Freewill exists

[Ecmandu]

And silhouette says I'm not terse!

Silhouettes posting style actually reminds me of someone.

"My" (I don't own her) mother married a guy who spent 3-4 hours a night cooking dinner ... and whenever there was a fight about anything (which he started), he'd always use how much work he did as the defense of his argument. He was a malignant narcissist.

I don't actually think silhouette is a malignant narcissist like him ...

Not by a long shot!

However, I do think silhouette absorbs a similar technique in posting to show how serious silhouette is, in a way that doesn't address the critical points, while making silhouette look like he's putting so much effort into his posts that it makes him seem unimpeachable.

[Pedro I Rengel]

Yes I read that you wrote "who", but since it was an invalid question, I corrected it to "what", which has a valid answer.

No no, you answered correctly. You said Determinism, not determinism. It isn't the most creative or ingenious answer I have ever heard, but it was a proper answer to the question. I was refering more to Artimas here, who answered an actual thing. Thence, you know, who not what, etc.

I think Artimas is on a right track. Do I see things I disagree with or have arrived at different opinions of? Sure. But taste is so much more important than accuracy.

[Pedro I Rengel]

Probably philosophy, proper philosophy, is when the distinction disappears.

[Urwrongx1000]

There is not much difference, or no difference, between the 'Who' and the 'What'. Organic life, Biology, has more "freedom", is freer than, stones, water, wind, trees, etc. The higher an organism evolves, is evolved, the 'freer' it is claimed to be. An insect has more 'freedom' than a vegetable. A lizard has more 'freedom' than an insect. A bird has more 'freedom' than a lizard. A mammal has more 'freedom' than a bird. A human has more 'freedom' than a mammal.

Silhouette, not by coincidence, conveniently ignores all this. He wants to equate the 'freedom' of a human, to that of a rock, ignoring everything in-between. Because if he admits that humans are 'freer' than rocks, then he invalidates his underlying argument that "everything is determined". How could everything be "determined" when rocks hypothetically are (by Four Fundamental Forces, by Physics, by Natural Law, by Gravitational Law, etc), but humans are far less so?

What makes the "less so" possible to begin with?


Is it merely "a feeling" that humans are 'freer' than rocks?

Or is it a fact? And if it's a fact, then Silhouette cannot continue to use "Science/Physics" to defend his position....

[Artimas]

Your fear or pride filled denial of attachment (even when one controls their attachment by attributing value to anything) to religion or spirituality or attempting at understanding it is what is trapping you or delaying the inevitability of your mind changing, whether you believe it or not. The books and spirituality in general have great significance, you should take less pride in yourself and put more pride in the fact that these books are ancient stories collected and preserved to depict man experiencing consciousness/psyche in the beginning of when consciousness evolved from the subconscious and that you can read them, if you have had a negative experience with spirituality then you should dismiss such, you state you are unbiased but are biased and it is blinding you. All you have done is change the semantics, it’s easy to feel right or special that way, when one thinks they are naming something new that has already existed long before and been described in different language and context. I used to be in your position, determinist, no free will.. experience of myself lead me away from that, which is spirituality. Knowing thy self.

Oooooh, I see what's going on here.

You changed your mind from Determinism, so you're assuming that other people (or at least me), who believe(s) in Determinism are just thinking like past-you

Wow, and here you recommend humility, and to me of all people. I don't even have much pride to speak of - I do give honest credit where it's due though, even if it's to ideas that just happen to have come through me - perhaps that's what is giving you this impression of me? I'm a Determinist who conceives of all people as continuous with the rest of experience, not islands but blurring in and out of relative context with environment and all others - yet somehow you have this conception of me as some kind of proud egotist: the exact opposite of what results from this. *Something* must be making you think you know me extremely well after a handful of posts over the course of a short period of time... But the enormous degree to which you are wrong and also hypocritical, and most likely just engaging in psychological projection, is really quite hilarious.

Going by pictures of you, you look about half my age and you're going on about the lack of experience that you're just assuming I have... If I don't meditate and am averse to religion, you assume I have always been this way, "something must have happened to me", and there's no other ways to gain equal or even better understanding/experience. It must be me because it can't be you, correct?

The arrogance!
And you think it's me who is in need of growth to eventually get aaaaall the way up to to that lofty cloud where you are. Cloud 9 is it? Ah, youth... such naivety.
As with all the new-age nonsense you're indulging in, maybe one day when you grow up you'll think less of your former self - just like you're trying to do to me here. But I've seen it all before so many times it doesn't mean anything to me anymore, so I'll just wish you well with all the continued evolution that Determinism has in store for you.


To address a previous post of yours that I hadn't got round to responding to yet:

Saying determinism will cause something to happen if it is supposed to happen is like saying god put that tree there because he wanted it to exist

...which is why this isn't my argument or Determinism. It's Fatalism if something is "supposed" to happen.

I've said it several times and I'll say it again with more conviction now my suspicion has been repeatedly confirmed: you do not understand what Determinism is.

First and foremost it's important to point out that Determinism is a description, or an explanation rather. It's not a proscription. It's not a restriction, it covers all things whether wild and pushing boundaries, or scared and following the crowd. You have this bizarre conception that it limits you, when all it does is explain behaviours whether they seem unlimited or not.

Determinism doesn't enforce rules that you have to abide by, it describes the behaviours of nature enacting on nature. Any enforcement is done by nature, not by the Determinism that describes it - your argument is like objecting to the messenger rather than the person who wrote the message.

Understand this, and all the strength of will in the world is completely understandable in terms of Determinism. You can work out a model of why nature is causing some natures to rise to fame and achieve success as well as why some natures give up, and Determinism is the best way we know how to do this - by a long way.

It's no wonder you switched from Determinism - you thought it was something else!

Some smaller issues + some closing stuff:

There is no temporal dimension or time to the unconscious/subconscious aspects of reality and the mind. It’s why we need an alarm clock to wake us up and why dogs and animals haven’t invented clocks.

Unfortunately not true. Many organisms have what's called a Circadian rhythm that will tend to wake you up and make you tired (amongst other things) at regular intervals - provided you don't mess with it too much of course. It's all unconscious.

Yes all will revert back to death and nothingness, to start over again. It will start over, there is no end. Without life it is inevitable because there is no time to it, the unconscious/subconscious, it has all of time to restart and we will be back like we always are, perhaps with different form and different minds.

Assuming the second law of thermodynamics is wrong and entropy somehow just reverses magically?

It is the separation of us and them, which the differentiation is consciousness. We have a subconscious/unconscious aspect to our mind that we may explore. Consciousness is finite, which is why you must hold the right pieces, to glimpse temporarily, more than what you can hold from the subconscious. The unconscious/subconscious aspect It is cause and effect in an inevitable form, non observable because there is no observer that may understand fully.

