“Reality Goes Beyond Physics,” and more

[peacegirl]

It's not a matter of indoctrination. A claim such as 'light at the eye/instance vision' simply has no merit and only serves to discredit the book. It doesn't work, not logically, not physically. That is why anybody who has even a basic understanding of physics and how the eye and brain functions in terms of vision cannot take it seriously.

You need to drop it.

No DBT, i will not drop it. You are being too quick to pass judgment. The review against him on Amazon was a misrepresentation of his claim. He never said light was not at the eye or that we don’t need light to see. This is crazy and has ruined interest even though this knowledge can actually change our world for the better. I asked you to please refrain from throwing his knowledge out without a thorough understanding of why he claimed what he did. Talk about throwing the baby out with [what you believe is] the bathwater and Is a perfect example of having a dogmatic hold where the mere mention that science may have gotten it wrong throws you into a tizzy. This is not being open-minded which is the hallmark of good science!

Passing judgement has nothing to do with it. Light at the eye/instant vision is false. Not because I pass judgement or I say so, but it's just not the way the world physically works. It's impossible. Being physically impossible, it doesn't do you any good to argue for it.

You are judging his claim prematurely whether you think so or not. There is nothing in his claim that violates physical laws, not when you understand how the brain works. You cannot see it because you keep thinking in terms of light having to bring the image to our eyes through space/time distance. This alternate view needs to be examined with rigor, not thrown out because you can't imagine how this could occur. That's exactly what you're doing and sadly dissing his entire work as a result. He knew this would happen, but he didn't know the extent of the resentment that would follow.

Many theories as to how world peace could be achieved have been proposed, yet war has once again taken its deadly toll in the 21st century. The dream of peace has remained an unattainable goal — until now. The following pages reveal a scientific discovery regarding a psychological law of man’s nature never before understood. This finding was hidden so successfully behind layers and layers of dogma and misunderstanding that no one knew a deeper truth existed. Once this natural law becomes a permanent condition of the environment, it will allow mankind, for the very first time, to veer in a different direction — preventing the never-ending cycle of hurt and retaliation in human relations. Although this discovery was borne out of philosophical thought, it is factual, not theoretical, in nature. Two other natural laws are also revealed in later chapters. It is demonstrated that because we never understood a PROJECTING FUNCTION OF THE BRAIN, words developed that allowed us to see, as on a screen, that half the human race is an inferior physiognomic production — homely, bad-looking, etc. But these words do not symbolize reality because people are not ugly or beautiful, just different, and when the truth is learned — the use of these words, and this kind of unjust, hurtful discrimination, must come to an end. The other law asks this question: With the Earth billions of years old, and with millions and millions of babies coming into the world since time immemorial, doesn’t it seem a strange coincidence and unbelievable phenomenon that YOU, OF ALL PEOPLE, were born and are alive at this infinitesimal fraction of time? The undeniable answer will make you very happy by removing any fears you might have regarding your own death.

It's not premature judgement, just physics. Where it isn't possible to see something before the light/ information reflected or radiated from the object is acquired by the eyes and processed by the brain.

As for "why me in this time and place," that can be said by anyone in any time or place where there are people.

Right, it can apply to anyone who is alive at this infinitesimal moment of time which adks the question, “why am I here right now” because the chances, when looking at all the people who have died before us, seems like a lottery win. It’s an interesting question which, when explained, removes the strangeness.

As the human race does happen to exist, evolution, genetics, etc, any of its members may ask themselves the question "why am I here." Given that the human race has evolved and it does exist, it is inevitable that we as individuals ask that question. A question that has probably been asked by each and every thinker in the history of the human race.

True.

 

[bilby]

As the human race does happen to exist, evolution, genetics, etc, any of its members may ask themselves the question "why am I here." Given that the human race has evolved and it does exist, it is inevitable that we as individuals ask that question. A question that has probably been asked by each and every thinker in the history of the human race.

I prefer the slight philosophical variation, "Why the fuck are you even here?".

 

[pood]

Every single event you describe is contingent.

Every picosecond's attributes are "necessitated" by its precedent. This does not negate free will, and it doesn't enable us to predict stuff beyond probability limits. There's just too much going on at once that may effect us later (meaning more than 2 picoseconds). A single gamma particle from a long gone explosion striking a gamete and altering DNA... science fiction stuff is happening all the time, and it impinges on our "free will". Our will may be free, but that's an internal phenomenon. There are no guarantees on outcomes, other than that we will effect it somewhat*.

