Something Instead of Nothing

Given that we do have freedom to choose, the distinction between the either/or world and the is/ought world becomes paramount to me.

In the either/or world, you can choose to believe things able to be demonstrated as not true. Just as you can choose not to believe things able to demonstrated as in fact true.

What becomes crucial here is the fact that, sans sim worlds, demonic dreams, solipsism etc., there is an objective truth to be found. Now, we may not be able to pin this down beyond all doubt but in the either/or world something either is or is not true.

On the other hand, in the is/ought world, we can all agree that certain things are in fact true, but we don’t all agree regarding our reaction to those truths. The state executes John Doe. That’s a fact. Jane supports this execution. That’s a fact. Jim does not support it. That’s a fact.

But if the discussion shifts to whether or not capital punishment is a good thing or a bad things [moral or immoral] that’s when I broach the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein, conflicting goods and political economy. Those are the “conditions” that are of most importance to me.

Now, if, instead, we presume that human interactions [and everything else] are embedded in a wholly determined universe, what does it mean to speak of one of us choosing one thing rather than another?

Yes, a choice is made. A woman chooses to have sex and becomes pregnant. This woman then chooses to have an abortion. A doctor chooses to perform it. A law official chooses to place them under arrest because abortion is illegal where they reside. A jury chooses to find them guilty. A judges chooses to sentence them to prison.

Now, in a wholly determined universe, is there anything that unfolds in this sequence of events that could ever have possibly been anything other than what it was?

That’s what I can’t wrap my head around here. And I will readily admit I might not be thinking this all through in the most reasonable manner.

But: if in fact we do choose something only because in fact we could not not have chosen it, how can we speak of a “compatibility” between a so-called “metaphysical determinism” and a so-called “psychological freedom”?

I must be missing something really important here.

If we live in a wholly determined universe then the manner in which I convey my own moral philosophy [nihilism] is just one more set of dominoes toppling over in sync with all the other ones. I choose to convey this here, but I was never able to not choose to.

Surprise, surprize…

Iambiguous trolls another thread without responding to mine.

If you simply conclude that conflicting good are inherently bad, you have a stable philosophy.

The reason I pick on iambiguous so much, is, that if you want to create a docile population that you can control with impunity, you will aregue that they don’t exist, and you will argue that consent violation is meaningless to ethics and morality.

I’ve stated before: I’m 100% certain iambiguous is a psychopath.

You respond yet again to a subtext that was never there…

You are effectively speaking to yourself…

Allow me to clarify one last time, and I do hope you make an effort to hear me this time…

I was saying that I can only aspire to make reasonable arguments, I cannot and do not dictate how persuasive that might be.
The faculty of reason is a shared one… it could be our common ground in such a conversation.
If ANYONE decides that they do not value that faculty nor find it’s conclusions persuasive, then we no longer have common ground.
And if they were honest about that, well we’d very likely agree about everything…
You could claim anything, literally anything and I’d agree that you could get there by ignoring reason…

The same holds true of people who straw-man the counter-arguments and thereby ignore them entirely… this is an act of deception
Whether it’s meant to fool me or themselves I cannot say… but regardless they are made deaf to reason all the same.

Now as you like to bring things back down to earth…
Whenever someone responds to an argument of mine by saying “I remain unconvinced”, I can only respond by saying “I don’t care”
If what I said was unreasonable or I was overlooking something important or failed to address something… THAT I would care about.
Whether or not someone was convinced is of no concern to me.

of course not… in fact I’d very much appreciate any reasonable criticism or counter arguments.
So long as our responses are reasoned into being and address the points… all they can ever do is improve our thinking

  1. Systems are not slaves to the rules that govern their fundamental building blocks… they subsume those rules and build their own rules from them.
  2. Define your terms “autonomy” and “choice” (What quality must you possess in order to qualify as being “autonomous” or what circumstance must you be in, so as to have “choice”?)
  3. Defining “self” dictates what is considered the thing that must be “isolated” so as to possess “autonomy”… Even a dualistic notion self still has input from the material world, you see, you hear, you smell, you feel etc. If the brain is considered the “self” it has the same influences. What you do in response to that input… well that’s a function of the “self” in both scenarios, except one is located in the material world, the other is not.
  4. If your character, if your will and wants are perfectly predictable, then so are your choices… that may well mean things are only as they ever could have been, but your will is part of the reason why.

But see, that there is a trap… Those of us not suffering from some insanity all agree that THIS is what is…
What is debated is which of these models best fits the reality we are experiencing… if there were big differences in outcome, the impostor would be easy to spot.

