MoFo's Religion

You can interpret quantum mechanics to be deterministic if you really want to like Bohm did. The fact that you interpret something as being non-deterministic doesn't really say anything about being. It just means you've stopped trying to dig deeper into the underlying mechanisms or your entire conceptual apparatus has failed.

We assume slot machines to be nondeterministic, even though their parts are all very far past the classical threshold in which we are most familiar. We assume this, because it's as good as nondeterministic according to our standards and tolerances -- even if the house always wins.

But again, all this talk of 'particles' and 'molecules' really has nothing to do with free will anyway. Free will is the act of self-determination. It needs self-consciousness, desire, and commitment, all of which are objects in their own right.

A politician In Australia wanted to regulate pokies (slot machines) though, the clubs and the Prime Minister couldn't bare the cost lol! Though, they do help and hinder people. For example...clubs do a lot for sporting clubs, though if the Father or Mother are degelient gamblers, well, they're f*****!

C'mon. Your argument is based on the title, and not anything it actually says? If you read a little more of it it becomes obvious that it's a fine title, anyway, because they describe the challenges that physics pose for the idea of free will, and they talk about what conceptions of free will (because as you said before, it can mean a few different things) are consistent with physics.

But it simply does not back up what you're saying. If you think it does, show me where. I see it saying the opposite of what you're saying more than once, and I quoted it to that effect a couple of posts back.

Why does it imply free will? Why can't it be complex instincts, or complex urges? Love seems an awful lot like a complex version of lust, for example. Conscience seems like a complex version of group survival. Obviously, I happen to think both mean a lot more, but I don't see why a materialist would regard these things as anything more than high-level instincts.

Simple: we know the law of physics exists because we can observe them acting upon things consistently and predictably.

I don't really need to provide the "why" because I'm not pretending to have it; I only say that we can observe certain physical laws, and we can deduce what idea are and are not consistent with those laws. But I'll take a guess anyway: the Universe would be pretty chaotic without reliable rules, and human beings wouldn't seem to serve a lot of purposes if they had no choice about what they said or did. Thus, we get lots of physical laws, but minds that can make independent choices. Any other combination looks pretty pointless.

Correct, he would've done something else because he'd be reacting to completely different forces. He'd also be a different person to begin with. So I'm not sure I see your point.

Re: the brain being magical. The thing is, that is what you're saying, even if you're not saying it. You're saying that something about the brain means it doesn't have to react the way other types of matter do. I see only two ways this could be true: either the "stuff" is different (and on a subatomic level, it isn't), or there's a way to arrange matter that suddenly makes it immune from causality. Can you think of any other conceptual way? If not, do you believe that second one? That you can put subatomic particles into a certain structure that renders it immune to causality? I see no other option, even on a broad conceptual level, but feel free to enlighten me.

But again, how would you know? You talk about the brain as being this mystifying, complicated, incredible thing, which is fine. But then you try to turn around and say that you understand it, and it gives you choice. It can't be an utter enigma when you want to talk about how it's physically constructed, but suddenly open up and become clear when you want to talk about what it can and cannot do. If it's complicated enough to be such a mystery, it's complicated enough that you have no way of knowing how thought is really formed, or what degree of control you have over it.

Also, your entire premise seems to be that free will must exist because you feel like you have it. That is the extent of the "evidence" you provide. Do you realize how much like blind faith that sounds? Lots of people say they believe in God because they "feel" His presence. So how about this: you have as much evidence for your belief as a church lady who believes in God because she says she feels the Holy Spirit.

If you define instinct that way, then yes, it's instinct. But the reason I disputed the idea is because that type of "instinct" is not some primal, overwhelming urge that overtakes our reason. That's not what determinism says, just to be clear.

I think instinct implies an impulsiveness and a different feeling than other types of decisions, but again, sure: if you define instinct merely as something we must do, then it's instinct.

Meaning your brain has some law that doesn't apply to it, or doesn't apply to it normally, right?

Okay, but you asked for empirical evidence, and I explained why there's a ton of empirical evidence. It's not just that we haven't seen some magic choice-having subatomic particles, it's that we've specifically seen the same "stuff" reacting every time we do something to it. It all has to react. Even the double-slit experiment was just a particle reacting in a surprising way. We have not found anything in this universe that is indifferent to any force; everything reacts to everything, somehow. It never has the option of just sitting there, as if nothing had happened, yet that's what's necessary, on some level, to create the circumstances necessary for choice.