*we get better at it all the time, which may be our downfall. Or our savior.

“Necessitated” here is just a manner of speaking. What I am getting at in these discussions is the logical meaning of necessity, which means that if a car crashes occurs, there is no possible world at which it fails to occur. Now clearly that’s false. I can imagine a world without this particular car crash, and I can do so without bringing about a logical contradiction. I cannot, however, imagine a possible world where triangles have more or less than three sides. Such a world would be logically contradictory.

 

[Jarhyn]

Every single event you describe is contingent.

Every picosecond's attributes are "necessitated" by its precedent. This does not negate free will, and it doesn't enable us to predict stuff beyond probability limits. There's just too much going on at once that may effect us later (meaning more than 2 picoseconds). A single gamma particle from a long gone explosion striking a gamete and altering DNA... science fiction stuff is happening all the time, and it impinges on our "free will". Our will may be free, but that's an internal phenomenon. There are no guarantees on outcomes, other than that we will effect it somewhat*.

*we get better at it all the time, which may be our downfall. Or our savior.

“Necessitated” here is just a manner of speaking. What I am getting at in these discussions is the logical meaning of necessity, which means that if a car crashes occurs, there is no possible world at which it fails to occur. Now clearly that’s false. I can imagine a world without this particular car crash, and I can do so without bringing about a logical contradiction. I cannot, however, imagine a possible world where triangles have more or less than three sides. Such a world would be logically contradictory.

Which gets to my point: that particular car crash clearly wasn't necessitated *everywhere*. It was only in that one place (and perhaps others, I'd depending on how "normal" the universe is).

Not only can you imagine one without that car crash you can see one and walk over to one, since most of the "worlds" in this world didn't have the crash.

That car crash failed to happen across most of the universe. Can you really say it was "necessary"?

 

[peacegirl]

Every single event you describe is contingent.

Every picosecond's attributes are "necessitated" by its precedent. This does not negate free will, and it doesn't enable us to predict stuff beyond probability limits. There's just too much going on at once that may effect us later (meaning more than 2 picoseconds). A single gamma particle from a long gone explosion striking a gamete and altering DNA... science fiction stuff is happening all the time, and it impinges on our "free will". Our will may be free, but that's an internal phenomenon. There are no guarantees on outcomes, other than that we will effect it somewhat*.

*we get better at it all the time, which may be our downfall. Or our savior.

“Necessitated” here is just a manner of speaking. What I am getting at in these discussions is the logical meaning of necessity, which means that if a car crashes occurs, there is no possible world at which it fails to occur. Now clearly that’s false. I can imagine a world without this particular car crash, and I can do so without bringing about a logical contradiction. I cannot, however, imagine a possible world where triangles have more or less than three sides. Such a world would be logically contradictory.

This is such a crazy defense, it’s beyond argument. There is nothing real about this mechanism that is trying to save free will in any form, compatibilistic or libertarian. The lengths people will go to in order to save free will (which holds no place in any observed phenomena) is excruciatingly clear and hard to listen to considering the overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

 

[Michael S. Pearl]

To assume block spacetime is to frame

No, it isn't. It's exactly the inverse of "framing".

From our point of view we still have to have somewhere we're looking in U, and "all of math and existence" outside some *existing* reference frame *is not a sensible concept*.

It is possible that you can appreciate a "point of view" as a subjective experience. The point of view subjective experience is often a reaction/response to an encounter. That encounter can be with a subjective imagining or with an object - an other than self - which, pre-encounter, is in all respects independent of the reactive subjective experience. The encounter can be with the presentation of a thought. But a thought is only a thought as an expression. And that means that a thought itself is a re-presentation such that an encounter with a thought is an encounter with a representation. Being a reaction, the point of view subjective experience is influenced/affected by what the experiencing subject sees/imagines/conceptualizes. As Alvin Goldman notes in Epistemology and Cognition, "The importance of how a [matter] is 'represented', or 'framed', [must] not be underestimated." Why? Because "Initial representations, it has been found, often tend to structure subsequent thinking ...."

To assume block spacetime is to put forth the thought that block spacetime represents reality. Assumptions always serve the purpose of representation. This sort of representation is referred to as framing in that it highlights the limits to what is to be taken into account. That which is assumed determines the sensibility or, more likely, the acceptability range for subsequent concepts/actions.

