Absolute determinism and the illusion of free will.

Am I wrong in thinking this should all be much simpler ?

The question is surely about pragmatically evaluating specific actions as indicative of "free will" or "determinism". This evaluation indicates what to do next, e.g. in legal cases of "culpability" or "otherwise".

Once that pragmatic scenario is lost we are prey to general epistemological and semantic problems like "causal versus teleological explanation"....when is "a body" not "a body" etc. which are fascinating in their own right but are iconoclastic with respect to the status of the original event/action from which the question arose. This is the philosophical equivalent of taking a structure apart to examine its mechanism, thereby rendering it useless.

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joefromchicago

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But in taking both positions, twyvel, you cannot avoid being at least half-wrong. Centroles asserts that every Girl Scout troop dies. Thus, it is most assuredly a question of "when the troop will die," since if one cannot state, with confidence, that there will be a time at which something dies, that person cannot state with any confidence that the thing in question is, in fact, mortal. Since Centroles claims that the troop will die, however, the question may logically be put: "if it will die, when will it die?"

The point is joefromchicago if the assertion, "troops die" is wrong, you are pursuing a false premise.

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fresco

Quote:

Am I wrong in thinking this should all be much simpler ?

The question is surely about pragmatically evaluating specific actions as indicative of "free will" or "determinism". This evaluation indicates what to do next, e.g. in legal cases of "culpability" or "otherwise".

Once that pragmatic scenario is lost we are prey to general epistemological and semantic problems like "causal versus teleological explanation"....when is "a body" not "a body" etc. which are fascinating in their own right but are iconoclastic with respect to the status of the original event/action from which the question arose. This is the philosophical equivalent of taking a structure apart to examine its mechanism, thereby rendering it useless.

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truth
This is vintage subtle Twyvel.
I particularly like the declaration that nothing can "be" the opposite of something else. Describing the properties of X can never include the ways other things' properties diametrically differ from the totality of X.

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Centroles wrote:

Quantum Mechanics is little more than a set of observations and certain calculations that can sometimes predict these observations. We haven't figured out the mechanism behind these observations. But there is simply no explanation for the observations we see in QM. So how can you possibly state that these observations are randomly determined. Doesn't that sound a bit presumptuos.

Remember the double slit experiment? You cannot predict where any individual photon will hit, even though all photons are emitted under exactly the same conditions. You will certainly get an interference pattern, but the path of each photon that contributes to that pattern is random.

Centroles wrote:

Just because we haven't yet reached the level of precision where we can't predict which sperm will fertilize the egg or which mutations may occur doesn't mean that these processes aren't governed by laws of physics and there isn't a mechanism behind them. Honestly, due to the uncertainity principle, I doubt we will ever be able to predict anything down to such small details. But that doesn't mean that they are random mechanisms. They still obey laws of physics.

Of couse they obey the laws of physics, but those laws allow for randomness. Which bit of DNA will be miscopied is not determinable, nor can we calculate which of the millions of sperm clustered around an egg will penetrate it.

Centroles wrote:

Just because we can't predict something doesn't mean that it occurs randomly. The uncertainly principle states that we can't ever PREDICT the exact position and velocity of any object simultanously. Does this mean that these propteties are random?

No, it states that we cannot simultaneously MEASURE the exact position and velocity of any particle. Many physical processes have a random component. Virtual particles appear randomly. Radioactive atoms decay randomly. Brownian motion is random, for all pratical purposes.

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Centroles wrote:

Even from a strictly practical standpoint, if things are indeed random at the microscopic levels, imagine how quickly this randomness should propagate via the domino effect. Things on a macroscopic scale should be downright chaotic.

No, because random effects average out and can be predicted quite accurately for sufficiently large numbers of particles. It is harder to predict what groups of people will do since there are more variables, but politicians and advertisers can be very good at it.

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JLN & twyvel.

Are we saying "to be" is always "to be in relationship with". I would agree with that.

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truth
Fresco, I'm not certain of Twyvel's meaning, but I was referring to the "essential" nature of some thing (i.e., its "to be-ness") as compared to/in contrast with (perhaps your "to be in relationship with') the essential qualities of something else. The essential nature of something cannot include the essential nature of other things. Therefore if there is a difference between two things, this difference is in the interpretive mind of the comparer, not in the essential nature of the things interpreted. I hope this is not hopelessly obscure.
I wonder however, if this contradicts your principle of interactionism, with which I agree: that Reality consists in the interaction between subjective and objective processes. Can my "comparer" therefore be absolutely distinguished from the "essential nature" of the things it compares?
Rolling Eyes

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JLN

The "transcendent observer" is in relationship with
the "normal observer" paired with its "objects". Thus "man" transcends the pair "bird/tree" in the sense that neither "birdness" nor "treeness" exist for the bird in our sense of those words. By analogy "higher consciousness" is higher by virtue of its observation of the interaction of "lower consciousness" and its "objects". The objects in this particular thread are e.g. "random events" since the lower level assumes "randomness" and "event" to be external to itself.

