peacegirl wrote:iambiguous wrote:
In a wholly determined universe there either are or are not connecting dots. The fact that you don't know for sure yourself merely reinforces my point about the gap between what you think you know about these relationships here and now and all that would need to be known. All that can be known. And this is now deemed to be okay by you because nature compels you to see/feel/experience this frame of mind as reflecting a necessary sense of greater satisfaction.
Connecting the dots in a way you believe is necessary not what is actually necessary. A discovery has been made and you refuse to want to know more about it. I agree, you cannot help yourself because your responses are part of your background and heredity that make you say what you say and believe what you believe, true or not.
iambiguous wrote:How on earth can you possibly know what is actually necessary here given that the existence of determinism [as either you or I understand it] seems to be encompassed in only 5% of the universe that science has just barely begun to scratch the surface in understanding?
I already answered this. We are not talking about the entire universe. We are talking about man's will.
iambiguous wrote:And then back again to...
1] accusing me of refusing to want to know about this discovery
I'm accusing you of accusing me.
iambiguous wrote:and
2] acknowledging that I can't help but refuse to
This makes sense to you. It doesn't to me.
I can point something out to you without accusing you of having a choice.
iambiguous wrote:If and when you are ever able to actually demonstrate this beyond merely asserting that it is true in a "world of words" I will be most interested in witnessing it.
peacegirl wrote: He has without a doubt shown that we move in the direction of greater satisfaction, rendering only one choice possible each moment in time. Will is not free, and you cannot escape this fact no matter how you try to make the case that autonomy or free will, or the ability to act or behave outside of natural law is a real possibility because you continue to define determinism as being nothing more than a domino without a will to resist being forced to do what you really wish you didn't have to do. I have no desire to prove anything iambiguous. You have a one track mind, and you are committed to creating a false narrative.
iambiguous wrote:See, that's our problem here. What I deem to be a discovery able to be demonstrated, you still confine to the definitions that the author gives to the words used in his "analysis" and "assessment" of these relationships. The part where this "world of words" is connected to actual human interactions able to be approached and understood through experiments, predictions and replicated results is no where to be found. Still.
What he did was just a clarification of determinism. He didn't change the definition to mean something altogether different. The only difference he pointed out is that even though will is not free, nothing can make you do what you don't want to do. Many people think determinism means you have to do what you are forced to do, even if it's against your will. His clarification of determinism is correct. Remember, definitions mean nothing where reality is concerned unless it reflects reality.
iambiguous wrote:And since there is seemingly no way around this for you, you shift gears and turn the argument into a critique of me. I have a one track mind. I am commited to a false narrative. While once again [no doubt] admitting that I was never actually able not to embody these things.
I am not critiquing you. I'm sorry you don't like my wording. I am only pointing out that you keep using the excuse that you can't help the way you respond. If you wanted to respond differently, you could. Nothing is stopping you but your desire not to change. To repeat: it is true that once you give a response it could not have been otherwise, but my correcting you may alter your response subsequently based on my response. We are constantly evaluating and reevaluating our responses based on input from the external world.
iambiguous wrote:Thus [over and again]:
You will either be compelled someday by nature to grasp how ridiculous nature has compelled me to view this or you won't. How can the past, present or future not be profoundly intertwined in whatever is "behind" the existence of existence itself?
You are in a world of words, not me. "Behind" the existence of existence itself is very arcane and makes it seem like there's no answer that could possibly be valid. I don't have to grasp the reason you view the importance that lies behind existence itself as necessary to understanding that man's will is not free and what this means for our benefit. It's not a prerequisite.
peacegirl wrote: You're right, this isn't going to work. You are bringing into the equation something that is totally unnecessary. You are creating a prerequisite that is ridiculous because it's like saying I would have to know all the causes in a deterministic world to learn anything new, create anything new, or advance in anything new.
iambiguous wrote:No, in a determined universe as I have come to understand it, I have necessarily brought into nature's equation that which you have necessarily attempted to debunk.
This author demonstrated a two-sided equation. Nothing to do with math, per se. What's your equation?
iambiguous wrote:And, no, I am suggesting that one would need to have a complete understanding of existence itself before grasping the part that either determinism or autonomy plays in human interactions. That's just common sense to me.
