Something Instead of Nothing

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.

I refuse to believe that in coming up with new definitions, we don’t, in the same stroke, come up with new concepts. Definitions are concepts.

What is the picture supposed to represent? The object in the world we refer to with our words? Or the concepts in our head denoted by our words? If the object in the world, then sure, there can only be one; but you still get a separate concept for every different definition. If the concept in the head, then no, there isn’t one draw, there are as many drawings as there are definitions.

This should be obvious with many real world examples. Consider flat Earthers. One Earth, two concepts, two definitions. The flat Earthers think of the world as flat–that’s how they define the Earth and that’s how they conceptualize it. The rest of the world think of and define the Earth as round.

Obviously, there is this thing called the ‘self’, the ‘I’–it’s a real phenomenon in the world (‘I’ skeptics notwithstanding), but there is tons of disagreement about the true nature of the self. Is it just the body? Is it a soul within the body? Is it the software that runs on our neural hardware? Is it an illusion? Does it not exist? I don’t think that just by pointing to Tom, for example, we’ve identified Tom’s ‘self’ in such a way that we can answer these questions (although I think our ability to point to a person, or refer to ourselves in the mirror, shows that the self is at least the body, but that’s just me).

Now, I do get the idea that we sometimes get definitions wrong. A foreigner who comes to the country and is just beginning to learn the language might point to an orange and say “banana”. What do we usually say? Do we say: “Ah, so I guess that’s a banana to you.” Or do we say: “No, sorry, but you’ve made a mistake. That’s an orange.” ← We usually say the latter. But this is because there’s a clearly defined custom here–a rule of language that almost everyone in our culture abides by. This is not the case with every word though. When it comes to the ‘self’, we are woefully short of agreeing on a clearly defined meaning (at least when we get philosophical about it). Like I said above, some think the self is just the body, some think it’s the soul, some think it doesn’t exist. In this case, if you want to say a believer in the soul is mistaken, that’s just your ordinary run-of-the-mill philosophical disagreement, not a statement about the person’s poor use of the language.

Fair enough… you can frame it such that every word’s meaning is a concept

So perhaps I can try to illustrate this a different way…

Determinism as a word has a meaning… that meaning is a question of semantics
Determinism as a concept is a model of reality wherein every event that plays out could be predicted given sufficient information.

“I/me/myself/self” are words… what they mean is a question of semantics
“The concept of self” is what is formed from that definition…

My point is, whatever that conception of self may or may not be, it has absolutely no bearing on the concept of determinism… it may be rendered impossible by determinism, it may be only possible given determinism… either way it does not constitute a change in the concept of determinism.

There is a HUGE difference between arguing over what the definition of “self” ought to be (semantics) and how best to model the phenomenon that we choose to call self.
We have made great strides toward understanding the workings of our brain and there’s a lot left that we do not know… but whether any of that information pertains to understanding the nature of “self” depends entirely on how we define “self”.

When someone says they define self as being a person’s soul and you define it as being their brain… the disagreement can be about SEMANTICS (an absolute waste of everyone’s time) or it can be about the existence of souls and what role they play.

How did the “concept of determinism” become so powerful that it drives the existence of “concept of self”? Why doesn’t the “concept of self” maybe render the “concept of determinism” impossible/possible?

After all, only conscious being with ‘selves’ can come up with the “concept of determinism” in the first place.

It’s probably not that huge.

Then you have one person who sees a lot of souls in the world and another person who sees a lot of brains. And these people are going to act differently and they will change the world based on those actions.

It’s like those who say that “animals have feelings” and those who say that “animals don’t have feelings”. Both are looking at exactly the same world/reality. They treat animals differently.

The right answer is that there is no right answer. Right?

No wait a minute, the correct attitude would seem to be “I don’t know whether there is a right answer or not”. That would lead to a calm peaceful state of mind. There would be no reason to attack ‘objectivists’ for their beliefs since you don’t know if they are right or wrong.

Instead :

You’ve convinced yourself that a right answer is impossible for “mere mortals”. How dare they think that there is a “fucking answer”.

No uncertainty there. Never : maybe they’re right, maybe they’re wrong, maybe the concept of right and wrong is not applicable.

Of course until we are able to determine the extent to which the feeling that we prefer is the feeling that we have freely chosen to prefer, we still seem stuck with taking an “intuitive leap” to one frame of mind or the other.

A leap that we are able to make with some measure of autonomy or not.

And, even in a non-determinist world, the choices that we make in the is/ought world are, in my view, circumscribed by the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein, conflicting goods and political economy.

Our “control” here is embedded in a particular historical, cultural and experiential [individual] context understood from a particular point of view ever subject to change given new experiences, new relationships and access to new information and knowledge.

duplicate post

But what if/when such differences follow /or become increasingly compatible to the point that they approach indiscernibility?

