Quote:A pluralistic materialism could just as well do without the idea of substance altogether
No substance, no material; so no materialism, pluralistic or otherwise.
Razzleg wrote:and supply an implicit critique thereof, without surrendering any of its empiricist directives.
Not sure what this means. Could you give me an example please?
Fil Albuquerque wrote:
So you mean that I am a sequitur for action through the action of my willing but action is a non sequitur for me...such idea should be called "Transcendent Dualism"...Dualism is a bad shortcut for what it really means.
i'm not sure what to make of that word salad. I appreciate that you seem to be insinuating an insult into your statement, but i don't feel particularly hurt. As i've said in the past, i'm not a strong advocate for free will, since i find it an inadequate model of historical agency. However, while a variety of reasons or causes may precede an incipient event, i find that it requires a leap to say that their value is necessarily determinative or enunciation imperative.
Can you present an all full argument against them step by step?
1 - To say for instance that someone "make´s me do it" against my own free will is utterly false, given based on free will own´s argument I could always have chosen otherwise! So either I can be compelled or I cannot !!!
2 - If I say that I was caused to go for instance to restaurant A, by someone or something else, then I do must implicitly mean that I was not the agent of such choice given in correct English I was caused, I was not the cause. And more, if I were to be this solely cause to this given action to happen then I must admit the impossibility of something causing me in order to prevent a chain of cause to which my own willing was conditioned.
3 - Either I am the solely agent of my choices and therefore cannot be compelled, or, in order to be compelled I must admit that there are causes beyond my free willed decision making... which is the same to admit that I may well not be in control of my own willing !
3 - Either I am the solely agent of my choices and therefore cannot be compelled, or, in order to be compelled I must admit that there are causes beyond my free willed decision making... which is the same to admit that I may well not be in control of my own willing !
"Action" refers to causal agency. Why should it go just one way ? WHY CAN I BE THE CAUSE BUT CANNOT BE CAUSED TO CAUSE ?
In what manner it is proven a substantial difference between me and nature ?
Fil Albuquerque wrote:
"Action" refers to causal agency. Why should it go just one way ? WHY CAN I BE THE CAUSE BUT CANNOT BE CAUSED TO CAUSE ?
In what manner it is proven a substantial difference between me and nature ?
i'm not drawing a distinction between myself (or you) and nature. i am a part of temporal nature. I am caused to be born, and i will be caused to die. Within the area circumscribed by those two events, i belong to a community of causes. Given my own temporary dynamism, i can resist some "causes" and not others. Why would i be the only, lonely effect in an otherwise cause-filled nature?
And now, i'll say goodnight...
That one can "resist " to some would be causes is not at stake.
What is at stake is in what matter "I am their solely agent" with causes around, since if I resist to these forces there are no causes for me to resist in the first place...the potential cause is caused to not cause, through me but not by me, and if there are causes behind and beyond me , why am I to be said the ONE agent on them ? Causes imply by definition a chain...
Fil Albuquerque wrote:Can you present an all full argument against them step by step?
I'm not entirely sure what you are asking of me. The best i can probably do at this hour (it's late here, and i'm getting tired) is try to show why i think those statements fail to sum up the possible descriptions of an event of "choosing", with an eye toward the distinction between compulsion and cause.
Fil Albuquerque wrote:1 - To say for instance that someone "make´s me do it" against my own free will is utterly false, given based on free will own´s argument I could always have chosen otherwise! So either I can be compelled or I cannot !!!
2 - If I say that I was caused to go for instance to restaurant A, by someone or something else, then I do must implicitly mean that I was not the agent of such choice given in correct English I was caused, I was not the cause. And more, if I were to be this solely cause to this given action to happen then I must admit the impossibility of something causing me in order to prevent a chain of cause to which my own willing was conditioned.
3 - Either I am the solely agent of my choices and therefore cannot be compelled, or, in order to be compelled I must admit that there are causes beyond my free willed decision making... which is the same to admit that I may well not be in control of my own willing !
