Ecmandu wrote:You didn't respond to the content of my post.
Sorry about that:









Ecmandu wrote:You didn't respond to the content of my post.
MagsJ wrote:Lol
Ecmandu wrote:
Ahh.. I see.
So here's the deal people.
Unless you can construct a non zero sum, non consent violating reality ...
Well... let me back up.
Logic is more powerful than god. And logic is not aware of itself.
People who weaponize philosophy will be damned by their own spirits.
I come as a witness to having been through this before.
It is not my curse, it is a curse you place upon yourselves.
Ecmandu wrote:MagsJ wrote:Lol
Ahh.. I see.
So here's the deal people.
Unless you can construct a non zero sum, non consent violating reality ...
Well... let me back up.
Logic is more powerful than god. And logic is not aware of itself.
People who weaponize philosophy will be damned by their own spirits.
I come as a witness to having been through this before.
It is not my curse, it is a curse you place upon yourselves.
Ecmandu wrote:Let me explain this a little better.
If you're a well informed person, you will know that taking a machete to your arm will chop it off.
I tell you the truth.
As you plead for others for chopping your own arm off, that you don't know why it occurred. They won't care. In this way, when your soul gets mangles by weaponizing philosophy, people will not care.
iambiguous wrote:Ecmandu wrote:Let me explain this a little better.
If you're a well informed person, you will know that taking a machete to your arm will chop it off.
I tell you the truth.
As you plead for others for chopping your own arm off, that you don't know why it occurred. They won't care. In this way, when your soul gets mangles by weaponizing philosophy, people will not care.
Among other things, define "better".
iambiguous wrote:Meaning what exactly? Either the words that we choose to encompass an argument about "something instead of nothing" can be connected somehow to the lives that we live or they can't.
That's what we are really grappling with here: the day to day lived relationship between words and worlds.
iambiguous wrote:Well, in that case there's not much then that any particular human mind can't speculate is true.
a) Not everyone's speculations are of equal caliber (look at Ecmandu).
b) I'm not concerned about what others speculate is true.
It makes for fascinating discussions, sure, <-- Bingo! but sooner or later what you think is true [or what you think you know] "in your head" is either able to be substantiated or not. After all, where you draw the line between reason and faith isn't likely to be where others will. Instead, what is exchanged by and large are assumptions. Intellectual contraptions as it were.
iambiguous wrote:But we have no way of establishing definitively if the verification process is not in itself merely an inherent manifestation of a determined universe. If mind is just brain and brain is just more matter, it would all seem to be essentially/objectively intertwined in whatever laws might exist that makes matter -- necessarily -- what it is and always will be.
iambiguous wrote:Originally? Yes, originally. In a world where all matter [mindful or otherwise] interacts necessarily as it only ever could, how is this distinction in and of itself not just but one more intrinsic manifestation of Existence.
iambiguous wrote:Well, in a wholly determined universe, my certainty is only as it ever could have been.
iambiguous wrote:And that was only 118 years ago. Do you really imagine that a 1,000 years from now physicists will be coming to the same conclusions about QM that are being made today?
iambiguous wrote:This entails understanding things about the emergence of consciouness and mind that is still beyond our grasp.
iambiguous wrote:If significance and meaning pertaining to the interactions above are essentially in sync with all the other domioes toppling over onto each other in the march of matter through time, how is your explanation [and my failure to understand it] not just another teeniest and tiniest part of it all?
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I can only assume here you are making an important point that I keep missing. Nope, but you are missing it. But: was there ever any capacity on my part not to miss it? Am I actually "destined" to get it at some point in the future? Would anything at all here have ever been other than what it is if either of us had some measure of autonomy?
iambiguous wrote:How is this not just another intellectual contraption in which words define and defend each other by going around and around tautologically in presumptuous circles? The logic doesn't seem to be connected to any empirical interactions such that experiments and predictions can be made. Such that others can replicate them pertaining to other physical interactions out in the world that we live in.
iambiguous wrote:How do the points mainfest themselves in nature manifesting itself in turn through "natural laws”?
iambiguous wrote:What crucial component of "compatibilism" am I missing here?
iambiguous wrote:If the manner in which I think and feel about my own subjective experiences is the only manner in which I was ever able to think and feel about them "here and now", what exactly would be established in making yet another attempt?
iambiguous wrote:A tactic? As though pointing out that there is certainly a gap between what either one of us think we know about these relationships and all that there actually is to be known about them, isn't just plain old common sense!
