My point is, first of all, that I am not able to be convinced one way or the other if we have free will. If we do then in the either/or world the laws of nature would seem to be no less applicable to all of us. In the is/ought world, however, The value judgments of “I” would seem to revolve more around dasein, conflicting goods and political economy. Considerably more subjective in other words.
But: “I” groping about out on the end of the metaphysical limb [re questions this big] encounters considerably more confusion, uncertainty, ambiguity.
Whatever I think I mean here is beyond doubt far removed from all that I would need to know in order to demonstrate that what I think I know is what all rational men and women are in turn obligated to know.
I merely suspect that this part includes you too.
Yeah, we grapple here with these relationships “philosophically”…but over and over and over again, it’s “decision time” out in the world of actual human interactions.
Thus:
…if nature compels me to say [this], it doesn’t really matter if it is deemed to be “useful” by yourself and others. Why? Because nature’s laws compel you no less to react to it only as you must.
If you feel that saying “nature compels you” is enough then so be it.
Sure, shooting the shit around dinner table at home, or shooting the shit with friends in a bar, that can certainly “work”. But in a philosophy venue, there are always going to be those who wish to take it further. Maybe even to actually figure it all out. As other philosophers have been grappling with it now for millennia. Let’s face it, you never really know for sure [in an autonomous world] what you might encounter in the next post here.
Is the belief by some that they are in possession of free will just a psychological illusion? Are my moral nihilism and your objective morality merely two sides of the same necessarily fused coin? The coin we call nature?
I don’t know. But something embedded in my own particular “I” brings me here to explore the question with others. Now, in an autonomous world that revolves [for me] around the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein. And, in a wholly determined universe, what “I” opt for here is never more than what I must opt for.
And then [for me] this part…
…the more you delve into the complexities involved in mindless matter evolving over billions of years into self-conscious human brains the more you come to recognize that gap between what you think you know about all this and all that there is to possibly know about it.
So just to be clear … you recognize a gap, then you “delve into the complexities” and you end up recognizing the gap again and again.
Yeah, of late. On the other hand, for most of my life, I was convinced that, through God or through one or another political ideology, the gap was closed. Not only did I possess free will but it was anchored to actual Meaning and Purpose in my life.
Just not anymore.
Still, my “fractured and fragmented” self here and now is no less embedded in the mystery that is existence itself. Whether I’m compelled to feel this or not.
Nature’s laws determine your choices but there is a part of what you choose that allows you to be an “agent” that is, what, somehow outside of nature’s immutable material laws.
Who says that it’s “somehow outside of nature’s immutable material laws”, FFS? I wrote in the same post : “Everything is a manifestation of the laws of matter.”
Let’s just say that we react to these words from different points of view. This strikes me as the sort of “before I choose” “agency” that peacegirl champions. Until after a choice is made…when free will finally collapses that agency; until the next choice must be made.
From my frame of mind, if “everything is a manifestation of the laws of matter” that includes anything at all before, during and after you choose. Nothing that we think, feel, say or do would seem to be excluded.
If only from our conception to our death itself.