Well, in a wholly determined universe, even this exchange that we are having would seem to be unfolding only as it ever could have.
In the only universe that ever could have been.
And that would be linked necessarily to whatever or whoever brought into existence the existence of existence itself.
But how on earth would any particular one of us go about the task of either verifying it or falsifying it?
Human consciousness is often tricked into believing things are one way when in fact they are not that way at all. Optical illusions for example, or the world of magic. Or dreams. You may have a dream in which you are discussing the nature of the universe with another. In the dream, your “I” seems to be calling the shots. But it is really only the brain creating all of it.
True, but we can still have the exchange and find meaning in it.
^ See, right there! ^ Anytime one talks about the “existence of existence,” one ought to pause. The existence of existence? That’s like saying the redness of red, or the softness of softness. Existence doesn’t have existence, it is existence. Ergo, nothing brought it into existence. It always was.
Dunno
I still don’t get why “I” can’t just be the subjective way of experiencing the brain–of what it’s like being the brain. Why do we have to experience our choices as necessary in order them to be so?
But we are having this exchange and it is unfolding as it is only because it could not not have existed and could not have unfolded other than as it has. This frame of mind is then either in sync with a wholly determined universe or it is not.
After all, you could dream of having an exchange with someone. And it all seems to be real in the dream. How then is the experience of dreaming this different from the experience you are having now? Given what may or may not be the ontological reality embedded in the relationship between the laws of matter and human consciousness.
And how is “meaning” here not but one more manifestation of that which can only ever be if mind is but more matter being only what matter can ever be?
Though I’ll be the first to admit that my thinking here may well be flawed.
Red and soft exist only because existence itself exist. And only because matter evolved into mind such that “red” and “soft” can be discussed here at all.
What would red and soft be in a completely mindless universe?
And what of those astrophysicists who argue that everything that exists burst into existence re the Big Bang out of nothing at all. Or is it argued here that back then nothing at all is what existed.
How is all of this not a prodoundly problematic mystery?
Your own frame of mind here seems to be conveying something that you have absolutely no capacity to demonstrate is “in fact” true. Others will even go so far as to suggest that what we think of as reality is only a manifestation of one or another Sim world. Or that it is all entirely solipsistic. Relevant only given the assumption that God is the hub in the reality wheel here.
It would seem [to me] that the distinction between subjective and objective reality in a wholly determined universe is necessarily an illusion that matter has somehow been able to evolve into such that the brain becomes this truly extraordinary matter able to reflect on itself as matter reflecting on itself as matter able to make such a distinction at all.
The part here that always seems to escape my own capacity to understand is the argument of the compatibilists.
To speak of mindful matter creating something like an automobile engine entirely out of mindless matter only because it was never able not to do so is, well, how the fuck does the human mind wrap itself around that given all of Rumsfeld’s “unknown unknowns” going all the way back to whatever or whoever is behind the existence of existence itself.
Knowledge that may well be beyond the capacity of the human brain/mind to grasp at all.
All of these are excellent philosophical question, Biggy. If anyone understands the futility in answering them definitively, it would be you. But I don’t think this proves the inherent paradoxical nature of reality as much as the inherent paradoxical nature of the questions (or our thoughts about them). As far as I’m concerned, there are conceivable scenarios we can entertain which could qualify as answers to these questions… just not definitively (because we can’t prove any of this). For example, you say:
…which is true, but you know as well as anyone that this possibility has never stopped you from having a meaningful discussion with people in the past. Life goes on despite the vexation of these questions.
We apprehend meaning in the moment. It’s true that we can always reflect on meaning and question whether it actually means anything at all, but there’s a reason these exchanges work. While engaged in an exchange, we apprehend meaning, and it’s that apprehension which perpetuates the exchange, which keeps us moving forward. If meaning was, in fact, vacuous, this would not be possible.
For example, if I ask you “what’s 4 plus 6?” you are able to says “10” only because you apprehend the meaning of “4” and “6”. 4 means “there are four things” and 6 means “there are six things” and 4 + 6 means “you have 4 things coupled with 6 things.” ← That means there are 10 things all together.
^ You see how meaning is the fuel that keeps thought, and thus exchanges, moving.
^ But all this could be a grand chimera, right?–maybe a simple discussion of what 4 plus 6 equals is, in reality, rambling nonsense, and we’re only determined to think it’s not–but you can only take that seriously when you’re not in the moment. When you are in the moment–actually think “what’s 4 plus 6?”–you patently see that it’s not.
