Philosophy Now Forum

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Feb 22, 2022 7:08 pm

bahman wrote: ↑Tue Feb 22, 2022 6:49 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Feb 21, 2022 5:05 pm
I said you could. You can "ask" anything you want.

And could He answer what I am going to do?

Keep asking. If He answers, you'll know.

But I can do the opposite of what He will tell me! Can't I?

iambiguous wrote: ↑Tue Feb 22, 2022 7:14 pm More words connected to more words still. Looks like [compelled or not] we're stuck.

Well, you are.

I'm fine.

Your problem is that you've accepted an unfalsifiable hypothesis as if it were true. And now you're mystified that you can't falsify it, and think it MUST be true.

But unfalsifiability isn't truth. It's just unfalsifiability.

Another example: the egoist argument. There are people who say that all actions are always taken for selfish reasons. There's no such thing as altruism, no such thing as sacrifice, no such thing as goodwill or generosity to others -- that every action is secretly selfish.

• Why did you give to charity? Because you wanted to make yourself feel good.

• Why did you sacrifice in raising your child? Because you selfishly wanted the "good parent" role.

• Why did a person donate a kidney to a stranger? Because he secretly wanted to be some kind of hero in his own eyes.

You can't disprove any of that, no matter how hard you try. Still, if you're a normal person, you sense the emptiness of that response, its vacuity, its lack of vision, and the smallness of the soul of the person who is advancing it.

Unfalisifiability isn't truth. It's just unfalsifiability.

bahman wrote: ↑Tue Feb 22, 2022 7:22 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Feb 22, 2022 7:08 pm

bahman wrote: ↑Tue Feb 22, 2022 6:49 pm
And could He answer what I am going to do?

Keep asking. If He answers, you'll know.

But I can do the opposite of what He will tell me! Can't I?

Try it. Find out.

iambiguous wrote: ↑Tue Feb 22, 2022 7:14 pm And if someone here has come across one that indicates human brain matter has in fact acquired the capacity to reason autonomously, please link me to it.

henry quirk wrote: ↑Sat Feb 19, 2022 8:19 pm biggy: The words aren't connected to the world in the manner in which neuroscientists attempt to grapple with human consciousness experientially/experimentally re the "scientific method".

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There are many men of differing disciplines who can use of these data, whether they find it reasonable to at­tempt to fit them into the hypothesis that the brain ex­plains the mind, or whether they conclude, as I have done, that the mind is a separate but related element. One of these two "improbabilities" must be chosen. Taken either way, the nature of the mind presents the fundamental problem, perhaps the most difficult and most important of all problems. For myself, after a professional lifetime spent in trying to discover how the brain accounts for the mind, it comes as a surprise now to discover, dur­ing this final examination of the evidence, that the dualist hypothesis seems the more reasonable of the two possible explanations. -Wilder Penfield

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We regard promissory materialism as superstition without a rational foundation. The more we discover about the brain, the more clearly do we distinguish between the brain events and the mental phenomena, and the more wonderful do both the brain events and the mental phenomena become. Promissory materialism is simply a religious belief held by dogmatic materialists...who often confuse their religion with their science. -John Eccles & Daniel Robinson

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Shall I continue quotin' neuroscientists who've grappled with human consciousness experientially/experimentally re the "scientific method"?

bahman wrote: ↑Tue Feb 22, 2022 6:48 pm

Sculptor wrote: ↑Mon Feb 21, 2022 3:53 pm

bahman wrote: ↑Mon Feb 21, 2022 1:42 pm
Why I cannot ask him what I am going to do?

You are going to ask what you want. But you cannot want what you want. You just want it.
If, and only if, you compel their answer, say through, force, would their free will be denied.
But their answer shall also be want they want to answer, and like you they cannot want what they want.

I am not talking about the free will of God. I am talking about our free will and foreknowledge and the conflict between. The question is whether I can choose to do differently from what God reveals to me that I am going to do?

Why don't you re=read what I said?

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Feb 22, 2022 2:55 pm No. Choosing existed before computers. In fact, the only reason computers exist at all is because of choices we made.

Q.E.D

And who made the choice to make computers (human occupation) exist?

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Feb 22, 2022 2:55 pm No, they don't. "Intention" is not a quality a computer can even have.

So humans don't have "intention"?

