Biological Will

At this point, the Determinists are Determined and have their heels dug into the ground, Sil and Prom. If you two won’t listen to Reason, and the arguments become circular, unwilling to listen and respond to the main points, then no progress will be made. But I will repeat myself anyway. Now it’s more valid than ever to consider the reasons and causes why most people are “Determined”, and have no Free-Will, while some people are Undetermined, and do have Free-Will. Is it a mere matter of belief, is it subjective? If you believe you are free, then you are free, and if not, then not? A criminal is in a jail cell. Does him believing he is free, make himself free? No, of course not. So the physical attribute of Free or Not, is obvious. But there is a mental aspect. What does believing you are free actually do for a person?

And is there something to being physically free and mentally free? What does it mean to realize all aspects of freedom, to move and think freely?

To restart some of the core arguments, and Prom mentioned before, most of humanity has deep investments in their beliefs and values. This includes Freedom or Not, Slavery and Determinism. If a family has been Christian for 1000 years, and they’ve been wrong the entire time, are they going to simply give-up on God? Or, even when the evidence mounts, and they are wrong to the very core, they will still hold onto the error and blind themselves to their indictments? They won’t turnover and admit defeat. They dig deeper into their position.

What must it had been like when Geocentricism was overturned by Heliocentricism, and the world had to be convinced they were wrong about such a simple fact? Did humanity merely “give it up”, or didn’t they fight for it? And how was this fight waged, except in the education/Indoctrination of children, for generations?

Because mass-beliefs have to be engineered in such a fashion. You don’t change the minds of all humanity overnight. You indoctrinate their children, who indoctrinate their children, who indoctrinate their children, etc. until Geocentricism switches-over to Heliocentricism, or the Abrahamic Christian-Jew-Moslem Nil God, is turned-over to the Pagan Gods. It takes multiple generations, centuries or millenniums, not an overnight process.

So I don’t suspect the one who is mentally enthralled, Slave-Dialectic, to just turn-over and admit to the possibility of Free-Will either.

Here’s the Crux though. You can change the disposition of the human masses over lifetimes and generations, but does that further the Understanding? Does humanity then comprehend the reasons and causes that they now believe Heliocentricism and not Geocentricism? No, instead, they merely do as they are told. They are followers of ideas and thoughts, of Reason, and not leaders of it. Thus they are not free and not part of the Master-Dialectic. Because to understand the reasons and causes, would necessitate that most people understand the changing of Paradigms, or the Conversion of this or that god, to the other. And it is not a fast process, nor overnight, but the domination of one Culture over another.

Thus even if USA builds a “Truly Free Society”, people repeat mantras that “we are free”, but don’t necessarily understand why or how. And that is the “Determinist” position as I see it here, and I believe it’s been presented thus far. They can argue “we are not free” to the same degree, without any progress. But the hang-ups and barriers are becoming visible, which I thank Sil for his courage to admit his ignorance. It is both enlightening and comedic. “Absence of evidence is evidence of Absence”, blah blah blah. Freedom is not an apparent condition, ever. How could anybody know they are free, when they may or may not be? I asked this question early-on, never got sufficient answers.

If you believed yourself free, and you actually were free “objectively”, then there maybe no way to “Determine” it, thus being Indeterminable but a probability nevertheless. No Authority above to Dictate or indoctrinate, whether you are free or not. No directions, no instructions, no conditions, aren’t these the prerequisite to Freedom anyway? Can a person be ‘above’ the rules of humanity, of the Abrahamic Nil God? Outside the boundaries of Causality? To ‘Cause’ events and actions, but in-turn not be “caused” by them. To impose will upon others, but others do not impose will upon you??

Isn’t this the meaning of Power, that you can do what you want to others, or existence, but it cannot do the same to you? If you answer yes then my arguments are at the very least reasonable, as I’ve laid everything out from start-to-finish, multiple times.

And if you agree power, then you will be forced to admit Moral Agency. If Freedom is possible, then you have to begin taking responsibility and accountability for it all, and for everything.

