You got that right. Same old mantra. Yours to me, mine to you. But isn’t that what one would expect when both mantras are entirely constructed by brains wholly in sync with the laws of matter wholly in sync with the only possible reality?
Note to nature:
This is the only possible reality, right?
Just kidding.
And I will start another thread when nature compels me to. Besides, wasn’t it you who “chose” to abandon this thread, hoping that on the New Discovery thread you’d find others actually willing to accept that out of the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of One True Paths being proselytized here and elsewhere the author’s own path really is the One True Path?
What are the odds? More to the point in a free will world what are the odds that any of you on any of these paths will actually have the intellectual honesty and integrity to admit that the odds must be very, very very long. No way. You all have too much invested in the comfort and consolation that being on the One True Path brings you. It’s not what the path is but that you’re on it.
But, again, what worries me about you is that you do have just enough intelligence to figure that out. And, if you do, will you be able to handle it? Hell, I remember what I went through myself all those years ago when I lost it. Twice. But you strike me as ten times more committed to your own rendition of it. It could be particularly brutal.
And a part of me can’t help but feel responsible if it does happen. That’s why I say stay away from me. You might crack right down the middle.
Iambiguous: You got that right. Same old mantra. Yours to me, mine to you. But isn’t that what one would expect when both mantras are entirely constructed by brains wholly in sync with the laws of matter wholly in sync with the only possible reality?
Peacegirl: The determinists among us know this. I can still call it a mantra, which it is.
Iambiguous: Note to nature:
This is the only possible reality, right?
Just kidding.
And I will start another thread when nature compels me to.
Peacegirl: When you decide to.
Iambiguous: Besides, wasn’t it you who “chose” to abandon this thread, hoping that on the New Discovery thread you’d find others actually willing to accept that out of the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of One True Paths being proselytized here and elsewhere the author’s own path really is the One True Path?
Peacegirl: There are many spiritual and religious paths, but none have been able to prevent war and crime on a global scale and without being persuaded to follow some guru.
Iambiguous: What are the odds? More to the point in a free will world what are the odds that any of you on any of these paths will actually have the intellectual honesty and integrity to admit that the odds must be very, very very long. No way. You all have too much invested in the comfort and consolation that being on the One True Path brings you. It’s not what the path is but that you’re on it.
Peacegirl: This is exactly what he was up against in his lifetime. You’re just a typical naysayer that isn’t even curious what this discovery is or what it can accomplish.
Iambiguous: But, again, what worries me about you is that you do have just enough intelligence to figure that out. And, if you do, will you be able to handle it? Hell, I remember what I went through myself all those years ago when I lost it. Twice. But you strike me as ten times more committed to your own rendition of it. It could be particularly brutal.
Peacegirl: Stop comparing me to you. You don’t have this figured out.
Iambiguous: And a part of me can’t help but feel responsible if it does happen. That’s why I say stay away from me. You might crack right down the middle.
Okay, but, in the real deal free will world, it’s your mental health that is at stake here. Personally, I hope that you make it all the way to the grave comforted and consoled by your author. I really do.
Iambiguous: You got that right. Same old mantra. Yours to me, mine to you. But isn’t that what one would expect when both mantras are entirely constructed by brains wholly in sync with the laws of matter wholly in sync with the only possible reality?
Peacegirl: The determinists among us know this. I can still call it a mantra, which it is.
Iambiguous: Note to nature:
This is the only possible reality, right?
Just kidding.
And I will start another thread when nature compels me to.
Peacegirl: When you decide to.
Iambiguous: Besides, wasn’t it you who “chose” to abandon this thread, hoping that on the New Discovery thread you’d find others actually willing to accept that out of the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of One True Paths being proselytized here and elsewhere the author’s own path really is the One True Path?
Peacegirl: There are many spiritual and religious paths, but none have been able to prevent war and crime on a global scale and without being persuaded to follow some guru.
Iambiguous: What are the odds? More to the point in a free will world what are the odds that any of you on any of these paths will actually have the intellectual honesty and integrity to admit that the odds must be very, very very long. No way. You all have too much invested in the comfort and consolation that being on the One True Path brings you. It’s not what the path is but that you’re on it.
Peacegirl: This is exactly what he was up against in his lifetime. You’re just a typical skeptic that isn’t even curious what this discovery is or what it can accomplish because you already concluded it can’t be right. Isn’t that called putting the cart before the horse? I thought that’s what real philosophers don’t do.