Therefore, it was and is correct to say that to assume block spacetime is to frame. It is also correct to note that when the block spacetime assumption is the only consideration, then that assumption cannot help but be a preferred framing. Inasmuch as it is the only considered frame of reference, it is also rightly described as a preferred reference frame.

 

[Jarhyn]

To assume block spacetime is to put forth the thought that block spacetime represents reality

The problem is that to put forth block spacetime still doesn't assume a reference frame.

Let's look at something else: let's look at "block parabola": y=x^2

This says there is no preferred x in y.

"Block universe" is only understood or handled by its equation. Without taking a frame of reference by filling in the x, you only know a general relationship of y. Once you have a reference frame it makes information happen. But it's absent a reference frame as-is.

 

[pood]

Determinism doesn’t eliminate choices, it generates options, and brains are able to choose among those options. A rock cannot choose what to do after being pushed down a hill. Humans can try to break or avoid or ease the fall, and will. The hard determinists owes an explanation of the difference between rocks and animals. Granted some of our survival behaviors are instinctual and reflexive, but others are clearly a matter of planning, thinking and choosing. And, as one of the referenced articles indicates, the hard determinist owes an explanation of how future human behavior was encoded at the Big Bang, or the Last Scattering Surface, as the article would have it. I asked this a number of times and never received a satisfactory explanation as to how, for example, the jazz improv composer did not create his piece — rather, it was created by Hard Determinism. This is the hard determinist Jerry Coyne’s stance, who also calls humans “meat robots.” This view of hard determinism seems quasi-theological to me, and also a category error itself — determinism is a description of how things broadly go at the classical scale, and never a prescription.

If any other members would care to go down this rabbit hole, feel free.

If choice is defined as permitting someone to take any one of a number of possible actions in any given instance in time, that is not determinism. And if a compatibilist believes that, they are not a compatibilist, they are a Libertarian.

I’ve addressed this many times. You need not agree with what I say, but it would be nice if you would address the substance of it.

I have addressed the substance of it.

Essentially, that is inner necessity that negates the Compatibilists definition of free will and makes Compatibilism a failed argument.

The standard compatibilist position (there are variations, such as neo-Humean compatibilism) is that if you replayed a series of events, with the exact same antecedents, then some person P would always choose X. The compatibilist is simply pointing out, however, that there there is no necessity in this choice — the choice x was, is, and always will be, contingent — which automatically means it could have been otherwise. As I have tried to explain, this must be understood in terms of modalities — the modalities of actuality, contingency, and necessity. The only necessarily true propositions are those that cannot be false under any circumstances; it can never be false that triangles have three sides, for example.

If I choose x — Coke, say, over Pepsi — I am acting on a string of precise antecedents that motivated my choice. But if y is Pepsi, it is clearly within my power, at the time of choice, to choose y — it’s right there in the refrigerator, at my fingertips. Hard determinism is not an agent that stays my hand to prevent me from choosing Pepsi. It’s just that given the relevant antecedents, I choose Coke because I want to, and not because I have to.

The options exist, but what is selected by someone in any given instance is determined, not freely willed or chosen.

The error, of course, is to overlook the fact that I, as the chooser, am part of the deterministic stream, and it is therefore I myself who determines what I choose, based on relevant antecedents.

That's the very thing I don't do.

As an incompatibilist I point out that the decision maker is inseparable from the deterministic stream.

Consequently, every decision and action must proceed as determined, without deviation or the possibility of alternate decisions (which would make it a genuine choice) or actions.

At dinner, where according your taste and proclivities, in the instance of decision making you select steak and red wine, while your wife selects salad and white wine, each according to their tastes and needs.

Right, which is perfectly compatible with compatibilism.

But still wrong to label these necessitated decisions and actions as examples of free will.

Inner necessity, where the decision maker and their actions are inseparable from the deterministic stream of events is hardly a matter of free will, hence incompatibilism.

The very point I am trying to get you to address is, what do you mean by “inner necessitation” and “necessity”? Is there some form of “necessity” different from logical necessity? Surely you would not argue, I hope, that if I choose Coke over Pepsi, it was logically necessary that I do so? Surely I can imagine a world, different from our own, in which I choose Pepsi, without bringing about a logical contradiction? Surely I cannot imagine any world, different from our own, in which triangles have more or less than three sides, or in which bachelors are married? Therefore you must be positing some form of nomological necessity, and I am asking, where in the world is there such a necessity?

