compatibilism

[Martin Peter Clarke]

So this whole Rummys Rule thing is just a reference to Donald Rumsfeld and the problem of unknown answers to unknown questions?

Nobody knows. Biggy seems incapable of saying what he means. He'll never tell you what Rummys Rule means, at best he might vaguely tell you what it "revolves around", as if that's helpful.

Er, yes he did,

'As for Rummy's Rule...

"Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don't know we don't know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tends to be the difficult ones"'

One still has to know that that is neo-con Donald Rumsfeld, 23 years ago. It is bloody obscure for the general reader. Only I will remember it like it was yesterday.

[FlashDangerpants]

So this whole Rummys Rule thing is just a reference to Donald Rumsfeld and the problem of unknown answers to unknown questions?

Nobody knows. Biggy seems incapable of saying what he means. He'll never tell you what Rummys Rule means, at best he might vaguely tell you what it "revolves around", as if that's helpful.

Er, yes he did,

'As for Rummy's Rule...

"Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don't know we don't know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tends to be the difficult ones"'

One still has to know that that is neo-con Donald Rumsfeld, 23 years ago. It is bloody obscure for the general reader. Only I will remember it like it was yesterday.

I remember it mainly for Jon Stewart taking the piss. But one way or another you certainly needed to be there.

[Martin Peter Clarke]

 Still don't know about The Gap.  Could it be the gap in research of known unknowns if that isn't systematized?[/b]

(i) For many here, The Gap and Rummy's Rule are something they often come across in my posts. And all anyone who is not familiar with them needs to do is to ask me to explain them.
 
(ii) The Gap revolves around the assumption [my own] that 1] there's what you think you know about the things we discuss here [pertaining in particular to value judgments and conflicting goods] and 2] there's the gap between this and all that there is to know about them going back to...to what exactly? to Pantheism? to the Big Bang? to God? to the multiverse?

Or going even further out on the metaphysical limb, to a sim world? to a dream world? to something out of the Matrix? to solipsism? 

(iii)

Reading @biggy's latest post above, he's no fucking retard.  He's a blind man - seeing is believing - looking for a shadow of doubt.  A tad gnomically.  Which I think I got previously.

What on Earth does that mean?

(iv) How about this...

When -- click -- I think of compatibilism, I always come back around to Mary above [or any woman confronting an unwanted pregnancy] who is told that she was never able not to have the abortion, but that she is still morally responsible for it.

What say you?

(v) As for being called a blind man, I have come to encounter reactions of this sort many times over the years. And I have come to conclude, in turn, that for many, what this really means is that I don't think like they do about something.

Exactly, for example. 

It's just that some here level particularly caustic and declamatory accusations regarding what I post.

The irony then being that I really do wish I could figure out a way not to think as I do!!

(i) A tad narcissistic, Old Man. We shouldn't have to ask.

(ii) The history of ideas doesn't answer is/ought questions? Nah, it never will, but there's common sense and good will. As epitomized by Jonathan Haidt's The Righteous Mind. 's all biology e'nnit? All. Morality, metaphysics, the lot. We are so grandiose over so very little. The extremes of philosophy, which are reached very rapidly, don't help in the slightest do they?

Talking of rapidly going to extremes, the further limb of 'a sim world? to a dream world? to something out of the Matrix? to solipsism?' is all bollocks isn't it. And coming back a little, our mewling and puking happens in, as a subset of, natural eternal infinity. Why, in heaven's name, bring 'God' into it?

(iii) & (v) You've rationally lost the capacity to believe non-consilient, non-consensus, non-sense, incoherent, unwarranted, unjustified, untrue beliefs. You can no longer 'see' them. You're blind to them. As you can't 'see' them, you can't believe them: seeing is believing. You naturally yearn to be wrong. You don't want to cease to exist as if you'd never been. Despite the fact we all do every night, in the little death. And I paraphrased a great line from The Police's King of Pain, you're therefore a blind man looking for a shadow of doubt.

Anadromously you said,

I still recall when it all began to sink in for me some ago. Over time I came to think myself into believing...

1] that my own existence is essentially meaningless and purposeless
2] that human morality in a No God world revolves largely around a fractured and fragmented assessment of right and wrong rooted existentially in dasein.
3] that oblivion is awaiting all of us when we die

a) All I can do "here and Now" is to search for arguments [here and elsewhere] able perhaps to convince me that these assumptions are wrong.

b) Then the part where, if particular hard determinists are correct, neither one of us is able to post freely here of our own volition anyway. So, that lets both of us off the hook.