Because people do Cause things to be, especially, harm against each-other. This much is obvious, common sense. Sil, you can keep avoiding these points all you want. You have already, but this is why you’re now cycling backward to your logical fallacies and errors of judgment. Mental blind-spot.

According to the great thinker janis joplin, the bobby mcgee principle/stratagem states otherwise:

Seems to me like the Determinist would be the ‘Victim’ of circumstance here; I have no clue why you’re linking victimization with Free-Will.

After all, it was the choice of the Free-Willest to board the ship and join the crew. He willingly gave his authority over to the Captain. The Determinist is the victim of circumstances, beyond his control. The Determinist never had control, ever, even in boarding the ship. The Free-Willest was the one making choices along the way.

ah but this freewillist reasoning reveals something equally absurd at the other end of the spectrum. according to your logic, one should feel no offense at being hit by a stray bullet because they chose to walk out the front door. clearly, that’s ridiculous.

so your position is wavering between two extreme and inescapable absurdities, and at both ends the real problem is never addressed. either the shooter is the bad guy, or the person shot is the irresponsible one. fortunately for you, neither is the case. the shooter had no choice, and the person shot by the stray bullet was not unreasonable to believe he should be able to walk out his front door without getting shot. in the first case ‘responsibility’ is erroneously given, in the latter, erroneously taken.

in very many of my own experiences with what the freewillist could only understand as ‘victimization’, i was not unlike the guy hit by the stray bullet. for example; if i commit crime x, knowing in advance the possible consequences of doing so and willing to accept them with no objection, if caught, but am charged with crime y instead, when caught, we wouldn’t say that i am responsible for suffering consequences of crime y because i commited crime x… no sooner than we would say the guy who got hit by the stray bullet was responsible because he chose to walk outside. in the same way that it was reasonable for him to conclude that it was safe to walk outside, it was reasonable for me to conclude that i’d only be charged with a crime i committed.

how stupid would it sound if i said to you ‘if you get in a car accident tomorrow, it’s your fault because you didn’t kill yourself today and prevent the accident from happening’?

identifying, dividing up, and allocating responsibility is not as easy as the freewillist assumes… but it is always convenient, because it is simpler. freewill is a very simple theory and requires little thought. one of the reasons it has persisted so long. that, and its use as a weapon of ressentiment and envy. it was after all the impotence of the slaves that sequestered the re-evaluation of the deeds of the masters. the slave says ‘we can’t have such power ourselves, such freedom from restriction, therefore those who have it are wrong for choosing to wield it.’ thus began the slave’s moral revolt, freewill being instrumental in this. where one cannot directly control with physical force, one resorts to psychological force and cunning. poisoning the conscience of those who have no experience of impotency, and therefore more freedom.

freewill was not devised by the strong - they had never thought twice about a deed because they thought it might be immoral, and never struggled with ‘choosing’. but they did, like anyone, suffer the phenomenological illusion of freewill in that their decisions always preceded their deeds. it was only because this illusion took so long to get over, philosophically, that the moral element of the theory became so embedded in it. what began as a harmless idiosyncrasy of human experience became weaponized by morality. freewill became the illusion that kept on giving.

two things though. i’m not saying morality is not possible… only that not all people are under the conditions of the same moral order. what is a crime for one can be a privilege for another. it all depends on circumstances. second, i’m not giving you the go-head to start rambling about freewill again. what i spoke of above are contexts of freedom, not freewill.

You seem to be obfuscating things. Somebody shooting a gun, is responsible for where the bullet goes. If it hits somebody, the shooter is responsible, although as you are implying, he is not. But people need to be accountable of their actions, and especially when they harm others. Why do you imply that people shouldn’t be responsible for harming others? Does that reasoning then imply that you should be harmed anytime by anyone? Surely not, so you’re forming a double-standard.

