Philosophy Now Forum

MustaphaTheMond wrote: ↑Thu Dec 24, 2020 2:52 pm

jayjacobus wrote: ↑Wed Dec 23, 2020 11:23 pm

MustaphaTheMond wrote: ↑Tue Dec 22, 2020 10:48 pm

You want to believe it exists, so you believe it exists, fair enough. But I would hesitate to describe that as a powerful or legitimate argument, more a sort of fideism.

And the mind "leaping" from one line of thought to the other is the result of neuronal activity and chemical states of the brain. It is not truly a leap in causation, that is just the way your mind is interpreting it. Everything slots into the chain of causation (other that indeterministic quantum events as already described).

What do you think Jaycob?

Hell no. The causal chain doesn't exist in the mind. It does in the brain which is subject to the mind's direction. Prove that their is neural activity in the MIND that neural scientists have identified. Besides, the mind is the cause that comes from the mind. Circular?? Perhaps. How do you explain that circularity?

Disagree with your assertion. There is a large body of work in neuroscience and cognitive science which makes a powerful argument that the "mind" or the experience of consciousness is the product of physical reality: neurones, electrophysiology etc.

The mind is subject to the causal chain (determinism) and quantum jumps (indeterminism) just like everything else. Neither leave room for freedom unless you start playing semantic games and change the definitions. To argue the converse is just mysticism and religion.

MustaphaTheMond wrote: ↑Sun Dec 20, 2020 10:55 pm I have just published an essay putting the final nail in the coffin of free will over on Malady:

https://philosophical-malady.blogspot.c ... -free.html

In it I have attempted to describe the "standard argument" against free will and interrogate the salient evidence from neuroscience and physics. I would be interested to hear peoples' views/responses.

(Apologies if posting links is not allowed, I can reproduce the essay here in its entirety but it is 5000 words long)

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Dec 24, 2020 4:08 pm

Nick_A wrote: ↑Thu Dec 24, 2020 4:03 pm Suppose a person wants to have the free will to be master of themselves. Then they learn in reality they are a slave to their desires.

They cannot "learn" such a thing, Nick. If Determinism is true, they don't "learn" anything...ever.

Every move they make and every cognition in their heads is nothing other than a material-causal chain doing whatever it was predetermined to do.

Walker wrote: ↑Thu Dec 24, 2020 4:19 pm

Nick_A wrote: ↑Thu Dec 24, 2020 4:03 pm
Suppose a person wants to have the free will to be master of themselves. Then they learn in reality they are a slave to their desires. They may want to lose twenty pounds but lack the free will to do so and are a slave to box of chocalate chip cookies.

A person may profess all sorts of humanistic values but spend their money on the sleaziest forms of entertainment so what do they really want? What are they attracted to? It seems humanity in general has a conflict between the conscious attraction to higher values and the attraction to acquired earthly negative emotions. But to be master of oneself a person must have the free will to acquire freedom from the dominance of acquired negative emotions. That is why free will is only possible for conscious Man. Lacking consciousness we are governed by desire; the desire of the mind and the dominant desires of negative emotions.

You can only be master of yourself, in the here and now.
That is also the place where true change, and want, is revealed as action.
That is also the only place where reality exists.

Thoughts are not change.
If anything, they are the confusion that chooses.
Thoughts come and go, most are soon forgotten.

To be master of yourself in the here and now is to clearly see who you are.
Who you are is defined by action, born of intent, shaped by limitations.
To see that is to also see who you will be.

Such sight takes into account all the wishin’ and a hopin’ that goes along with human nature.
This is why age gives humans an edge in understanding.

Who is this mysterious "they?"

Nick_A wrote: ↑Thu Dec 24, 2020 8:05 pm How many even on this thread assert they have free will?