Iambiguous: But, again, what worries me about you is that you do have just enough intelligence to figure that out. And, if you do, will you be able to handle it? Hell, I remember what I went through myself all those years ago when I lost it. Twice. But you strike me as ten times more committed to your own rendition of it. It could be particularly brutal.
Peacegirl: Stop comparing me to you. You don’t have it all figured out.
Iambiguous: And a part of me can’t help but feel responsible if it does happen. That’s why I say stay away from me. You might crack right down the middle.
Peacegirl: I can’t help but laugh at that remark!
Iambiguous: Okay, but, in the real deal free will world, it’s your mental health that is at stake here.
Peacegirl: This has nothing to do with the real deal free will world, which doesn’t exist. Actually this knowledge has increased my mental health not because I’m attached to it as an anchor, but because I have learned so much about human nature which has been an asset in my personal life. You don’t have a clue what you’re talking about. I’m willing to be told it’s wrong after, not before, it’s carefully investigated.
Iambiguous: Personally, I hope that you make it all the way to the grave comforted and consoled by your author. I really do.
Peacegirl: Stop the condescension, okay?
Iambiguous: Not much chance of that for me though.
Peacegirl: I feel for you as well because you are missing out! I wish you the best with your Note to Nature that does not excuse any behavior that you are responsible for. Of course you don’t understand how that’s possible because you didn’t read, let alone study, these principles which are rooted in fact.
Here’s a challenge. Note for me the name of someone who, over all of these years, you agree has in fact read and studied the author’s principals. But who refused to agree with them. And you then shook their hand, thanked them and said “Fine, no problem, I respect your opinion.”
Now, I have never once come across an objectivist who was willing to admit that someone who had read and studied their arguments [or the arguments of an author they admired] was permitted to say “no, they are wrong.” Not about the big stuff.
It simply goes against the entire psychological make-up of the objectivist mind.
Once again, you’ve already pegged me as an objectivist and therefore anything I say will only confirm in your mind what you believe to be true. Confirmation bias??
No, once again the laws of nature embodied in my brain have compelled my greater satisfaction to revolve around pegging you as an objectivist. While at the same time enabling me to imagine that I am pegging you as an objectivist of my own free will. Although, unlike the author, I [compelled or not], would not argue that my own conclusions here amount to “principles” contained in a book that others must share or be accused of not reading. Or of reading but not agreeing with.
Which, for you, the objectivist, is the same thing.
Iambiguous: No, once again the laws of nature embodied in my brain have compelled my greater satisfaction to revolve around pegging you as an objectivist. While at the same time enabling me to imagine that I am pegging you as an objectivist of my own free will.
Peacegirl: Yes, of your own free will or desire, but not of your own free will according to a ghost in the machine that gives you complete autonomy. So what if you got satisfaction out of falsely accusing me of being an objectivist. Your thought process is your protective mechanism which shows confirmation bias.
Iambiguous: Although, unlike the author, I [compelled or not], would not argue that my own conclusions here amount to “principles” contained in a book that others must share or be accused of not reading. Or of reading but not agreeing with.
Peacegirl: Be true to yourself Iambiguous. You haven’t read anything and you know it. You’re too busy trying to categorize me. Debate the principles please. You won’t do it because you don’t have knowledge in which to do this. Stop accusing me just so you can put me in a box that makes anything I share easy to dismiss.
Iambiguous: Which, for you, the objectivist, is the same thing.
Peacegirl: I will ask you again, what is the discovery and how do the principles play out? You don’t know because you’re not interested.
Iambiguous. And around and around she goes. Much like nature itself.
Peacegirl: And around and around you go. You answered nothing that I asked of you. Par for the course. Nature please tell iambiguous he’s full of BS blaming you for his lack of desire to even listen to what this author has to say. He can’t help himself but that does not mean he doesn’t have a choice. He just does not get satisfaction in giving this author an opportunity to share his findings.
In a world of no freewill, it’s impossible for one being to have more power than another. We’re just billiard balls on a pool table. One ball is not more powerful than another ball.
Do some people have more freedom than others?
Are some beings more powerful?
Do some beings have more agency?
A person in a wheel chair does not have the same agency as a person who walks.
And thus, again, you are refuted.
I take notice that you avoid my posts because I keep refusing you.
In a world of no freewill, it’s impossible for one being to have more power than another. We’re just billiard balls on a pool table. One ball is not more powerful than another ball.