The main difference between the conscious and unconscious is that the former is best at solving mid-level complexity whilst the latter is best at solving the overly simple or overly complex.

Your conception of consciousness leaves you vulnerable to the "Homunculus Argument". If "we" are like these little men who operate our body, the little man presumably needs his own little man to operate his body - ad infinitum. Either that or you're positing some "ghost in the machine" that runs you into the mind-body problem. Will cannot be simultaneously free from influence, whilst being influenced by experience, whilst also able to influence. The self as "consciousness" is just a loose end conceived as a primitive explanation of how there appears to be a subject dynamic - and yet as soon as you try to find it as the object of your search, it is no longer the subject - the subject is now observing a new object. The subject is ever evasive to the point that it cannot be ascertained at all. The best you can do is claim some kind of inference that "well something has to be doing the observation!" If you want to be a Dualist you have all your work ahead of you to make any sense of it whatsoever. Or you can just admit that the findings of studies more and more suggest that even consciousness can be controlled like a remote control car just the same as any other part of the body - and funniest of all, people still feel like they're completely in control the whole time! Oh science and Determinism, how dare you break the illusions of the old and mystical where all understanding was ahead of us.... Consciousness is more like an echo that manifests and reinforces what the unconscious has already decided by itself. Either way, consciousness is just as much subject to the electromagnetic force that determines neurons firing that determines your conscious experience. As much as it feels like consciousness is the free driver, actually examining the whole thing reveals it really isn't.

You will still evolve just the same however well you're understood deterministically. You can still think and choose just as originally as you did before and it will appear just as free as before - nobody's taking that away from you here. Don't feel so threatened by people being able to understand people better than you want to think they can. You like the romance, the woo-woo - Determinism can explain why this is so too. I'm not even remotely as limited as you want to think I am - but how else would you understand something you don't yet understand, except in terms of what you already understand? Doesn't mean you can't come to understand it - I'm doing my best to explain it to you, but the more you resist and insist that it's how you used to be rather than how you could be, I'll be getting nowhere. I don't think you understand the degree to which everything you're saying isn't a new way of thinking for me, it's obvious why people fall for Free Will.

No, my mind didn’t change from determinism because determinism doesn’t just cease to exist, it’s not about denying determinism... it’s about accepting the fact that it doesn’t end at determinism, hence the argument of free will, it’s the next step out of determinism and so it has been proven in evolution as well, the steps are as clear as day.

(Matter/instinct)Unconscious > subconscious > consciousness(Ability to understand both sides) < subconscious < unconscious(Mind/instinct).

Determinism on the most basic of levels is a plant growing because water and nutrients are there or even more basic, a pebble moves because of a strong wind, free will is at a higher complexity than both that subconscious and unconscious example of life/existence, instead of the plant growing from water alone, it gets watered by a conscious individual whom is more complex than the plant and the water. It’s a higher step of instinct, an evolution of cause and effect of which we are the effect of determinism that may cause effects as well, desired or not. If we can -exploit- the system, then that is freedom.

We aren’t replacing determinism, we advocate another step and yes, there is a next step and is one after that as well and again, and again to an infinite degree. You on the other hand, deny another step while using the very same ‘next step’ to argue your points, it’s contradictory. That’s like me sailing the ocean and denying that it’s blue.


What is humble to you? a man who already has accepted the others argument of determinism and admitting that determinism exists as it does but advocates a next step, or the other whom ceases to move to a next step or denial of there even being a next step whilst being on the very step to argue against that step, attributing it all under determinism, all stemming from a bias/avoidance of self which stems out of spiritual practices of meditation and self awareness.

Yes, we are continuous experiences, does a stone understand it’s experience? We do, that’s the freedom. We can create more or less experience for ourselves based off of values. You said yourself you don’t meditate, you don’t have much emotional state, you stay away from religion/spirituality, from what I assume is due to a fear or pride of it through possible negative experience or misunderstanding. I don’t need to know you to understand that I myself am free to experience how I wish to experience to, I only need to know you, to help you. I don’t claim to know you, unless your previous post was a lie, I made what I feel to be a logical/reasonable deduction of why you stay away from spirituality/religion in a whole, even if you technically don’t and possibly have misconstrued the idea of what it even is, most of the time when people dislike religion it’s over fear or ego(pride), which prevents a full understanding of it by the avoidance of it. I am not stating you’re an egotist, I am stating, your biased view of religion/spirituality blinds you of what it truly is.

Explain to me, what you view spirituality as and what your experience with religion/spirituality may be, we can clear this up right here, easily.


Well, you’re the one who portrays a bias here.. I used to have the same bias and for good reason until I found that it isn’t all based off of or around the experience that created such bias to begin with. I understand how bias works, to assume I don’t is to call me stupid. You either have a positive or a negative bias, your avoidance, shows a negative bias toward the subjects I mentioned, crucial subjects in getting to know oneself. I have no bias toward it anymore, I merely do it justice in attempt at explaining it for what it is because I understand it now, not because I go to church on Sunday or associate myself in every aspect of religion heavily. I am continuing my understanding, not ceasing at determinism just because it exists and happens, it isn’t the only variable and you already know such just won’t admit it.

I forgot to also add, Buddhism is a philosophy, not a religion, if you didn’t know.


We all need growth, change is inevitable, your choice on if you wish to delay or speed such up. Not on cloud 9, in reality, with a clear vision of it. Nothing I have said is new age. It’s been around since before you and me and it will go on after you and me. I don’t think less of you, which is why I am here trying to show you the next step but you won’t even question your being possibly incorrect due to a formed bias, which bias creates a lack of understanding due to comfort in such bias and not treading on past it to achieve the understanding.. which is why I suggested for you to reflect without distraction and to feel. We may not evolve if we determine to not evolve or we can evolve, if we determine to evolve. Do you not see how destructive our species is? Seems like freedom to me, what other species destroys themself like we do? Know why? Freedom of value attribution to choice. Or just value attribution in general.


If there is no confine or limitation, then how is there no free will? Why do you argue against a free will or self determination if there is no limit or confines and you just admitted such here.
A behavior having a determined outcome is not a lack of freedom in choosing a behavior. Nature is the very deterministic cycle of which granted a free will (consciousness)... there is a higher and a lower.


And we are acting agents of nature that can influence environment to our own needs or desires. How is that not freedom within the system itself?


Yes, you can use the system.. that is freedom though my friend.. dogs can’t use this system like we can, rocks(unconscious) can’t, we all think we’re all saying different things than we are, because we don’t all think or describe the same. It’s the freedom of an individual in a present moment to make those choices to pursue a nature of success though, it doesn’t just happen with no value attributed by the individual because it appears that way to us, it has to be fought for and planned for and there is no planning to fight for without an aspect to will of which is free.


