New Discovery

So does the word “free”. The only “free” we are interested in regarding this argument is whether we are free to choose otherwise. If we could have chosen otherwise, we could then accept freedom of the will, but we don’t have free will because we are constrained by our very nature (which we cannot escape from) to choose ONLY the alternative which we believe offers us the greater satisfaction of the options available, and there is only one choice that can be made each and every moment of time. Compatibilists try make a case that some choices are not free (if they meet the compatibilist qualification of no physical or emotional constraint) and some are. In their way of thinking people who make the wrong choice (according to the law) deserve retributive justice because, according to their way of thinking, they could have chosen better. This division between free and not free is a false distinction (because no one is free in a free will sense) which confuses the truth and allows for the the status quo of blame, punishment, retaliation, and just desert to continue without looking deeper for a better solution.

The state of nature x can only predict state of nature y to follow necessarily if there is a direct cause and effect relationship like the storm causing floods. There is no choice. If I misstep and fall due to a tree branch I didn’t see, cause and effect will force me to go down. But it’s not the same with biggy. It cannot be predicted that biggy will necessarily choose y from state of x because there is no way such an accurate prediction can be made until biggy in fact, chooses y. There is no causal chain coming from nature forcing biggy to choose y, which the conventional definition of determinism implies and many philosophers object to. This goes back to the confusion with the word “cause”, which is a misnomer since it implies that necessarily biggy must choose y even if y is not his preference. There is a subtle difference between saying “he was compelled, of his own free will (which only means of his own desire), to choose y because under the circumstances it gave him greater satisfaction (which is the only choice he could have made since he can’t move in the direction of dissatisfaction)” in contrast to "necessarily he was forced to choose y because that is how it was programmed all the way back to the Big Bang even if the choice was against his will. No past event (even if it was a minute ago) can force us to choose a particular option. We make choices in the present based on the factors that are being considered. All this means is that there is nothing that says a person cannot alter his choice up to the instant a choice is made. Making choices based on contingency does not mean we have the kind of autonomy that frees us from the law of determinism or greater satisfaction. Due to the fact that man’s will is not free, everything that has ever happened up until the present time was predestined to happen because we were never given a free choice.

Again, I can only imagine those truly autonomus aliens following this exchange. Here you are once again agreeing that I have no “choice” but to go around and around in sync with how nature has compelled me to embody a particular sense of greater satisfaction, and me necessarily insisting that this is only a nominal “choice” and not an actual autonomous choice like the aliens made to follow this exchange.

But that somehow I might “choose” to change my response as though that too is not just the embodiment of the laws of matter manifested in brain matter that has emerged necessarily from the evolution of life on earth.

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.

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.

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?

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.

But to think like that widens the gap considerably between the human condition as it is now and this fabled “progressive” future that you have thought up in your head. So, of course you going to shrug off those “unknown unknowns”.

As for this…

…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? 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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

Let’s just say that we are far, far removed regarding what “for all practical purposes” this tells us about human interactions out in a wholly determined world.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Um, I think our progressive future has come to fruition in many ways through all kinds of discoveries. How you call this fabled, I have no idea. I’m very well aware that there are unknowns. But the FACT that will is not free IS NOT ONE OF THEM.

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.

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.

YOU STILL DON’T GET IT. 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. In a court of law they would not accept the excuse that nature made you hit a person because of running the red light. You hit the person because you desired to speed up, and the person became the collateral damage. Now you would be forced to pay for what you did. But before you push on the accelerator, you have a choice. Once you make the choice, it could not have been otherwise. But now there is a way to increase responsibility to such a high degree that under the same conditions you would never desire to take a chance speeding up, and the accident would be avoided as a consequence. But you’re not interested in knowing how this is possible since you have already made up your mind that “for all practical purposes” there is nothing here that can change human conduct. Your mindset is in stone.

No iambiguous. You are using the fact that if we cannot understand the entire universe we can’t begin to understand anything. 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.

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.

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.

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!

Peacegirl,

Arrogant name, but, whatever.

Many people are masochists, they find joy on wounds being constantly afflicted upon them.

In order to find someone willing to do this, besides themselves, they need to find sadists.

sadists don’t like masochists, because the whole point of being a sadist is to derive joy by violating consent, which is hard to do to a masochist.

The point is, people have mutually exclusive consents, or as iambiguous would say, conflicting goods.

So if everyone is seeking pleasure but everywhere you look you find polar opposites of what pleasure is, you don’t have a solid philosophic principle.

