Philosophy Now Forum

Posted: **Sun Feb 27, 2022 2:49 am**

"You can't "win" the Materialist case by merely presuming Materialism is true until further notice."

But there hasn't been any competition yet, so there's nothing to 'win'. The materialist simply waits around for some argument or evidence that doesn't turn out to be nonsense, or as Wittgenstein put it; 'language on vacation'. But it never happens.

Posted: **Sun Feb 27, 2022 4:58 am**

promethean75 wrote: ↑Sun Feb 27, 2022 2:49 am The materialist simply waits around for some argument or evidence that doesn't turn out to be nonsense,

Materialism has it's own problems, starting with the obvious fact has no way of accounting for things that we all experience every day, such as consciousness, mind, identity, rationality, intelligibility, science, morality and volition.

But if you assume your own conclusion, you're never going to notice that.

Posted: **Sun Feb 27, 2022 6:43 am**

iambiguous wrote: ↑Fri Feb 25, 2022 6:54 am ...demonstrate empirically, phenomenologically that free will is in fact the ontological truth in regard to the matter we call the human mind.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Feb 25, 2022 4:22 pmI put the ball back in your court already; but you won't return it.

Or I put the ball back in your court, but you won't return it.

Or, who really knows, nature and its primordial laws may well be both the court and the ball here.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Feb 25, 2022 4:22 pmI say again: every human being lives as if free will is true. No human being lives as if it's not. Explain why every human being is actually wrong, and Determinism is true.

That's an empirical, phenomenological argument. Let's see you deal with it.

I say again: the human brain as the embodiment of laws that pertain to all matter has "somehow" created the illusion that we live as though free will were true. Just as it creates the illusion of free will in our dreams.

And no human being is either right or wrong as, say, libertarians construe that, because right and wrong arguments and conclusions themselves are wholly interchangeable in the only possible world.

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.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Feb 22, 2022 7:30 pm Calm down now, iam.

No, seriously, how does your own rendition of a God, the God, my God factor into the ontological relationship between Mary choosing to abort her fetus and that which brought matter [and whatever its laws might be] into existence? Roughly, say.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Feb 22, 2022 7:30 pm I'm only pointing out the fallacies of Determinism. I am not (yet) advancing any counter-theory. And so to lapse into a complaint of what I am not yet advancing is pointless. You don't even know on what grounds I would advance it, if I ever did.

Meanwhile, if Determinism fails, it fails on neutral terms. Determinism being wrong doesn't imply what's right; it only implies that Determinism itself is a failed view. And if Determinism is going to be defended, then it must be defended on exactly what you suggest -- empirical, phenomenological, rational grounds -- it cannot "win the day" by merely remaining absurdly unfalsifiable.

So if you know a real argument FOR Determinism, let's hear it. And if you don't, then why do you believe in it?

Then back I go to the manner in which you "accomplish" this entirely in a world of words. A set of premises thought up by you in which the words in the argument are defined and defended by more words still. Such that through sleight of mind -- "definitional logic" -- the conclusion you come to is derived [necessarily] from the premises themselves.

As with me, you have nothing in the way of experiential/experimental evidence to back this conclusion up. You are just not willing to acknowledge this because you pursue these exchanges through the dueling deductions that are the wont of Will Durant's "epistemologists" among us.

Ever and always up in the didactic clouds that comprise the "general description intellectual contraptions" that many "serious philosophers" must fall back on precisely because beyond a world of words they cannot go.

Including me. My leap of faith revolves around the assumption that the human brain is just more matter. No less intertwined in the laws of matter.

That is until one day the men and women who are inclined to go the experiential/experimental route are finally able to explain how mindless/lifeless matter evolved into mindful living matter that evolved "somehow" into us.

No, I have no real argument for determinism because -- click -- I don't delude myself into thinking that philosophers can actually "think one up". Analytically as it were.

...as though a test exists for human autonomy.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Feb 22, 2022 7:30 pm It does, actually. The evidence is that all human beings experience (phenomenology) that in the real world (empirically) acting on the basis of free will works, and trying to act on the basis of Determinism fails every time.