1] Yep
2] Yep
3] Yep

a) Why? Nothing should convince you. No argument. Ever. You know this.

b) Basically, when push comes to shove, yes.

The only way your axioms could be wrong, is if Intent, The Great Intender, proved them wrong. They obviously can't and won't; they always would have done, unless our pre-transcendent existence is meaningless to them, apart from as breeding ground. Which is contrived, apologetic bollocks.

[Flannel Jesus]

So this whole Rummys Rule thing is just a reference to Donald Rumsfeld and the problem of unknown answers to unknown questions?

Nobody knows. Biggy seems incapable of saying what he means. He'll never tell you what Rummys Rule means, at best he might vaguely tell you what it "revolves around", as if that's helpful.

Er, yes he did,

'As for Rummy's Rule...

"Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don't know we don't know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tends to be the difficult ones"'

One still has to know that that is neo-con Donald Rumsfeld, 23 years ago. It is bloody obscure for the general reader. Only I will remember it like it was yesterday.

Er yes he did what?

Are you saying he defined Rummys Rule? Because that quote isn't a definition. It's a paragraph that starts by talking about reports. Is Rummys Rule the reports themselves? Why would you name a bunch of reports "a rule"? How does that make sense? How can reports be a rule?

They fucking can't. He isn't clearly laying out for anybody what he means, and quite frankly he shouldn't, he should just stop making up terms and attempt to use phrasings that normal human beings understand. "Rummys Rule" isn't it. Neither is the way he uses "click".

[Atla]

In case anyone is interested, I might actually be able to solve the Iambig mistery now. It's a bit complicated, and it uses my dubious seasonal biology knowledge (bio-Astrology).

I already established that Iambig is a high-functioning autistic, he's mildly autistic. But that's only half of the picture, here's the other half:

I was born on March 23rd.

That's the Pisces-Aries cusp. That personality can kinda go two ways, the "good" outcome is the William Shatner personality, which doesn't carry the Pisces glass wall defect (tendencies are still there but they are beaten). The "bad" outcome is the one that carries the glass wall defect. Many Pisceans and even quite a few cuspers have that one:

Pisces cons: ..., often doesn't have true empathy and true interpersonal emotions because of living alone behind some kind of mental glass wall.

Looks like Iambig is a high-functioning, mildly autistic guy with the Pisces glass wall defect. That means that he literally can't truly connect with other people. That's just not a thing in his world.

Which brings up the next question, did the glass wall defect cause his mild autism, or did these two simply coincide?

[Martin Peter Clarke]

Nobody knows. Biggy seems incapable of saying what he means. He'll never tell you what Rummys Rule means, at best he might vaguely tell you what it "revolves around", as if that's helpful.

Er, yes he did,

'As for Rummy's Rule...

"Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don't know we don't know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tends to be the difficult ones"'

One still has to know that that is neo-con Donald Rumsfeld, 23 years ago. It is bloody obscure for the general reader. Only I will remember it like it was yesterday.

Er yes he did what?

Are you saying he defined Rummys Rule? Because that quote isn't a definition. It's a paragraph that starts by talking about reports. Is Rummys Rule the reports themselves? Why would you name a bunch of reports "a rule"? How does that make sense? How can reports be a rule?

They fucking can't. He isn't clearly laying out for anybody what he means, and quite frankly he shouldn't, he should just stop making up terms and attempt to use phrasings that normal human beings understand. "Rummys Rule" isn't it. Neither is the way he uses "click".

OK. I'll ask, good cop. You ask, bad cop. Let's see how he reacts to my latest response.

[iambiguous]

Determined by Robert Sapolsky
Philip Badger questions Robert Sapolsky’s determinism.

For Hume, free will is compatible with determinism as long as our actions are not compelled by forces outside of us. In other words, if I hit you in the face then I am responsible for the act if the impetus for the action came from within me.

Years ago, I read a science fiction novel describing how, in the more or less distant future, a person went to a doctor or to a psychiatrist in which there were pods in his or her office. The doctor/shrink sat in one, the patient in the other. In other words, the doctor/shrink could actually feel the same somatic symptoms as the patient did and/or the same mental and emotional states.

How many less "failures to communicate" might there be?

Is anyone able to, perhaps, provide me with their own interpretation of Hume here in regard to a woman with an unwanted pregnancy choosing/"choosing" an abortion being told that she was never really free to opt not to abort, but she is still morally responsible for doing so.

As for the "impetus for the action", how would that be demonstrated to reflect a manifestation of human autonomy rather than an inherent autonomic sequence orchestrated entirely by the brain entirely in sync with the laws of matter.