of course he’s responsible, which really only means he’s responsive… he’ll respond to the consequences and either protest or go easy. but hitherto this word has been a very nasty slippery slope, and it’s had to be because the only alternative - a radical reassessment of the epistemology that the theory of freewill is founded on, as well as radical political/social changes in an effort to drastically modify the environment and lower criminal statistics - would challenge the powers-that-be. if you generate a society that produces a lot of crime, those who gain advantage from that society will have to come up with a way to make that crime more manageable. they’re certainly not going to change the society… because then they wouldn’t profit from it… so they have figure out a way to indirectly keep crime at a minimum without modifying the environments that produce that crime. to date the most effective way to do this has been with the meme of freewill. so if you can make the criminally inclined believe not only that there are objective values of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, but also that each of them has both the intelligence to know these values, and the freewill to choose between them… you got em. what makes this affair such a nasty slippery slope is that neither of these claims are true… so effectively, society is being managed with a set of lies by those who would not be able to profit if society were such a way that it produced far less crime, if any at all.

so it comes down to a couple options. either make an effort to prevent crime at the highest levels- which would compromise the economic freedoms of the ruling classes, i.e., a major redistribution of wealth to improve the quality of life for the lower, blue-collar criminal classes so that they’re no longer inclined to commit crime - or, do nothing to change the circumstances and continue to use lies to keep them under control.

there’s a lot more going on here than you’d like to think, junior. you’ve only just caught a glimpse of the monster of freewill… and you’re only just beginning to understand its modus operandi.

i sorry, but what is that? i think i saw a phrase like that in one of L. Ron Cupboard’s books once, but i can’t be sure.

@Silhouette

It isn’t because you’re introducing another invisible entity to explain the phenomenon, this time an anthropomorphic one with freewill, yet somehow simultaneously omnibenevolent (problem of evil, etcetera), omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient.
It’s very convoluted, whereas I’m just acknowledging the phenomenon, that gravity varies in intensity across space-time.

I’m not sure.
There could be elaborate ways in how it does it, but conversely it may just do it.
There’s no need to believe it’s complex, unless it’s been observed to be.
As you said Ockham’s razor.

I’m not sure.
On the one hand, it may turn out there’s no pattern in this variation of gravitational intensity, on the other it may turn out that there are a few patterns, but no more than chance would allow if randomly generated, or it may turn out there are many patterns, more than chance would allow if randomly generated.
Who knows what these patterns may look like if they exist.
Maybe there’re gravity intensifying zones, maybe these zones are in the shape of spheres, tetrahedrons or other Euclidian shapes, we should just follow wherever the data leads.

It improves it because we’re not making assumptions, or unnecessarily devoting resources to idle speculations, attempting to ascertain which invisible entity best explains the data, instead of not concluding anything beyond the data.

I’ll have a look at those 3+ arguments.

So silly of me, it sounds like you’re suggesting that pointing out fallacies and biases in your questions is a mental blind-spot… of mine?

Urwrongx1000
Silhouette: “the question is invalid because it contains fallacies and biases”
Urwrongx1000: “You are not answering the question”
Silhouette: “to answer a fallacious and biased question represents neither truth nor my view”
Urwrongx1000: “You are avoiding the question and keep cycling back to using logic due to a mental blind spot”
— and Urepeatx1000 —

Condense a list of questions in their simplest form that you want me to answer so I can continue to point out their fallacies and biases. You can then repeat that it’s me who has the mental blind-spot - you like repetition, right? I get to hone my skills and show everyone precisely how Urwrongx1000 - we both win.

That’ll be the Motte and Bailey fallacy again.

Yeah, who cares about big dumb logic when you can be freeeeeeee from reason [-o<

You goddamn hero.

Urwrongx1000 won’t touch them with a Footx1000pole.

It’s true that the God-did-it explain-away is actually convoluted upon further examination so is doubly insufficient - the point I’m making is that you need to be proposing something with attributes that can be tested. Dark Matter has these things, like being “non-baryonic” - according to Wikipedia, and it may consist of an elementary particle, the existence of which can be tested for. It’s not just some random invisible entity, a cursory skim of Wikipedia shows no sign of it definitely existing “and that’s the end of the story” - it just looks like compared to other theories it’s so far the most compelling avenue to explore at this point. But Wikipedia also brings up other avenues that are also being explored - listing “various modifications of the standard laws of general relativity, such as modified Newtonian dynamics, tensor–vector–scalar gravity, or entropic gravity”, which don’t need Dark Matter to explain things. “Gravity varying in intensity across space-time” would be included here.

