Why should a dent be necessary when evolution is an observable process ? I may not understand reality in any absolute sense
but understanding it on a very basic level - one that is exclusively scientific - is simply acknowledging the process as it is
I am an objectivist when it comes to accepting facts about reality - anyone who is not is simply in denial of those facts
Well, given my own existential leap to the antinomy – “a contradiction between two beliefs or conclusions that are in themselves reasonable” – that I see embedded in the age old determinism/free will debate, you have to because the laws of nature compel you to.
Only I am no more able to demonstrate that than I presume you are able to demonstrate that in fact your own will is free here.
Instead, that demonstration would seem to revolve around the ongoing attempt by science to explore matter evolving from mindless interactions into interactions that are anything but.
And I suspect that you and I will be long dead and gone before anything definitive is within our reach there.
Because, as KT will insist, that is [eventually] what I always come around to: “I” in the is/ought world.
Besides, how on earth can a discussion of human autonomy not get around to that which would seem to be by far the greatest consequence of a resolution: our responsibility regarding the actual things that we think, feel, say and do.
My advice is that you steer clear of my posts if you won’t [eventually] go there.
Unless, of course, nature has other plans for of us. 
But the whole point behind peacegirl’s posts regarding Decline and Fall of All Evil is that life can be understood in regards to free will and “choice”; such that in a “progressive future” all evil will – must – decline and fall. And, as with you, attempts on my part to probe the manner in which [and the extent to which] she approaches all this through the lens of God and religion got me nowhere fast.
In particular in regard to the “choices”/choices she makes pertaining precisely to her own day to day interactions.
But now [compelled or not] she’s gone.
And this is relevant to a discussion of determinism…how?
Okay, demonstrate to us that it does. Demonstrate it other than in merely asserting that it does. Other than in pointing out that you just know that it does. That, deep down inside intuitively, viscerally, you are absolutely certain that you are of your own free will choosing to read these words.
Because there is definitely a part of me no less convinced that I am of my own free will typing these words.
But how can I demonstrate that?
Let me ask you this…
Dreams. I always come back to them because in them I am equally convinced that I am thinking, feeling, saying and doing things of my own free will. And yet I wake up recognizing that my brain is entirely responsible for creating this reality. I’m everywhere, doing everything in my dreams. But I am in turn nowhere doing nothing other than sleeping in my apartment.
Now, what is the definitive connection/relationship between “I” in my dreams and “I” wide awake here and now?
What do you make of it?
There are men and women – scientists – conducting any number of experiments in any number of contexts in order to grapple with this relationship empirically, materially, phenomenologically.
And yet if you google “dreams and free will” there’s almost nothing relating to that. The closest most folks come to connecting these dots is in regard to “lucid dreaming”.
This thing:
“A lucid dream is a dream during which the dreamer is aware that they are dreaming. During a lucid dream, the dreamer may gain some amount of control over the dream characters, narrative, and environment; however, this is not actually necessary for a dream to be described as lucid.”
Which is obviously intriguing because it raises the question of “I” being in control of a dream.
But: do you accept it because nature compels you to accept it or because you were free to opt for not accepting it, thought it all true, and, of your own volition “here and now”, took that existential leap to accepting it.
An existential leap from my frame of mind because, even given some measure of autonomy, “I” is still ceaselessly constructed, deconstructed and reconstructed from the cradle to the grave. At least is regard to value judgments and to big questions like this.
Bottom line: You can never really be certain [again, given autonomy] what new experiences, relationships and access to ideas might do to change your mind.
This makes no sense in the context of what I wrote about determinism, free-will and autonomy. You don’t actually read my posts, do you?
Wake up.
I’m not Peacegirl. So why are you writing about her posts and not mine?
That’s good advice.
Okay, demonstrate what that means to you when these free thinkers interact and come into conflict over “the right thing to do” in any particular context.
My “obsession” here as phyllo might insist.
Then demonstrate how you are able to prove beyond all doubt that scientists investigating the human brain in the act of choosing have concluded beyond all doubt in turn that human autonomy is in fact the reality here.
And how might a “collective or universal consensus” among them become reconfigured at the level of the individual into a subjective frame of mind.
What on earth does that mean?
All you do here [yet again in my view] is to assert something that “here and now” is true for you “in your head” in a “world of words”.
Then around and around we go.
