iambiguous wrote: ↑Tue Feb 01, 2022 6:45 pm
"It turns out that roughly 68% of the universe is dark energy. Dark matter makes up about 27%. The rest - everything on Earth, everything ever observed with all of our instruments, all normal matter - adds up to less than 5% of the universe." Nasa
Yep. That's interesting.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Jan 30, 2022 8:59 pm
Of course, in neither form does Compatibilism make sense.
But then compatibilists make sense of things...differently.
That's my point: they don't "make sense" of them; they "make nonsense" of them.
You see, free will can easily accept and incorporate the existence of material causality. There's nothing inconsistent in a person saying, "I believe rocks fall and storms happen by pure material causality, but human beings are special, and have volition, identity and choice." That's perfectly logical. But once we opt for Determinism, there can be no thought of free will again. That's because Determinism is an
absolute belief; it's whole cachet is that it purports to explain
everything, not just some things.
And this brings me to something that is both a significant attraction of Determinism and one of the biggest evidences of its faults at the same time: it's utterly
unfalsifiable.
If you know a little about the philosopher of science Karl Popper, you may recall that he pointed out that this is one of the features we expect of an authentically scientific theory: that there have to be some terms, some way, in which, if untrue, it can be shown to be false. And thus, when it turns out to be true, we have reason to trust the theory, because it could have been otherwise, but was not. But if a theory is utterly
unfalsifiable, what it means is that it
cannot be tested scientifically. And then we have no way of knowing whether or not we can trust it.
Determinism is like that: one can believe in it because one wants to, but one cannot find a test that would suffice to show it wrong. And we might think that means it must be right; but Popper shows why it does not. What it means, instead, is we have on hand an unscientific theory, a belief that can never be proved or disproved. So the only way to hold it will be to believe it
on no sufficient evidence at all.
...the teleological component of existence. If there even is one.
That's an interesting speculation. Why would a universe that had arisen by pure accident and developed through nothing put physical-material causes have a "teleology"?
Teleology implies intention, direction, purpose and goal. How can we speak of the indifferent universe as "intending" us to do or become anything in particular at all?
Yes, even here there are many different reactions any particular one of us might have. Perhaps it then comes down to how close you are to death itself. If it's right around the corner then it can hit you that you will go to the grave utterly ignorant of "what it all means". Or if you are convinced "I" is sustained on "the other side", you can convince yourself you will find the answer then.
Maybe. But what if the here-and-now HAS a teleological purpose? What if the "now" is actually a preparation for the "then"? What if the condition of the "then" is set by the "now"?
In such a case, marching to the grave in the hope of finding out something later is probably a rather unfortunate strategy, isn't it?
..for some, the more science reveals about the staggering mysteries embedded in the very, very large and the very, very small the more utterly insignificant "I" becomes.
I get that. But think of it another way.
Suppose you're standing on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean. Perhaps it makes you weep to think of the vast expanses and depths it must contain, because you are a mere mortal, and have no chance of ever exploring it to its utmost. You think of all the sea creatures that might be there, but you'll never see...the sunsets on the edge of the Caribbean, the ice caps of the polar North, the whole length of the Gulf Stream, and so on. You will never know the Atlantic Ocean, if "know" means "know everything."
Still, with almost no effort, you can bend down, and scoop a cup of water. And in that cup will be a genuine part of the real Atlantic Ocean, one that you can know very fully with very little effort. Your understanding will be genuine, and can even go down to the microscopic level, if you want. You can know all kinds of things about parts of the Atlantic Ocean, in fact; and all of it will be valid knowledge.
So why should we despair about all we cannot know, when there are things we can?
All the science and education in the world will be of little relevance [for some] when death is literally right around the corner. You'll die...for what? You will have lived...for what?
Ah, yes...this is the great question.
And if the answer is that you and I merely go to the grave and become food for worms (as Shakespeare so poignatly put it), then there is no point at all. But I say again: what if the "now" is a preparation for the "then"?
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Jan 29, 2022 12:18 amAs I said earlier, nobody is able to live like a Determinist. Nobody. Not the most ardent Determinist. We all get up and behave as if we have options, and that our choices matter, and that they are our own, and that we have to consider "possibilities" of things happening. We don't just put our feet on the floor in the morning, and sigh, and say, "Que sera, sera." We get up and make choices.
The Existentialists, particularly Kierkegaard, really got this bit right.
Okay, but, again, how we live in a wholly determined universe from my frame of mind is the only possible way in which we could have lived.