 

[pood]

A fire extinguisher lasts five to 15 year before it must be replaced or refurbished. Suppose I have a fire extinguisher in my kitchen for 15 years, but never use it, because no fire breaks out. Also, I never even test it. At the end of 15 years I get a new fire extinguisher.

Because the fire extinguisher was never used, does that mean it could not have been used? This seems to be what the hard determinist is saying, and it strikes me as surpassingly strange. Of course it could have been used, but was not, because a fire never broke out. Had different antecedents prevailed — had a fire broken out — it would have been used.

From a logical standpoint, you cannot say it necessarily was not used — necessarily, as a matter of logic, means that there is no possible world in which it could have been used, even in a world in which a fire broke out in my kitchen.

Surely the hard determinist does not mean this. So what does he mean? What form of “necessarily not used” does he have in mind, if not logical necessity? The only form that remains is this posited “nomological necessity,” but that would be the crux of a new dispute — with Wittgenstein, I see no valid category called “nomological necessity.” As with not ever using the fire extinguisher, so it goes with my not ever choosing Pepsi.

But I am glad to see we appear to have a new denizen of the rabbit hole.

There is no rabbit hole Pood. It’s your faulty definition that confuses the issue.

I could do anything other than what I did is a realistic mirage and it certainly doesn’t give us free will to do otherwise. I could jump off the Empire State Building I could be a mass murderer. I could drive into a parade and kill innocent people. Why don’t !? What’s stopping me Pood? The fact that I could is obvious when we are given the freedom to choose, but that freedom is constrained by our decision not to do these things because we cannot justify them. Your “would” only matters if your would turns into reality. No one is saying that the option to shoot is there. “I would” if I wanted to, but what stops you is that you don’t want to meaning that you could not, not you would not, given the conditions of your life up to that point.

No, it just means I would not and do not shoot anyone because I don’t want to. However, it is certainly within my power to shoot someone if I so desire. But, I don’t so desire, even though I could do it if I wanted to. This is called “compatibilism.”

 

[pood]

Pood said:

... the hard determinist says I could not choose

By the compatibilist reasoning you have put forth, that is also what the compatibilist means even if the compatibilist does not convey that meaning as succinctly or as coherently as does the hard determinist.

You say that when the compatibilist says could have done otherwise what is meant is would have done otherwise had conditions been different. As noted previously, the hard determinist could/would readily agree with the statement would have done otherwise had conditions been different.

But, given the assumptions of determinism in all of its usual forms, to mean would have done otherwise had conditions been different is also to mean could not have done otherwise because conditions were not different.

No, it doesn’t mean that. That’s the whole point. You are making a modal fallacy.

You are saying:

Given (antecedents x and y, Sam MUST [necessarily] do z.)

I am saying,

Necessarily, given (antecedents X and y, Sam WILL [but not MUST] do z.)

Sam’s doing z is a relative necessity, not an absolute one. The necessity relation inheres jointly in the antecedent and the consequent of the proposition, and not solely in the consequent. This means that Sam’s choosing z is, was, and always will be, a contingent act — could have been otherwise.

This is the case because the determinist notion that antecedents determine what follows includes denying the actuality of the indeterminateness necessary for there ever to be (or for there ever to have been) actual alternatives to what has occurred, to what occurs, as well as to what will occur. All usual forms of determinism hold that the past, present, and future are at all times relevantly, equally, and utterly determinate.

Except the past could have been utterly different because the past is an ongoing set of contingencies.

When you refer to the situation in which you are "[f]aced with Coke vs. Pepsi at a vending machine," you say "the possible choice of Pepsi is very real". Is that intended as a brief description of your (subjective) experience? Or, is it also a description of the (meta)physics of the situation?

If you are merely describing your experience, what you are indicating is a lack of (experiential) awareness of being in a situation which determinism asserts is actually devoid of the indeterminateness that you seem to be experiencing. That very sort of indeterminateness is a necessary condition for there to occur an actual - rather than a merely apparent - choosing between alternatives. If such indeterminateness is not (thought to be) actual, then the experience is illusory despite being subjectively actual/real. If the experience is not illusory, if the experience well enough reflects the (meta)physics of the situation, then the present - and, hence, the future - are necessarily not as utterly determinate as the past appears to be.