Well, my point was that redness doesn’t have redness, it isn’t given redness, it is redness. Existence isn’t given existence. Things are given existence, brought into existence. Existence is just the word we use to refer to the being of all things. The being of things wasn’t given being itself.
I’m not a Big Bang denier–I’ll go along with the idea that some huge explosion occurred roughly 13 billion years ago–but I would just caution anyone who wants to talk about existence “coming into” existence at that point. If there was a “before” prior to the Big Bang, then time could not have begun with the Big Bang, and that means there must have been existence before the Big Bang (even if empty). If there was no “before” then time has a beginning, but there was no “coming into” existence since that implies time before.
People can believe all sorts of things. My interest here is not in proving the reality of any theory or possible scenario. I just try to take your paradoxical conundrums and see if I can make sense of them.
The what now?
First of all, you can’t have an illusion without subjectivity. Subjectivity just means: how things seem from a first person point of view. The creation of the illusion (if we’re calling it that) is subjectivity.
But that doesn’t really address my point. I was asking why we assume that if we are fully determined, we would necessarily feel determined. I mean, without having to posit that the brain has to supplement the experience of freedom to its already rich repertoire of experiences. It’s like asking: how does the brain create the experience of pain without including the aspect of the wetness of the neurons underlying the experience of pain? Not everything about the physical infrastructure that underlies our experiences necessarily has to be made a part of our experience. As far as I’m concerned, what we call “freedom of choice” is not an illusory “thing” that we experience in addition to all our other experience, but an omission on the part of our brains. The brain omits to add to our experiences the fact of our being determined. So we don’t feel determined. We might then infer that we are free in the sense of being able to violate the laws of nature (or that the laws of nature don’t apply to us) but this is an ordinary run-of-the-mill philosophical mistake, not an insoluble paradox of our existence.
You have that wrong … I’m certainly the first to bring a prototype of that to these boards in a really long thread that John Bannon and I had about 6 years ago
Grammatically speak, no. But I think the point is that you can’t have a lack of existence. If we think of “a lack of existence” as a thing (which we inevitably do), it becomes apparent that such a thing is impossible (a lack of existence implies no things), and so what we must have instead is a lack of a lack of existence, which is just existence.
This argument is brought up all the time in various ways by many people all over the internet. It’s not an original idea. Nobody “steals” it from others.
Thats just the same as observing that something exists. But thats not a reason as to why it exists.
Its like why are you sitting at the table? Because I am not not sitting at the table. If that impresses you as an answer I think you never asked the question.
Its a bad formulation of the idea, as your explanation verifies.
I have no capacity to demonstrate that these questions have no definitive answers. I can only note that “here and now” I have not come across an answer that seems definitive to me. And then to note how ludicrous it seems coming across those who speak of these things as though their own answers were in fact definitive.
And then [especially] to note the gap between what we think we know about either the questions or the answers “in our heads” and all that would need to be known about the existence of existence itself in order to know definitively.
For some however this spoils it. They have to accept the part where they go to the grave never really knowing what the answers might be. Unless of course their own defintive answer includes God, immortality and salvation.
But how meaningful is a discussion that starts and stops only as it ever could have? And if life itself “goes on” only as it ever could have then meaning itself would seem to be just another manisfestation of a reality produced by a brain wholly in sync with the laws of matter.
In other words…
But if that apprehension is embodied only in the illusion of autonomy, how is the exchange we are having here really all that different from the seeming autonomy that we possess in the dream? In or out of the dream, I’m convinced that reality unfolds only because I will this instead of that.
Okay, but how do we determine and then demonstrate that this isn’t also just embedded in a wholly determined universe? The mystery is still matter able to evolve to the point of becoming mindful of things like this. The part about “dualism”. The ghost in the machine. And, then, for some, the soul.
Whether something is seen as meaninglful or as rambling nonsense isn’t the point to me. The point is the extent to which we react to the world around us with some measure of autonomy.
From my frame of mind a lot of this is embedded in the arguments over AI. Think, for example, of the Terminator. We think he is just like us. A man going about the business of choosing one set of behaviors rather than another. But he is just programmed that way. He does what he must.
Are we then the equivalent of this – “designed” by nature to choose this instead of that? But only because we were never really able not to?
