Yo I’m working on a radical new theory of freewill y’all. It goes like this: the individual has no freewill and cannot be a cause of what he does himself… but only what external objects do. Meaning, u are only a ‘cause’ in a relationship to things separated from your body by space. I can cause u to fall down or drop ur cheeseburger, but I can’t cause myself to fall down or drop my cheeseburger. Likewise, if I do, something external to me caused me to do it.
Eureka, right? I know. Like why didn’t I think of this before.
Compatibalism is nonsense and has nothing to do with my theory.
Wait a minute tho I gotta scratch my theory because it can’t be right. If my arm bumps my leg, my body has acted as a cause on itself. There is still no acausal Cartesian ghost in my body making things move tho.
In relation to the meaning of free will in this debate, we are talking about whether someone could have acted or chosen otherwise. You don’t get to create arbitrary definitions and say they’re all the same. Its right in front of your nose but you refuse to see (we know you can’t help yourself) that once a choice is made, we did not have the free will to act in any other way rendering free will a realistic mirage. You confuse everyone by the use of the term autonomy, which can be used to mean independent thought (without pressure from others) but in no way entails freedom of the will.
Definition of three: Equivalent to the sum of one and two; one more than two.
If someone says three is equivalent to the sum of one and three; two more than two, his definition is wrong if he’s using the same symbols. To repeat: definitions mean nothing where reality is concerned if they don’t reflect reality.
We’ll need a context of course. On the other hand, apaosha being one of the founding fathers of Know Thyself, he will almost always avoid one.
Or when he does come “down to Earth”…
“A jew will externalize his own flaws in such a way that his own bad actions necessitating consequences become instead the responsibility of an external oppressor, to which he becomes an innocent victim, a spectator, a subject. The anti-semite just attacks him for no reason because the jew is innocent and has done nothing to cause the attack.”
…it is always understood that his own assumptions – political prejudices – trump yours every time.
Anyway, I invite him to come here in order to discuss this…
“Consciousness, therefore, is an event along a causative chain. Consciousness is not subject to causality. Consciousness is an expression of causality.”
Yes, yes, yes, we know that intellectual gibberish is still being foisted on us here in the name of philosophy. You don’t have to keep reminding us of it.
On the other hand, should it perhaps be the case that you too are afflicted with a “condition”, just say the word and, as with ecmandu, I’ll only feel bad for you instead.
And the ground rule here, is, that between primary facea impression and the ground from which appearances enimate , is very reductive, progressively so, that definitions of what is described are subject to examination .
That examination is basic, and is primarily basic to the ground from which we can describe the rules which are induced.
Right?
Or, wrong?
Or all or none of the above?
…and i don’t think to blame any one, especially EC. mon…due. (For his ‘condition’ whatever that may be)
Out of the sense of compassion, how can You, iambig compell someone to move on , where an equal and opposite sense determines a defense of the poor guy, unable to do it for himself?
Someone has to defend the downtrodden!
And remember. I am on Your side of the argument, and even if you and I are excluded from what nature has intended to exist.
A Metaphysics For Freedom by Helen Steward
We exercise free will this issue as Les Reid defends A Metaphysics For Freedom.
Book Review
Note to Honderich, Pinker and Dennett:
Hear me out…
Given my own understanding of determinism, your claim could come from science or from philosophy or from God or from just pulling it out of thin air. All that matters in the end is that you were never able not to make the claim itself. And Steward going on the offense with her own claim is no less an inherent manifestation of the only possible reality as well.
Are we then compelled in turn to be in agreement or in disagreement about that?
How about this: obviously!
Until we have a complete understanding of the human brain as matter evolving from matter going all the way back to why there is any matter at all, and why it is matter as it is and not some other kind, it’s always going to be nothing more and nothing less than naive or sophisticated conjecture.
Unless of course someone here like peacegirl’s author or one of pood’s regularity theorists is already in possession of a complete enough understanding of the physical laws that govern us. Enough to insist that, say, unless you agree with them [compelled or not] you are wrong.
Pick one:
1] the “patchy, regional and evolving world”
2] the patchy, regional and evolving world
3] the “patchy, regional and evolving world”
Until we have a complete understanding of the human brain as matter evolving from matter going all the way back to why there is any matter at all, and why it is matter as it is and not some other kind, it’s always going to be nothing more and nothing less than naive or sophisticated conjecture.
Unless of course someone here like peacegirl’s author or one of pood’s regularity theorists is already in possession of a complete enough understanding of the physical laws that govern us. Enough to insist that, say, unless you agree with them [compelled or not] you are wrong.
Peacegirl: If I say one plus one is two, and you disagree, you are wrong. Your assumption that this author could not have a complete enough understanding of the physical laws that govern us (in order to make such a discovery) is false, even though you were never able not to make this FALSE assumption.
A Metaphysics For Freedom by Helen Steward
We exercise free will this issue as Les Reid defends A Metaphysics For Freedom.
Book Review
Of course, here we immediately come to the part where merely noting this in a “world of words” is far, far removed from neuroscientists and others actually taking us inside a functioning dog or human brain and pinning down chemically and neurologically why we are either compelled to believe it or have the option to not believe it…even though in fact it may well be true.
Will there ever be a way around this dilemma?
Exactly my point in regard to exchanges like this. We all assert any number of things as though in asserting them that makes them true. Only in this debate everything asserted may well just be “nature’s way”. The whole discourse is brutally exasperating. But: only really exasperating if we do have free will.
And then the part where we take all of this to Mary, agonizing over whether to kill Jane in the womb. Assuring her perhaps that her agony is at least the real deal?
We have agency in the fact that we can choose. But we cannot choose other than what we choose, which free will says is possible.
Mary can’t choose other than aborting Jane given her circumstances. Leave out the word morality and you will be much more inclined to understand Mary’s position. If someone chooses what society deems ‘immoral’ then we have a societal disconnect. Having people choose based on their environmental conditions has nothing to do with what other people judge right or wrong. They are doing what they believe is best for them under their circumstances. No neuroscientist will find this no matter how many brains they dissect. This comes from observation of hundreds of examples of how people think and react in difficult if not oppressive situations.
