iambiguous wrote:iambiguous wrote:Once again, from my frame of mind, you are agreeing that everything we think, feel, say and do is inherently, necessarily intertwined in the "brute facticity" that encompasses the existence of existence itself...but that somehow this "progress" you speak of is dependent on others choosing to think about all of this as you do. As though they really are free to do so.
peacegirl wrote: That is very true. Only when people act on a finding can there be success based on that finding.
No, only when it is determined that we do in fact live in a universe where there is some measure of human autonomy, will folks be free [up to a point]
to act on a finding. Your finding for example. Or mine. In the interim, given a wholly determined universe, we act on findings that we were never able to not act on. And never able to not find.
Determinism, the way it's accurately defined, does not mean we aren't able to act autonomously or with thought based on contingent events and sudden changes. Just because we can't act outside of natural law does not mean we can't change course or think independently. We've been through this.
iamiguous wrote:And [of course] "progressive" behavior revolves around your own understanding of what that means in a world where you could never have understood it other than how you were compelled to.
And, yes, if the laws of matter propel/compel everything that we do, being described as a cog in nature's wheel seems reasonable to me.
peacegirl wrote: It depends on the context.
iambiguous wrote:How are not all contexts wholly in sync with nature's way?
Thus...
iambiguous wrote:Okay, what aspect of human interaction is not wholly in sync with cause and effect as prescribed by nature?
Everything we do is in sync with nature's way but...nature cannot force us to act in a way that we ourselves are not in sync with, or give permission to. In that respect I don't think it is accurate to say we are just cogs in a wheel. To be a cog in a wheel you would have no choice but to do what you're being forced to do. That is not the definition of determinism I am using. We've been through this already.
peacegirl wrote: Nature doesn't proscribe or prescribe behavior, therefore nature does not cause an effect. The word 'cause" is misleading. Nothing causes a person to kill. He wants to kill for various reasons, which gives him greater satisfaction in his motion from here to there.
iambiguous wrote:The laws of nature are either embedded in a teleological component of Existence, or they are not. One can imagine a God prescribing or proscribing human behaviors. But nature? Wanting to kill or not wanting to kill is neither here nor there to nature. It is just nature evolving into matter evolving into minds necessarily compelled to want or not to want anything.
That is true, our brains are necessarily compelled, based on multivariate factors, to want or not to want anything. But this does not remove autonomy in the way it's normally defined, nor does it have to be excluded since contingent events are always coming into play. Autonomy and determinism (the way it's accurate defined) are not mutually exclusive, which is what you have come to believe.
iambiguous wrote:But this in turn can only be an assessment that I was never able not to make.
Just as this...
peacegirl wrote: Nature doesn't compel or cause a behavior. Our circumstances give rise to desiring one alternative over another but we are not caused by external forces since nothing has the power to do that.
...is an assessment that you were never able not to make. Either determinism encompasses all matter or the human mind is somehow the exception. After all, our desiring would seem [to me] to be no less in sync with the laws of matter.
Determinism encompasses all matter. The human mind is no exception but you are ignoring an important adjunct to this understanding, which I will state again: Nothing but nothing has the power to force you to do anything you make up your mind not to do, for over this you have mathematical control. You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink.
iambiguous wrote:But how could my perception of contingency, chance and change not be just another inherent manifestation of nature? In an autonomous universe, the manner in which I understand them is crucial because the things "I" choose are profoundly predicated on, embedded in, and sustained by the manner in which I can never fully understand and control them. But in a determined universe how I think I understand and control them is only as I was ever able to.
peacegirl wrote: The distinction you're making is flawed. The things you choose as an autonomous being are no different than the determined being who thinks in a certain way --- because the two are one and the same.
iambiguous wrote:Think about it. The distinction that I am making here is one that I am compelled to make and it is flawed? Indeed, this is precisely why some will embrace the idea of a wholly determined universe. Everything that they think, feel, say and do, they are off the hook regarding. "Flaws" are no less the embodiment of nature than "perfection".
