New Discovery

that nigga beet ain’t got shit on his majesty Cletus Awreetus-Awrightus and the Grand Wazoo

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6peaCMIFyI[/youtube]

After You put ‘duplicate’ , ambig posted , and then I posted Right, and followed it partly, by asserting some points he made. I noted that it was indeed posted, and wondered how it came to be deleted, for even if I had, I would have had to fill the post with something.

But never mind Peacegirl, and things happen, nevertheless it made me wonder, and may have been caused by a technical quirk.


I have just read the third chapter and agree that there is absolutely nothing to fear in death

There is something to fear, that one committed the sin of commission, that is You could have done something for another soul that You failed to do, because of that fear that you did not overcome.

The fear was evidence of a lack of love , and the proof in the pudding is, that love does not know fear.

Are you sure that you understand what Iambig is saying?

You repeatedly reply to his point in this way - as if “your want” gives you some measure of control. But that really doesn’t make sense because you will want whatever ‘nature’ makes you want.

In a determined world, you don’t get to choose your wants, desires or preferences.

Peace girl,

Why can’t You see this in a different way, rather then using ‘strict’ determination based on ontology, psychological relativity of preferred method of describing trends, 'leaning toward conclusive but probabilistic notions to support determined situations, contextual divergences, supplying relative ideas of mixed willful/ determined phases of both?

An either/or juncture develops with absolutely defined conditional reductive nominal consequance-ism where the reductive effort toward simpler explanations fail, because a reduction toward psychological explanation failing, the threas gains contradictory interpretations.
Why? Because reductive arguments can not be supported by emotive wished for conclusions: not because it’s lack of validity, but because reductionism does not, can not entail it’s derivitive, for psychologisms can not derive an ontology.

It’s chasing it’s own tail . as it were, at the very least, as shown by the structurally preoccupied linguistic considerations.
This was mentioned above, I can’t remember where but I will search it out later on, today.Generally , the structural interpretation of language appears to express some need for cohesion or compatibility with the philosophy of mind. I will try to come back to this later today, this being an initial , early morning effort.

The fact of derivation is relevant and important here, because the derivation flowed from metaphysics to and through psychology , and not vica versa. inductive reasoning uses probable options to approximate the differing usage , filling in variables likely appropriate as the most possible factual choice.- In the original schematic constructive integrative route that is to be deconstructed so it can be approximated.
The deconstruction is caused by the lack of cohesive certainty, as a structural foundation, which came about by the break up of meaningful demonstrations, where strict determination can be shown to be conditionally be based on absolute and absolutely intrinsic causitive factors. This here, simply can not be shown, and the foundation can not support such a route our minds can re-route.
Its like the little girl who left home dropped pieces of bread on the road, so she will have a sign of her route retraceable on her return, only have them eaten up by birds.

These general concepts rely on the language analysis which I earlier referred to And in a like manner , will try to retrace, in order to be able to support my point.

Further note: the reason I am writing in ''philosophic language’s, is, that if it was not for that , I could never try to recreate the patterns of reasoning which got me here. (The route which later, as I promised, will try to re route and return to-so as to be able to reduce it to ‘sensible’ under-standing.)
So it us of primary reason that I have to understand myself.

Another way to put this is to say that you will, in any given moment, find yourself with a set of desires, wants and preferences. We can set aside where they came from, because that doesn’t matter…you got them now. Now someone could argue, well I can choose to aim for new ones…Sure, you can. But then the choice will be determined by those wants, desires and preferences you have now. And no baby out of the womb is choosing its desires, wants and preferences…so we wake up, in time, finding ourselves with a set. And that set determines the next one. If the determinists are right. Like water running down a hill, changing course due to gravity and the shape of the hill. Choices happening like the weather.

I’m glad you agree about nothing to fear in death. Many people don’t. What he explained in the last paragraph was just a prelude to Chapter Ten, Our Posterity. I am curious as to why you had no comment regarding the subject matter of Chapter Three. I mean if this principle can help prevent carelessness that kills large numbers of people every year, that’s a very big deal, and you made no mention of it at all.