Not only did you not discover anything new, which you brazenly claim is the newly discovered answer to world peace - you are also wrong.

let me tell you what i really do. i soak myself in lamp oil, and then i burn myself in front of the crowd. […] i’m also known very very well for pulling large pieces of furniture from my ass

What does that have to do with anything? You can get satisfaction out of being a masochist.

These are people who get joy out of hurting others. This is not something they were born with, which is what you’re insinuating. I wasn’t born yesterday Ecmandu. I know the depth of pain people can impose on others. These behaviors didn’t come out of nowhere. The removal of these behaviors will also be eliminated when a changed environment produces changed behaviors. You’re acting as there’s nothing we, as a society, can do to prevent these type behaviors, but you’re incorrect. When the environment that triggered these behaviors is changed, so will the behaviors.

Conflicts are symptomatic of a society where people are struggling to survive. Conflicting goods can be eliminated when everyone has their basic needs met. Self-preservation is the first law of nature and without it conflict is bound to occur.

This is not the pleasure principle. People do many things for greater satisfaction that have nothing to do with pleasure. You are the brazen one to come into a thread and claim that you know what you’re saying when you don’t know the first thing. You’re all so arrogant. You give a bad name to philosophy.

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?

And then back again to…

1] accusing me of refusing to want to know about this discovery

and

2] acknowledging that I can’t help but refuse to

This makes sense to you. It doesn’t to me.

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.

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.

Thus [over and again]:

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.

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.

And [in my view] you need to ask yourself why you seem [increasingly] compelled to attack me with these accusatory interjections. 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.

“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.

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?

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.

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.

No, I still cannot get it. Not until nature compels me to get it. 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.

Which brings me to to this part. My latest contribution to your own Determinism thread:

[b]Then we head in the direction that peacegirl always seems to go:

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.[/b]

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?

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…?

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.

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?

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.

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…

…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.

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!

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?

Just as nature necessitated this:

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.

I already answered this. We are not talking about the entire universe. We are talking about man’s will.

I’m accusing you of accusing me.

I can point something out to you without accusing you of having a choice.

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.

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.

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.

This author demonstrated a two-sided equation. Nothing to do with math, per se. What’s your equation?

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?

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

All I can say is keep trying. Maybe you will get it someday.

You choose chocolate over vanilla because you prefer it, but you can’t choose what you prefer.

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?

That should be understood by now, but that was not my point in explaining what happens in a free will society.

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.

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.

Let it go! :stuck_out_tongue:

youtu.be/L0MK7qz13bU

And information technology is continuing to explode without understanding the part of the universe we don’t understand. Geeze! #-o

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

No worries, you will be, not your posterity. :slight_smile:

Does or does not “man’s will” – free or determined – exist in the universe? Is there or is there not a definitive explanation for that?

And how on earth could this not be profoundly intertwined in the things we are discussing here? It’s just plain silly to me to argue that one isn’t integral to the other.

Besides, I asked and you answered in accordance with whatever that explanation might be. But: Only if the human brain is even capable of grasping something like that. Given that in some capacity the conscious mind is able to pursue it with some measure of autonomy.

Who cares if any and all accusations made by mere mortals are what they were only ever able to be.

Who cares if everything we point out is only as we ever could have pointed it out.

Another “world of words” that swirl around the definition and the meaning given to the words in the “assessment” itself. Connected to no other demonstration that the words are in fact true experientially relating to actual human interactions. The only “reality” here is the intellectual ccontraption. Words he was determined to write, words you were determined to post here, words I am determined to read. But only if my own assessment of determinism is true. And how on earth would I go about actually demonstrating that?!

Well, not of your own free will.

I’m sorry I wasn’t able to consider the wording and then, of my own volition, like the wording instead.

This is the part where I point out that in a determined universe [as I understand it] nothing that I want or desire is not in turn beyond my autonomous control. The external world and the internal world are all necessarily in sync with the laws of matter.

Well, autonomously or not, we’ll have to just agree to disagree about this. First blow, last blow. And all the blows inbetween. Just don’t call them “fated”?

Note to others:

All I can do here is to consider your own attempts to explain this better. Do I or do I not have the true capacity to understand her here? Is my resistence something that I have any true capacity to “for all practical purposes” reverse?

Given what you think she is attempting to convey about human will in a determined universe.

What does it mean to speak of behaviors being “allowed” in a determined universe? You acknowledge that I could not have reacted to it other than as I did. As in fact I must. And that you could not have been anything other than agitated as you were at my reaction. As you must have been. But this thinking and feeling of ours is not “robotic”? What we are to the dominoes, nature is not to us?

All I can do is to note how peculiar it seems to me to argue that I can’t help but do the things that I am determined to do but that I should stop doing them anyway.

