Determinism

Okay, how is the brain as a biological organism able to reconfigure its own matter into an autonomous point of view?

How specifically does that actually unfold in the brain?

And, if this has in fact been determined by, among others, neuroscientists, why aren’t we hearing about it everywhere?

So, what about the choices that you make in dreams? Do you choose freely the things that you think, feel, say and do in them? Or, instead, does the brain create these “realities” chemically and neurologically night after night?

Everything exists on a spectrum ranging from the very simple at one end to the very complex at the other end
So complex organisms such as human beings are therefore more capable and adaptable than simple organisms
The entire spectrum is quite simply the eternal infinite reality that is in a constant state of motion and change

We do not yet fully understand how the brain works and a very specific problem is lack of objectivity
In order to study the brain you have to use the brain which is not ideally how phenomena are studied

What can be determined is that the sub conscious is more in control than the conscious
So I would say that it is that which is responsible for all dream states not the conscious

Moral responsibility cannot be made compatible with that. How can a person be held morally responsible if he could not have done otherwise? That’s the first part of the two-sided equation.

Even when two or more choices have a relatively equal probability of being chosen, as long as there is the slightest difference in value to the person doing the choosing, he will be compelled to pick that choice in favor of the other. If there are no differences in value to the person doing the choosing, his brain will automatically choose one over the other without any contemplation necessary. What difference would it make if he chose this A or that A considering they were identical or identical in value?

In actuality, every thought and every action is determined not by some external force but by our biological necessity of choosing only that which offers us the better alternative, and only one choice is possible. It’s a one way street. IOW, why was the chosen option inevitable? Because that option most fitted our purposes at the time-inevitability is not some mysterious external force which forces us to choose against our will. If you don’t understand the greater satisfaction principle, you will be using the old definition which causes an unnecessary split between these two ideologies. There will never be a solution because the two camps are not compatible due to definition only. That is why the author said that free will (or doing something of one’s own accord) and determinism (not choosing freely) can be reconciled and still be within the confines of natural law.

Obviously, we have no control over our dream states just as we have no control over other biological systems like our reflexes. Although we are able to make a choice, the choice is not a free one. We are no more free than our brain state when we’re dreaming although the illusion of free will is a very powerful one. “Sure I have free will. Nothing is stopping me from choosing this or that.” It seems so simple coming from a superficial understanding.

separate morality from free will
by Phil Goetz
at the lesswrong website

Even in a free will world however Jim would seemingly have the choice not allow Joe to make him do it. He could choose freely to alllow Joe to shoot him. The real question then is this: regarding the entire sequence of events was Joe or Jim at any time able of their own volition to choose [rather than “choose”] anything at all?

In other words, even in regard to what others are concerned about in reacting to what does in fact unfold, the reactions themselves are all compelled by nature’s laws.

All that need be established [if it can be by the hard guys in the scientific community] is that the human brain itself is no less a necessary component of those laws.

Or, again, so it seems to me given my own understanding of determinism.

They wouldn’t need to ask perhaps because asking here is no less beyond their control as entities lacking in autonomy. The brain deficiency is merely another inherent manifestation of nature – a necessary mutation that unfolds inside any particular brain. It [and only it] causes him to behave as it does.

Or maybe something like this: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_W … nd_inquest

The controversy that surrounded cause and effect here. Did the brain tumor alone compel him to behave as he did?

The real question would still seem to be this: are all brains [with or without conditions/tumors/diseases etc.] just the most sophisticated of nature’s dominoes?

Which just brings us back to the deeply puzzling conundrum embedded in grappling with the human brain in all this: to be or not to be of our own free will?

Does the “entire spectrum” that encompasses the laws of nature allow for human autonomy?

That’s the predicament alright. We are of nature trying to explain nature evolving into brains now able to make attempts to explain it.

There appears to be no way in which to detach ourselves from the inquiry itself. To gain that precious “objectivity”.

After all, look at what is at stake here! What if everything – everything – we think, feel, say and do is only as it ever could have been?

What would that then suggest about this very exchange?

But what can’t be determined is the extent to which waking states are just the psychological illusion of being different from dream states.

With ever fiber of our intuition we just know that they are. But who among us has at last been able to demonstrate this?

Again, how would news of this sort not be plastered everywhere if a final determination had been made?

Or, if that in fact did become a part of our waking world, how would we determine if that part in turn was not just another manifestation of nature? That we believed it had all been resolved only because nature had compelled us to believe it.

They are only different in the sense that they have different capabilities but they are still on the same spectrum
Because everything that exists in the observable Universe is either all made of or from the same natural elements
These elements are the building blocks of all organisms and objects which share this commonality if not much else

Yes it does because any observable function is a feature of the spectrum because the spectrum is all there is - there is nothing else
This does not just include the observable Universe but everything that is non observable as well for it is literally everything there is

In other words, the part we seem bascially in sync regarding.