The coherence (not "logic" which is lower level) of the transcendent view relies on Einsteinian relativity for its model (space tells matter how to move/matter tells space how to curve)

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fresco

Quote:

Are we saying "to be" is always "to be in relationship with". I would agree with that.

"to be in relationship with"JLNobody

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truth
Fresco's talk about interactionism is admittedly dualistic; it must be so long as it is talk. Yet it is an advance toward non-dualism for he who wants (to be able) to talk about the relationship between self and objects. Twyvel's reminder that there is ultimately no self to relate to objects is correct, but it forces us into the realm of silence, a realm where our intellectual friends, Joe, Frank, et.al. are not willing to follow.
But Fresco's "transcendent observer" does seem to represent the non-dualistic perspective ON the dualistic relationship between the "normal observer" (the ego-self) and the "objects" of its perceptions/relationships.
Twyvel, did I understand your statement correctly? "That the ego can disappear, and 'presence' [meaning its 'existence'?] remains is proof that 'you' are not it." Are you referring to those moments, more likely to occur in meditative states, where the "feeling" of an observing self is gone, and later, of course, returns? The fact that you did not die at the moment of ego-absence is evidence that "you" are not "ego/self"?
I must confess, Fresco, that I do not understand your last paragraph.

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JLN

Try putting "rationality" in place of "coherence". It seems to me that the matter-space mutuality is meta-logical in "our" sense of logic and we can "take comfort in its success". This analogy goes some way to satisfying the need to flesh out interactionism.

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Re: truth

JLNobody wrote:

Twyvel's reminder that there is ultimately no self to relate to objects is correct, but it forces us into the realm of silence, a realm where our intellectual friends, Joe, Frank, et.al. are not willing to follow..

JL...

...just want to go on record as saying that ONE OF THE POSSIBLE explanations of REALITY is that "ultimately there is no self to relate to objects."

My poblem is, and always has been, that it is being presented here as THE explanation of REALITY.

We simply do not know -- or at least, I DO NOT KNOW and I suspect neither do the other people participating here.

Fact is, it may be unknowable. (I do not know that either.)

I also assert that the evidence for this particular take on REALITY is not nearly as compelling as some of the advocates of the position suggest it to be.

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Re: truth

JLNobody wrote:

Twyvel's reminder that there is ultimately no self to relate to objects is correct....

How do you know that?

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Frank and Joe,

This is where the word "know" becomes the key issue ! If you can establish the meaning of this without assuming an objective reality populated by "selves" then we ( JLN, twyvel and myself) might be willing to yield a little, but because we believe you cannot, then our alternatives seem preferable.

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truth
Frank, I don't recall that non-dualism has been used to EXPLAIN reality, only to give a better description of an aspect of it--that of the human condition. Let me be clearer. When we wish to perceive the nature of our experience and choose to do so by looking (as a form of radical empiricism), not by conceptual exercise, we sometimes SEE that, as Tywvel emphasizes, there is no PERCEIVED differentiation between perceiver (self), perceiving, and object(s) of perception. The "reality" (the nature of the situation) is essentially a context of experience or, better, experiencING. This unity (the Hindu's Tat tvam asi, thou art that) is one in which the self not so much disappears (except as a distinct entity) but melts into the scene (context) of experience. This is not "knowledge" in the sense of conceptual propositional truths that one can argue for; one can only PRESCRIBE that others make an effort to attain that unitary PERSPECTIVE--for the "spiritual" benefits it affords. Believe me, I DO understand your intellectual reservations. One cannot TALK about nondualism except dualistically. You say that you "believe" or are willing to speculate that "ultimately there is no self to relate to objects." You depend greatly here on the qualifier, "ultimately", for good reason. Ultimately, you are right, that it is ultimately unknowable CONCEPTUALLY. Indeed, all of our constructions fall away as merely the wiggling of puny creatures in the vast and unfanthomable whatever of "reality." But I am only talking about a (sometimes clear and other times vague) cosmologically provincial perspective of this puny creature and that of others who sometimes think of themselves as "mystics."
Joe, I hope this also addresses your question ("How do you know that?"), with an emphasis on your "know." I do not "know", I "see" or sometimes "glimpse" (with due appreciation of the possibility of delusions, which are always a possibility in the case of private perspectives, as opposed to the "consensual validation" inherent in public perspectives, but also acknowleging the possibility of collective delusions, which is in part what cultures are)

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fresco wrote:

If you can establish the meaning of this without assuming an objective reality populated by "selves" then we ( JLN, twyvel and myself) might be willing to yield a little, but because we believe you cannot, then our alternatives seem preferable.

On what basis do you prefer your alternative? In other words, why is your system (presumably non-dualism) preferable to any other?

