Philosophy Now Forum

BigMike wrote: ↑Thu Apr 10, 2025 5:58 pm Alexis, let’s stay on target.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Thu Apr 10, 2025 6:36 pm Mike, our fundamental picture of “reality” does not jibe. And as I plainly said when you came back here a few days ago: I am not the opponent you seek to work out your doctrines.

[Who, may I ask, do you feel you’ve forged agreements with here? What is your impression of why many don’t go along with you?]

I understand your position — that is, the elements of the position you present. So perhaps this will enable you to feel “heard”.

You are asking me to continue to engage with you and this could only amount to repeating what I’ve already written (no part of which you can accept!)

Atla wrote: ↑Thu Apr 10, 2025 10:52 am How does a perpetual afterimage of things that have already happened, "do" anything?

Ben JS wrote: ↑Thu Apr 10, 2025 10:27 pm

Atla wrote: ↑Thu Apr 10, 2025 10:52 am How does a perpetual afterimage of things that have already happened, "do" anything?

The current temporal state of existence exists.
The current temporal state of existence is as real as any preceding or proceeding temporal state of existence.

To describe the current temporal state of existence as an 'afterimage', is poetic language - but misleading.

A stone crushes a flower.
The stone did not aim or intend to crush the flower.
The stone's momentum/trajectory led to the outcome of the flower being crushed.
The stone can contribute to the outcome of the flower being crushed in the absence of freedom.
The stone was determined to crush the flower, based on the forces that affected the stone.
The flower would not have been crushed in the absence of the stone.

We can act volitionally, in accord with our will -
but our volition and will were not products of volition / will.
They were the inevitable product/unfolding/procession from a prior temporal state of existence,
far preceding every form of life.

A person can contribute to an outcome - but only as they were determined to do so.
Our presence affects the environment, as the environment affects us.
It is a feedback loop - but a determined one.
The illusion is not that we can have affect,
the illusion is that the effect we have was ever going to be different.
The illusion we have is that our 'choice' is not genuine, as there was only one outcome.
We experience the process of choosing and evaluating,
but our 'choices' are products of an environment that existed before us -
a chain of causality that existed before the earth.

Stones do things.
People do things.
Things determined by forces/processes/mechanisms present before they stones/people were things.
If there is only one outcome, and that outcome was determined before we existed, then we do not have meaningful freedom.

Natural selection has no aim or intent.
Natural selection has an outcome, but no preferences.
Natural selection is indifferent to whether a species goes extinct or flourishes.
Natural selection is anthropomorphized by foolish beings who think an indifferent process wants any outcome.

The result/outcome of natural selection are being that are well adapted to surviving in their environment.
This was not by design, or intent or preference.
It was an inevitable outcome of the selection pressures living beings mutated under.

We are natural.
Everything we do is natural.
All our advancements,
raise the bar for the capacity of what nature can do -
as all we do is a part of nature.

We cannot transcend nature.
We demonstrate nature's capacity for brilliance -
nature's capacity for complexity and variety.
But we will always be a product of nature,
and anything we ever create or do,
will themselves also be part of nature -
as they emerged from nature.

Artificial / man-made are subcategories of nature.
Differentiating between aspects of nature that occur due to the present of homo sapiens,
as opposed to aspects and environments that are present in the absence of homo sapiens.
There is much utility in this distinction,
but do not mistake any of our actions as unnatural -
that'd be a flaw of your thinking.

We're more intelligent than natural selection.
Natural selection has no intelligence, it isn't conscious.
Our interests, shaped and endowed by natural selection,
do not need to align with natural selection -
we can defy it.
We can cause artificial selection,
or artificially affect the development of our species.

Natural selection has it's limits.
It can only cause change incrementally,
where each increment must itself provide advantage of previous increments.
And once a mechanism is shaped that can meet a survival need of a being,
natural selection cannot go back to the drawing board with that species and make drastic changes in light of new information.
It's dumb and short sighted.

Guess who has the capacity to not be short sighted?
Homo sapiens.
We were endowed with intelligence and reason.
We can evaluate our internal and external environment,
and construct plans and strategies for actualizing our goals.
Making WISE decisions.