Are you actually suggesting that, in regard to what you speculate about here and in your book, this gap is not really relevant at all?
iambiguous wrote:But my point here is that I have no capacity myself to "really believe" any of my own speculations. At best "here and now" they can seem reasonable to me. But "I" am no less the embodiment of the gap I point to.
iambiguous wrote:Now all I need then is someone able to convince me that any of this was ever really within my capacity to change, to reconfigure into something else. Otherwise I can only assume that I had no actual capacity at all.
iambiguous wrote:You tell me:
How is this post not just a bunch of words that some might even construe to be gibberish?
Ecmandu wrote:Gib, I already addressed that point in my post.
gib wrote:Ecmandu wrote:Gib, I already addressed that point in my post.
So you did. And I interpreted it in just the way you stated. That's the law of non-contradiction.
Biggy has a different idea in mind (I think). He's coming from physical determinism where everything--even the choices we make in the future--are pre-determined.
I don't know if he's right--the world may be fully determined, or it may not be--but I think you're right: when you choose to do X, you can't also choose to do not-X.
gib wrote:iambiguous wrote:Meaning what exactly? Either the words that we choose to encompass an argument about "something instead of nothing" can be connected somehow to the lives that we live or they can't.
That's what we are really grappling with here: the day to day lived relationship between words and worlds.
We are? I thought we were just dabbling in a bit of abstract philosophy. Well, if you want an alternate method than science to resolve the determinism vs. free will problem, try philosophy (I guess). But of course, that don't work either, does it. I guess we're hooped!
gib wrote: The point of separating out different meanings of "freedom" is to be able to talk about a kind of freedom that isn't mutually exclusive with physical determinism (that's why they call it compatibilism).
gib wrote: If you perform an fMRI scan on a person who is asked to perform some action out of free choice, you will find deterministic operations going on in his brain. What I'm calling "psychological freedom" is simply the psychological state of making a decision to do, say, or think something and finding that this decision is carried out just as intended. <-- But no one said this requires rising above the laws of nature as they would play out in the brain. It's just a type of brain state that leads to certain behaviors.
iambiguous wrote:Well, in a wholly determined universe, my certainty is only as it ever could have been.
gib wrote: So is your inconsistency.
iambiguous wrote:And that was only 118 years ago. Do you really imagine that a 1,000 years from now physicists will be coming to the same conclusions about QM that are being made today?
gib wrote: And how is it you know what they will come up with 1,000 years from now?
gib wrote: If I point to evidence that suggests our world may not be fully deterministic after all, you jump ahead 1,000 years when scientists will allegedly (re)discover a Newtonian clockwork universe. But if I agree with you that the world is fully deterministic, you don't even bring up the fact that this view of nature was debunked that same 118 years ago (ironic that you brought up that quote).
gib wrote: The truth is, we don't know if the world is fully deterministic or not. That you cling to such a view despite your alleged self-professed ignorance on the topic tells me you don't know how to follow your own nihilistic perscription.
I can only assume here you are making an important point that I keep missing. But: was there ever any capacity on my part not to miss it? Am I actually "destined" to get it at some point in the future? Would anything at all here have ever been other than what it is if either of us had some measure of autonomy?
gib wrote: Don't think too hard about this. It's not that important a point. We just disagree on the compatibility of meaning with determinism. You say: no freedom, no meaning. I say: no freedom, yes meaning.
iambiguous wrote:How is this not just another intellectual contraption in which words define and defend each other by going around and around tautologically in presumptuous circles? The logic doesn't seem to be connected to any empirical interactions such that experiments and predictions can be made. Such that others can replicate them pertaining to other physical interactions out in the world that we live in.
gib wrote: That’s not my concern.
gib wrote: Philosophy is notorious for touching on topics that aren’t empirically verifiable. This is one of them.
iambiguous wrote:How do the points mainfest themselves in nature manifesting itself in turn through "natural laws”?
gib wrote: Plato’s cave analogy is very fitting here. You can think of matter as the shadows cast on Plato’s cave wall, and the objects that cast the shadows as the experiences had by the universe that matter represents (the representational relation is quite the same; matter represents the universe’s experiences like the shadows represent the objects in Plato’s cave) The light which makes the shadows possible would be analogous to meaning. .