We simply don’t know what brought about the existence of existence itself. After all, how does the human mind come to grips with either scenario: exiastence always existing or existence coming into existence out of nothing at all. “Redness” and “softness” are attributes of matter evolving into minds. Once all such matter is gone redness and softness goes with it. The crucial question is still the extent to which they were thought up autonomously by minds able to freely choose “blueness” and “hardness” instead.
But we are still back [eventually] to whether these subjective/objective distinctions are or are not just more dominos toppling over given the extent to which mind as matter must obey the laws of matter. Naturally, as it were.
Again, this can only be fully grasped to the extent to which neuroscientists are able to fully grasp it. And then in how we wrap our heads around the idea that they either will or they will not only to the extent that they were ever really going to. Then back to how “nature” and “natural laws” came to exist at all. And then [finally] back to any possible teleological component here.
Could Nature have accomplished this by itself? And for a reason? Or is it always going to be God here?
At least until a child comes along and asks “what created God”?
I fail to see why things being determined negate their being meaningful. And regardless, even if this seems perplexing, we know there is meaning because we apprehend it in the everyday conversation we have with people.
(Here, I’m talking about meaning as in the meaning of our words and ideas, the content of our communication, not the “grand purpose of existence” which I think is a very confused interpretation of “meaning”.)
I don’t think the apprehension of meaning is embodied in the illusion of autonomy. As I said earlier, I don’t think there is any illusion of autonomy, only the lack of experiencing our determined state. We infer our autonomy on the rare occasions when we’re being philosophical only by virtue of not being informed by our senses (or any other experience) that we are determined. But this inference can occur quite independently of apprehending meaning in the things we say and communicate to each other.
We are like computers. Computers communicate to each other. A client makes a request to a server for a website. The server apprehends the meaning of the request: the client wants such-and-such website. And it delivers the website. All this without any assumptions on the client’s or the server’s part that they are acting freely or determined (and in fact, they are clearly determined if any machine is).
Indeed, this is a conundrum. I’m not sure how matter evolved to be mindful, but I also don’t think we need to understand this in order to acknowledge that it is so.
And personally, I don’t think matter did evolved to be mindful; I think mind always existed and evolved into a form that perceives the rest of the universe as matter.
Quite possibly.
Well, I’m saying such a notion is incoherent.
I’ll admit, they both tax the brain, but I’ve always found the former easier to wrap my head around. I’m able to imagine a universe with no beginning without feeling there is an irrevocable paradox in the idea. If we have no problem accepting that the universe may go on forever, then imagining a universe with no beginning is just the inverse of that.
But the really smart guys in the physics communities tell us that not only does the universe have a beginning but time began with it… which means there was no “before”… which means no “coming into existence”… we are simply prohibited from imagining a “before” as we would be imagine something that never was.
I think even if we did have autonomy, we wouldn’t be choosing to see red as we do or feel softness as we do. There are some thing we (supposedly) choose and some things we don’t. I choose to kick a rock when I’m angry. I don’t choose to experience stubbing my toe as painful (though it is an experience had by a mind).
And besides, my argument was more about language than the mental/subjective character of “red” and “softness”. To say red is given red conveys the wrong idea. To saying existence was given existence conveys the wrong idea.
Well, I think if this proves anything, it’s that objectivity is the illusion.
That’s not necessarily true. If I’m right about mind evolving to see matter, then no amount of research in the neuroscience will get us any closer to understanding the true relationship between matter and mind. We are making a false assumption, as far as I’m concerned, about the brain producing consciousness. I believe it is the other way around. I have no proof of this, but it does offer me one scenario that works as an alternative to everything you have proposed.
the existence of a thing is the thing…
the is of a thing exists the thing
the thing of an is exists the thing
the thing of existence is the thing
the thing of a thing is the existence
No, it’s more like “Because I can’t be not sitting at the table,” with a bit of explanation why–namely, that if a lack of existence means no things, and if all our concepts take the form of “things” (whether we realize it or not), then the concept of the lack of existence is impossible.
Maybe, but I got the gist of it.
Existence is a state of mind? Really? ← You’ll have to explain that one to me.
What makes a thing a thing is more mental than physical (maybe that’s what you mean). Elsewhere in this thread, it was noted that even solid objects like rocks are 99% empty space, and the particles that take up what little space there is are more like waves of probability than material particles. What you said of existence could be said about almost anything.
A thing becomes a thing when it becomes a noun–which is to say, we give it an identity according to which we can say: it is this, and not that. It becomes a thing when we give it an essence. We can do this with concrete things and abstract things, and everything between, including the universe itself.