That’s change though, not time. Rhythm is change. Time is merely a measurement of change that we humans invented to measure such, such as circadian rhythm, That rhythm is caused by evolutionary path/environment, which is measure-able change.

Yes it is unconscious. Which is why we need a clock to wake up on time for work, our circadian rhythm evolutionary bodily cycle may not always be aligned with what one freely wills or chooses to do by value. If the effect is planned for, it was never not a free choice to bring that effect.


The law of entropy is not going to reverse, it’s going to start back over. It will all die in chaos and re-condense to burst and expand again. It is a cycle, never ending, re-occurring and since we won’t be here, conscious life, it will seem like a blink of an eye for conscious life who have the concept of time because to the unconscious/subconscious aspects, time doesn’t exist.

No, because the little man doesn’t have consciousness, it’s a primitive version of us which is why it serves us... we are conscious and far more complex than a cell or simple neuron. Which is why I laugh at them being used as comparison in arguments, it takes many cycles of life and death of their working to serve us in order for us to even exist period, our consciousness is free due to unconscious/subconscious cellular organisms that we began as. Just because you know what an unconscious cell does doesn’t mean we can so easily predict the whole of the human that the cell works for. We are merely larger conscious versions of them, which is why we are destructive and appear as a virus or parasite to earth, so I have heard from many that think we are parasites.

We weren’t always free from the confines of experience in terms of instinct, what I am saying is, we weren’t conscious for nearly the entire current universe’ existence of unconscious/subconscious experiencing and evolving and we are embedded with those experiences, which is an infinity for us to understand, the resulting consciousness is our freedom of, through and for experience. We were influenced so we could cause influence. No one stated free will came before determinism, though consciousness -was- determined, which is the will that is free and without being confined or limited to pure instinct.

We aren’t like the little men, that’s the entire argument of free will.. we’re conscious and cells aren’t.

We were confined before by determinism, we experienced.. now we may influence experience as well as experience, a determined will that is free in that of understanding and the pursuit of such. The will only becomes, more free. We don’t have to directly be influenced or experience something first hand to use a priori.. what is logic and reason if not deducing, free of direct experience? Were you there, conscious of the Big Bang when it happened? So then how do you understand it if you did not experience it? A priori.. which I have also stated is the freedom in consciousness but only through a long time of unconscious/subconscious a posteriori



It isn’t about a romance of it, it just is, a higher and lower exist and it only can go higher or lower, based on ones value attribution, which is their own personal freedom to make those choices in and of value/reason. If people can understand other people better than those who practice philosophy, then what’s the point in philosophy or pursuit of wisdom? The differentiation clearly shows in society, that you’re wrong. People don’t understand other people as well as you may think, because most people don’t even understand themself. How can you understand another if you do not understand yourself? you don’t, just like you can’t with love as well.

[promethean75]

"Further conceive, I beg, that an Artimas, while continuing in motion, should be capable of thinking and knowing, that it is endeavoring, as far as it can, to continue to move. Such an Artimas, being conscious merely of its own endeavor and not at all indifferent, would believe itself to be completely free, and would think that it continued in motion solely because of its own wish. This is that human freedom, which all boast that they possess, and which consists solely in the fact, that men are conscious of their own desire, but are ignorant of the causes whereby that desire has been determined." - Spinoza

[Karpel Tunnel]

There is not much difference, or no difference, between the 'Who' and the 'What'. Organic life, Biology, has more "freedom", is freer than, stones, water, wind, trees, etc. The higher an organism evolves, is evolved, the 'freer' it is claimed to be. An insect has more 'freedom' than a vegetable. A lizard has more 'freedom' than an insect. A bird has more 'freedom' than a lizard. A mammal has more 'freedom' than a bird. A human has more 'freedom' than a mammal.

Silhouette, not by coincidence, conveniently ignores all this. He wants to equate the 'freedom' of a human, to that of a rock, ignoring everything in-between. Because if he admits that humans are 'freer' than rocks, then he invalidates his underlying argument that "everything is determined". How could everything be "determined" when rocks hypothetically are (by Four Fundamental Forces, by Physics, by NaturalOH Law, by Gravitational Law, etc), but humans are far less so?

What makes the "less so" possible to begin with?


Is it merely "a feeling" that humans are 'freer' than rocks?

Or is it a fact? And if it's a fact, then Silhouette cannot continue to use "Science/Physics" to defend his position....

Oh, jeez, come on. I black box the whole thing, but it gets tiring reading these kinds of straw man arguments. A human has the most complicated object we know of, the human brain, which is connected to a wide range of inputs that we do not, yet, think rocks have. So causation is going to be vastly more complicated, free or not, vastly more complicated. Hell, I'm a pantheist, but rocks have nothing resembling the sensory systems or muscular nervous systems with their unbelievable complexity that humans have. So just once I would love

just love the free will crowd to notice their own fear that maybe it isn't freedom, but rather just complexity.o

I am no fan of the determinism crowd and their position has all sorts of problems, but this kind of trash argument by the free will side

strikes me as fear denial.

I am sick and tired of people of all sides presenting themselves as so sure and confident and never owning up to their own fears and confusions. (this doesn't just have to do with free will vs. determinism, but it's here also)

Obviously humans can do an incredibly wider range of things and can respond in a huge array of ways to the incredibly diverse set of causes, internal and external, washing through and over them.

That doesn't explain how this vast set of causes is not utterly determined. It just makes it very hard to predict. But then fuck we'd have a hard time predicting where the next batch of pachinko balls will all fall, but that doesn't make a pachinko machine free, or does it?

So, mock and mock and ad hom the determinists and present

that is, front,

as if you are confident,

when the very ludicrousness of the 'argument' presented here
coupled with the ad homs,

smells like denied fear.

How does the uncaused vantage from which I choose enter the stream of causation and why isn't it in turn caused by my desires and brain states and.....

Nah, we don't have to worry about that, let's just use straw man comparison where rocks are supposed to be as free - which would mean have a similar set of complicated responses which all might be determined as humans - as humans.

Let's snort and feel superior to hallucinated arguments as if they solve the hard problem of free will.

And sure the dterminists have all sorts of problems to deal with, such as how can they possible know if they are being rational if they believe in dterminism and they get all ad hom and smug too. But that isn't much of an excuse.

Everybody runnign from fear.

And where does that fear go.

Well, some people end up getting that spiral of denied fear floating over them.

Feel your own fears. Join the real humanity.

Presenting as fear-free has been confused with being right and courage for so long and it has done so much damage and it is just tiring to those who don't do it. Presenting as fear-free is precisely the opposite of courage.

[Artimas]

There is not much difference, or no difference, between the 'Who' and the 'What'. Organic life, Biology, has more "freedom", is freer than, stones, water, wind, trees, etc. The higher an organism evolves, is evolved, the 'freer' it is claimed to be. An insect has more 'freedom' than a vegetable. A lizard has more 'freedom' than an insect. A bird has more 'freedom' than a lizard. A mammal has more 'freedom' than a bird. A human has more 'freedom' than a mammal.