That something was in the past,
does not mean we ought seek it in the present.
That natural selection shaped us in the past,
does not mean we ought look to natural selection as a guideline for how to progress in the future.

We can recognize what's in our health.
We can recognize our wants and needs.
We can evaluate what is of utility or detrimental to our objectives.

Natural selection is blind.
We do not have to be blind,
despite many acting so.

BigMike wrote: ↑Thu Apr 10, 2025 10:46 pm

Ben JS wrote: ↑Thu Apr 10, 2025 10:27 pm

Atla wrote: ↑Thu Apr 10, 2025 10:52 am How does a perpetual afterimage of things that have already happened, "do" anything?

The current temporal state of existence exists.
The current temporal state of existence is as real as any preceding or proceeding temporal state of existence.

To describe the current temporal state of existence as an 'afterimage', is poetic language - but misleading.

A stone crushes a flower.
The stone did not aim or intend to crush the flower.
The stone's momentum/trajectory led to the outcome of the flower being crushed.
The stone can contribute to the outcome of the flower being crushed in the absence of freedom.
The stone was determined to crush the flower, based on the forces that affected the stone.
The flower would not have been crushed in the absence of the stone.

We can act volitionally, in accord with our will -
but our volition and will were not products of volition / will.
They were the inevitable product/unfolding/procession from a prior temporal state of existence,
far preceding every form of life.

A person can contribute to an outcome - but only as they were determined to do so.
Our presence affects the environment, as the environment affects us.
It is a feedback loop - but a determined one.
The illusion is not that we can have affect,
the illusion is that the effect we have was ever going to be different.
The illusion we have is that our 'choice' is not genuine, as there was only one outcome.
We experience the process of choosing and evaluating,
but our 'choices' are products of an environment that existed before us -
a chain of causality that existed before the earth.

Stones do things.
People do things.
Things determined by forces/processes/mechanisms present before they stones/people were things.
If there is only one outcome, and that outcome was determined before we existed, then we do not have meaningful freedom.

Natural selection has no aim or intent.
Natural selection has an outcome, but no preferences.
Natural selection is indifferent to whether a species goes extinct or flourishes.
Natural selection is anthropomorphized by foolish beings who think an indifferent process wants any outcome.

The result/outcome of natural selection are being that are well adapted to surviving in their environment.
This was not by design, or intent or preference.
It was an inevitable outcome of the selection pressures living beings mutated under.

We are natural.
Everything we do is natural.
All our advancements,
raise the bar for the capacity of what nature can do -
as all we do is a part of nature.

We cannot transcend nature.
We demonstrate nature's capacity for brilliance -
nature's capacity for complexity and variety.
But we will always be a product of nature,
and anything we ever create or do,
will themselves also be part of nature -
as they emerged from nature.

Artificial / man-made are subcategories of nature.
Differentiating between aspects of nature that occur due to the present of homo sapiens,
as opposed to aspects and environments that are present in the absence of homo sapiens.
There is much utility in this distinction,
but do not mistake any of our actions as unnatural -
that'd be a flaw of your thinking.

We're more intelligent than natural selection.
Natural selection has no intelligence, it isn't conscious.
Our interests, shaped and endowed by natural selection,
do not need to align with natural selection -
we can defy it.
We can cause artificial selection,
or artificially affect the development of our species.

Natural selection has it's limits.
It can only cause change incrementally,
where each increment must itself provide advantage of previous increments.
And once a mechanism is shaped that can meet a survival need of a being,
natural selection cannot go back to the drawing board with that species and make drastic changes in light of new information.
It's dumb and short sighted.

Guess who has the capacity to not be short sighted?
Homo sapiens.
We were endowed with intelligence and reason.
We can evaluate our internal and external environment,
and construct plans and strategies for actualizing our goals.
Making WISE decisions.

That something was in the past,
does not mean we ought seek it in the present.
That natural selection shaped us in the past,
does not mean we ought look to natural selection as a guideline for how to progress in the future.

