Philosophy Now Forum

How to approach objectivity:
When possible, we must define and apply semiotics, i.e., words/symbols, as connectors, not disconnectors, between our perceptions and the perceived.
We begin with the act, not the idea represented by words in texts.

The act.
What is will then?
Not a metaphysical abstraction, but n action.
My every movement is an wilful act, with an intent.

Will is what differentiate the living from the non-living - the willful from the will-less.
Will is how organisms focus their aggregate energies upon an objective - intentionality.

i reject Schopenhauer's use, to replace God's will by simply eliminating the god part, locating it "outside causality."
What is outside causality is outside existence....non-existent.
Will is part of causality. Causality with intent. Causality made more efficient.

All value judgments are triangulation between a subject, its objective and its estimation/evaluation of the distance/effort required to converge the two.
What are the terms strong/weak, positive/negative, powerful/powerless, free/unfree....etc.?
Value judgements, despairing an evaluation.
A qualification of the concept they refer to.

What does 'free' qualify about Will, in the synthetic concept of free-will?
A will's options, liberating it form one option; one course of action.
A will's power to choose between two, or more available option, participating in the determinaiton of its fate.
We experience our will, our choices, when we consider our options.
Our choice is not illusory, even if our considerations are not based on complete knowledge and awareness.
All choices are approximations....causing unforeseeable, and often unintended, consequences.
This does not negate our culpability in the outcome, no matter how minuscule or mistaken it might have been.
All choices multiply probability, they do not ensure certainty.

Choices are part of natural selection.
They determine who passes on to the future, and who dies in the present.

The future is an illusion because the future does not exist. Only the present exists.

The future is our thoughts about what might, should, could, would happen. It's entirely 'thoughts'.

There is not "one future". There is one present. And that's true whether there is free-will, determinism or complete randomness.

When a person makes a choice, he creates a new present. And from that he starts thinking about the future again.

phyllo wrote: ↑Thu Apr 10, 2025 1:20 pm The future is an illusion because the future does not exist. Only the present exists.

Yes....what we refer to as 'existent' is a perpetual present, presence, perceived as the apparent.

Past continuously manifests presence.
Past is never irrelevant.

Future is what is being determined in the present, with every willful and will-less interaction, i.e., flux.
Man's will participates in what is being determined, to the degree that his powers allow.

phyllo wrote: ↑Thu Apr 10, 2025 1:20 pm The future is an illusion because the future does not exist. Only the present exists.

Ben JS wrote: ↑Fri Mar 14, 2025 10:50 pm I believe in Eternalism or the B-Theory of time.

For your education:

Eternalism:
1. Under standard eternalism, temporal locations are somewhat akin to spatial locations.
[...] When someone says that they stand ‘here’, it is clear that the term ‘here’ refers to their position.
‘Back’ and ‘front’ exist as well. Eternalists stress that ‘now’ is indexical in a similar way.
[...] Events are classified as past, present, or future from some perspective.
-
2. Some forms of eternalism give time a similar ontology to that of space, as a dimension, with different times being as real as different places,
and future events are "already there" in the same sense other places are already there, and that there is no objective flow of time. [...]
It is sometimes referred to as the “block time” or “block universe” theory due to its description of space-time as an unchanging four-dimensional “block”.
-
3.
Let us distinguish between two senses of “x exists now”.
In one sense, which we can call the temporal location sense, this expression is synonymous with “x is present”.
The non-presentist will admit that, in the temporal location sense of “x exists now”, it is true that no non-present objects exist now.
But in the other sense of “x exists now”, which we can call the ontological sense, to say that “x exists now” is just to say that x is now in the domain of our most unrestricted quantifiers.
Using the ontological sense of “exists”, we can talk about something existing in a perfectly general sense, without presupposing anything about its temporal location.


B-Theory of Time:
B-theorists think all change can be described in before-after terms.
They typically portray spacetime as a spread-out manifold with events occurring at different locations in the manifold (often assuming a substantivalist picture).
Living in a world of change means living in a world with variation in this manifold.
To say that a certain autumn leaf changed color is just to say that the leaf is green in an earlier location of the manifold and red in a later location.
The locations, in these cases, are specific times in the manifold.

So you're wrong.
Picking up where you left off years ago.

phyllo wrote: ↑Thu Apr 10, 2025 1:20 pmWhen a person makes a choice, he creates a new present.