We could look at the findings of neuroscience and observe where certain notions of dualism become cumbersome… now needing to invent unobserved phenomena to explain the unobserved phenomena they invented to explain the observed ones.
Determinism otoh is a strange beast… technically it has nothing to do with materialism… you could have a deterministic reality, that had multiple dimensions at play, yet all equally determined.
The only alternative to determinism is any measure of randomness…

As I understand the words, autonomy is not contrary to determinism…
Even if something remained completely unaffected by everything else, that would not mean that this thing would not be orderly and perfectly predictable on it’s own.
And so long as it is orderly and not at all random, it seems perfectly congruous with determinism…
The most fundamental forces of reality, whatever they may be, qualify as autonomous by definition (unless you are using another definition)… determinism, as I know it, does not deny their existence, only claims them to be orderly.

You have two cases here : looking forward at an event and looking back at it.

Looking back, the event has already happened. It’s done, finished. You can’t undo the event. It can’t be anything other than what it was because of the one way direction of time. That’s true both for a deterministic world and a non-deterministic world.

Looking forward at an event in the future, you don’t know what is “determined” to happen. You don’t know how the infinite number of factors, swirling around you, affect your decisions.

Is it “determined” that you sit on your couch eating cheese doodles or that you get up and do something else? You don’t know until after you do what you decided to do. It’s when you do it that it becomes the thing that “had to happen”. Before that, you could have chosen something else, you could have done something else.

You seem to mix up past, present and future. As a result, you treat future events as if they are somehow in the past - as if the future has already happened. So you say " unfolds{present and future} in this sequence of events that could ever have possibly been{past} anything other than what it was{past}".

Which doesn’t make sense.

Well, after a series of rather substantive exchanges between us, that post had shrunk down to what I construed to be retorts. Zingers aimed at making me the point.

And that’s an honest expression of my evaluation. Or, rather, as honest as someone who thinks like “I” do can be.

The help I am asking for revolves basically around three things:

1] figuring out if, on this side of the grave, there’s a way up out of the nihilistic hole that “I” am in when confronting conflicting goods

2] figuring out if, on the other side of the grave, there’s a way up out of the abyss

And on this thread in particular

3] figuring out if my thoughts and feelings regarding the first two are in sync with at least some measure of autonomy pertaining to “I”

And here what else is there but to exachange points of view? I merely prefer them to be anchored [as much as possible] out in the world of actual human interactions.

First of all, you keep noting this as though it is something that you can in fact actually know. Again, just because I am able to distract myself from those things I am trying to figure out, doesn’t make them go away. And I recognize how ultimately futile it is likely to be for you to grasp this from my point of view. And vice versa. But I never lose sight of the possibility of bumping into someone who thinks about these things in a way that manages to reconfigure how I think about them. Dasein [for me] is everywhere here.

Then it comes down to to either grappling with or impugning each others motives. The trickiest part to say the least. Hell, I suspect I am not even close to fully grasping my own. If grasping anything at all is even within my capacity as someone in possession of a “free will”.

It’s true: I have no way of demonstrating that this is in fact applicable to you and to others here. All I can do is to extrapolate from past experiences with exchanges of this sort.

Meaning what? If expectations here are construed by me to be profoundly problematic, it then comes down to finding someone able to convince me that they don’t have to be. But here I always come back to the gap between what any of us think we know about these things and all that there actually is to know.

You tell me: How can the expectations that any of us have be fitted snugly into that?

Huh? You’re comparing taking aspirin for a headache to embodying distractions able to numb the brute facticity of an essentially meaningless world that tumbles over into oblivion?

What can I say. All those ideas later and it still seems more reasonable to me to distract myself from the hole that I am in on this side of the grave and the nothingness that awaits me on the other side.

I’ll leave it to you to explain to others why that is all my fault.

Okay, fine. Let’s leave it at that. Again, all I have to fall back on here are my own personal experiences with objectivists over the years. The part about “I” always seemed to be particularly aggravating to them.

This part:

If you say so.

What’s that really got to do with answering my qestion? What positions [of late] regarding important issues have the arguments of others managed to precipitate change [helped you] in your own life?

What can I say? Yes, I really would like to come upon arguments that might “for all practical purposes” help me to “figure out” the three things I noted above. And I am more than willing to at least make the attempt to understand the experiences of others that helped them.

But: there are only so many [realistic] options open to me “here and now”.

You insert your problems, your “hole” and your reactions into the discussion and then when someone addresses you directly you react with “Why are you making me the issue?”.

Well, for obvious reasons … you made yourself one of the issues.

I still do’t know what “figuring out” means or how one would go about “figuring out” anything with you. I don’t see any sort of progress at all… and therefore no “figuring out” going on.

I’m just going by what you posted.

I do grasp it.

Meaning that the “confusion and frustration” isn’t about “the big questions”, it’s about the little question of your “hole” and how you interact with people.

You’re always going to find that gap and so it’s unlikely that you can “figure out” anything.

