Philosophy Now Forum

BigMike wrote: ↑Tue Sep 06, 2022 4:06 pm

Belinda wrote: ↑Tue Sep 06, 2022 3:58 pm

bobmax wrote: ↑Tue Sep 06, 2022 1:33 pm

I don't think there is really awareness in humans and not in animals.
Perhaps there is greater clarity.

But it doesn't always benefit humans.
I have seen animals more sensitive than many men...

I think true freedom is real and absolute.
That is, what we truly are is absolutely free.
Since Being = Truth = Freedom.

The non-existence of individual free will shows our actual freedom.
And this can be understood when we are taken by compassion.

Humans, as far as is known, are the only animals that can use symbolic language to abstract ideas from experiences, and subsequently create new ideas.

Washoe was the first non-human to learn American Sign Language. She was a common chimpanzee.

Impressive as Washoe , and ASL was and is, it's very doubtful that her ability to form sentences is equivalent to abstracting ideas from other abstracted ideas.

Belinda wrote: ↑Tue Sep 06, 2022 4:09 pm

BigMike wrote: ↑Tue Sep 06, 2022 4:06 pm

Belinda wrote: ↑Tue Sep 06, 2022 3:58 pm

Humans, as far as is known, are the only animals that can use symbolic language to abstract ideas from experiences, and subsequently create new ideas.

Washoe was the first non-human to learn American Sign Language. She was a common chimpanzee.

Impressive as Washoe , and ASL was and is, it's very doubtful that her ability to form sentences is equivalent to abstracting ideas from other abstracted ideas.

Washoe may have passed the Turing test if you had administered it to her. However, I don't know. My remark was meant to be more inquisitive than argumentative.

BigMike wrote: ↑Tue Sep 06, 2022 2:33 pm

bobmax wrote: ↑Tue Sep 06, 2022 1:33 pm I don't think there is really awareness in humans and not in animals.
Perhaps there is greater clarity.

But it doesn't always benefit humans.
I have seen animals more sensitive than many men...

I think true freedom is real and absolute.
That is, what we truly are is absolutely free.
Since Being = Truth = Freedom.

The non-existence of individual free will shows our actual freedom.
And this can be understood when we are taken by compassion.

Encyclopaedia Britannica: "Free will, in philosophy and science, the supposed power or capacity of humans to make decisions or perform actions independently of any prior event or state of the universe."

The adjective "free" indicates that the decisions and actions in question are the result of a "primus motor," or "first mover" modifying the universe's state. But the universe's state can be altered only by adding or removing energy, momentum, electric charge, or angular momentum from the system.
I believe that your definition of "free" differs from the commonly accepted one, and that you are therefore referring to an entirely different concept. Would you like to expand or specify? Your claim that "Being = Truth = Freedom" is not particularly illuminating.

I think this definition of free will is equivalent to the one I propose: "Only what is an unconditional origin of events is free."

But isn't the unconditional origin the real being?

Being is not perhaps what is conditioned only by itself?

So if I ask myself when I am free, then I can say that I am free when:
"I decide what I want because I owe it as this I am".

That is, my freedom is the coincidence of my will with my duty, and this coincidence is my very being.

Freedom necessarily expresses my being.
Being = Freedom.

And since Being is True Being...
Being = Truth = Freedom

Belinda wrote: ↑Tue Sep 06, 2022 3:58 pm Humans, as far as is known, are the only animals that can use symbolic language to abstract ideas from experiences, and subsequently create new ideas.

There can be no substantial difference between anything in the world.
Of this I am convinced.

Truth is necessarily everywhere.

There is always a quantitative difference, never a qualitative one.

My dog, my chickens, even the annoying insects, are nothing other than me.

Greater or less complexity, greater or lesser rationality, but there is never a difference of essence
This requires the One.
The negation of the negation.

bobmax wrote: ↑Tue Sep 06, 2022 5:51 pm There can be no substantial difference between anything in the world.
Of this I am convinced.

I doubt it.

If you did believe that, it would mean you don't believe anything exists...at all ...because everything has its own distictive features, identity and essence, and those are how we know it's one thing and not another.

That which has no difference from everything else is a "thing" that simply does not exist: being undetectible from the surrounding matter, it's unlocatable, invisible, unknowable.

bobmax wrote: ↑Tue Sep 06, 2022 5:29 pm I think this definition of free will is equivalent to the one I propose: "Only what is an unconditional origin of events is free."