Well, i hate to tread the same paths as kennethamy, but there seems to be some confusion here as to what causes what and how. In the given situation, one must ask in what sense someone or something caused me to go to the restaurant. If my friend recommends the restaurant to me, he is the cause of my knowing about it. That exchange certainly opens up the possibility of my going to the restaurant, but it in no sense makes it necessary for me to go. My inevitable hunger may inspire me to go to the restaurant, but one would be hard pressed to call my hunger an external cause. "My hunger" describes an aspect of myself, and so could hardly be compulsory. And so on and so forth.
Compulsion merely implies that we have different priorities given different circumstances, and that one may choose to act based on what is currently accessible to us, even if the act fails to satisfy all of our other desires.
Fil Albuquerque wrote:3 - Either I am the solely agent of my choices and therefore cannot be compelled, or, in order to be compelled I must admit that there are causes beyond my free willed decision making... which is the same to admit that I may well not be in control of my own willing !
This is a false dichotomy. There is no reason to say that both "being the sole agent of my choice" and "causes beyond my free will" are not simultaneously possible.
But this God is free in the same way an author or artist is. Halfway through the creation of a work of art, one senses freedom to dictate the form of the piece. But at this point, there are already a finite number of possible outcomes. The closer to completion one comes, the smaller that number becomes until it drops to one. Which is why my own paintings are never completed in my own mind. Once they're completed, they're no longer alive. And creating life is what drives me. Got off on a tangent there. Thanks dude!
That one can "resist " to some would be causes is not at stake.
What is at stake is in what matter "I am their solely agent" with causes around, since if I resist to these forces there are no causes for me to resist in the first place...the potential cause is caused to not cause, through me but not by me, and if there are causes behind and beyond me , why am I to be said the ONE agent on them ? Causes imply by definition a chain...(my emphasis)
No ! There are forces around each pushing in its own way inside your mind and out of external stimuli...the prevailing one will be the strongest in darwinian "natural selection" terms and your conscience will automatically be in accordance with it...Mind functions as a cohesive Whole remember ?
You won´t go against the prevailing forces that make you think in the first place.
Right, resisting a cause can only be poetry for some kind of conflict. At first glance the conflict is a local situation. The poetry of objectivity would have it that a conflict is between competing possible universes. Each possible outcome is a universe with it's own unique history. However the conflict is resolved, the resolution is an event preceded by a causal chain which makes that outcome inevitable.
At the point we're exerting effort in the name of one possibility, we imagine we're in a universe with an established history. Yet we're simultaneously imagining that history is not fixed. To exert individual will is to seek to dictate everything everywhere throughout all time. So individual will is identification with God.
Maybe that's what Nietsche meant by the question "doesn't he know God is dead?" What died was God as the other. God is subsumed into the self when one pictures the world in terms of Will.
But are we required to understand events as being preceded by a causal chain? Apparently we're locked into that by the nature of meaning. It started when we asked why? This was an attempt to relate an event to a bigger picture. In other words, the effort to comprehend leads straight to a monist perspective. The alternative is meaninglessness. But every monist is also a dualist... otherwise there would be no vantage point on the monad and monism itself would not exist.
So freedom of the will exists for a God with a malleable toy multiverse. This God is free because it's separated from the mechanical pattern of the toy.
But this God is free in the same way an author or artist is. Halfway through the creation of a work of art, one senses freedom to dictate the form of the piece. But at this point, there are already a finite number of possible outcomes. The closer to completion one comes, the smaller that number becomes until it drops to one. Which is why my own paintings are never completed in my own mind. Once they're completed, they're no longer alive. And creating life is what drives me. Got off on a tangent there. Thanks dude!
Right, resisting a cause can only be poetry for some kind of conflict. At first glance the conflict is a local situation. The poetry of objectivity would have it that a conflict is between competing possible universes. Each possible outcome is a universe with it's own unique history. However the conflict is resolved, the resolution is an event preceded by a causal chain which makes that outcome inevitable.
At the point we're exerting effort in the name of one possibility, we imagine we're in a universe with an established history. Yet we're simultaneously imagining that history is not fixed. To exert individual will is to seek to dictate everything everywhere throughout all time. So individual will is identification with God.
Maybe that's what Nietsche meant by the question "doesn't he know God is dead?" What died was God as the other. God is subsumed into the self when one pictures the world in terms of Will.