Gib wrote:All experiences are meaningful, and this gives rise to what I call “flow” or “entailment”—the metamorphosis of experience from one quality to another. This is nicely represented by the flow of energy in matter, and in the brain, the flow of signals from one neural centre to another. When Information impinges on the eye, signals are sent to the occipital lobe at the back of the brain. This is where vision occurs. Then signals are propagated to higher cortical regions so that we can recognize more complex and abstract features—such as shapes, 3D cues, movement, and identities. Signals will further propagate to other brain regions so that we can think and feel about the things we see (or sense in any other way). Physically, we see a flow of energy. Subjectively, we experience a change in experiences. This change is driven by meaning. The meaning is each experience “entails” the meaning in the next. Experience A means experience B. <— The logic of experience. This “entailing” of one experience by another is represented by physical laws—one physical event “causing” another.
When we observe a fire, we see the flickering of flames, hear the crackle, and feel the heat. All this is possible because of the flow of physical energy—light, sound waves, and the heating of the air around the fire. Even before this energy flow impinges on our senses, it represents the entailment of experience—this time had by the universe, not us. All physical events between the flickering of flame and the stimulation of our senses represent experiences of some foreign quality being had by the universe. The way these physical events change represents the way the experiences morph from one quality to another, driven by meaning and entailment, until they finally take the form of a visual, auditory, or tactile sensation. <— That experience is represented by the signals that enter our brains from the sense.
Natural law is like the observation of repeating patterns in the shadows. If the prisoners in Plato's cave notice repeating patterns in the shadows, they might come up with a concept similar to natural laws. But obviously, these patterns are themselves representation--not of objects per se but repeating patterns in the activity of those objects, which someone free to roam about the cave might identify as the real natural laws. In the case of my theory of experience, this would be analogous to patterns of entailment between experiences--qaulities of experiences which consistently entail the same subsequent qualities (similar to a syllogism: the two premises "Socrates is a man," and "All men are mortal," consistently entail "Socrates is mortal"... and they do so because of what the premises mean).
Gib wrote:You and I, Biggy, are like the prisoners in Plato's cave. I'm trying to convey to you a theory about what creates the shadows. I have to bring in concepts like "objects" and "light". You don't understand so you ask: explain these "objects" and "light" in terms of the shadows. And I try to tell you that I did: the objects and light create the shadows, but beyond that, they don't exist as shadows. If I could, I'd throw up my hands and say: what else can I tell you?
iambiguous wrote:If the manner in which I think and feel about my own subjective experiences is the only manner in which I was ever able to think and feel about them "here and now", what exactly would be established in making yet another attempt?
gib wrote: Woaw, hold on there now. While I grant your helpless role in a deterministic universe, I do not grant that your responses to my questions are themselves natural laws--as though your first response will inevitably be your every response. People change their minds all the time. They give different responses on different occasions. If on one day, they feel like avoiding a question, they can turn around and decide to answer the question the next day. You're not special, Biggy, you can change your mind too.
gib wrote: If you persistently refuse to answer my questions, that's only stubbornness, not a law of nature. All you need is to want to answer my questions and you will.
iambiguous wrote:A tactic? As though pointing out that there is certainly a gap between what either one of us think we know about these relationships and all that there actually is to be known about them, isn't just plain old common sense!