No side has to apologize. This was not meant to be a devisive post. It was meant to show that there is a better way even if the world as it stands, is all that it can be at this time.

There is a difference between nature making me do something, and nature causing me to want to do something due to my preferences. Obviously, our wants, desires or preferences are not of our choosing. The difference between the two statements is huge. When you say nature made me do this, it implies that nature is an entity that is forcing me to make a preset choice, which may be opposite from the choice I prefer to make. We have no control over what we we choose (in the direction of greater satisfaction), but the difference is that we, as the agent, must give permission to those choices. We know that if will is not free, the choices we make are beyond our control, so how could we have any measure of control? But it is important to understand the other side of the equation that nothing can make us do what we make up our mind not to do, for over this we have absolute control. This ability does not grant us free will, just to clarify.

[i]The government holds each person responsible to obey the laws
and then punishes those who do not while absolving itself of all
responsibility; but how is it possible for someone to obey that which
under certain conditions appears to him worse? It is quite obvious
that a person does not have to steal if he doesn’t want to, but under
certain conditions he wants to, and it is also obvious that those who
enforce the laws do not have to punish if they don’t want to, but both
sides want to do what they consider better for themselves under the
circumstances. The Russians didn’t have to start a communistic
revolution against the tyranny that prevailed; they were not compelled
to do this; they wanted to. The Japanese didn’t have to attack us at
Pearl Harbor; they wanted to. We didn’t have to drop an atomic
bomb among their people, we wanted to. It is an undeniable
observation that man does not have to commit a crime or hurt
another in any way, if he doesn’t want to. The most severe tortures,
even the threat of death, cannot compel or cause him to do what he
makes up his mind not to do.

Since this observation is
mathematically undeniable, the expression ‘free will,’ which has come
to signify this aspect, is absolutely true in this context because it
symbolizes what the perception of this relation cannot deny, and here
lies in part the unconscious source of all the dogmatism and
confusion since MAN IS NOT CAUSED OR COMPELLED TO
DO TO ANOTHER WHAT HE MAKES UP HIS MIND NOT
TO DO — but that does not make his will free.
In other words, if someone were to say — “I didn’t really want to
hurt that person but couldn’t help myself under the circumstances,”
which demonstrates that though he believes in freedom of the will he
admits he was not free to act otherwise; that he was forced by his
environment to do what he really didn’t want to do, or should he make
any effort to shift his responsibility for this hurt to heredity, God, his
parents, the fact that his will is not free, or something else as the
cause, he is obviously lying to others and being dishonest with himself
because absolutely nothing is forcing him against his will to do what
he doesn’t want to do, for over this, as was just shown, he has
mathematical control.

[/i]

Nature doesn’t end at the skin. We are nature. Our insides, desires, flesh, intentions…are nature. It flows forward. Inevitably. If determinism is the case.

Exactly, but when you say nature made you do this, it’s not an accurate expression

I don’t think the term “sin” is accurate here. We, as social beings, were created to help each other when there is a true need, which turns out to be the key to the economic system. But often it is the case that we are expected to comply with another’s request not because there is a true need, but because it’s easier for them to have others do their dirty work. Are we expected to be selfless to prove we are loving?

I don’t understand a lot of the philosophic language or patterns of reasoning that you’ve presented, since I’m not familiar with it. Therefore, I will need a translation in order for me to respond intelligently. :confused:

Not sure what you mean. Maybe you can expound on it.

Can you give me an example?

I like that analogy. We cannot identify absolute intrinsic causative factors that can be traced back because it’s almost impossible to know all of the factors that lead up to an individual’s preference. Identifying a cause/effect relationship is not possible because there are many variables that lead a person to choosing one thing over another. I’m sure if you’ve been following this thread you would also understand why the word “cause” is misleading. Meno, thanks for your input. As I mentioned in the previous post, I am trying to understand your reasoning even though it’s a challenge because I’m not well versed in some of the language. I hope we can overcome this barrier. :slight_smile:

It had to be a technical quirk because I never saw your post. If it was ambiguous’s post, you should be able to find it. I can’t delete other people’s posts. You said you seconded what he was saying in part, right? I don’t remember seeing your comment or I would have responded, especially if it was a question for me. I would never censor anyone, but I have blocked people in the past who were throwing around ad hominems.