And yet, tomorrow morning, you will get up and brush your own teeth. You won't feel like you're waiting for the universe to just do it for you. And you'll dress yourself, and you'll go to work, or to some other activity, one you'll feel like you have chosen. And you'll choose your meals, and you'll select your words in conversation and print...and in none of them will you just resign yourself and say, "It doesn't matter what I do; it's all fated anyway."
Look at what you're doing right now: talking about Determinism. But why talk? If it's all fate, we can't change anything by talking. Your mind is what it is because of universal causality; mine is what it is also because of universal causality. Why discuss? Why persuade? In even attempting such things, we are evincing our disbelief in Determinism.
And that's the point I want to push hard:
nobody lives like a Determinist. Nobody. Nobody in the entire history of the world, to my knowledge. And the fact that we don't should be a persistent "stone in the shoe" of anybody who argues for Determinism.
I think we ought to take that fact seriously; don't you?
If the human brain is just more matter in sync with immutable laws of matter, the mystery still revolves around how "on Earth" that was even possible.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Jan 30, 2022 8:59 pmBut if the universe were really predetermined, then how is it that we don't know it is? What sort of odd "predetermined" effect has the "predetermined" universe thrown up, that human beings all, universally, act as if Determinism isn't true, even though it is?
Well, this too is subsumed in the assumptions that I make regarding determinism.
I know this is how one argues the other side: but as I pointed out, the problem is that it's an unfalsifiable way to argue. But unfalsifiablilty doesn't make a theory
true; it just makes it
impossible to test scientifically, and thus, believable only on the most gratutious sort of faith.
Then back to the part where I flat out admit the problem here may well be my own inability to grasp your point or the point of the compatibilists. But then I think myself into believing that I was never able not to think here other than as I do...so I'm off the hook?
Then why are you thinking at all? After all, to "think" is to process mentally; but Determinism says that mental states are a sort of "dumb terminal" in the chain of causal events. Thinking doesn't change things, according to Determinism; it's just a very odd and Deterministically-inexplicable "epiphenomenon," an odd side effect of living in a strictly physical-material causal matrix.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Jan 30, 2022 8:59 pmDo you see how bizarre that framing of the world is? In that version of things, there are all these creatures who (presumably) are predetermined to live and die as they do, unconscious of the fact of Determinism; then there's this one creature -- man -- who, for some reason we can't begin to explain, has to live entirely as if the fact Determinism were factually false.
How do we make sense of that?
In precisely the manner in which everything that we think, feel, say and do unfolds...in the only manner that it ever could unfold.
That's not a good answer: that's just a misunderstanding of the question, really. The question is really this: how would a physical-material causal universe "decide" to create creatures that think Determinism, the ironclad law of the universe itself, is untrue?
That looks very odd. And it does cry out for some kind of better explanation than to say, "Well, that's just the way it went."
From my frame of mind, once you conclude that the human brain is just "more matter", then you are compelled to marvel at just how lifeless/mindless matter itself could evolve into us. Or you are compelled to insist that you could have opted to conclude something else. But nothing is not compelled given my own understanding of determinism.
Right. I get that.
Then I go back to dreams. To all of the astonishing "realities" my own brain "creates" night after night. Each morning my mind is simply boggled at what I "experienced" in those dreams. How extraordinarily elaborate and detailed those "experiences" were. And yet none of it really happened at all other than by way of my brain itself.
That's odd, isn't it? I agree.
And messier than that is the fact that you think and feel as though you had real "experiences" and "decisions" and "choices" in your waking life, when really, according to Determinism, you never actually had any such things.
Is all life just us sleepwalking through a Determinist matrix, dreaming that we are doing something here?
But that's pretty counterintuitive, if nothing else.
The part where our brains are then hard-wired to invent Gods to explain it.
That's an even weirder, less plausible explanation. It goes, "The physical-material universe hard-wired us into not only not living as if Determinism is even true, but also somehow made us think about God, an entity that bears no relation to the physical-material causal universe, according to secular Determinism."
That's a kind of explanation that starts to look desperate, strained and even myopic. It seems to be doing less "explaining" than "explaining away" as fast as it can.
Here, though, from my frame of mind, is the assumption that human beings are in fact free to opt for either science or superstition. Faith or facts.
That's a false dichotomy, though.
It's easy to remember, but it oversimplifies the case drastically. As Michael Polanyi so expertly showed faith is involved in science, and science in faith. They are co-participants, not opposites. And neither is absolute, but both are probabilistic in nature.
Why? Now that's the "final question". And the "final answer" to it will, perhaps, among other things, allow us to determine if our own individual lives may well be essentially meaningful and purposeful.
Yep. True enough.
It's good talking to you. You're a reflective and interesting person.
Too bad it's not really you -- it's just the "noise" the universe was predestined to generate at this particular juncture in time.
