Hi my real name, how are you? I don’t think you read the definition of determinism that this author has set forth. We are not robots or automatons reacting to a determinant with no will. You MUST read the first chapter and then you will see that getting up in the morning is a choice (although not a free one) that people can make, or they can go back to sleep, or commit suicide. Once they make a choice, they could have never done otherwise, at that moment, because it gave them greater satisfaction. If you really want to understand this, you need to study it and I’ll be here to answer questions afterwards. It is worthwhile reading in spite of everything that has been said to the contrary.
Your author seems to be a pessimist on the topic of choice. All his talk seems to be about lesser evils, when free will has more to do with choosing a positive good. Limitations on free will are not existential, that is, they are situational problems, not a problem with the will itself. I see his future world as an Orwellian one, where no one ever acts for what they really want. I think that’s the result of his position.
As for the first chapter, I tired of it since it seemed to be hackneyed discussion about how no one has ever discovered what he discovered and how this will revolutionise the world. Good luck.
By the way, I like your author’s underlining discussions after the arguments. I think it’s good rhetoric and it puts the argument into simpler language to understand.
It is not rhetoric. He tried very hard to make it as clear as he could, but when the world uses logic in so many arguments, they can’t tell the difference between fact and opinion. I have an uphill battle but I ain’t giving up. Maybe I will add one more chapter to help clarify certain things. It takes reading the entire book at least twice for understanding. I have been with this knowledge for many years and that is the only reason I have a clearer grasp of these principles.
Oh, I’m sure it is pretty flattering to compare yourself (or your author) to Galilei and the like.
You want your readers to be like young children, because you want them to believe…
My occupation is not pseudo-philosophic - stop parroting my words. I have razed down your precious castle-in-the-air, and though I take it that you are attached to this castle - perhaps the original author was your father? -, I think this is a fine opportunity for you to grow up (become a woman instead of a girl). Our failures may be valuable lessons - if we are not too proud, or rather proud enough, to admit defeat. A little humility would be in place, I’ll agree with you on that: you come barging into a philosophy forum with your fancy theories and preach (not to mention accept) them as Gospel truth. You are no better than a Christian Fundamentalist who sticks to his Bible no matter what.
I will leave if there is no further interest. You won!
Just point out where I am “confused” if you can, instead of coming up with childish comparisons to simple mathematics.
I have a comparison for you, by the way. You think you have a thesis and an antithesis which together form a synthesis, and you think that both the thesis and the antithesis are right. Or, to put it differently, you have two premises and a conclusion, and because you believe both premises are true you believe the conclusion is true. But one of the premises is false. You think you have a case of 1+2=3, but you only have 1+0=1.
Oh, but there is further interest! From fellow believers like myrealname and what’s-his-name - Membrain! I remember Membrain’s leap of faith like it was yesterday… You share the same characteristic with him, namely the stiff refusal to relinquish your faith - and probably for the same reason: fear of uncertainty!
“Confidence
c.1430, from L. confidentia, from confidentem, prp. of confidere, from com- intens. prefix + fidere “to trust” (see [b]faith[/b]).”
etymonline.com/index.php?term=confidence
But your “analogy” has no connection to my argument. I challenge you to tell me what the 3, the 6, the 4, the 8, and the 9 correspond to in your “analogy”. I can tell you what the 1, the 2, the 3, and the 0 correspond to in mine:
1: true premise (thesis)
2: true premise (antithesis)
3: true conclusion (synthesis)
0: false premise
You cannot make a person “do” anything against his will, as “doing” is an active occupation. But a person is not free to will or not to will. One cannot “bring up” the will to do something, nor can he repress it if the will is there (unless the will to repress, as the phrase bespeaks, is itself a will and thereby part of the equation whose resultant is what we call “the person’s will”. And the same goes for this will to repress as for any other will: it is a pathos, something passive, something suffered, something that arises, that is aroused. You cannot “choose” to make a will appear or disappear.
Of course you are, Jenny.
Who the hell is Jenny? Is this some kind of inside joke? 
I am not angry; what makes you think that? But the premise is wrong, and your “analogy” applies more to you than to me: you probably don’t understand my deconstruction of it, perhaps because you’re not intelligent enough (I mean, you certainly are skeptical enough!..).
