Peacegirl,
Let’s come back to this:
You state that the deterministic law of world peace is the highest law in existence.
For millions of years, hominids have never been confused by a real law, the law of gravity …
Yet, a law that you claim to be a higher law than the law of gravity is a law that NOBODY obeys !!!
So there are one of two possibilities here for your “law”
1.) because it’s the highest law in existence and nobody follows it, it’s a proof of freewill
2.) it’s not a law
Remember what she is proposing cannot be proven at this point in time since it has yet to happen
This means there is no absolute guarantee it will happen and something else could happen instead
Well put.
It seems that people have certain predispositions that can manifest in anti-social behavior given the right conditions, but to say that people are born evil or psychopathic is without scientific proof.
I didn’t say that. I said that man’s will is not free and that when the corollary to this invariable law is put into practice, world peace can be achieved.
That’s only because we had to believe in free will as part of our development, even though man’s will has never been free. Your comparison doesn’t fly. Just because we were never confused about gravity and we were confused about free will, doesn’t automatically negate determinism.
Once again, your premises are ridiculous. We don’t follow it because the principle of no blame is counter-intuitive considering that our entire justice system (the best in the world) is based on the belief in free will. But the time has come where we have been given a better way. Why are you so resistant when you haven’t even studied the principles? You are too sure of yourself.
It is a natural invariable law that no one can escape because there are no exceptions. That’s why it’s a law.
I appreciate the time it took to respond to this long post, but I am going to take a pass. A lot of it is repetitive and we just don’t see eye to eye. You keep saying I blame you, and I don’t. You keep saying these are assumptions that have no real capacity to demonstrate, which is false. Chapter Three gives a clear demonstration of how this law works when applied to the environment. You keep saying this discovery has no foundation without understanding what is behind existence itself, which is not true. You keep bringing up autonomy (free will) as if we can step outside of the laws that created us. I keep saying that it’s a false dichotomy because we can have determinism and be autonomous according to the definition given in most dictionaries. You keep talking about conflicts that you believe can never be resolved. You say it’s just a frame of mind that I have concocted in order to feel good about the author, his discovery and all the peace and prosperity heading our way as a result of them, which is completely bogus. I have concocted nothing. You haven’t shown a shred of interest in the book which is why you don’t understand a shred of it. I know nature didn’t allow you to, and that’s okay. But because we have such different perspectives, I don’t think there is any way we can move forward, therefore I’m bowing out of our discussion. It was a good run and I wish you the best. 
First of all, given that Einstein is described here …
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious … #Free_will
…as a “strict determinist”, I would ask him if he believed the discussion we were having would and could only unfold as it must. Given how he is said to believe that “human behavior was completely determined by causal laws.”
I would then probe his thoughts regarding Hitler and the Manhattan Project. If human behavior is in fact completely determined by causal laws, was not the entire Second World War [up to the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki] inherently and necessarily in sync with the laws of matter? Going all the way back to the explanation for existence itself?
Besides, try as I might, I still don’t really understand all the technical arguments he made in his arguments/theories regarding the “space-time continuum”.
But the thing about Einstein is that his arguments could be tested empirically. Experiments could be conducted, predictions could be made, results could be replicated.
And your author? Where on earth is the equivalent of this in his own work? How has he taken his world of words, intellectual contraption assumptions about free will, determinism and a “progressive” future and provided us with an assessment that can in fact be brought down to earth and shown to be applicable to the behaviors that we really do “choose”?
The fact that you are so obsessed with “definitions” speaks volumes to me. In my view, you believe that words mean only what they must mean in order to sustain [psychologically] the comfort and security you derive from this meaning “in your head”.
No one is disputing this, but the word “cause” is misleading. I’m not going to repeat myself.
The results of this knowledge can be replicated although its difficult due to the fact that we cannot easily isolate the variables in a free will environment. But it can be falsified. If, under the changed conditions (which involves much more than not blaming) people can move in the direction of striking a first blow, then it will be proven wrong.
This author made no assumptions. None whatsoever iambiguous. He was correct about determinism and the book is exactly that: an assessment that can in fact be brought down to earth and shown to be applicable to the behaviors that we really do “choose”. You haven’t read it so you can’t respond to my comment intelligently.