Nick_A wrote: ↑Thu Dec 24, 2020 8:14 pm
What are we in the here and now? Do we have inner unity or are we a plurality which features both the struggle between conscious will and mechanical reaction to desire? "To Know Thyself" requires becoming aware and experiencing that we are both

Walker wrote: ↑Thu Dec 24, 2020 11:12 pm

Nick_A wrote: ↑Thu Dec 24, 2020 8:14 pm
What are we in the here and now? Do we have inner unity or are we a plurality which features both the struggle between conscious will and mechanical reaction to desire? "To Know Thyself" requires becoming aware and experiencing that we are both

Thoughts come and go. Even a thought that seems important now will likely soon be forgotten. The more complex the thought, the more likely the forgetting.

Ever have a moment of clarity when you say, yes, this is how it is. This is what I have to remember. And then dang it if you don’t. Or if you do later remember it seems too simple, not so relevant anymore.

I’ve noticed the questions sort of veer in that direction and are answered with a view, but I think the how still remains in the questions.

The real question I hear is: What simple unforgettable key unlocks the truth of every situation?

Over.

Nick_A wrote: ↑Fri Dec 25, 2020 2:29 am Associative thoughts are very useful but lack the force to do anything. Consciousness reveals what is necessary to do but the force to do anything comes from our body and our emotions. A person may say all the right things but without the force of emotions to support thoughts, nothing gets done. Thoughts have no force.

MustaphaTheMond wrote: ↑Tue Dec 22, 2020 10:33 pm To argue against this simply because you don't like it is the "appeal to consequences fallacy".

RCSaunders wrote: ↑Fri Dec 25, 2020 10:11 pm

MustaphaTheMond wrote: ↑Tue Dec 22, 2020 10:33 pm To argue against this simply because you don't like it is the "appeal to consequences fallacy".

He's not, "appealing," to anything. His words are just a predetermined event without meaning. Why do you describe his words as though they were chosen for some reason?

henry quirk wrote: ↑Sat Dec 26, 2020 1:35 am

RCSaunders wrote: ↑Fri Dec 25, 2020 10:11 pm

MustaphaTheMond wrote: ↑Tue Dec 22, 2020 10:33 pm To argue against this simply because you don't like it is the "appeal to consequences fallacy".

He's not, "appealing," to anything. His words are just a predetermined event without meaning. Why do you describe his words as though they were chosen for some reason?

exactly so...queer how the determined event, mustapha, acts just like, responds just like, a free will; strange how the determined event, mustapha, holds me, another determined event, responsible

A reluctant physician, when Mustapha isn’t pushing needles into the spines of neurologically-diseased men, he is studying the works of Marx, Kaczynski, Bukowski and Schopenhauer. A pessimist at heart, but a revolutionary Marxist on a cerebral level, The Mond lives in a perpetual conflict between his acceptance of the futility of an absurd, deterministic universe and the propulsive need to assemble an improved socialist society. Mustapha accepts the overt descriptive truth of modern monetary machinations and his attempt to integrate it into classical Marxian theory is yet to yield fruit. His hobbies include wooing East African or Arabic women, smoking opium, collecting William Blake’s paintings and consuming over-priced aged spirits.

RCSaunders wrote: ↑Sat Dec 26, 2020 2:25 am

henry quirk wrote: ↑Sat Dec 26, 2020 1:35 am

RCSaunders wrote: ↑Fri Dec 25, 2020 10:11 pm
He's not, "appealing," to anything. His words are just a predetermined event without meaning. Why do you describe his words as though they were chosen for some reason?

exactly so...queer how the determined event, mustapha, acts just like, responds just like, a free will; strange how the determined event, mustapha, holds me, another determined event, responsible

Here's how Mustapha Mond describes himself:

A reluctant physician, when Mustapha isn’t pushing needles into the spines of neurologically-diseased men, he is studying the works of Marx, Kaczynski, Bukowski and Schopenhauer. A pessimist at heart, but a revolutionary Marxist on a cerebral level, The Mond lives in a perpetual conflict between his acceptance of the futility of an absurd, deterministic universe and the propulsive need to assemble an improved socialist society. Mustapha accepts the overt descriptive truth of modern monetary machinations and his attempt to integrate it into classical Marxian theory is yet to yield fruit. His hobbies include wooing East African or Arabic women, smoking opium, collecting William Blake’s paintings and consuming over-priced aged spirits.