Gib, “cant” is nowhere given. That’s just an assumption from a logician whose working with a bunch of incomplete knowledge.
And also I’m gonna be annoying about that these arguments are too exact to have a gist.
Then we simply don’t come to the same conclusion about it. When something happens only because it could never not have happened, and when we react to it as meaningful only in the way that we ever could have reacted to it as meaningful, it’s just not the same [to me] as living in a world where something happens only because some chose freely to make it happen because they believed that other autonomous human beings were free to share their own meaning and understanding of it or to freely choose another meaning and understanding altogether.
When both meaning in and meaning out are inherently in sync with the laws of matter, it’s a whole different kind of meaning from one in which I’m convinced that it is meaningful to me only becasue I have freely chosen to accept one meaning rather than another.
If Jane freely chooses to have an abortion and Jan freely chooses to believe this means she should be arrested for premeditated murder, that’s different [for me] than Jane and Jan behaving as they do and then reacting to those behaviors as meaningful only in the way that they ever could have.
If, in a wholly determined universe, the “grand purpose of existence”, embedded and embodied in any particular human mind, is only what it was ever going to be, how are distinctions between thoughts and feelings and behaviors here to be made? All aspects of our interactions are just different kinds of dominoes toppling over as they were “designed” to by whatever or whoever brought into existence, existence itself.
But, again, I’ll be the first to admit that I am missing something here. But then I’m back to whether or not I ever had the capacity to not miss it. Is it my fault for thinking this all through incorrectly in a world where thinking anything through at all is just part of the very fabric of reality?
The difficulty I have here is that your point is entirely abstract. Let’s consider your argument as it relates to the recent spate of bombing scares here in America. From your frame of mind was there ever a possibility that the bomber could have chosen to do something else?
Is there the possibility that how each of us initially reacted to what he chose to do might reconfigure into a different reaction because we are able [autonomously] find a different meaning in it all?
We’re now in the mind of the person creating and mailing the bombs. How is your point above relevant to the choises that he makes?
Okay, but suppose someone uses the computer in order to make contact with websites that offers the “client” access to hardcore child pornography. He is caught doing this and is arrested. It’s in the news and many people recognize him and react to him.
In the tangle of all these interactions was there ever the possibilty of it all unfolding any differently in a wholly determined universe? Now, if it is presumed that mere mortals have some measure of autonomy here, it is easy to imagine any number of alternative sequences. But [from my way of thinking] if mind is just more matter in sync with the “immutable laws of matter”, it just is what it was only ever going to be.
This part:
Then [for me] we’re back to whether this acknowledgement was ever going to be anything else.
Then [for me] we’re back to the gap between what you think you know is true “in your head” and your capacity to demonstrate that all rational men and women are obligated to think the same.
And to the extent that one is able to believe in this infinite mind is the extent to which one can imagine their own mind somehow being in sync with it. In either a God or a No God world. And that can be a comforting and consoling frame of mind. And that can be the reason [psychologically] that one comes to think something like this in the first place.
Well, that just begs the quesrion. What does it mean to be coherent given the gap between what you think you know about existence “here and now” and all that would need to be known about it in order to attain a fully coherent understanding of it?
And how coherent will the arguments proposed by the “really smart guys [and gals]” in the physics community today appear to those in the same community 100, 1,000 or 10,000 years from now?
Given all the things we are still really fuzzy about regarding QM, dark matter, dark energy and the multiverse?
In 1900, the British physicist Lord Kelvin is said to have pronounced: “There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement.” Within three decades, quantum mechanics and Einstein’s theory of relativity had revolutionized the field. Today, no physicist would dare assert that our physical knowledge of the universe is near completion. To the contrary, each new discovery seems to unlock a Pandora’s box of even bigger, even deeper physics questions.
Langauage and ideas are just manifestations of the evolution of matter into minds. Unless you or others are able to demonstrate that, what, mind came first?
It still comes down [for me] to whether redness and softness are seen to be more preferable than bluenss and hardness because someone believes they are able to freely make that choice. And that in fact given the actual existence of human autonomy, they were able to.
It would seem to be an illusion to me as well in a No God world. Nature, reality, existence etc., just are what they are. With no autonomous minds around to insist that they are other than that.
That would appear to be the whole point of inventing Gods. But how did matter evolve from the Big Bang into a “mind” able to think up Gods?