The choice before me is absolutely real. I am free to choose Coke or Pepsi.

If/when a hard determinist says that you could not choose, that can indicate an awareness of an indeterminateness as a necessary condition for a choice to be actual in conjunction with that hard determinist denying that there is any such indeterminateness. On the other hand, if that same hard determinist has not recognized that choice presumes such an indeterminateness, then that determinist can well be emphasizing the otherwise in you cannot choose otherwise than you do despite your seeming to experience indeterminateness as actual. What the hard determinist is not denying is that you and only you do what you do. The hard determinist agrees that your physical person (or the physics of your person) is a necessary condition for what actually occurs.

There is no determination of my choice until I determine it. I am part of the deterministic process.

Hard determinism clearly does not cohere with - is not congruent with - the (subjective) experience of human being. And maybe compatibilism is promulgated as a reaction to that incoherence. However, it is determinism itself which does not cohere with human experience. Compatibilism might be intended as an attempt at salvaging determinism by rectifying (or maybe just smoothing out) the particular incoherence of hard determinism. However, on the face of it, hard determinism seems at least more semantically coherent than does compatibilism, and the incoherence of determinism is not - and never will be - overcome (although it might be assuaged) by resorting to the relatively greater semantic incoherence exhibited as compatibilism.

So tell me, who wrote the jazz improv piece? The Big Bang? How did the Big Bang manage that miracle?

 

[peacegirl]

Determinism doesn’t eliminate choices, it generates options, and brains are able to choose among those options. A rock cannot choose what to do after being pushed down a hill. Humans can try to break or avoid or ease the fall, and will. The hard determinists owes an explanation of the difference between rocks and animals. Granted some of our survival behaviors are instinctual and reflexive, but others are clearly a matter of planning, thinking and choosing. And, as one of the referenced articles indicates, the hard determinist owes an explanation of how future human behavior was encoded at the Big Bang, or the Last Scattering Surface, as the article would have it. I asked this a number of times and never received a satisfactory explanation as to how, for example, the jazz improv composer did not create his piece — rather, it was created by Hard Determinism. This is the hard determinist Jerry Coyne’s stance, who also calls humans “meat robots.” This view of hard determinism seems quasi-theological to me, and also a category error itself — determinism is a description of how things broadly go at the classical scale, and never a prescription.

If any other members would care to go down this rabbit hole, feel free.

If choice is defined as permitting someone to take any one of a number of possible actions in any given instance in time, that is not determinism. And if a compatibilist believes that, they are not a compatibilist, they are a Libertarian.

I’ve addressed this many times. You need not agree with what I say, but it would be nice if you would address the substance of it.

I have addressed the substance of it.

Essentially, that is inner necessity that negates the Compatibilists definition of free will and makes Compatibilism a failed argument.

The standard compatibilist position (there are variations, such as neo-Humean compatibilism) is that if you replayed a series of events, with the exact same antecedents, then some person P would always choose X. The compatibilist is simply pointing out, however, that there there is no necessity in this choice — the choice x was, is, and always will be, contingent — which automatically means it could have been otherwise. As I have tried to explain, this must be understood in terms of modalities — the modalities of actuality, contingency, and necessity. The only necessarily true propositions are those that cannot be false under any circumstances; it can never be false that triangles have three sides, for example.

If I choose x — Coke, say, over Pepsi — I am acting on a string of precise antecedents that motivated my choice. But if y is Pepsi, it is clearly within my power, at the time of choice, to choose y — it’s right there in the refrigerator, at my fingertips. Hard determinism is not an agent that stays my hand to prevent me from choosing Pepsi. It’s just that given the relevant antecedents, I choose Coke because I want to, and not because I have to.

The options exist, but what is selected by someone in any given instance is determined, not freely willed or chosen.

The error, of course, is to overlook the fact that I, as the chooser, am part of the deterministic stream, and it is therefore I myself who determines what I choose, based on relevant antecedents.

That's the very thing I don't do.

As an incompatibilist I point out that the decision maker is inseparable from the deterministic stream.

Consequently, every decision and action must proceed as determined, without deviation or the possibility of alternate decisions (which would make it a genuine choice) or actions.

At dinner, where according your taste and proclivities, in the instance of decision making you select steak and red wine, while your wife selects salad and white wine, each according to their tastes and needs.

Right, which is perfectly compatible with compatibilism.