For Hume, the antecedent causes of my urge to violence were impenetrable; but not for a person equipped with the insights of modern neurology. Indeed, work by some specialists in the field, especially Ben Libet in the 1980s, suggests that events in my brain can sometimes be used to predict my actions before I am even aware of the urge to act.

In other words, the part where women and men approach all of this as scientists, philosophers and/or theologians. And all I can do is to follow the arguments for or against autonomy given the assumptions I embed in a No God world.

And how might impenetrable above be just another word for ineffable? Here and now we simply do not grasp the brain intelligently enough to go much beyond what may well be an exchange of more or less sophisticated conjectures. The part embedded in Donald Rumsfeld's own speculation that...

https://youtu.be/REWeBzGuzCc?si=Of5X9JuYcnjGIs7V

In particular, when involving the Big Questions: "but there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we do not know we don't know."

[Flannel Jesus]

Determined by Robert Sapolsky
Philip Badger questions Robert Sapolsky’s determinism.

For Hume, free will is compatible with determinism as long as our actions are not compelled by forces outside of us. In other words, if I hit you in the face then I am responsible for the act if the impetus for the action came from within me.

Years ago, I read a science fiction novel describing how, in the more or less distant future, a person went to a doctor or to a psychiatrist in which there were pods in his or her office. The doctor/shrink sat in one, the patient in the other. In other words, the doctor/shrink could actually feel the same somatic symptoms as the patient did and/or the same mental and emotional states.

How many less "failures to communicate" might there be?

What the actual fuck are you babbling about? What does this sci fi novel have to do with the thing you quoted? Why are you quoting text just to talk about something else entirely? Please tell me, are you actually retarded?

[FlashDangerpants]

Er yes he did what?

Are you saying he defined Rummys Rule? Because that quote isn't a definition. It's a paragraph that starts by talking about reports. Is Rummys Rule the reports themselves? Why would you name a bunch of reports "a rule"? How does that make sense? How can reports be a rule?

They fucking can't. He isn't clearly laying out for anybody what he means, and quite frankly he shouldn't, he should just stop making up terms and attempt to use phrasings that normal human beings understand. "Rummys Rule" isn't it. Neither is the way he uses "click".

The fun thing is, Biggie could, if he were interested in being comprehended, have given you the link to the same page he cut and pasted that confusing paragraph from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_are ... n_unknowns

It was in 2002 and was pretty well known at the time, but you would have been somewhat too young to be part of that conversation I imagine. The "reports of something that hasn't happened" were the reports saying that Saddam Hussein hadn't continued developing weapons of mass destruction nor supplied such to terrorists. Rumsfeld was one of the hawks attempting to force an invasion of Iraq based on assumptions about such weapons, so this was his notorious attempt to say that absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence and that the only reason we can't find the WMD is because we don't know where to look for them.

But Rumsfeld went about it in a fancy way. Separating out the things that we do know we don't know from the things we don't even know that we don't know. When Rumsfeld sis it, the entire spectacle was a ruse to misdirect. I make no effort to endorse Biggie's use of the same idea, it looks equally haphazard and misused. But that's what I think of more or less every aspect of the man including all of his other ideas, and probably his trousers.

[iambiguous]

Did you notice that my gnomicism, gnomicisity?, exceeded @biggy's?

I don't know what you mean by this, so this is the perfect opportunity to show biggy an example of what a real explanation looks like. What do you mean when you say your gnomicism, gnomicisity exceeds his?

On the other hand...

What does that have to do with the text you quoted?

Which particular text? And, by all means, note the parts I got wrong by providing me with what you construe to be the one and only correct understanding.
 
Given a particular set of circumstances pertaining to your own interactions with others.

also...

...as I noted with iwannaplato, at least make an effort to compare and contrast my own  misunderstandings with your own corrections. 

So -- click -- when is he going to set me straight given particular misunderstandings on my part above?

As for Martin Peter Clarke noting, "Did you notice that my gnomicism, gnomicisity?, exceeded @biggy's?" I look forward to his explanation regarding what that means for all practical purposes given a moral conflagration of his own choosing.

[iambiguous]

So this whole Rummys Rule thing is just a reference to Donald Rumsfeld and the problem of unknown answers to unknown questions?

As though that were, what, a trivial pursuit? 

"Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don't know we don't know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tends to be the difficult ones." Donald Runsfeld

How on Earth could this not be applicable to the human brain and autonomy?! 