But then [in my view] this is where we are “stuck”: in figuring out that which either is or is not necessarily true about matter evolving into minds capable of creating an exchange like this one.
And then this part: death.
Once we do go to the grave is our access to the whole truth here gone forever? Or is this eternal mind of yours somehow able to keep us in the game?
Still don’t get it. Why does one have to choose a meaning in order to get a meaning. If someone says “horse”, I interpret that to mean the animal we call horse. But I don’t feel like I’m choosing to interpret it that way, as if I could choose some other interpretation like turtle or cat, I feel like that’s just the meaning of the word, and the one who uttered the word meant precisely and only that.
And besides, even if I did feel like I was choosing the meaning, how is that any different than the feeling of choosing an action (like raising my arm)? Is raising my arm not really raising my arm if I’m actually determined to do so?
That’s meaning qua implication (as opposed to meaning qua content of language); but still, same arguments apply. If I believe that seeing lightening means there will be thunder soon, does it not really mean that if I’m actually determined to believe that?
The bomber did what he did without any thought to whether he was doing it freely or being forced by the laws of nature. He just did it. If in fact he was totally determined by the laws of nature, there is no reason to assume that fact had to be present in his consciousness at any point. Being forced doesn’t entail feeling forced.
If you could oblige me and flesh out this scenario with how meaning fits in (i.e. are we talking about the meaning of his thoughts, his purpose in acting, the meaning in the message he wishes to convey in doing the bombing?) I’ll add more to my response.
For now, let me add the following analogy to clarify my point: if you look into a dark room, do you see anything? No, you don’t. But is this the same as the illusion that the room is empty? Compare this to a room that is lit up and full of objects, but you are hallucinating its emptiness. ← This I would call an illusion. The feeling that we act freely is not really the illusion of freedom, but simply blindness to being determined by the laws of nature. Nature keeps us in the dark about her workings. This just keeps us ignorant. Some of us may infer on the basis of this ignorance that we are really free, that there are no laws of matter governing our thoughts and behavior, just as some might infer that the room is empty on the basis of its darkness, but this is just a mistaken assumption, not an illusion. Many people say that the brain must give us the illusion of freedom in order for us to be convinced that we are free (and I suppose making the inference of being free is done by the brain, but this is a thought, not the way our actions feel), as if there is a special brain part whose sole function is to produce the feeling of freedom, but I question why this assumption is necessary. The brain doesn’t need to do anything in order for us to simply not feel the determining forces that govern the operations of the brain, it just has to refrain from adding the feeling of being forced into our experiences and thoughts. It just has to keep us in the dark.
This is why I say the apprehension of meaning in our thoughts and our communication doesn’t require the illusion of freedom. We are not consciously making choices every time we interpret a meaning or try to convey a meaning, as if saying to ourselves: ok, I’m going to choose to interpret it this way, and now I’m going to choose to convey this and not that. We don’t tell ourselves anything beforehand. We just do it. We don’t feel forced to do it, but this is more an absence than a presence–the absence of feeling forced, not the presence of feeling free. The forces that work through nature do so blind to any concerns of freedom or determinism. They just do. We are no different. The feeling of freedom we have in our actions are just us doing–doing without thinking about either our freedom or our determinism.
And that negates it? Let’s say your acknowledgement about the fact that mind seems to have evolved from matter was never going to be anything else. You’re still acknowledging that mind seems to have evolved from matter (if anything, it only makes it more emphatic).
Science does indeed crunch out, from time to time, some bizarre mind-warping secrets of nature. But even if one day scientists announced: existence did, in fact, come into existence at a time before which there was no existence, I would still regard that as an incoherent notion.
So what does that mean to you? That you are not able to experience red unless you can choose to experience it as blue? When you look at a banana, you see it as yellow, right? But are you not really seeing it as yellow because you can’t will for it to become blue in your perception?
No, I think it would throw us into a totally different game (an afterlife). I imagine that experience would continue but our individuality would dissolve; all experiences unique to the human mind would fade–experiences like sensations, memories, emotions, concepts, pains and pleasures, etc.–and give way to a whole set of new experiences. We would essentially become one with the universe.
It wouldn’t be all that different from what happens to our bodies after we die. Over time, the body “dissolves” and returns to nature–there will be no more iambiguous or gib, not even as a corpse–but the matter which once constituted our bodies will live on–all the atoms and particles will be dispersed into the environment–and we could say we become one with nature.
But that’s my theory–it’s not the point of this thread–unless you want to go there.