Are you actually suggesting that, in regard to what you speculate about here and in your book, this gap is not really relevant at all?
gib wrote: Not to you answering my questions. Whether a tactic you use to avoid a question is common sense or not is completely irrelevant. Most tactics depend on some truth or common sense in order to be used (otherwise, they'd be totally ineffectual). What makes it a tactic, as opposed to simply a statement that helps the discussion move forward, is that your motives in using it are other than to help the discussion move forward--you're trying to avoid answering a question which you know would put your main points into doubt.
iambiguous wrote:But my point here is that I have no capacity myself to "really believe" any of my own speculations. At best "here and now" they can seem reasonable to me. But "I" am no less the embodiment of the gap I point to.
gib wrote: Ah, then we suffer the same affliction. I too know what it's like to not *really* believe my own speculations (which is why I have so much trouble answering your question about how I close the gap between what's true in my head and what's true out there). However, from what I gather, the difference between you and I is that you're plagued by this while I'm at peace with it.
iambiguous wrote:You tell me:
How is Ecmandu's post not just a bunch of words that some might even construe to be gibberish?
gib wrote: Well, I can see what he's saying. He's raising Aristotle's law of non-contradiction--a thing can't be and not be at the same time. If you choose to eat cornflakes, you can't, at the same time, chose to not eat cornflakes.
ambiguous wrote:Why on earth was a complex human language invented in the first place? Well, given the evolution of life on earth we are equipped biologically to create it. Other species of animals may have more or less complex sounds that can be created to more or less impart information to each other. But nothing like ours. Still, what all such sounds have in common is the communicating of practical information about the world around us. Information allowing us to sustain our existence: acquiring food, water, shelter and protection. Sounds/words conveyed that facilitate reproducing the species.
The part about exchanging abstract philosophy came considerably later. And only for our own species. Philosophers talk about that which it is rational or logical to say. That which we either can or cannot know. But the bottom line [mine anyway] will always revolve around the extent to which we either can or cannot connect the dots between the words we use and the world we live in.
We can think and say and feel almost anything about "something" and "nothing". About mind and matter. But what can we demonstrate to others is true or not true in regards to a particular context?
And, sure, if all one is interested in is exchanging "worlds of words" that conjure up some really fascianting possibilities [and discussions], fine. My "thing" here, however, is always in connecting those speculations to that which others have to say about the existential relationship between identity, value judgments and political power.
And, on this thread, probing the extent to which we can ascertain whether these exchanges are autonomous or not. Going back eventually to an understanding of Existence itself: Why something instead of nothing? Why this something and not another?
If exchanging conjectures embedded largely in intellectual contraptions is more someone else's "thing", there are always going to be plenty of folks around in places like this to go in that direction.
iambiguous wrote:But if all we do talk about here is only that which we were ever able to talk about here, what kind of "freedom" is that? <— The psychological kind.
We make choices based on the assumption that, unlike the choices that hedgehogs and rats and spiders make, ours are "thought out" and not just the biologically imperative. Most are convinced we have the capacity to choose something else entirely. But what if that is in turn just an illusion built into human psychology built into the laws of matter.
Some people might think of it that way, but the ability to think things through before acting isn’t the defining marker of psychological freedom to me. Here, we and the hedgehogs are in the same boats. It’s the absence of feeling forced. The hedgehog freely chooses (psychologically) to eat food just as I freely choose (psychologically) to eat food. But if a larger animal steels that food away, the hedgehog was forced to abandon his food, just as I would be forced to abandon my food if a thief stole it from me.
So, the two main questions would seem to be 1] is this true? and 2] if it is, how could matter become conscious/mindful of itself as matter in exchanges like this one?
As I said, I don’t know if it is true, but I’m granting it for the sake of this argument.
How on earth do we come to grips with this in any other way than as we are always meant to? Or, sure, not meant to?
Even using the word "compatible" here would seem to be only as it ever could have been used in a wholly determined universe.
iambiguous wrote:On the other hand, how are "intellectual (political) freedom", "psychological freedom" and "metaphsical freedom" in the brain not analogous to a battery, an alternator and a starter in an automobile engine.
iambiguous wrote:There's a part here I can clearly recognize as different. But there is also a part that thinks, "it's a distinction without a difference". Why? Because whatever the parts of anything, they were never, ever going to not interact as nature intended.
iambiguous wrote:But I do not have a deterministic take on these relationships. I'm just not sure. Meaning I'm just not sure if I could ever have not been unsure.
iambiguous wrote:And the part about the irony you note is unclear.
iambiguous wrote:The assumption here seems to be that while this is a reasonable reaction of yours in regard to my point of view, the same can't be said regarding my own reaction to yours.
