BigMike wrote: ↑Sun Jul 31, 2022 8:16 am
Libertarians and compatibilists (L&C) believe that people should be punished for their actions, even if they had no other choice. For example, when a baby poops in its diaper, a good parent does not punish it. Instead, good parents teach their children to go potty. Because the child could not have behaved differently, parents who beat the child or, even worse, kill it because of this are committing a heinous act. Such punishment is entirely unjustified.
So, your argument here is that everyone who believes in free will doesn't potty train their children.
Bullshit. You think you can figure out statistics by doing silly deduction in your head. You are at least as irrational as the people you are judging. You are just making things up. Show me some evidence that people who believe in free will don't potty train their children. And not anecdotal evidence, actual evidence.
Due to a lack of free will, all individuals receiving retributive punishment for unavoidable actions are equally unworthy of punishment. Therefore, I believe that all retributive punishment ("because they deserve it") is evil. Moreover, such cruel responses are logically consistent with a false belief in free will; such beliefs are inherently evil, and their adherents are eager to carry out evil deeds. Acts of evil follow logically from the falsehood of free will. This is known as "Ex Falso Quodlibet" or the explosion principle, “from falsehood, anything [follows]”.
What you'd need to do here is show that people who believe in determinism, for example, don't want similar punishments for criminals.
2) you don't understand Ex Falso Quodlibet. It doesn't mean that YOU get to attribute conclusions to people if you think they have contradictory beliefs. It means that logically if one has contradictory beliefs then any conclusion is possible. Further you don't even seem to understand that Ex Falso Quodlibet is based on contradictory beliefs NOT false beliefs.
As I stated in a previous comment, people who believe they have free will are inherently evil, even if they have no choice.
I have no idea why you are repeating it.
I think your repeated assertion that people who disagree with you are evil is offensive and your arguments are not evidence in the least. You haven't even demonstrated that people with free will would be more likely to be evil. You know very well that there are many free will believers who potty train their children but you insult both my intelligence and obviously your own by trying to pass that off as evidence. It seems like because you think you are on the right team, the determinist believers, you can just assert idiotic and pernicious things about huge groups of people without any real evidence. You allow yourself to do what you are criticizing others for.
I don't want anything to do with someone like you. Nothing. Good luck with your irrational conclusions.
That was my intent. My opinion is that L&Cs who refuse to hear any counterargument or even attempt to ridicule it, perhaps out of a fear of being proven wrong, exhibit an innate desire to continue their evil practices.
And now you are shifting your goalposts. Now they have to both believe in free will AND refuse to hear your counterargument (your personal one, do they have to have contact with you?)
In my opinion, they should follow the advice of the English mathematician and philosopher William Kingdon Clifford, who stated that we should only believe things supported by sufficient evidence.
Does this make you evil? Because you have provided only speculation, not evidence.
"It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone to ignore evidence that is relevant to his beliefs, or to dismiss relevant evidence in a facile way," he said.
So, in your opinion we should follow the opinion of William Clifford and he is saying it is wrong to do what you are saying free will believers are doing. This is also not evidence and also doesn't support ANY conclusions about people who do this being evil. Wrong of course need not have a moral meaning.
BigMike wrote: ↑Sun Jul 31, 2022 8:16 am
The evidence shows that the laws of physics explain everything that goes on in our brains; no one has ever found even an atom in our brain start moving unless acted upon by a force. There is no spooky "ghost in the machine", to quote the British philosopher Gilbert Ryle.
Some who do not wish to communicate with me further choose to disregard this evidence.
BigMike wrote: ↑Sat Jul 30, 2022 10:43 am
What makes you believe in free will? Seems to me your argument is kind of "since the earth looks flat, it must be".
As I say, Dom: many (most, all?) of my decisions are founded on what I hope to cause tomorrow. Those choices, those intentions, have no roots in yesterday. I'm not pushed from behind by what happened, but am enticed forward by what I imagine I can make happen. And, yep, it, my argument, is that simple (so simple I don't have to write a book about it).
Bless you Henry! Have you been studying Heidegger? I must say I agree with you. And yet, unless you have lost all your memories you must have learned from past experiences which learning does influence the sort of choices you make.
So, you agree you're a free will capable of beginning, ending, and bending causal chains?
*
you must have learned from past experiences which learning does influence the sort of choices you make.
As I say...
henry quirk wrote: ↑Sat Jul 30, 2022 3:11 pm
I never said any of us is dis-embedded from our histories. What I say is none of that determines any of us.