Wouldn't "an unconditional origin of events" necessitate pushing some atoms where they would have otherwise been at rest or holding them back where they would have otherwise been in motion? If you respond in the affirmative, you essentially refute Newton's first law of motion, would you not agree? If you respond negatively, then you are not, in fact, "an unconditional origin of events" are you?

So if I ask myself when I am free, then I can say that I am free when:
"I decide what I want because I owe it as this I am".

Arthur Schopenhauer once remarked, "A man can do what he wants, but not want what he wants." You assert that you can decide what you want, but you do not address the central issue: can you actually want what you want?

That is, my freedom is the coincidence of my will with my duty, and this coincidence is my very being.

But again, "the coincidence of my will with my duty" doesn't mean that my will is free, does it?

BigMike wrote: ↑Tue Sep 06, 2022 7:04 am

iambiguous wrote: ↑Mon Sep 05, 2022 11:25 pm Explain how in a wholly determined world where Jane is flushed down the toilet, that is, what, interchangeable with a world where Jane is around to contribute of her own volition her own thoughts on the matter?

Those two worlds are not interchangeable. Should they be?

That's not the point for the truly hardcore determinists. Their point is that however anyone of us answers your question, we were never able not to answer it other than as the laws of matter encompassed in our material brains compel us to.

Again, from my frame of mind, you pose the question as an advocate of free will would. As though you accept that I or others can opt to think it through of our own volition and sustain an exchange as, say, libertarians might?

But...

Given that I am no less ignorant regarding where "iambiguous" fits into 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.

...let alone where the "human condition" here on Earth fits into the explanation for existence itself, I recognize that while some posts here are more rather than less educated guesses, all of our speculations are really closer to "wild-ass guesses" given Rummy's Rule...

"There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know."

...in a No God world.

Sure, I'll always champion those philosophers among us who take a stab at thinking it through...it's all fascinating stuff to say the least.

Instead, what I tend to react to are those who come off [to me] as objectivists. As I noted to phyllo, they project this certainty that seems to suggest that others are fools if they don't think the same.

iambiguous wrote: ↑Tue Sep 06, 2022 7:07 pm

BigMike wrote: ↑Tue Sep 06, 2022 7:04 am

iambiguous wrote: ↑Mon Sep 05, 2022 11:25 pm Explain how in a wholly determined world where Jane is flushed down the toilet, that is, what, interchangeable with a world where Jane is around to contribute of her own volition her own thoughts on the matter?

Those two worlds are not interchangeable. Should they be?

That's not the point for the truly hardcore determinists. Their point is that however anyone of us answers your question, we were never able not to answer it other than as the laws of matter encompassed in our material brains compel us to.

Again, from my frame of mind, you pose the question as an advocate of free will would. As though you accept that I or others can opt to think it through of our own volition and sustain an exchange as, say, libertarians might?

I am a hard determinist, in contrast to compatibilists who are soft determinists. The hardcore determinists to whom you refer are, in my view, correct in their fundamental claims.
They don't seem to fully understand, though, that the brain is flexible and always changing, and that we've learned, even if by accident, how to shape its growth in ways that may benefit us, through study and repetition. Even if this process is "determined", we know that people are more likely to learn and change when stimulated and taught rationally by others. The extra work is not a waste of time as that change would not have happened without it. Again, though, the fact that some people care enough to put in the extra work to discuss with others, and others don't, is also "determined". Nevertheless, these hardliners can also be persuaded to be less fatalistic than they appear. I therefore continue to preach.

What exactly is astonishing about determinists having a discussion?

BigMike wrote: ↑Tue Sep 06, 2022 9:32 pm

iambiguous wrote: ↑Tue Sep 06, 2022 7:07 pm

BigMike wrote: ↑Tue Sep 06, 2022 7:04 am
Those two worlds are not interchangeable. Should they be?

That's not the point for the truly hardcore determinists. Their point is that however anyone of us answers your question, we were never able not to answer it other than as the laws of matter encompassed in our material brains compel us to.

Again, from my frame of mind, you pose the question as an advocate of free will would. As though you accept that I or others can opt to think it through of our own volition and sustain an exchange as, say, libertarians might?