It’s irrelevant. I don’t have to know if 1+1 is true in the entire universe to know that 1+1=2 is true on earth.

It’s not silly at all. It actually gets us somewhere. Otherwise you’re just staring at your navel and pondering questions that cannot be answered.

You refuse to consider that determinism does not mean we don’t have the kind of autonomy that would necessitate free will, especially the way it’s accurately defined.

That’s your cop-out. You wondered why I was accusing you. I answered that you accused me first by saying things about me that are wrong. All you do is go in circles because you repeat what we already know. All you ever say is how you could not have answered the way you answered. I KNOW THAT IAMBIGUOUS, but it certainly doesn’t get us any further.

Is anyone here getting my points or am I wasting my breath?

The reason you don’t see a demonstration is because you’re not letting me demonstrate. We haven’t gotten past Chapter One in the book let alone the first three chapters. And to call this an intellectual contraption is a joke. You have no clue, and yes, you can’t help yourself.

Of course it’s not of my own free will. That should be understood by now.

Again, you keep going back to your innocence. And by the way, you do have the volition (or autonomy) to change your mind due to contingent events or sudden changes and still be in sync with the laws of matter.

So where’s the argument? Determinism does not mean autonomous control (what I call the control to give or deny consent to an action) is out of sync with the laws of matter or what gives greater satisfaction.

You’re confused here. Fate does not dictate in advance how a situation must turn out. After someone gets killed, you can call it fate ordained, but not before.

You have the capacity but your way of thinking about determinism is so entrenched, I don’t think it’s possible to reverse.

Iambiguous, you refuse to look at the distinction. I said many times that dominoes have no choice. Humans do have a choice, although not a free one. This means that given a different environment, we can change the trajectory of our world but still in the direction of greater satisfaction. IOW, nature doesn’t say that necessarily we must have war, crime, and poverty because a deterministic universe planned it that way and there is no recourse.

You are using determinism to justify victim behavior. That’s all you’re doing, as if you can’t change your ways if YOU WANT TO. =;

It’s irrelevant to you. Therefore others are obligated to see it as irrelevant too? Even in an autononmous universe? After all, in a wholly determined universe, the laws of matter decide what we think we know is true or not true.

It gets us somewhere because you simply dismiss all those “unknown unknowns” as irrelevant to that which you seek to convey here: that your own “progressive” future hinges on having enough people “choose” to grasp the author’s wholly determined point of view.

You acknowledge there are seemingly questions that cannot be answered but whatever those answers might be have nothing to do with your own answers here and now.

Then [in my view] back to your own rendition of “definitional logic”:

What compels me to refuse here? Is it “I” or my brain embedded in that which compels nature to compel all of us to think, feel, say and do things that are ever and always wholly in sync with the laws of matter?

Like whatever gets us further is not in turn just another inherent, necessary manifestion of nature.

You ask…

As though any of us can actually choose of our own free will to get them. From my frame of mind the more you embrace the idea of “choosing” to get things, the more you sound just like the libertarians who argue that they actully do choose to get things.

And the reason I’m not letting you…? Then around and around we go. Only I am more than willing to concede that my frame of mind here is beyond my own capacity to demonstrate as either free or determined. How on earth could I possibly know that given all that I am still unable to grasp about the objective relationship between “I” and “all there is”. If it is even objective at all.

On the Science Channel last night they speculated about yet another component embedded in the mystery of our existing universe:
sciencechannel.com/tv-shows … a-hologram

“I” in the hologram?

Entrenched? Exactly!!

Or maybe others here may well succeed in helping me to understand the different ways in which being entrenched might be understood in a determined universe.

Like this “different environment” is within our actual capacity to make more “progressive”. Like if enough of us “choose” to read and concur with the author’s own determined assumptions above, nature at least stands a chance of being more in sync with your own moral and political prejudices regarding that which constitutes “peace and prosperity”.

And this [of course] has nothing to do with my own assumption that [either freely or not] you and the author have concocted this frame of mind in order to sustain the psychological “comfort and consolation” that it brings you.

No, I am pointing out that one very important consequence of embracing a wholly determined universe is that being a victim is just an illusion. You become only that which you were never able not to become. Wanting to or not wanting to is no less embodied in the laws of matter unfolding necessarily in accordance to…to what exactly?

To the physics behind the hologram above? To God’s will?

But here you are able to sustain what may or may not be the illusion that you know best how to grasp these extraordinary relationships.

No one is obligated to see anything they don’t want to see. I am not out of line though to say that it’s irrelevant to know whether 1+1 is true in the entire universe to know that it is true here on earth and is the basic building block of many physical structures.

This new world is not dependent on your understanding specifically.