That fact needs explaining. So far, you and I have no explanation for it.

Why not?

Because there are those like you who won't admit to themselves that in order for someone to pass your test they must first agree with the definition and the meaning you give to the words in arguments; arguments that then make no reference to the actual behaviors that humans choose...but only to words [backed up by more words still] said to mean this rather than that.

And while such communication is often entirely effective in regard to material interactions in the either/or world, once we shift gears to the is/ought world, or go all the way out to the Big Questions at the end of the metaphysical limb, the communication tends to become increasingly more problematic.

Posted: **Sun Feb 27, 2022 1:03 pm**

"Materialism has it's own problems, starting with the obvious fact that it has no way of accounting for things that we all experience every day..."

Define 'accounting', pleeze.

Posted: **Sun Feb 27, 2022 2:19 pm**

iambiguous wrote: ↑Sun Feb 27, 2022 6:43 am
iambiguous wrote: ↑Fri Feb 25, 2022 6:54 am ...demonstrate empirically, phenomenologically that free will is in fact the ontological truth in regard to the matter we call the human mind.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Feb 25, 2022 4:22 pmI put the ball back in your court already; but you won't return it.
Or I put the ball back in your court, but you won't return it.

You didn't, actually. We stand at the point of knowing that literally everbody acts as if free will is a reality, and that nobody behaves like a Determinist, and you've given us no explanation of how that can possibly be.

But you did try this much:

...the human brain as the embodiment of laws that pertain to all matter has "somehow" created the illusion that we live as though free will were true. Just as it creates the illusion of free will in our dreams.

But it only moves the problem back one step. Now we have to explain how a purely Deterministic universe would have thrown up this "illusion" in the first place. Now you've posited that we're all deluded, for no reason.

And this creates an additional problem: if we're all deluded in the matter of free will, then we don't know if we're also deluded in matters like logic, reason and science. If human belief is unrelated to truth, then we actually know nothing at all. You have to be nihilistic about science itself.

And this produces a third problem: what are you doing right now?

You're arguing for a view, as if people can be persuaded by your "good reasons" to believe in Determinism. But your explanation itself says this change-of-mind is not more than another delusion: in reality, they only believe what they were predetermined to believe.

And this creates a further problem: if Determinism were true, then nobody's responsible for what they end up believing, or, more importantly, for anything they end up doing!

There is no evil in a pedophile or a psychopath or a slave-trader...all are merely playing out the inevitable course of a predetermined hand. It's not their fault. None of it can be.

As you say,

"And no human being is either right or wrong..."

Now look at where we are...four hurdles away from Determinism.

...Mary choosing to abort her fetus...

Move this to the abortion thread, iam. We have no right to sidetrack this discussion at the expense of others.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Feb 22, 2022 7:30 pm So if you know a real argument FOR Determinism, let's hear it. And if you don't, then why do you believe in it?
Then back I go to the manner in which you "accomplish" this entirely in a world of words.

And yet here you are, attempting to "accomplish" something in that which you insist is "entirely a world of words."

...the conclusion you come to is derived [necessarily] from the premises themselves.

That's the very defnition of "being logical."

Are you now a disbeliever in logic as well, iam? Then you're not going to be able to mount any logical argument here without defeating your own hypothesis.

As with me, you have nothing in the way of experiential/experimental evidence to back this conclusion up.

Yes, I do, as I've three times pointed out to you.

It's manifest that nobody can live as a Determinist. That's an experiential/empirical/phenomenological observation, a relevant data point in this discussion.

But you are now claiming to believe in science, while also championing the Determinism that means that science is not believable anymore.

I have no real argument for determinism...

I see that that is true.

Well, I've made the point as far as it can go with you, then. You believe in things for which you have no real argument, and you disbelieve in science, logic and experience, and only believe in "words."

Under those conditions, you can imagine you're a Determinist while not acting like one. Because it's all a delusion anyway, you insist.

And if I believe you, I guess I'm just debating with somebody who's deluded and plays with words -- I don't see what other conclusion can be drawn from your claims.