iambiguous wrote:n a determined universe, we think [can think] only as hard as we were ever going to think. But, so much more importantly [to me], what we think and the meaning that we think that we impart to others is also only as it was ever going to be. Thus to make the distinction that you do is just another inherent manifestation of nature unfolding.
iambiguous wrote:Obviously. But: how obvious is it in turn that there was never really any possibility that it could have been of concern to you?
iambiguous wrote:Yes, but this one is a particulary Big Question. It revolves around the extent to which anything that we think, feel or do was ever within our capacity to not think, feel and do.
iambiguous wrote:At times, you strike me as someone who, in charging others with not answering your question, is more concerned instead with others giving you the right answers. Your answers. I just want clarity. Whether you answer with a yay or a nay, I get a fuller understanding of your point. When you avoid answering, it’s just frustrating. Also, the assumption seems to be that my wanting to is within my capacity. We need not assume that. If I really wanted to, I would. Even though I am still not certain that my wanting to do anything is embedded in what is deemed by some to be my "freedom of choice".
iambiguous wrote:Let's try this: Note what you construe to be the most important question here that I have not answered.
iambiguous wrote:How does any of this make the gap between what you and I think we know about these relationships and all that can be known about them go away? Until that is grasped how on earth would anyone be able to determine if and when the discussion is moving forward.
iambiguous wrote:And, come on, what could Nietzsche tell us definitively about that?
iambiguous wrote:What are you suggesting here...that while acknowledging that, like me, you recognize the gap between what you think is true in your posts here, and all that can be known about existence itself may be significant, you're "at peace" with that?
Yes, most people are.
Okay, then good for you. Me, I can't imagine a sense of equillibrium or equanimity here given that gap. I can only resign myself to the fact that soon enough I will tumble over into the abyss that is oblvion and be bothered by it no more.
I don't myself imagine some God or some transcending "mind" up there/out there that "I" will somehow become a part of. It's still just an essentially meaningless world on this side of the grave and the obliteration of "I" for all time to come on the other side.
iambiguous wrote:For me compatibilism seems to revolve around the assumption that a choice has been made and a meaning has been concocted for that choice --- but there was never any possibility of it ever being any other way.
gib wrote:ambiguous wrote:But if all we do talk about here is only that which we were ever able to talk about here, what kind of "freedom" is that?
The psychological kind.
We make choices based on the assumption that, unlike the choices that hedgehogs and rats and spiders make, ours are "thought out" and not just the biologically imperative. Most are convinced we have the capacity to choose something else entirely. But what if that is in turn just an illusion built into human psychology built into the laws of matter.
gib wrote: Some people might think of it that way, but the ability to think things through before acting isn’t the defining marker of psychological freedom to me. Here, we and the hedgehogs are in the same boats. It’s the absence of feeling forced. The hedgehog freely chooses (psychologically) to eat food just as I freely choose (psychologically) to eat food. But if a larger animal steels that food away, the hedgehog was forced to abandon his food, just as I would be forced to abandon my food if a thief stole it from me.
iambiguous wrote:On the other hand, how are "intellectual (political) freedom", "psychological freedom" and "metaphsical freedom" in the brain not analogous to a battery, an alternator and a starter in an automobile engine.
gib wrote: Well, political freedom has to do with laws and government, so it has absolutely nothing to do with batteries or car parts. Psychological freedom might have to do with, I don’t know, a state the car engine might be in?
iambiguous wrote:There's a part here I can clearly recognize as different. But there is also a part that thinks, "it's a distinction without a difference". Why? Because whatever the parts of anything, they were never, ever going to not interact as nature intended.
gib wrote: Yeah, I know, that’s all you’re concerned about. But for someone who feels so strongly that these discussions should be brought into the world of real men and woman struggling for political power and (what was it?) conflicting goods, you sure seem to be barking up the wrong tree.
gib wrote: If you want to deal with the majority of people in their day-to-day struggles in the world of politics, economics, religioun, etc., I’d highly recommend adopting the “psychological” definition of freedom. That’s what most people understand and will be most receptive to.
gib wrote: Even if you could get them to understand and believe in metaphysical freedom, or the lack thereof, they wouldn’t care about it.
iambiguous wrote:But I do not have a deterministic take on these relationships. I'm just not sure. Meaning I'm just not sure if I could ever have not been unsure.
gib wrote: Then why do you speak as though determinism is a given?
iambiguous wrote:And the part about the irony you note is unclear.
gib wrote: The irony is that the quote you sited supports the indeterminism of quantum mechanics and throws out the hard determinism of classical mechanics.
iambiguous wrote:The assumption here seems to be that while this is a reasonable reaction of yours in regard to my point of view, the same can't be said regarding my own reaction to yours.
gib wrote: If that is my assumption, it is only because I could not not have that assumption.