The current temporal state of existence is different than other temporal states of existence.
This is no different than saying one part of an object is different than another part of the object.
There is nothing 'new', this is your illusion.
There is change along dimensions, but they are not 'new'.
Existence is eternal and determined by a chain of causality.

Wrong again, as the bitch Satyr is wrong.
Better luck next time.

He finally realized after a decade of me using the term will,
that it was the extension of Schopenhauer's conception of will.
The reason I didn't solely use intent for decades,
was to extend Schopenhauer's conceptions.

How easy it is for an imbecile to connect the dots,
when someone's already done all the work for you.
What a brilliant insight of that imbecile,
to finally realize when I used the word 'will' over the course of a decade,
I was talking about Schopenhauer.

Satyr - 2024 wrote:I’ve partially adopted Schopenhauer’s definition of Will

Finally connected the bricks that others built.
Brilliant.

I'm sure you were so proud of yourself.

His silver bullet didn't work.
Now he's frustrated in his impotence.
Boo hoo.

Let the ranting and raving commence.

EDIT:

People like Pistolero/Satyr wish to sew the seeds of discord.
To distract and create so much noise,
to reduce the capacity for others to speak.

They have no intellectual honesty.
They'll readily say anything to reach their end.

Satyr has 50000 posts on his main account,
and 1000s upon 1000s of posts spread across his alt accounts.

Ever wondered where this Pistolero fellow appeared from?
Or what Pistolero means?

"Pistolero" is a Spanish word that translates to "gunfighter" or "gunman".
Very fitting for their motives.

I will not remain in this trap of a futile conversation,
dedicating energy to someone that only seeks to waste it.

He and his lackeys will undoubtedly get the last word,
and I will endeavor to depart upon the right word.

-

Ben JS wrote:The process of reacting to the environment entails non-illusory mechanisms.
The process of evaluating the environment entails non-illusory mechanisms.

Those 'big brains', are providing an advantage for the 'big brained' thing's survival.
They are the mechanism by which this intelligent being can outcompete it competitors,
and adapt to the challenges / adversities of it's environment, and potentially flourish in these conditions.

Whilst the acts of a being are beyond the being's control,
that being still must possess the mechanisms by which it could contribute to an outcome,
if an outcome is to occur which requires a being with this capacity.

In other words, a domino cannot cause another domino to fall, if it does not have the weight (mechanism) to contribute to this result.

Big brains are a pre-requisite of evaluating / selecting.
Natural selection lead to this outcome.

Ben JS wrote:The biological mechanisms by which one evaluates their environment and devises strategies for interacting with their environment are not illusory.
These are what have been shaped by natural selection.

The illusion is that there were genuine alternatives, not that there are mechanisms by which actions are made.

philosophy stack exchange
Fatalism vs Determinism vs Free-Will

To my understanding, physical causal Determinism means that if E is a physical event, then there is a physical event C such that C causes E. Fatalism means that if some event C happens, then any event E caused by C must always have happened on account of C.

Again, bringing this down to Earth:

Suppose the physical event revolved around Trump announcing a tariff on Chinese goods.

He announced a triple digit tariff on China. This will cause any number of diverse consequences for different companies. Now, how would someone go about the task of determining if this reflects determinism or fatalism? How would someone make that distinction "for all practical purposes"?

From the perspective of some there is no substantive difference between them. Once the laws of nature had compelled Trump to do only that which he ever could have done, anything/everything that follows reflects in turn the only possible reality. Then cue The Gap, Rummy's Rule and the Benjamin Button Syndrome.

This part:

That is, determinism says that what happens has a cause, and Fatalism says that causes and effects have to have happened. The former is saying that a cause is enough for an effect, while the latter say that all instances of causation have always been decided.

Clearly, everything that happens has a cause. It's not like Trump just pops up out of nowhere to do what he does in an entirely random manner.. It's that we still don't know the extent to which the human brain either has or does not have some measure of free will.

I understand that this is a bit simplistic, and would require a broad survey of at least physics, metaphysics, and math to really fully motivate. Either way, doesn’t debate about free will have more to do with Fatalism than Determinism?

So much more to the point though [for some of us] wouldn't the survey itself become just another inherent component of the only possible reality? As though one can simply insist this is not the case because they don't believe that it is.

Ben JS wrote: ↑Mon Apr 07, 2025 2:58 am

iambiguous wrote: ↑Tue Apr 01, 2025 3:02 amAnd if the excuse this person give is in and of itself no less an inherent manifestation of the only possible reality?

Our motivation is to influence the future to be closer to our ideal.
We do not know what the future will be.

