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.