JLNobody wrote:

Joe, I hope this also addresses your question ("How do you know that?"), with an emphasis on your "know." I do not "know", I "see" or sometimes "glimpse" (with due appreciation of the possibility of delusions, which are always a possibility in the case of private perspectives, as opposed to the "consensual validation" inherent in public perspectives, but also acknowleging the possibility of collective delusions, which is in part what cultures are)

A very fair and straightforward response, JLN. And I'm glad that you take into consideration the possibility that your "seeing" is the result of a delusion (a concession that some of your fellow travelers, I'm afraid, have yet to make). Nevertheless, you have chosen non-dualism despite this possibility, and despite the fact that your choice is based on dualistic "perception" (even if tempered by "radical empiricism").

Now, if your non-dualistic "seeings" or "glimpsings" are more in accord with your perception of the human condition, there must be some measure by which you would judge the human condition, such that your estimation of the accuracy of your "seeings" could be judged either correct or incorrect (otherwise your choice would be based on nothing more than whim or caprice). But you cannot rely upon your understanding of the human condition as this measure. In other words, you cannot say that non-dualism gives a better description of the human condition, and you know that because of your understanding of the human condition. That would be an impermissible boot-strapping argument. So how do you know that non-dualism gives a better description of the human condition than any other system?

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fresco wrote:

Frank and Joe,

This is where the word "know" becomes the key issue ! If you can establish the meaning of this without assuming an objective reality populated by "selves" then we ( JLN, twyvel and myself) might be willing to yield a little, but because we believe you cannot, then our alternatives seem preferable.

This reminds me very much of my conversations with Christians on the issue of whether or not they KNOW there is a God -- the starting point of their theistic philosophy and of our conversation. They simply cannot acknowledge that they do not KNOW what they claim to know (in any meaningful sense of that word) -- and often even allow the notion to end up with them KNOWING the information in their hearts, rather their minds - while expressing sorrow for me because I am unable to see that they actually have the knowledge they claim.

Bottom line, however, is that Twyvel asserted (and has continued to assert over the several years we've discussed this issue) that:

Quote:

...there is ultimately no self to relate to objects...

JL picked up on this occasion of Twyvel asserting that, and wrote:

Quote:

Twyvel's reminder that there is ultimately no self to relate to objects is correct, but it forces us into the realm of silence, a realm where our intellectual friends, Joe, Frank, et.al. are not willing to follow.

Now let me make myself clear on this: The reality of existence MAY be that "ultimately there is no self to relate to objects."

I certainly cannot say that REALITY cannot contain that component -- that it is impossible in REALITY that ultimately there is no self to relate to objects.

But there is absolutely no way that I can say: It has to be so.

Now I go on to speculation: None of you -- not Twyvel, JL, nor Fresco has ever said anything that convinces me that you know (in any reasonable sense of that word) either.

Just as the Christians insist that what they experience is KNOWLEDGE that there exists a God -- and just as some atheists with whom I have argued insist that what they experience is KNOWLEDGE that no gods exist -- you folks seem to be insisting that you KNOW that ultimately there is no self to relate to objects.

I don't think Christians KNOW there is a God; I don't think atheists KNOW there are no gods; I don't think any of you three KNOW that ultimately there is no self to relate to objects.

I may be wrong.

But my assessment of the evidence is that all of you -- you three, the theists, the atheists -- are making guesses about the unknown -- and apparently your guesses sound so good to you - and are so important to you -- you simply will not see them for the guesses they are.

Don't know how to explain that any better.

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Re: truth

JLNobody wrote:

Frank, I don't recall that non-dualism has been used to EXPLAIN reality, only to give a better description of an aspect of it

Quite honestly, JL, this seems to be a distinction without a difference.

Everything you are saying about non-dualism is an explanation of REALITY -- which, it might be noted, often excludes other possible ways for REALITY to be.

There is precious little difference between the explanation you, Twyvel, and Fresco are making -- and the explanations theists give -- or atheists give.

The content is different, admittedly -- but the essence (here is what REALITY is) is almost identical.

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This unity (the Hindu's Tat tvam asi, thou art that) is one in which the self not so much disappears (except as a distinct entity) but melts into the scene (context) of experience. This is not "knowledge" in the sense of conceptual propositional truths that one can argue for; one can only PRESCRIBE that others make an effort to attain that unitary PERSPECTIVE--for the "spiritual" benefits it affords...

This reminds me of something Ican once said: (Paraphrased) What is there about the air and food of the subcontinent that causes people there to suppose their guesses about reality are absolute fact?

JL, I have absolutely no problem with a belief system that incorporates an element of dualism; non-dualism or anything else.

But when it is presented as knowledge as opposed to PURE UNADULTERATED speculation -- which is to say, guesses -- I have my say.

When someone asserts: This is the REALITY -- I am going to question it.

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JLNobody

Quote:

Twyvel's reminder that there is ultimately no self to relate to objects is correct, but it forces us into the realm of silence, a realm where our intellectual friends, Joe, Frank, et.al. are not willing to follow.

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Absolute determinism and the illusion of free will.

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