On the other hand, some hard determinists insist -- are compelled to insist? -- that human motivation itself is wholly determined as well. And while some may be idealists and others cynics, both frames of mind are inherently fated in turn. In other words, for some, determinism and fatalism are necessarily interchangeable.

Unless, of course, they are not. So, as of now, what are the neuroscientists telling us. Which one is it...for sure.

Basically in my view -- click -- you note things like this...

Ben JS wrote: ↑Mon Apr 07, 2025 2:58 amDeterminism is not a reason to stop striving towards your ideal future.

People using determinism to argue that the current predicted trajectory ought be or cannot be other,
are contributing an influence that I predict leads away from the future I consider ideal.

Thus, I am motivated to highlight that we can contribute to an outcome,
that leads us away from a predicted future that is not preferable,
in the absence of our attempted actions to alter said predicted outcome.

...as though, what, we should all just assume that your assessment of determinism need be as far as one goes in order to understand [and accept] it...objectively? necessarily?

Only from long practice online, I have found that, when some point this out to me, what they really mean instead is that since i didn't agree with them, the problem is me.

Or, sure, I'm not understanding your point correctly.

How about this:

Given your understanding of determinism, how would you describe this exchange that we are having? What parts were within your control and what parts were not?

Eternalism or the B-Theory of time.

"Eternalism" and "B-theory" change nothing.

One has some knowledge of the present and some memories of the past. There is no knowledge of the future, there are only thoughts about it.

A person's choice still creates a new present state.

A person is only ever in the present.

Pistolero wrote: ↑Thu Apr 10, 2025 12:35 pm How to approach objectivity:
When possible, we must define and apply semiotics, i.e., words/symbols, as connectors, not disconnectors, between our perceptions and the perceived.
We begin with the act, not the idea represented by words in texts.

The act.
What is will then?
Not a metaphysical abstraction, but n action.
My every movement is an wilful act, with an intent.

Will is what differentiate the living from the non-living - the willful from the will-less.
Will is how organisms focus their aggregate energies upon an objective - intentionality.

i reject Schopenhauer's use, to replace God's will by simply eliminating the god part, locating it "outside causality."
What is outside causality is outside existence....non-existent.
Will is part of causality. Causality with intent. Causality made more efficient.

All value judgments are triangulation between a subject, its objective and its estimation/evaluation of the distance/effort required to converge the two.
What are the terms strong/weak, positive/negative, powerful/powerless, free/unfree....etc.?
Value judgements, despairing an evaluation.
A qualification of the concept they refer to.

What does 'free' qualify about Will, in the synthetic concept of free-will?
A will's options, liberating it form one option; one course of action.
A will's power to choose between two, or more available option, participating in the determinaiton of its fate.
We experience our will, our choices, when we consider our options.
Our choice is not illusory, even if our considerations are not based on complete knowledge and awareness.
All choices are approximations....causing unforeseeable, and often unintended, consequences.
This does not negate our culpability in the outcome, no matter how minuscule or mistaken it might have been.
All choices multiply probability, they do not ensure certainty.

Choices are part of natural selection.
They determine who passes on to the future, and who dies in the present.

The need for a scapegoat runs deep in these manimals.
Herd psychology is innate.
They need someone, or something, to blame.
Innocence is how they earn salvation.

So they play word games, constantly contradicting themselves with absurdities.
Many of these sad fucks are extra careful, because they are, humble cowards.
They look thrice, before the cross the street, and imagine that the cosmos has a special place for them....because they deserve eternity.


The issue is regret.
How does a manimal, of some age, deal with a lifetime of bad choices, based on judgements that never doubted the principles they were sold?
Conventional minds, lead like sheeple to the slaughter....and when the blade approaches, they must believe that it was all part of some plan....or, at least, inevitable.
They could not have done anything differently. It was all determined by forces they could not resist.
Their life was not a product of their bad judgments....
The ego cannot deal with this, when it cannot change its ways.
Imagine living a lifetime believing in lies....
Would you be able to admit it?
How humbling it is.....would the go endure it?
So much time and effort invested on "facts" that were all lies.
One life lived, and wasted....
How can such a manimal cope with this?
He need to believe that it was all inevitable....his fate.....and he had no part in determining it.

How does Mary put it? "....the 'laws that govern matter."......
Mosaic commandments reinvented.