Above you pointed out that you had “chosen” to end this exchange. Now you have “chosen” to resume it.

So, did nature compel you to flip-flop here or were you in fact able to choose to “choose” to reverse yourself?

In other words, regarding the part I do not understand, what was unfolding inside your head before and then after these two “choices”? How is free will – the lack of it – understood by you in both instances?

But how are these words not in turn just more of the same: the embodiment of nature compelling you to “choose” them. How is your expression of appreciation different from how a free will advocate would encompass it? The inflection [to me] is basically the same.

Also, I have no clear understanding at all of what particular point nature has compelled you to make. As usual [with you and the author] it’s just words defining, then giving meaning to, then defending more words.

Which just takes me back to the distinction made between “choosing” words and choosing words.

Or: Before I do something, I am compelled by nature to embody the only option that is in sync with the laws of matter.

Or: Once I am compelled by nature to choose the one behavior that is in sync with nature’s inherent laws, my “reponsibility” [perceived by both myself and others] becomes just another necessary manifestion of reality unfolding only as it ever could have.

Again, I am compelled by nature to ask: What choice do you have in reacting as you do other than in how nature compels you to? Instead, you settle for this mysterious “choice” that your own particular “I” has in the moment before the choice that you make is finally understood by you to be the embodiment of no free will.

So, in terms of an actual context preciptating actual choices precipitating actual behaviors, show me where/how the author has demonstrated empirically that someone wanting to do something is not in turn just a necessary adjunct of his or her brain complying with the laws of matter.

Instead…

And here is your exceedingly thin response:

This is really all you have to fall back on, isn’t it? You simply keep repeating the mantra that the author doesn’t need to close that staggering gap between what he thinks he knows about free will among the human species here on planet Earth and how the existence of Earth itself somehow fits into staggering enormity of the task involved in grappling with an understanding of our own existence in what may be a multiverse encompassing an infinite number of universes.

You don’t go there in my opinion because that puts a gigantic crack in the edifice that has become the discovery that has become the very foundation onto which you anchor all that is purposeful and meaningful in your life.

Just as for years, I too resisted abandoning first God, then Marxism, then the “authenticity” embraced by existentialists as my very own foundations.

Trust me: I do know what is at stake here for objectivists of all stripes.

Then, the part that truly baffles me:

Yet despite this, you cling to an “agency” which you claim to possess even though this agency “for all practical purposes” changes nothing regarding the things you think, feel, say and do!

Others here might perhaps try to make better sense of this for me. Because your rendition simply makes no rational sense to me given my own understanding of determinism.

No, you can’t literally go backward, but you can imagine determinism in a particular way and go back and speculate as to how your own understanding of it would for all practical purposes impact on the choices you made before, during and after they are made. For me, “no free will”, no autonomous “agency” exist from start to finish. For you however there seems to be some manifestation of actual agency that reconfigures into no free will only after the choice is made. But nothing is “prevented” unless it is in sync with nature unfolding inexorably [per its laws] as it must.

That’s the part that I am not yet compelled to latch onto.

Thus:

Over and over and over and over again: precisely the sort of observations and suggestions I would expect from someone who believed that their preferences and the direction that their sense of satisfaction goes in, was embodied in an agency embodied in at least some measure of free will.

Only they are convinced that they are choosing these things of their own volition, not “choosing” them only because nature wholly compels them to.

Always you want it both ways. You topple over only as nature compels you to, but unlike the domino it is absolutely vital for you to believe that you participate in “choosing” to. Nothing at all changes in terms of what you must think, feel, say and do…but at least nature has evolved for you into an “I” that does “choose”.

