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
I’ve narrowed it down to three possibilities…
1] [Of course] We really do live in a wholly determined universe and I pop in there from time to time because the laws of nature compel me to. I cannot not go back. On the other hand, if that’s the case, this let’s him off the hook too, right?
2] given some measure of autonomy, I go back there for reasons so deeply embedded in dasein I couldn’t even begin to unravel all the variables that propel me in that direction
3] given some measure of autonomy, once any particular “I” reaches the point where he or she is just “waiting for godot” they can rationalize doing damn near anything at all. Well, providing of course that they still can
Besides, I still make him squirm. I’ll post something here. He’ll take it there with a deluge of posts fuming at the desperate degenerates like me. Dozens of harangues.
And all that exposes is just how vulnerable he is to finally imploding. Another objectivist bites the dust. And I’ve got notches going way back.
And that [for whatever reason] still amuses me. 
Emotions however would be but another inherent manifestation of the human brain wholly in sync with the laws of nature. They merely make the mystery of “mind” all that much more profound.
In other words, we feel no less wholly in tandem with nature than we think.
And minds think only what they are compelled to think. So, everything that they think must be logical in the sense that no one can think other than the manner in which nature compels them to.
So, it’s not a question of whether it is logical for me to insist you assert something to be true, but that in a determined universe I could not not have asserted that myself.
True. But it is one thing to note in this exchange that “what happens within reality has no bearing on the actual existence of reality”, and another thing altogether for you to demonstrate the meaning of this as it pertain to something that you choose to do “in reality” such that it then has no bearing on the actual existence of reality. What on earth does that mean?
I agree. In fact, that’s my point. What makes most folks uncomfortable is that when they do get down to seriously grappling with the stuff that philosophers and scientists say about free will and determinism, they begin recognize that they may well go to the grave never actually being certain that “I” is [at least in part] autonomous.
Sure, some take their own existential leaps to one or another argument, to one or another conclusion. But those on the “other side” have their own sets of conflicting assumptions right?
My point is that while there may well be an optimal argument that pins it down definitively going all the way back to, in turn, a definitive explanation for existence itself, I have not myself come across it.
Or, sure, perhaps I have [here for example] but I was not capable of grasping it. That’s apllicable to all of us.
But, really, if there was a conclusion reached by philosophers and scientists that did pin down once and for all whether “I” is free or not, wouldn’t it be blasting out of every media orifice?
Yeah, except that, given some measure of human autonomy, there are countless human interactions that are clearly embedded in an either/or world in which we are able to clearly demonstrate that some things and some relationships are in fact true objectively for all of us.
Barring sim world or dream world or matrix realities. Or the role any actual existing God might play in it all.
Yet more examples of things you assert to be true that in my view are not connected in any substantive manner to particular contexts in which behaviors that we choose might be examined given whatever it is that you mean by “[r]eality…at its most fundamental level…is physical not biological”.
How is that related existentially [out in the world of human interactions] to the conflicting assessments of human autonomy?
I’m presuming that, in terms of the behaviors that you choose from day to day, this has a meaning for you.
But damned if I can imagine how you connect the dots here.
On the other hand, if one does believe that the laws of matter are entirely applicable to the human brain, then the ever changing system [including human interactions], might be construed as the one and only reality there could ever be.
But that is just another assertion about reality. This because of that. But the relationship between the two is encompassed only in a world of words.
You don’t provide us with examples of experiments or experiences or predictions that can be made and then tested in examining the actual choices that we make.
More from our tireless wordmeister…
The idea of free will. And that’s always his point. Ideas are ever and always a bundle of words that define and defend other words.
And here he uses words to “prove” that the determinists [religious or secular] are wrong to claim that human interactions are preordained by the laws of matter. All they really do is trick us into believing it is by insisting it’s determinism all the way down.
Instead, his own autonomous brain is presumed to be in possession of the ultimate “will to power”. He is able to grasp nature itself. His own rendition of genes and memes trumps any and all renditions from others.
How does he demonstrate this?
Well, up in the clouds of abstraction. He invariably wallows in the sort of “general description” arguments and assessments that make his ilk so utterly irrelevant regarding how all of this scholastic, academic stuff plays out in the world that we actually live in.
So, how does accomplish that? Of course: he merely “argues” it to be true.
I challenge anyone here to reconfigure this particularly godawful intellectual contraption into an argument that bares at least some resemblance to the actual choices that flesh and blood human beings make in to course of interacting with others from day to day.
On this thread, however, it’s not a question of whether freedom is absolute, but whether it can finally be demonstrated once and for all that the human brain allows for actual freedom at all.
^ a great example of one of the many ways philosophers use the word ‘absolute’ in abstract statements which can demonstrate nothing, and certainly don’t disqualify the meaning of ‘absolute’ in the many ways we use the word unphilosophically.
ever read the wiki article on: the philosophical meaning of the word ‘absolute’? these knuckleheads can’t even agree with each other… neither the philosophers arguing for, or against it. so if there is clearly a problem with what this word means, why can’t they agree on what that problem is? maybe because there is no problem?