Do some people have more freedom than others?
Peacegirl: In regard to determinism, no one has more freedom than another because will is not free. If you’re using the term freedom to mean having more access to doing what you want without constraints … of course some people have more freedom than others.
Ecmandu: Are some beings more powerful?
Not inherently; only more powerful due to their place in society.
Ecmandu: Do some beings have more agency?
A person in a wheel chair does not have the same agency as a person who walks.
And thus, again, you are refuted.
I take notice that you avoid my posts because I keep refusing you.
Peacegirl: I am not refuted. I already said of course some people have more agency in the sense you are speaking of. You are conflating two completely different definitions of the same word.
I’m in agreement with you that we have agency. We just don’t have free agency. We are not just pool balls. Funny you mention that. The author was a Maryland 9 ball champ in his early years.
In Defense of Compatibilism: A Response to Edwards and Coyne
written by Ben Burgis at the quillette website
Yeah, that’s how [compelled or not] I think about it. Nothing is not compelled by the laws of matter if the human brain is not somehow an exception to the material laws of nature. On the other hand, I would not argue that it can’t be an exception. And thus that we do in fact possess some measure of autonomy given this [so far] inexplicable exception.
Then the compatibilists weigh in…
Sigh…
Here we go again. Their brains being compelled to argue this no less than all the rest of us being compelled to choose behaviors that others are compelled to call immoral that still other are compelled to hold them responsible for.
Where’s the “control” come in here? And how is it different from the control that those who embrace the real deal free will world use to justify punishing immoral acts?
Any thoughts?
Again, however, only in reference to something concrete like Mary aborting her unborn baby/clump of cells.
So now in the deterministic universe nobody is “free to do B” or any other letter of the alphabet, but you still need a word to describe typical situations where there is some level of freedom like “free to go to the park” as opposed to “not free to go to the park” because … there is a fence in place or you’ll get fined by the pandemic police or you’ll get beat up for being “that sort of person” in a segregated park … etc.
Those uses of the word ‘free’ come up much more often than some abstract discussion of free-will.
That’s a fixation on “moral responsibility” and some sort of magical meaning associated with it.
In a completely deterministic world, you have to use reward and punishment to shift people away from doing undesirable actions.
You can’t simply say that nobody is morally responsible and remove all punishments. How many people think that would work? The author and Peacegirl and who else?
Don’t talk about control and moral responsibility. Talk about the need for incentives.
Right, but in a wholly determined universe as some understand it, it makes no difference who “uses” the word “free” for any reason…whether in an abstract discussion of free will or in regard to going into the park or in regard to Mary aborting her unborn baby/clump of cells.
Unless the human brain is demonstrated to be an exception to nature’s material laws of matter, everything unfolds in all three contexts only as it it ever could unfold. And that would include any “greater satisfaction” one feels in “opting” for this instead of that. Or whether one “chooses” P instead of any other letter in the alphabet.
Just as it includes me typing these words here and now and you reading them here and now. Different times same laws of matter.
Or, for some: compelled by the laws of nature, that’s a “fixation” compatibilists have that somehow they do have the “option” to make this distinction at all.
Or, for some: In a completely deterministic world, you have to “use” reward and punishment to shift people away from doing undesirable actions. But the action and the reactions to those actions were ever fated/destined to be what they could only possibly have been unless, again, it can be shown that the matter comprising the human brain is somehow the exception to the immutable rules that some “insist” is applicable to all matter throughout the universe.
On the other hand, sure, maybe given multiple parallel universes there is one where human autonomy can be demonstrated “here and now” to exist.
But in this universe to the best of my current understanding it has not.
No, you can’t simply say anything at all that wasn’t inherently/necessarily the embodiment of nature’s laws. No exceptions unless and until they are demonstrated by science or philosophy or any other discipline to be exceptions.
No, talk about the “need” or the need or the “need” for incentives. Indeed, explain how you understand “exceptions” as any different from “greater satisfactions” in a wholly determined universe.
But:
But, given some degree of free will, at least I am flat out acknowledging that my own speculations on this thread are just a wild ass guess. Given the gap. Unlike peacegirl who insists that the author’s “world of words” speculations in “the book” are the actual principles for grasping both free will and evil.
How about you? Wild ass guess? Principled conclusions? Somewhere in between?
Of course you can’t say no one is morally responsible and remove all punishment just like that. He was very clear about that. I can’t believe that’s what you’ve taken from this.