It doesn’t work that way for me. Instead, it is only profoundly mysterious. How can mindless matter evolve over billions of years into a lifeform possessing a brain possessing a mind culminating in a self-conscious “I” wholly in sync with the laws of matter and be able to actually grasp that!!

The hard guys are, of course, groping and grappling to understand that experientially, experimentally, scientifically, empirically, materially, phenomonologically, etc… Their discoveries are not predicated solely on intellectually self-serving assumptions and defintions.

The only question is whether this in and of itself is but another manifestation of wholly natural compulsions.

It doesn’t matter that there are “many factors that affect choice, which we consider every time we deliberate” if all of them are wholly in sync with the only possible reality that can unfold in a nature that includes the matter we call mind.

Consider:

The Boeing 737 is made up of 367,000 parts. And not a one of them chooses a damn thing.

The average human brain has about 100 billion neurons. And each of them works in sync with all of the others to embody an “I”. But how [in tandem] do they encompass an “I” that either does or does not possess the will to choose freely among options?

No doubt about it, the parts of an airplane were thought up and assembled by the parts of our own brains. But the distinction between not choosing, choosing and “choosing” here is far, far, far, far from being wholly understood, settled.

Except for objectivists of your ilk. However you are compelled to understand the profound mystery embedded in the fact of existence itself, you are compelled in turn to insist that others had better damn well better concur with it. Otherwise…

They!
Are!!
Wrong!!!

Right?

I’m merely compelled to suggest that this frame of mind is more in sync with the manner in which I am compelled in turn to keep coming back to this part: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=185296

I’ve never really understood how some folks are able to “think” themselves into not fearing death. Not unless they are able to “think” themselves into believing in God, immortality, salvation and divine justice.

Or unless their life becomes so riddled with terrible pain and suffering, they yearn to die just to be done with it.

Or maybe “fear of death” is not the right way to put it.

If your life here and now is bursting at the seams with many more good things than bad things, then dying takes all of those things away. And, if you are not a believer in God, they – like you – are gone forever.

Me, I’ve found things that give me an enormous amount of pleasure, satisfaction, fulfilment. The last think I want is for oblivion to take them all away. So, in that respect, I certainly dread the prospect of dying.

On this thread though the dread is either something I have some measure of control over or it is but another inherent manifestation of my wholly determined “I”.

But, again, imagine understanding the evolution of matter able to become self-conscious of it’s own demise. Autonomically as it were.

How to explain that?!

And, once again, peacegirl puzzling over why someone doesn’t mention something that can only be mentioned by someone when nature compels them to.

Nature didn’t compel me to flip-flop as if it forced this on me, no. I thought that you wouldn’t post anymore but when you did it gave me greater satisfaction to answer you.I don’t like to intentionally ignore people. I may still still bow out if your posts are repetitive and I don’t think there’s any progress being made.

What was unfolding inside my head was before I said I was going to bow out was basically frustration with the lack of progress. Haven’t you ever said you were never going to do something again, and then you did it again? I don’t have identifiable reasons why I decided to post after I posted that I was bowing out. Maybe I felt more relaxed and at that moment I changed my mind when you were the only one posting. Maybe I saw something in your post that I wanted to respond to. We can change our mind up to the very last instant before we make a choice.

A libertarian would think I had a choice, where I know I didn’t. It’s not about the inflection, it’s about the underlying belief system.

Nature hasn’t compelled me to choose something; nature has compelled me to desire to choose something.

We can’t “choose” words that are not part of our repertoire. If every move we make is not done of our own free will, and every thought is not done of our own free will, we have no choice in anything we do. Contemplation is also part of the causal chain, which moves us in only one direction.

You can put it that way.

That’s perfectly fine to say, although “your responsibility perceived by others” is a judgment that will not occur under the changed conditions.

No, you are misunderstanding. Before you do something that requires serious thought, you contemplate, right? There is no mysterious “I” that comes to a decision. All I am saying is that this law prevents the act of crime BEFORE it takes place, not AFTER. Why? After contemplating should I rob this person or not, for example, the desire to rob will be less satisfying than not to. If this person chooses not to rob, do we need to do those things that were required in a free will society such as incarcerate, rehabilitate, punish, seek justice and recompense?

to be cont…

So, in terms of an actual context preciptating actual choices precipitating actual behaviors, show me where/how the author has demonstrated empirically that someone wanting to do something is not in turn just a necessary adjunct of his or her brain complying with the laws of matter.