You can “convince” me that I am mistaken by pointing out the mistake I made, or making a logical argument for your premise. It is really a case of you defending your “knowledge” (belief) to the nth degree (and not with rational arguments but by repeating that it is “valid and sound”). I will again show you the breach I made in your supposedly waterproof argumentation:
“As you are contemplating hurting me in some way, I know as a matter of positive knowledge that you cannot be blamed anymore because it is an undeniable law that man’s will is not free. This is a very unique two-sided equation for it reveals that while you know you are completely responsible for everything you do to hurt me, I know you are not responsible.”
[Chapter Two, The Two-Sided Equation, with added emphasis.]
According to the writer, there are two knowledges here that are mutually exclusive. At least one of them must be wrong (and therefore his “knowledge” not be knowledge at all). You are either responsible or not responsible. As I agree that there is no free will (but determinism), I say you are not responsible.
You should also see that the following two statements are mutually exclusive:
- “No one is blaming you.”
- “You are blaming yourself.” (= what we call “conscience”)
As “no one” includes “you”, if it is true that you are blaming yourself, it is not true that no one is blaming you.
By the way, nothing can do anything to itself, but it is always a part of something (or someone) that does something to another part of it (for instance, if “I hit myself”, my hand is hitting another part of me - it cannot hit itself). The part of you that blames you is called “conscience”.
Except for the part I made bold, I agree. Funnily, the part that follows the sentence I made bold is in nowise an argument for the assertion I made bold.
But that consideration is part of your will. Will is always a will to something - it is not as if you have a will but you are free to choose what you do with it. The will we are currently discussing is your will to speak to me, not to do anything else (even though it may be the resultant of many disagreeing wills within you; but then the will to speak to me is the strongest of all those wills).
PG: Agreed!
Yes, because your character is too stubborn - or too thick - to listen to reason.
Because the law of noncontradiction says it has to.
I agree with the part I didn’t make bold. But the removal of all first blows is, according to your author, achieved as follows. As no one can relieve his conscience by shifting the responsibility for one’s actions, one must suffer the pangs of conscience which are aroused by hurting others, and as these are unbearable, no one will hurt others anymore. But this “logic” fails to take into account the fact that, if there is no free will, there is no responsibility. It’s as simple as that. There can only be pangs of conscience if one’s conscience tells one that “you should have done otherwise”; but this depends on the assumption that he could have done otherwise - which he couldn’t, as there is no free will.
Yes, because of the otherwise-ensuing pangs of conscience I mentioned above. But if my conscience blames me, I can tell my conscience that my will was not free, and thereby wash my hands of any responsibility.
But your hand was not free! So it wasn’t your hand’s fault.
Oh please. Remorse is only due to attachment. Enlightenment is freedom from attachment. So you are calling the enlightened “mentally ill”. That is pretty blasphemous.
It means that if one’s “conscience” is blaming one, one is blaming oneself, so then it is not true that no one is blaming one. As long as there is conscience, there is blame.
Before or after makes no difference. Everything is determinate before, after, and during the event.
Yes, I can. It is what Nietzsche called “the innocence of Becoming”. It means the absence of resentment. This does not mean the absence of war, however (indeed, Becoming is a struggle).
PG: There won’t be resentment because there will be nothing to cause that resentment, and when there is nothing to cause that resentment, then under the changed conditions there will be no reason to strike out at people who have not hurt you first. The same goes for war. War is not that difficult to prevent, once this law is put into effect. I can’t cut and paste this chapter because it is over 100 pages long.
This correspondence is closed.
PG: I’m curious as to what I said that upset you? If you didn’t like something I said, you could have given me the decency to tell me what it was and what was bothering you in the post. I never said anything to be nasty. So whatever you interpreted to be unacceptable is not something I did intentionally. What an unfortunate ending to a promising discussion. Take care.
A-huh…huh. Ah-huh-huh-huh-huh…hey Beavis…
…ah-huh-huh…“come on baby light my fire”…a-huh-huh-huh!!!
Yeah, yeah…mm-mm…fire! fire! FIRE!!!
Ummm…
Nevermind.
Dear Peacegirl, you are part of change in progress. In the past cultures have risen, flourished, solidified and fallen. At other times the solidification gives rise to the seeds of a new direction for a culture (re: Fritjof Capra’s “Turning Point”). Our culture is rapidly approaching the Turning Point. The Old has solidified and must decay. The new shoots of the future direction (yourself included) spring up at an ever-increasing rate. We flow with it doing what we MUST do and being who we MUST be. Do not cling to the aspect of the future you have witnessed or you may solidify. But if you do cling, you were always going to anyway. Just as I was always going to send this message.
