Pointing out someone’s way of responding has nothing to do with the belief that they answered that way of their own free will.
You want it both ways. But in a manner I am still unable to grasp. You want to make a distinction between a domino not choosing to topple over and John choosing to set it up to topple over. While at the same time acknowledging that both the domino and John do only that which nature compells them to do.
The only difference iambiguous is that a domino is being pushed by an external force. There is no external force pushing you, for example, to be here in this thread. You are here because it gives you greater satisfaction over the option not to be here.
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.
No, that’s the hatch that nature compels me to “choose” to escape down. Just as nature compels us to “choose” to post these words in our exchange only as they ever could have been posted. What you want is to escape down the hatch that revolves around the meaning that you were of necessity compelled to give to “choose”.
Again, this pointing out is not faulting you. It is just pointing out why we can’t move forward.
It really comes down to how you connect the dots between the things you want to do and the things that nature compels you to want to do. As though there actually is a distinction to be made in a world where all matter [including the human brain] is inherently connected to all of the dots that comprise nature itself.
Ultimately, we are part of nature and we are inherently connected to the dots that comprise nature itself, but you seem to be stuck with the idea that you are a walking robot. This is the confusion surrounding this discussion due to the fact that having choice is not inconsistent with the truth of determinism IF it is defined correctly.
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.
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.
This is simply preposterous to me. You admit that what you think you know is necessarily embedded in all that you do not know…and then simply shrug that off. Why? Because you need to do this in order to sustain the belief that what you think you do know is somehow in sync with what the author thinks that he knows in discovering this wholly subjective progressive future
Stop making insinuations about the author that this discovery cannot be true because he only thinks that he knows. He knows, trust me. He didn’t have to discover this wholly progressive future. How can anyone know everything that is going to occur before it occurs. It isn’t necessary. All he needed to know is how we can prevent the desire to hurt one another when given a better option. You are creating an argument that has no place.
It’s all neatly contained in the internal logic that revolves entirely around what you think you do know about that 5% of the universe that physicists themselves admit is applicable only to the matter that they are grappling to understand given all the unknown unknowns contained in the other 95%.
Once again, I don’t have to know everything about the universe in order to understand that man is compelled to move in the direction of greater satisfaction. What gives him greater satisfaction is not something anyone can know ahead of time (which is not necessary to bring about the Golden Age of man) except how to prevent this desire to hurt to others by making it less satisfying than not to hurt others, and it can be done.
What you can’t ever own up to [in my view] is how crucial the authors “discovery” is to sustaining the psychological comfort and consolation that believing in all his assumptions provides you.
Stop with the analysis please. You are way off.
It’s your own equivalent of God and religion from my frame of mind.
The word God is used throughout the book but it is qualified to mean “the laws of nature that govern us”.
On the other hand, given the manner in which I construe a determined universe, my own speculations here about your “comfort zone” are no less compelled by nature. As though what either of us believe “is possible” is taken into consideration by nature as she makes her way inexorably into a future that can only be given the laws of matter that comprises nature.
You can speculate all you want and I can also come back at you with justified anger because you are telling me what I’m doing when this is not what I’m doing. When someone strikes a first blow (which you are doing), it is a normal reaction to strike back, which is what I’m doing.
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.
See, you acknowledge that my interest in this is entirely embedded in that which nature compels me to be interested in, but that somehow nature, in compelling you to “choose” to whet my appetite here, might somehow herself be compelled to be more in sync with you.
You’re not making sense now. We are both in sync with our nature and our way of responding, which could not have been otherwise. I’m trying to get through to you that when you use the term “nature”, you seem to distancing yourself from the fact that nature is YOU. Nature as a distinct entity cannot make you choose anything if YOU don’t desire it. Please stop using the excuse that nature made you do something. You did something because you simply wanted to do it. You answered me a certain way simply because you wanted to answer me that way. Nature did nothing you yourself didn’t want.
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.
Then someone else is going to have to be more successful in reconfiguring your words here into something that makes sense to me. There are no exceptions to nature’s rules. But the manner in which you “choose” to point this out here sure seems like an exception to me.
If life itself is a movement away from dissatisfaction to greater satisfaction, which can only be in one direction, how can there be any exceptions to nature’s law?
Again, I am not arguing that you are wrong here, only that, given my own understanding of determinism, your argument seems entirely bizarre to me. Over and again you seem to agree with me about things that, from my point of view, refute your point of view.
Well maybe you need to reconfigure your definition of determinism, and then it won’t be so bizarre to you. Nothing I said refutes my own point of view if you follow me carefully.
This part:
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.
Having autonomy is not equivalent with free will OF ANY KIND. Yes, we have volition. Volition = being able to make choices that comes from within, not from without. Being able to make choices is part of human nature that we have been given. Making choices does not mean they are FREE choices, for we can only move in one direction when comparing meaningful differences. If we could choose what is less preferable when a more preferable option is available, you could say we have free will, but this is impossible.
You can be autonomous, but you cannot separate yourself from the laws of nature that created you.
Then I cannot be autonomous as those who champion some measure of free will describe it. Instead you concoct your own description of it. A description that seems to admit that nature compelled you to describe only as you must but that somehow your “choosing” to describe it as you do makes it all different.
I’m just trying to help you see that the schism you have created by how these words are defined are not in sync with reality. The problem here is not with my description; it’s with the way determinism has been defined down through the ages. I think you are having a hard time trying to understand that having a choice does not automatically grant us the free will that libertarians and compatibilists have taken for granted we have.
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.
This is a flat out contradiction in terms given my own understanding of determinism. To be compelled to think for myself such that I think only that which is wholly in sync with the laws of matter makes “thinking for myself” basically an illusion that matter has somehow evolved into when becoming a human mind.
You are using two different definitions here. Thinking for ourselves in a world where everything we do is in sync with the laws of matter could not be any different, therefore the independence in this sense is illusory…but we can say using definition 2 that we were able to think through a problem without any immediate outside interference. It’s the same thing as saying evil is not evil when seen in total perspective, but we can use the term evil when we are identifying someone who has caused a heinous crime.
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.
But I know any number of folks right here at ILP who argue the road to prosperity for all revolves either around capitalism or socialism. Which one then is more in sync with the author’s “progressive” future?
And what of those nihilists who own and operate the military industrial complex who crave the sort of wars that keep them grinning all the way to the banks?
Somehow they will all be compelled to come into contact with the author’s “discovery” and usher in this “progressive future”. Right?
No, it won’t happen necessarily like that, but let me try to get you to think more expansively here. What if government itself is no longer needed? What if conflict can be avoided and everyone benefits in the process? What then?
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?
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.
Okay, nature compels both the automatons and the guests to do only as they were ever able to “choose” to do. But that’s not the same as nature “programming” them?
The word “program” is problematic because, once again, the wording implies that it’s the program causing you to do what you do, which is false. Please try to get this because it is the key to what follows. Nothing, not nature, not a program, not your heredity or environment can CAUSE you to do what you do unless you want to do it. This keeps the responsibility on YOU, where it belongs, not in a blameworthy way but just to assign whose responsibility it is for making a choice.
And, yes, I agree in the sense that nature is differentiated from God. The laws of nature are [until we know otherwise] just the reflection of the brute facticity that is existence itself. No teleological component at all.
That being said, the fact that will is not free and we are progressing toward a world where there will be no more war, hatred, crime, or poverty indicates that there is some kind of design, not in a personal God way, but in a way that points to order out of chaos.