Determinism is Abrahamism evolving in accordance with post-enlightenment, postmodern ideals.
Instead of god's absolutist, totalitarian, authoritarian will, we have absolute cosmic order.
They would rather accept that life is no different than a grain of sand, than accept any responsibility for the negative shit they suffered.

How else could they believe that all men are "created equal"?

Let's admit...that if choice is an illusion and life has absolutely no agency, has an entirely and completely un-free will, that we are back to creationism.
How would big brains evolve if they offered no advantage by being able to make better choices, based on better judgements?

If living beings have no will that can offer an advantage, then they are no different than lifeless phenomena.
Man no different than a pebble rolling down a mountainside, towards a cliff - unable to will itself to change course; unable to choose a different path.

Fatalists.

A Judas Goat has cognitively taken over, and the sheeple follow it towards their determined destiny.

We are reverting to a secular version of the same Abrahamic superstitions.

Big brains and sophisticated nervous systems evolve using the natural selection process.
Mutations that offer an advantage are propagated, those that do not, are culled out, or lie dormant until triggered by another mutation.

Will is what separates the living form the non-living - intentionality, focusing organic energies upon an objective.

A stone rolling down a mountainside has no will - it is entirely governed by forces it cannot resist.
A rat going up the mountainside, trying to attain its objective, according to these fucks, also has no choice.
So there's no advantage to being alive. In fact, it's a disadvantage, because a rat is compelled to suffer the uphill, choosing a path of more resistance, whereas a stone abandons itself to the path of least resistance.
But if life has no free will at all, it is no different than the stone, leaving only suffering to distinguish the living form the non-living.
The rat suffers, whilst the stone does not....yet both lack will. So why must the rat suffer, in this cosmological farce?
Why be alive at all?

But things get worse.
If sophisticated nervous systems offer no advantage, then how are they naturally selected?
Big brains evolved to perceive and gather data, formulate judgments and make choices....choices that determine their fate.
But, according to these delusional fucks, choice is illusory, and will exists for no reason.
Eliminating the advantage that would explain selection.

We're back to creationism.
An absolute totalitarian god, is replaced by a totalitarian absolute concept, order, or simply universe, presuming that all that exists is entirely ordered. Fuck Yin/Yang, and chaos....it is merely complexity. All is ORDER.
Life emerges and evolves according to what is cosmological determined - god's will.
Life has no participation in this.
It is an "innocent" bystander, experiencing its life, unable to do anything about it.
Its participation is NIL. It's choices determined, it has no input into what happens to it.
It cannot participate by formulating good judgments and making better choices, since all of it is predetermined and it cannot participate in what is being determined.

_____________________________________________
Free does not mean independent from causality, as many of these sad fucks think, it only means options.
freedom is not metaphysical. Freedom, like 'power' is a qualifier of what concept follows its use.
A qualifier expressing a degree, or a relationship.
My power determines how many options I have, because power can overcome resistance. More power, more resistance is overcome....more options are available - increasing freedom.
A rich man has more options, relative to a poor man. He is more free to do as he wills.
If I have more than one option, I am free to choose one or the other. My choice participating in what will unfold.
If I can only choose one, I am not free. One choice is not a choice.
Freedom defined in the way these sad fucks define it, is intended to make it supernatural. Only a god would be free, from causality, from need, from all the components that compel us to make a choice.
They do not apply the same method to the qualifier 'strength/weakness' or 'power' or 'good/bad'....only to free/un-free.
They CHOOSE this definition for this purpose.
Then they live their lives contradicting it.

Most of these sad fucks, meticulously study all option made available to them, before they make their choice.... In practice.
In theory, they want to believe that the choice they made was the only choice they could have made.
Why?
To protect their ego from the implications of a choice producing unforeseen, or unexpected, negative consequences.
They need to remain innocent of those.
And while they live their lives contradicting their, self-serving, theories with actions, they routinely find scapegoats to blame....Republicans, or Nazis, Fascists, Capitalists... etc.

But, if nobody has a choice, because choice is an illusion, why are these evil ones blamed?
Does not fatalism necessitate a stoic endurance of everything, because it is all determined and nothing is intentional, so nothing can be wrong?

These poor self-deceiving saps, use double standards to evade the paradoxes that arise when their actions contradict their beliefs.

Freud wrote:Anatomy is Fate

They easily accept collectivized fate of species and subspecies, but refuse to apply it to one species, their own.
There they believe the cosmos takes personal care of every individual to determine his or her fate.
A position in line with Abrahamic narratives, and sparks and souls only existing in humans.