My own vision concerns time - it doesn’t exist - and the repercussions of this for mankind. I constantly fall back into who I am, a condition I would dearly love to transcend and find myself clinging to the “importance” of my vision.
Time for the New Shoots to gather
Mosassam
Thanks for your thoughts Mosassam. I am in absolute agreement that we are reaching a turning point, and it is happening rapidly. We have no control because we are gravitating toward this New World, this Golden Age of man, where there are no wars and no hatred but still in accordance with the laws of our nature. But the universe must be ready for change and until we can wrap our minds around that fact that a peaceful world is not only possible, but inevitable, we will be angry at anyone who makes claims of this magnitude. I am just a messenger bringing knowledge that I have studied for a long time, and I feel a commitment to it because I know it is undeniable.
Until the world recognizes the scientific nature of what is being presented, we will live in the world of free will with the concomitant blame and punishment, and the misery that we have experienced since time immemorial. But I have hope that very soon there will be a quantum leap in understanding, and when this occurs the world will never be the same. I hope you continue to dream and trust your vision that a new world is coming, because it is God’s will which only means the laws of our nature including the law of greater satisfaction. I hope you continue to question and learn from this knowledge, because it is undeniable. Sincerely, peacegirl
For anybody who is still curious about this knowledge, I will give you a glimpse into another chapter just to help you clear up any misunderstandings. I am not here to argue; I am here to share. It’s as simple and as pure as that, and regardless of what anyone thinks about this discovery, the truth always comes to light when it’s intended to, and not a second sooner. I will not defend this knowledge anymore. If anyone has questions about it, fine, but I will not answer someone who tells me that it is wrong, when it is not, unless he can prove that 1+1=3.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE WISDOM OF SOCRATES
Many years ago Socrates was crowned the wisest man of his time
when he discovered that the primary difference between
himself and others was that he knew he did not know whereas
the others did not know either, although they thought they did. In fact,
Socrates demonstrated to all the intelligentsia of his time that they didn’t
know the truth at all, only thought they knew. There is quite a difference
between the knowledge resulting from the perception of mathematical
(undeniable) relations, and that which arises from syllogistic reasoning or
observation. People who do not know the truth but think they do are
projecting some kind of fallacious standard upon a screen of undeniable
substance, and because they see with direct perception, with their very eyes,
what gives their knowledge the appearance of truth, they are convinced they
know whereof they speak. The fact that these [educated] people are
unaware that they don’t know isn’t what concerns me; what does concern
me is that they could hurt innocent people by convincing them that they
know when they really don’t. In our present world there exists a form of
hurt different than any other in that it is done by us to ourselves when our
fear that we will only get worse or at least not better unless something is
done immediately compels us to consult doctors who, in their effort to earn
a living by selling their services, convince us that they are fully capable of
handling our problem, but instead make us worse. You see…a person who
considers himself very educated starts out with an assumption that his
knowledge is more accurate than someone without this formal training. If
someone dares to disagree with him, he uses his background as a standard
to determine who is most learned of the two and is then given justification
to reject any disagreement as being unsound.
When a student of medicine studies certain subjects at a recognized
university and receives a diploma, he is given a right by the school and state
to open an office and charge a fee to anyone who consults him for his
knowledge. He knows that he has this legal right because he has received a
diploma from a recognized university and a license from the government.