Last edited by henry quirk on Sun Jul 31, 2022 1:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Sumthin' light but relevant, by fellow tin foil hat wearer, libertarian, and EVIL GUY, Jon Rappoport...
-----
Interviewing the dead Albert Einstein about free will
It was a strange journey into the astral realm to find Albert Einstein.
I slipped through gated communities heavily guarded by troops protecting dead Presidents. I skirted alleys where wannabe demons claiming they were Satan’s reps were selling potions made from powdered skulls of English kings. I ran through mannequin mansions where trainings for future shoppers were in progress. Apparently, some souls come to Earth to be born as aggressive entitled consumers. Who knew?
Finally, in a little valley, I spotted a cabin, and there on the porch, sitting in a rocker, smoking a pipe and reading The Bourne Ultimatum, was Dr. Einstein.
He was wearing an old sports jacket with leather patches on the elbows, jeans, and furry slippers.
I wanted to talk with the great man because I’d read a 1929 Saturday Evening Post interview with him. He’d said:
“I am a determinist. As such, I do not believe in free will…Practically, I am, nevertheless, compelled to act as if freedom of the will existed. If I wish to live in a civilized community, I must act as if man is a responsible being.”
Dr, Einstein went inside and brought out two bottles of cold beer and we began our conversation:
Q: Sir, would you say that the underlying nature of physical reality is atomic?
A: If you’re asking me whether atoms and smaller particles exist everywhere in the universe, then of course, yes.
Q: And are you satisfied that, wherever they are found, they are the same? They exhibit a uniformity?
A: Surely, yes.
Q: Regardless of location.
A: Correct.
Q: So, for example, if we consider the make-up of the brain, those atoms are no different in kind from atoms wherever in the universe they are found.
A: That’s true. The brain is composed entirely of these tiny particles. And the particles, everywhere in the universe, without exception, flow and interact and collide without any exertion of free will. It’s an unending stream of cause and effect.
Q: And when you think to yourself, “I’ll get breakfast now,” what is that?
A: The thought?
Q: Yes.
A: Ultimately, it is the outcome of particles in motion.
Q: You were compelled to have that thought.
A: As odd as that may seem, yes. Of course, we tell ourselves stories to present ourselves with a different version of reality, but those stories are social or cultural constructs.
Q: And those “stories” we tell ourselves—they aren’t freely chosen rationalizations, either. We have no choice about that.
A: Well, yes. That’s right.
Q: So there is nothing in the human brain that allows us the possibility of free will.
A: Nothing at all.
Q: And as we are sitting here right now, sir, looking at each other, sitting and talking, this whole conversation is spooling out in the way that it must. Every word. Neither you nor I is really choosing what we say.
A: I may not like it, but yes, it’s deterministic destiny. The particles flow.
Q: When you pause to consider a question I ask you…even that act of considering is mandated by the motion of atomic and sub-atomic particles. What appears to be you deciding how to give me an answer…that is a delusion.
A: The act of considering? Why, yes, that, too, would have to be determined. It’s not free. There really is no choice involved.
Q: And the outcome of this conversation, whatever points we may or may not agree upon, and the issues we may settle here, about this subject of free will versus determinism…they don’t matter at all, because, when you boil it down, the entire conversation was determined by our thoughts, which are nothing more than atomic and sub-atomic particles in motion—and that motion flows according to laws, none of which have anything to do with human choice.
A: The entire flow of reality, so to speak, proceeds according to determined sets of laws. Yes.
Q: And we are in that flow.
A: Most certainly we are.
Q: The earnestness with which we might try to settle this issue, our feelings, our thoughts, our striving—that is irrelevant. It’s window dressing. This conversation actually cannot go in different possible directions. It can only go in one direction.
A: That would ultimately have to be so.
Q: Now, are atoms and their components, and any other tiny particles in the universe…are any of them conscious?
A: Of course not. The particles themselves are not conscious.
Q: Some scientists speculate they are.
A: Some people speculate that the moon can be sliced and served on a plate with fruit.
Q: What do you think “conscious” means?
A: It means we participate in life. We take action. We converse. We gain knowledge.
Q: Any of the so-called faculties we possess—are they ultimately anything more than particles in motion?
A: Well, no, they aren’t. Because everything is particles in motion. What else could be happening in this universe? Nothing.
Q: All right. I’d like to consider the word “understanding.”
A: It’s a given. It’s real.
Q: How so?
A: The proof that it’s real, if you will, is that we are having this conversation. It makes sense to us.