I do not think that there is any aspect within Nature that absolutely compels me to accept any particular thing otherwise every mind would think the same
Any new knowledge or experience will always affect a mind because it processes everything it is exposed to and never stops functioning even during sleep
Although there will often be shared knowledge or experiences between minds they can still process it differently to each other despite the commonality
The mind is constantly developing as it experiences the eternal now just like all other phenomena within this eternal Universe . Indeed one could
say that the observation and study of the mind is that of the Universe in microcosm : an independent dynamic system in a state of eternal change
Come on, even within the scientific community itself there are any number of arguments that grapple with pinning evolution down to the definitive explanation:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_o … ary_theory
And that’s before we get to taking the arguments devised by intelligent life on this planet all the way back to an explanation for existence itself. Or the arguments proposed by the theologists. Or the arguments that subsume all such arguments in a wholly determined universe.
Your facts of course. But as with me and my facts, we either are or are not able to demonstrate why [in turn] all rational men and women are obligated to accept them as facts applicable to all of us.
But, even here, by first assuming this all unfolds in this exchange among autonomous human beings.
My argument is basically to suggest that objectivism is embedded as much in human psychology as in philosophy or science. It’s more that you believe what you believe that brings about a certain measure of comfort and consolation in regards to situating “I” out in the staggering vastness of the world around us.
But, again, assuming we do this of our own volition. Maybe we do, maybe we don’t.
Okay, fine. Nature has compelled you to point out that nature has not compelled me to not read your posts. I freely choose of my own volition not to read them instead because of all the dishonest and devious things that KT has concluded about me here.
Compelled or not as it were.
I’m going back to the OP. To the manner in which she intertwines “life” in a “choice” that I have never really been clear about as it pertains to God and religion. As that pertains to our moral responsibility in a world argued to be determined. These dots are always intertwined in my argument. You more than anyone ought to know that by now.
Damn straight. Now let’s see if it is in sync with nature.
Objectivism by definition ideally would have to be something entirely independent of human interpretation
So human definitions of objective could be more accurately described as a virtual absence of subjectivity
I think though that there are some aspects of reality that are fundamentally truly mind independent or objective :
Existence is eternal and extends infinitely into the past and into the future
Absolute nothing cannot persist which is why the above statement is true
Death is eternal for all life but non life will always exist in some form
Reality creates minds while minds interpret reality [ often wrongly ]
Absolutely nothing at all matters within the grand scheme of things
The delicious irony of a mind declaring mind independent truth
75:
True, but there are really 3 levels ascribed to this topic, which is suggestive of what You are saying: That consisted of perspective, suggested by an early pre-existentialist: Nietzche. The either/or relations is modified by a meta-effective Kantianism, that suggests a mind within mind is as fallible as Sure/and/or/ Russell-Wittgenstein. Thus the eyeternally reductive mind within a machine&/or machine within a mind is left unresolute.
I have some articles in reserve I could dig up in all two scenarios, but it is within a deep state of uncategorical files.
As far as original sin is concerned, western philosophy has a comparable model: the eastern idea of karma. That may not be a coincidental
but design related structural hierarchy.
Our inveterate abstractionist brings out the big guns:
And that settles it, right? With this one particular assertion, Sartre has clearly demonstrated beyond all doubt that we choose of our own free will. Authentically as it were.
Unless of course this “general description intellectual contraption” from Weininger comes even closer to pinning it all down.
Or, sure, perhaps our very own hero here comes the closest of all:
On the other hand, I tried exercising my own free will in discussions with him in the agora. And, of his own free will, he dragged me to his dungeon.
Why? Well over there religion revolves solely around agreeing with the meaning and the definition that he gives to all the words that comprise his hopelessly abstract philosophical arguments.
The dungeon then becoming the equivalent of Hell?
And then of their own free-will, we are told, the Desperate Degenerates who [moronically of course] enslave themselves by embracing one or another religious dogma are magically transformed into…nihilists?
Go ahead, ask him.
Still, compelled as I am to say this, he is off the hook in being compelled by nature himself in turn.
Though he still seems intent on asserting that he actually does choose of his own free will to be, among other things, made a fool of. And not just by me.
Go get him, Magnus!! =D>
You don’t read my posts because of something KT wrote about you???
I wrote a bunch of stuff in several posts which you blatantly ignored and instead you are “going back to the OP”. I see.
No [as I point out over and over and over again], I don’t know for certain if nature compels me to read the posts of yours that I do “choose”/choose to read and the posts that I “choose”/choose not to read.
Just as nature either compelled me or did not compel me to “choose”/choose that aside regarding the disdain that nature either compels or does not compel KT to level on me here at ILP.