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Feb 22, 2022 2:55 pm They weren't. Many of one's desire do, in fact, contradict or oppose the will of God.

Then God has only himself to blame for making us that way.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Feb 22, 2022 2:55 pm I see you don't understand it.

You don't even understand what it means to understand.

Skepdick wrote: ↑Wed Feb 23, 2022 8:01 am

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Feb 22, 2022 2:55 pm No, they don't. "Intention" is not a quality a computer can even have.

So humans don't have "intention"?

"Computers." I said "computers."

Are you high?

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed Feb 23, 2022 2:19 pm "Computers." I said "computers."

Are you high?

So you don't even know what a computer is.

Computer (human occupation)

iambiguous wrote: ↑Tue Feb 22, 2022 7:14 pm
More words connected to more words still. Looks like [compelled or not] we're stuck.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Feb 22, 2022 7:30 pmWell, you are.

I'm fine.

Click.

That doesn't surprise me. Generally, those who have managed to convince themselves that their own moral or metaphysical philosophy is the optimal frame of mind need to believe this because that belief in and of itself allows for the comfort and the consolation that it brings them. For some, there is almost nothing they are "stuck" regarding.

Though of course the manner in which they demonstrate their superior point of view almost always revolves around flat-out assertions like this:

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Feb 22, 2022 7:30 pm Your problem is that you've accepted an unfalsifiable hypothesis as if it were true. And now you're mystified that you can't falsify it, and think it MUST be true.

But unfalsifiability isn't truth. It's just unfalsifiability.

As though abstract intellectual assumptions like this can't be turned around and aimed that those who think like you do.

Try explaining your own "final answer" to Mary not yet convinced that she is, of her own free will, murdering her unborn child.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Feb 22, 2022 7:30 pmAnother example: the egoist argument. There are people who say that all actions are always taken for selfish reasons. There's no such thing as altruism, no such thing as sacrifice, no such thing as goodwill or generosity to others -- that every action is secretly selfish.

• Why did you give to charity? Because you wanted to make yourself feel good.

• Why did you sacrifice in raising your child? Because you selfishly wanted the "good parent" role.

• Why did a person donate a kidney to a stranger? Because he secretly wanted to be some kind of hero in his own eyes.

You can't disprove any of that, no matter how hard you try. Still, if you're a normal person, you sense the emptiness of that response, its vacuity, its lack of vision, and the smallness of the soul of the person who is advancing it.

Unfalisifiability isn't truth. It's just unfalsifiability.

And there are people who argue that selfishness and selflessness are entirely interchangeable in the only possible world. What does it mean to be unable to verify or falsify something if you were never able to verify or falsify it other than as the laws of nature compel you to in the first place. If true and false in the waking world is synonymous with true and false in the dreamworld, it's all just that profoundly mysterious matter we call mind doing its thing.

Skepdick wrote: ↑Thu Feb 24, 2022 2:07 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed Feb 23, 2022 2:19 pm "Computers." I said "computers."

Are you high?

So you don't even know what a computer is.

Yeah, I do.

But I'm pretty sure you don't know what a human being actually is.

iambiguous wrote: ↑Thu Feb 24, 2022 5:16 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Feb 22, 2022 7:30 pm Your problem is that you've accepted an unfalsifiable hypothesis as if it were true. And now you're mystified that you can't falsify it, and think it MUST be true.

But unfalsifiability isn't truth. It's just unfalsifiability.

As though abstract intellectual assumptions like this can't be turned around and aimed that those who think like you do.

It can't, actually.

There are falsifiable arguments...like scientific ones, for example...and unfalsifiable ones, like Determinism and the Egoist Thesis. They're a different class of argument. And that's not a matter of my opinion or yours; it's analytically true, as I point out below.

What does it mean to be unable to verify or falsify something if you were never able to verify or falsify it other than as the laws of nature compel you to in the first place.

The "laws of nature" have nothing to do with Determinism. They are testable, and their existence doesn't imply Determinism.

No test exists for Determinism. It's neither verifiable nor falsifiable, to any degree at all. And if you think otherwise, then maybe you'll be so good as to give me the test for either the verification or falsification of it.

But neither is 'freewill', yet you say nothing about that fact. For two reasons; one, belief in freewill is more comfortable and agreeable, and two, I don't think you understand what is being philosophically implied by the phrase 'free-will'.