“Philosophers constantly see the method of science before their eyes, and they are irresistibly tempted to ask and answer questions in the way science does. This tendency is the real source of metaphysics, and leads the philosopher into complete darkness.” - wittgenstein
okay, let’s take for granted what’s said in that quote above. would i be wrong to say it is absolutely the case that things are changeable, divisible, and pluralistic? such a use of the word ‘absolute’ would not be nonsensical, and nothing has changed about its meaning… only the things that are meant with its use. the question then is not ‘is the concept of ‘absolute’ meaningless’, but rather ‘where can the word be used meaningfully as a matter of fact, and without any conceptual difficulty.’
‘this cake is absolutely delicious!’
philosopher: ‘stop! not only is that cake changing as you chew it, but the ionized potassium particles that cause the dendrites to fire, creating the sensation of ‘good taste’, are also undergoing entropic change, so the resulting qualia of ‘good taste’ isn’t the same as it was a moment ago. in fact, the cake is now not absolutely delicious, and you’re an insufferable liar! and that’s not to mention the fact that because it’s logically possible for the cake to taste better than it does, it can’t ever be absolutely delicious, you imbecile!’
‘but i… i was just enjoying the cake, man. jesus christ.’
“The essential thing about metaphysics is that it blurs the distinction between factual and conceptual investigations.” - wittgenstein
and yet if you approach a philosopher with this insight, he’ll charge you with playing word-games. lol! unbeknownst to him, he is so completely submerged in a word-game that he is unable to recognize anything but word-games.
A Compatibilism / Incompatibilism Transformation
By Trick Slattery
From the “Breaking the Free Will Illusion” web site
This is just an example of how far down these discussions can go in introducing complex elements into the debate that can only really be understood to the extent that everyone is in sync regarding what the words themselves mean.
To date no one is able to bring a good reductionist and a greedy reductionist into the lab, perform a set of experiments with/on them, and demonstrate why one rather than the other is closer to the whole truth regarding determinism and free will.
Besides, why can’t it simply be argued that whatever you consider yourself to be here in regard to “reductionism”, it is only that which nature compelled your brain matter to espouse?
If everything does reduce down to brain matter wholly in sync with the inexorable march of nature into a necessary future nothing noted in discussions like this changes that.
Thus “cranes” and “skyhooks” were “destined” to become a part of our universe going all the way back to whatever set in motion the laws of matter themselves.
We just [still] have no idea what the hell that could possibly have been.
mm-hm. the further you stray from a rudimentary language into philosophy, the greater is the demand that you structure a logically perfect language to avoid this very problem. the analytical philosophers and logical positivists tried this by identifying axiomatic sets of atomic propositions (i have no idea what that means but i kinda do) from which all complex propositions are built. they failed. well wittgenstein failed, revoked his own tractatus, and replaced it with the theory of language games. now check this out. if, and this is a very big IF, language cannot be reducible to, and founded on, a set of stable and unconditional rules, philosophy cannot produce a body of doctrine, and can only be an activity.
‘i distrust all systematizers. the will to a system is a lack of integrity (to integrate)’ - N
in addition to this rather inconvenient fact for patrons of the sesquipedalian arts, they’ve got derrida’s concept of ‘deferral’ to contend with now, too. not to mention the metaphorical origins of the logocentric concepts in the philosophical discourse (i have no idea what that means, either).
needless to say philosophy is in a bad way today, hombre. it’s been on its last leg for like a hundred years now, and still the last two generations kept pumping out philosophers like there was anything left to be said. nothing new has been said though… and worse, what was said badly by philosopher of old was said even worse by philosophers of new. yeah i know. it doesn’t sound possible, but it happened, and is still happening at a forum near you.
there’s only one kind of sage who has remained steadfast in this swirling maelstrom of nonsense, biggs, and that’s the epistemological nihilist. fist bump
separate morality from free will
by Phil Goetz
at the lesswrong website
This sort of thinking continues to baffle me. In order to confront “the already-difficult-enough problem of what actions and values are moral”, we would first have to determine if the confrontation itself is embedded in at least some measure of autonomy. Otherwise we will never really know if that which we do “choose” to confront is not only that which we were never able not to choose to confront.
So, I might suggest here that we can only take a subjective leap to autonomy. But: never really knowing if I was never able not to suggest that. Why? Because what I think is subjective here is but another necessary component of the objective reality embedded ever and always in matter unfolding only as it ever can and must and does.
First and foremost, I need a way to determine if “I” have any capacity to choose freely. Otherwise, I have no way in which to be certain that this very post is not but another inherent component of the very fabric of reality itself.
But only to the extent that it can be determined definitively that, of his own volition, Kant might have come to a different conclusion can we determine if Goetz in turn might have opted freely to argue the opposite.
Again, as though even our reaction to this may not be the only reaction that nature accords us.
Then it’s just going around and around in circles depending on which set of assumptions you either were or were not free to choose.