Posted: **Sun Feb 27, 2022 5:37 pm**

I say again: the human brain as the embodiment of laws that pertain to all matter has "somehow" created the illusion that we live as though free will were true. Just as it creates the illusion of free will in our dreams.

This baby can be put to bed if...

The materialist will explain how the ham sandwich walks, talks, dances, and lives.

Explain it.

...or...

Acknowledge he can't (and therefore agree mebbe there's sumthin' more to the ham sandwich).

...or...

Be silent.

Posted: **Sun Feb 27, 2022 7:25 pm**

promethean75 wrote: ↑Sun Feb 27, 2022 1:03 pm Define 'accounting', pleeze.

"Having any reasonable explanation for"

Posted: **Mon Feb 28, 2022 8:15 am**

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Feb 25, 2022 4:24 pm Well, human beings lived long before there were even rudimentary computers.

You continue to misunderstand; or deliberately attempt to shift the frame.

Fundamentally, and in the most general sense, computation is the manipulation of matter.
Human being have been doing that since - forever.

Computation in the form of symbol manipulation is a more recent development leading to mechanisation of symbol manipulation.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Feb 25, 2022 4:24 pm So at most, what you are attempting is an anachronistic metaphor, and one that does not aptly describe human cognitive processes, or account for the fact that while no computer is possible without humans, humans are very possible with no computers.

Nothing of that sort is happening here. You are failing to recognise that computation is a verb.

Manipulation of matter is possible without humans - literally all living organisms do it. And perhaps even non-living processes.
Humans are not possible without manipulating matter - we'd have nothing to eat, breathe etc.

Posted: **Mon Feb 28, 2022 3:18 pm**

Skepdick wrote: ↑Mon Feb 28, 2022 8:15 am
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Feb 25, 2022 4:24 pm Well, human beings lived long before there were even rudimentary computers.
You continue to misunderstand;

No, I understand...it's just a bad argument, because human being are not computers, anymore than they are hammers or ham sandwiches.

computation is a verb.

As a general verb, it is not confined to computers. But it also does not bear the same meaning in other contexts. To say a person "computed" something is not to say was programmed to follow an algorithmic function in a silicon chip in his cranium. It's merely to use the term to say that he "thought about" it in a careful or linear way.

You're not understanding metaphor. You're talking as if it signals identity. It does not, of course: it signals analogy.

Posted: **Mon Feb 28, 2022 5:28 pm**

Two Conceptions of Free Will
Matthew Gliatto
Published in ILLUMINATION

There are philosophers who have promoted each of these three positions. One notable compatibilist philosopher is Daniel Dennett. He has written a book promoting compatibilism. In past ages, renowned philosophers such as David Hume and John Stuart Mill were also compatibilists. And Thomas Aquinas was essentially a compatibilist, even though he was living in a pre-scientific era. Meanwhile, George Berkeley (the namesake of UC Berkeley) promoted libertarian free will, and Immanuel Kant and William James both criticized compatibilism, although they did not necessarily endorse libertarian free will.

To the best of my knowledge, not a single one of these renowned intellectuals had anything to say about compatibilism did not flow almost entirely from a world of words. Scholarly, analytical, thoughtful assumptions no doubt. None however had ever conducted extensive experiments with actual brains, probing how "for all practical purposes" the chemical and neurological interactions came together enabling them to establish that in fact even though Mary could not have not aborted her unborn fetus, she was still morally responsible for doing so. Or, as well, in determining that in fact she did indeed have free will in making her choice.

And a philosopher named Gregg Caruso has promoted hard determinism. (How Gregg Caruso feels motivated to get up in the morning is beyond me.)

This is often where the free will advocates go. As though human motivation itself can't be but an inherent manifestation of a wholly determined mind. It just depends on what someone insist they "just know" about their own motivation. Because they think they are choosing of their own volition, that makes it so.

(I should add that there is actually a fourth possible position, which is that there is some sort of inherent randomness in the universe which has nothing to do with a person’s choices. So under that view, determinism is false, but free will doesn’t exist either. There’s just randomness. However, that is not relevant here.)