Their approach is more protestant.

"Judge a man by the content of his character"... but why judge a man at all if he had no part in determining his character?
Why judge a man harshly if he kills?
Why punish him if 'choice is an illusion'?
Is not a kind man and a cruel man equally lacking free-will?
Does a killer have the ability to choose not to kill? If he does then he has free-will, because 'free' simply means that he has more than one option that can be selected, willed.

If I could have pressed the breaks but CHOSE to press the gas, and I killed a man.....I am responsible for my choice, because it was free - within my range of power. I intentionally pressed the gas - willfully.
If it were not, it would be an accident... or fate. Inevitable.

But, according to these cowards, there is no free-will and choice is an illusion...so no matter what Is willed, the wrongdoer had no choice.
No man can be held accountable for anything.
God willed it....or cosmic forces, beyond his control, willed him, compelled him, to do what he did.

Are they punishing the cosmos for determining him to act as he did?
Is this not what the God of the bible do to Adam?
He, supposedly, created Adam to be and act as he did, and then punished him for it.....in essence he punished himself for creating Adam to do what he did.
Masochistic?


Every day these buffoons live a life of internal dissonance.
Their mind is convinced that they're fate is determined, but their bodies act as if they willfully participate in what was being determined....and so have agency.
Every day they take care not to make a bad choice, as if they have a choice to make a bad one.

Schizophrenics...mind/body dissonance, in accordance with the Abrahamic traditions, and postmodernism.
Divine sparks "trapped" in imperfect bodies.
Immortal souls "trapped" in mortal bodies.

Males trapped in female bodies.

A mind's convictions usurping its body's actions.
Body has no free will, and the mind is trapped in it.
Mind can contradict the body, and the body's actions can contradict the mind's ideals.

Does a pious saint feel ashamed when he gets an erection at the site of a teenage female?
He feels betrayed by his own body. He feels he has no will to prevent it from occurring. No choice, he tells himself.
Ha!

iambiguous wrote: ↑Sun Jan 23, 2022 6:22 pm From Free Will and Determinism: A Dialogue by Clifford Williams.

Frederick [Mr. Free Will]: Can you explain why in your sense a person can be both free and determined?

Carolyn [Ms. Compatibilist]: Yes. A person can be free and determined because what he does can be caused by something that goes on inside him even though he is not forced by some circumstances outside of him to act as he does. If he is not forced by circumstances outside of himself to act as he does, then he acts freely. Yet his action could nonetheless be caused by something inside him, such as an unconscious motive or a brain state.

Frederick: ...a person could have freedom in your sense even though he had no control over anything he does. Let me explain. If everything a person does is caused by unconscious motives, as you say, then he would have no control over anything that he does. Unknown to him, he would be buffeted about by the workings of his unconscious mind. Yet such a person would have freedom in your sense of freedom because no external circumstances would prevent him from doing what he consciously wants to do. That means your conception of freedom is a sham --- a person who has freedom in your sense does not have control over what he does.

Yep, that is basically my own reaction to compatibilism. We have "conceptual"/"theoretical" freedom, but, for all practical purposes, we have no control over what we do because "internal" and "external" are seamlessly intertwined re the laws of matter.

As Frederick notes...

"You can call that freedom if you want to, but it is a psuedofreedom."

And that, in my view, is often where the compatibilists go: letting it all revolve around what you call something, name something, define something. As though the inner "I" here was not the equivalent of all that is out in the world able to compel you to "choose" this instead of that.

Here I always come back to "I" in our dreams. The "freedom" we are convinced we have all the way up to the point when we wake up. The waking "I" no less a manifestation of the laws of matter. Only, far, far, far more inexplicably.

I do not think you know the difference between agent and patient, "free from" and "free to"
Use your car or truck stuck in the mud to work it out.
You have only two parts of speech, If you cannot perform the operations, just follow along with your computer.

Phil8659 wrote: ↑Mon Apr 14, 2025 10:51 pm
I do not think you know the difference between agent and patient, "free from" and "free to"
Use you car or truck stuck in the mud to work it out.
You have only two parts of speech, If you cannot perform the operations, just follow along with your computer.

You want me to work it out for you?

You can name a relative, you can name a correlative.
Paired they make another correlative.

So, what can't you do with two and only two concepts? except confuse the one with the other.

In short, you cannot predicate existence, as if free is some existent thing, you have to know its relative difference.
Generally it is simply motion for "free" free to do its own work. Free to come and free to go. etc.