Philosophy Now Forum

You've cracked it buggy, case closed. Enjoy your despair

Flannel Jesus wrote: ↑Wed Feb 01, 2023 8:05 am

iambiguous wrote: ↑Wed Feb 01, 2023 4:19 am
And when someone's brain wholly in sync with the laws of matter compels them to Google it...is that an example of fatalism or determinism?

Determinism

Okay, how would fatalism be different here if it was you Googling something?

iambiguous wrote: ↑Wed Feb 01, 2023 4:19 am The point some hard determinists argue is there is nothing at all that we think, feel, say or do, that we were ever able to freely opt not to.

Flannel Jesus wrote: ↑Wed Feb 01, 2023 8:05 amThere's a recursive nature to the proposition that you can "freely opt" to think or feel everything you think or feel, which makes the proposition itself dead in the water. Do you see the recursiveness, the infinite regress, yourself? I can explain it if you don't.

No, what I react to here is yet another "intellectual assessment" that I'm trying to grasp in terms of an actual existential instance of someone Googling something. Or, here, posting something. How is your point applicable to that? How would you go about actually demonstrating scientifically, experimentally, empirically, phenomenologically etc., whether you posted what you did of your own free will or not?

iambiguous wrote: ↑Wed Feb 01, 2023 4:19 am At least until brain scientists are able to discover how and why brain matter itself is, in some measure, exempt from the laws of matter that clearly seems applicable to all other matter.

Flannel Jesus wrote: ↑Wed Feb 01, 2023 8:05 amDo you think brain matter is exempt? I definitely don't. I don't have any expectation that any scientist will discover otherwise - but I'll be listening if they do!

More to the point [mine] how do I pin down definitively whether what I do think now I did think of my own volition...or was instead only ever able to think given the manner in which some determinists suggest that nothing that I think, feel, say and do is not fated or destined or determined to be.

And that any attempt on my part [or your part] to make a distinction between them is in turn but a necessary manifestation of the only possible reality.

iambiguous wrote: ↑Thu Feb 02, 2023 7:29 pm

Flannel Jesus wrote: ↑Wed Feb 01, 2023 8:05 am

iambiguous wrote: ↑Wed Feb 01, 2023 4:19 am
And when someone's brain wholly in sync with the laws of matter compels them to Google it...is that an example of fatalism or determinism?

Determinism

Okay, how would fatalism be different here if it was you Googling something?

Without googling, here's the difference to me.

Fatalism says the path doesn't matter because the destination is the same.

Determinism says the destination is the same only because the path is the same.

iambiguous wrote: ↑Thu Feb 02, 2023 7:29 pm

iambiguous wrote: ↑Wed Feb 01, 2023 4:19 am The point some hard determinists argue is there is nothing at all that we think, feel, say or do, that we were ever able to freely opt not to.

Flannel Jesus wrote: ↑Wed Feb 01, 2023 8:05 amThere's a recursive nature to the proposition that you can "freely opt" to think or feel everything you think or feel, which makes the proposition itself dead in the water. Do you see the recursiveness, the infinite regress, yourself? I can explain it if you don't.

No, what I react to here is yet another "intellectual assessment" that I'm trying to grasp in terms of an actual existential instance of someone Googling something. Or, here, posting something. How is your point applicable to that? How would you go about actually demonstrating scientifically, experimentally, empirically, phenomenologically etc., whether you posted what you did of your own free will or not?

You're putting the cart before the horse. The conversation hasn't naturally led to that question being meaningful. You've gotta warm me up, give me some foreplay first.

iambiguous wrote: ↑Wed Feb 01, 2023 4:19 am At least until brain scientists are able to discover how and why brain matter itself is, in some measure, exempt from the laws of matter that clearly seems applicable to all other matter.

Flannel Jesus wrote: ↑Wed Feb 01, 2023 8:05 amDo you think brain matter is exempt? I definitely don't. I don't have any expectation that any scientist will discover otherwise - but I'll be listening if they do!

More to the point [mine] how do I pin down definitively whether what I do think now I did think of my own volition...or was instead only ever able to think given the manner in which some determinists suggest that nothing that I think, feel, say and do is not fated or destined or determined to be.

And that any attempt on my part [or your part] to make a distinction between them is in turn but a necessary manifestation of the only possible reality.

You keep bringing up this little loophole you found. Can you explain why this loophole is important to you?

The problem with you repeatedly asking for scientific proof of these things is that, once you understand why compatibilist think what they think, you'll understand why "scientific proof" of it isn't even relevant.

But you have to listen to their positions first.