But still wrong to label these necessitated decisions and actions as examples of free will.

Inner necessity, where the decision maker and their actions are inseparable from the deterministic stream of events is hardly a matter of free will, hence incompatibilism.

The very point I am trying to get you to address is, what do you mean by “inner necessitation” and “necessity”? Is there some form of “necessity” different from logical necessity? Surely you would not argue, I hope, that if I choose Coke over Pepsi, it was logically necessary that I do so? Surely I can imagine a world, different from our own, in which I choose Pepsi, without bringing about a logical contradiction? Surely I cannot imagine any world, different from our own, in which triangles have more or less than three sides, or in which bachelors are married? Therefore you must be positing some form of nomological necessity, and I am asking, where in the world is there such a necessity?

Your entire argument regarding logical necessity is flawed. Just because we can imagine a world that we can choose another option (in this case Coke over Pepsi) does nothing to prove that, under the same exact circumstances in which you chose Pepsi could have been otherwise. Logical necessity is not equivalent to actual necessity. IOW, it is obvious that choosing Coke over Pepsi was logically possible, but it was an impossibility to have chosen the Coke if Pepsi was desired more. Unless you give up this flawed modal fallacy, you will continue to use it to buttress your position of “being able to do otherwise”. Something is very wrong here Pood and I hope you see it for what it is.

 

[pood]

Pood said:

"The only form of necessity I recognize is logical necessity ..."

Okay, then you surely realize that there is no sort of necessity (logical, entailment, or otherwise) in your earlier statement: "if you replayed a series of events, with the exact same antecedents, then some person P would always choose X." A closer to necessity form of that statement would be "if you replayed a series of events, with the exact same antecedents, then some person P would always do X." It is closer to necessity in the sense that it is more trans-perspectival. The revised statement is more trans-perspectival in that it is a statement which is coherent both from the modal determinism and the nomological determinism viewpoints. The revised statement also avoids begging the question with regards to those who regard the act of choosing as presuming an actual indeterminateness which provides for actual (and, typically, actualizable) alternatives.

But, then, there is this earlier statement: "The compatibilist is simply pointing out, however, that there there is no necessity in this choice — the choice x was, is, and always will be, contingent — which automatically means it could have been otherwise."

First of all, given that the modal approach is not logically necessary, the cited statement is more accurately expressed as "... there is no modal necessity in this choice". Secondly, the remark "contingent ... automatically means it could have been otherwise" is also not logically necessary. From the nomological determinism perspective, even granting the contingency, it is false that "it could have been otherwise" insofar as "otherwise" at least implies there having been the very sort of indeterminateness which is denied under nomological determinism.

For that matter, and certainly from the perspective of the nomological determinists, there is nothing about the modal perspective which necessarily entails that "it could have been otherwise" within the context of this universe.

To me, “nomological determinism” just means “physical determinism,” and that is what determinism is — physical. A more intriguing life of thought is whether there exists nomological, or physical, necessity, and that is what I deny, though it seems to be what the hard determinist requires for his argument to go through. I agree with Wittgenstein that only logical necessity exists.

To say, “it could have been otherwise,” or, “I could have chosen otherwise,” means, to the compatibilist using modal logic, “I WOULD have chosen otherwise, had conditions been different.” Even though he DID NOT choose otherwise, he COULD have done so.

Don't you see that saying "it could have been otherwise" or "he could have chosen otherwise" had the conditions been different is not the argument? The argument is that had the conditions been THE SAME, according to your logic, he COULD have chosen otherwise because he had the option to do so. This is a huge fallacy. IOW, to then say, even though he DID NOT choose otherwise, he COULD have done so, is contradicting the very compatibilist definition of determinism that you are defending. No determinist is denying that he could or would have chosen otherwise had the conditions been different, but given what the conditions were, he COULD NOT HAVE RESPONDED DIFFERENTLY THAN WHAT HE, IN FACT, DID. This argument of yours is a strawman.

Of course he could have, he just did not.

 

[pood]

I’d say that the term “nomological determinist” is redundant in this context, since it really just means physical or causal determinism, as distinct from other types of determinism such as epistemic, logical, or relativistic determinism.

As mentioned, if you want to invoke the concept of nomicity, I think the key question is whether nomological determinism entails nomological necessity. Such necessity, if it can be had, is what the hard determinist needs to support his claim that my choosing Coke over Pepsi is somehow necessitated. Logical necessity will not support the claim.

