But where I am stuck in particular is in discerning “once and for all” if I was ever able to decide that I am not stuck instead. Autonomously, freely or whatever else one calls “I” making a choice in a world not entirely in sync with the laws of matter.
From my frame of mind, this doesn’t make my point go away until someone is able to demonstrate that either for me or for “tons” of others, the things that we think, feel and do were or were not in fact the things that we were only able to think, feel and do. Psychologically, we seem able to convince ourselves that we choose freely. But how is this in and of itself demonstrated to not merely be an inherent manifestation of life evolving into the human brain on earth? Evolving wholly in sync with the laws of matter?
Same thing. Until it can be demonstrated that the choice I made to block it out was not the only choice I was ever able going to make, we just go around and around in circles. Why? Because we were never able not to.
Again, I’m not arguing that I believe this beyond all doubt. I’m only suggesting that my ambivalence here may well be “beyond my control”. And that even the arguments that some make in concluding that it is not beyond their control is in fact beyond their control. In that they were never able to argue otherwise.
Here I often go back to dreams. In them, I think that I am calling the shots. But it is only my brain matter creating what seem to be very real experiences to me.
No, that’s your assumption. My own aim instead revolves around grappling with human autonomy in a world where “free will” has been debated now for many, many centuries. There is no clear cut consesnsus by any means.
And, so, I am not pursuing determinism. I am not pursuing anything other than an attempt to come to grips with my own ambivalence. And to question those who actually do seem convinced that their own understanding of all this is the right one. That’s the part where human psychology comes into play here for me. This need to believe that there is but one correct answer. Why? Well, because they have already found it. And that allows them to anchor “I” in a foundation that is able to sustain some measure of comfort and consolation.
How can you ruin something for me that does not even exist? I am not arguing as either an objectivist or as a determinist. I am acknowledging right from the start that my own frame of mind here is both an “existential contraption” ever subject to change given new information, knowledge and ideas, and, in turn, woefully incomplete given the gap between what I think I know here and now and all that can be known about the existence of existence itself.
After all, I haven’t written a book that comes to certain – certain? – conclusions about mind and matter.
That would be you, right?
Mostly I am trying to grasp how you reconcile the psychological freedom of any particular individual in a world in which mind is matter and matter is in sync with necessary laws.
How can these not be understood as compatible only in the sense that you were never ever able not to make that distinction? Unless of course you can convince, among others, the philosophical and scientific communities that your conclusions are in fact the most reasonable. And that you either were or were not in fact free to come to that conclusion.
Perhaps because you were never able to not doubt it. But if, in fact, you were, how could you possibly even begin to truly grasp my motivations and intentions anymore than I could truly grasp your own? Try to even imagine the existential gap between your “I” and my “I” in this exhange.
And that is certainly in sync with an assumption of my own: that you actually are convinced that these are things you can in fact know. And how gratifying [psychologically] that must be.
You actually seem to think that I like thinking that we live in an essentially meaningless world on this side of the grave that ends in the obliteration of “I” for all time to come on the other side of it. And you think that I think about this as I think that you think about it.
But only one of us seems rather smug about it all.
Then this part:
But I am not saying “that I do or say or think X only because I could never have not done or said or thought X.” That is you saying what you insist I am saying. Instead, I’m pointing out that I read the arguments of the determinists and the nondeterminists and they both make points that the other side is not able to just make go away. Points that cannot be demonstrated to be necessarily irrational.
I’m pulled and tugged in both directions. And, in fact, if I were wholly convinced that determinism is the optimal or only rational frame of mind here, the only explanation for pursuing dasein, conflicting goods and political economy in my is/ought world discussions is because I was never able not to. But how exactly would I go about determining that?
Is “free will” real? Here and now I can only think I know this or that about the answer. But I can’t determine if what I think I do know here and now is closer or farther away from what you think you know given that neither of us is probably even close to whatever the answer might be given an actual ontological understanding of existence itself.
Exactly! Some think that their own attempts are freely chosen, while others think that, in thinking this, the attempts in and of themselves are just another manifestation of what we still don’t know about how mindless matter could have evolved into brain matter evolving into human minds.
Are memes and genes essentially interchangable in an existence that trudges on necessarily only as it ever could?
Agreeing with you about what? We can both agree that we are exchanging posts here at ILP. We can both agree that we have different takes regarding the existential significance of “psychological freedom” given the choices that we make.
But how would anything that we either agree or disagree about not still be embedded in the gap between what we think we know about these things here and now and all that can be known in about them in order to assess the reality of existence essentially, necessarily?
I’m basically at a loss regarding why you can’t own up to this profoundly significant chasm. Unless, of course, you were never really able to.
No, everything takes me to the question of how it can be determined that “everything” – “anything” – here was or was not ever within my capacity to have chosen otherwise.
Note to others:
What sort of answer is he after here? Please provide me with the manner in which you would answer him instead. So that I can make comparisons.
Sure, maybe. But all I can do here is to respond to the best of my ability. For me, there is no question that we choose our subjective experiences. Instead, the question is the extent to which it is possible that “I” could have freely chosen another experience instead. Or that I could have freely chosen to react to the experiences of others otherwise.
Right now there is a part of me convinced I am freely choosing to type these words. That, in other words, I can stop doing so and freely choose to do something else instead.
But how can I determine this beyond all doubt? Is the fact that psychologically I “think” and I “feel” that I am free the same as actually being so? I think and feel that I am free in my dreams. But it’s all brain matter creating a reality “in my head” to the best of my knowledge.
So, that settles it?
Again: To the extent that anyone is able to point out the weaknesses in my assessment, I can only be grateful.
Nothing that you’ve noted above changes that. Though, sure, you can think what you will in exposing “the real me” to others here.
But I’m the one who has to live from day to day with what I have “here and now” thought myself into believing is true about these things. And, your own contentions to the contrary, it is a really, really, [b]really[/b] grim point of view.
Bingo. You admit that your own answers here may be right, may be wrong. But [from my frame of mind] that’s not the point. Instead, the point is that you have managed to convince yourself that there is a right answer to be had here. So, again, why not yours. It’s the part about having an answer – any answer – that propels the objectivist mind.
Why would you want to “undo” the answer given that having one was the whole point in the first place?
That’s the part where “comfort and consolation” comes in.
The arguments on this thread however revolve more around are the extent to which, psychologicaly and/or metaphysically, anything that we chose here was or was not only as we ever could have chosen it.
Not only do I not know the answer to this, I can’t even imagine the minds of any mere mortals on this tiny little rock in the vastness of what may or may not be the multiverse, actually thinking that they have one!
The fucking answer!!!
To me, that’s analogous to insisting that you believe in the existence of the fucking God! And then demonstrating that He does in fact fucking exist!!
Again, if the human brain is matter wholly in sync with the necessary laws of matter, human thoughts and feelings are either wholly in sync with that or there is something very, very special about human “minds”.
Or, perhaps, souls?
If I could not not have made the sandwich and if I could not not have thought I was doing this freely…
What does freedom mean here? For all practical purposes?
In a determined universe [if that be the case] in which you were never able to not say it.
But my wanting to is or is not no less entangled in my having to want to. My brain/mind is or is not compelled [by whatever brought into existence existence itself] to want or not want things only as it ever could have wanted or not wanted to.
My “sense of freedom” here in making the sandwich would seem to be interchangeable with the prisoner begging the guard for food. We both think and feel and behave as we do only because there was never any real possibility of it being otherwise.