Q: Yes, but how can there be understanding if everything is particles in motion? Do the particles possess understanding?
A: No they don’t.
Q: To change the focus just a bit, how can what you and I are saying have any meaning?
A: Words mean things.
Q: Again, I have to point out that, in a universe with no free will, we only have particles in motion. That’s all. That’s all we are. So where does “meaning” come from?
A: “We understand language” is a true proposition.
Q: You’re sure.
A: Of course.
Q: Then I suggest you’ve tangled yourself in a contradiction. In the universe you depict, there would be no room for understanding. Or meaning. There would be nowhere for it to come from. Unless particles understand. Do they?
A: No.
Q: Then where do “understanding” and “meaning” come from?
A: [Silence.]
Q: Furthermore, sir, if we accept your depiction of a universe of particles, then there is no basis for this conversation at all. We don’t understand each other. How could we?
A: But we do understand each other.
Q: And therefore, your philosophic materialism (no free will, only particles in motion) must have a flaw.
A: What flaw?
Q: Our existence contains more than particles in motion.
A: More? What would that be?
Q: Would you grant that whatever it is, it is non-material?
A: It would have to be, but…
Q: Then, driving further along this line, there is something non-material which is present, which allows us to understand each other, which allows us to comprehend meaning. We are conscious. Puppets are not conscious. As we sit here talking, I understand you. Do you understand me?
A: Of course.
Q: Then that understanding is coming from something other than particles in motion. Without this non-material quality, you and I would be gibbering in the dark.
A: You’re saying that, if all the particles in the universe, including those that make up the brain, possess no consciousness, no understanding, no comprehension of meaning, no freedom, then how can they give birth to understanding and freedom. There must be another factor, and it would have to be non-material.
Q: Yes. That’s what I’m saying. And I think you have to admit your view of determinism and particles in motion—that picture of the universe—leads to several absurdities.
A: Well…perhaps I’m forced to consider it. Otherwise, we can’t sit here and understand each other.
Q: You and I do understand each other.
A: I hadn’t thought it through this way before, but if there is nothing inherent in particles that gives rise to understanding and meaning, then everything is gibberish. Except it isn’t gibberish. Yes, I seem to see a contradiction. Interesting.
Q: And if these non-material factors—understanding and meaning—exist, then other non-material factors can exist.
A: For example, freedom. I suppose so.
Q: And the drive to eliminate freedom in the world…is more than just the attempt to substitute one automatic reflex for another.
A: That would be…yes, that would be so.
Q: Scientists would be absolutely furious about the idea that, despite all their maneuvering, the most essential aspects of human life are beyond the scope of what they, the scientists, are “in charge of.”
A: It would be a naked challenge to the power of science.
Einstein puffed on his pipe and looked out over the valley. He took a sip of his beer. After a minute, he said, “Let me see if I can summarize this, because it’s really rather startling. The universe is nothing but particles. All those particles follow laws of motion. They aren’t free. The brain is made up entirely of those same particles. Therefore, there is nothing in the brain that would give us freedom. These particles also don’t understand anything, they don’t make sense of anything, they don’t grasp the meaning of anything. Since the brain, again, is made up of those particles, it has no power to allow us to grasp meaning or understand anything. But we do understand. We do grasp meaning. Therefore, we are talking about qualities we possess which are not made out of energy. These qualities are entirely non-material.”
He nodded.
“In that case,” he said, “there is…oddly enough, a completely different sphere or territory. It’s non-material. Therefore, it can’t be measured. Therefore, it has no beginning or end. If it did, it would be a material continuum and we could measure it.”
He pointed to the valley.
“That has energy. But what does it give me? Does it allow me to be conscious? Does it allow me to be free, to understand meaning? No.”
Then he laughed. He looked at me.
“I’m dead,” he said, “aren’t I? I didn’t realize it until this very moment.”
I shook my head. “No. I would say you WERE dead until this moment.”
He grinned. “Yes!” he said. “That’s a good one. I WAS dead.”
He stood up.
“Enough of this beer,” he said. “I have some schnapps inside. Let me get it. Let’s drink the good stuff! After all, I’m apparently Forever. And so are you. And so are we all.”