But that leaves you with a free floating "I can oppose you whenever you lean to one side." You don't take a position. I am taking a position because there is no such thing as free will, or autonomy as you like to put it, which only means the ability to think for yourself. Determinism doesn't prevent anyone from thinking for themselves, but you make it appear (by the way you interpret determinism to mean) as if you can't think for yourself (you're just a robot doing what nature causes you to do) if your will is not free. This is far from true. I can ask a question to a child and say to him, don't ask anyone else what they think. Think for yourself. Do you actually think this makes his will free?
iambiguous wrote:And [in my view] you need to ask yourself why you seem [increasingly] compelled to attack me with these accusatory interjections.
Stop acting like a victim when you aren't one. You want me to turn the other cheek after you slap me in the face by your accusation that my interest in this knowledge is only a psychological defense mechanism.
iambiguous wrote:From my frame of mind [in an autonomous world] it is because you have invested so much of your own particular "I" [psychologically] in the confort and consolation the the author's argument has provided you. I am a threat to that. The intellectual contraption that the author has created is at risk of tumbling down. And I know of this calamity myself because my own objectivist contraptions are to this day still in heaps of rubble all around me.
You are no threat. I am not depending on you for anything. To be clear, you are making assumptions about knowledge you haven't read, or even cared to read. You don't see yourself. You are coming off as this innocent person who is being accused yet you accusing me of using this knowledge as a defense mechanism, nothing more. This is a serious insult which requires me to be very clear about who is striking the first blow. If someone strikes a first blow, the one being struck is justified to strike back.
iambiguous wrote:"I" am fractured and fragmented here in a way that most folks will do almost anything to avoid. Both in terms of the is/ought world and in terms of all those really, really Big Questions that "I" will almost certainly go to grave without answers to.
You can ponder the Big Questions all you want and never get a satisfactory answer. Maybe we're not supposed to understand the Big Questions. The Big Questions are existential in nature. Science, on the other hand, can catapult us closer to the truth with each new discovery, creating a better world for all. Socrates was known for saying, "Know Thyself" which we are at last getting to understand.
iambiguous wrote:It would be like someone who has absolutely no understaning of an automobile as an actual entity being given a sparkplug and then asked to encompass what a car is. In other words, given all of the "unknown unknowns" that must stand between what we think reality is now and all that is yet to be grasped about it down the road.
peacegirl wrote: No one has to understand anything other than how to use a sparkplug in a moving vehicle, which is what a car is. Of course he would have to know what a car does to work on how a car can be better designed. He needs not know anything more about the existential reasons for why cars were created to make a better designed car. You're off base.
iambiguous wrote:No, I am necessarily off base in a wholly determined universe as I understand it. I'm just grappling to figure out if, autonomously, I have the capacity to comprehend how you understand it. In other words, given those parts we seem to overlap regarding.
And what of those who curse the internal combustion engine in cars and yearn to create a "progressive" future in which mass transit is the primary means of moving us about? What will the future actually be? And what actual choice do any of us have in bringing it about?
You have the capacity to understand what I'm saying if you really take the time. This is not rocket science. The problem is your resistance to trying. We don't know how the future will unfold or the time it will take for this discovery to be brought to light. It will depend on many factors that cannot be predicted. Just like we didn't know that we would replace candles with incandescent light for most of our lighting needs. What does this have to do with the fact that will is not free and what this means for the betterment of mankind?
CHAPTER TEN
OUR POSTERITY
There is an aspect of life that doesn’t seem fair. There are
people who have suffered and died to develop this world
who will not be around when the fruits of their labor have
ripened to maturity.
“No matter how wonderful this Golden Age will be, how can God
be a reality when there is no way perfect justice can prevail? Doesn’t
the thought occur to you that it is awfully cruel of God to make the
man of the past pay a penalty and be made to suffer in order for the
man of the future to reap the harvest of the Golden Age?”
“You will see shortly why perfect justice does prevail. But I don’t
want to get ahead of myself.”
