Note to others:
Trust me: when you are waiting for godot -- compelled to or not -- engaging in utterly futile discussions like this is interchangeable with anything else that you might be doing.
That's why.
peacegirl wrote: why don’t you try to understand rather than defend your position.
Because, as with Bartleby, the scrivener, I prefer not to. Though, unlike him [perhaps], I prefer not to only because I do not possess the free will enabling me
not to prefer not to.
Or something like that. These discussions can get, well, surreal at times.
For instance...
Me, I'll stick with speculating that if I am in possession of free will, then my preferences here are rooted more in dasein than in whatever philosophers can ascertain as to that which all rational men and women ought to prefer.
peacegirl wrote: There is no “what we ought to prefer.” There is only what we do, in fact, prefer based on our heredity and environment.
Exactly!!!!
Only, compelled or not, I prefer this to mean something other than you do.
And, if I am not in possession of free will, then my preferences are only what they ever could have been given that they are derived from a mind derived from a brain that is matter no less inherently and necessarily "at one" with its own immutable laws.
peacegirl wrote: we are controlled by immutable laws but that does not remove our ability to choose. We do it all day long but this does not grant us free will.
Yeah, and around and around and around
you go...inside
your head. We "choose" only what we "prefer" to "choose" but what we "prefer" to "choose" is the only thing that we can "choose". Or however you rationalize the distinction between Mary "choosing" to have an abortion and Mary
choosing to have one.
Either way though the baby is shredded. Having no "choice"/
choice at all in the matter.
And that the most profound mystery of all still revolves around explaining how, after the Big Bang [or whatever brought into existence the existence of existence itself], mindless matter was able to configure into self-conscious mindful matter.
peacegirl wrote: it is a mystery but it doesn’t change the fact that we have NO FREE WILL.
And you have thoroughly researched this going all the way back to the author's explanation for the existence of existence itself? Is that in the book? Or, in order for you to sustain the illusion of certainty, sustaining whatever comfort and consolation [and income?] the author provides you, is that part really just a trivial pursuit?
And I sure as shit recognize that, given the gap between "I" and "all there is", there is almost no possibility that what I argue here is anywhere near to being the best of all possible explanations.
peacegirl wrote: if you know this then why can’t you open your mind rather than accuse me of “intellectual contraptions, objectivism, and being in my head?”
Well, among other reasons, there have been any number of folks here in ILP [over the years] that insisted, in turn, that, if only I would open my mind and read their books or posts or arguments, I would be persuaded to go down their own TOE path.
But, as with you and the author, their arguments are almost always just that:
theories of everything.
Truly elaborate and at times amazingly sophisticated intellectual contraptions that refuse to go where I accuse you above of not going.