(^ I’ve been waiting for an opportunity to use that.)
iambiguous wrote:Yes, but this one is a particulary Big Question. It revolves around the extent to which anything that we think, feel or do was ever within our capacity to not think, feel and do.
gib wrote: Hey Biggy, you know what I just realized? Check it out: you only think that because you were never going to not think that. <— Now that’s deep, eh bro?
gib wrote: We need not infer freedom of choice. I am just saying that you’re not special. Other people do it all the time, and whether they do it because the laws of matter forced them to or they really did make a free choice to do it, you’re human like the rest of us, and there is no reason you, at some future time, can’t make a similar switch.
iambiguous wrote:Let's try this: Note what you construe to be the most important question here that I have not answered.
gib wrote: I would very much like an answer to my question: do you think that in order to have a subjective experience, one must be able to choose that subjective experience (this was the example about choosing to see a banana as blue).
iambiguous wrote:How does any of this make the gap between what you and I think we know about these relationships and all that can be known about them go away? Until that is grasped how on earth would anyone be able to determine if and when the discussion is moving forward.
gib wrote: I mean that I ask you questions in order to get clarity on your points. This, to me, would be a great help in moving the discussion forward. So when you avoid answering them, this to me stifles the discussion.
gib wrote: [Nietzsche] also taught how to see through the logic of people’s arguments to their motives. He taught to question not what people were saying but why they were saying it. People, he said, argue philosophies and other intellectual points, not to uncover and disseminate the truth, but to gain power. The existence of God is irrelevant to the preacher, only that his flock be made believers, for in that case he gains power over them. Now, in your case, Biggy, I don’t think you’re trying to gain power, but to avoid weakness. In avoiding my questions with the tactic: it’s futile to answer your questions, gib, because whatever answer I give you, it will be the only answer I was ever able to give you—you avoid exposing weaknesses in your arguments.
gib wrote: I imagine the problem for you, Biggy, is more than just that there is a gap, but a paradox. The way you argue your points comes across as though you think that in a world of pure materialism and unyielding physical laws, of cold lifeless matter and accidental events, there cannot be free will, consciousness, mind, and meaning. While I acknowledge that there is a gap between what I think I know and all that I would need to know (in order to finally know “the truth”), I am able to entertain certain possibilities—ways in which there might be free will, consciousness, mind, and meaning—so the gap isn’t paradoxical to me. <— This is enough to allow me to live with the unknown with some measure of peace.
iambiguous wrote:For me compatibilism seems to revolve around the assumption that a choice has been made and a meaning has been concocted for that choice --- but there was never any possibility of it ever being any other way.
gib wrote: “A meaning has been concocted”… meaning what? A meaning for “choice”? <— That’s exactly what compatibilism is: a concocting of a new meaning for words like “choice”, “freedom”, “will”… such that they become compatible with determinism.
gib wrote: That’s what I’ve been trying to explain. “Freedom” doesn’t mean “freedom from physical laws” anymore (never did, really). It means freedom from external forces (or sometimes internal) trying to make your life difficult—people trying to force you against your will… or natural forces like gravity forcing you to stay on the ground despite your best efforts to fly. But to make yourself a cheese and ham sandwich? There’s no external forces stopping you there, so you are free to make yourself a cheese and ham sandwich.
gib wrote: Essentially, compatibilism is getting back to grass roots, the layman’s understanding of freedom. It asks the question: what does the layman think he is free to do? What does he want freedom from? And the answer is very rarely: the laws of nature. So long as he is free from this or that (thugs, gravity, corrupt government), the compatibilist will take that definition of freedom and focus his philosophy around it.