They don’t. They are irrelevant because they don’t apply.

It is not definitional logic to give an accurate definition of what is actually taking place in the real world.

The mind of man is so utterly confused with words that it will require painstaking clarification to clear away the logical cobwebs of ignorance that have accumulated through the years.

I have never denied this, but you refuse to consider that nature cannot make you do anything against your will. This entire 10 pages has only been a repeat of two sound principles 1) WE ARE COMPELLED TO MOVE IN THE DIRECTION OF GREATER SATISFACTION and 2) NOTHING, NOT EVEN NATURE, CAN MAKE OR FORCE US TO DO ANYTHING AGAINST OUR WILL IF WE DON’T PERMIT IT. Why can’t you be a good investigator to see where this leads rather than waste lots of bandwidth?

I told you I’m not accusing you of refusing to want to know about this discovery if you’re not interested. I know your lack of interest is beyond your control.

Because accusations are a form of attack, which lead to counterattacks. This can be on an individual or a collective scale, which warrants attention if we want to prevent conflicts that often lead to war, crime, and other forms of hurt.

Who is saying it’s not? But again, being that every action is in the direction of greater satisfaction does not mean you can’t change your Modus operandi if you want to. Your signature answers are keeping you stuck.

This needs qualification again. If “of your own free will” means “of your own desire”, yes you can actually choose a different way of responding IF you find that your present way of responding isn’t helpful.

I’ve clarified this many times. You actually DO choose to get things. That is where part of the confusion lies. Although choice is not free the second you choose, of meaningful differences, what you prefer, you could have not chosen otherwise. But this doesn’t mean you didn’t have a choice beforehand.

[i]It is true that nothing in the past
can cause what occurs in the present, for all we ever have is the
present; the past and future are only words that describe a deceptive
relation. Consequently, determinism was faced with an almost
impossible task because it assumed that heredity and environment
caused man to choose evil, and the proponents of free will believed the
opposite, that man was not caused or compelled, ‘he did it of his own
accord; he wanted to do it, he didn’t have to.’
The term ‘free will’
contains an assumption or fallacy for it implies that if man is not
caused or compelled to do anything against his will, it must be
preferred of his own free will. This is one of those logical, not
mathematical conclusions. The expression, ‘I did it of my own free
will’ is perfectly correct when it is understood to mean ‘I did it because
I wanted to; nothing compelled or caused me to do it since I could
have acted otherwise had I desired.’ This expression was necessarily
misinterpreted because of the general ignorance that prevailed for
although it is correct in the sense that a person did something because
he wanted to, this in no way indicates that his will is free. In fact I
shall use the expression ‘of my own free will’ frequently myself which
only means ‘of my own desire.’

Religion was compelled to believe that God was not responsible
for the evil in the world, whereas Spinoza and Christ believed correctly
that there was no such thing as evil when seen in total perspective.
But how was it possible, except for people like Christ and Spinoza, to
forgive those who trespassed against them? And how was it possible
for those who became victims of this necessary evil to look at it in
total perspective? Is it any wonder man cried out to God for
understanding? The time has arrived to clear up all the confusion and
reconcile these two opposite principles, which requires that you keep
an open mind and proceed with the investigation.
[/i]

The objective relationship between you and all there is, is irrelevant to the knowledge that life on earth moves in one direction only, rendering FREE choice an illusion, but a persistent one. How in the world can our choices be free when we are under a compulsion to choose what gives us greater satisfaction from one moment to another? This is an invariable law that cannot be broken.

I am only interested in demonstrating how we can eliminate the hurt in human relations right here on earth. There are so many theories out there.
Holograms may be interesting to think about but they do not negate the authenticity of this discovery.

When you say “determined universe” you are implying that you are just a peg in a wheel. If we are to communicate you need to stop thinking that you have no choice before you do something. We were given the attribute of contemplation which is comprised of options.

Not only are you assuming that the author made assumptions (which he didn’t), but now you are assuming I have moral and political prejudices. :open_mouth:

Another accusation, eh? If this wasn’t such an important discovery, this conversation would be humorous! :laughing:

Just because everything had to be does not mean we can’t prevent people from becoming victims (those that have been hurt by others) and it certainly doesn’t mean we can’t define the word.

[i]vic·tim
/ˈviktəm/
noun

a person harmed, injured, or killed as a result of a crime, accident, or other event or action.[/i]

Hologram or no hologram, the purpose of this discovery is to show how we can prevent from coming back that for which blame and punishment were previously necessary… but when this knowledge will be brought to light is anyone’s guess. I just hope it’s sooner rather than later. :confused:

Unless of course nature obligates you to want to. And you are not out of line only because you were never really able to want to be anything here other than what you must be. Your own obligatory embodiment of nature. Then it’s back to the assumptions that nature obligates us both to make here.