Flannel Jesus wrote: ↑Wed Feb 01, 2023 9:21 am

Flannel Jesus wrote: ↑Wed Feb 01, 2023 8:05 am

iambiguous wrote: ↑Wed Feb 01, 2023 4:19 am The point some hard determinists argue is there is nothing at all that we think, feel, say or do, that we were ever able to freely opt not to.

There's a recursive nature to the proposition that you can "freely opt" to think or feel everything you think or feel, which makes the proposition itself dead in the water. Do you see the recursiveness, the infinite regress, yourself? I can explain it if you don't.

I'm gonna lay out an example, because this is important.

So, I don't necessarily disagree that you can choose how you feel or choose what you think, to some degree, but that choice is... fundamentally limited. Let me demonstrate.

So here's an internally narrated example of me making a choice to change how I feel - every choice is indicated by --:

I wake up
I feel groggy
I don't like feeling groggy
I want to change that
I know what will make me feel less groggy, a shower
-- So I choose to
-- go take a shower
<And after the shower I don't feel groggy anymore, so I chose to change how I feel>

So, here, I made a choice to go take a shower, so I changed my own feelings, right?

BUT, my choice was the direct consequences of thoughts I didn't choose. I didn't choose to think "I want to change that". I didn't choose to think "a shower will make me feel less groggy". These thoughts just happened to me. I thought them, I didn't choose to think them, the thoughts occurred to me, happened to me.

But you object, perhaps. Perhaps you say, no no, for me it was a choice to think I want to change that!

So I respond, you wanted to want to change that? Okay, so that just adds another thought to the chain of thoughts

Okay, but imagine the same thing. Only this time it's in a dream. Now, I don't know about your dreams, but in mine, it's not at all unusual for me to "experience" something analogous to waking up groggy and deciding to take a shower in order to flush that feeling away. I think and feel and say and do things in the dream all the time just as I do in the waking world. In fact, I can't count all of the times I woke up absolutely startled that it was "just a dream!"

My brain created these "realities" entirely on its own. Does my brain create the realities I experience in the waking world entirely on its own as well? So, sure, I tell others, link me to an argument that explains why these realities are entirely different.

And, no doubt about it, there's a part of me no less convinced that "of course they are different!" Only how do I go about demonstrating that?

And whatever unfolds "in your head" when you wake up feeling groggy, you either have some measure of autonomous control over that or you don't. However you explain it above doesn't make that go away. What you think, what you don't think, what you think you don't think...it's all unfolding like so many dominoes set up by your brain wholly in sync with the laws of matter.

Only human brain matter is nothing short of mind-boggling itself. Then back to your brain making sense of 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, indeed, back to paraphrasing Schopenhauer:

"A man can surely do what he wills/wants to do, but he cannot determine what he wills/wants to do."

Then however far back you take this. All the way back to the Big Bang? All the way back to a complete understanding of existence itself?

Arthur Schopenhauer wrote:Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills.

Flannel Jesus wrote: ↑Wed Feb 01, 2023 9:21 amThis is a problem whether determinism is true or not. Determinism neither harms nor helps this problem. Indeterminism neither harms nor helps this problem. Even dualism neither harms nor helps this problem. Whatever choice you make, eventually you can trace it to a thought that you didn't choose to have.

Okay, but if determinism is not true and "somehow" matter did acquire biological life on Earth evolving into self-conscious human beings, then while the problem may remain, Jane is not aborted and is around to discuss that problem with us here and now.

That's the part I wish to focus in on. Your "analytical" assessment above pertaining to the existential reality of human beings choosing behaviors that can have profound consequences for all of us. Consequences that can be discussed in terms of moral responsibility in places like this. What of moral responsibility in a world where Jane was never not going to be aborted? How can Mary be held morally accountable given that?

Flannel Jesus wrote: ↑Wed Feb 01, 2023 9:21 amI'm not denying we can make choices, and I'm not denying we can choose to some extent what to feel or think, but if we do choose that, that chain of choices can't be infinite. We can't choose every thought and every feeling back for eternity, the choices started somewhere, and that means they had to start with thoughts we didn't choose.

I'm less interested in what you ascribe to or deny in regard to the consequences of human interactions and more in how you would go about demonstrating that those interactions are the embodiment of free will or the embodiment of the laws of matter such that the human brain itself is just more of it.

And if you want to go back to what we didn't choose you can start with the fact that we didn't choose to be born. But did our mother choose of her own free will to make that the case?

You're going too fast for my brother, you're asking questions about an idea that you haven't even had fully explained to you yet. You gotta understand the full idea before it's worth while even trying to approach the questions.

The first idea you've apparently just acknowledged above is that, no matter what, whether determinism or indeterminism or even mind dualism is true, no matter what, we can always trace any choice we made back to a state of mind or a thought that happened to us, that we didn't choose.

I want to just verify with you first that you understand and agree with that.