TIL, if you find some way to see past his towering self-regard, apparently the inner biggy is just a heroic everyman dying of fractured clicks for your sins.

Really, how pathetic is that? 

Let's try this:

Let Flash connect the dots between how he reacts to 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.

...and how his assessment of it is applicable to the scenario I come back to over and again.  In other words, the part where a woman burdened with an unwanted pregnancy has an abortion and is told that while she could never have freely opted otherwise, she is still morally responsible for doing so.

Meanwhile, the hardcore determinists will note that the compatibilists themselves are merely articulating what they were never able not to.

[iambiguous]

 Still don't know about The Gap.  Could it be the gap in research of known unknowns if that isn't systematized?[/b]

(i) For many here, The Gap and Rummy's Rule are something they often come across in my posts. And all anyone who is not familiar with them needs to do is to ask me to explain them.
 
(ii) The Gap revolves around the assumption [my own] that 1] there's what you think you know about the things we discuss here [pertaining in particular to value judgments and conflicting goods] and 2] there's the gap between this and all that there is to know about them going back to...to what exactly? to Pantheism? to the Big Bang? to God? to the multiverse?

Or going even further out on the metaphysical limb, to a sim world? to a dream world? to something out of the Matrix? to solipsism? 

(iii)

Reading @biggy's latest post above, he's no fucking retard.  He's a blind man - seeing is believing - looking for a shadow of doubt.  A tad gnomically.  Which I think I got previously.

What on Earth does that mean?

(iv) How about this...

When -- click -- I think of compatibilism, I always come back around to Mary above [or any woman confronting an unwanted pregnancy] who is told that she was never able not to have the abortion, but that she is still morally responsible for it.

What say you?

(v) As for being called a blind man, I have come to encounter reactions of this sort many times over the years. And I have come to conclude, in turn, that for many, what this really means is that I don't think like they do about something.

Exactly, for example. 

It's just that some here level particularly caustic and declamatory accusations regarding what I post.

The irony then being that I really do wish I could figure out a way not to think as I do!!

(i) A tad narcissistic, Old Man.  We shouldn't have to ask.

Over time here I have noted and explained what I mean by The Gap, Rummy's Rules and the Benjamin Button Syndrome. Three crucial components embedded "here and now" in my own moral and political philosophy. 

And of course we should ask others about things they post here that we do not understand.

(ii) The history of ideas doesn't answer is/ought questions?  Nah, it never will, but there's common sense and good will.

See, there you go again: averring that is/ought questions will never be answered...as though this is actually something a mere mortal in a No God world can know! 

Now, I don't subscribe anymore to objective morality. But I would never argue that those here who do believe in it -- re God, deontology, idealism, ideology, biological imperatives, etc. -- are necessarily wrong. On the contrary, I'm always hoping that one day someone will succeed in deconstructing my own truly grim assumptions here.

On the other hand, where is the definitive argument, one bursting at the seams with all kinds of definitive evidence, able to demonstrate one way or another [and once and for all] the relationship between "I" and the human brain.

As epitomized by Jonathan Haidt's The Righteous Mind. 's all biology e'nnit?  All.  Morality, metaphysics, the lot.  We are so grandiose over so very little.  The extremes of philosophy, which are reached very rapidly, don't help in the slightest do they?

Okay, connect the dots between what you are trying to convey philosophically here and the manner in which it is pertinent to your own interactions with others socially, politically and economically. 

Talking of rapidly going to extremes, the further limb of 'a sim world? to a dream world? to something out of the Matrix? to solipsism?' is all bollocks isn't it. And coming back a little, our mewling and puking happens in, as a subset of, natural eternal infinity.  Why, in heaven's name, bring 'God' into it?

Same thing, in my view. It's not what you articulate here that I react to so much as the manner in which you seem utterly -- arrogantly? -- convinced that how you understand these things really is the optimal or the only rational assessment. 

As for this... 

(iii) & (v) You've rationally lost the capacity to believe non-consilient, non-consensus, non-sense, incoherent, unwarranted, unjustified, untrue beliefs.  You can no longer 'see' them. You're blind to them.  As you can't 'see' them, you can't believe them: seeing is believing.  You naturally yearn to be wrong.  You don't want to cease to exist as if you'd never been.  Despite the fact we all do every night, in the little death.  And I paraphrased a great line from The Police's King of Pain, you're therefore a blind man looking for a shadow of doubt.

As is often the case reading your posts, I'm not really sure at all what the points you subscribe to even mean. Bring them down to Earth please.

How about this...

