What the hell? There is no ghost in the machine that would allow for free will. Who is introducing an intermediate position of self that is not part of the deterministic process? I AM IN AGREEMENT WITH YOU. If there’s any problem with our communication, it needs to be improved upon because we’re basically on the same page.
to think about this really hard; you’re telling me that everything that’s happening around me in the world is compelled by natural forces to be what it is, when it is, as it is, except this thing called ‘choosing’, which is a special kind of event unlike all the other events in the world, that is not subject to the same natural forces.
I am having a hard time believing that this is what you’ve gotten out of my posts. The only thing I’m saying is that human beings are different than dominoes in that they have choices, dominoes don’t.
this is the agency you’re introducing here, the ‘self’,
Of course we have agency. Who else is making choices but you? When you choose what to eat for breakfast is it something other than you making the choice?
which you’re saying is what is responsible for the physical actions of your body following the event of ‘choosing’. you’re saying that this ‘choosing’ somehow magically escapes and transcends the causality that affects everything else in the world.
That is not what I’m saying. I’m saying that we are compelled to choose one thing over another if there is a meaningful difference, but it is not forced upon us by by a past event. We live in the present therefore everything happens in the present using our memory of the past to influence our choices in the present. To say the past caused us to act in a certain way is misleading. Where am I magically escaping from causality? The problem with the word “cause” is significant though. Have you even tried to understand what is being said before disputing it?
you know who else did this? descartes. we call it substance dualism, and by that we mean that ‘consciousness’, or the 'soul’.
The fact that will is not
free demonstrates that man, as part of nature or God, has been
unconsciously developing at a mathematical rate and during every
moment of his progress was doing what he had to do because he had
no free choice. But this does not mean that he was caused to do
anything against his will, for the word cause, like choice and past, is
very misleading as it implies that something other than man himself
is responsible for his actions. Four is not caused by two plus two, it
is that already.
l’, or the ‘mind’… three words that are notoriously turned into metaphysical concepts by philosophers… and we say that this second substance is ontologically different from the other substance, physical stuff, and therefore exempt from the causality that the physical stuff is under the jurisdiction of. descartes had a helluva time explaining how these two things - the self and the world - can interact causally if they’re two distinct substances… an impasse that spinoza later pointed out.
I don’t know where you got the idea that this is dualism or two distinct substances. Everything we do comes from the brain but the mechanism that causes us to move in the direction of greater preference cannot be found through dissection. We cannot pinpoint greater satisfaction directly therefore it can only be observed indirectly through inference. There is nothing supernatural about this finding.
how does a ‘choice’ cause an ionized particle to cross a membrane? is this some harry potter shit because i didn’t read the books or watch the movies.
Why are you choosing to put “greater satisfaction” in the same category as a pool ball, or any situation that can be traced to a single cause? That’s not the way human agency works because there are many factors that lead to greater preference. This is not that difficult to understand unless you are bent on proving him wrong without actual proof. It’s sad that the people who have the greatest capacity to understand this simple equation make it more complicated than it is because they can’t believe it’s that easy.
so you’re a closet cartesian (or ‘clotesian’) if you believe that ‘choices’ aren’t also the effect of some prior state of affairs and/or events in the world, but instead a different kind of event that is caused by something other than natural forces.
Please stop putting words in my mouth. You are stuck in a certain way of thinking which makes it hard for you to grasp the simplest of explanations. Are you forgetting Occam’s razor?
the ‘self’ is nothing more than a kind of temporarily sustained bundle of sensations, perceptions and impressions. it’s not some concrete thing that exists unaffected by the changing, empirical world. and just like every other natural process or body, it too acts, changes and develops under the influence of natural forces.
Absolutely, but we are not caused to do anything without our permission. That’s all I’m saying but you’re making much to do about nothing because you can’t believe it’s that easy. If a well-known philospher came onto this site and said this author was correct, what would you have to say then? You would respond differently.
you’re right… the premise ‘something other than yourself is forcing a choice upon you’ is not true, but not because it’s false. no seriously. there are some statements that can’t be true or false because they make no sense…
Huh? It is either true or false, because it definitely makes sense. Determinism, as it’s presently defined, implies that we have no choice due to the fact that the choice has already been made since the Big Bang rendering us impotent and making a mockery of contemplation.
and this is one of em. there is no ‘self’ in the philosophical sense that you’re meaning it, so that statement can’t be true… but it can’t be false either.
There is definitely a self that we call “I”. We don’t have to say each time that our biology, our neurons, our brains did this. We can just say 'I", as we can call a table a table without having to go any deeper in the table’s make-up.
the fact is, i could not have chosen to put ketchup rather than arby’s special sauce on the curly fries i just ate, but this doesn’t mean i am passive… because there is no ‘I’ here to be passive. the saucing of the curly fries - natura naturata - followed from the necessity of nature naturing itself… of the fries saucing themselves. remember what nietzsche said; there is no subject ‘fries’ and predicate ‘sauced’. there is only the saucing. to separate the saucing from the saucer is only a convenience in language.
Just because this idea came from a respected philosopher such as Nietzsche does not make it right. I am different from you. Ketchup is different from arby’s special sauce, and you cannot use the excuse that you are the killer and the victim because there is no difference. Language plays an important part to distinguish real objects from another. There is a definite separation because these items are separate entities that language is identifying. Language doesn’t create an artificial division unless the word being used to describe an object has no real object to describe. This is like creating heaven using the word when no such corresponding accuracy can be detected in the real world.