And then I want you to answer this: do you think we have moral responsibility and/or free will in an indeterministic universe?

BigMike wrote: ↑Thu Feb 02, 2023 6:16 pm

phyllo wrote: ↑Thu Feb 02, 2023 6:11 pm

However, according to determinism, non-physical mental states cannot cause or even influence physical states.

That's not a requirement of determinism.

Determinism can be purely physical, purely non-physical or a combination or physical and non-physical.

The only requirement is that prior events/states produce a necessary effect.

One can say that a book is physical but the message contained in the book is non-physical. A person reacts to the message, not the physical book.

In fact, it's counterproductive to try to link this reaction to physical forces and subatomic particles.

Are you implying that visual experiences, such as reading a book, are not physical and do not involve the exchange of energy that excites photosensitive cones and rods in the retina, resulting in the transmission of an electric nerve pulse (action potential) via neurons to the brain?

You haven't responded to his explicit point: determinism is not a stance on substance but on causation.

Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Fri Feb 03, 2023 8:21 am

BigMike wrote: ↑Thu Feb 02, 2023 6:16 pm

phyllo wrote: ↑Thu Feb 02, 2023 6:11 pm That's not a requirement of determinism.

Determinism can be purely physical, purely non-physical or a combination or physical and non-physical.

The only requirement is that prior events/states produce a necessary effect.

One can say that a book is physical but the message contained in the book is non-physical. A person reacts to the message, not the physical book.

In fact, it's counterproductive to try to link this reaction to physical forces and subatomic particles.

Are you implying that visual experiences, such as reading a book, are not physical and do not involve the exchange of energy that excites photosensitive cones and rods in the retina, resulting in the transmission of an electric nerve pulse (action potential) via neurons to the brain?

You haven't responded to his explicit point: determinism is not a stance on substance but on causation.

Causation refers to the relationship between an event (the cause) and a second event (the effect), where the second event results from the first. In other words, causality is the connection between a cause and its effect, implying that the cause led to the effect. Without the cause, the effect would not have happened.

What, then, is causality if not an interaction? Feel free to provide an example of a "purely non-physical or a combination of physical and non-physical" cause.

BigMike wrote: ↑Fri Feb 03, 2023 9:46 am What, then, is causality if not an interaction? Feel free to provide an example of a "purely non-physical or a combination of physical and non-physical" cause.

Again, you're trying to shift the burden. If I argue that the non-physical can affect the physical. Then your challenge makes sense. I am not, nor have I made that statement or made that kind of argument.

Again, I am arguing against you ruling out the possibility in my other post in response to you.
And in the post you just responded to I am pointing out that he is correct, determinism does not entail a stand on substance. And in the other post I argued that the term 'physical' has a shifting meaning. It now just means real.

If I point to a phenomenon, you'll say it's physical. But that doesn't mean anything anymore, because it keep expanding. Now it includes dark matter and dark energy which we don't know what they are made of.

Demonstrate for me that dark energy is physical.

Whenever they figure out what dark matter and energy are, they will call it physical, regardless of its properties or lack thereof.

If you told a medieval theologian that billions of neutrinos are passing through us right now with out touching us, they'd wonder about your sense of what category you are arguing against when you consider them an example of it. And neutrinos are less ephemeral than particals in superposition or vitual particles or, hey, how about neutrinos and other antimatter moving backwards in time.

Looks like big mike's point there is that, if it interacts with the physical world at all, it's physical by definition.I suppose there's something to that, it's not without merit.

For me, I can easily see how two different "realms" can interact, and interact deterministically, despite not being made of the same stuff, and the reason I can see that is because I can program it. Believe it or not, I've actually programmed a universe before, and if I felt compelled to I could program a synchronized universe, made of "different stuff", with a small surface area of bi-directional casualty between the universes.

So the idea of dualism isn't pure nonsense to me, because I can conceive of how to achieve something like it myself. My problems with dualism are that it lacks evidence, and it doesn't actually solve any problem. What it does is it takes a mystery, and it boxes up that mystery and puts it into a mystery realm, made up of a mystery substance.

You can't solve a mystery by just saying "it happens in a mystery realm." That's not a solution, that's just a new mystery to box up the old mystery.

Flannel Jesus wrote: ↑Fri Feb 03, 2023 10:11 am Looks like big mike's point there is that, if it interacts with the physical world at all, it's physical by definition.I suppose there's something to that, it's not without merit.

Sure, but then is a claim about substance?

For me, I can easily see how two different "realms" can interact, and interact deterministically, despite not being made of the same stuff, and the reason I can see that is because I can program it. Believe it or not, I've actually programmed a universe before, and if I felt compelled to I could program a synchronized universe, made of "different stuff", with a small surface area of bi-directional casualty between the universes.