Even though the other two discoveries will bring about an entirely
new world for the benefit of all mankind, the blueprint of which is
demonstrated as I extend the principles into every area of human
relation; the discovery which I am about to reveal in this chapter is my
favorite. When thoroughly understood it might be yours too. Well,
my friends, I have great news! Wouldn’t it make you feel wonderful
to know as a matter of undeniable knowledge, equivalent to two plus
two equals four, that there is nothing to fear in death not only because
it is impossible to regret it, but primarily because (don’t jump to any
hasty conclusion) you will always be here. Although the basic
principle has been an infallible guide and miraculous catalyst through
the labyrinths of human relations, it cannot assist me here; but it did
not help other scientists discover atomic energy, nor was it used to
reveal itself. However, that of which it is composed, this perception
of undeniable relations that escapes the average eye will take us by the
hand and demonstrate, in a manner no one will be able to deny, that
there is absolutely nothing to fear in death because we will be born
again and again and again. This does not mean what you might think
it means because the life you live and are conscious of right now has
no relation whatsoever to you and your consciousness in another life.
Therefore, I am not speaking of reincarnation or a spiritual world of
souls or any other theory, but of the flesh, of a mind and body alive
and conscious of existence as you are this moment.
iambiguous wrote:...how is it not just one more gigantic "intellectual contraption" bursting at the seams with assumptions that in no way shape or form are actually demonstrated to be true?
peacegirl wrote: In your desire to be open-minded you are extremely closed minded and the antithesis of a true investigator. We all know you're not to blame so don't repeat yourself. You read one paragraph and you already have come to a conclusion that this is an intellectual contraption. You are lost in your own confused thinking which is the intellectual contraption you don't realize you are caught up in.
iambiguous wrote:Here [of course] you completely avoid responding to my question. How is this not "an 'intellectual contraption' bursting at the seams with assumptions that in no way shape or form are actually demonstrated to be true?"
Because in my view that is clearly what it is.
Your view doesn't mean much when you have only read a paragraph and are assuming that because he didn't die, he couldn't know what death is. He found clues that demonstrate we are born again and again, not the "I" that is you now. This is a difficult concept but before you even read his observations, you immediately jump to the conclusion that this is "an intellectual contraption." These words you constantly use keep you at a distance so you don't have to do anything but repeat the same old refrain.
iambiguous wrote:Again, from my frame of mind, the whole point of "thinking up" an alternative reality to "brute facticity" embedded in a human existence that has no meaning or purpose behind it -- and that ends in the obliteration of "I" forever and ever -- is to create a psychological defense mechanism that allows for some measure of comfort and consolation in what can be a truly grim and gruesome "human reality" from day to day.
And, sure, to the extent that the author and you are able to actually believe it, more power to you.
peacegirl wrote: You should not be reading this book. Please stay in your gruesome "human reality" if you feel this knowledge is just a psychological defense mechanism. It's anything but. I don't think there is any purpose to our continuing the conversation because you will only fight me without really taking the time to understand the principles.
iambiguous wrote:There you go again [in my view] reacting subjunctively in a manner in which I would expect someone who believes in free will might. Becoming aggitated that I am still refusing to grasp the importance of the author's discovery in a world where I am never able to react to it other than as I do. Which is as I must.
I am allowed to be agitated, even if you couldn't react to it other than as you do. It doesn't matter. Our nature doesn't change just because we know will is not free. I am also reacting to you the way I am compelled to react to you. Determinism doesn't turn us into non-thinking, not emotional robots that don't have the ability to answer in a way that we see fit.
iambiguous wrote:And around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around we go. Then I'm back to this:
Until nature compels you to reconfigure your argument into something that makes this part go away nature will continue to compel me to react as I do now.
If nature and "I" are one and the same then the accelerator must be pushed and the red light must be run. And if there are terrible consequences as a result of that, well, que sera sera...right?
peacegirl wrote: YOU STILL DON'T GET IT.
iambiguous wrote:No, I still cannot get it.
Not until nature compels me to get it.
Maybe if you stopped pooh poohing this knowledge and gave it a shot, you
would get it. You're not allowing yourself to get it. I know you can't help yourself.
iambiguous wrote:Maybe in the next post. Maybe on the next tread. Or maybe never at all. If "I" am not just along for the ride -- inherently, necessarily embedded in "nature's way" -- then, sure, I am not understanding -- defining -- nature and determinism correctly. Like I have any real choice to.