Give it up! All he did was clarify a definition that is more exact. He was a stickler for clarity. His definition of determinism is correct because it reflects what is actually going on in reality. By saying nature made me answer this way, you are relinquishing the agent or “I” that made the choice. I’ve said this over and over. It’s all about clarification which is important in this important discussion. It’s more accurate to say I was compelled to make this choice, not nature made me which implies you weren’t a participant. We know that once a choice is made, it could not have been otherwise but that doesn’t mean that before something is done the choice has already been pre-planned by an external force called nature. What if you don’t like the plan? You can change it, but that doesn’t mean your will is free. You keep abdicating your responsibility, as if nature is this thing that forces you to do what you can’t help but do. But you can help but do, if that is not the choice you want to make. Where is this a world of words iambiguous? You are accusing him of things he is not guilty of. The entire book is a practical application of how these principles work.
The first thing some will note about this point is that it reflects precisely the sort of thing that would be raised by those who do believe in free will. You appreciate the time I took because you had the option not to appreciate it but chose instead to appreciate it. You have now decided to take a pass on continuing the exchange because you were able to think through the discussion and, of your own volition, decided it’s time to end it.
Whereas from my frame of mind, given my own understanding of a wholly determined universe, not a single letter of a single word that I am typing here and now could ever have not been typed.
Only, sure, another part of “me” scoffs at this, convinced that, in a manner no one really understands fully, “I” am capable of choosing the words that I type. Even if I am compelled [by the laws of spelling] to chose particular sets of letters to comprise them.
Again, as though in the moment before I repeat myself “I” am somehow crucial to bringing that about. But the moment after I repeat myself, my free will is really gone.
Maybe someone else might be more successful in explaining this to me, but, until then, it remains nonsensical.
I’ll leave it to others to decide for themselves the extent to which you do in fact hold others responsible for not completely agreeing with the author’s discovery.
They can’t of their own free will choose to read his book, but it clearly seems to exasperate you to no end that many of us here don’t “choose” to read it.
Maybe it just comes down to how we define “blame”.
And note just one example of where the author his demonstrated that his discoveries are on par with the manner in which folks like Edison and Einstein demonstrated both the use value and the exchange value of their own discoveries.
You claim this…
Sum up the manner in which this is demonstrated. Note an argument that is free of the mere assumptions he makes, of the definitions that others must first agree to accept.
In my view, only someone very, very naive could possibly believe this. Or are wholly compelled by nature to believe it.
This part:
[b]It would be like physicists discovering that the multiverse does in fact exist, and someone insisting that, for the purposes of their own discussion, they want only this universe to be relevant. Even though the existence of the multiverse might have profound implications for our own universe.
Or like someone living in Flatland able to demonstrate the existence of our own three dimensional world, and dismissing that as irrelevant to all that might be understood regarding the relationship between these two worlds.
Or like someone who was raised to believe their Christian beliefs were based only on the Old Testament alone, discovering that the New Testament existed…but then dismissing that is irrelevant to a discussion about Christianity.[/b]
How is this not applicable to your claim about the discovery in the context of all that can be known about existence itself?
No, that is what you do. You posit the laws of nature but somehow “I” is able tweak them. And then eventually enough of them will have been tweaked to usher in the author’s own rendition of the Brave New World. Only this time with real “peace and prosperity”.
The dictionary. The ultimate world of words.
Then back to the extent to which any of the words you “chose” here…
…had any possibility whatsoever of either not existing at all or of being different words.
Was there that mysterious moment “before” you chose them when it might have become something other than what it, in fact, now is…or was nature wholly embedded in the sequence of experiences that is your own particular “I” going all the way back to the day that you were conceived.
So, are you choosing to bow out here as those who embrace autonomy might construe this juncture, or has nature compelled you to “choose” to do what you were only ever able to.
From my frame of mind [and that’s all it is], you are just another in a long string of objectivists I have come across over the years in venues like this one.
Your arguments are construed by me to be but another existential rendition of this: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=185296
Though, of course, my own narrative here can only be seen in much the same way.
Anyway, to the extent that I have not been able to convince you that “I” is largely an existential contraption down in a hole all busted up, you remain intact. You are still able to think yourself into believing something that, in the end, comforts and consoles you. And in a world that is bursting at the seams with so many fucking things that do anything but.
Whatever works I always say.