"If I wish to live in a civilized community, I must act as if man is a responsible being.”
that whole einstein dialogue was tldr, but i did see this and would like to comment. the whole argument is set up from that false problem there; that if man wants to live in a civilized society, he must act as if he is a responsible being, and determinists can't/don't do this. so the implicit premise is that determinists can't/don't act as if they are responsible (and therefore aren't able to live in a civilized society).
but wait.
what would a determinist do differently than a person who believed in freewill, in any number of behaviors engaged in and with the world? set two guys up and aks them to make a decision regarding what to do with/about x, and let's see if I'm able to identify which of the two guys is a determinist.
whether with freewill or not, each of them would commit to a decision making process precisely in the same way; responsibly, i.e., feeling that one is in control of their actions and prepared to face possible consequences of those actions. that's the meaning, the act, of 'responsibility' in praxis.
when philosophers, metaphysicians and moralists use the word, there is an entailment there that doesn't exist for the ordinary use of the word. that's to say in moral and legal language, the word 'responsible' is conflated. It becomes one of those qualities Mackie called 'queer' when talking about moral facts.
anyway there is no problem here. even if you or albert argued that there's a higher number of determinists commiting crimes than people who believe in freewill, you'd not be able to say that's because they are determinists and don't believe in freewill. moreover, those determinists would bear the consequences of their actions just as anyone would, and are just as 'responsible' by virtue of that.
the whole freewill lexicon is fucked up, really. concepts like 'will', 'mind', 'consciousness', 'choice' and 'cause' are abused as badly as a red-headed step child by the Cartesians. I've never in my analytically positivist life.
[quote=promethean75 post_id=587196 time=1659273939 user_id=16524]
"If I wish to live in a civilized community, I must act as if man is a responsible being.”
that whole einstein dialogue was tldr, but i did see this and would like to comment. the whole argument is set up from that false problem there; that if man wants to live in a civilized society, he must act as if he is a responsible being, and determinists can't/don't do this. so the implicit premise is that determinists can't/don't act as if they are responsible (and therefore aren't able to live in a civilized society).
but wait.
what would a determinist [i]do differently[/i] than a person who believed in freewill, in any number of behaviors engaged in and with the world? set two guys up and aks them to make a decision regarding what to do with/about x, and let's see if I'm able to identify which of the two guys is a determinist.
whether with freewill or not, each of them would commit to a decision making process precisely in the same way; responsibly, i.e., feeling that one is in control of their actions and prepared to face possible consequences of those actions. that's the meaning, the act, of 'responsibility' in praxis.
when philosophers, metaphysicians and moralists use the word, there is an entailment there that doesn't exist for the ordinary use of the word. that's to say in moral and legal language, the word 'responsible' is conflated. It becomes one of those qualities Mackie called 'queer' when talking about moral facts.
anyway there is no problem here. even if you or albert argued that there's a higher number of determinists commiting crimes than people who believe in freewill, you'd not be able to say that's [i]because[/i] they are determinists and don't believe in freewill. moreover, those determinists would bear the consequences of their actions just as anyone would, and are just as 'responsible' by virtue of that.
the whole freewill lexicon is fucked up, really. concepts like 'will', 'mind', 'consciousness', 'choice' and 'cause' are abused as badly as a red-headed step child by the Cartesians. I've never in my analytically positivist life.
[/quote]
We exist in the ignorance gap between chaos and causality. To the extent we do Not understand causality we May feel free.
An Examination of Free Will and Buddhism
Barbara O'Brien
Karma and Determinism
The Buddha also rejected a purely deterministic view in his teaching on karma. Most of the Buddha's contemporaries taught that karma operates in a simple straight line. Your life now is the result of what you did in the past; what you do now will determine your life in the future. The problem with this view is that it leads to a degree of fatalism -- there's nothing you can do about your life now.
Exactly. Either what goes around must come around or it might come around in different ways instead...depending on the extent to which you are in fact free to change its trajectory. So, where does the Buddhist understanding of karma end and fatalism begin? And if there is no God around to determine that, what does? Also, how is karma construed in regard to such things as the caste system. Some are "untouchables" but they only have themselves to blame? They must have done something in the past to warrant their....fate?
But the Buddha taught that the effects of past karma can be mitigated by present action; in other words, one is not fated to suffer X because one did X in the past. Your actions now can change the course of karma and impact your life now.
Again, though, technically, how exactly does that work? Who or what is "out there" juggling all of these variables such that the past and the present and the future are either seamlessly intertwined or open to, what, mitigating or aggravating circumstances?
With many religious denominations it's a God, the God. But that gets tricky because this God is often said to be omniscient. And how then is an all-knowing God able to be reconciled with human autonomy?
But with Buddhism? What "force" or "entity" is "behind" karma? The universe itself? Or does this part require Buddhism's own rendition of a "leap of faith"?