Regardless that they are the embodiment of nature, they are still flawed and need correction. If I say that 2+2 is 5, that is also no less the embodiment of nature but I would appreciate being corrected.
iambiguous wrote:Then back to this:
peacegirl wrote: How is your repeating this over and over again helping to clarify the fact that determinism does not mean we are compelled to choose what we do not prefer to choose? A domino has no choice. We do have a choice, although it's never a free one.
iambiguous wrote:Nature is a domino not choosing to topple over and nature is a human being "choosing" to topple over the domino. The domino was never not going to topple over and the human being was never not going to set it up to topple over.
Human beings are not dominoes. They are not "choosing" to topple over the domino unless there is a pile up on the highway, or something similar.
iambiguous wrote:Just as the future is only going to be what it must be but somehow we can "choose" to see it as you do and make it a "progressive" future.
You can choose to learn more, or not choose to learn more, in the direction of greater satisfaction. Either way, once you make a choice, you could not have done otherwise.
iambiguous wrote:But any lack of understanding on the part of either of us is always compelled by nature. The "folly" for me here [given my current understanding of determinism] is that any misunderstandings on the part of either one of us in this exchange are perfectly natural.
peacegirl wrote: It is. That is why this knowledge may take thousands of years to be brought to light not because it's untrue, but because people are reluctant to give up fixed ideas.
iambiguous wrote:Why are people reluctant to give up on fixed ideas in a determined universe if not because being or not being reluctant [again regarding anything] is what they are ever and always compelled to be?
I understand that, but repeating how many centuries it took for the truth to be accepted may help to prevent the same thing from happening again. Just knowing what has happened in the past can serve as a reminder.
You should take your conclusions to those who actually perform experiments on the thinking brain. Those who, using MRI technologies, test their conjectures about free will and determinism on people who are actually in the process of "choosing" or choosing something.
peacegirl wrote: There is no way that free will can be proven by an MRI. Determinism has been supported by neuroscience but it doesn't solve the problem of responsibility.
iambiguous wrote:In my view, another flagrant assertion. You believe this and that makes it so.
You can't be serious. I offered the first three chapters. You have not read it yet you seem to be so sure it's a flagrant assertion! Wow!
iambiguous wrote:You still have no capacity to actually demonstrate that this is true.
But it has been demonstrated. Do you have any conception of what the discovery is about in order to come up with such a charge?
iambiguous wrote:And the problem of responsibility has always revolved around the extent to which it can be demonstrated that we are responsible for choosing one thing rather than another. And the only way that makes sense is if we are not compelled to "choose" instead. You keep insisting what to me are two contradictory things:
1] that I am confused over the meaning of determinism
You are. Definitions mean nothing if they do not symbolize reality. The way determinism has been defined causes a false dichotomy where none exists.
iambiguous wrote:2] that I was never able not to be confused over the meaning of determinism.
I never said that you were never able not to be confused but that does not take away from the fact that it needs correction.
The only reason the terms are contradictory to you is because you don't understand how I'm using the term "responsibility". For example, if a person runs a red light and injuring someone, he is responsible no one else but that doesn't mean he is responsible in the sense that he could have done otherwise. But this is only part of the equation. This alone will not prevent a person from slowing down rather than speeding up if that is what gives him greater satisfaction. The feeling of hurting someone when he knows in advance he will not be blamed for this careless act, WILL STOP HIM.
iambiguous wrote:Or, rather, so it still seems to me.
God forbid? You mean Nature forbid? But if nature has no meaning or purpose embedded in its laws, than the dominoes falling, the cars piling up and the human brains that brought both situations into existence were never going to not unfold as they must.