I’ll have to look at the links. I’m not an objectivist. So many things are subjective and relative. The “I” or self gets to choose, although the choice is never free because life can only take us in one direction. The “I” is not a contraption down a hole all busted up. The “I” is part of the causal chain, but remember the word “cause” is misleading since nothing can cause us to do anything we (the “I” that we use to identify ourselves) choose not to do. Moreover, we can’t go back to one cause that has one effect, like a domino. When it comes to human choice, there are many factors that affect choice, which we consider every time we deliberate. Bottom line: We are compelled to move in the direction of greater satisfaction, not less satisfaction, from moment to moment. He explains this in more detail in Chapter One.
Peacegirl,
To be respected, there are three things you must represent:
You must be logical
You must be reasonable
You must be sympathetic
You have neither of those three traits.
This whole philosophy will be dumped in the wastebin of human output
Which is why all entities and particles and quanta are “valuings”.
What a sore loser! 
Interesting and very relevant!! 
never happen. this is the way of the future. you just can’t comprehend the strange wisdom of the girl in the magnesium dress.
Frank Zappa was never a good philosopher and composer.
Beethoven was.
Beethoven accomplished two amazing feats in his life:
He separated music from the church.
He facilitated musicians to be supported by their own works.
Even people like Bach and Mozart were commanded by the church to only play certain notes together …
Beethoven moved the church so much with his music, that it changed its policy.
Now get this: Beethoven was still in the generation of patrons, he was dirt poor…
His music was so good that even a generation later, through both concerts and selling his music, Liszt lived like a king.
Beethoven modernized, to a large extent, by himself, all of western culture …
Compared to that, frank zappa contributed nothing except experimental music … lots of people have done that.
Im glad you think so Peacegirl. I hope this concept will be of use to you in the development of your theory. I think we are somewhat likeminded.
Hey, awesome, this happened to me a few times too:
Maybe so, but if you’re a serious philosophy student this wouldn’t be enough. I can’t do more than I’m doing. If I can’t people to read even if they skip the introduction, then I guess they won’t learn what this is about. I am bending over backwards already.
If somebody is a professor who is teaching philosophy, then he/she would do that. But most people are not going to invest that much time because they have other interests and other things to do.
True, and I’m not getting any younger.
I’m trying my best. I’ve already gone over why man’s will is not free, but when it is accepted to be true, once and for all, then we can reap the benefits as we extend the corollary, Thou Shall Not Blame.
I’m not asking about that.
If this law is immutable, there will be no afterwards because no one will desire to strike a first blow without justification. But in order for this to work, we must remove all of the things that justify retaliation, and there are many.
Number one, he won’t desire to kill her, but in this world he may desire this and may take the chance if he believes he won’t get caught. But for us to get to the point where no one wants to kill anyone, we have to remove the hurt that allow people to justify what they’re about to do.
It is a deterrent to know that the serious consequences of going to jail or the death penalty will be enforced, if caught, but not everyone heeds these threats.
These things will not occur because the environment in which children are raised will be so different that the thought of gaining at someone’s expense or hurting someone in any way will not even enter their minds. There are some mentally ill people and they may be so far gone that their conscience no longer can control their behavior therefore they may need to be institutionalized, but as a new generation is born into this new world, mental illness will be virtually wiped out.
[/quote]
duplicate
On the contrary, you’ll repeat yourself if nature compels you to. On the other hand, how could you possibly know here and now what nature will compel you to do tomorrow or next week?
Yet, as is often the case here, you speak of yourself doing something in the same manner as those who embrace free will would!
Sure, just as I do. But that’s because I recognize how profoundly problematic my own understanding of all this must be. How on earth could I possibly know for sure that my arguments on this thread reflect some “final truth” about a conundrum that has baffled our species now for thousands of years?!
But, okay, what is your own rendition of cause and effect in regards to Einstein’s participation in the Manhattan Project? Was he or was he not determined by the laws of matter to write that letter to Roosevelt? What caused him to? Was there ever a possibility that he could have chosen not to? Was there ever the possibility that, given your own understanding of cause and effect in the human brain, the decisions made by all of those involved leading up to Hiroshima and Nagasaki might have resulted in a different outcome?
What on earth are you talking about here? Einstein’s knowledge or the author’s? Note an actual context involving human interactions that might allow others to actually substantiate your claims here
Yet more baldfaced assertions about him without a shred of documentation to back them up.