...which explains a lot. Strange how that description looks for all the world like something written by someone who chose what they wrote. Perhaps the, "spirits," play a bigger part in influencing his cerebral fantasies than his, "determinism."

Walker wrote: ↑Fri Dec 25, 2020 9:40 am

Nick_A wrote: ↑Fri Dec 25, 2020 2:29 am Associative thoughts are very useful but lack the force to do anything. Consciousness reveals what is necessary to do but the force to do anything comes from our body and our emotions. A person may say all the right things but without the force of emotions to support thoughts, nothing gets done. Thoughts have no force.

I’d invite you to consider this view further in light of: the existence of proven scientific methods, non-belief dependent, which engage emotions via thought, and also methods to give thought emotional power, which speaks to the how in your questions. Non-thought methods, again scientific, serve to quiet the mind static, which subsequently opens consciousness to thoughts like a radio receiver opens to frequencies. Enough for this discussion to know that these methods and their purpose exist in many traditions, and the particulars of their form is shaped by those traditions.

Who would choose to pursue this knowledge?

The one who has no choice but to pursue it.

Matthew 15:17-20
Do you not yet understand that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and is eliminated? But those things which proceed out of the mouth come from the heart, and they defile a man. For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies. These are the things which defile a man, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile a man."

Nick_A wrote: ↑Sat Dec 26, 2020 3:15 am

Walker wrote: ↑Fri Dec 25, 2020 9:40 am

Nick_A wrote: ↑Fri Dec 25, 2020 2:29 am Associative thoughts are very useful but lack the force to do anything. Consciousness reveals what is necessary to do but the force to do anything comes from our body and our emotions. A person may say all the right things but without the force of emotions to support thoughts, nothing gets done. Thoughts have no force.

I’d invite you to consider this view further in light of: the existence of proven scientific methods, non-belief dependent, which engage emotions via thought, and also methods to give thought emotional power, which speaks to the how in your questions. Non-thought methods, again scientific, serve to quiet the mind static, which subsequently opens consciousness to thoughts like a radio receiver opens to frequencies. Enough for this discussion to know that these methods and their purpose exist in many traditions, and the particulars of their form is shaped by those traditions.

Who would choose to pursue this knowledge?

The one who has no choice but to pursue it.

"People mistakenly assume that their thinking is done by their head; it is actually done by the heart which first dictates the conclusion, then commands the head to provide the reasoning that will defend it." ~ Anthony de Mello

I agree that the great traditions are concerned with the relationship between reason and emotion. Intellectual people profess that emotions deny reason while emotional people assert that emotion brings value to reason. But the bottom line is that when reason and emotion are opposed to one another, free will is impossible and replaced by the desires of self justification

Socrates in the Chariot allegory shows how the dark horse or our earthly lower negative emotions and thoughts pull the chariot down. They do not listen to the driver. In Christianity the corrupt heart denies our potential for free will.

Matthew 15:17-20
Do you not yet understand that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and is eliminated? But those things which proceed out of the mouth come from the heart, and they defile a man. For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies. These are the things which defile a man, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile a man."

IMO free will is only possible when a person has acquired emotional intelligence to match intellectual intelligence. Then they can function together (facts and values) as normal for human "being" Otherwise free will can only be defined by efforts at defensive self justification. What is emotional intelligence and can it develop much like person develops intellectual intelligence?

The only people willing to pursue objective understanding are when they have need for it. Without the need to admit ones nothingness, self justification and all the negative emotions used to justify it reign supreme.

even the most retarded, ignorant man is a causal agent (a free will)...he just not a very competent one, is all

free will is what a man is...bein' reasonable (havin' decent emotional & intellectual quotients) really doesn't figure into it