Two points…

1] From my frame of mind, human psychology is important here because I see it as a crucial component of the objectivist mind. The objectivist has obviated an essentially meaningless world by subsuming “I” in one or another intellectual contraption that sustains some measure of comfort and consolation. Having an answer is the main point for them.

Thus, for example, the conservatives claim to have the answers in the political arena no more but no less than the liberals claim to. Then back to my arguments on this thread: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=185296

And then the part where the religious objectivists obviate the obliteration of “I” in death by subsuming it in one or another God and Salvation.

On the other hand…

2] Any particular individual’s psychological bent can only be an enormously complex agglomeration of countless existential variables going all the way back to his or her birth. What are the odds then that we have any really true understanding and/or control over them?

Nature, nurture, genes, memes. All embedded in the trajectory of one particular life. “I” here can only scarcely be glimpsed I suspect. Let alone understood fully. Let alone in attempting to fully understand the psychology of another.

We exchange these hopelessly problematic arguments because, well, that’s really all that is within our reach.

Unless of course I’m wrong.

But what if/when such differences follow /or become increasingly compatible to the point that they approach indiscernibility? Then You may be wrong, but only then, maybe way too far in the future perhaps never?

Mostly what I am saying is that I do not seem to have access to the answer here. Even in the either/or world, “I” is still construed by me to be an existential contraption “thrown” fortuitously into being at birth and then ceaselessly configured and reconfigured all the way to the grave.

“I” seems in turn to be created and recreated in the gap between what I think I know is true here and now and all that can be known to be true about existence itself.

Some, of course, just shrug that part off. As though it were of little consequence. They have their answer about the relationship between matter and mind; and this works to sustain whatever measure of comfort and consolation that having an answer gives them.

It’s just that some factor in God and relgion as well. That way “in their head” [and later “in their soul”] the answer can sustain them through all of eternity.

Iambiguous, you definitely have what’s termed, a personality disorder.

They’re basically incurable.

Everyone is defined by continuity of consciousness, you from a child to you now. There’s no confusion to anyone who isn’t trolling for attention. I’d almost be willing to think that you’re a female, as they have the largest percentage of personality disorders.

Iambiguous: I really don’t want to interject because it makes me look like too persistent. But for the sake of philosophical truth, isn’t my persistence grounded in this particular con text within Your ground in the either/or, particularly as it concerns morality, whereas we should be beyond that by now? Your uncertainty feeds absolute predicates which dis unite an evolving spatial-temporal demarcation at least in essence?

I don’t “use” determinism. I grapple with trying to understand the extent to which the human mind may or may not be able to determine the extent to which we think, and feel and behave with some measure of “free choice”.

Also, my own experience with objectivists of your ilk is that, when they accuse you of not responding to their posts, what they are really bitching about is that they don’t recognize the words that you choose as the words that they would choose.

This thread then revolves more around the extent to which such exchanges were ever within our capacity to control.

And here, I am, admittedly, drawn and quartered. I am simply unable to come to any conclusion that settles it.

No, I wish to entertain an argument able to convince me that whatever it is that I think I want to grasp about human responsibility, it is within my power to entertain alternatives and then to choose that which I believe [autonomously] is the most reasonable point of view.

That is until, in having new experiences, I come to freely choose a conflicting point of view.

That is until someone is able to demonstrate substantively that which all rational men and women are oblgated to believe is true.

Unfortunately, so far, that’s not been you.

I take away something only if I can be convinced that there was something that autonomous minds are able to freely take away.

And then the part where some seem compelled [literally or otherwise] to attach their own agency to one or another God or one or another political ideology or one or another philosophical contraption or one or another rendition of nature.

I’m still trying to understand how that pertains to you out in the world of conflicting goods.

I don’t “use” determinism. I grapple with trying to understand the extent to which the human mind may or may not be able to determine the extent to which we think, and feel and behave with some measure of “free choice”.

Sorry, that was Your quote.

So You are trying to determine freedom of choice to the extent that it remains from the part that has pre-determined it. Right?

Over and over and over again with you: The right answer pertaining to what particular context understood from what particular conflicting points of view?

On this thread though it gets all that more problematic because we are discussing the extent to which any answer reflects at least some measure of human autonomy pertaining to every context.

You seem to insist that I seem to insist that how I view this is how I think that all rational men and women are obligated to view it. Whereas in reality – remember that? – I don’t think that at all. Quite the opposite given the manner in which I keep pointing out over and over and over again the depth of the ambivalence I am embedded in when thinking about it at all.

No, I make a distinction between answers [in the either/or world] that seem to be apllicable to all rational men and women and answers [in the is/ought world] that do not.

Here though the question revolves more around answers [any answers, all answers] as but more dominoes toppling over given that the mind is the brain and the brain is just more matter in sync with matter’s immutable laws.

