peacegirl wrote: iambiguous wrote:
It's irrelevant to you. Therefore others are obligated to see it as irrelevant too? Even in an autonomous universe? After all, in a wholly determined universe, the laws of matter decide what we think we know is true or not true.
No no no iambiguous. Stop using "a wholly determined universe" as your "get off the hook" card that exempts you from answering directly.
iambiguous wrote:Well, in a "wholly determined universe" as I have [necessarily] come to understand it, the only answer that I am able to give comes directly from nature.
Right?
Of course it comes from nature, even your sly way of answering.
No one is obligated to see anything they don't want to see. I am not out of line to say that it's irrelevant to know whether 1+1 is true in the entire universe to know that it is true here on earth and is the basic building block of many physical structures.
iambiguous wrote:Unless of course nature obligates you to want to.
peacegirl wrote: That's not how the word "obligated" is normally used. Obviously we have no control over what we desire or don't desire. There you go again saying the same old thing as if it's a new revelation.
iambiguous wrote:How anything is used is normal. Why? Because it can only have ever been used as it in fact was used.
Right?
That's your escape hatch every time we talk. I can't carry on a normal conversation because you keep reverting back to the fact that everything is only what it could ever be. WE KNOW THAT, but the way a word is used is either considered normal language or not and there is nothing wrong with me pointing that out, even though it is only what it could ever be.
iambiguous wrote:Thus...
And you are not out of line only because you were never really able to want to be anything here other than what you must be. Your own obligatory embodiment of nature. Then it's back to the assumptions that nature obligates us both to make here.
peacegirl wrote: You're not obligated to say anything you don't want to. Stop using the term in an unconventional way, which can only cause confusion.
iambiguous wrote:Unless of course I am not able to want anything other than that which nature compels me to. And then [again] around and around and around we go.
You are obligated by nature to choose only that which you are compelled to choose, which is why will is not free. But that's not the kind of obligation I was referring to. When someone says they were obligated to do something, the word "obligated" often means doing something that they really didn't want to but felt they had to. We know that the feeling of obligation was also all it could ever be.
iambiguous wrote:It gets us somewhere because you simply dismiss all those "unknown unknowns" as irrelevant to that which you seek to convey here: that your own "progressive" future hinges on having enough people "choose" to grasp the author's wholly determined point of view.
peacegirl wrote: This new world is not dependent on your understanding specifically.
iambiguous wrote:As though pointing this out has anything at all to do with actually responding to my point that you simply ignore all of the unknown unknowns that stand between what you think you know and all that can be known about these relationships.
peacegirl wrote: I gave two undeniable principles that lead to the two-sided equation (which you have no knowledge about.) There are no unknowns that stand between the soundness of these principles. You do not know what you're talking about iambiguous.
iambiguous wrote:So what? "In your head" that makes the unknown unknowns go away. As though that need be as far as it goes. As though that actually does make them go away!
There are many unknowns in the universe. This is not a prerequisite to understanding what can be known. It's not that in my head it makes the unknowns go away. It's just not something I need to know about in order to explain this discovery.
iambiguous wrote:And you know what you are talking about because the psychological comfort and consolation that you cling to with the author and his "progressive future" has become the center of the universe for you now. Everything that grounds your own particular "I" in this particular assessment of these particular principles is what is now at stake here. I can't know what I am talking about because if I do all of this might come crashing down all around you.
There you go again, making accusations that this is all about my comfort zone and my clinging to a progressive future that you don't believe is possible.
iambiguous wrote:And the reason I'm not letting you...? Then around and around we go. Only I am more than willing to concede that my frame of mind here is beyond my own capacity to demonstrate as either free or determined. How on earth could I possibly know that given all that I am still unable to grasp about the objective relationship between "I" and "all there is". If it is even objective at all.
peacegirl wrote: The objective relationship between you and all there is, is irrelevant to the knowledge that life on earth moves in one direction only, rendering FREE choice an illusion, but a persistent one.
iambiguous wrote:Asserting this as you do here is no less preposterous to me now than it was before. You reduce everything that can be known in and about the universe down to how you have come to understand things here and now on earth.
