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
you’re still messing with those folks over at know thyself, biggs? what the hell for? you can’t tell me there’s any fun it it anymore. and these days its even pointless to talk past them because there’s nobody watching for whom you can make an example. i mean what’s the point of a kung-fu match in an empty dojo? i dunno man. the only reason i’d bother with that place would be for an exhibition fight in front of a decent sized audience… or else there’s no fun it it. and i’d have to set up a pay-pal account in which forum members would deposit an agreed upon payment per post. a five dollar minimum per viewer.
i can’t believe you’re still going at it over there, dude. old nihilists die hard, i guess.
They did just find that 40 percent of the nucleus of a comet was organic chemicals and that certain chemicals once assumed to indicate the presence of life were found around baby stars. IOW there is a bunch of prelife stuff in really rather inhospitable places and being flung around. I also tend to assume that the physicalist model begins with a bias towards dead and dumb, and that consciousness saturates things.
but while you’re at it, biggs, let me take a few shots for the hell of it…
terrible analogy here. even the dumbest christian can distinguish between a commandment and a natural law. one never has a problem being compelled to stay on the ground because of gravity like one might have a problem with the compulsion to steal. you won’t be able to fly regardless of what choices your god has given you in your commandments, so even the idiot christians wouldn’t make this ridiculous comparison.
but to understand why he would make such a terrible analogy you gotta understand the general hackneyed style of his thinking and the utterly complex nature of his accumulated confusion.
the distinction between ‘descriptive’ and ‘prescriptive’ he makes is correct, but his conclusion does not follow. by not being ‘prescriptive’ we’d have to mean that nature isn’t deterministic… that nature does not ‘have in mind’ before an event happens, what event should happen. one of the greatest gaffs of the anti-freewill thesis is the use of the anthropomorphically loaded word ‘determine’, which inadvertently associates those qualities ordinarily given to what the word ‘determine’ means when describing human behavior, to nature, when causation works. we begin to imagine nature as a ‘planning’, ‘intending’, ‘goal oriented’ agency that acts with purpose and deliberation. these are the features of an act of ‘determination’, and nature has no such features. this is why freewillists are constantly attacking a strawman… one which, incidentally, the determinists set up themselves with the careless use of their language. and in fact it’s the fault of the determinists around here that poor urwrong is still talking about midgets in cages with no freewill. well okay maybe that’s a little unfair… at least to sil. he’s bent over backwards to try and explain this shit to the dude.
anyway the conclusions which i say do not follow are these:
first of all, man does not ‘make’ or bring into existence the action and regularity of natural phenomena (which we name ‘laws’) that he observes; if a man were to fall over dead in the presence of a moving vehicle, that vehicle probably won’t stop moving because that man is no longer there to ‘make the laws’ that govern its activity. moreover, such laws don’t ‘explain’ anything, only describe. we cannot know why gravity exists rather than not, or why inertia exists rather than not, or why momentum exists rather than not, etc. these laws don’t tell us why they are just such laws, so they explain nothing. on the other hand, they most certainly do compel, because they are causative. finally, such laws aren’t ‘representative’ of man’s knowledge and understanding; we think and know and understand under the causal governance of these laws, yes, but these laws are not models of our thinking. gravity does not ‘represent’ a particular type of reasoning, and exists with or without any reasoner around to know it exists.
so you see there in a single paragraph like five senseless conclusions are reached. if you squared the number of mistakes made to the size of the posts, you’d quickly lose your incentive to even bother with any of it. i mean this shit is like work, dude. philosophy is supposed to be fun, not a frickin’ chore, biggs. this is why i demand payment to do it any longer. you now owe me five dollars.
damn i meant to add a critically important detail that goes hand-in-hand with our understanding of appropriate terms here. you’d look at that above statement and think ‘but wait, wouldn’t saying the laws are the cause of x mean the same thing as saying the laws ‘explain’ why x?’ it seems so… but look closely. in the same way we associate the contexts of the word ‘determine’ when we commit the anthropomorphic fallacy in its use here, we mistake ‘explanation’ as the same thing as ‘cause’ when addressing natural law. with our understanding of the word ‘explanation’ comes the implicit feature of the meaning of ‘reason’. in human discourse we explain purposeful behavior by giving the reasons why it happened:
joe went to the store because he wanted a beer. this ‘wanting’ is the reason, the purpose. we say that joe’s wanting a beer ‘explains’ his driving to the store. but natural laws don’t cause an avalanche because they want snow to come crashing down the mountain. there is no ‘reason’ here, just cause. we therefore can’t explain natural laws and the events they cause in terms of reasons like we do when describing human behavior. this is one of the very subtle linguistic confusions that contributes to the misguided attack on causality (determinism… but i hate to use that word).
to be compelled it is not necessary to be ‘explained’. reason and cause are not synonymous.
right so nature doesn’t ‘determine’ me to do anything. it causes me, but it doesn’t determine.
nietzsche once wrote that it was due to our inability to avoid the illusion of freewill that we projected onto nature the same kind of confection and proceeded into the initial stage of the error…
first we experience our actions following our deliberative thoughts… and believe we have caused our actions. then we assume nature does the same thing; deliberate, act with teleological purpose it has in mind beforehand.
then we get past the confusion of our own freewill… but retain for nature the same structural deliberating scheme that we just removed from ourselves. we say ‘i may not determine what i do, as i don’t have freewill, but nature still does determine what it does.’
we give ourselves and nature a will… take away our will, but not nature’s will. and so long as we still think of nature in terms of having will, we frame the anti-freewill thesis as ‘determinism’. but determinism is false because nature has no will. there is only mechanical causation, and it accounts for anything and everything that happens. and more importantly, there is only one kind of causation, not many… not ‘conflicting’ causes working through different agencies.