I'd say it's a good deal more impressive than saying that something can exist because we might find some way to explain it someday. But that's not my whole argument, either. This is just the part where I explain why there's no empirical evidence that suggests you should believe in free will. That your entire position is based on a feeling that is heavily contradicted by our observations and what we can currently deduce from them.

God knows they'd probably make better decisions.

I'm gonna be selective about what I'm responding to in your posts, PN. Which is probably best, because it seems like most of it is just fleshing out the idea and not even meant to be an argument, necessarily. I'll try to focus on what I think are the pivot points. Here goes.

Cool. Let's see if you do!

With you so far.

Still with you. Exciting!

Well, that "stuff" is just imperfect pattern recognition, or the limits of categorization itself. The fact that we perceive imperfectly does not create a space for freedom for objects. I don't know why it would imply anything at all, really. That's kind of like saying objects are even freer if we have terrible eyesight, because then we're even worse at describing each one and they could be anything. But at some point you have to posit a reality independent of our perceptions. And our failure to make our thoughts and words correspond to that reality doesn't mean that reality has choice. It just means we're not perfect. Make sense?

Also, it feels like there might be a bait-and-switch (maybe not intentional) wherein you acknowledge the "supplement" is just a name for our categorization of things, but then you talk about the supplement doing things, and segue over into talking about it as if it had agency. I'm not sure how you get from one to the other.

This sounds like you're saying that an object exerts "freedom" but defying the category its placed in and refusing to fit comfortably within it. We certainly learn this when we examine objects closely, but that's something we learn, not something the object does. And it's not an expression of freedom, it's just a revelation of our own finite ability to categorize.

At this point the atheists are just trolling.

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Takes one to know one.

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He's got you there.

I think.

It was predetermined I would say that.

Re: trolling. In all seriousness, I don't think anyone's doing that. I do think some people are just taking shots at religion and not really trying to have a serious discussion about it, but I don't think it's just for kicks or anything.

At this point, I really feel like we're getting somewhere at this point.

That's totes the right attitude. I think the real 'argument' starts from a different place -- looking at what mathematics has to say about what the One is, so right now it is pretty randumb.

I'm pumped, because you're definitely close to getting me, but you're still stuck in some older ways of thinking -- namely, the Kantian mode that centers everything on humans. This constant anthrocentrism might also come from your religion.

If I am talking about being, I am talking about each and every One that is, was, or ever could be. I'm talking about us, sure -- since we know most about us -- but I'm also talking about rocks, zebras, and galaxies.

Basically you're stuck in the thought that the human mind is extremely central to being. But categorization is not some primoridial aspect of being. It is just another One. You can have one category, two categories -- heck, you can even have three. It's weird for me to address this sentence, because you're saying something that's totally right, but you mean it in a way that's meant to imply the One is still there.

The fact that our categories are imperfect is just more reason to think the One is not.

Lastly, categories only collect what are already objects. I'm saying that, even when looking at a single object -- any singular object -- you find its breakdown into the Multiple. You don't even have to go up to the level of languages, concepts, or categories.

Sure it does. The fact that we percieve imperfectly already creates a space of freedom for our perception -- the freedom of our perceptions to move about in the rough edges of its imperfection.

We don't need to percieve anything for it be evident that the One is not. Whether we look at something or not, there is no One, only Multiple.

This doesn't work as an analogy at all, and for a crucial reason.

In this discourse, we have a standard for what is good eyesight. Therefore, it is possible to actually obtain a true vision of the thing in question.

The One is impossible to obtain a vision of, because it is not there. Only the Multiple is. In fact, it is rather that the better our eyesight gets -- i.e. the more rigorously we examine the limits of the object -- the more the object eludes us.

I posit reality as the thing which has the choice. Our perceptions are just as real as anything they percieve -- and just as imperfect and not-One.

This is not Kantianism, where the thing-in-itself is inaccessible to us through its appearances. There is no thing-in-itself. There are only its Multiple appearances grouped together as One, thus producing the illusion of some hard kernel behind the veil. There is only the veil. There is nothing behind it.

This does not admit to some ignorance, it admits to total empricism as it should be. The true empricist does not posit objects. That's why most scientists cannot be said to be empiricists. The true empiricist has no need for objects. The way Hume is typically taken is as a defeatist who argues "we will never know." But this does not imply that there is something to know.