Silhouette, not by coincidence, conveniently ignores all this. He wants to equate the 'freedom' of a human, to that of a rock, ignoring everything in-between. Because if he admits that humans are 'freer' than rocks, then he invalidates his underlying argument that "everything is determined". How could everything be "determined" when rocks hypothetically are (by Four Fundamental Forces, by Physics, by NaturalOH Law, by Gravitational Law, etc), but humans are far less so?

What makes the "less so" possible to begin with?


Is it merely "a feeling" that humans are 'freer' than rocks?

Or is it a fact? And if it's a fact, then Silhouette cannot continue to use "Science/Physics" to defend his position....

Oh, jeez, come on. I black box the whole thing, but it gets tiring reading these kinds of straw man arguments. A human has the most complicated object we know of, the human brain, which is connected to a wide range of inputs that we do not, yet, think rocks have. So causation is going to be vastly more complicated, free or not, vastly more complicated. Hell, I'm a pantheist, but rocks have nothing resembling the sensory systems or muscular nervous systems with their unbelievable complexity that humans have. So just once I would love

just love the free will crowd to notice their own fear that maybe it isn't freedom, but rather just complexity.o

I am no fan of the determinism crowd and their position has all sorts of problems, but this kind of trash argument by the free will side

strikes me as fear denial.

I am sick and tired of people of all sides presenting themselves as so sure and confident and never owning up to their own fears and confusions. (this doesn't just have to do with free will vs. determinism, but it's here also)

Obviously humans can do an incredibly wider range of things and can respond in a huge array of ways to the incredibly diverse set of causes, internal and external, washing through and over them.

That doesn't explain how this vast set of causes is not utterly determined. It just makes it very hard to predict. But then fuck we'd have a hard time predicting where the next batch of pachinko balls will all fall, but that doesn't make a pachinko machine free, or does it?

So, mock and mock and ad hom the determinists and present

that is, front,

as if you are confident,

when the very ludicrousness of the 'argument' presented here
coupled with the ad homs,

smells like denied fear.

How does the uncaused vantage from which I choose enter the stream of causation and why isn't it in turn caused by my desires and brain states and.....

Nah, we don't have to worry about that, let's just use straw man comparison where rocks are supposed to be as free - which would mean have a similar set of complicated responses which all might be determined as humans - as humans.

Let's snort and feel superior to hallucinated arguments as if they solve the hard problem of free will.

And sure the dterminists have all sorts of problems to deal with, such as how can they possible know if they are being rational if they believe in dterminism and they get all ad hom and smug too. But that isn't much of an excuse.

Everybody runnign from fear.

And where does that fear go.

Well, some people end up getting that spiral of denied fear floating over them.

Feel your own fears. Join the real humanity.

Presenting as fear-free has been confused with being right and courage for so long and it has done so much damage and it is just tiring to those who don't do it. Presenting as fear-free is precisely the opposite of courage.

Yet we’re here from the rock as symbolizing the unconscious aspects of reality. How is it a strawman? If determinists can say “i know what an atom or neuron is doing and so I know what you’re doing” then the same argument can be made for comparing the unconscious to the conscious. That’s not a strawman, that’s reality. The unconscious and subconscious aspects in reality and in humanity are what granted consciousness, value fits into this argument and we project value, nothing else does. Which this value can become entrapment or liberating, that’s up to the individual who values.

To compare neurons with the entirety of consciousness or the human, is a ridiculous argument. I am not a single neuron and my brain is not a single neuron, they are subconscious/unconscious... humanity is conscious. I don’t understand how it’s not easily seen, that there are LEVELS OF CONSCIOUSNESS. If there are LEVELS of consciousness then that is a DETERMINED more free and less free in regards to INSTINCT. admit it already so we can move on to how we’re going to wake up the monkeys in society.

Determinism is cause and effect yeah? Well free will is understanding that cause and effect and with attribution of VALLUE. Free will is the VALUE one can determine or project onto other things or aspects by creating or letting go of attachment and past/present/future.

[Artimas]

"Further conceive, I beg, that an Artimas, while continuing in motion, should be capable of thinking and knowing, that it is endeavoring, as far as it can, to continue to move. Such an Artimas, being conscious merely of its own endeavor and not at all indifferent, would believe itself to be completely free, and would think that it continued in motion solely because of its own wish. This is that human freedom, which all boast that they possess, and which consists solely in the fact, that men are conscious of their own desire, but are ignorant of the causes whereby that desire has been determined." - Spinoza

Never said I was free in an absolute sense but the absolute freewill is the same infinity that determinism has already laid out for us to tread on its path of understanding knowledge. Are you saying that understanding or wisdom ends and is not continual and infinite? The day wisdom and change ends will be the day you can say free will isn’t absolute. Your decision to pursue a more free will than yesterday. That’s on you. The absolute is observable but may not be attainable, never stated we had an absolute free will, only that it is visible by the same continuity of information that determinism has determined.

I don’t move to learn because of my own wish? So I didn’t sever all attachment with my past and experience to remain unbiased in searching for understanding? So then what’s suicide? What’s value? I can easily kill my self, the fact that I don’t IS MY wish, acceptance. I never said it is all due to me that I am here, it is due to me after I understood I am here and why, who, what, when, where, how, that makes it my choice. Understanding grants responsibility.

I’m unconscious to why I have my own desires? What’s suppression then, what’s psychology? Am I? Speak for yourself. If I have a bias, I can remember back in my past and sever attachment to the experience of which created a bias, welcome to Buddha. You speak of genetic desires? Oh? What’s molecular/chemical treatment by medicine? What’s being conscious of environment so that we may shape our own genetics by consistency of trial and error? Don’t make your self seem so small, you’re a a millions of years old experiment, you aren’t as small as you’d like to think. You should pay attention to the future and advocate for it because the answers are coming, to which you will have no more arguments that confine a human will, and if no confinement then there is no argument of which will isn’t free. What’s genetics, what’s ancestry? Pretty sure a doctor has to trace ones ancestry to figure out an illness embedded in genetic history, of which genetic history IS able to be altered by environment. So tell me, where are you not free?

Spinoza must not have practiced the buddha’s philosophy of attachment and value attribution.

Consciousness of Desires alone aren’t what make one not free, it’s the -freedom- to act on those desires or not based on what? Oh, in value.. well look at that.
Free to weigh the losses/benefits of every cause and effect scenario, exploit. I don’t think dogs know chocolate kills them, they require direct experience to value. We’re past that to an extent because we have already been embedded with the direct experiences in our subconscious/unconscious past, which granted us what? Well welcome to consciousness.