The Theravadin monk Thanissaro Bhikkhu wrote...
"Buddhists, however, saw that karma acts in multiple feedback loops, with the present moment being shaped both by past and by present actions; present actions shape not only the future but also the present. Furthermore, present actions need not be determined by past actions. In other words, there is free will, although its range is somewhat dictated by the past."
Now, this is definitely what I call a "general description spiritual contraption".
Any Buddhists here care to explore the actual existential implications of it given your own life...past, present and future?
From in-forum: nope, I'm not backtrackin' myself to prove to you I've admitted to bein' wrong on big stuff. Go ask Flash Dangerpants: he's caught me up three or four times. No doubt he'll explain in delicious detail my errors, and grudgingly admit I copped to each and every one. Or, he might tell you to get bent. You never know with Flash.
From the Real World: Nope. For one, my life is none of your business. For two, I can't offer any evidence of my Real World mistakes or mea culpas (not without splayin' open my life for you which I'm not doin').
Typical "wiggle, wiggle, wiggle" mentality of the objectivists I've come across over the years. You claim to have been wrong about the "big stuff" before [meaning you may well be wrong about it now] but you won't actually cite examples of this.
Note to Flash Dangerpants:
What "big stuff" did you manage to prompt henry into admitting he got wrong?
are you acknowledging...you embrace the "you're right from your side, I'm right from mine" school of thought?
Okay, in however you connect rational thinking to your Soul and the Deist God, you believe that there is an objective moral truth but that in regard to the "big stuff" [like guns and abortion] you have been wrong in the past. And you may well be wrong about important things right now.
Something like that?
Thus...
you believe that there is in fact the optional or the only rational/objective moral truth in regard to issues such as this, but you are not insisting that your own arguments are necessarily the right ones.
henry quirk wrote: ↑Sat Jul 30, 2022 1:03 amNope, I'm sure mine are the right ones, but -- as sure as I am -- I have to hold to the remote possibility I'm wrong.
How do you calculate this? Given that those at the other end of the political spectrum will often argue exactly the same thing in regard to a "a well regulated Militia".
How in interpreting the meaning of that does one acquire a point of view such that there is only a remote possibility of them being wrong?
What I suspect of course is that in coming to embody the "psychology of objectivism" above, they believe that which most comforts and consoles them. It's not what they believe about guns but that what they believe about guns allows them to, among other things, voice disdain regarding those fools who don't share their own arrogant and self-righteous convictions.
henry quirk wrote: ↑Sat Jul 30, 2022 1:03 am If I'm wrong then I'm not a free will with a natural right to my life, liberty, and property. If I'm wrong then I'm bio-automation with no right to anything.
Sigh...
Back again to how you completely avoid owning up to how this...
All of this going back to how the matter we call the human brain was "somehow" able to acquire autonomy when non-living matter "somehow" became living matter "somehow" became conscious matter "somehow" became self-conscious matter.
Then those here who actually believe that what they believe about all of this reflects, what, the ontological truth about the human condition itself?
Then those who are compelled in turn to insist on a teleological component as well. Usually in the form of one or another God.
Meanwhile, philosophers and scientists and theologians have been grappling with this profound mystery now for thousands of years.
Either in the only possible reality in the only possible world or of their own volition.
...is also applicable to you.
Instead the laws of nature compel your brain to delude you into thinking that your brain is not deluding you into thinking that you post what you do of your own volition.
Whereas I always come back to this here: click.
In other words...
assuming that we do possess free will.
Only that assumption in and of itself may be embedded in the only possible reality in the only possible world.
We're all stuck in the gap between what we think we know about free will and all that there is to be known about it...going back to how the "human condition" itself fits into all we would need to know about the existence of existence itself.
Like this...
henry quirk wrote: ↑Sat Jul 30, 2022 1:03 am We, each of us, don't possess free will. We, each of us, is a free will.
...presto!...
...clears it all up.
...how could any of us definitively pin down answers to questions regarding the existence of free will or natural rights.
Though, again, given the manner in which you inflect your point --- all but daring me to prove that you are wrong -- you project as always [to me] as an arrogant, authoritarian bully. All but scoffing at those who refuse to see things as you do.