As though pointing this out has anything at all to do with actually responding to my point that you simply ignore all of the unknown unknowns that stand between what you think you know and all that can be known about these relationships.

My own “lack of interest” in correcting my understanding of them is, as you note, “beyond my control”, but: but that’s not an excuse for still refusing to.

Not to get too technical here but: Huh?

Asserting this as you do here is no less preposterous to me now than it was before. You reduce everything that can be known in and about the universe down to how you have come to understand things here and now on earth.

And then expect me and others to just go along with it while acknowledging that our reactions here are in fact beyond our control.

Yeah, that’s my argument too. But how you are able to make it your own argument in turn basically encompasses the gap between us.

No, when I say “determined universe” I am acknowledging right from the start that my own understanding of that can only reflect the gap between what I think it means and all that can be known about the universe that I am simply not privy to here and now. Anymore than you are. Only I am willing to own up to the “for all practical purposes” implication of that because unlike you I have not imagined some “progressive” future that seems to be predicated on others understanding these things as I do.

Okay, but what on earth does this have to do with the point that I make?

Note to others:

My polemical bent aside, what am I missing here?

In a wholly determined cosmos, I’ll fall back to a 25 year old disproof I made about god …

If god knows every reason why god knows everything god knows, and all of those reasons are external, then by virtue of them all being external, there is 0% reason why god can possibly have an internal to believe that god exists. Since this argument is true by definition, were this actually the case, god cannot perceive, under the circumstances of absolute knowledge of causes beyond ones self, a self.

If, however, god knows every reason why god knows what god knows, and all of those reasons are internal, then god could not perceive anything outside of god with which to reference god exists relative to an “other”.

The argument I stated even further, is that at 100% for both of these extremes, will force logical catatonia, making the being non sentient.

The point being, if you are even aware that you exist, the cosmos is impossible to be wholly determined …

That’s proof through contradiction.

And since iambiguous is reading and responding to this thread: debate me

That’s right iambiguous … I made that proof a quarter of a century ago. What do you think I can do now!?

So here’s the deal iambiguous:

I gave you the why existence exists instead of not existing proof

I gave you the abortion proof

I gave you political proof

And I gave you the freewill proof

Debate me.

I fulfilled all of your impossible tasks.

You’re in the wrong thread Ecmandu. Debate iambiguous elsewhere.

Actually, aside from the iambiguous mutterings…

I just proved that freewill has to exist, in your thread.

It is absolutely on topic.

If you think for one second that you proved free will true, this shows how utterly wrong your reasoning is. Prove to me that you could do otherwise, which is the only proof of free will that would hold weight. But it’s impossible to do, so you have no proof. You’re here because you have a beef with iambiguous.

Peacegirl,

Well, aren’t you quite the disingenuous person.

I addressedyou directly in this thread about how mutually exclusive pleasures make your world peace idea insoluble …
You never responded to it, other than to demand that I show the post where you used the word “pleasure”

Oh sorry!! I forgot, the word was SATIFACTION…

Oh, how horrible I am.

Here’s is proof:

viewtopic.php?p=2726853#p2726853

Reply to that!

No no no iambiguous. Stop using “a wholly determined universe” as your “get off the hook” card that exempts you from answering directly.

That’s not how the word “obligated” is normally used. Obviously we have no control over what we desire or don’t desire. There you go again saying the same old thing as if it’s a new revelation. #-o

You’re not obligated to say anything you don’t want to. Stop using the term in an unconventional way, which can only cause confusion.

I gave two undeniable principles that lead to the two-sided equation (which you have no knowledge about.) There are no unknowns that stand between the soundness of these principles. You do not know what you’re talking about iambiguous.

You are constantly using the excuse that you can’t help yourself in order to justify your responses, which is exactly what libertarians worry about, for all anyone would need to say is: I couldn’t help killing that person, nature made me do it and they would be excused. Do you see the problem here?

You may not understand many things that I do, and I may not understand many things that you do. So what? This has no relation to the undeniable nature of this discovery.

If there is a gap between us, there is NO need to close it. Your lack of understanding (the gap) will not stop this discovery from coming to light when the time is right. Do you think a lack of understanding of Edison’s discovery on your part would have prevented the lightbulb from being discovered?

You’re off the beaten track. You sound like a nihilist very determined to prove that a progressive future is not something we can achieve.

You said in a determined world there are no victims. I said yes there are. I get what you’re saying when looked at in total perspective, but who in the world can see it this way when they have been attacked and left for dead?

Everything!