We can recognize what's in our health.
We can recognize our wants and needs.
We can evaluate what is of utility or detrimental to our objectives.

Natural selection is blind.
We do not have to be blind,
despite many acting so.

Ben JS, that was a refreshingly sharp and grounded breakdown—thank you for putting it so clearly. You're absolutely right: calling consciousness an "afterimage" is poetic, not literal, and it risks misleading people into thinking determinism somehow erases causality, participation, or value. It doesn’t.

What it erases is un-caused causes—things that just spring into existence or actions that erupt from an “I” disconnected from prior causes. But nowhere does determinism imply that people are inert like stones. What it clarifies is that our actions, though complex and deeply intertwined with feedback loops and internal modeling, are still the result of chains we didn’t choose.

You nailed it with:
"The illusion is not that we can have affect, the illusion is that the effect we have was ever going to be different."

Yes. That’s the liberating insight of determinism. It tells us: you can matter deeply—you can shape your world, influence others, build futures—but what you become, and what you cause, flows from what caused you. Your efforts are real. Your consequences are real. But they are not authored from a metaphysical void. They are part of the tapestry.

You also made an essential distinction between understanding our roots in natural selection and recognizing our ability to move beyond its blind constraints. We are nature, yes—but we are also the first known part of nature that can simulate alternate futures, plan across centuries, and adjust its behavior for ethical, aesthetic, or long-term goals.

You captured it perfectly:
"That natural selection shaped us in the past, does not mean we ought look to natural selection as a guideline for how to progress in the future."

Exactly. We are nature becoming aware of itself. The question isn't whether we can transcend nature—it’s whether we can consciously participate in its unfolding with clarity and compassion, rather than myth and moral panic.

And you’re right: we don’t need to call anything “unnatural” to criticize it. We don’t need mysticism to find awe, or divine decree to find morality. All of that can emerge—has emerged—from the causal fabric of a universe where stars explode, DNA mutates, and eventually, people write posts like yours.

That’s not bleak. That’s astonishing.

Thanks again for the clarity.

BigMike wrote: ↑Wed Apr 09, 2025 7:28 am The only valuable metaphysics is the one that can survive contact with physics, neuroscience, and reason.

Dubious wrote: ↑Fri Apr 11, 2025 8:38 am

BigMike wrote: ↑Wed Apr 09, 2025 7:28 am The only valuable metaphysics is the one that can survive contact with physics, neuroscience, and reason.

These are my views regarding determinism and its sequels.

Determinism, at its root, is a story of origins, meaning the story of everything that was and will be at whatever point of time in the universe simultaneous with all of its multiplex manifestations. Determinism is the rule contained within each process which provides some kind of output. I imagine there are very few processes existing independently which do not interact much like an inert element which refuses to combine. In our case, an analogy would be the processing power of a single neuron being useless if it doesn't connect to a multitude of others.

In effect, if one could, like Laplace's Demon, consider the entire range of processes operating within the cosmos all rigidly ruled by its inherent deterministic paradigms yet providing a plethora of variable outputs through its interconnections, we are forced to acknowledge a host of probabilities and possibilities which such a fusion of inputs would cause...if cause is the right word.

The point I'm trying to make is that metaphysics amounts to an epiphenomenal state within our categories of permissible operations. This includes, to my mind, philosophy, theology, myths, art etc., encompassing as well all the made-up rules governing a society. The deterministic rules of physics created the human brain, however long it took, but without any intent to do so. If there were intent, it should not have taken so long!

A process, deterministically ordered has no knowledge of its consequences. In that respect we and the universe may be, or may as well be, nothing more than an episode of serendipity within a multiverse offering a near infinity of variable outcomes, all and each deterministically structured.

Metaphysics by contrast consist of derived mental events and agencies; a signature of value systems meant to operate as an extension of the physical forces responsible for our existence. The mystical too, within the human psyche, more often defaults to chords which don't ask for a resolution. When felt as music, that would be called the Tristan chord.