He also knows that this right is not given to those who did not study for
eight years and pass all the necessary requirements. Furthermore, there are
all kinds of word relations he can project to make himself feel that he is all
the more qualified. This occurs when the word ‘unqualified’ is attributed to
those who are considered charlatans. To reinforce this belief many in the
medical profession have indignantly exclaimed, “Doctors can’t harm you,
only quacks can, those unscrupulous charlatans, the pushers who sell their
products without a prescription and tell you there is no real danger – how
dare them!â€
Their reasoning concludes that since they are doctors, the term
‘unqualified’ does not apply to them otherwise they would never have been
given the right to open an office. It is taken for granted that because of this
diploma, the title of doctor and the syllogistic reasoning that is always
unconsciously at work, these individuals have actually acquired the
knowledge to treat and heal. Their reputation does not originate in accurate
knowledge but in the fact that there are those who are not entitled to
practice by virtue of never having acquired the necessary credentials, in the
fact that it is assumed a doctor knows what is better for the patient, and
because the patient fears getting worse unless he abides by the doctor’s
recommendations, which elevates the value of doctors. This happens all the
time, even when a doctor says to his patient – “You don’t know what you
are talking about because you’re not a doctor.†The doctor’s opinion may
take precedence over the patient’s own intuition regarding a particular
diagnosis only to have confirmed many tests later, and sometimes too late,
that this individual was absolutely right. How many times does someone
give advice and say it is reliable because it comes from a doctor? And how
many times does a drug firm advertise the value of its products by saying it
is recommended by doctors, which gives the buyer a false sense of security
that the products being sold are safe. The average person has been taught to
depend on the doctor’s judgment because of the belief that only the
physician has access to the wealth of information that can diagnose and
treat. Today, the medical profession has so much more knowledge and they
have so many more words to describe our ailments that it is no wonder there
is an undercurrent of uneasiness that has grown in equal proportion, sending
many with just the slightest ache to the emergency room for fear that if they
don’t have their condition checked out immediately, they could get worse or
even die. This exact situation occurred years ago when a cousin of mine, in
his fifties, went to his doctor for a six month check up. After giving him a
thorough examination the doctor stopped, looked quizzically at the floor,
tapped a pencil on his forehead and said, “I don’t know.†“What don’t you
know?â€, said my cousin with a worried look on his face. “I’m trying to
make up my mind whether you have Xyczeghusites or Idykfyjffkskdls.â€
The poor guy became so frightened by hearing names he couldn’t
understand, that together with his high blood pressure he had a heart attack
three days later worrying about it.
I learned this from his wife on the day of
the funeral.
My mother, being brought up to believe that the body can recuperate if
given the proper ingredients to facilitate the body’s natural healing
properties never did trust the knowledge of doctors. I’ll never forget the
time she had a doctor come to the house even though she was perfectly
well, in order to teach me a lesson. She pretended she was very sick and
told the doctor she didn’t know what was wrong. After examining her, the
doctor prescribed some medicine which she ordered right away. He
instructed her to follow the directions carefully so that the medicine would
take immediate effect. Otherwise she could get sicker, he warned. When
the medicine came she said, “Now watch sonâ€, as she poured the entire
bottle right down the drain. “Why did you do that, mom, you wasted it?â€
She replied, “The doctor and pharmacist have to earn a living and I helped
them in this respect, but I certainly don’t have to follow their advice. I
wasn’t even sick but the doctor prescribed medicine anyway. The
difference between him and I is that he has more faith in the medicine, and I
have more faith in my body’s natural healing power. †A friend’s mother,
who felt the same regarding the danger of doctors, took medicine prescribed
when she was well, and then vomited. She had actually replaced it with
some kind of emetic. Then she turned to her son and said, “You see, just
imagine what would have happened had I taken the medicine when my
body was too sick to eject that stuff. Montaigne observed this even in his
own time when he said that in trying to make him well, his doctor nearly
killed him. Why does the public hand over so much power to the doctors?
The word doctor itself is an unconscious standard for it is a justification
that symbolizes a logical assumption, and the fear that exists in the minds of
those who accept this assumption that they will only get worse if they do
not consult this individual is the lever upon which unconscious ignorance
further justifies its existence while being granted a legal right to hurt others
with impunity. In other words, just supposing that the doctor does not have
this knowledge, that in spite of all he was taught he really doesn’t know, he
just thinks he does, then he is in a position to hurt others with impunity
since he was told by the school that he is a qualified physician. Only fear
makes an individual pretend to knowledge he does not possess, but doctors
were compelled to do this as the lesser of two evils when their income
depended on this self-deception and dishonesty. How is it humanly
possible to be honest with yourself when this depends on being honest with
others, and how is it possible to be honest with others when this results in a
hurt to yourself. Because you get well after swallowing all kinds of
medicine or because you are able to overcome a fear after consulting a
psychiatrist for years does not prove the doctor is responsible for your
recovery. In fact, there is the very strong possibility that in his effort to heal
he may actually be causing harm. It must be remembered that there is this
other side of a doctor’s unhappiness. If I reveal that the medical profession
itself is partly responsible for a great percentage of all the sickness that
exists and that one day their services will no longer be necessary, the
doctors could not be elated over this news because their livelihood would be
at stake. The physician is out there to make a living, just like anybody else,
and he must believe that what he is giving to the patient is necessary in
order to receive compensation for his services. When you tell him that you
aren’t feeling well he will prescribe something in order to get paid and will
justify his treatment on the grounds that there are people to whom he will
not prescribe anything, which is equivalent to a surgeon justifying the
removal of tonsils on the grounds that he doesn’t remove everybody’s. A
doctor must always be in a position to shift his responsibility just in case
something goes wrong and his patient gets worse, and he must always be
able to justify that what he prescribes will not make him worse. If he
cannot meet these requirements he will be forced out of business. Let me
draw up a comparison for better understanding.