You misconceive what I state. I never stated we are free of the game, I stated we are free in how we play it. Want a new set of desires? Reset yourself. Only a man insecure with himself will use the argument of desires being the confines against a will that is free in use, even if those desires don’t have to be followed through on, freedom isn’t always built off happiness, in fact, much the opposite.

That an appeal to authority? Funny how humans look in the past to take the pasts word solely, when they are the present because of the past and are genetically superior. What’s evolution if not? Respect your roots sure but no one is saying to remain tangled in them.

[Ecmandu]

Again, I'm a compatibilist.

The person who is a determinist is afraid of judgement (consent violation)

The denial of determinism is a fear of assenting to consent violation.

These positions both come from fear.

[Artimas]

Again, I'm a compatibilist.

The person who is a determinist is afraid of judgement (consent violation)

The denial of determinism is a fear of assenting to consent violation.

These positions both come from fear.

Both exist, it’s not hard to see. I don’t deny either side. Absolutes on both side exist but may not be attainable to us, the fact of the matter is, we can see the absolutes and are in the middle ground.

[Urwrongx1000]

A human has the most complicated object we know of, the human brain, which is connected to a wide range of inputs that we do not, yet, think rocks have.

If you think rocks are "more complicated" than humanity and the human brain, or that inanimate objects are in anyway 'conscious' then, big lolz....

[Urwrongx1000]

Artimas is right.

Silhouette and the whole "fundamental force quantum quarks are as 'determined' as organic life, particularly humans" is the real "strawman" argument.

Not mine...

[Artimas]

Artimas is right.

Silhouette and the whole "fundamental force quantum quarks are as 'determined' as organic life, particularly humans" is the real "strawman" argument.

Not mine...

The unconscious aspects of reality are at the very least instinctual but not subconscious/conscious

Unconscious = instinctual experience
Subconscious = instinctual experience and knowing, knowledge and learning of value comes from this stage.

Conscious = understanding of knowing and instinctual experience with the use of value attributing that is the knowledge from the previous state of subconsciousness and experience from both layers of sub/unconscious.

[Silhouette]

Oh, jeez, come on. I black box the whole thing, but it gets tiring reading these kinds of straw man arguments. A human has the most complicated object we know of, the human brain, which is connected to a wide range of inputs that we do not, yet, think rocks have.

It's good to have you around Karpel, as a genuine neutral voice on this issue. I can understand how insufferable it may be to deal with people such as myself firmly standing by points of view, that we really think justify being stood by.

I'm inclined to agree that complexity does not yield freedom. Of course it's true, to the extent that we currently understand it, that humans are far more complex than things like rocks - and that's the only real difference. Somehow complexity results in descriptive models such as Determinism no longer applying?? But to give us a first hand taste of the sort of intellects that are able to go no further than arguing from incredulity in such a way, the guy seems to have understood what you said as the literal opposite of what you said in his response to you

I note your comment that determinists have all sorts of problems to deal with. I don't want to drag you into any discussion that you want to blackbox, but what sorts of problems are you thinking of? You mention a problem of how one knows one is rational if they believe in Determinism. To appeal to a word that derives from the same root as rational: ratio, which is numbering/calculating etc. - there's simply more attribution of measurable concepts in Determinism than Free Will. It's more testable, it's more precise and discerning - all of the things that one requires for knowledge. For example, where Free Will simply discerns between conscious/unconscious as Artimas is accentuating, perhaps mind/matter in line with the seemingly necessary Dualism required to believe in Free Will, Determinism goes into far more details of neuroscience, down to the level of individual cells in the brain and beyond. I think by the very definition of the word rational, Determinism clearly involves more. I would like to stress that I don't believe any narrative of understanding can ever be absolute - also by definition - Determinism is simply more true to the world (far far far more).

I do think silhouette absorbs a similar technique in posting to show how serious silhouette is, in a way that doesn't address the critical points, while making silhouette look like he's putting so much effort into his posts that it makes him seem unimpeachable.

I wouldn't want anyone thinking I am right by virtue of the effort I put in my post - I don't want that to add to any perception of impeachability. It would be fallacious to give my arguments more credit than what can be derived through their content alone - though actually I can't find any name for it, perhaps some kind of fallacy by association with hints of argument from authority, but not really.

I do it to aid in clarity and specificity - I want to be sure I know exactly what my position is before I explain it, and I want to help others know this too to aid in my quest to find someone who can poke legitimate holes in what I have to say. Obfuscation is the last thing I want to be involved in. A problem I have with your writing, Mr. Mandu, is I have to read your sentences multiple times to try and coax out exactly what is being referred to, for example. When you use too many pronouns in one sentence, don't explain non-standard terminology, and gloss over the absolute crux of your argument too lightly, it really makes it a chore to read and engage with you. I've said before that poor writing can be a sign of poor thinking, but I don't want to assume this. When I try and phrase what I say, I am stretching my theory of mind as far as I can to make sure that someone who isn't me ought to be able to understand what I'm saying - I recommend this for everyone, though plenty of people here are sufficient enough in this capacity.

No no, you answered correctly. You said Determinism, not determinism.

How would you define the distinction between capitalising the term, and not? Honestly, I don't want to take any credit that I don't deserve - I only capitalise terms like this when they're standard terminology, like one would capitalise Proper Nouns.

The unconscious and subconscious aspects in reality and in humanity are what granted consciousness, value fits into this argument and we project value, nothing else does. Which this value can become entrapment or liberating, that’s up to the individual who values.

To compare neurons with the entirety of consciousness or the human, is a ridiculous argument. I am not a single neuron and my brain is not a single neuron, they are subconscious/unconscious... humanity is conscious. I don’t understand how it’s not easily fucking seen, that there are LEVELS OF CONSCIOUSNESS. If there are LEVELS of fucking consciousness then that is a DETERMINED more free and less free in regards to INSTINCT. admit it already so we can move on to how we’re going to wake up the monkeys in society.

Determinism is cause and effect yeah? Well free will is understanding that cause and effect and with attribution of VALLUE. Free will is the VALUE one can determine or project onto other things or aspects by creating or letting go of attachment and past/present/future.

I think he was referring more to the incessant tedium of Urwrongx1000. Your zeal may be a little misplaced, though it's true he was phrasing his post in a general manner.