Basically it’s not like alternative hypotheses are ignored in favour of the currently most mainstream one - I imagine much of the Dark Matter hype in the media and outside of the scientific community is that its name is cool and mysterious. Inside the scientific community, like I said, as long as you’re proposing something falsifiable that you can test for then it’s fair game - the more explanatory power your findings provide, the more you’ll tip the balance. The history of science is littered with once mainstream theories being discarded in favour of an underdog. Proposing something measurable is all that matters.

Much of what you’re suggesting is all just fine so long as you can construct an experiment to identify something measurable and test it: time will tell. “There’s no need to believe it’s complex, unless it’s been observed to be” is bang on, but it’s not all about Occam’s razor, explanatory power is the aim - and the more complex model will win over the simpler one if the explanatory power is sufficiently superior.

Sil wrote

You’re a causal victim, right? Of course, the irony is you will never have the freedom to rectify your flaws nor can anyone else.

To Prom,

People choose to be criminals. But Jo the criminal can blame it on Tom, Dick, or Harry, the rich, the poor, the police, the old spinster down the street for all I care, but the criminal chose their route.

To whomever,

Perhaps determinists only feel they have choices, freedom, when they can do something good, but when they do something bad, they were a pawn in a predetermined fate. Also it seems that determinists tend to favor extreme socialism or outright communism.

So the whole thing with historical materialism and determinism got off the ground when the young hegelians, marx being one of them, sought to establish the primacy of the material relations of people over their ‘ideas’, rather than maintaining the hegelian notion of spirit holding primacy over the material… one such example would be the Cartesian second substance acting on matter in the form of freewill. It was becoming more and more important to check the theory of freewill during and after the industrial revolution because it distracted thinkers away from the reality of material life. You’ll see an example of this at work in the ridiculous claim that ‘people choose to be in poverty’:

socialistworker.org/2011/10/28/ … aterialist

But all this stuff is pretty complicated and we don’t really want to get all philosophical. So forget it, wendy. Let’s get out of here…

A “victim” of cause?

Or a victor through cause?

I mean it works both ways, right? Determinism is the attribution of the cause of said flaws and the way to determine how to rectify them.

It’s like Free Will proponents forget that Determinism is the exact way to determine how figure out problems in the first place, and instead jump straight to “well you’re just using it as an excuse”. Well no, it is a model for applying reasons for things happening… it’s a reason for the bad stuff for sure, and a reason for the good stuff and everything else. It’s an acknowledgement of what causes the change either way, and an understanding of what causes the change in the other.

You need to be able to see both sides to “get” Determinism I guess. It seems like suspicion about how you could “use it for evil” is all the Free Will proponents see. I’m no victim, I seek to master all that’s going on - and Determinism is the way to understand how to cause this, that, and what caused this and that - and so on.

Sil wrote

You do not have the freedom or the will to rectify them, no? You are not an active participant in your future, nor a participant who determined his past either. Everything else determined your past and everything else, not you will determine your future.

If you can’t see how the past manifests as the present and how you make choices in the present that decide both your past and your future then you may be screwed.

This isn’t true at all, and sounds more like Sil hyperbole. We can identify the causes and choices rather easily. The random man chose to walk outside of his house or apartment. He did not choose to get shot by a stray-bullet. The shooter chose to drive-by attack his rival gang, or to fire his gun off in the middle of the city. He did not choose the unintended target. Accidents happen, but, the shooter did choose to shoot and the victim did choose to step outside, leading to an unintended and accidental circumstance.