And then expect me and others to just go along with it while acknowledging that our reactions here are in fact beyond our control.
I was hoping there would be more interest. I'm not expecting anything from you because if you don't find this interesting that's also beyond your control. I'm trying to whet your appetite but I think it's a lost cause.
peacegirl wrote: You may not understand many things that I do, and I may not understand many things that you do. So what? This has no relation to the undeniable nature of this discovery.
iambiguous wrote:Again, as though merely insisting that this is true need be as far as you and the author go. You demonstrate nothing substantial. You can't take someone through their day and explore the choices that they make other than by way of fitting them all into the intellectual assumptions you make about having or not having a free will. Nothing can be pinned down either experientially or experimentally.
Because I haven't been given a chance. Anyway, if you know so much about the book offering nothing substantial, you must have studied it. So what is the two-sided equation? I gave the first three chapters to everyone. You know you didn't read it.
peacegirl wrote: How in the world can our choices be free when we are under a compulsion to choose what gives us greater satisfaction from one moment to another? This is an invariable law that cannot be broken.
iambiguous wrote:Yeah, that's my argument too. But how you are able to make it your own argument in turn basically encompasses the gap between us.
peacegirl wrote: If there is a gap between us, there is NO need to close it. Your lack of understanding (the gap) will not stop this discovery from coming to light when the time is right. Do you think a lack of understanding of Edison's discovery on your part would have prevented the lightbulb from being discovered?
iambiguous wrote:As though the things that we think we need to do are not in turn only the things that nature compels us to think that we need to do. You want to make our "choices" the exception to the rule somehow. But I'm simply unable to understand why and how you think you accomplish this -- can accomplish this -- in a determined unviverse.
I never said there is an exception to the rule that man's will is not free. I have said over and over that it's an invariable law.
iambiguous wrote:...when I say "determined universe" I am acknowledging right from the start that my own understanding of that can only reflect the gap between what I think it means and all that can be known about the universe that I am simply not privy to here and now. Anymore than you are. Only I am willing to own up to the "for all practical purposes" implication of that because unlike you I have not imagined some "progressive" future that seems to be predicated on others understanding these things as I do.
peacegirl wrote: You're off the beaten track. You sound like a nihilist very determined to prove that a progressive future is not something we can achieve.
iambiguous wrote:I'm off the beaten path only because nature put me there. I call myself a nihilist only because at this point in time nature compels me to. Instead, my assessment of moral nihilism in ILP revolves around the assumption that I am in fact [up to a point] autonomous. I am able of my own volition to conclude that moral and political values are rooted existentially in dasein, conflicting goods and political economy. And embedded out in a particular world historically, culturally and experientially.
You can be autonomous, but you cannot separate yourself from the laws of nature that created you. Just because nature causes you to choose certain things based on your desires does not mean you can't think for yourself, do for yourself and be independent...yet still be working within the framework of determinism.
iambiguous wrote:And that the behaviors you deem to be a prerequisite for "peace and prosperity" are precisely the behaviors that others hold in contempt.
I don't know of anyone who would rather be poor than rich, have war rather than peace, or hold these values in contempt. What they hold in contempt is exploitation.
peacegirl wrote: You said in a determined world there are no victims. I said yes there are. I get what you're saying when looked at in total perspective, but who in the world can see it this way when they have been attacked and left for dead?
iambiguous wrote:My point is that in a determined universe as I understand it here and now those who are left for dead and those who leave them for dead are like the characters and the guests in West World.The characters are wholly programmed to think and feel and say and do only what they must. While the guests presume that they are free to do these things autonomously. The show then explores what happens when the two worlds begin to intertwine.
But: in a determined universe [again, as I understand it] there is no distinction between the characters and the guests. They are all compelled to think and feel and say and do things as nature commands given the immutable laws of matter.
I agree that the guest and the characters are both doing what they are compelled to do. The only thing I have an issue with is your using the term "programmed" which indicates that you can't make a choice because it's already made. This is where there is a lot of confusion as I've already expressed.