I wonder if you associate Determinism purely as reliant on Materialism? I would disagree, if this is the case. If I had to choose a more standard ontology, I actually find myself more inclined towards something like Panpsychism. But in an attempted synthesis between this and the Logical Positivism that came after it, which has obvious ties to Determinism, this is why I propose my more neutral "Experientialism" - where experience is the fundamental subtance that incorporates both mind and matter. In my view, given the mind/matter dichotomy, it should be clear that matter only occurred to anyone in the first place as something viewed in terms of mind. It was only subsequently that this was inverted such that mind was then put in terms of matter - which has problems of the sort you seem to be pointing out. "The hard problem of consciousness" comes to mind. As such, I would prefer to think of matter as quanta of mind's qualia, which I model as Discrete Experience versus Continuous Experience respectively. They are two forms of the same thing as a Monism rather than a Dualism: experience. You can "deal with" the discreteness of matter - it has utility where the true continuity of mind cannot be dealt with: the former models the latter. They are "of" the same thing, but serve differently. So whilst the ontological and epistemological ideals and absolutes reside in "that which is modelled", the models themselves are the reals and relatives - and this is where Determinism comes in. It comes in terms of Discrete Experience to model Continuous Experience as the relatively most real and transitively true model of it. Free Will is a more primitive version of modelling Discrete Experience in far less precise terms - something more like a first attempt in the same way that religion is like a first attempt at science. We got better at this and now have Determinism.

Hopefully, if you can see the sense in this, you will now see how concepts such as "value" are not a problem for my philosophy. Nor is consciousness, and the Hard Problem of Consciousness no longer applies.

This is why I sing such high praise of Experientialism, because the simple distinction between truth and utility in terms of experience, monistically, solves a ton of traditional philosophical conundrums.

I'll try to read your longer posts in due course and maybe respond to them at another time - like I did with your last longer post.

[Meno_]

I think generally the above is analysis through modeling, but the general tone reflects what I was tempted to write responsibly, but much overtly in line with general opinions of my method of muddling up arguments.
Then again, I was compelled to add it, since the analysis above is really a peeling back from and through language qua consciousness as defined by Artemis, and left unqualified by Silhouette.
But I'll add the narrative anyway, not as an exhibition of anything, but rather, a showing of following with the intent of getting on board, from and through non deconstructed level of meaning and value.:



Here I quote myself :

"Perceiving is the substata of understanding and knowing , derived from patterning and rearranging forms of experience, leads toward understanding knowledge. The cogito ergo sum could not have ever begun without mirroring,
primarily self mirroring .

Therefore 'cogito ergo sum" must have always been 'sum est percipii". How come it took 500 years to find this missing link?

For the man in the middle , the compatibility can only begin with the most outer layers' synthesis, the most general patent outlines , and venture into and toward the quantum composition of spatially determined time.
The very earliest contention between seemingly opposite logical systems, preceeds, (Parmenedies / Heraclitus).
through the three conversions starting from ancient materialism, modern differentiation (Descartes-Leibnitz) and post modern phenomenology ( Husserl)

Where we are at now is beyond that, a re integration of and through all these temporal signifiers through various holographic quantum energy systems,


If such are based on constant processes of replication , then a substratum, must have effects of variable" formal and contextual degrees of differentiation of energy systems.

Implying variable energy systems cutting off at critical points which are perceived as more or less determinant , and systematically lower giving rise to perceptions of absolute freedom of will, or lack of".


Now what started me thinking the above , is this from Siluette-


"So whilst the ontological and epistemological ideals and absolutes reside in "that which is modelled", the models themselves are the reals and relatives - and this is where Determinism come....."

(The difficulty I am having is very slight but still the idea of abstracting from which is modeled to the ideals and relatives lead to the heart of derivation , of abstraction and derivation. At different levels of modeling such correlation of ideas indicate less and not more residual content), and does reaffirm the very general parenthesis between language as knowledge and language as understanding.)

I find this argument rest in a word 'reside in' , contentious for definitional reasons, the ideals , models, absolutes, relatives reals, appear patently more prone toward less structurally complex, - leading to projective assumptions of positivism in language, ( in Artemis view, more in line with a deterministic interpretation , then his conscious/subconscious understanding) - [ I think there is no needless emphasis , when 'rests there ' implies a setting up of the basic contradiction of the kind preset by Heraclitus and Parmenedies, and gives more slant toward less complex dynamics toward the implications toward relative value, here. Such is the stuff contradiction is made of, and can indicate a mild form of the circularity that was inherent with dualism. In its mild form, redundancy can mitigate complexity, at least informally interpreted as here I am attempting.
Meaning: within these informal , relative values , one may get lost within the model, the object, that determines the transcendental utility within which the argument implies; the differential ability of the model, either as appearance or understanding. Such will lead to the contradiction between understanding and knowledge.

The peeling away from more to lessening levels of complexity, may not determine anything else but a show of preferential bias of arguing from and through logical contingency than necessity, giving an impression of allowing more value for meaning per-se, and as such, the formally determined sequence of the effects , that modeling has more open , cognitive, rather then 'less conscious' mind-neural activities.

For these work antagonistically, by mirroring as modeling, rather then modeling on previous cognative constructs.

As a parting shot. such reductive view, becomes more necessary as the mentioned neural links become prevy to more.mechanistic effects on consciousness, replacing sub conscious distinctions. Whereas, on that level , there appears more uncertainty and diffusion and interpenetrability between them.

[Ecmandu]

Silhouette,

Sorry if my clarity is lacking for you. I always consider that to be the authors responsibility.

This is where I think you lost the argument, discussion, debate ... whatever.

The cliff is ultimate reality, it's the most objective of the objective. people will act the same no matter what they say, even if what they say shows that they don't believe the cliff is ultimate reality.

After a while of this, it becomes incredulous.

Nobody contradicts ultimate reality as they see it, regardless of what they say.

You say that ultimate reality is no identity (no cliff), but nobody contradicts ultimate reality as they see it. Your ultimate reality is identity (even though you claim that it isn't), and thus, you never come close to stepping off the cliff (true ultimate reality).

I've already explained that the reason I'm so keen on the identity argument, is that when dismantled, it brings us back to the remainder argument of mine.

I have a method to this, and I'm not going to chase unnecessary tails to get to the heart of this thread.

You've been gracious enough not to call me unresponsive. I said that about you once.

So here we are.

[Silhouette]

Silhouette,

Sorry if my clarity is lacking for you. I always consider that to be the authors responsibility.

This is where I think you lost the argument, discussion, debate ... whatever.

The cliff is ultimate reality, it's the most objective of the objective. people will act the same no matter what they say, even if what they say shows that they don't believe the cliff is ultimate reality.

After a while of this, it becomes incredulous.

Nobody contradicts ultimate reality as they see it, regardless of what they say.

You say that ultimate reality is no identity (no cliff), but nobody contradicts ultimate reality as they see it. Your ultimate reality is identity (even though you claim that it isn't), and thus, you never come close to stepping off the cliff (true ultimate reality).

I've already explained that the reason I'm so keen on the identity argument, is that when dismantled, it brings us back to the remainder argument of mine.

I have a method to this, and I'm not going to chase unnecessary tails to get to the heart of this thread.

You've been gracious enough not to call me unresponsive. I said that about you once.

So here we are.

