There could be absolutely anything at all that could actually exist even if it might not be understood but whether there is or not will never be known
Omniscience is not something we can ever attain so there will always be gaps in our knowledge and this is a limitation that simply has to be accepted
So, basically, we just have to, well, live with that. If only from the cradle to the grave.
But that won’t stop the moral and political objectivists among us from concluding that not only is their own “real me” in sync with “the right thing to do” in the either/or world, but in the world of moral and political value judgments too. There is practically nothing they are not absolutely convinced starts and stops with what they think, feel, say and do.
Though, sure, they may well be no less compelled by nature to conclude this than I am to conclude what I do. But what of a world in which what we think, feel, say and do really is embedded in the random and accidental interactions of matter?
That is really over my head. Here and now, for example.
I think its probably a lot deeper than the mere machinations of matter so its possible it is beyond our comprehension
We cannot know what new knowledge we will discover in the future but we do know that that process will never stop
At least until we become extinct at which point our knowledge generating capacity stops functioning for the rest of time
Other intelligent species - if they exist - may carry on where we have left off but we will be not be here to witness them
Well, to the best of my current knowledge, unraveling all of this and finally resolving it once and for all still seems to be beyond our comprehension. It is certainly still beyond mine. Only for folks like Peacegirl and others, their own intellectual contraptions here do in fact work as the “final solution” for them.
And, as I see it, a factor embedded in the “human condition” if there is some measure of autonomy is this: believing something is enough.
Peacegirl is convinced of her far more hopeful future for mankind. As laid out in The Book. This comforts and consoles her.
I’m not. Here and now, I am still of the opinion [compelled by nature or not] that the past, the present and the future are part and parcel of an essentially meaningless human existence that ends for each of us one by one in oblivion. If there is any comfort and consolation for me at all it lies in my own acknowledgment that this assessment itself is but the embodiment of “I” as an existential contraption rooted in dasein.
And, yes, imagine all of the other possible civilizations out in the staggering vastness of the universe. The multiverse? Civilizations far in advance of our own. What have they come to conclude about all of this.
In fact I often imagine what hypothetically might have happened if that asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs 60 odd million years ago, paving the way for us, had come, say, a hundred thousand years earlier. Would we be a hundred thousand years more advanced than we are now? What would those discussions of determinism be like?
“An Argument For Compatibilism”
Jason Streitfeld
from the Specter of Reason website
Okay. For those here who subscribe to compatibilism, please explain, beyond intellectual contraptions like the one above, the point being made as it is applicable to, say, me typing these words and you reading them. How do you understand determinism and free will in a way different from how I do. The way that I do revolving around the assumption that even in defending compatibilism there was never any possibility of your not defending it.
What on earth do I keep missing here?
And that is exactly what I focus on as well. Moral responsibility in a world in which it is assumed that, unlike components of nature that lack the capacity to choose, we do in fact opt for these things instead of those.
Thus, given human biological imperatives, if the sex act is performed, one of the possibilities is a pregnancy. And once a new life is created in a particular womb, it goes through what it must go through in order to slide down out of the vagina and out into the world of new born babies. And none of us to my knowledge while in the womb chose to do the things that were needed to be done to bring all of this to fruition in a birth.
And, once we are born, there are any number of things that we do that are basically beyond our control. Others do things to and for us instead.
But eventually we reach the point where we begin to make a distinction between “I” and others. We choose things because we become aware that choosing different things results in different consequences. But how much of this is demonstrably autonomous? And then further we reach the point where we choose things that are judged by others as either the right thing or the wrong thing to do. Or is this too all just a manifestation of a wholly determined universe.
“An Argument For Compatibilism”
Jason Streitfeld
from the Specter of Reason website
What does it mean to speak of a coherent frame of mind here when God is introduced into the assessment? And if this God can create the human species, know whether they are naughty or nice and then reward or punish them accordingly, how on Earth is the “supernatural” part dispensed with. I must not be understanding his point.
My point though revolves around the extent to which this God is seen to be omniscient. Once He becomes all-knowing, we get into the age old debate in which human autonomy itself is somehow reconciled with that.
Things get all twisted into any number of imagined assumptions regarding His knowing here. Some claim He knows everything that we do but the act of choosing itself is still our own. Then I drag that frame of mind into the individual choosing in the is/ought world as “I” embodied in dasein. And then hundreds and hundreds of both genetic and memetic variables get thrown into the mix. Each mix then embedded in a particular context construed in a particular way. Parts of which are readily communicated and parts of which are not.