That is very true. All I am showing is that this law of our nature, when applied to our environment, will cause us to veer in a new direction but still in keeping with deterministic law.
peacegirl wrote: As I stated, nature does not cause; neither does heredity, God, your status, your income, your being an expert of some kind. Only your desire based on conscious and unconscious factors lead to the choices that you ultimately make.
iambiguous wrote:What then is the "for all practical purposes" relationship between nature and any and all desires that I have? Aren't they begotten by life on earth evolving into human brains evolving into human minds wholly in sync only with the laws of matter?
No one is denying that iambiguous. The only thing I am trying to bring out is that nothing from the past can cause us to do anything against our will, not nature, not our parents, not even our genetics. IOW, a person can't say nature forced him to shoot that person. He shot that person because he wanted to. At that moment it gave him greater satisfaction than not to shoot, for whatever reason. Does that make sense?
iambiguous wrote:There it is. The part that I keep coming back to. You need some way to reconfigure the world around us today into a better, more progressive place for human beings to live. You can't actually do that "in reality", so you need to "think up" a way to understand the choices we make so that if others come to think of them in the same way, that better, more progressive world is possible.
peacegirl wrote: I am not reconfiguring anything. I'm sharing a discovery. If you don't want to partake in trying to understand this discovery, that's fine. Others will. It does not necessitate that everybody understand this knowledge for it to work, just as it didn't take everyone to understand Edison's discovery of the lightbulb for us to enjoy the benefits.
iambiguous wrote:Well, you are not of your own free will sharing this discovery, right? And it's not a question of whether it is "fine" that I am not sharing in it [here and now], but that I was never really free myself to share in it.
What is done is done, but that does not mean in the next instant you [in the here and now] may decide to share it. Either way, each moment offers a new set of possibilities.
iambiguous wrote:To choose to share in it. Although, depending on what nature has in store for me in the future, I might one day "choose" to share it.
Call it nature if you will but you cannot say nature made you share it. You may desire to share it because you find it compelling and want to pass it on, in the direction of greater satisfaction but that is a far cry from saying you were forced to share it against your will, which is the problem with the conventional definition.
peacegirl wrote:That's called being visionary. It is not changing what is, but it is allowing new ideas to take us to a place where we can envision what could be.
iambiguous wrote:Call it whatever you must. Nature either allows new ideas to reconfigure the world into your own wholly compelled rendition of progressive behavior, or it doesn't.
peacegirl wrote: Stop shifting your responsibility to nature, as if nature has this kind of control. It doesn't.
iambiguous wrote:I shift where nature compels me to. Just as you do. In a determined universe. And "control" here revolves entirely around a complete understanding of existence itself.
Once again, nature doesn't compel. You, as part of nature, are compelled to choose what offers you greater satisfaction from moment to moment. That is the direction of all life. This direction is beyond our control, as is the fact that nothing can make us do what we choose not to do. If you could allow me to show you where these two principles take us, we would make progress.
iambiguous wrote:Others are compelled to either read [the author] or not. But either way, the future [like the present] is already inherently a continuation of the past. Once nature's laws set us in motion we are only ever going to "choose" what must be.
peacegirl wrote: True. It took two thousand years for people to finally accept that the earth is round, so who knows how long it will take to bring this discovery to light.
iambiguous wrote:Well, it will take as long as it must in order for the future to be what it must.
Very true. None of us know what our efforts will produce or what the future will be. It will be what it must be, in the final analysis.
iambiguous wrote:From my perspective, if in "[l]ooking back...we could not have chosen", it means that our choices are for all practical purposes robotic. Nature's laws program us to think and feel and say and do only what we could never not think and feel and say and do. And feeling here includes our desires. They are no exception to the rule. Nature is my "will".
peacegirl wrote: Nature and your will are synonymous, if that's how you want to perceive determinism.
iambiguous wrote:Do I or do I not have any real choice in how I perceive determinism. In the past, in the present or in the future?
If you are given different ways of looking at it, you have a choice based on what makes more sense to you. The choice in how you perceive determinism is not a free one. We all know that.
peacegirl wrote: The only caveat is that nature CANNOT force you to do anything without your consent. I've said this before. People often say, "He made me shoot that person." That's incorrect because no one has the power to do that. This is not a trivial observation.
iambiguous wrote:How is my "consent" not also synonymous with nature? How are the people shooting or being shot or explaining why they were not in turn also wholly synonymous with nature's way?
