Determinism

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.

What happens within reality has no bearing on the actual existence of reality
And so had I never evolved or had you died before now then reality would be entirely unaffected by either of these alternative events
Anything possible can happen even if it never does but no single event / events can eliminate reality itself - that is forever impossible

What still ever boggles my mind is how other minds can assert things like this as though they actually do have the capacity to demonstrate that is true for all rational men and women. And, I suppose, for all other intelligent beings on all other planets throughout the staggering vastness of the universe.

That you believe this here and now “in your head” is one thing. That you can explain its meaning “for all practical purposes” regarding the behaviors that you choose over, say, the next 24 hours, another thing altogether.

But, sure, go ahead, give it a shot.

There is no assertion and it is not something that only exists within my head either. Because it is a fundamental feature of the Universe that change
is happening all the time. For it is always occurring within reality regardless of anything else. Reality is simply the description of the eternal change
I hold this to be demonstrably true but cannot compel other minds to also accept it as true. As what they think is entirely a matter for them not me

It’s a bit hard to imagine that someone thinks a particular event, like the events we experience, even explosions, would eliminate reality. IOW what viewpoint could the quote above be arguing against. Is there someone who thinks that a single event would eliminate reality? I suppose if we consider the Big Crunch that some physicists think might hapen an event, but otherwise who is the group that believes what you are arguing against?

‘Anything possible can happen’
?
From our limited perspective, sure. But then why didn’t those things happen? Why didn’t an avalanche happen? Why didn’t all those other events that could have happened happen? One can’t even use free will there, since it could have rained but the sky didn’t choose to not rain. Or are you panpsyhcist?

But that still just 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.”

Of course this exasperates many. Any answer that they choose to post here merely becomes another example of nature compelling them to “choose” it…wholly in sync with the laws of matter.

I am basically compelled by nature to remind everyone that no one is able to demonstrate beyond all doubt that exchanges of this sort involve some measure of human autonomy.

And it is always the not knowing for sure that we take to the grave, right?

Mindless matter [ physics / chemistry ] evolved into self conscious matter [ biology ] over a period of four and a half billion years assisted by the laws of nature
And an infinitesimally insignificant part of that resulted in the creation of my own particular I that among other things thought this reply up and posted it here

It don’t matter if you don’t mind.

“Defending Free Will & The Self”
Frank S. Robinson in Philosophy Now magazine

Here though it depends on where you draw that ever so slippery free will line. What if the brain events that compelled Breivik to become a mass murderer are the same brain events that compelled each of us to react to him as we did? What if the killings and any and all consequences that came after them [including the legal process] were also compelled by those overarching laws of nature — laws that compel all matter.

Applicable in turn to, say, Adolph Hitler.

It seems we have no way in which to demonstrate beyond all doubt, once and for all, the whole truth here. And so we all take our own existential leap to “I” believe this or “I” believe that.

Only we have no way to demonstrate that “existential leaps” are not in turn merely embodied in the psychological illusion of opting to leap of our own free will.

Again, that’s where it gets tricky. We know of actual brain disorders that clearly do propel certain behaviors. We know of any number of conditions in which “I” is not entirely at our command. With determinism, it’s just a matter of concluding that even those behaviors we are convinced are within our command, we are only compelled to believe they are by the ubiquitous laws of matter.

Same with environmental factors. We know that children raised in poverty and in increasingly dsyfunctional communities are far more likely to behave in ways that those children raised in affluent, staple communities are not.

But what if these distinctions are as well subsumed in the only possible reality there can ever be for all children. The one compelled by nature.

That’s what scientists exploring the functioning brain are basically looking for, isn’t it? That mysterious “bit” of matter in the brain that explains both the part compelling us to do only that which we must do and the part where “I” actually has the option to choose something else.

But when will we have a trial where the neuroscientist takes the stand and is able to demonstrate precisely the behaviors the defendants are wholly responsible for and the behaviors they are not?

Or entirely as a result of the laws of matter. The laws of matter don’t assist me in typing these words, they compel me to.

Science, philosophy and, for some, theology are simply unable to fully explain the difference yet.

Let alone explain how we are to grasp the part where matter becomes mind becomes “I”.

