Okay, but unlike the matter in rocks and water, the matter in the human mind has somehow become aware that the brain is composed of all the elements that make up matter in turn. But put together in a way that appears to be qualitatively different than the matter in rocks and water.
How then to explain the difference?
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.
Even if this is entirely true, it doesn’t explain why this set of rules and not another. Or demonstrate that the rules that exist either do or do not permit human minds to choose with some measure of autonomy.
And it doesn’t encompass the optimal or the only rational manner in which to grasp our “nature” going all the way back to the “nature” of existence itself.
Basically your argument [to me] is just another bunch of words defining and defending another bunch of worlds in “general desription” intellectual contraptions that resolve nothing relating to the conflicting points of view that inundate actual human interactions out in particular contexts.
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:
- He shoots you, then he kills both of them right here and now in front of you as you bleed out
- 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.
“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.
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…
You’re the one who brought it up.
And then this part:
[b]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.[/b]
Would they not note in turn that the question you posed to me and the manner in which I chose to answer was only ever as it could have been down on a planet existing in a part of the universe in which everything – everything – unfolds only as it ever could have.
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?
Well, in a wholly determined universe, the minimum requirement would seem to the existence of matter able to delude itself that it is freely choosing among various options. Or matter having evolved into human brains actually able to precipitate a human consciousness that has somehow acquired the capacity to choose of it’s own volition.
Now, who among us here is able to demonstrate that it is unequivocally one rather than the other?
Could you be given options such that the “choice” you will make between them is a given?
Given options from who or what? God? Nature? Our own minds?
Like say “you are an empathetic person” might be one of your characteristics.
Is this a characteristic I freely chose to embody, or is the entirety of my character a material, physical, phenomenal mechanism wholly in sync with the laws of matter?
I don’t know. But you seem to think that you do. But you have no way [beyond a world of words in my view] in which to demonstrate it.
Or, rather, nothing that has so far convinced me.
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?
Some would choose to do so, most would not. Why? How do we determine the extent to which, in an autonomous world, such choices are not embedded [as I believe] in the existential contraption that is dasein? And how do I determine that the choice to bring this up was or was not the only choice that I was ever able to make?
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?
Back to the autonomous aliens. What would they suggest?
Indeed, how are the philosophical tools that we call logic and knowledge applicable in discussions such as this?