My advice is not to focus on the gap.

Yes I am. Your distractions are aspirin or morphine for your mind.

That’s one way to deal with it. You can keep taking painkillers/distractions for the rest of your life.

It’s your life. You’re looking for a cure. It’s up to you to decide what to do with the offered advise.

I still find it odd that you have not found anything worth trying.

I’m never going to tell you anything about my personal life again.

Whatever they say, you’re going to find “the gap” or “the existential contraption”.

This frame of mind speaks volumes regarding what may well be at stake here.

If we live in a world where [in some measure] human autonomy is embodied in this exchange then your clarification and my making an effort to hear it can [presumably] be judged freely by others here. Your clarification reflects what in your autonomous view is rational and I am able to finally grasp that or I have freely chosen a less rational perspective.

On the other hand, in a wholly determined universe there was [again presumably] never any possibility that this exchange could ever be anything other than what it is. And then the choices that we do in fact make come to constitute this “psychological freedom” embedded in the “metaphysical determinism” of the human brain as matter interacting with other matter only as matter can.

That we choose becomes more important than the fact that we were never able to choose anything other than what we did. Psychologically we think we are free [even though we’re not] and that’s not nothing.

And some argue that what you aspire to say in making reasonable arguments you were never able not to aspire to.

The “faculty of reason” is no less mechanical in the matter that constitutes human interactions than is the matter that constituted the recent earthquake in Anchorage.

Only our matter is able to convince itself that it is choosing of its own volition how human interactions unfold.

There is no equivalent of a brain in the earth quaking.

Brain matter appears to be everything here. How could mindless matter have possibly evolved into it. In part that’s why the Gods are always around. God is, after all, one possible explanation.

Okay, but common ground here is not necessarily the equivalent of the objective truth. Philosophical discussions and debates about “free will” and “dualism” have been churning now for centuries. What then is the “common ground” that allows us to finally know once and for all how rational men and women are obligated to think about it.

Bring this general description down to earth. Note a context in which flesh and blood human beings make choices. Choices that either do or do not come into conflict. What can be demonstrated to be reasonable here? And how is it demonstrated that what we all agree is reasonable based on “common ground” assumptions, came about because we either chose freely to accomplish this or because it was never really able to unfold other than as it did?

Instead, I get this…

“Not caring about” what others think here depends entirely on whether or not that is actually an option. And on whether the option is only the illusion of choosing it freely.

And, here again, everything depends on the extent to which [in an actual context] we are able to point to important things overlooked or things that were failed to be adressed. Such that an objective truth can be determined.

But how on earth is this really applicable in regard to either value judgments in a world of conflicting goods or to questions as big as the “free will” debate?

Some insist that things are important here that others insist are not important at all. Some insist that things were overlooked that others insist ought to have been overlooked.

But the only way we can explore these things more fullly is by taking them “out into the world” that we live in.

Instead, I get this…

General descriptions X 4.

Let’s do this.

You pick the context. You note the behaviors. You note the choices that people make. Then one by one we can explore the points you raise above.

Both in terms of whether [philosophically] it can be determined [in the is/ought world] how rational people ought to behave, and then the extent to which it can be demonstrated that they either were or were not able to choose what they did freely, autonomously, of their own volition.

In other words…

Note to others:

Insanity? Spotting imposters?

Is there something here in this particular “general description” that is pertinent to the suggestion I made about bringing it out into the world of human interactions?

I bring to down here to the world of human interactions.

Consent violation is bad.

That’s as down to earth as it gets.

I also find it interesting, like other psychopaths and narcissists that you’re always the only one doing what you accuse others of.

I provided you with the necessary conditions for a rational conversation between you and I… and you question their value?
We have no basis then, on which to conduct this conversation…

deleted, wrong thread

Okay, that’s your bottom line. Mine revolves more around the assumption that, as with many here, you have no real interest in bringing your “technical philosophy” down out of the clouds. You’re just more comfortable with “analyses” that I construe to be largely intellectual contraptions. You present us with assessment after assessment after assessment embedded squarely within the parameters of what I call “general descriptions”.

Arguments, in other words, in which the reasoning is tautological, circular, internal. These words are said to be true because those words define and defend them.

They have almost nothing to do with the lives that we live!

Or, perhaps, like others here, you are more discomfited by the argument that focuses in on the seeming futility of ever pinning any of this down. Why? Because none of us come even close to having access to an understanding of what lies behind existence itself.

So, what then becomes of more importance [in my view] are psychological needs being met in convincing yourself that there are answers and that your own are the best place to start.

And you can always find those in the philosophy community who share your conviction that the answers are there. Only most will assure you that the answers are theirs and not yours.

Unless of course there was never any possibility that you could or would contribute to this exchange in any way other than as you were compelled to by the laws of matter.