It makes sense, and if one wanted to , they could say, well yes, but whatever Nature is, and here Arcturus could come in and exemplify the aesthetic aspect of life , as it manifest’s regardless of representation.
A model independent of what we name consciousness is potentially perceptive , as if in anticipation of evolving in some sort of awareness of an unfolding. Anthropomorphism could implicate a recognition of such pattern, and the causation It’s self, could implicate intelligence.
We define intelligence in terms of imminent cognition, based on particular instances of hypothetical or , intuitive cognitive processes, and they do follow pattern recognition, by inference , the anthropomorphic projections. But that is simply a stage of material nominalism through which it had to proceed, until criticality was reached by Descartes.
Another example is the connection of the HIV virus to immunology. The variable behavior of the virus can lead to a paradigmn, that the virus for a long time was working ‘intelligently’ proceeding to transform it’s biochemical compositor resistance to any new strain of antibiotic developed.
Behavior so inferred could be act as some kind of intelligent design, converting an agent to reverse evolution, even to suggest by some clerics that effective negative synergy could be interpreted as some kind of divine lesson.
The ontological -ontic relationship could exemplify a pre-nominal process whereby the ideas of causation and determination cross paths, setting up a paradigmn as the interrelation of natural and artificial processes abound in tandem. Here, consciousness, particularly human consciousness could be termed a simulation of natural processes, to lead to conclusions which find the functional derivitive of machine and man made brain function non separable .
As a consequence, idea of modeling , apprehended as incongruent from the idea of determination qua causation, lays bare lower leveled strata subsiding it.
I think You are right at the level of separating strict determinancy from freedom through will, and I think Your quote from Nietzche supports that view.
However it may just be, that Nietzche is self inclusive in the set that looked back on him, ?
Esse est percipii.
Kierkegaard , a religious existentialist may have indicated the reverse his intention by predicting faith before aesthetics, but maybe with the same illusionary intent.
The bottom line in all this is simple , too simple, and that is the naturalistic fallacy, we must incorporate a better world into our vocabulary, one that makes sense , and not be satisfied by ’ it is what it is.
It is what it is begs it’s self, on the level of an exhaustive deity, and recognising the limits of familiarity with it. The idea generates an anthisis that begs, literally the implication, yeah, it is what it is, but it is enough for other’s , not for me.
I am not satisfied with the above but no thought it kind of leads to a simpler deal:
“nietzsche once wrote that it was due to our inability to avoid the illusion of freewill that we projected onto nature the same kind of confection and proceeded into the initial stage of the error…”
In Nietzche contra Wagner the aesthetic / and thetic distinction is significant on a nominal level.
I could have jumped on this existentially, but would have supported a claim for bias.
Kierkegaard’s leap was aesthetic but in his mileau it was unacceptable.
If the distinction is significant enough, then the projection may transcend into introjection, a posteriori.
Tell me, is this significant or mainly illusionary? Or worse? My reliance is not black letter theism but consisting of aesthetic patterning of memory
‘Although Kierkegaard views these stages as a progression, it is important to note that he does not envision one simply replacing the others. Hence the ethicist Judge William remarks to the aesthete that the ethical does not annihilate the aesthetic, but reorients its telos—it “does not want to destroy the esthetic but transfigure it” (Either/Or, II, p. 253).’
Another assertion.
Of course on this thread the question becomes whether or not our own contributions to this ever changing universe are actually within our capacity to command freely by choosing to go in one direction rather than another.
In other words, on whether any contributions here [asserted or not] could have been other than what the laws of nature compelled them to be.
And how is this…
“What happens within reality has no bearing on the actual existence of reality”
…not an assertion?
And “what on earth” does it mean in the context of you choosing particular behaviors from day to day? How are the two not inseparable “for all practical purposes” in a wholly determined universe?
I must be misunderstanding your point.
All presumably going back to those ubiquitous laws of matter.
The mystery here [as I see it] has always revolved around how philosophers and scientists explain the part where lifeless/mindless matter evolved over billions of years into mindful living matter actually able to become cognizant of itself as mindful matter.
For most, of course, questions of this sort are punted to the ecclesiastics who then punt it on to one or another God. Or set of Gods.
Okay, so fit this relationship into an optimal understanding of what is in fact true given the conflicting assumptions embedded in the centuries old arguments between the hard determinists, the free-will advocates and the so-called compatibilists.
As that relates specifically to a particular choice that you have made. Today for example.
Another example of what I construe to be an assertion…a belief you have in your head that [in my estimation] you have yet to demonstrate why all rational men and women are obligated to believe it in turn.
And what if the ultimate reality goes back to God? He might have an interest in all this.
True.
But: Not much this doesn’t cover, right?
In other words, in time we will know some things and not know other things. Not unlike our predicament today. Or the predicament of all our ancestors in turn.
But the question remains: autonomously or not?
Human beings dont always think logically - sometimes they think emotionally - and that is when there will be differences of opinion
Even when something can be objectively demonstrated it doesnt automatically follow that everyone will accept it without question
And free will / determinism isnt even something that can be demonstrated with sufficient rigour so opinions are therefore inevitable
Any genuine free will choice that anyone has to make will be entirely subjective based upon their own individual assessment of the particular situation
Even though human beings can think alike each one ultimately comes to decisions by themselves as they are the final arbiter of what choices they make
Reality has precisely zero interest because at its most fundamental level it is physical not biological
Physical systems pre date biolgical life forms by ten billion years so its not even a matter of opinion
I equally have precisely zero interest in trying to convince other minds of anything that I say
As what anyone does with it is not for me to decide - I just make it known and then let it be
Because it is an ever changing system in a constant state of motion but is still reality regardless of anything else
It isnt an assertion as nothing in existence can consistently remain perfectly still because that isnt a viable state