Opposing determinism? And why not opposing indeterminism?
Kant distinguished the empiric character (cp.: causality, determinism) from the intelligible character (cp. free will, indeterminism).
Compatibilism means that indeterminism and determinism are compatible, and that it is possible to believe or think both without being logically inconsistent.
Arthur Schopenhauer: “Der Mensch kann tun, was er will, aber er kann nicht wollen, was er will.” Translation: “Man can do what he wills, but cannot will what he wills.”
Compatibilism distinguishes “free-will” as being free from opposition, but not free from causation, not freely created, but once created, free from critical opposition.
Yes, that is right. The “free will” is merely a relatively free will, because it is not free from causation.
I’d rather discuss the semantics and syntax of value-ontology and how this effects the different interpretations of compatibilism instead of descend into meaningless cum shots.
“And he whom you cannot teach to fly, teach to fall faster!”
— Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Likely, since we can’t determine what it is, we certainly wont be able to find its causes.
There is zero scientific modeling to map consciousness in a causal sense. None.
So yea, not a fat chance we’ll find a clue as to its origins any time soon.
Note, there are many who believe that the brain generates consciousness, but there are no indications that it does. What it seems to be doing is filtering from a larger current. Information could be called causality itself.
At the most micro level we can attain now, information and rudimentary energy is seen as the same, in the sense of electron spin.
This again ties into the epistemic limits that we have. At the smallest level, a bit of substance and a bit of knowledge are indistinguishable in terms of knowledge.
Not.
Yes, it is.
It’s what we might call a minimal-sum meta-subjectivity. “Objectivity” is a composite of so many subjectivities that their inner necessities become visible as a shared necessity, a ‘law’, something none of them can find a way around if they will tend to keep existing.
Consciousness and human will are such balances, as is every dynamic form and organism.
No element in the equation can predict the outcome of that equation without changing it - but no element in an equation could ever get a comprehensive look at the equation.
This is why the equation of Value Ontology begins with a local assessment which includes the notion of locality (Relativity and Uncertainty combined amount in this) as a seed of the logic by which the rest of the assessment is assembled.
Science has all sorts of eclectic and ad hoc ways of assembling assessments into coherent terms. But it struggles with this more than with anything else.
This is one way in which my model offers an elegant solution.
That is the path of theoretical astrophysics, which is really a form of philosophy. It’s the ground to my own philosophical angle.
First of all the word random only refers to a pattern that is not recognizable under this or that condition. There is no true randomness.
In a computer, a random number is generated using the processors ticks. Its not actually random
So there isnt a difference between determined and random.
Whatever we call random is certainly part of all sorts of patterns; true chaos is imperceptible.
What we do not have now is what Lacan calls a Master Signifier in science. We do not have a hub or axis to our method. Our episteme is scattered, has no heart. This is why our knowledge of our world, to begin with ourselves is flat and useless. The knowledge isnt actually knowledge yet, it’s factoids.
Of course we have some knowledge, but not on the level of consciousness. Truly, the amount of facts the know about its structure in the sense of physics, is zero. There is literally no knowledge of it.
So you could say we may have been looking in the wrong places… or rather, in the wrong way.
With the wrong assumptions as to what ‘origin’ really is.
I maintain origin is non local; whereas existence is local (‘existence’ = ‘an object’ - not an accumulation of objects; an object is existence itself, there is no existence of existence, as Heidegger went to great lengths to ‘clarify’… if one can use this word with respect to Heidegger)
On the other hand, if we’d come to understand Valuing as the primary substance of all that we could possibly investigate - -
imagine what massive benefits will come. Or at least, sit for a moment to contemplate the ramifications.
Right now, we are under the impression, that to understand what we are, we have to disregard and let go and neutralize to our mind all that we find important.
This is the stupidity that merits the worst genocide. I dont know what is dumber, the idea that man even could disentangle form his values, or that he should want to, or that it would be a way to understand himself.
All are fundamentally contemptible from a sober mindset. All are the result of absolute drunkenness.
As with all questions pertaining to work that has yet to be done: go do the work and find out.
In this light, let me point you in a direction that may take you ahead quite quickly. This is one of the most crucial threads this forum has seen.
ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopi … 1&t=175698
Consciousness is not hard to understand. It just takes some clarity of thought and observation; and you need the right concepts to bring to bear upon the question.
As I said, consciousness is a system for coordinating inputs and outputs. The brain is basically a huge mass of electrical activity designed by nature for this purpose. You have your five senses all feeding into a unified perceptual experience, then you have two kinds of proprioceptions, the one for your physical body in space and another for your feeling internal to consciousness; feelings are inputs from all around the body and feed into the brain to produce a background state of feeling, a “well being” or feeling of what it means to be you in any given moment-- an “emotion”.
Your actions (including speech) are the externalized result (outputs) of the inner activity of consciousness; that inner activity is just the sum of all that sense+proprioception+self-reflexive data all coming together to produce an experience of self. Then on top of it all you have the neurology’ ability to record the present moment state of all that inner activity into memory so that this present moment can be implicitly compared to just-past moments, even further deepening the input and output patterns, making them even more self-reflexive.
Beyond that, what do you really think your “consciousness” is? The real stuff of consciousness is in the experiences, the sense data, the ideas, the “physical” sensations, all coming together to work into constructing the self from moment to moment. The body and neurology is just a material machinic system allowing all that “immaterial” stuff to exist as, again, input and output; sense reaction and response, behavior.
Further to that we have what we call reason and language; language is a system of further recording, externalizing and manipulating contents of consciousness by making objects out of them and allowing those objects to be rearranged in new ways; reason is the ability to posit something against the raw instinctual data and reaction that further delimits and changes that instinctive level, introducing further orders of differentiations into the equations of the contents of consciousness.
It is an incredible thread. Nothing that provides any extravagant realizations for new grounds of philosophizing. I’ve read that thread numerous times and after reading it the first time, I decided to join this site. It reminds me of Karl Popper and his distinctions between science and pseudoscience. When we go about creating hypotheses, we may only look for things that support the hypotheses and not negate it entirely. This is what happens in all truly scientific fields, where one hypothesis is affirmed (partly or entirely), or is entirely denied until a better hypothesis arrives. Nonetheless, there is no way avoiding our description of things instead of actually knowing things without understanding consciousness. We need to understand consciousness, values, language, and our history in order to just begin to penetrate the bounds of knowing rather than perceiving. From my personal experience, science has created a separation from society, especially within my friends/community, where there is an Ontological tyranny of scientific valuing; the science is truth which has really only turned atheism and its sciences into the most modern and prolific Western religion (perhaps globalizing religion). The human mind itself is objective, if only we could fully understand it, implying to understand ourselves to the fullest extent.
This will be my last formal post on this site, representing my gradual resignation from this site. I will still browse all the forums and deeply research the important threads, but philosophizing with all these people was mostly discouraging. You all assure yourselves of being better off, when I am no. I am not well-read/mature(in philosophy) enough to seriously contribute to philosophy yet. I am still only in my adolescence and have an unfathomable amount of things to learn/read. Hopefully I can contribute to this site again, but for now I must migrate into academia, for better or for worse. I am grateful for everything everyone has introduced me to and will use it to my advantage.
I wish I could’ve stayed longer, I wish I could’ve changed the name to this terrible thread.
You seem very rattled and deeply confused. Good - that is a start. Or could be one.
Thinking is quite emotional, as thought without emotion pertains to nothing besides sociopathy, and philosophers are always, at their depth, very happy and very empathic. They can endure the tragedy of contradictions.
Many people, I’d say especially in Academia, have a heart too small and thin to be both honest and happy in this world. And in order to be truly honest, one must be fundamentally happy; only full affirmation of ones position as a position can ever be considered a standard to truth.
I recommend as a last step on the path Ive guided you on is to spend some months researching the most emotionally disturbing political histories of the world. If you can integrate what you come to know with the happiness I described, then you will know the sort of friction and heat that gives shape to a philosophy.
I cant tell precisely if you are afraid and proud, or an ingrate. In the latter case, you dont want to hear my wishes, in the former, go through some deep shit that can ground your assumptions, or burn them off.
Don’t stick to philosophy like gum to a shoe.