Okay, note the most blatant point of all that I ignored. Let’s start there.
Note to others:
And, of course [presuming at least some measure of autonomy here], he never – never ever – ignores any of the points that I raise with him in our exchange here. 
I have no doubt that KT would change how he responds to you, if you changed how you interact with him. However, I don’t think that you would change how you respond to him, if he changed how he interacts with you. IOW, if he dropped his “disdain”, you would stay the same.
Over and over, I have tried to nail down the meaning of the word 'autonomy" and entirely without success. You use the word all the time. So what does it mean?
I use the dictionary definition. According to the dictionary, people have autonomy. And it’s impossible to lose autonomy to “natural laws”.
Autonomy has nothing to do with it. If we have autonomy, I don’t respond to all your points. If we don’t have autonomy, I don’t respond to all your points.
I don’t respond for several reasons:
“You’re just asserting that.”
“It’s just in your head.”
“You’re compelled to write that.”
“You have to demonstrate that, beyond all doubt, for all reasonable men and women” (forever and ever)
Your points are very repetitive. I think that I have covered them in the previous posts.
I think that often your point is a way to try to avoid dealing with my point. It’s a distraction tactic.
AS in me or as in Satyr or Know Thyself in general.
It’s about you. He has brought you in the last couple of posts and I’m responsing to it.
No, what you have no doubt regarding is that here and now [b]of your own free will[/b] you are reading these words.
What I have doubts about, however, is the extent to which I am able to demonstrate [b]beyond all doubt[/b] that I either do or do not have autonomy here in typing new ones.
KT here and Satyr’s KT there are just more dominoes that nature is toppling over.
But: that is true only given my assumption that the human brain is but more matter necessarily in sync with the laws of nature.
The part that science seems far better equipped to explore than philosophy.
And, in particular, philosophers like Satyr who pump out endless intellectual contraptions that must be true because they are basically tautologies. Words defining and defending other words. And now he sees fit to quote other philosopners who accomplish much the same thing.
Then around and around we go.
“Individual autonomy is an idea that is generally understood to refer to the capacity to be one’s own person, to live one’s life according to reasons and motives that are taken as one’s own and not the product of manipulative or distorting external forces.”
Now, if the capacity we have to think, feel, say and do anything – anything – is linked inherently to a brain that is matter linked inherently to the laws of nature, what aspect of the “human condition” would not be but embodied in the psychological illusion of free will?
Human psychology itself would certainly appear to be no exception.
Unless of course it is. Either through God or through an understanding of the human brain that science has yet to pin down.
I’m not arguing that free will does not exist, only that here and now, given the assumptions I make regarding a wholly determined universe, it does not seem reasonable to suppose that it does exist.
But this is no less a speculation on my part given the gap [enormous I suspect] between “I” and a complete understanding of existence itself. All those “unknown unknowns” that I haven’t even thought of. Just as with you.
If you have autonomy, you don’t respond to my points because, of your own free will, you choose not to. You actually have that option but do not choose to exercise it. That’s the part I link to “I” as an existential contraption – as dasein.
And how different is that from nature compelling you to respond or not to respond to anything.
But: How is it determined which assessment is the correct one?
Fair enough. No one [least of all me] is demanding that you are obligated to respond to anything I post. Assuming of course that I do have some measure of volition here in pointing that out.
We can only agree to disagree about what it means to “cover” them.
Again, only if you are willing to cite examples of this, are any of us likely to gain a better understanding of this point.
But: If we live in a universe in which all matter – including brain matter – is but an inherent manifestation of what is often described as “the immutable laws of matter”, nothing is independent of the totality – the objective reality – that is matter unfolding entirely in sync with those laws.
Unless I am not thinking that part through correctly. And I am more than willing to concede this given all that I do not know about existence itself.
In other words how would this…
…not in turn be but a necessary component of the only possible reality given the only possible configuration of matter given the extant laws that govern it?
Also, this assessment is but another “general description” “intellectual contraption” in which words are connected only to other words that are defined and defended by you in a particular way.
Even assuming some degree of human autonomy, free will, volition, responsibility etc., how are we to link it to the behaviors that we choose in course of actually living our lives from day to day?
Don’t talk to me like that.
Unattributed quote.
So instead of talking about autonomy, you switch to free-will.
Autonomy is not free-will. People have autonomy in a determined universe.
Ditto.
Oh, I thought there was talk of dungeons and things. Beyond my powers. But now I know.