I think of mysticism as that which allows for an open-ended psyche, green-lighting itself for all kinds of speculation whose value resides in the kind of images it produces and follows. Being, as all things are, deterministically created, should not disallow us to achieve an inner escape velocity and thus create our own relevances vis-à-vis any settled reality as I believe it would, should and must for any so-called intelligent species existing within the same sphere of stark indifference.

Consciousness comes complete with its own mandate where not every truth is enhancing nor every non-truth pejorative. The brain mandates imagination where truth or an imagined truth may have an equal effect being impervious to any truth associations in which any truth, actual or not, only exists as the mind's own delineation.

In the cosmos, most things merge into each other, into one form or another. As consequence, the physical complexities which created us eventually merged into what we in turn create, summarizing itself into a process gradually forging its own independence as if it were the inevitable sequel forced by nature to reveal itself.

The difference between us, as I see it, is not based on any separation of views on determinism as it is with most here who do so by theorizing frothy, rootless scenarios incubated by their own sense of exceptionalism, but in its subsequent interpretation by those made capable through the laws of physics of so interpreting.

BigMike wrote: ↑Thu Apr 10, 2025 10:46 pm

Ben JS wrote: ↑Thu Apr 10, 2025 10:27 pm

Atla wrote: ↑Thu Apr 10, 2025 10:52 am How does a perpetual afterimage of things that have already happened, "do" anything?

The current temporal state of existence exists.
The current temporal state of existence is as real as any preceding or proceeding temporal state of existence.

To describe the current temporal state of existence as an 'afterimage', is poetic language - but misleading.

A stone crushes a flower.
The stone did not aim or intend to crush the flower.
The stone's momentum/trajectory led to the outcome of the flower being crushed.
The stone can contribute to the outcome of the flower being crushed in the absence of freedom.
The stone was determined to crush the flower, based on the forces that affected the stone.
The flower would not have been crushed in the absence of the stone.

We can act volitionally, in accord with our will -
but our volition and will were not products of volition / will.
They were the inevitable product/unfolding/procession from a prior temporal state of existence,
far preceding every form of life.

A person can contribute to an outcome - but only as they were determined to do so.
Our presence affects the environment, as the environment affects us.
It is a feedback loop - but a determined one.
The illusion is not that we can have affect,
the illusion is that the effect we have was ever going to be different.
The illusion we have is that our 'choice' is not genuine, as there was only one outcome.
We experience the process of choosing and evaluating,
but our 'choices' are products of an environment that existed before us -
a chain of causality that existed before the earth.

Stones do things.
People do things.
Things determined by forces/processes/mechanisms present before they stones/people were things.
If there is only one outcome, and that outcome was determined before we existed, then we do not have meaningful freedom.

Natural selection has no aim or intent.
Natural selection has an outcome, but no preferences.
Natural selection is indifferent to whether a species goes extinct or flourishes.
Natural selection is anthropomorphized by foolish beings who think an indifferent process wants any outcome.

The result/outcome of natural selection are being that are well adapted to surviving in their environment.
This was not by design, or intent or preference.
It was an inevitable outcome of the selection pressures living beings mutated under.

We are natural.
Everything we do is natural.
All our advancements,
raise the bar for the capacity of what nature can do -
as all we do is a part of nature.

We cannot transcend nature.
We demonstrate nature's capacity for brilliance -
nature's capacity for complexity and variety.
But we will always be a product of nature,
and anything we ever create or do,
will themselves also be part of nature -
as they emerged from nature.

Artificial / man-made are subcategories of nature.
Differentiating between aspects of nature that occur due to the present of homo sapiens,
as opposed to aspects and environments that are present in the absence of homo sapiens.
There is much utility in this distinction,
but do not mistake any of our actions as unnatural -
that'd be a flaw of your thinking.

We're more intelligent than natural selection.
Natural selection has no intelligence, it isn't conscious.
Our interests, shaped and endowed by natural selection,
do not need to align with natural selection -
we can defy it.
We can cause artificial selection,
or artificially affect the development of our species.

Natural selection has it's limits.
It can only cause change incrementally,
where each increment must itself provide advantage of previous increments.
And once a mechanism is shaped that can meet a survival need of a being,
natural selection cannot go back to the drawing board with that species and make drastic changes in light of new information.
It's dumb and short sighted.

