choose the only possible option for this particular brain/mind in this particular context, it’s not at all a choice in the manner in which choosing is contrued by those convinced that mind has somehow evolved to acquire autonomy.

Discount my character?

I don’t follow this. If we were only able to either discount or not discount it, and this was inherently embedded in the evolution of all the matter that came before that choice, it was only ever going to be what it only ever could have been. The illusion of freely willing to or not to.

An “immaculately definable” character? What “on earth” does this mean? Note a context in which human interaction unfolds. How would you describe this given the choices that are being made? And how would it be “perfectly predictable”?

As for the choice, is it in fact just an inherent manifestation of nature having evolved into the human brain, or is there something in this brain that takes matter to a whole other level?

And how on earth can we know the answer to something like this assuming we do have the capacity to make the choices we do of our own volition.

Done.

Done.

Note to others:

Seriously, how can anyone actually imagine that the gap between what we think we know here and now and all that there is to know about the existence of existence itself, is not of fundamental importance?

Back to this:

There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know.

And though Rumsfeld [as I recall] noted this in connection to the war in Iraq, it is clearly applicable in turn to an ontological understanding of Reality itself.

You switched to something else again.

You changed from “understanding of why there is something instead of nothing, and why it is this something and not another” to “the gap between what we think we know here and now and all that there is to know about the existence of existence itself”.

Do you not notice that you do this? Are you just unfocused? Are you intentionally trying to attribute a position to me that I don’t actually hold?

We can easily miss the forest for the trees… which is more and more what I suspect is going on here.

A mountain is, just like an ocean, made up of electrons neutrons and protons and if we define them by the “matter” that makes them up… we can fool ourselves into thinking they are exactly the same thing.

But they are not exactly the same and they are not defined solely by the “matter” that makes them up, this kind of reading is a form of sophistry…
It’s how that matter is organized that qualifies something as stone or water, and the volume of it that makes it a mountain or an ocean.

So too with people. We are not merely “neurons” or “brain matter”… we are a particular and very complex organization of neurons and chemicals and more fundamentally protons, neutrons and electrons…

You can organize things in such a way that you create a system. Systems, as you complicate them, are governed by ever more distinct rules than their fundamental building blocks.
Protons, neutrons and electrons have rules but the biological systems that are made up of those things have their own set of distinct rules, then the organism made up of biological systems have their own rules… and so on and so forth.

We are many layers of systems deep when we get to human brains… so trying to understand how humans work by looking at how protons, neutrons and electrons work is at best a tremendous misunderstanding of our nature.

I must admit I’m beginning to suspect foul play on your part. “magically know to be true” was a weird thing to get hung up on and confused by as it was tangential to the question I posed you…

But in case this was an honest misunderstanding and my question wasn’t clear, I’ll ask it again differently.

What is the minimum requirement for an act of choice?

Could you be given options such that the “choice” you will make between them is a given?
Like say “you are an empathetic person” might be one of your characteristics.
So when given the option to torture someone for the fun of it or NOT torture someone it would be a foregone conclusion that you would choose to NOT torture?

In other words can you have characteristics that would make certain choices a certainty? As in you cannot logically posses this characteristic and simultaneously make a different choice.
If so, would that mean it was never a choice?

Mad Man p - a warning. I have never observed any honesty in Iambiguous’ approach, no intention to do justice to his conversation partners.

He is on here to score “hits”. His own thread, the mundane irony thing, consists strictly of titles of commercial products and some inane non comment on each of them. He is here strictly for the Google bots.

You’re about the two hundredth person to try to talk to him with a lot of good will and you’ll come out of it like all of us - pissed off at how someone can be so empty.

I was reading through your posts and felt I might as well inform you. He is here to steal your energy for the hollow purpose of bot-fame. A species of parasite that the Internet brought forth.

Edit-
But I suppose you must have been here before, having joined in 2005.

I was not here.
-“Bill Clinton”

Now there will be a “note to others” in guous’ next post.

Well, that would depend entirely of course on the extent to which the aliens are able to demonstrate that where they reside autonomous minds do in fact exist. Although even here you may or may not have the capacity to grasp what they tell/show you. Or the whole experience might be encompassed in a sim world or in a dream or while on LSD or because your brain was damaged in some manner.

After all, can mere mortals ever really be certain of anything until they are able to comprehend the existence of everything?

I’m saying that anything that I might say or that you might say here would seem to be necessarily embedded in Don Rumsfeld’s “unknown unknowns”.

But if we don’t have free will anything that we imagine would seem to be only that which we were ever able to imagine.

The autonomous aliens note that we do in fact choose. Just as, when we watch something on TV or at the movies, we note the characters on the screens choosing. But they choose only that which the directors [and the writers] compel them to choose. Their choices are scripted. So, the questions we need to ask here are these: are the choices that we make scripted by God? by nature? by our own free will?

Me, I don’t know. I’m not really sure what to believe. “Deep down inside” I’m still convinced that I am in possession of at least some measure of volition. But in the dream I just woke up from I was just as certain of that then.

Again, that might be God or the immutable laws of matter embedded inherently in nature or…or what?

Sure, the power might revolve around my own autonomous mind. My capacity to think something through and arrive at the most rational conclusion. After all, look at the technology around us. Some folks were unequivocally able to make choices that brought it all into existence. And I’m sure they would accept no other explanation but that they accomplished this because they freely made the right choices.

And there will in turn be those who accomplish nothing in life able to convince themselves that this is only because they were never able to accomplish something.

So, beyond all doubt, which one is it?

Was I ever able not to?

Here [once again] the assumption is that how you construe all of this is somehow more reasonable than the manner in which I do. And that if I will only try harder to understand your own frame of mind, I might be helped. All the while assuming in turn that this exchange is unfolding “metaphysically” only as it ever could have, producing human minds able to convince themselves “psychologically” that it is all unfolding instead because they choose for it to unfold one way rather than another.

And even though this choice is really just an illusion it is still no less a choice.

Unless, perhaps, you are just being ironic? :wink:

Depressed? Hardly. I have many, many distractions that bring me tons of fulfilment. Here and now. But there it is: oblivion. Getting closer and closer. And a “frame of mind” on this side of the grave having convinced itself that human existence is essentially meaningless in an is/ought world in which I have brought into existence [in my head] the components of a moral philosophy that is either entirely grim or entirely liberating.

I don’t wallow in this sort of thing. But the questions truly do fascinate me. Just as they fascinate others here.

Only my “I”, unlike your “I” and their “I” is considerably more fractured and fragmented. And, therefore, as long as I don’t bring you over to my point of view, you can sustain a measure of “comfort and consolation” that continues to escape me.

I merely speculate that, in an autonomous world, it is this soothing psychological frame of mind that is actually behind their philosophy.