This is not intelligible to me. How does one really discuss God, given any degree of “supernatural” power, until one grasps reality going back to the existence of existence itself. Either an ever existing God created the Universe, then us with or without autonomy, or…or what? What’s crucial for me of course is that a God, the God is able to create rules that we are free to obey or not obey and and then depending on what we choose of our own volition, He will either reward or punish us. On both sides of the grave.
“An Argument For Compatibilism”
Jason Streitfeld
from the Specter of Reason website
Again, what on earth is this supposed to mean?
Joe is a rabid carnivore. He meets Jane who is a rabid vegan. Jane is convinced that eating animal flesh is immoral. That those who do so deserve to be punished and never rewarded. She’s even willing to go so far as to endorse laws that punished the eating of animal flesh as a crime. Now how is moral responsibility to be understood here by the compatibilists? If both Joe and Jane think, feel, say and do things because their brains are wholly in sync with the laws of matter, the ultimate cause of the behaviors they choose would necessarily be in sync with the ultimate cause of others reacting to those behaviors as either deserving to be rewarded or punished: with nature itself.
Unless of course in a manner that no one yet understands, “nature itself” [b]re the world of quantum interactions[/b] is able somehow to “choose” different outcomes.
And psycho-social matters in a wholly determined universe…how exactly is that not just another manifestation of the only possible reality? Same with human roles and relationships.
What are the compatibilists arguing here that I keep missing? And how would you determine that your own explanation in and of itself is or is not “beyond your control” in the manner in which we react to that expression in a world where human autonomy does in fact exist.
Of course what is this but another “general description intellectual contraption”…a world of words that, in no way shape or form, is connected to any substantive empirical evidence derived from actual human experiences, or from any data collected as a result of conducting experiments.
Anyone here able to link us to this sort of thing? Something that settles this age old debate conclusively.
Compatibilism fails by being a merely academic abnormality involving weirdnesses like “truth makers” and such nonsense.
It’s simply a fact that deterministic causalism is the case. If you don’t believe it then gtfo of philosophy since you won’t be able to do it.
Truth does not “correspond” to reality. Reality is exactly what we mean by the words “truth” or “true”.
Your version of philosophy seems to be 1) making unsupported assertions 2) making appeals to incredulity and 3) being an ass. You can’t have much internet experience. There are millions and millions of people who are your kind of philosopher.
First of all, given my own own understanding of a wholly determined universe…a universe in which the human brain/mind/“I” is but one more inherent/necessary component of the only possible material truth/reality…you typing the words above then and me reading them now could never have not been the case.
So, in a way that is difficult to explain, say, scientifically, I have to assume that instead we have at least some measure of autonomy in order to argue the point in a way that those who believe in free will insist these things are discussed and debated. Of our own volition.
All the while acknowledging that this in and of itself is only explicable going back to that which wholly explains the existence of existence itself.
Consequently, how would any advocates of compatibilism here react to that?
godoftroof, you’re right on. As sam harris once put it, ‘freewill’ is an impossibility for any conceivable material universe. This argument was over a century ago, and yet these philostophers still bang on about it.
Yes, deterministic causalism is another word for logic.
The facts, that things are determined more interestingly than humans can generally know, and that causes are more profound than humans dare to know, and that general human grasp on logic is wanting, are not due to any flaws deterministic causalism as such.
To argue against deterministic causalism using logic, which is deterministic causalism, is clearly not going to yield much fruit.
Still and all in order to make a proper logical argument one needs sound knowledge and understanding of all things considered to begin with. And such knowledge and understanding has emerged only quite recently in philosophy.
The fact wisdom exists, defeats what determinism is as a whole really. The system itself cannot be understood by itself, which leads to free will. The choice when the ability is had, to understand such system. The world used to be determinism ruled, until consciousness. Determinism effects the subconscious state much more.
In other words, the fact that your brain worked this out proves that your brain worked it out of your mind’s “I” own free will.
A world of words in which the words are true because they are defined and defended by more words still.
And if you took this intellectual contraption to the neuroscientists who are actually engaging the “scientific method” in probing the brain here experimentally, they would confirm beyond all possible doubt that this is true. Some even being able to go all the way back to explaining how the existence of the human species itself fits into a definitive understanding of why something exists rather than nothing, and why this something and not something else.