All I can say is keep trying. Maybe you will get it someday.
peacegirl wrote: Nature is YOU and therefore being you, you cannot be forced to push on the accelerator and take the risk of killing someone, UNLESS YOU WANT TO.
iambiguous wrote:Which brings me to to this part. My latest contribution to your own Determinism thread:
Then we head in the direction that peacegirl always seems to go:
Someone might point out that we’re acting on our desires, which a computer doesn’t have. But as Arthur Schopenhauer once said, “a man can do what he wants, but he cannot will what he wants.” In other words, you might choose chocolate over vanilla, but you can’t choose to prefer chocolate over vanilla.
You choose chocolate over vanilla because you prefer it, but you can't choose what you prefer.
iambiguous wrote:Frank S. Robinson from "Defending Free Will & The Self" in Philosophy Now magazine
Which is basically my point here as well. But she somehow sees this point as missing her point. And even though I am not able to not miss her point, I still seem to be "responsible" for missing it. In a way I am simply unable to grasp.
No one said you're responsible for not understanding it. You are not responsible for slamming on the accelerator either and possibly killing someone. Your will is not free so who is blaming you?
peacegirl wrote: In a court of law they would not accept the excuse that nature made you hit a person because of running the red light.
iambiguous wrote:Yes, but in a wholly determined universe as I understand it, all of the proceddings in this court of law would no less unfold only as they were ever able to.
Right?
That should be understood by now, but that was not my point in explaining what happens in a free will society.
iambiguous wrote:Obviously, once a choice is made it cannot be unmade. But if that choice was never able not to have been made in the first place...?
The only way we can know that the choice was never able not to have been made in the first place is when we make it. We cannot determine that the choice was already made in advance of it being made, as if our choice was prescribed or fated to happen even if we didn't give consent to it. But we do have a choice every moment of every day, although the choice we make after deliberation could not have been otherwise.
iambiguous wrote:Everything in the courtroom is set in stone. If that "stone" comprises the immutable laws of matter [including the human brain begetting human consciousness beggetting human interactions] unfolding only as they are/can/must necessarily.
But don't you see, the courtroom is set in stone in the here in now. It is not set in stone that the court of law, as we know it, will continue to be the best procedure therefore it may be replaced by something better.
peacegirl wrote:I made no claims regarding what is true about the entire universe. The claim regarding man's will and how this truth can change our world for the better has no bearing on the 95% of the universe we know very little about.
iambiguous wrote:How on earth can you possibly know this?! You can't even admit to yourself how crucial that relationship must be for grappling with determinism in that context which encompasses all of existence itself.
Instead, you wrap everything around that puny 5% that we still are a long, long way from fully grasping because that which you claim to grasp now is the part that comforts and consoles you.
Let it go!
https://youtu.be/L0MK7qz13bUpeacegirl wrote: No iambiguous. You are using the fact that if we cannot understand the entire universe we can't begin to understand anything.
iambiguous wrote:That in my view is nothing short of ridiculous. Consider what our species thought it knew about that 5% of the universe 5,000 years ago. And what it knows now. How on earth could computer technology and the internet come into existence unless human knowledge of the seeming either/or world hadn't exploded over the past centuries?
And information technology is continuing to explode without understanding the part of the universe we don't understand. Geeze!
iambiguous wrote:But that still doesn't make the fact that the other 95% is still beyond the reach even of those who pursue knowledge using the scientific method.
The point is we human beings are advancing by huge leaps and bounds within the 5% of knowledge that you say doesn't count for much.
iambiguous wrote:What "method" have you or the author employed so far? You "think up" certain assumptions about matter [and a "progressive" furture] in that 5% and then shrug off the rest of it as really not all that important at all in fitting a complete understanding of human consciousness into existence itself.
We are expected to accept thinking like this...
