No argument there.Wizard22 wrote: ↑Mon May 01, 2023 8:07 pm
So far your arguments have been that life is only reactionary, life reacts to rocks, rocks react to Earth's gravity, Earth reacts to the Sun, The Solar System Reacts to the Universe. So what does the universe "react" to?
Your infinite regress of causality is pretty much the same as Hard Determinists who claim that there is always a 'prior cause'. So you need to go back to the beginning of time itself, to have a "First Cause".
Like Hard Determinists, this is a constant shifting-the-goal-post fallacy. There's never a real cause, or a real reaction, because there is always something "down the road". There is never evidence, never proof. So your mentality is immune to both criticism and empiricism. In order to have a sound philosophical argument, your assertions must be falsifiable. Since yours are not, there's not much responding I can do...it would be like me trying to convince a Theist that God does not exist, or an Atheist that God does exist. You are set on your premise 'Reaction', your axiom, that you will not doubt no matter what. [/quote]
No fallacy, reality. Well, I have given plenty of examples for you to contest. I think you are just afraid of the challenge. If all organisms were not reactionary creatures would evolutionary adaptation be possible? Would the source of all disease be that of reaction to a chemical or biological invasion, injury, old age or lack of vital nutrients? Would a species survive long without an active reactive immune system? Would the only way to understand an individual or a nation's behaviors be to know what they are reacting to? Please respond.
I don't see further discourse on this point productive. I'll merely repeat my previous assertions. Life and Existence, is not "only reactive". It is active. It is interactive. The human mind tends to "look backward", at the Past, for proof and certainty. This is how I view your perspective, always looking at the past, not the present, and not the future. Because your argument cannot make rational sense in terms of the "future". Is the Future reacting to the Past? How? Explain it. The Future does not yet exist, so is not Reacting, so there needs to be a Pro-active principle. People believe the Future is not set, not determined, hence Anti-determinism. [/quote]
I don't imagine you do find the discussion productive if all you are interested in is winning an argument, very frustrating indeed. My premise is always in the here and now, the eternal moment so to speak, you just do not have a rational argument. What is it you wish for certainty about, that sounds very like religious orientation. It is true that people look to books and the experiences of like organisms/people, with trust in another like biology's experiences of their eternal moment, to gain prior knowledge; but it could never be verified without firsthand experience of the moment of another person.
The Future is unwritten, but it seems obvious now that you and other Determinists in this thread, do not believe this. If you did. Then you would not be Hard Determinists. Man would be Active. Man would be a Causal Agent. Man would be, like other lifeforms, able to make Choices.
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I didn't say the future is written, as reactionary organisms whose destiny is tied to the ever-changing world and where evolution has no goal for the organism but to adapt to the earth as cause. Life survives by adapting to circumstances in reactionary ways, like any good Marine adapts and overcomes!! I did not say that there are no choices, only that one has no ability to not react to one's environment. There are a multitude of examples of people making the wrong choices in a given situation and failing to adapt to circumstances. If you wish to remain negative, I suggest you adapt and overcome, with appropriate well thought out reactionary thought.