Yes, the part that we are compelled by nature not to be in sync regarding at all.

As though the “value” that “I” place on this instead of that is not in turn just another inherent manifestation of natural law.

This mysterious part of your own particular “I” that, at the moment of “choosing”, is compelled by nature to be convinced that, unlike the bullet in the gun, does in fact get to “choose”.

That it is only what nature compels you to choose is beside the point. What’s important is that nature compels you to believe that this is a crucial, important distinction between the trajectory of your “I” and the trajectory of the mindless bullet in the mindless gun.

But: over and over and over again, I may well be incorrect regarding my understanding of all this. Either because nature compels me to be or because my thinking as an autonomous beings is inferior to yours as an autonomous being.

I don’t deny the possibility of that.

When machines finally replace humans they will be able to study us from a more clinical perspective
They will not be compromised by the psychological traits that prevent us from being truly objective

Waking states and dream states are functions of the brain and therefore exist on a spectrum
Different parts of the brain are activated but it is still the same organ that is doing all of this

We like to compartmentalise and split things up and put them into little boxes but reality is just a single continuum
Everything is ultimately connected to everything else - there is no real separation in reality - separation is an illusion

Still more from our hardcore intellectual:

Yes, that’s precisely the point. But then we get to the part where he insists that our universe is not absolutely ordered. Why? Because, well, he insists that it’s not. And his “demonstration” of this consist of yet more assertions still. Always a world of words in which the argument itself is merely assumed to be the embodiment of his own free will.

And this [in my view] reflects the part about why it is so important to him to possess free will. After all, without it, his accusation that all who refuse to share his own own point of view here would be but another manifestation of nature compelling him to label them as morons. Instead nature compels him to call them morons because nature compels him to believe that they could freely choose to agree with him but don’t.

And that just won’t do.

Instead, from my frame of mind, assuming some measure of human autonomy, what makes him a moron is the same thing that makes him an objectivist: the psychological need to believe that he is in touch with the real me in touch with the right thing to do in touch with the one and only true understanding of human reality itself!

He gets nature. The morons don’t.

As though the only possible alternative to a wholly determined universe is a wholly random one. Instead, from my point of view, the tricky part always revolves around those things that we are able to demonstrate as true objectively for all of us…and those those we are not.

But: even that assumes some measure of autonomy. Which both scientists and philosophers are still grappling with. Unless of course someone out there already has pinned down The Whole Truth here.

Link me to it.

From my frame of mind, this would just make the mystery all the more surreal. Mindless matter evolves into living matter evolves into human beings inventing a mechanical/machine matter that may or may not have minds the same as we grope to understand our own.

But if human psychology is just another necessary manifestation of matter evolving over billions of years into “I”, how would that really be different from the mentality of machines? Either all matter is inherently in sync with however cause and effect is understood going back to the explanation for existence itself, or there is that long grappled with “dualism” in regards to some matter that is not applicable to other matter.

With or without God.

Everything is on a spectrum so all matter is therefore directly or indirectly connected
There is no disconnect because reality is a continuous process with no gaps anywhere

More from our objectivist “serious philosopher”:

But, again, when you challenge him to demonstrate how he is able to actually prove that that his own definitions are derived freely from his own autonomous “will”, all he has for you are yet more arguments.

Arguments ever and always embedded in “general description” “intellectual contraptions” that allow for no one to test beyond merely accepting that his own definitions are ever and always the default in any “philosophical” exchange.

It’s not a question of being in a mental prison so much as others being obligated to be in his. To be “one of us”. And if you choose not to be then by definition that makes you a moron.

Or a chimp. :wink:

Here is a mind that can only hope that nature does in fact compel his every word. And, thus, lets him off the hook.

More from our die-hard abstractionist…

This frame of mind starts with the assumption that free will has in fact already been demonstrated to be a part of the human condition.

That many in both the scientific and philosophical communities continue to debate its actual existence, is simply dismissed out of hand.

Of course he has free will. After all, if he didn’t, how could he pride himself on grasping it better than anyone else? How could he know that those who refuse to think of it exactly as he does are degenerates and morons and part of the contemptible herd?

The supreme irony here then being that while championing his free will, he holds in contempt all those who, in exercising their free will, don’t think about everything exactly as he does.

He becomes the expert, the authority, the judge, the jury, the warden, the guard of his own intellectual domain.

Well, not that he isn’t compelled to of course. :wink:

But that still begs the question:

Did you think this up of your own free will or has mindless matter somehow evolved into self-conscious matter compelled by the laws of nature to become your own particular “I” compelled to think this up…and to post it here.

Is there anything in this exchange itself that might not have been given that either of us might have freely chosen an option in the past such that either of us might not be participating in the exchange at all?

After all, I might have freely chosen an alternate option in my past such that it resulted in my death.