I am a hard determinist, in contrast to compatibilists who are soft determinists. The hardcore determinists to whom you refer are, in my view, correct in their fundamental claims.
They don't seem to fully understand, though, that the brain is flexible and always changing, and that we've learned, even if by accident, how to shape its growth in ways that may benefit us, through study and repetition. Even if this process is "determined", we know that people are more likely to learn and change when stimulated and taught rationally by others. The extra work is not a waste of time as that change would not have happened without it. Again, though, the fact that some people care enough to put in the extra work to discuss with others, and others don't, is also "determined". Nevertheless, these hardliners can also be persuaded to be less fatalistic than they appear. I therefore continue to preach.

If the soft determinists don't fully understand but the hard determinists do, how is this too not just another inherent manifestation of the only possible reality in the only possible world?

How can some learn or care more than others -- about anything -- and it not be embedded in the same fated, destined world too?

Though, sure, you may be making a really good point here that my own material brain is still compelled by the laws of matter not to get.

But that just takes me back to all of us...all of us basically being in the same boat: still ignorant as to how [exactly] to fit "I" into 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.

BigMike wrote: ↑Tue Sep 06, 2022 6:15 pm

bobmax wrote: ↑Tue Sep 06, 2022 5:29 pm I think this definition of free will is equivalent to the one I propose: "Only what is an unconditional origin of events is free."

Wouldn't "an unconditional origin of events" necessitate pushing some atoms where they would have otherwise been at rest or holding them back where they would have otherwise been in motion? If you respond in the affirmative, you essentially refute Newton's first law of motion, would you not agree? If you respond negatively, then you are not, in fact, "an unconditional origin of events" are you?

So if I ask myself when I am free, then I can say that I am free when:
"I decide what I want because I owe it as this I am".

Arthur Schopenhauer once remarked, "A man can do what he wants, but not want what he wants." You assert that you can decide what you want, but you do not address the central issue: can you actually want what you want?

That is, my freedom is the coincidence of my will with my duty, and this coincidence is my very being.

But again, "the coincidence of my will with my duty" doesn't mean that my will is free, does it?

As a being distinct from all else, I am not an unconditional origin.

But be careful!
Since I am not an unconditional origin I just am not.

This non-being of mine is expressed in not even being my will.
And in fact I can't want to want.
But I want or don't want it doesn't depend on me.

And I'm not even my love.
Because I can't even want to love, but I love or don't love it's not up to me.

So I'm not.
I exist but I am not.

Mine is a non-being.

But if my will truly expresses what I am, and expresses it when it coincides with my duty, then I really am!
And because I am, I am free.

To be or not to be.

iambiguous wrote: ↑Tue Sep 06, 2022 9:50 pm If the soft determinists don't fully understand but the hard determinists do, how is this too not just another inherent manifestation of the only possible reality in the only possible world?

How can some learn or care more than others -- about anything -- and it not be embedded in the same fated, destined world too?

It is "just another inherent manifestation of the only possible reality in the only possible world". And it is "embedded in the same fated, destined world". That's why I said that "the hardcore determinists to whom you refer are, in my view, correct in their fundamental claims."

Though, sure, you may be making a really good point here that my own material brain is still compelled by the laws of matter not to get.

But that just takes me back to all of us...all of us basically being in the same boat: still ignorant as to how [exactly] to fit "I" into 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.

Well, it's hard to answer many of the questions you raise above. We can't fully answer them yet. But let's put one brick on top of the other. I am confident we will eventually answer them all. Every day, we make huge strides in our understanding of consciousness.
The fact that we cannot answer all questions right now, however, does not mean that we should disregard everything we already know to be true: science. And any hypothesis that contradicts what we already know to be true, such as the notion that people have free will, must be rejected.

bobmax wrote: ↑Tue Sep 06, 2022 10:06 pm As a being distinct from all else, I am not an unconditional origin.

But be careful!
Since I am not an unconditional origin I just am not.

This non-being of mine is expressed in not even being my will.
And in fact I can't want to want.
But I want or don't want it doesn't depend on me.

And I'm not even my love.
Because I can't even want to love, but I love or don't love it's not up to me.

So I'm not.
I exist but I am not.

Mine is a non-being.

But if my will truly expresses what I am, and expresses it when it coincides with my duty, then I really am!
And because I am, I am free.

To be or not to be.

