This frame of mind speaks volumes regarding what may well be at stake here.
If we live in a world where [in some measure] human autonomy is embodied in this exchange then your clarification and my making an effort to hear it can [presumably] be judged freely by others here. Your clarification reflects what in your autonomous view is rational and I am able to finally grasp that or I have freely chosen a less rational perspective.
On the other hand, in a wholly determined universe there was [again presumably] never any possibility that this exchange could ever be anything other than what it is. And then the choices that we do in fact make come to constitute this “psychological freedom” embedded in the “metaphysical determinism” of the human brain as matter interacting with other matter only as matter can.
That we choose becomes more important than the fact that we were never able to choose anything other than what we did. Psychologically we think we are free [even though we’re not] and that’s not nothing.
And some argue that what you aspire to say in making reasonable arguments you were never able not to aspire to.
The “faculty of reason” is no less mechanical in the matter that constitutes human interactions than is the matter that constituted the recent earthquake in Anchorage.
Only our matter is able to convince itself that it is choosing of its own volition how human interactions unfold.
There is no equivalent of a brain in the earth quaking.
Brain matter appears to be everything here. How could mindless matter have possibly evolved into it. In part that’s why the Gods are always around. God is, after all, one possible explanation.
Okay, but common ground here is not necessarily the equivalent of the objective truth. Philosophical discussions and debates about “free will” and “dualism” have been churning now for centuries. What then is the “common ground” that allows us to finally know once and for all how rational men and women are obligated to think about it.
Bring this general description down to earth. Note a context in which flesh and blood human beings make choices. Choices that either do or do not come into conflict. What can be demonstrated to be reasonable here? And how is it demonstrated that what we all agree is reasonable based on “common ground” assumptions, came about because we either chose freely to accomplish this or because it was never really able to unfold other than as it did?
Instead, I get this…
“Not caring about” what others think here depends entirely on whether or not that is actually an option. And on whether the option is only the illusion of choosing it freely.
And, here again, everything depends on the extent to which [in an actual context] we are able to point to important things overlooked or things that were failed to be adressed. Such that an objective truth can be determined.
But how on earth is this really applicable in regard to either value judgments in a world of conflicting goods or to questions as big as the “free will” debate?
Some insist that things are important here that others insist are not important at all. Some insist that things were overlooked that others insist ought to have been overlooked.
But the only way we can explore these things more fullly is by taking them “out into the world” that we live in.
Instead, I get this…
General descriptions X 4.
Let’s do this.
You pick the context. You note the behaviors. You note the choices that people make. Then one by one we can explore the points you raise above.
Both in terms of whether [philosophically] it can be determined [in the is/ought world] how rational people ought to behave, and then the extent to which it can be demonstrated that they either were or were not able to choose what they did freely, autonomously, of their own volition.
In other words…
Note to others:
Insanity? Spotting imposters?
Is there something here in this particular “general description” that is pertinent to the suggestion I made about bringing it out into the world of human interactions?