Cool, though over my head.

So the idea of dualism isn't pure nonsense to me, because I can conceive of how to achieve something like it myself. My problems with dualism are that it lacks evidence, and it doesn't actually solve any problem. What it does is it takes a mystery, and it boxes up that mystery and puts it into a mystery realm, made up of a mystery substance.

I'm sort of a spectumist, though I think dualistically sometimes. I think we all do.

You can't solve a mystery by just saying "it happens in a mystery realm." That's not a solution, that's just a new mystery to box up the old mystery.

Well, I think it has often been dualism first, based on experience, then monism coming in and trying to say that really it's one substance. I hope you see what I am saying. You are presenting it as if the dualist reacts to the monism and says, nah, there something weird going on (mystery) let me add a substance. But generally I don't think that's been the process. I wouldn't go so far as to say monism bears the onus, but I do think it's a toss up, and monism has some work to do.

I'm pretty pragmatist, so for me it can be useful or better put perhaps natural to be dualist or use language that is dualist in nature. I am not so concerned with what is 'really' or really going on in the ding an sich.

And I mean, if you keep allowing anything you consider real to be called physical or expanding the category to put it another way, I don't know what you are actually committing to when you say everything is physical.

Just to jump back to the theologian fussing with his dualism and you come and tell him, no there is no transcendent stuff, non-physical stuff.

Then you describe magnetic fields, dark matter and energy, massless particles, a potential multiverse, gravity fields, neutrino passing through us, virtual particles, particles moving backward in time and the theologian just might say...

Oh, ok, that basket is so broard perhaps angels and God are physical, whatever you mean by that term.

Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Fri Feb 03, 2023 10:08 am

BigMike wrote: ↑Fri Feb 03, 2023 9:46 am What, then, is causality if not an interaction? Feel free to provide an example of a "purely non-physical or a combination of physical and non-physical" cause.

Again, you're trying to shift the burden. If I argue that the non-physical can affect the physical. Then your challenge makes sense. I am not, nor have I made that statement or made that kind of argument.

Again, I am arguing against you ruling out the possibility in my other post in response to you.
And in the post you just responded to I am pointing out that he is correct, determinism does not entail a stand on substance. And in the other post I argued that the term 'physical' has a shifting meaning. It now just means real.

If I point to a phenomenon, you'll say it's physical. But that doesn't mean anything anymore, because it keep expanding. Now it includes dark matter and dark energy which we don't know what they are made of.

Demonstrate for me that dark energy is physical.

Dark energy is a hypothetical form of energy that is thought to exist in order to explain observations of an accelerating universe. The exact nature of dark energy is unknown, but it is believed to be a property of space itself that is causing the expansion of the universe to accelerate.

But since it is a type of energy, according to hypothesis and current understanding, it is physical because it consists of at least one of the six elements I mentioned earlier (energy, electricity, linear or angular momentum, etc.).

BigMike wrote: ↑Fri Feb 03, 2023 10:23 am Dark energy is a hypothetical form of energy that is thought to exist in order to explain observations of an accelerating universe. The exact nature of dark energy is unknown, but it is believed to be a property of space itself that is causing the expansion of the universe to accelerate.

But since it is a type of energy, according to hypothesis and current understanding, it is physical because it consists of at least one of the six elements I mentioned earlier (energy, electricity, linear or angular momentum, etc.).

But we don't know what it is made of, what qualities it has or does not have. So, we are calling something physical that we have no idea of these things. The term physical just means real. We will swallow anything that comes up into that label, as long as we consider it real.

Iwannaplato wrote: ↑Fri Feb 03, 2023 10:27 am

BigMike wrote: ↑Fri Feb 03, 2023 10:23 am Dark energy is a hypothetical form of energy that is thought to exist in order to explain observations of an accelerating universe. The exact nature of dark energy is unknown, but it is believed to be a property of space itself that is causing the expansion of the universe to accelerate.

But since it is a type of energy, according to hypothesis and current understanding, it is physical because it consists of at least one of the six elements I mentioned earlier (energy, electricity, linear or angular momentum, etc.).

But we don't know what it is made of, what qualities it has or does not have. So, we are calling something physical that we have no idea of these things. The term physical just means real. We will swallow anything that comes up into that label, as long as we consider it real.

What is your objection to what I've said?

BigMike wrote: ↑Fri Feb 03, 2023 10:38 am What is your objection to what I've said?

Well, I'm not sure you've shown objections to what I've said in other posts. But let me put my objection in a different form.
You are claiming that it must have these qualities because of the name we have given it, despite the fact that we cannot observe it directly and do not know what it is made of. (not using observe in the vision sense but in the scientific observation sense)

You are making claims about the substance of something that scientists do not know what it is made of.