Ultimately, as common sense does and should dictate, when you are firing your gun, it is your responsibility to ensure the bullet goes where it ought to. The above is a case of negligence and the shooter is at fault. It maybe an accident but it is a crime nevertheless. The next problem begins when the Shooter begins denying responsibility for shooting an innocent bystander, and refuses to pay for the harm. That is when the law-system and retribution takes effect. If he will not own-up to paying the harm back then society enforces the retribution, and sends him to jail or worse.

You can claim that “nobody is at fault” but that doesn’t make it true. According to Determinism, somebody or something is always at-fault. So your position is contradictory. You cannot be a Determinist and have a general attitude that “nobody is at fault” for crimes and harm, unless you further admit, that humans are incapable for causing things, which humanity is not. I think your issue is more a matter of who gets to decide the cause and place the actual blame, which admittedly, can be erroneous. But it is necessary, which is why people elect Judges and Juries.

It sounds personal and so you do admit a vested emotional interest. Maybe you’re innocent, maybe not. But who are you trying to convince, exactly?

I’ve mentioned countless times now that power and willpower are fundamentally connected with freedom and free-will. Everybody can and does “want to be free” but fewer are willing to actually do work, take risks, and prepare sacrifices. Historically, the “masters” of society are the ones who did so, and won. Victory, Success, and Achievement underpins the social elite. Most often, such positions are earned, whether you agree with how it was done or not, resulting in a disparity of power (and freedom) within the society.

People generally get upset when the difference between rich and poor, master and slave, is too profoundly different, unjust, and readily apparent throughout the society. Slaves tend not to complain when they are well-fed, treated well, housed, and generally comfortable. But if you start whipping, beating, raping, killing the slaves, then they revolt.

It’s all context.

I’m not afraid of all that goes on, are you?

The system does profit from the crimes and faults of underlings. But why not? If random injustices happen, and they don’t let to revolt, then the System will overlook them. Innocent men have been killed on death-row and executed, throughout history. That doesn’t stop the System. What does stop the System, is grave-injustice on a mass scale. Brutalizing a slave population for centuries, will lead to revolt. Intentionally genociding and exterminating specific political or ethnic groups, will lead to revolt. Injustice beyond the scale of normalcy, is historic. One person going to jail for standing at the wrong place at the wrong time, in the middle of a police-riot, will not lead to revolt. Justice and Injustice has a scale, and some deeds are heavier than others. Most are content and happy with the Western system, and if the cost/sacrifice is some males go to jail who shouldn’t, or stay in jail too long, then society would accept that injustice in favor to keep general peace.

Your problem, and Prom’s too, is conflating the application of ‘Determinism’, to yourself, to humanity, and seem to ignore the fact that humans Cause and “are Caused”. If you admit that humans Cause then you must admit a moral agency. People do things, and, should or must be held accountable. That is the process of Determination as you just admit. A man runs a stop-sign in his car. He causes a car accident and 2 adults and 2 young children are killed. Who is at fault? Who caused what?

Your history of posts suggest that “nobody is at fault” because the infinite series of causes passively-led to the event, the harm, and there’s no point to “blame” anybody. But your reasoning, and Prom’s, are both wrong. Because Cause involves factors of power and freedom, in the form of Choice. People choose to do things, and either choose to take responsibility for them, or not. People lie about their choices too. Lies are common, and often hide the real causes of things. Indoctrination is another factor. People believe in causes that aren’t true, and false, for hundreds or thousands of years.

Because you are willing to ignore all the causes which go into things, humanity, and existence, and your posts precede you (in this thread and in Advanced Freedom), to further push your position on ‘Determinism’, you seem unable to make any sort of progress, and your position is borderline Intellectually Dis/Honest.

Yes, it’s such a problem when Determinists ignore the main foundation of their doctrine: that humans cause and are caused. Such a deep problem. It’s almost as though that’s exactly what we say at the core of our points?

We cause, the things we cause cause, and the things that caused us causing were caused in the first place. Clearly I’m ignoring cause here, obviously.

Get outta here dude, c’mon. Are you real?

I bet you’re some Google bot designed to sucker people into wasting their time pointing out the obvious instead of doing something productive. Great job though, Google - but now I’ve figured you out, what’s your next plan? Is this bot gonna reset again, continue to ignore all my arguments, try and flood the next few posts with the same repeated nonsense? Try something new to distract me, this is boring.