There is nothing to know but appearances, the Multiple manifestations OF the One ARE all the One is.

Agency is just a metaphor for process. You see it everywhere. For example, protons HATE to be next to one another. To be clear, the supplement does nothing. Only the object does. The object has the CHOICE to recognize the supplement or not. The object does all the work.

The object is subject to something like cause/effect, yes. But if it is pushed into the realm of the supplement, then it is free to do whatever it likes. Stay within it and bring about a self-transformation or leave and go back to its determinate existence.

We have no idea of what an object does in its spare time, as it were. Our categories aren't the issue here. Our categories is just the language by which we try to communicate with objects. We have no real idea what they're saying.

I'm not even implying they're all doing anything like thinking or speaking or that self-consciousness is what we think of as that. One needn't even go further than to ask how a deaf, dumb, blind person percieves themselves.

The only important thing is that, as an object, you are non-self-identical by definition. You have the possibility of more than what you are inside you at all times.

This goes for us, rocks, and our categories. Philosophy in particular prides itself in the task of freeing categories from themselves.

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Anyways, we are really getting somewhere, I feel. This post mainly had to do with generalizing the domain of the One to every object that ever was, is, or could be instead of just the objects of our cognition.

Materialism as a term isn't really supposed to be contrasted with religion -- it emerges in opposition to Idealism, that everything is cut out by the mind. This is not what I'm saying. I think Idealism fails on many levels. No, it is just to say that objects find-themselves 'cut out' -- how else can one find itself? -- and that they are free because those cuts are actually parts of themselves.

Actually, the Ancient Alien Theory of Advanced technology being mistaken for magic or miracle makes alot of the bible make sense.

Take the story of Noah for instance, its plausible the cataloguing of every animal was achieved, if rather than the actual beasts loaded aboard a boat which as the retarded child noted, was absurd, what actually happened was the dna samples from each were taken. Something that we do today.

The Virgin Birth is obviously invitro fertilization.

Its my understanding that True Christians believe in their heart that non-human beings exist. They are represented by the Good guys (angels) and bad guys (Demons). They can be omniprescient, or they can occupy a physical body.

My Contention is, the entities mentioned in the bible and thousands of years earlier in other religious texts were extra-terrestrial in nature, but certainly flesh and blood.

Personal Jet Packs perhaps?

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"The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it." - Michelangelo.

Note:

So yeah. I'm trying to be as clear as possible here when I say that every object is decomposable, so, for now, I'm talking about individual objects as if they are isolated.

But really, most of the objects we have been talking about -- legos, trees, rocks -- don't really exist in isolation. They are clearly just members or parts of a much larger situation, carefully networked into countless other objects.

Overall, this doesn't really make a difference, since any situation is itself an object. Still, I feel it is important to point out how our world reveals itself IN BULK as it were. We get a whole lot of objects and relations that all seem to come with one another.

Again, this doesn't present any more of a difficulty for the thesis that the One is not anymore than the parts of a car all come with one another when they are presented in the situation of a car.

We can demonstrate the point just as well on levels, but it is important to realize that, for us, the principle object under consideration is the situation-object or world-object. It is an object within which we ourselves are embedded and participate in.

This is perhaps the most important property of existence that 'dethrones' us as trascendent observers/categorizers of the world. You can say the world probably 'categorizes' us as much we 'categorize' it. The same goes for any part of the world.

In the end, we are just one object among others, all embedded in a larger object... and so on...

All objects fail. All objects are free. We are free to determine our own wills and our own perceptions, but the external objects that correspond to those perceptions are also free to determine themselves.

And, of course, as always objects aren't really there, but are just groups of multiples made possible by supplement multiples.

Dude, say something constructive to the thread.

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"A laugh can be a very powerful thing. Why, sometimes in life, it's the only weapon we have."

Suspect's Reviews

@TheUsualSuspect, when you say "Dude" is that literal, I woman don't want to classed in either way...I don't think that made sense, anyway! Is Flimmaker1473 is a Man?

Dudette?

It's a Woman with a question-mark...that doesn't sense either...lol! I'm very confused!

Your posts confuse me on a daily basis.

Dude, I will as soon as you do.

At the very least my posts are asking you to think. Yours are....to antagonize?