Only on practically every post of mine on this thread.
BTW, why are you so hung up on this particular question? Why not be like Descartes and worry about evil demons? Or question whether we’re in the Matrix? Or whether this is all just a dream? There’s a million and two scenarios you could bring up that throw certainty and agency into question. Why the one about laws of matter making your brain think, say, and do stuff?
Huh? Over and again I make note of how, if we go far enough out on the metaphysical limb, there are all manner of “explanations” that might encompass this exchange: sim worlds, the demons, senility, dreams, solipsism…
But all of this still comes down to the extent to which we can determine if anything at all that happens to us happens because the choices that we made autonomously necessitated that something else didn’t happen instead.
But that just takes us to this: Were you ever able not to not be troubled by it?
Why would I care?
And this is the part where I ask if it was ever within your capacity to freely choose to care or not care.
Again, if, hypothetically, we lived on a planet that was wholly determined, an observer from an autonomous planet, could note that you are not troubled by it. But then his friend points out that, unlike them, you were never able to freely choose to be or not be troubled by it.
Haven’t those aliens got anything better to do?
Suppose they don’t. Respond to the point I made.
Though sure my thinking here could be flawed. If so, then, using this example, straighten me out.
Nope, it’s pretty spot on… and pointless.
This sounds more like a “retort” to me than an attempt to argue how in fact I can be straightened out.
Clarity? How clear can we be about any of this until an argument is framed that resolves the question such that all rational men and women are obligated to embrace it.
Sorry Biggy, got my clarity. I ain’t givin it back.
What’s this then, a witticism?
None of this enables me to grasp if my “really really really grim point of view” is or is not “beyond my control”.
Are you under the impression I’m trying to help you?
I’m under the impression that you are somehow able to reconcile “metaphysical determinism” and “psychological freedom” “in your head” such that whatever you try to do you were never able not to try to do…but that this doesn’t bother you.
Okay, let’s try to pin this down more. Do you believe that, in regard to the relationship between the brain as matter and the human mind this matter has evolved into…
That’s not what I believe but we’ll go with that.
No, you seem to have concocted an explanation that, what, starts with mind?
…“I” is able to understand it such that it can be determined whether or not “I” am freely choosing to type these words or, instead, “I” was never able not to type them?
Given the picture you’re giving me (brain evolving into mind), and the sciences these brains have collectively built up and share amongst themselves, I’d say the picture is looking pretty deterministic. I mean, I don’t know how anyone can confirm that with certainty (is someone going to monitor each and every movement of every particle in every brain at all times?), but the most parsimonious picture is that the laws of chemistry, biology, and electrodynamics (all of which are at work in the brain) all work together to keep the brain pretty much under their control. Then there’s the quantum consciousness theorists who want to take quantum indeterminism and amplify it to the level of neurons, thereby giving credence to the idea of free will (your of free will), and I don’t know enough to rule that out.
I guess in brief, I flip a coin and say no, “I” is not able to determine whether “I” freely choose or has no choice.
So, how does this general description analysis relate to the extent to which your own particular “I” is able to understand it such that it can be determined whether or not your “I” is freely choosing to type those words or, instead, was never able not to type them?
I’m not certain about my answer at all. And it’s not even my answer because it’s prefaced by an assumption that I don’t agree with (brain evolving into mind).
Okay, fair enough. But you seem rather certain that your answer is considerably closer to what the right answer might be [if there is a right answer] than mine. And if it is not matter evolving into mind how does mind evolving into matter [if that’s what you believe] make it any easier to understand whether you either do or do not have the capacity to freely choose to do one thing rather than another.
Otherwise you would seem to embrace the assumption that “I’m right from my side and you’re right from yours”. Based entirely on the intital conflicting premises that the arguments falls back on.
Well, sure, relativistically speaking everyone’s right from their own side.
Though it would seem to be clearly the case that in regard things able to be demonstrated as either this or that, everyone’s “right” is not created equal.
What are the conflicting premises again?
In the either/or world:
Donald Trump is or is not president of the United Sates.
In the is/ought world:
Donald Trump is or is not doing a superb job in the Oval Office.
And then the conflicting premises on this thread:
We are or are not choosing to exchange these posts of our own free will.
If the reason and the logic that any particular mind is able to utilize to function only as it ever could have functioned then that reason and logic exist only as they ever could have existed in turn.
But we do not seem to have the capacity to determine if this is in fact the case or not. It’s just that some think they do have that capacity and others think they don’t.
Then it’s either/or [if it is either/or] all the way down to whatever brought into existence the existence of existence itself.
And here we come full circle. Did the existence of existence exist before the existence of existence started to exist? In other words, did something come from nothing? And if so, why something instead of (a continuation of) nothing?
Exactly. Nothing would seem to be of more fundamental importance than connecting the dots between what we think we know now about these relationships and all that can be known [must be known] in order to demonstrate that what we do think we know now is in sync with the answer.
It all ties into my own assumption that having an answer is far more important to many [psychologically] than in whatever their answer might be.
After all, isn’t that really the only way in which to come to grips with, among other things, death and oblivion? If there is an answer and “I” am somehow intertwined in it, then why not for all of eternity?
If somehow “I” is at “one with the universe” and the universe is always around one way or another then so am “I”.
So, just out of curiosity, re your own beliefs regarding mind/matter, how do you imagine your own “I” fares once it shuffles off this mortal coil?
Is there any measure at all of comfort and consolation here for you? Because, given the way in which I think about all this, there is absolutely none for me.
At best I can only accept my own oblivion to the extent that my pain becomes so unbearable, I, like those folks in Aliens, will beg to die.