I think you're the opposite of unresponsive If I've been unresponsive to you before it's because I can't pick out exactly what it is that you're trying to say. My criticism of your lack of clarity isn't meant as offense, it's just a barrier that affects my ability to respond as well as I would like. And the whole mesa analogy thing is just another level of removal between me and your point - and not for lack of trying, I've somewhat lost a taste for trying any further to get to it. You might just as easily blame me for not being able to understand you - I *think* it's your explanations, but I don't want to guarantee that 100%. But it's always nice to have some self-improvement to work on, no?

I wouldn't be so hasty in calling victory, it seems more like an impasse. Neither of us has moved, and you don't seem to think you've "lost" any more than I do. For me, I can't see you saying anything more than "well actions are the ultimate arbiter of what you believe, regardless of what you say", or words to that effect.

It might have gotten lost somewhere that by my "actions" not matching what I say, I mean by my use of language - involving all the usual syntax that inherently implies identity. Pronouns like "I" and "you" especially. I don't mean by my physical movements around the world. Those actions are perfectly in tune with the ultimate reality that I'm declaring. I think the actions of the physical world take precedence over the action of using conventional language, because truth takes precedence over utility. I don't think my use of language ought to make others incredulous concerning what I'm using language to say - it's just a means to communicate, not a direct presentation of the Continuous Experience that is the world. Language is "of" the world, it isn't the world itself.

So based on this, I can't accept the argument that "actions are the ultimate arbiter etc." because it doesn't apply to what I mean. That's why I can't, in all honesty, concede any defeat to you. I get the feeling that I'm constantly missing points of yours because I don't understand the sentence construction, so continuing to get to the bottom of this is unlikely to get beyond the impasse where we are...

I have the same issue with Meno - perhaps it's me who is at fault. I rarely understand what he's saying so I tend to avoid engagement. For example, to his above post - I can barely make head nor tail of it. Apparently I didn't qualify consciousness or something? I don't know what was being required of me here. I think I can make out the gist of most of the sentences, but I can't tell what his point is. Perhaps somebody can translate? I'm sorry, Meno - I don't mean to be rude. If it's any consolation - English *is* a dumb language. Unfortunately it's the only one I speak with anything close to fluency.

[Meno_]

Silhouette,

Sorry if my clarity is lacking for you. I always consider that to be the authors responsibility.

This is where I think you lost the argument, discussion, debate ... whatever.

The cliff is ultimate reality, it's the most objective of the objective. people will act the same no matter what they say, even if what they say shows that they don't believe the cliff is ultimate reality.

After a while of this, it becomes incredulous.

Nobody contradicts ultimate reality as they see it, regardless of what they say.

You say that ultimate reality is no identity (no cliff), but nobody contradicts ultimate reality as they see it. Your ultimate reality is identity (even though you claim that it isn't), and thus, you never come close to stepping off the cliff (true ultimate reality).

I've already explained that the reason I'm so keen on the identity argument, is that when dismantled, it brings us back to the remainder argument of mine.

I have a method to this, and I'm not going to chase unnecessary tails to get to the heart of this thread.

You've been gracious enough not to call me unresponsive. I said that about you once.

So here we are.

I think you're the opposite of unresponsive If I've been unresponsive to you before it's because I can't pick out exactly what it is that you're trying to say. My criticism of your lack of clarity isn't meant as offense, it's just a barrier that affects my ability to respond as well as I would like. And the whole mesa analogy thing is just another level of removal between me and your point - and not for lack of trying, I've somewhat lost a taste for trying any further to get to it. You might just as easily blame me for not being able to understand you - I *think* it's your explanations, but I don't want to guarantee that 100%. But it's always nice to have some self-improvement to work on, no?

I wouldn't be so hasty in calling victory, it seems more like an impasse. Neither of us has moved, and you don't seem to think you've "lost" any more than I do. For me, I can't see you saying anything more than "well actions are the ultimate arbiter of what you believe, regardless of what you say", or words to that effect.

It might have gotten lost somewhere that by my "actions" not matching what I say, I mean by my use of language - involving all the usual syntax that inherently implies identity. Pronouns like "I" and "you" especially. I don't mean by my physical movements around the world. Those actions are perfectly in tune with the ultimate reality that I'm declaring. I think the actions of the physical world take precedence over the action of using conventional language, because truth takes precedence over utility. I don't think my use of language ought to make others incredulous concerning what I'm using language to say - it's just a means to communicate, not a direct presentation of the Continuous Experience that is the world. Language is "of" the world, it isn't the world itself.

So based on this, I can't accept the argument that "actions are the ultimate arbiter etc." because it doesn't apply to what I mean. That's why I can't, in all honesty, concede any defeat to you. I get the feeling that I'm constantly missing points of yours because I don't understand the sentence construction, so continuing to get to the bottom of this is unlikely to get beyond the impasse where we are...

I have the same issue with Meno - perhaps it's me who is at fault. I rarely understand what he's saying so I tend to avoid engagement. For example, to his above post - I can barely make head nor tail of it. Apparently I didn't qualify consciousness or something? I don't know what was being required of me here. I think I can make out the gist of most of the sentences, but I can't tell what his point is. Perhaps somebody can translate? I'm sorry, Meno - I don't mean to be rude. If it's any consolation - English *is* a dumb language. Unfortunately it's the only one I speak with anything close to fluency.

Silhuette,


I can say this: I do understand You for the most part, I feel safe to say that You are literal, but less so relatively speaking. I am almost certain, that whereas I am constantly making points allusively , with poignant references to less then proximate movement away from the center, to farther assumptions,than it needs or should which is used referentially.

I do apologise, main point being that as a consequence , You're style tends me to shortcut reasoning below toward the use of contradictory language, which in it'self tends to seek verification within its own absolute domain, excluding those which tend to be more familial then approximage.

I am not writing this to elicit an involvement , but rather, to say that there may be other reasons than lack of clarity for this.

Often , on these boards, and I am not at all implying anything, lack of clarity is given as a reason rather then others more consuming.

[Ecmandu]

Silhouette,

I'll try to make this as clear as I possibly can:

Utility (identity) is not ultimate truth to you, yet, nobody ever contradicts ultimate truth.

This is an easy exception to your Tu Quoque stance.

You've shown that utility (identity) is the ONLY important thing to you ... while you state that it is not ultimate reality.

No matter how much you state that the cliff doesn't exist in ultimate reality, you never step off it (stop posting on ILP). The cliff (identity) is ultimate reality not only to you, but everyone. Nobody contradicts ultimate reality, regardless of what they profess.

[Silhouette]

Silhouette,

I'll try to make this as clear as I possibly can:

Utility (identity) is not ultimate truth to you, yet, nobody ever contradicts ultimate truth.

This is an easy exception to your Tu Quoque stance.

