New Discovery

I just pinch my self hard now and it was not satisfactory. I knew that it wouldn’t.

Just now it gave you greater satisfaction to pinch yourself in an attempt to prove that it was not satisfactory. But it gave you greater satisfaction at that moment. Therefore, it did not prove what you think it did. Under any other circumstance it would not have given you greater satisfaction to pinch yourself.

No, I was not really thinking about having more satisfaction by proving that I am right. I believe that you can imagine such a situation.

You may get great satisfaction by trying to prove that you’re right, but you will never be able to prove it because you aren’t right. You can imagine being right all you want. When you see what this law can do to benefit our world, you will be happy.

but an explanation for the existence of the illusion is not necessary to logically deduce that there can’t be freewill. in other words we don’t need to know why the peculiar phenomena of ‘consciousness’, through which the ilusion occurs, evolved in this evolutionary process, to be able to definitively say that freewill can’t exist. these two arguments do not depend on each other.

but ‘consciousness’ is only a relatively new evolutionary feature. if what you are claiming is true, evolution wouldn’t have started until man became conscious… which is patently absurd.

there is no ‘deterministic mechanism that terminates’ because the causal process is seamless. the same natural ‘laws’ that work to affect the behavior of the electro-chemical activities that occur in your brain to make your volition possible, continue to work regardless of what kind of volition will result. ‘choosing’ to raise your right arm instead of your left does not suspend or terminate this causal process.

The point is that if everything is mechanically calculable then there was no need for conscious decision since everything simply could follow an instruction, what we assign to blind matter.

Materialists believe that consciousness is the result of matter activity, process (the process is the result of following an instruction). Therefore any conscious activity vanishes if only if at least one process stops in the brain.

i see how that point might seem curious, but you have to think of ‘conscious decision’ as something superimposed after the fact… as a part of the instruction given by the software being run by the hardware. consciousness isn’t part of another program that interacts with the program that is our body. it’s rather the last stage of a series of neurological protocols being advanced by a single set of instructions, you might say. the biggest problem the thesis of freewill is faced with is essentially ontological in nature. the thesis has to reconcile how some individual thing (e.g., the ‘will’) can exist in space/time along with everything else, and yet not be subjected to the same causal forces as everything else. and not just that, but also, at the same time, be able to apply it’s own causal forces on things in space/time. so for instance, you would say that your arm didn’t raise because of the causality affecting everything else in the universe. no, this was a special case/kind of causality. here, it was the ‘bahman’ causal force that raised the arm… and the bahman can do this because the bahman isn’t like anything else in the universe, and is therefore free of the causal forces that affect everything else.

starting to see the absurdity of the thesis of freewill?

here’s some searle for yas:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rZfSTpjGl8[/youtube]

Free will is just like the split beam experiment, where the observer changes the results.

Another way I try to explain this:

Are constrictions a bad thing? Not indicative of free will. Say that I want to smoke cigarettes forever…

I need a body with a mouth, good lungs, cigarettes and a lighter… all constrictions. But not a single one that my aspect of freewill is bothered by.

Yes, that is the problem. That is why I don’t believe in materialism. You can start your own chain of causality, as I started to write after I decide, proceed further and stop whenever you want. You are simply uncaused cause/mind.

Thanks for sharing the link. I will listen to it shortly.

One of the reasons there has been so little progress in the free will/determinism debate is the issue of moral responsibility. If will is not free our entire penal system would collapse, for it is based on the idea that a person could have done otherwise (he could have chosen not to shoot that person) and therefore he can be punished for his wrongdoing. It is also assumed that if threats of punishment were not used as a deterrent, there would be more criminal acts. But this is false. As we extend the corollary, Thou Shall Not Blame, it can be clearly seen that responsibility increases with this new understanding, not decreases. This is something that has confused philosophers down through the ages for if will is not free, we cannot hold anyone responsible for what they do. The question then becomes: How is it possible not to blame and punish the terrible acts of crime that have ruined lives? The solution, however, becomes crystal clear as we see how the problem is resolved in the book Decline and Fall of All Evil. If anyone is interested in reading the first three chapters, please let me know. I will post the link again.