I can't show you one way or the other. Not in regard to "I" in the is/ought world or in regard to the Big Questions. After all, have or have not some truly extraordinary minds down through the ages been grappling with these issues to no avail. Or, sure, link me to the definitive assessment of conflicting goods or metaphysical conundrums.
henry quirk wrote: ↑Sat Jul 30, 2022 1:03 am Oh, that's easy. Ask yourself: are all my choices necessitated by what's behind me, or do I sometimes decide based on what I hope to find, or cause, in front of me? If truly all your decisions are rooted in yesterday then, yeah, you might be a robot (or very, very timid and unimaginative). But if you can truly say at least some of your choices are made in anticipation of what hasn't happened yet and what you intend to make happen, then you're a free will.
What difference does any of this make if your brain, wholly in sync with the laws of matter, compels you to "anticipate" and "intend" in turn.
Again, back to anticipating and intending things in our dreams. Only to wake up and realize the anticipation and the intention was constructed chemically and neurologically by the brain itself. But then the brain compelling you in turn to believe that in the waking world all of that changes.
henry quirk wrote: ↑Sat Jul 30, 2022 1:03 am Same thing with natural rights: ask yourself is my life mine? If truly you think your life is not yours, then, yeah, you might be a meat machine (or just whupped on so much you've given up). But, if you can say my life is mine and know it's true, then you've taken the first step to recognizin' your natural right to your life, liberty, and property.
Please. From the day we are born until well into our teens we are indoctrinated by others to see our life as they do. And then as adults in a free will world how we come to think of our life is profoundly embedded in a particular historical and cultural and experiential context. We come to have particular sets of experiences and relationships and access to information and knowledge that commonsense tells us will predispose us to embrace one set of political prejudices rather than another.
Exactly! That's my argument too./b] Your moral convictions work for you precisely because the life that you actually lived predisposed you existentially to embrace one set of political prejudices rather that another. It's just that, as with most objectivists, you really don't allow others who have led very different lives in very different historical, cultural and experiential contexts to insist that, no, it's their own moral convictions that must prevail.
Sure, you claim to be presenting just one subjective point of view about guns, but you don't come off that way at all to me. Instead, you seem clearly to present your own prejudices as that which really does reflect "natural rights".
henry quirk wrote: ↑Sat Jul 30, 2022 1:03 am As I say: **it's remarkable to me it doesn't...I assert you know you're a free will, know you have a natural right to your life, liberty, and property, and know it's wrong, as moral fact, for others to unjustly deprive you of life, liberty, and property...so, yeah, it's remarkable to me when folks like yourself argue you're robots with no natural claim to yourself
Yes, you assert things like this all the time. In other words, rather than actually address the substance of the points I make you "snip out" little fragments and merely propound one or another "general description intellectual contraption". Your own rendition of what you accuse me of doing..."copying and pasting" standard refrains.
note where I have ever argued that others are required to think like or believe what I do
henry quirk wrote: ↑Sat Jul 30, 2022 1:03 am Every damn post where you say over and over if folks don't accept everything and everyone is rooted in your version of dasein then they're fulminating objectivists. You're as my way or the highway as as anyone.
Okay, let's agree to allow others to judge this accusation of yours. Only I flat out acknowledge that my own personal opinions here do not even come close to revolving around the "remote possibility I'm wrong".
Quite the contrary, I once had to admit to myself that I was wrong about Christianity, then wrong about Unitarianism then wrong about Marxism then wrong about Leninism then wrong about Trotskyism then wrong about Democratic Socialism then wrong about the Social Democrats then wrong about objectivism altogether.
How about you, henry?
...it's folks like you that represent the second most dangerous frame of mind in this world. Those who gain power in any community and basically impose their own rendition of "right makes might?" on it.
The most dangerous, ironically enough, still being the amoral "show me the money" moral nihilists who own and operate the global economy. Wall Street and its equivalent in nations like Russia and China.
henry quirk wrote: ↑Sat Jul 30, 2022 1:03 am Wait, aren't you an *amoral nihilist?
Yes, but that frame of mind is no less rooted existentially in dasein. There's not just one path to take.
henry quirk wrote: ↑Sat Jul 30, 2022 1:03 am can a nihilist be moral?
Sure. It depends on the extent to which in a No God world [an assumption] a nihilist is able to think him or herself into accepting one or another Humanist moral and political agenda as more or less rational. Not all nihilists are as fractured and fragmented as "I" am.
I been tryna work with Henry now fer... well fer a good six'r seven months at least, and I just can't seem to make a breakthrough. Reckon mebbe Henry don't like to think of emself as a toaster.
If it's not the supernatural Free Will thing that makes humans more free than other animals, then what is it we have that allows us so many more choices than other animals?