In regard to a particular moral conflagration such as abortion or gun control, or homosexuality, how would you differentiate what is in fact objectively applicable to all of us from what seems to reflect instead the manner in which I root human morality in ever evolving historical and cultural and experiential contexts. Moral relativism, situation ethics, I'm right from my side, you're right from yours.

Anadromously you said,

"Anadromous: migrating from salt water to spawn in fresh water"

So, we're salmon now?

I still recall when it all began to sink in for me some ago. Over time I came to think myself into believing...

1] that my own existence is essentially meaningless and purposeless
2] that human morality in a No God world revolves largely around a fractured and fragmented assessment of right and wrong rooted existentially in dasein.
3] that oblivion is awaiting all of us when we die

a) All I can do "here and Now" is to search for arguments [here and elsewhere] able perhaps to convince me that these assumptions are wrong.

b) Then the part where, if particular hard determinists are correct, neither one of us is able to post freely here of our own volition anyway. So, that lets both of us off the hook.

1] Yep
2] Yep
3] Yep

Maybe, maybe, maybe is more my own prejudiced frame of mind here.

a) Why? Nothing should convince you. No argument. Ever. You know this.

No, I don't know this at all. Instead, what I recall are all of the times in the past when I was convinced I had found the One True Path...over and again as new experiences, new relationships and access to new information and knowledge prompted me to change my mind.

b) Basically, when push comes to shove, yes.

On the other hand, when push comes to shove, how would we go about demonstrating something like this? Posting here for instance. Push coming to shove, where does the autonomic brain end and the autonomous brain begin?

But then back to a point I have no idea regarding the meaning of: 

The only way your axioms could be wrong, is if Intent, The Great Intender, proved them wrong.  They obviously can't and won't; they always would have done, unless our pre-transcendent existence is meaningless to them, apart from as breeding ground.  Which is contrived, apologetic bollocks.

My axioms? No way I would call them that. 

[iambiguous]

Determined by Robert Sapolsky
Philip Badger questions Robert Sapolsky’s determinism.

For Hume, free will is compatible with determinism as long as our actions are not compelled by forces outside of us. In other words, if I hit you in the face then I am responsible for the act if the impetus for the action came from within me.

Years ago, I read a science fiction novel describing how, in the more or less distant future, a person went to a doctor or to a psychiatrist in which there were pods in his or her office. The doctor/shrink sat in one, the patient in the other. In other words, the doctor/shrink could actually feel the same somatic symptoms as the patient did and/or the same mental and emotional states.

How many less "failures to communicate" might there be?

What the actual fuck are you babbling about? What does this sci fi novel have to do with the thing you quoted? Why are you quoting text just to talk about something else entirely? Please tell me, are you actually retarded?

Sounds like a personal problem to me. I suspect his reaction to me may well revolve around the extent to which he is becoming increasingly more convinced that my frame of mind may perhaps become his/her own someday.

I've been there myself a few times so I know what is at stake.

[iambiguous]

But Rumsfeld went about it in a fancy way. Separating out the things that we do know we don't know from the things we don't even know that we don't know. When Rumsfeld sis it, the entire spectacle was a ruse to misdirect. I make no effort to endorse Biggie's use of the same idea, it looks equally haphazard and misused. But that's what I think of more or less every aspect of the man including all of his other ideas, and probably his trousers.

Again, in regard to the psycho-somatic relationship between the human brain and human autonomy, how could Rumsfeld's observation above not be profoundly applicable?

The irony itself revolving around the fact that the brain is given the task of figuring itself out!

[Flannel Jesus]

Determined by Robert Sapolsky
Philip Badger questions Robert Sapolsky’s determinism.



Years ago, I read a science fiction novel describing how, in the more or less distant future, a person went to a doctor or to a psychiatrist in which there were pods in his or her office. The doctor/shrink sat in one, the patient in the other. In other words, the doctor/shrink could actually feel the same somatic symptoms as the patient did and/or the same mental and emotional states.

How many less "failures to communicate" might there be?

What the actual fuck are you babbling about? What does this sci fi novel have to do with the thing you quoted? Why are you quoting text just to talk about something else entirely? Please tell me, are you actually retarded?

Sounds like a personal problem to me. I suspect his reaction to me may well revolve around the extent to which he is becoming increasingly more convinced that my frame of mind may perhaps become his/her own someday.

I've been there myself a few times so I know what is at stake.

I don't even know what your frame of mind is because you write like a child still. How old are you? You write like you've never seen red pen on an essay of yours before. You're too old to write like this man, get better.