Free-from-cause is a nonsense idea on its face, and 'will' amounts to nothing more than a metaphor at best, and is not a real feature of human nature. You wanna think that the body has a 'will' (which you want to call the causative agent) like it has a leg or a height, that it then employs upon command given by the 'self', something else that isn't the body. This is all far more metaphysical and nonverifiable than determinism could ever be. Clearly the principle of parsimony does not suit you or your religious agenda.

And I also explained to you how freewill would be even impossibler if a god did exist. Like that's a double whammy, dude.

promethean75 wrote: ↑Fri Feb 25, 2022 4:39 am But neither is 'freewill', yet you say nothing about that fact.

Of course not. For there actually is empirical evidence in favour of the free will view, while there is none for Determinism.

It is an empirical fact that we all live as if free will is true, and nobody ever lives as if Determinism is true. That empirical fact needs explaining...by Determinists. Because all other things being equal, that makes free will the more plausible view.

Free-from-cause...

Nobody's even talking about that.

The question is only whether or not human will is itself, a "cause" of some events.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Feb 22, 2022 7:30 pm Your problem is that you've accepted an unfalsifiable hypothesis as if it were true. And now you're mystified that you can't falsify it, and think it MUST be true.

But unfalsifiability isn't truth. It's just unfalsifiability.

iambiguous wrote: ↑Thu Feb 24, 2022 5:16 pmAs though abstract intellectual assumptions like this can't be turned around and aimed that those who think like you do.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Feb 22, 2022 7:30 pm It can't, actually.

There are falsifiable arguments...like scientific ones, for example...and unfalsifiable ones, like Determinism and the Egoist Thesis. They're a different class of argument. And that's not a matter of my opinion or yours; it's analytically true, as I point out below.

All I can do is to challenge you or anyone else here to take your definitional logic and your didactic deductions down out of the analytical contraption clouds, and to demonstrate empirically, phenomenologically that free will is in fact the ontological truth in regard to the matter we call the human mind.

In fact, what have the neuroscientists either confirmed or falsified beyond all doubt in regard to the functioning human brain examined in the act of choosing itself?

Where are the newspaper headlines announcing to the world this astonishing conclusion?

Instead, you "prove" your case "philosophically" by examining the meaning of the words you use and concluding they reflect either 1] the optimal "analytical" conclusion or 2] the only rational "analytical" conclusion that there can ever be.

Hundreds of years from now, what, both philosophers and scientists will recognize your contributions here as comparable only to those like Newton and Einstein?

And perhaps by then they will have found this God that you ultimately fall back on to sustain your moral and metaphysical dogma.

What does it mean to be unable to verify or falsify something if you were never able to verify or falsify it other than as the laws of nature compel you to in the first place.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Feb 22, 2022 7:30 pm The "laws of nature" have nothing to do with Determinism. They are testable, and their existence doesn't imply Determinism.

Yes, and next you'll be suggesting that the laws of nature have nothing to do with the existence of existence itself. Instead, that goes all the way back to a God, the God, your God.

Bottom line: human beings themselves are a part of nature. And nature in regard to physics and chemistry and biology etc., is governed by laws that seem to be applicable to all matter. Even matter on the quantum level may one day be grasped as wholly in sync with a TOE applicable to all material interactions.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Feb 22, 2022 7:30 pm No test exists for Determinism. It's neither verifiable nor falsifiable, to any degree at all. And if you think otherwise, then maybe you'll be so good as to give me the test for either the verification or falsification of it.

Right, as though a test exists for human autonomy. One that either unequivocally verifies or falsifies its existence. Instead, scientists continue to grapple with it using the tools at their disposal re the scientific methods.

And the fact is that philosophers have no equivalent of these tools themselves. Instead, their tools revolve around logic and epistemology. The rules of language and the limits of what we can know.

But what can be encompassed with language, and what are the limitations of human knowledge in regard to either morality or metaphysical mysteries in what some of us assume is a No God world.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Feb 25, 2022 2:35 am Yeah, I do.

But I'm pretty sure you don't know what a human being actually is.

You are only "pretty sure" because nobody knows what a human being "actually is". Including yourself.

What we do know is some of the things human beings DO. Human beings compute. That's why it's a job description.