As a linear thing yes, but in a Relativistic universe causality is rounded on all sides, it is just a matter of where you begin attributing cause.
Some philosophers relinquish the will to know a first cause and simply posit their own wisdom as the central cause.
The mind contains future and past and brews them into something which exists in the present but is different from the present; a kind of antagonistic, very limited representation of the factors that go into and come out of the present which attacks it from both the past and the future. Inspiration is in allowing this attack to happen and orchestrate a part in it for oneself indifferently to anything other than the fact of attack.
“An Argument For Compatibilism”
Jason Streitfeld
from the Specter of Reason website
This observation alone encompasses just how problematic discussions like this can become. He says that he agrees but he may well be saying that only because he was compelled by his brain compelled by the laws of nature to say it. Just as we say we are choosing to read his words only in assuming that it was within our own autonomous capacity to choose not to. And then when, compelled or not, we bring God into the discussion that just adds another convoluted layer. After all, if an omniscient God is just another inherent manifestation of a wholly created universe…what then? Or, if, instead, an omniscient God created the universe and then created us to be autonomous how is what we choose to do not already known by God Himself. How here is free will squared with His omniscient nature?
And, again, in reflecting on all of this how is the mind of the compatibilist qualitatively different from the mind of the determinist? What, given the compatibilist perspective, would be any different? In particular, in regard to human interactions down here on Earth.
These points are embedded in an argument for compatibilism. When all I want to know is how on earth in a determined universe points that could only have been made are somehow in sync with the idea that peacegirl and others raise in distinguishing between choosing to raise them and “choosing” to raise them. I see this as embedded necessarily in the the psychological illusion of free will embedded necessarily in how the human brain must function.
The way forward [for me] is to explain how the past, present and future move as they do when a distinction is made between hard determinism and compatibilism. What changes in regard to what actually does happen?
And why focus on morality and moral responsibility if one is only ever able to make that the focus in the only argument that one is ever able to make. Isn’t that why? If you argue for a coherent picture going all the way back to what brought into existence the laws of matter themselves isn’t your argument going to be just another inherent component of that?
From chaos to free will
A crude understanding of physics sees determinism at work in the Universe. Luckily, molecular uncertainty ensures this isn’t so
George Ellis at the aeon website
Of course it doesn’t matter what he might have said, only whether he could have said something entirely different. And then the extent to which, if he could have, we can determine definitively how to demonstrate this.
What is or is not superfluous in regard to matter unfolding into the future?
Come on, we all know the toppled domino here that brings all of this into question: the evolution of matter into biological life into a central nervous system into a brain into a mind into an “I” actually able to convince itself that any number of things it chooses to think and feel and say and do excludes all of the things it freely chose not to.
This is where scientists and philosophers have been spinning their wheels now going back to the very first mind that tried to grapple with it all the way to the final explanation.
In philosophy it’s called an antimony: “a contradiction between two beliefs or conclusions that are in themselves reasonable”. Like the one where existence is infinite or it is not. Or the one where existence had a beginning or it did not.
In science, on the other hand, beliefs are tested “in the lab”. Actual experiments are conducted with the human brain in order to pin down the empirical relationships between the chemical and neurological interactions. And here the assumption on their part may or may not be that they are going about this of their own free will.
From chaos to free will
A crude understanding of physics sees determinism at work in the Universe. Luckily, molecular uncertainty ensures this isn’t so
George Ellis at the aeon website
And then the considerably more problematic part: brains evolving into minds evolving into self-conscious minds evolving into you and I grappling to come up with a definitive understanding of whether or not the understanding itself is only as it could ever have been.
Really, is it any wonder than that, given some explanation for the existence of free will, one of the first things that the minds of mere mortals will do is to invent Gods. Let Him be the explanation. Then we are left only with reconciling human autonomy with the fact that most insist that their own God is omniscient.
It might seem or it must seem? Isn’t that the question? And yet try as most of us might [including myself] to wrap our heads around the reality that typing these very words or reading them is really just another manifestation of nature on automatic pilot, it just seems ridiculous. We invent words like “visceral” to connote a sense of certainty that goes beyond simple explanation. We just know we have free will.
After all…
True, but there are also “many problems” noted for those on the other side as well: debate.org/opinions/does-free-will-exist
Let’s call these “conflicting assumptions”.