But are we required to understand events as being preceded by a causal chain? Apparently we're locked into that by the nature of meaning. It started when we asked why? This was an attempt to relate an event to a bigger picture. In other words, the effort to comprehend leads straight to a monist perspective. The alternative is meaninglessness. But every monist is also a dualist... otherwise there would be no vantage point on the monad and monism itself would not exist.
So freedom of the will exists for a God with a malleable toy multiverse. This God is free because it's separated from the mechanical pattern of the toy.
But this God is free in the same way an author or artist is. Halfway through the creation of a work of art, one senses freedom to dictate the form of the piece. But at this point, there are already a finite number of possible outcomes. The closer to completion one comes, the smaller that number becomes until it drops to one. Which is why my own paintings are never completed in my own mind. Once they're completed, they're no longer alive. And creating life is what drives me. Got off on a tangent there. Thanks dude!
For free will to exist there needs to be a non-physical "you" that is not compelled by experiential conditioning or inherited biological drives.
Poop...a mistype led me to post a foreshortened version of my response. Here is the full version. I apoligise for the mistake.
It tends to focus on the atrophy of supposed divine omniscience (along with the implicit moral implications thereof), as an opportunity for humanity's earthly will to express itself.
And to finish with a small contention with your description of the artist's role: Once one has chosen the medium in which one chooses to exercise oneself, the options are quite limited. Not only are the senses limited, as tomr has stated, but the art's medium itself exercises certain limiting factors. If you sense total freedom when you are just half-done with your paintings, i envy you. When i write, i see restrictions from the outset. Although the blank page signals a plenitude of means, it is negotiating the constraints without sacrificing intent that marks a successful work to me. The life of the work exists only insofar as it survives the gauntlet.
Good evening, Fil.
Fil Albuquerque wrote:That one can "resist " to some would be causes is not at stake.
What is at stake is in what matter "I am their solely agent" with causes around, since if I resist to these forces there are no causes for me to resist in the first place...the potential cause is caused to not cause, through me but not by me, and if there are causes behind and beyond me , why am I to be said the ONE agent on them ? Causes imply by definition a chain...(my emphasis)
I don't think the final, italicized statement is necessarily true, and in so far as the the preceding remarks are based upon this figure they are not necessarily valid either. If a chain is your metaphor for cause and effect, then it's not terribly surprising that you feel that it binds.
The temporal pattern you seem to me to be sketching is a diagram of linear temporal progression. Of course, events do develop that way sometimes, but there are other ways that events come to pass, equally true. One could also diagram temporal relations as a funnel, or a web, a vortex, or an explosion, a dotted or fading line, a pile of vertical layers, or a a set of concentric circles. One of the problems with the "time-line" method of sketching history is that it tends to reduce all causes to the form of efficient cause. But i think that causes act in a variety of different ways, irreducible to one another, or to put it another way, they assume a variety of different forms.
A human being does not act in a vacuum, certainly, which is to say that her actions take place in on a plane accessible to a plethora of causal factors, or other beings, but this multiplicity does not necessitate that her being partake only of a negative aspect.
Fil Albuquerque wrote:No ! There are forces around each pushing in its own way inside your mind and out of external stimuli...the prevailing one will be the strongest in darwinian "natural selection" terms and your conscience will automatically be in accordance with it...Mind functions as a cohesive Whole remember ?
You won´t go against the prevailing forces that make you think in the first place.
No, i don't remember, but if things were as you described: how reliable am i to count my memory? i'm curious as to what makes you think that "mind" functions as a whole, not to mention what makes you think that decision- making is entirely a matter of "mind" (which i am currently translating into my own argot as "consciousness".)
My objection to this point is much the same as my last. We could treat your causal contest as a new temporal model, or we could consider it as a variation of the funnel diagram. Whichever response seems more appropriate to you, i still do not see the model as definitive of a person's relationship with her surroundings. Your method seems a mite too exclusive to me; you seem intent upon an either/or conclusion to this topic. i have no qualms in saying that there are circumstances in which a person's actions have been determined, either by external forces or by a rogue "inner" component. (Although, i'm not entirely comfortable with the inner/outer analogy.) On the other hand, i think there are other circumstances in which the individual exercises "sovereignty" over her own actions. The results of such actions may or may not match the desired goal, but that is of little matter when evaluating the individual's freedom to act.
Consciousness is an epiphenomena is n ´t it ?