Let’s try this: Note what you construe to be his most convincing argument such that others do not have to fall back on either the intellectual assumptions he makes about free will or on the definitions that he gives to the words in the argument itself.
And note how cause and effect works inside human brains involved in interactions with others in which value judgments come into conflict. My own “thing” here. Imagine, for example, arguments before the Supreme Court in which it is being decided if Roe V. Wade is to be struck down. Here in America.
How might this…
“…an assessment that can in fact be brought down to earth and shown to be applicable to the behaviors that we really do ‘choose’”.
…be demonstrated in that courtroom to be true? In regard to behaviors being chosen by women who see themselves as burdened with unwanted pregnancies.
And I readily agree that human brains will be compelled by nature to “choose” particular thoughts and feelings and behaviors in that room. But will anyone there actually have chosen anything at all that is not entirely in sync with the laws of matter?
Is there something crucial about the matter that comprises the human brain begetting consciousness begetting “I” that makes it very, very different from all other matter?
That’s the part that still utterly stumps us. Or, rather, stumps those of us who haven’t concocted one or another intellectual contraption to neatly explain “everything”.
In my view, the author’s narrative is just another rendition of James Saint’s RA/AO TOE. Or the stuff being accumulated here: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=195009
Or the dogmatic assumptions about how nature always trumps nurture embedded in Satyr’s declamations over at the Know Thyself clique/claque.
Objectivist mentalities of this sort are everywhere on philosophy boards.
It’s all about believing in some overarching human reality – it can be anything! – that allows you to anchor “I” into/onto one or another psychological foundation. It’s about how believing it in and of itself is the whole point.
That’s the font for whatever comfort and consolation it brings you. In my view, you’re just one of the few who don’t take the more standard leap to one or another denominational God.
Unless of course I’m wrong.
Note to nature:
Compel me to admit that I am wrong. That she is right. And soon please.
You’re wrong. Nature can’t compel me if I don’t want to repeat myself.
I don’t know what will give me greater satisfaction at every moment until that moment arrives.
Maybe so, because many philosophers believe if you have a choice, that is the definition of free will, although it’s not.
It’s a conundrum because you didn’t make a discovery. He did. Are you going to resent him for this and call his discovery an intellectual contraption because you can’t believe it’s possible?
I have always maintained that nothing could have been done any differently.
I told you that this knowledge can be substantiated when the bridge is built, so to speak. If people can still hurt others under the changed conditions, then this discovery would be false.
You’re right, it can’t be documented because we are not in the new world. We live in a free will society of blame and punishment. There could always be a simulation on a small scale, although it would be hard to set up since it would involve finding a community that would incorporate these principles. Applying the corollary, as well as removing the hurt and economic insecurity that now exists, will result in a new world based on an accurate blueprint, just like having the right mathematical equation to build a bridge, (even without the bridge having been built yet) will support the cars crossing it.
OMG, they are not assumptions. They are inferences based on astute observation. I’m sorry if you don’t like the fact that there is no autonomy if you mean by this word, FREE WILL.
Again, in the new world no one is going to tell you what to do. There is no right and wrong in many of these gray areas and, just like abortion, it will be be up to the mother because no one will tell her what she must do. There will be no Supreme Court run by a few humans that make these decisions. But like I said, people will not be in the same position they are today where abortion becomes the lesser of two evils.
You are projecting what you believe will be an issue in the new world based on what is happening today. You can’t do that.
No iambiguous. Please stop making it seem that I am describing anything other than determinism.
You still don’t get it and I’m tired of trying to get you to get it.
Just because he explains that nothing external can cause us to do anything against our will, and that we are compelled to move in the direction of greater satisfaction (which is why our will is not free), does not make it an intellectual contraption. You are trying to put him in some kind of box.
Who said nature always trumps nurture? I think it’s the other way around. We have a certain nature and when it’s nurtured, we get a healthier environment.
But this is more than a belief. The only overarching human reality that is important here is that man’s will is not free and what this means for our benefit.
It is definitely comforting to know that we are moving toward a world of peace, but that does not mean the discovery is false just because it makes me feel good.
You are!
You don’t have to admit you are wrong if you don’t think you’re wrong. If you read the chapters, you might prefer of your own free will or desire, to admit you were wrong after a better understanding of what this law can actually accomplish.
Thanks for shortening your post.