Which denotes/demotes to the lowest arguable description of understanding to the either/or implication, whereas the prescription consists of progressive emulation (mimic-simulate) a pre-logical signal, that words can not possibly relate.
That relational component is totally aposteriori to the collusive structural beginning, a beginning which really has no imminance, until it is capable of phenomenologically reduced transcendence. (Here at this level of mimicry, there is no distinguishable time between past , present , and future); and imminance and transcendence are codependent strictly on spatial-structural configuration.

Sorry iambig, must reduce to an ontological maximum, within the language specified.

This is not the same as an intellectually unfounded barrage.
The foundation is necessary even same god, but then call it anything.
Even the new Moses to the worn goliath.

But may be? (In conjunction to limits):

Universes and black holes as potential life cycle partners

Crane’s MAP (meduso anthropic principle)is a variant of the hypothesis of cosmological natural selection (fecund universes), originally proposed by cosmologist Lee Smolin (1992). It is perhaps the first published hypothesis of cosmological natural selection with intelligence (CNS-I), where intelligence plays some proposed functional role in universe reproduction. It is also an interpretation of the anthropic principle (fine-tuning problem). The MAP suggests the development and life cycle of the universe is similar to that of Corals and Jellyfish, in which dynamic Medusa are analogs for universal intelligence, in co-evolution and co-development with sessile Polypgenerations, which are analogs for both black-holes and universes. In the proposed life cycle, the Universe develops intelligent life and intelligent life produces new baby universes. Crane further speculates that our universe may also exist as a black hole in a parallel universe, and extraterrestrial life there may have created that black hole.

Crane’s work was published in 1994 as a preprint on arXiv.org. In 1995, in an an article in QJRAS, emeritus cosmologist Edward Harrison (1919-2007) independently proposed that the purpose of intelligent life is to produce successor universes, in a process driven by natural selection at the universal scale. Harrison’s work was apparently the first CNS-I hypothesis to be published in a peer-reviewed journal.

Crane has revisited and further updated his fascinating CNS-I model in Possible Implications of a Quantum Theory of Gravity: An Introduction to the Meduso-Anthropic Principle(2010).

Why future civilizations might create black holes

Crane speculates that successful industrial civilizations will eventually create black holes, perhaps for scientific research, for energy production, or for waste disposal. After the hydrogen of the universe is exhausted civilizations may need to create black holes in order to survive and give their descendants the chance to survive. He proposes that Hawking radiation from very small, carefully engineered black holes would provide the energy enabling civilizations to continue living when other sources are exhausted.

Philosophical implications

According to Crane, Harrison, and other proponents of CNS-I, mind and matter are linked in an organic-like paradigm applied at the universe scale. Natural selection in living systems has given organisms the imperative to survive and reproduce, and directed their intelligence to that purpose. Crane’s MAP proposes a functional purpose for intelligence with respect to universe maintenance and reproduction. Universes of matter produce intelligence, and intelligent entities are ultimately driven to produce new universes.

(Artimas touched on this, albeit in terms of the subconscious) or?

Back to our inveterate abstractionist…

You might perhaps be wondering if he has actually been able to demonstrate that these desperate degenerates have freely chosen to approach the laws of matter as religionists freely choose to approach the Commandments of a God that freely chose to create them.

Nope. That part is still subsumed in all of the assumptions he makes about the human brain going all the way back to the assumptions he makes about where the human species itself fits into an understanding of existence itself.

How exactly does he demonstrate that his own particular “I” is both compelled by the laws of nature and yet somehow “external” to them? Like the rest of us he is of nature and by nature, but somehow with him nature doesn’t always get the final word.

Let him then explain how that works when he chooses his behaviors from day to day. Re nature, how does his brain function differently from the desperate degenerates?

Same here. How is the “submissiveness” of the desperate degenerates not but a necessary, inherent manifestation/component of nature itself? As, it would seem, gender itself is.

Instead, we are to believe that he is just far enough outside of nature to enable him to grasp it in its entirety?

Non organic matter is physics and chemistry and organic matter is biology
So when physics becomes sufficiently complex it becomes chemistry and when chemistry becomes sufficiently complex it becomes biology

Mind is a function of the brain [ the only function of the brain ] And minds are responsible for personality which is fundamentally I
The I is what makes everyone absolutely individual and unique as no two human beings are identical [ not even monozygotic ones ]

The need for explanations about physical reality is what drives human curiosity but reality itself has precisely zero interest in this
And so some things are currently unknown [ either in part or in whole ] but will be known in the future while other things will always be unknown
One of the things that is not fully currently known is the human mind but whether it will always be so is only something that can be known in time