You can always fall back on that, right? :wink:

I can’t believe it! A post with actual substance!!

I’m only joshing my friend. :wink:

What, like physically? or do you mean conversationally?
Because if it’s the latter we first need to have a foundation for a productive conversation…

How on earth could you possibly grasp the meaning and the nature of time itself?

You may not like me pointing it out but speculation of this sort is no less subsumed in the “unknown unknowns” that stand between what you think you know about it here and now and all that can be known about it going back to how it is wholly integrated into all that can be known about the meaning and nature of existence itself.

We are all stymied here of course.

Now, I make what I construe to be a crucial distinction between what we seem able to demonstrate as in fact true for all of us in the either/or world, and what we cannot. At least Insofar as we interact out in the world from day to day.

But how can that ever be removed from all that I don’t know about the really big questions revolving around threads like this one?

Most crucially though [in my view] we don’t know if the future is something that we can steer in one rather than another direction autonomously.

In fact this point is one that I would make in regard to “I” in the is/ought world. Even assuming autonomy, we can’t possibly grasp all of the variables that came/come together to form the trajectory of our actual lived life. In my opinion, the “self” here can only be reasonably construed as an existential contraption in a world teeming with conflicting goods as we go about the business of interacting amidst an avalanche of contingency, chance and change.

Back to my hypothetical aliens. They note us choosing to do one thing rather than another. But then they point out that on earth everything unfolds in a part of the universe that is wholly determined. We think [psychologically] that we chose freely to eat cheese doodles but there was never really any possibility that we could have chosen not to.

Consider this: youtu.be/vrqmMoI0wks

Now, how close is this speculation to all that would need to be known in order to demonstrate that the points here are wholly in sync with that which explains the existence of existence itself.

Come on, I note these things in order to elicit from others reactions relating to their own lives. How are those things deemed to be problems for me not problems for them? How are they not down in an existential hole when their own particular “I” is confronting conflicting goods?

What else can it mean? There is what I think I know about morality on this side of the grave and oblivion on the other side. There is what I think I know about my own capacity to choose things with some measure of volition.

And, in thinking about them as I do, it precipitates frames of mind that trouble me. I come into places like ILP and note this. How then are others either able to empathize with me or instead are completely at a loss in understanding them.

Exchanges commense. And they are either sustained with a mutual respect for each other’s intelligence or they aren’t.

In time, with many of them, one side or the other [or both] will pull out of them. For any number of reasons.

Right, that will make it go away.

Well, here we will just have to agree to disagree. The gap between them is, in my view, enormous.

Well, yes, the gap is always there. No matter the context.

But the part about “existential contraptions” can only be explored as it pertains to a particular context. In other words, there are things we seem able to demonstrate to each other are true for all of us and there are things we seem unable to.

With things like Communism there are any number of facts that are “existential contraptions” only in the sense that actual individuals had actual personal experiences with it in actual contexts.

But when the discussion shifts to judging those experiences as more or less rational and more or less virtuous, that’s a very different kind of “existential contraption”.

Unless, of course, we do live in an entirely determined universe. Then they are essentially interchangeable.

What I mean is that starting with your first point…

“1. Systems are not slaves to the rules that govern their fundamental building blocks… they subsume those rules and build their own rules from them.”

…we focus in on a particular system in a particular context. One that most here will be familiar with. An economic system. A political system. A system that revolves around a business or a sporting event or a social gathering or a religious experience.

A system where actual men and women interact by making choices. Choices that others react to as either reasonable or unreasonable. As either moral or immoral. As either autonomous or determined.

What might constitute slavery in this particular system? What is the relationship between the rules that are or are not followed and what are deemed to be the fundamental building blocks?

What do you mean by a “foundation”?

Do you mean that before we actually bring the words out into the world we must first be entirely in sync with regard to their definitions?

If so, then I am willing to abide by the definitions that you give them. I just want to take the meaning that you do ascribe to them out into the world of actual human interactions.

The gap is cowardice, lack of soul.
Or you might call it instrumentalist hedonism.

The ‘cure’ is simply : fight for your values. This is assuming you have values.

That 's what the OP could be seen as addressing, isn’t it – existence, eg valuing, eg fighting, or iambs hole, oblivion, retreat into the primordial mud.

I promise not to ask you what this means if you promise not to tell me.

On the other hand, folks have been fighting for their values now for thousands of years. The rest is history.

A few have even insisted that their own values are derived…ontologically.

And, sure, let’s all just assume that we are entirely free to fight for them.

=D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D> =D>

You’re so disconnected from reality that even ‘past’, ‘present’ and ‘future’ are too complicated for you? :open_mouth:

And let’s see, you want to discuss stuff that’s more complex. #-o