Or, if someone here believes that it is relevant, let them explain to us how it would pertain to Mary's decision to have the abortion.

Posted: **Mon Feb 28, 2022 8:30 pm**

iambiguous wrote: ↑Mon Feb 28, 2022 5:28 pm To the best of my knowledge, not a single one of these renowned intellectuals had anything to say about compatibilism did not flow almost entirely from a world of words. Scholarly, analytical, thoughtful assumptions no doubt. None however had ever conducted extensive experiments with actual brains, probing how "for all practical purposes" the chemical and neurological interactions came together enabling them ...

Good heavens, man!

I gave you such an argument, and you ignored it repeatedly. The "experiment" you mention happens every single day, in every life in history. You can't get a more comprehensive "experiment" than that, even if it doesn't merely occur in a lab but in all of life.

Because they think they are choosing of their own volition, that makes it so.

That's not the argument, and unless you've been asleep at the switch, you know it, too.

The argument is that NOBODY LIVES, OR CAN LIVE, AS A DETERMINIST. And if Determinism were true, you'd need to explain how that was possible, how the basic mechanics of the universe had mysteriously become completely contrary to the phenomenological experience of all the people allegedly generated by its pure mechanics.

But I despair of getting you to answer. I now think you're just sold out to an unfalsifiable myth.

(I should add that there is actually a fourth possible position, which is that there is some sort of inherent randomness in the universe which has nothing to do with a person’s choices. So under that view, determinism is false, but free will doesn’t exist either. There’s just randomness. However, that is not relevant here.)

I'll help you out here.

You can make that case even stronger. One would be better of being the product of a merely mechanical but rational process of cause and effect than a helpless particle eternally swept along in the churning clothes-dryer of utterly uncalculable randomness.

In short, randomness determinism is even worse determinism than mechanical determinism, and still leaves no place for free will.

Posted: **Mon Feb 28, 2022 10:33 pm**

iambiguous wrote: ↑Fri Feb 25, 2022 6:54 am ...demonstrate empirically, phenomenologically that free will is in fact the ontological truth in regard to the matter we call the human mind.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Feb 25, 2022 4:22 pmI put the ball back in your court already; but you won't return it.

Or I put the ball back in your court, but you won't return it.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Feb 27, 2022 2:19 pm You didn't, actually.

I did, actually.

So, anyone here able to provide the definitive argument or the definitive physical evidence that resolves this once and for all?

And even here -- click -- the assumption must be made that any attempt merely presumes that someday those that don't tackle this deeply enigmatic quandary in a "world of words" -- definitions and deductions -- and actually do probe thinking brains themselves, will be able to explain to us how lifeless/mindless matter did in fact manage "somehow" to evolve into autonomous human minds.

Until then, back up into the "analytical"/"metaphysical" clouds:

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Feb 27, 2022 2:19 pmWe stand at the point of knowing that literally everbody acts as if free will is a reality, and that nobody behaves like a Determinist, and you've given us no explanation of how that can possibly be.

Tell me this isn't "proven" only by way of accepting the definition and the meaning you give to these words placed in this order.

...the human brain as the embodiment of laws that pertain to all matter has "somehow" created the illusion that we live as though free will were true. Just as it creates the illusion of free will in our dreams.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Feb 27, 2022 2:19 pm
One step forward, one step back. What possible difference could that make if the steps taken are steps that were never able to not be taken? As though that is also the case in regard to our explanations as well. Or things that we posit.

Then straight back up even higher into the "analytical" clouds:

[quote="Immanuel Can" post_id=561547 time=1645967960 user_id=9431And this creates an additional problem: if we're all deluded in the matter of free will, then we don't know if we're also deluded in matters like logic, reason and science. If human belief is unrelated to truth, then we actually know nothing at all. You have to be nihilistic about science itself.

And this produces a third problem: what are you doing right now? You're arguing for a view, as if people can be persuaded by your "good reasons" to believe in Determinism. But your explanation itself says this change-of-mind is not more than another delusion: in reality, they only believe what they were predetermined to believe.