The entirety of this is well beyond my pay grade.

phyllo wrote: ↑Tue Sep 06, 2022 1:15 pm

Seriously, folks, someone please explain how this makes any sense at all. He's talking to Jane because in a free-will world Susan convinced Mary not to shred her into oblivion. In a world where Mary was never able to opt not to abort, Jane is on her way back to star-stuff.

You wrote it that way without any reasons for why it has to happen that way.

Like you, I don't know why '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' unfolded as it did.

For all "I" know, IC's Christian God really did plant a soul in my brain on the day I was conceived.

Neither, I suspect, do pregnant women agonizing over an abortion have access to the whole truth. Again, that's why it has stumped scientists and philosophers now for thousands of years.

Just not counting the hardcore objectivists among us here who insist that they really have nailed it. Well, if only in a "world of words".

phyllo wrote: ↑Tue Sep 06, 2022 1:15 pmSince Mary has the same history, the same motivations, in both worlds, it's reasonable to think that both Marys would come to the same decision. Either both to abort or both to give birth.

But you never even consider those cases.

But I'm still convinced that whatever I consider, I was never able to freely opt not to consider. Only my "take" on this ever and always provides me with a loophole: admitting that given "the gap" and Rummy's Rule, going back to my complete ignorance regarding the existence of existence itself, I'm always flat out acknowledging -- compelled or not -- that I couldn't actually demonstrate that what "I" think here all rational men and women are obligated to think as well.

When I note from time to time "unless of course I'm wrong" about questions like this, trust me: I really, really, really mean it.

phyllo wrote: ↑Tue Sep 06, 2022 1:15 pm Here is another opportunity for you. How does Mary's 'free-will mojo' make her decide something different than her identical determined twin? What thought pops into her head that produces a change?

Huh?

How is that not embedded in 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'

Please. The same brain creating the thoughts and the emotions in the dream is there creating them in the wide-awake world. Only the wide-awake brain creates the psychological illusion of freely choosing them.

phyllo wrote: ↑Tue Sep 06, 2022 1:15 pm Your dreaming brain also produces sensations (sights, sounds, smells, tastes) which are not there. It's not real.

Tell that to yourself in the dream. What's mindboggling is still how the brain itself is creating these worlds "all by itself". So, who is to say what it can't also create "all by itself" in the waking world.

phyllo wrote: ↑Tue Sep 06, 2022 1:15 pm I see no reason to discuss dreaming in a thread about free-will, determinism, or compatibilism.

Well, here and now, I see no reason why you were never able not to see that.

Only, as with henry, and IC and BM, phyllo inflects this arrogant certainty that how he understands all this really, really, really does encompass it.

phyllo wrote: ↑Tue Sep 06, 2022 1:15 pm If I'm discussing something in a philosophy forum(or elsewhere), I take a position and I give reasons for it.

If you disagree, you state your reasons for why you disagree, why my reasons are faulty.

Then I reply with more reasons about what you wrote/said.

And it goes on, back and forth.

Taking a position on an issue is not "arrogant certainty".

Nobody has to preface every statement with "I might be wrong".

Click.

Yes, that is one way to think about it. And I am always the first to admit that how "I" think about it is derived largely from my own subjective prejudices derived further from the existential parameters of the life I've lived. I construe an "arrogant certainty" from some here that you do not.

Fair enough.

phyllo wrote: ↑Tue Sep 06, 2022 9:41 pm What exactly is astonishing about determinists having a discussion?

Again, most of us, in using words like "I was astonished by his behavior", are assuming that the astonishment they felt was an autonomous reaction on their part to the behavior. And I'm no exception. For example, I'm often astonished here by some of the posts I read. And "intuitively" I'm convinced that this reaction is in fact derived from my own capacity to react freely. No one is putting a gun to my head and demanding that I react as they tell me too or else.

On the other hand, over the years, in exploring all of this scientifically and philosophically, I have come upon arguments that convince me that all of this is just the "psychological illusion of freedom", i.e. that human psychology itself is wholly compelled by the laws of matter.

Then back to this:

Imagine the universe being such that there is a free will part and a wholly determined part.

Those from the free will part are hovering above planet Earth in the wholly determined part. They note that over and over and over again you and I express astonishment from time to time about any number of things.

But then they remind themselves that we are in fact compelled by brains wholly in sync with the laws of matter to feel this astonishment...and that we are not in fact feeling this astonishment freely.