outstanding, peacegirl.

this knowledge draws our attention more to the environment in which people are conditioned, rather than casually ignoring it and letting it develop in ‘any ol’ direction’ it wants. but there’s a reason why there is so much opposition to the state and its controlling hand. you say:

believe it or not, most of them aren’t confused about the implications. they (the status quo or ‘ruling ideology’) actually purposely deny the non-existence of freewill because without the belief in freewill, they’d have a more difficult time keeping people in check and under control. that, and the criminal justice system is a multi-billion dollar industry; they need criminals to make money, so they would therefore pay little attention to environmental conditioning and the excessive freedoms of capitalist/consumerist society that create the criminal class.

oh hells yeah, there’s a loooong history involved in the manufactured lie of freewill… and it all began with the bright idea; how do i control someone without having to physically touch them. ah, i create in them a conscience, and teach them that doing the things that threaten my control over them, are ‘immoral’. thus began the revolt of the master class against the working class. priests, kings, capitalists… all of em. the great architects of the lie.

c’mon, man… don’t make me read the book. the last time i read a whole book, i was in solitary confinement, and i don’t plan on going back. besides, nobody reads books today. we get the cliff notes through google. just tell me bro. gimme a synopsis.

:laughing:

Srsly bro, if this knowledge is an actual discovery, wouldn’t it be worth your time to read a few pages in sequence? I mean, I’m sure you had to read the books of well-known philosophers, if that was your major. A cliff note is like a soundbite; it won’t do this knowledge justice. You can skip chapter One (it would be helpful to read it again, especially pages 53 to the end of the chapter). Chapter Two is where the discovery is explained. Chapter Three shows how the principle would work in a real life situation. All I ask is that you take your time and don’t rush to judgment, as many are inclined to do.

declineandfallofallevil.com/ … JqSUSGT6bY

my major in school was falling asleep… then after dropping out of the eleventh grade, i majored in hanging drywall.

alright, but it better not be a mile long pdf.

There’s nothing wrong with hanging drywall. It’s an honest living!! :slight_smile:

Some people tell me it’s a little long-winded. It’s not a mile long. It’s a half mile. :confused:

uhhhh… yeah, um… well, that’s not the whole truth, peacegirl.

i’ve done two terrible things in my life which i will never forgive myself for. one is peeing in the shower when i was thirteen, and the other is exploiting workers who i employed as a subcontractor. there. i said it.

i was getting $2 a board and paying my hangers $10 an hour. they could hang 50 boards in an hour… which means i was making $80 for every hour they worked, for free.

so i’ve got a pretty checkered past and have done some bad stuff… stuff i’m not at all proud of, peacegirl. but before you go judging me i want you to know i’ve changed and sworn an oath to never do those things again.

Whether you’re making this up or not, who is judging you?

We’ve got to work on your sense of humor, PG.

Okay, but how is all of this not in turn necessarily subsumed in a determined universe? From my frame of mind, what you seem to be distinguishing in regards to “I” here is the difference between having a compelled “choice” in a determined universe and having a free choice in a universe in which human autonomy exists.

What becomes paramount for you is being able to use the word “choice”.

The same behaviors will unfold only as they were ever able to, but once we “choose” to “find” these new ways, nature will then be in sync with the future as you imagine it. It is still as though our conscious minds are the driving force behind nature’s laws and not the other way around.

Hence:

How then is it not also true of our “finding” those “better ways”? And that’s before we get to the part where, with respect to any particular set of conflicting goods, we arrive at conflicting assessments of what constitutes a better or a worse future.

For example, is the future better under capitalism or socialism? Ask the folks in these camps to explain what it means to “move in the direction of greater satisfaction”.

And this is basically the charge hurled at the determinists by the free will libertarians among us: determinism is just a frame of mind that allows the losers among us to accept their fate as beyond their control.