As we have seen, a salesman is able to justify telling white lies in order
to earn a commission because he needs this money for his livelihood, but if
the product he was selling could do serious harm to the buyer then he would
need a stronger justification otherwise he would be compelled to look for
another product to sell. If he couldn’t find another product, then he would
risk the consequences as the lesser of two evils. To show you how
confused is our thinking, we ask doctors to help us but force them to carry
malpractice insurance just in case we are not satisfied with the results. How
is it possible for them to stay in business so they can help us when we need
them if we do not wish to accept the responsibility of the risks involved?
By imposing the need to carry this insurance which blames them in advance
for the risks they must take to earn a living and make us well, they cannot
help but react with resentment towards us because there is no way they can
offer 100% guarantees. This is somewhat equivalent to a mother who
cannot swim offering money to bystanders if they would jump in and save
her son from drowning, and then blaming them for his death because they
declined the offer or were unsuccessful in their effort. It would make no
difference what type of employer we are, if mistakes are made by those we
hire how is it possible to blame them when they could never have hurt us
had we not employed them? It is true that we may have gotten hurt still
more had they not been employed, but in either case this is our
responsibility which reveals another great fallacy and form of injustice that
exists today. There is no way a doctor can be held responsible for our
getting worse or dying, and the fact that we do blame only reveals once
again how utterly confused we are. Their next justification comes from the
fact that there are malpractice laws which means that if they conform to the
Hippocratic Oath and stay away from those things that could cost them their
license, they are qualified to do everything allowed within their particular
field. If some are general practitioners, they are allowed to prescribe any
medicines that they think will help their patient. In most cases the patient
gets over his cold, cough, fever or stomach ache after taking the medicine
prescribed and he credits the doctor with the cure, but is this proof that the
doctor knows what he is doing? All we know for sure is that he could get
better or worse because of the treatment, or he could get better or worse in
spite of the treatment. In primitive times, when medicine men used to
mumble incantations to exorcize the spirit of illness, the patient used to get
well in spite of the treatment although his belief that they knew what they
were doing put his body in a more favorable condition to combat the
disturbance so the patient was partially helped because of the treatment.
This is similar to the placebo effect in modern terminology. When he
recovered, credit was given to the medicine men but in those days when the
patient did not recover the doctor was often hanged and quartered.
To be a qualified doctor, it is important to know the actual cause of the
disturbance before treatment is administered and to be absolutely certain
that the body is not fully capable of taking care of this matter itself. Some
patients have died only because a doctor did more harm in trying to find out
what was wrong than the harm that could have been done were they left
completely alone. I know a case of a very healthy boy who cut his hand on
a tin can. Ordinarily there would have been no excitement, but the mother
was up to date on the latest medical information and she rushed her child to
the doctor for the purpose of getting a tetanus shot. That evening the child
came down with a high fever and again the mother called her doctor. This
time he prescribed something else, but after taking the medicine he began to
develop unexplained rashes. One problem led to another, leaving the
doctors perplexed because they weren’t sure exactly what was causing the
boy’s symptoms. Believe it or not, it took the boy three months to get well.
Now the question arises, “What would have happened had she not rushed
him to the doctor for a tetanus shot, couldn’t he have died?†“Certainly he
could have died just as you can die from various causes, but whether he
would have died had the doctor not given him the shot is questionable.
Besides, what about the other side of the picture. Was the boy’s sickness
due to the tin can or was it a reaction to the medicine?†Today we have a
different kind of problem because the medical profession can injure or even
kill with impunity while doctors blame everything but themselves. There is
absolutely nothing today, that is, up until now, that can stop a doctor from
hurting others through this unconscious ignorance, consequently, to make
himself believe that he knows even though he doesn’t he must constantly
resort to his title, this syllogistic reasoning concealed in words as a
confirmation of his knowledge which compels him to reply to anyone who
disagrees with what he does, “You are not a doctorâ€, which means when
translated, “I know what I’m doing because I am the doctor.†However, this
is not a criticism of the medical profession because everything developed
out of mathematical necessity…and that is how everything will continue to
develop.