Your consent is also synonymous with nature since nothing can make or force you to do what you do not consent to. This is an important observation because many people when questioned will say, "This person made me do it," or "I didn't agree to it; I was forced into it."
peacegirl wrote:You don't have to think up a better, more progressive future because it's already been thought up based on sound principles.
This makes sense to me only to the extent that you are able to explain who or what decides that the laws of nature are based on "sound principles". The laws of nature simply exist.
peacegirl wrote: That is true. Nature doesn't prescribe. But we can learn from nature through observation and utilize those laws in ways never before thought possible.
iambiguous wrote:We can learn only that which nature, in unfolding inexorably, enables us to learn. Call it a "prescription", call it something else. It is what it is because it is what it is.
Along with the truth that it is what it is because it is what it is, humanity is developing at a consistent rate. It's exciting to see what is ahead knowing that we have the ability to prevent war and crime.
iambiguous wrote: Now, the existence of an omniscient God and "sound principles" makes sense. If God knows everything of course His principles will be sound. But nature in a No God world? How on earth does that work?
peacegirl wrote: You're getting off onto a tangent about God. The word God was used throughout the text to mean the laws that govern our universe. One of those laws is that man's will is not free. We never knew the importance of this law and its implications until now.
iambiguous wrote:No, with God it is possible to imagine the existence of meaning and purpose behind existence. And "sound principles" as being in sync with God's will. With nature -- nature as this profoundly mysterious explanation for existence -- "sound principles" suggests that nature is as it is because it is in fact "sounder" than being some other way.
And we don't know why it is this way at all.
We don't have to know the reason for why nature is the way it is, or if God exists. All we really need to know is that we are moving toward a world of peace and brotherhood as a result of this knowledge (which you haven't read).
iambiguous wrote:And here you are like many, many others insisting that what you think is true here comes closest to explaining it all. You even include a more "progressive" future in the mix of assumptions. Though never in a million years will you describe this explanation as a psychological defense mechanism rooted inherently in a human brain rooted necessarily in nature itself.
How comforting and consoling can that be?
peacegirl wrote: OMG, you are the one making assumptions that this must be some kind of psychological defense mechanism. You're way off base iamiguous.
iambiguous wrote:Again, as though the choices that I am making here allow you to accuse me of this.
I am pointing out that your analysis is flawed. This is not an accusation; it's a statement.
iambiguous wrote: I am not at all free to make choices more in sync with your own, but somehow the problem seems to rest here [in your mind] with my "flaws".
Again, I am not accusing you for being mistaken. I'm just pointing it out.
peacegirl wrote: Once we see how this new world can be achieved, people will be compelled to move in this direction because they will want what they see.
iambiguous wrote:Or: Once we are compelled by nature to either see or not see how this new world can be achieved people will either be compelled or not compelled to move in this direction because nature will have either compelled or not compelled them to want what they see.
peacegirl wrote: True, but when a genuine discovery is made, it is human nature to want to understand how that knowledge can be applied for the betterment of all. If someone finds a cure for cancer, are we not going to use that knowledge in order to help those suffering? Progress moves humanity forward.
iambiguous wrote:Genuine? How can that not be but one more word that we were compelled to invent in order to sustain an exchange as it was, in turn, compelled to be?
What is wrong with the word genuine? You say this is but one more word that we are compelled to invent? I'm not inventing this word.
iambiguous wrote:Cancer is a biological imperative built into the evolution of life on earth. Some get cancer. Some don't. And someday someone may well find a cure for it. But how is any of this not wholly in sync with whatever nature necessarily has in store for us in the future?
Again and again you keep repeating what I already agree with. All I am saying is that life progresses as it must, which is to do better with each succeeding generation. That is how life works.