But:

I’ve convinced myself that I don’t know if any answer is ever anything other than the only answer that could ever have been.

As for the “concept” of right or wrong, how is that either in sync or not in sync with that which can be demonstrated to actually be right or wrong for all rational human beings. Out in the world of conflicting goods.

And that’s when you insist that all of those who don’t think about things like Communism as you do have the wrong answers.

Over and over again with you … can there be right and wrong answers in the general sense? You know, that there is an answer to at least one question in the field of identity, etc. One fucking right answer. And can there be wrong answers?

(This is where you ask me how it would be demonstrated. But I’m asking you first. You must have figured out the problem with demonstrations since you have the idea that it can’t be demonstrated.)

Yeah. You say that you are ambivalent but you don’t sound like it. I think an ambivalent person would tend to shut up or at least phrase his posts very differently.

And then there is the fact that you keep finding something wrong with the objectivists who don’t think as you do.

Notice how the pile grows. Now you need “the only answer that could ever have been” instead of just “a fucking answer”.

And here it has to “be demonstrated to actually be right or wrong for ALL RATIONAL HUMAN BEINGS”. Pile it on.

What about one rational human being? For a start.

In that case, there is never two kinds of any “ism”. Say good bye to Protestantism and Catholicism. If X-ism is defined as the belief in X, then that settles what X-ism is. So long as a person believes in X, he or she is an X-ist. If that person happens to also believe in Y, and another X-ist disagrees with Y, we can’t say there are two kinds of X-ists–those that believe Y and those that don’t–there is only one kind of X-ist–those that believe in X. And there may be some who also believe Y, and some who don’t, but if Y has no bearing on X, we can’t say there are two kinds of X-ists.

But doesn’t this seem kind of absurd in some cases? Take materialism, for example. There are two kinds (or so a philosophy professor at university taught us): eliminativists and reductivists. The eliminativists believe that the only thing we can legitimately say is real are the most fundamental building blocks of matter (or whatever turns out to be real)–particles, energy, whatever–whereas the reductivists believe that we can say that the things built on top of the most fundamental building block of matter (or whatever turns out to be real) are also real. For example, an eliminativist would say there is no spoon, only the particles arranged in the shape of a spoon, whereas the reductivists would say the particles that make up the spoon are indeed real but so is the spoon they make up. But both believe in the essential part of materialism that makes it materialism: that the world is ultimately no more than matter. According to you, we have no right to say materialists can be divided into reductivists and eliminativists. There is only one kind of materialist: those who believe that the world is ultimately just matter. But there happens to be materialists who are also eliminativists, and there are materialists who are also reductivists. Their views on eliminativism and reductivism, however, ought to be treated separately from their views on materialism.

^ To me, this itself is just semantics. We can say that there is only one kind of materialist, and independently of that, eliminativists and reductivists, or we can say there are two kinds of materialists: eliminativists and reductivists–ultimately, we’re saying the same thing but in different words–semantics. The latter way of saying it doesn’t entail that the meaning of materialism changes depending on if you’re an eliminativist or a reductivist–it stays the same–both believe the world is nothing more than matter–but it adds additional information about what in the world of matter they believe is real.

Now, I would agree that not all such divisions are useful. Saying that there are two kinds of humans–those under 6 feet tall and those over 6 feet tall–is pretty useless (depending on the context); but saying there are two kinds of humans–males and females–can be a lot more useful. In the case of determinism and whether the self is a participant in the system or an outsider just watching from the sides, I think it can be very useful to make the distinction. It has implication for some of the most contentious topics the determinist likes to engage in: are we in control?

This is true, but it’s rare that each person’s definition goes unmentioned. When someone says that the self goes on after death, it’s pretty clear they mean a soul. I don’t think anybody believes that the body goes off somewhere after we die. And if the definition isn’t clear in the course of the discussion, it usually comes up very soon. And then the discussion can turn to whether the soul exists or not (or whatever you want to talk about).

Dude I don’t even understand how what you just said has anything to do with what I said previously. It’s such a confused reading of what I said that I now suspect you just want to argue for the sake of arguing… but I’m going to assume it’s a misunderstanding and I’ll try to express it differently, in case it might help.

If my concept of self is one wherein the essence of it is let’s say “supernatural” and I have a conception of reality wherein there is no supernatural dimension, then neither concept needs to be adjusted by the other…
they can co-exist AS concepts and do not at all relate to each other in any way.
The same way the concept of absolute darkness is utterly unaffected by the concept of absolute light… forming one concept does not alter the other…

Someone saying “I’m a determinist” and then denying there is any agency within this model is either denying the existence of complex organisms or more likely playing a language game where those organisms do not qualify as “agents” because of how that term is defined.

If it’s a language game… it’s a waste of everyone’s time to argue about it… a rose by any other name and all that jazz.