Your set of "philosophical" assumptions, or mine? Your definitions and deductions or others?

But this is what it is really all about, isn't it:

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Feb 27, 2022 2:19 pmAnd this creates a further problem: if Determinism were true, then nobody's responsible for what they end up believing, or, more importantly, for anything they end up doing! There is no evil in a pedophile or a psychopath or a slave-trader...all are merely playing out the inevitable course of a predetermined hand. It's not their fault. None of it can be.

What if "moral responsibility" is in turn subsumed in the only possible reality? What if all of our great accomplishments cannot be demonstrated beyond all doubt to have been as a result of our own brilliance? What if all the failures of others can't be pinned entirely on them?

Now, I'm certainly not arguing that what most of us deem to be Good and Evil is literally "beyond Good and Evil". Of course human volition may be an important factor here.

But how to explain that without in turn explaining just how mindless/lifeless matter did evolve into us. How to explain empirically, phenomenologically why and how the waking world reality is fundamentally different from the dream world reality.

Other than in a world of worlds?

...Mary choosing to abort her fetus...

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Feb 27, 2022 2:19 pm Move this to the abortion thread, iam. We have no right to sidetrack this discussion at the expense of others.

No, that is precisely what "serious philosophers" of your ilk wish to do: Take discussions of free will up into the didactic clouds, and leave actual human behaviors completely out of it. Like some here do in regard to discussions of mortality as well.

Existential philosophers of my ilk, however, are only interested in these "technical discussions" to the extent that they do make it about things like abortion. Actual human interactions that result in actual consequences in the lives we live.

You wish to be "logical" about determinism as though "definitional logic" here need be as far as it goes. As though those in the determinist camp aren't equally capable of accumulating their own philosophical premises.

Then what?

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Feb 27, 2022 2:19 pm Yes, I do, as I've three times pointed out to you.

It's manifest that nobody can live as a Determinist. That's an experiential/empirical/phenomenological observation, a relevant data point in this discussion.

Yes, this is actually what you presume to describe as a manifestation of "experiential/empirical/phenomenological" evidence. You observe yourself "just knowing" that you choose to read these words of your own free will. That makes the observation wholly in sync with...what exactly?

What you think about what you observe...without any substantive/substantial evidence of how your brain functions chemically and neurologically to bring this observation about...need be as far as you go in "proving" the existence of free will.

Then back to what I construe to be your la la land claims about me:

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Feb 27, 2022 2:19 pmBut you are now claiming to believe in science, while also championing the Determinism that means that science is not believable anymore.

No, I am merely noting that science may well be a long, long way from fully explaining the human brain...to itself?

Whereas your brain apparently has been compelled by the laws of matter to reflect the arrogant posture of the metaphysical objectivist.

And, I suspect, re your own "private and personal" God, the moral objectivist.

Posted: **Mon Feb 28, 2022 10:41 pm**

iambiguous wrote: ↑Mon Feb 28, 2022 10:33 pm But this is what it is really all about, isn't it:

No. That's the fourth point.

Just resolve the connundrum I've been putting to you, namely, "If Determinism is true, how come nobody ever lives as a Determinist?"

Posted: **Tue Mar 01, 2022 12:22 am**

henry quirk wrote: ↑Sun Feb 27, 2022 5:37 pm I say again: the human brain as the embodiment of laws that pertain to all matter has "somehow" created the illusion that we live as though free will were true. Just as it creates the illusion of free will in our dreams.

This baby can be put to bed if...

The materialist will explain how the ham sandwich walks, talks, dances, and lives.

Explain it.

...or...

Acknowledge he can't (and therefore agree mebbe there's sumthin' more to the ham sandwich).

...or...

Be silent.

Posted: **Tue Mar 01, 2022 1:04 am**

Immanuel Can wrote:

We stand at the point of knowing that literally everbody acts as if free will is a reality, and that nobody behaves like a Determinist,

Determinists seek the causes of behaviours. The best people are determinists therefore as instead of simply blaming the man for his bad behaviour they seek the causes of the behaviour so that the badly -behaved man may be controlled by reason whenever possible.

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