Instead…

And here is your exceedingly thin response:

This is really all you have to fall back on, isn’t it? You simply keep repeating the mantra that the author doesn’t need to close that staggering gap between what he thinks he knows about free will among the human species here on planet Earth and how the existence of Earth itself somehow fits into staggering enormity of the task involved in grappling with an understanding of our own existence in what may be a multiverse encompassing an infinite number of universes.

You don’t go there in my opinion because that puts a gigantic crack in the edifice that has become the discovery that has become the very foundation onto which you anchor all that is purposeful and meaningful in your life.

Just as for years, I too resisted abandoning first God, then Marxism, then the “authenticity” embraced by existentialists as my very own foundations.

Trust me: I do know what is at stake here for objectivists of all stripes.

Then, the part that truly baffles me:

Yet despite this, you cling to an “agency” which you claim to possess even though this agency “for all practical purposes” changes nothing regarding the things you think, feel, say and do!

Others here might perhaps try to make better sense of this for me. Because your rendition simply makes no rational sense to me given my own understanding of determinism.

No, you can’t literally go backward, but you can imagine determinism in a particular way and go back and speculate as to how your own understanding of it would for all practical purposes impact on the choices you made before, during and after they are made. For me, “no free will”, no autonomous “agency” exist from start to finish. For you however there seems to be some manifestation of actual agency that reconfigures into no free will only after the choice is made. But nothing is “prevented” unless it is in sync with nature unfolding inexorably [per its laws] as it must.

That’s the part that I am not yet compelled to latch onto.

Thus:

Over and over and over and over again: precisely the sort of observations and suggestions I would expect from someone who believed that their preferences and the direction that their sense of satisfaction goes in, was embodied in an agency embodied in at least some measure of free will.

Only they are convinced that they are choosing these things of their own volition, not “choosing” them only because nature wholly compels them to.

Always you want it both ways. You topple over only as nature compels you to, but unlike the domino it is absolutely vital for you to believe that you participate in “choosing” to. Nothing at all changes in terms of what you must think, feel, say and do…but at least nature has evolved for you into an “I” that does “choose”.

It doesn’t work that way for me. Instead, it is only profoundly mysterious. How can mindless matter evolve over billions of years into a lifeform possessing a brain possessing a mind culminating in a self-conscious “I” wholly in sync with the laws of matter and be able to actually grasp that!!

The hard guys are, of course, groping and grappling to understand that experientially, experimentally, scientifically, empirically, materially, phenomonologically, etc… Their discoveries are not predicated solely on intellectually self-serving assumptions and defintions.

The only question is whether this in and of itself is but another manifestation of wholly natural compulsions.

It doesn’t matter that there are “many factors that affect choice, which we consider every time we deliberate” if all of them are wholly in sync with the only possible reality that can unfold in a nature that includes the matter we call mind.

Consider:

The Boeing 737 is made up of 367,000 parts. And not a one of them chooses a damn thing.

The average human brain has about 100 billion neurons. And each of them works in sync with all of the others to embody an “I”. But how [in tandem] do they encompass an “I” that either does or does not possess the will to choose freely among options?

No doubt about it, the parts of an airplane were thought up and assembled by the parts of our own brains. But the distinction between not choosing, choosing and “choosing” here is far, far, far, far from being wholly understood, settled.

Except for objectivists of your ilk. However you are compelled to understand the profound mystery embedded in the fact of existence itself, you are compelled in turn to insist that others had better damn well better concur with it. Otherwise…

They!
Are!!
Wrong!!!

Right?

I’m merely compelled to suggest that this frame of mind is more in sync with the manner in which I am compelled in turn to keep coming back to this part: ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopi … 5&t=185296
[/quote]