Again, you assert this as though those who do argue for some measure of autonomy are just plain wrong. They must be wrong because you must be right. But all of this is “proven” only by the assumptions that you make in your arguments. Unlike the physicists and neuroscientists, you [and the author] don’t seem to offer the sort of evidence that is subject [empirically] to experimention, prediction and replication by others.

You “choose” to separate the wheat from the chaff here only as you were compelled to by the laws of nature…and I’m the one who doubts determinism?

Back again to that. My desire.

Perhaps an understanding of that is embedded in this…

“You may notice that there are so to say two levels of free will. On one hand you can do anything you will – and this is undeniably the freedom of mind – on the other hand however you can’t change your will.” Arthur Schopenhauer

If you are not able to desire other than that which the laws of nature compels your brain to propel you to desire then what you “choose” is only free nominally.

The psychological illusion of freedom that is no less inherently embedded in the laws of matter.

But how are the definitions that we “choose”/“desire” not in turn subsumed in nature unfolding autonomically per the laws of matter?

Think about this. Who or what gives us this ability not to make a FREE choice? God? Nature? “I”?

We don’t know. That ever and always goes back to the explanation for existence itself.

This still makes no sense to me. If the human brain is compelled to invent the game of bowling in a wholly determined universe, it seems at best we can point out that the brain reconfigured into “I” had “chose” to invent it unlike the pins that had no “choice” in falling down.

Nothing was ever able to be other than what it must be but at least “I” am not a mindless bowling pin or domino.

If I can’t say it, it was only because I was compelled never to say it. The child will be run over only because the laws of matter set into motion a sequence of cause and effect such that the child was never not going to be run over.

That’s how I imagine determinism working “for all practical purposes” out in the world of human interactions.

But I’m the first to admit my understanding of it may well be wrong.

What options in what context?

Consider:

Jane is pregnant. She doesn’t want to be.
Jean is pregnant. She doesn’t want to be.
Jane lives in a place where abortion is strictly illegal.
Jean lives in a place where under certain circumstances it is legal.

Now, how is his point illustrated in these two contexts?

Both women are faced with the same options: to abort or not to abort. They both share equally the desire to abort.

Then there are those in the pro-life movement who share a desire to argue that the only truly moral option for both women is to give birth. One insist in turn that abortion is a sin against God.

Then there are the legal authorities set up to deal with Jane if she chooses to abort her baby.

Then there are those in the pro choice camp insisting that women must be free to control their own bodies; and that Jane’s unborn embryo is not even really a human being.

Now, in a determined universe how are the individuals in these scenarios not compelled to “choose” only that which is necessarily in sync with the laws of nature?

And, in Bahman’s free-will universe, what is the “right thing to do”?

Indeed, that’s why those more content to exchange intellectual contraptions stay up in the clouds. As soon as they bring their “world of words” down to earth the actual problematic nature of human interactions begins to complicate the extent to which their definitions and meaning can be demonstrated to be the objective truth.

Suppose in a wholly determined universe in sync with the laws of matter, the human brain, in being just more matter, compels any particular “I” to choose one over the other? And then, further, is able to compel “I” to believe that she has actually chosen of her own volition to choose one rather than the other.

How do we determine definitively which is actually the case?

After all, in a dream you could choose one over the other and it is entirely the product of the chemical and neurological interactions in the brain.

Again, in a wholly determined universe, how is anything that you want not only what you are compelled to want? How is the feeling of being “trapped” not in turn wholly in sync with nature’s way?

Then [in my view] it’s straight back up into the clouds:

What on earth does this mean?

As with choosing chocolate or ice cream above, your point is reasonable only to the extent that someone shares the definition and meaning that you give to the words used in the argument.

For all you know a wholly determined universe compelled you to define them only as you ever could have.

Or, sure, maybe not.

But how is this to finally be pinned down? Intellectually in arguments or experimentally in probing brains actually functioning?