Ecmandu wrote:Are you guys kidding with those walls of text?
viewtopic.php?p=2712564#p2712564
That's the answer.
iambiguous wrote:Ecmandu wrote:Are you guys kidding with those walls of text?
viewtopic.php?p=2712564#p2712564
That's the answer.
You can only thank your lucky stars that your posts are only as they ever could have been.
Ecmandu wrote:You might want to look up the word, "indetermenancy" someday, maybe then, you can actually reply to what i wrote and proved.
iambiguous wrote:Here we are clearly stuck. I don't think we were ever moving. If the things I think, feel and do are all intertwined necessarily in a brain intertwined necessarily in the laws of matters, what is the point of making such a distinction? Other than because "I" was never able not to make it?
iambiguous wrote:I just don't grasp this "psychological freedom" the way you do.
iambiguous wrote:My point here however is that I am conflicted. I doubt that. I am of "two minds". A part of me is convinced that any autonomy we do possess in the is/ought world is circumscribed by the manner in which I construe the components of my own moral philosophy. But another part of me is not even convinced that we possess autonomy in the either/or world.
If I didn't know any better, I'd say it was the whole you.
There is no wrong tree here for me. There is only this: not being able to pin down the extent which "I" am in fact in possession of any capacity to determine my own life.
iambiguous wrote:If I thought like that, I would never pursue my other aim here: groping with the existential parameters of this: How ought one to live?
iambiguous wrote:Yes, that's what we are attempting to come to grips with here: the extent to which any reactions from any of us were/are within our capacity to have been other than what they were/are instead.
iambiguous wrote:How deep though? Is it in fact true...going all the way back to whatever it is that explains the existence of existence itself?
iambiguous wrote:But how does this not immediately take us on to the next question: do you think that what you do think here is something that you chose to think "of your own free will"?gib wrote:I would very much like an answer to my question: do you think that in order to have a subjective experience, one must be able to choose that subjective experience (this was the example about choosing to see a banana as blue).
Everything takes you to that question, Biggy.
The banana is blue because someone painted it blue, or because you have taken LSD, or because your brain is diseased, or because you are dreaming it is blue.
^ Is this really your answer? Ha! You couldn't even answer the question! Your brain distorted what you read. In a panic over the prospect of being shown up, your brain convert this: "Do you think that in order to have a subjective experience, one must be able to choose that subjective experience?"... to this: "Why is the banana blue?"
It still comes down to whether with respect to any of these contexts there is an element of autonomy present.
iambiguous wrote:In other words, with some questionspeople, there is only so much clarity to be had.
iambiguous wrote:To, to the extent that anyone is able to point out the weaknesses of this assessment, I can only be grateful.
iambiguous wrote:What can be exchanged here clearly?
iambiguous wrote:And I suspect that the peace of mind that you and "most others" are able to sustain here is embedded in a psychological defense mechinism that revolves around one or another rendition of this: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=185296
iambiguous wrote:...in a way that really doesn't make much sense to me. I'm simply not free to make a ham and cheese sandwich if I was always ever going to make it. If thinking that I am free is in turn the only way I was ever able to think about it, then this feeling of "compatibilism" is in turn illusory.
iambiguous wrote:...is just another intellectual contraption that your brain was determined to concoct in order to sustain the illusion that a part of you -- the psychological "I" -- might have chosen something different.
MagsJ wrote:Can we stick to debating and not psychoanalysing others.. thanks.
phyllo wrote:What's the difference between a person who believes in determinism and one who believes in compatabilism/free will?
On the plus side:
The determinist feels that he is not responsible/accountable for his life.
The non-determinist feels that he has control of his life.
On the minus side:
The determinist feels that he lacks control of his life.
The non-determinist feels the pressure of responsibility and accountability.
Which feeling do you prefer to have?
To what extent do these beliefs alter a life?
gib wrote:MagsJ wrote:Can we stick to debating and not psychoanalysing others.. thanks.
Aw, why you gotta ruin our fun, Mags?
Tell you what... Biggy, do you like psychoanalyzing me? I like psychoanalyzing you. If we both agree to accept each other's psychoanalyzations (because it's fun), can we continue?
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