Oh I have the will. I’m entirely active in my future, but I can’t claim to have determined my past - that sounds backwards. Unless you mean even further in the past before the point that I was involved in determining such a past event? Not exactly sure what you’re getting at here.

You seem to be under the false impression that Determinism means “everything else except me” determines - obviously no. I determine and determined, everything does. All willers will, all non-willers don’t will, it’s determined whether they will or not, and their will (or not) determines what it does (or it doesn’t). Try and formulate your point without using causation, because every time you do, you support Determinism.

I don’t get this weird assumption that somehow a Determinist doesn’t determine their future, nor did they they determine their past before it happened… Certainly nobody determined the past after it happened, that seems obvious enough.

You mean if I can’t see exactly what Determinism says?

I think I’m good, thanks for your concern though.

Good Sil, now next you should admit that people are “free from causality” because there is no absolute “Causality” that applies to everybody and everything.

And you should further admit that many aspects of life, humanity, and existence are Un-determined. Then we will be on the same page.

“No absolute causality” was my point all along?

Bots don’t even listen to your words anymore

Nirvana fallacy strikes again!

Do another one!

My 3+ arguments are feeling lonely. Address them and maybe you will get to be on the same page as me.

it is because the question of what can be done with freewill has been so neglected and abused by those institutions in which the truth of the thesis is so critically important, that i am so adamant about taking the privilege of using the thesis, away from it. let us suppose that having freewill was never a question… and then let us look at what is expected of those who have it (say, in a court of law). in order to place blame and guilt upon the defendant, the court has to convince the defendant that the crime was not only illegal, but ‘wrong’, irrespective of it being illegal, and that the defendant was able to understand (and agree on) the ‘wrongful’ nature of the crime, and finally that the defendant’s intention during the commission of the crime was not to do what he thought was reasonable, despite the coincidence of it being ‘wrong’. all three of these expectations are nonsense, and yet the court cannot proceed without them. for it is not enough to simply say ‘defendant x was the cause of crime y’, leave it at that, and punish him. this approach would be in the form of a strict consequentialism (which would dehumanize and reduce people to automatons), but the ethical foundation of the law is deontological; ergo, it has to justify its authority on the grounds that there are objective values of right and wrong and that everyone has both the knowledge of the values and the ability to transphenomenally choose freely among them (unless they’re deemed insane).

now until this point it wasn’t at all gravely important whether or not we really have freewill, because the consequences of that thesis being true or not had no such gravity yet. what i have done is show you a place where the truth or falsity of the thesis is incredibly important in regards to honesty and competence… and there is no other place than a court of law in which such virtues matter so much. so by revealing this fundamental flaw, i’ve essentially torn the foundation out from under the civil contract of western civilization. i’ve killed the epistemological head and the body has followed.

so what you don’t yet realize is that this is a dead horse and has been for centuries. the privilege of granting the thesis of freewill has been thoroughly abused where it matters the most, and this is even after the fact that i’m granting a thesis which isn’t true in the first place. give them an inch and they take a mile.

what is left to do is restructure everything from bottom to top if one wishes to participate in a lawful society that is honest and competent. nobody has to do this, of course, and can continue living as the ignorant buffoons that they are presently. it makes no difference to me; it’s all quality entertainment. but if you want to do what you guys call the ‘right’ thing, what you guys always thought you had founded your civilization on, but had not, you’ll begin by taking a critical look at society to root out the things that make the compound nature of these problems possible at all. i’ve written extensively about these things over the years, but have never felt it was important to inform a few random people at a forum of this information… so while there is a consistent system of thought here, there is no organization to any of it. here and there i drop a gem, and then walk away.

but all these ideas are moving in a single direction, a straight line, toward a basic premise; here is a way to stop this nonsense. if you do not accept this way, stop complaining about crime, because we anarchists aren’t going to hear it. in fact, if you keep bitching, we just might turn it up a notch.