You're talking gobbledegook now. I have no assumptions about matter. The will of man is not free, period. This is not an assumption. A progressive future is based on this knowledge, which you have no understanding of. I never said other discoveries won't be made and we won't learn more about the universe, but what does this have to do with the discovery that I'm presenting? Nothing.
peacegirl wrote: The 5% that we can know here and now is more important in the scheme of things than the 95% that we may never come to understand. We are a small planet but it's our home. Discoveries have been made that have improved our world and the human beings that live here. This discovery is one of them, and a very significant one.
iambiguous wrote:...as being as far as it is necessary for our species to go. When, in my view, it is as far as you are willing to go in order to broach and then sustain considerably more psychological comfort and consolation than folks like me are able to.
Only, in a determined universe as I understand it, as far as you are willing to go is really just another way of saying as far as you are able to go.
Wow, you are continuing to make false accusations, probably because you can't wrap your head around the fact that this is a genuine discovery.
iambiguous wrote:If the truth is "[Hitler] could not have chosen any differently than what he did" how then were the Jews not fated by nature to be sent to the death camps? Surely, what would be construed by many of us as more horrible than the Holocaust itself, is the possibility that it is but one teeny, tiny manifestation of nature unfolding only as it ever could going all the way back to the Big Bang. Utterly "beyond our control" as wholly determined men and women.
peacegirl wrote:They were fated to go to the death camps looking back in hindsight. But that does not mean that nature as something apart from us, prescribed this to happen. It happened because the people involved got greater satisfaction out of using the Jews as a scapegoat, because they were an easy target.
iambiguous wrote:Looking back in hindsight? How are we not in turn fated to look back at the Holocuast in hindsight only as nature compells us to? How is the greater satisfaction that we get in doing this really any different from the greater satisfaction that folks back then got in using the Jews as a scapegoat? Nothing is not compelled in a wholly determined universe as I am either compelled or not compelled to understand it.
peacegirl wrote: The fact that you keep repeating what you know I already know is true and have agreed with umpteen times, is just delaying any productive conversation.
iambiguous wrote:No, the fact that I am not "for all practical purposes" able to not keep repeating myself until whatever propels nature to unfold as it must compels me to is the main point of my argument. As though it really is the "choice" that "I" make here that is holding things up!
You have a choice every single time you make a choice. You have a choice right now to stay or to leave this thread. If you stay, your choice in the direction of greater satisfaction is to stay. Don't tell me you had to stay because you didn't have a choice, and that the choice was already embedded in the laws of matter, which make it seem, the way it's expressed, that the choice was already made for you (i .e. that you necessarily must choose that option) which is exactly what compatibilists disagree with. There is nothing that says you must make a particular choice UNLESS YOU WANT TO. Don't you see that?
iambiguous wrote:I'll tell you how I think the author accomplish it: in his head. Then it's only a matter of whether he could have chosen autonomousy to perhaps have accomplish something else instead.
peacegirl wrote: Tell me, how else could a discovery be made if not through someone's intellect (which is in his head) using astute observation and careful analysis as tools to create something new from things old? To say "in his head" the way you're using it is to be derogating due to your lack of understanding and misplaced skepticism.
iambiguous wrote:Or: Tell me, how can someone's intellect not be entirely the product of nature having reconfgured matter through the evolution of life on earth into someone's brain wholly in sync with the laws of matter? How can anything created [old or new] not be entirely in sync with the same? Ditto for human understanding and skepticism. What on earth is not compelled to unfold only as nature necessitates it to?
Everything had to be just as it unfolded, but it's a modal fallacy to say necessarily you must choose to stay in this thread. You stay in this thread because it gives you greater satisfaction than to leave, not because you are being forced by the Big Bang that says you must follow a prescribed path if it's not your preference.
iambiguous wrote:Just as nature necessitated this:
peacegirl wrote: This knowledge "for all practical purposes" is able to show the way out of misery, hatred, greed, poverty, murder, jealousy, and war (because of its ability to change every aspect of human relation from economics to child rearing, to the medical field) and you tell me without any understanding of this law and how its applied that you know more than the author did after 30 years of observation and careful analysis of what you think this discovery can do or not do. How absurd!
iambiguous wrote:Now let's see if nature can actually pull it off "in the future". In reality as it were.
My guess: Neither you nor I will be around to confirm it. One way or the other.
Unless, in some mysterious way the author hints at, "I" actually will be.
No worries, you will be, not your posterity.