You've shown that utility (identity) is the ONLY important thing to you ... while you state that it is not ultimate reality.

No matter how much you state that the cliff doesn't exist in ultimate reality, you never step off it (stop posting on ILP). The cliff (identity) is ultimate reality not only to you, but everyone. Nobody contradicts ultimate reality, regardless of what they profess.

Oh I got that bit. I mean, didn't I sum it up by "well actions are the ultimate arbiter of what you believe, regardless of what you say" - as a reiteration of your point? You are nice and clear in the above quote btw, even if not quite representative of me.

I know nobody contradicts ultimate truth... that's what I mean by all physical actions being perfectly in tune with what I'm saying (no identity). It's only language that is violating ultimate truth by dissecting its continuity into Discrete Experience, so that we can talk about it, for which we invent concepts like identity. So identity is only important to anyone for the purposes of utility. That's why we all speak in terms of it. Communication is important to social beings like us - not so much for a fly, for example. Flies do not suffer existential crises every time they dodge your attempts to swat them, they are purely instinctual and it gets them through life. If we could live as instinctually as them, like feral children, identity wouldn't be important at all. One would just be living reactionarily, moment to moment, without developing a sense of identity - which children only do from about age 6 if they grow up in adequately social conditions. Identity is a construction - you can't tell me that I show that identity is the only important thing to me when it's made up. Ultimate reality, pre-identity if you like, is all anyone needs unless they want to communicate. Identity is an add-on, a bonus.

In reality, not that I want to get back into this analogy, we're stepping off cliffs that aren't actually there all the time - as I said before. We just speak in terms of staying away from the cliff edge, because it's there that we understand what we each mean.

You can say the mesa is there by definition of being a mesa, but our actions prove it isn't all the time - it's only our words that say otherwise.

I get what you're trying to say, do you not get what I'm trying to say? What you're saying doesn't represent me - I don't know how to be any clearer than I am. We're only going to get beyond an impasse if we're agreeing on one another's representations of the other. It's known as Steelmanning, if you haven't heard of the term before.

[promethean75]

If you think rocks are "more complicated" than humanity and the human brain, or that inanimate objects are in anyway 'conscious' then, big lolz....

... but what does more 'complicated' mean? no matter how he defines it, you'd not be willing to retract your belief in freewill because you don't know what the concept of metaphysical freewill is... what it is asserting. Silhouette and peacegirl (to an extent... but she's a 'soft-determinist') are the only ones in this thread who know what in sam hill is going on here.

now you tell me; what is the special property a human being has that makes it immune to influence of the natural forces? 'consciousness'? but consciousness is an effect, not a cause... unless you believe that thoughts can move objects.

when comparing rocks to humans, of course we can say that there is a greater complexity of system processes, but processes aren't things, aren't physical, they are descriptions of behavior. we're not questioning how things behave, but why they behave as they do, and process is not an explanation for this... at least not at the fundamental level we are examining here. now if you disregard the differences in processes for a moment and look for the property that all things have in common, you'll see that they are all objects located in space/time. now if causation affects all things in space/time, what is that special property human beings have that makes them exempt to these causal forces? forget about your consciousness, your 'thinking'... this is not a property in a physical sense... not even a thing... but a descriptive process for a kind of behavior; you don't 'have' consciousness, you don't 'do' consciousness. you 'act' consciously or not, and we say you are conscious not because we 'see' or have located in your brain some special feature which we can say of 'wait... that's not part of the brain... that's something else'. rather we see corresponding behavior states to mental states, and while these are sometimes interchangeable (mental state x may be contiguous to behavior y, or vice versa), there is nothing showing that a mental state doesn't, itself, follow causally sufficient antecedent conditions... conditions you didn't spring into being by 'thinking'.

all this talk about slave mentality and subconscious/unconscious instinct and psyche and power totems and yada yada yada is neither here nor there. until you can demonstrate a substance - such as an acausal 'soul' - that cannot be affected by the physical causation that affects everything else in the universe, you cannot assert that there is metaphysical freewill.

you guys really, really need to do some research on the philosophy of freewill and determinism so you can know exactly what you're saying when you say freewill is real. i can tell by your arguments that you haven't done this. i know this because you aren't even defending freewill properly... much less refuting determinism. if i can come in here and present a better argument in defense of freewill (even though it would be sophistry), you guys ain't hittin' on shit.

i'll even give you a push. read over hume's problem of induction so you can get an understanding of the only solid empirical argument against causality. and then look at kant's reply to hume on this problem. finally, look at how spinoza treats the problem, and you'll find the strongest deductive proofs for the existence of causality that stand on a purely rational foundation. you'll discover that you don't need to 'experience' causality to know that it exists and that everything in existence is subject to it. no 'wiggle' room, no 'yeah this is determined but not that... not all the way, not completely.' and if you find the shit too dry, check out richard taylor, roderick chisholm, and peter van inwagen.

man i don't what ya'lls deal is. it's like you're scared of the shit or something. like it's not even a big deal, though. what are you gonna do if suddenly you realize there's no freewill? stop getting out of bed in the morning? what, do you need to believe in freewill to make your life meaningful? you think if the world woke up tomorrow and stopped believing in freewill, there'd be any less responsibility and culpability? hell naw, man. it was never about freewill in the first place because there's no such thing. the entire corpus of judicial law and morality is founded on power relations, and you can bet your ass there will always be consequences for what people do. that shit in a court room about 'yeah but you knew it was wrong' or 'but you could have chosen not to do it' is nothing but a sophisticated language game ministering to some kind of exchange/subordination of power. morality and freewill is just a cover-up for this dynamic. the shit isn't real, bro!

ya'll need to spend a whole week studying substance dualism, because that's what you're all doing... and ya'll don't even know it. don't think anything you say in defense of freewill hasn't already been said, said better than you, and thoroughly refuted. ya'll niggas is better than this amateur shit you're doing.

promethean75, out.

[Ecmandu]

Silhouette,

Feral kids don't jump off cliffs and flies don't dive under water.

They have identities that to them is ultimate truth

[Pedro I Rengel]

"Proper Nouns."

Right, exactly.

[Urwrongx1000]

now you tell me; what is the special property a human being has that makes it immune to influence of the natural forces?

It's not about being "immune" to natural forces or influences. It's about being aware of what those forces truly are. My position is Epistemological and Silhouette knows this full well. If Science and Physicists don't know what's going on in existence, to a degree of certainty, then what makes Silhouette take the extra seven steps to claim that "everything is always already determined, before anybody knows about it"? I have my own presumptions there. But the difference between what is known and guessed at, is obvious. Beyond a certain point, nobody can say "what is determined" or not, because if you could, then you could predict the future with 100% accuracy. Nobody can, not even close. So Silhouette neither has evidence nor proof for his position.

It's a weak position. And I think more are catching onto this obviousness.