Guess who has the capacity to not be short sighted?
Homo sapiens.
We were endowed with intelligence and reason.
We can evaluate our internal and external environment,
and construct plans and strategies for actualizing our goals.
Making WISE decisions.

That something was in the past,
does not mean we ought seek it in the present.
That natural selection shaped us in the past,
does not mean we ought look to natural selection as a guideline for how to progress in the future.

We can recognize what's in our health.
We can recognize our wants and needs.
We can evaluate what is of utility or detrimental to our objectives.

Natural selection is blind.
We do not have to be blind,
despite many acting so.

Ben JS, that was a refreshingly sharp and grounded breakdown—thank you for putting it so clearly. You're absolutely right: calling consciousness an "afterimage" is poetic, not literal, and it risks misleading people into thinking determinism somehow erases causality, participation, or value. It doesn’t.

What it erases is un-caused causes—things that just spring into existence or actions that erupt from an “I” disconnected from prior causes. But nowhere does determinism imply that people are inert like stones. What it clarifies is that our actions, though complex and deeply intertwined with feedback loops and internal modeling, are still the result of chains we didn’t choose.

You nailed it with:
"The illusion is not that we can have affect, the illusion is that the effect we have was ever going to be different."

Yes. That’s the liberating insight of determinism. It tells us: you can matter deeply—you can shape your world, influence others, build futures—but what you become, and what you cause, flows from what caused you. Your efforts are real. Your consequences are real. But they are not authored from a metaphysical void. They are part of the tapestry.

You also made an essential distinction between understanding our roots in natural selection and recognizing our ability to move beyond its blind constraints. We are nature, yes—but we are also the first known part of nature that can simulate alternate futures, plan across centuries, and adjust its behavior for ethical, aesthetic, or long-term goals.

You captured it perfectly:
"That natural selection shaped us in the past, does not mean we ought look to natural selection as a guideline for how to progress in the future."

Exactly. We are nature becoming aware of itself. The question isn't whether we can transcend nature—it’s whether we can consciously participate in its unfolding with clarity and compassion, rather than myth and moral panic.

And you’re right: we don’t need to call anything “unnatural” to criticize it. We don’t need mysticism to find awe, or divine decree to find morality. All of that can emerge—has emerged—from the causal fabric of a universe where stars explode, DNA mutates, and eventually, people write posts like yours.

That’s not bleak. That’s astonishing.

Thanks again for the clarity.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Fri Apr 11, 2025 1:02 pm These recent posts, over-brimming with life-altering Truth, caused me to weep! How did you guys do it?! One stands awe-struck. No Tristan chord left unresolved, resolving truth!

Displacing Earth’s confabulating priesthoods you emboldened men lay out the truths that move mice, men & nebulae!

I feel that the tide has turned. By some alignment of the celestial and neuronic bodies a great determined song is being sung here. The proper use of poetry!

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Fri Apr 11, 2025 1:02 pm

Belinda wrote: ↑Fri Apr 11, 2025 1:17 pm

BigMike wrote: ↑Thu Apr 10, 2025 10:46 pm

Yes, but causal determinism is more than a "chain" of causality. Causal determinism's "chain" if you like leads not only to sequence in time but also to clumps of contemporary circumstances that endure for significant time spans. These clumps of enduring circumstances(e.g. climates, epidemics, terrains) themselves are caused by even more enduring circumstances which taken as a whole are Nature itself.
Nobody knows whether or not human nature exists as a thing, or if humans are so adaptable that we can transcend what has gone before. In other words, are we defined by our histories or are we a work in progress? I sincerely hope that we, as species, nations, and individuals are works in progress!

BigMike wrote: ↑Fri Apr 11, 2025 1:48 pm
You clearly don’t deny the facts—not really. You admit causality. You acknowledge the collapse of old metaphysical frameworks. You know, deep down, that the deterministic model is solid. You just don’t like where it leads. So instead of walking forward, you dance around it with lyrical resignation and ironic distance.