Yes, but what of my own reaction to that:
In other words, in any and all contexts that any and all of us might find ourselves in, this is true because…he says so?
Then let him focus in on one context in particular. Let him describe for us how power unfolds between two conflicted minds that he is, in turn, able to demonstrate are wholly aware of their options as autonomous beings.
Instead of just presuming [in a world of words] that this is the case.
Or are we to presume that because you presume that you possess the autonomy to profess that his point seems clearly to be true that makes it so.
Because you say so?
Why don’t you provide us with a context in which to explore these general descriptions.
Perceptive Gentleman wrote :
Therefore, freedom increases in accordance to awareness and power.
Only a higher organism can mentally and willfully usurp its genetic impulses, and its automated reactions to stimuli.
Sure. There would be greater freedom to act.
Yes, presuming that you are able to provide us with a definitive argument that establishes beyond all doubt that this freedom to act is not in fact merely a manifestation of the psychological illusion of autonomy built into human consciousness built into the human brain wholly in sync with the laws of matter.
Also, as I noted above:
Therefore, if, compelled or not, you concur with the definition and the meaning that he gives to the words he “chooses”/chooses in this particular intellectual contraption, it’s all settled.
But, again, we will need an actual context in which to explore what makes one of us a “higher organism” in regard to whatever on earth it means for an entity to “mentally and willfully usurp its genetic impulses, and its automated reactions to stimuli.”
Why don’t you take a stab at what this might mean out in the world of actual human interactions.
Perceptive Gentleman wrote :
One claims that all is determined in past, but that all future is also predetermined by it, making the present an inevitable process they can only passively observe happening.
The causal chain manifesting as presence making the future an inevitability the present cannot change.
Some people definitely see it that way.
Yes, but as I noted above:
Again, the point isn’t what one claims about the past, present and future, but the extent to which one can demonstrate that one’s claim is verifiable. And a claim not able to be falsified.
Other than as encompassed in an argument – an intellectual contraption – such that verification revolves around the definition and meaning that one gives to the words used in the argument itself. The argument here being a particular understanding of determinism.
And in which falsification revolves around insisting that his argument is wrong because another’s definitions and meanings constitute a truer understanding of the matter.
All I can come back to here is this: Why don’t you and I bring this down to earth?
Perceptive Gentleman wrote :
The other claims that all is determined in past - interaction of order chaos - and that this past is manifested as presence, but the future is not predetermined but is in the process of being determined in the present by those who are aware of their presence.
Yes. It makes sense to distinguish past, present and future. It’s more useful than seeing then as essentially the same. Past actions are fixed and unchangeable but nothing is yet fixed about the future.
Okay, now react to the point I made above in regard to this:
And who could that possibly be other than God Himself? Awareness here being embodied in omniscience. But what of mere mortals? What can they be aware of regarding the future? And how is it to be determined that their awareness of being aware of anything at all is not as necessary in their waking hours as it clearly seems to be in their dreams?
The brain as matter embodied in the laws of nature creates our dreamscapes. But: does it stop there?
I’m at least willing to acknowledge that “I” have no capacity to know this for sure.
But then I’m not an objectivist.
Of course, his frame of mind here is embeded in a No God world. A world where the ubermen become the closest thing to God. Naturally as it were.
Perceptive Gentleman wrote :
The will is not a passive agency, watching existence occur, but a dynamic participant, contributing, in the present, to what has yet to be determined, in the future.
A conscious organism is a participant, in the present, as presence, in what is being determined - a participating and contributing agency - a presence - not a passive observer (victim).
Yes. That’s the difference between a person and a rock.
Not only that but rocks don’t dream. And neither do dominoes, right? They don’t even get to “choose”. Then we are back to the manner in which you and peacegirl and our perceptive gentleman are either able to or not able to demonstrate that in fact we do get to choose. Freely, as an autonomous “I”.
And when I suggest instead that…
This is merely asserted to be the case. Where is the substantive evidence to actually back it up?
In fact, one suspects that his only recourse here [as with mine and probably yours] is to Google those folks who are in fact exploring this experimentally, scientifically, phenomenologically etc., and extracting the arguments most in sync with his own particular subjective prejudice.
You bluntly assert that this is not the case. Why? Because, indisputably, of your own volition, you say so.