Are you of the opinion that — for example — your choosing the Packers to defeat the Lions in Week 14 was somehow nomologically necessary? And if so, how would you justify that claim? Simply appealing to hard determinism would be circular.

Again, determinism also does not dictate IN ADVANCE what a person must choose; it is descriptive, not prescriptive, remember?

Um … right. That has been my argument all along. Why don’t you tell that to DBT and other hard determinists, and not to me?

It forces nothing against our will.

Exactly right. Tell it to DBT.

The problem, therefore, is with the modal fallacy that says that because we had options (which no one is denying), that "we could have chosen otherwise". We could have if we had desired to, but we didn't desire to, so we could not have.

We didn’t desire to, so we DID NOT do otherwise.

Contingency only means we base our decisions on factors (conscious and subconscious) that have led up to our present actions. This contemplation is an inextricable part in the causal chain of events that play out in our individual lives.

Yeah. So? That is compatibilism.

 

[pood]

If you assume block spacetime, then you assume past, present, and future are all devoid of (relevant) indeterminateness and are all determined, because by assuming block spacetime you assume utter determinateness at all spacetime points. At "any point in block spacetime", the future is determined even though the future is not actual at (or from the perspective of) any pre-future spacetime point. Given the assumption of block spacetime, all future points are always determined regardless of whatever point is dubbed the present, but none of those determined future points are actual at the point referenced as present. Given the assumption of block spacetime, talk in terms of alternatives is feckless despite being constituent of block spacetime.

Not at all. In the block world my actions past, present and future determine, in part, what has/does/will happen.

This block world stuff is called relativistic determinism, because it is a determinism that arises from the Minkowski interpretation of relativity theory, and it founders on the entheymematic premise that in order to have free will, one must be able to change something, including the present and the future if not the past. Compatibilist free will does not require us to change anything. Nor libertarian free will, for that matter.

 

[pood]

It's not a matter of indoctrination. A claim such as 'light at the eye/instance vision' simply has no merit and only serves to discredit the book. It doesn't work, not logically, not physically. That is why anybody who has even a basic understanding of physics and how the eye and brain functions in terms of vision cannot take it seriously.

You need to drop it.

No DBT, i will not drop it. You are being too quick to pass judgment. The review against him on Amazon was a misrepresentation of his claim. He never said light was not at the eye or that we don’t need light to see. This is crazy and has ruined interest even though this knowledge can actually change our world for the better. I asked you to please refrain from throwing his knowledge out without a thorough understanding of why he claimed what he did. Talk about throwing the baby out with [what you believe is] the bathwater and Is a perfect example of having a dogmatic hold where the mere mention that science may have gotten it wrong throws you into a tizzy. This is not being open-minded which is the hallmark of good science!

Passing judgement has nothing to do with it. Light at the eye/instant vision is false. Not because I pass judgement or I say so, but it's just not the way the world physically works. It's impossible. Being physically impossible, it doesn't do you any good to argue for it.

But you are judging prematurely. It is not impossible

It is not being judged prematurely. Your author’s claims were proven to be impossible hundreds of years ago, and are both logically and physically impossible. If you want to continue to defend these claims about light and sight, this is a derailment of this thread. Please do so in the thread you started, where you have lost your audience, as I told you would happen if you argued in the way that you do. But you never listen to advice.

 

[pood]

We are not talking about many worlds or there rather than here, which is just another lame excuse for observed reality. All you are doing is trying desperately to give determinism a bad rap due to your dislike for the implications.

This is classic ad hominem. I will start reporting all your ad hom posts if you keep this up.

 

[peacegirl]

A fire extinguisher lasts five to 15 year before it must be replaced or refurbished. Suppose I have a fire extinguisher in my kitchen for 15 years, but never use it, because no fire breaks out. Also, I never even test it. At the end of 15 years I get a new fire extinguisher.

Because the fire extinguisher was never used, does that mean it could not have been used? This seems to be what the hard determinist is saying, and it strikes me as surpassingly strange. Of course it could have been used, but was not, because a fire never broke out. Had different antecedents prevailed — had a fire broken out — it would have been used.

From a logical standpoint, you cannot say it necessarily was not used — necessarily, as a matter of logic, means that there is no possible world in which it could have been used, even in a world in which a fire broke out in my kitchen.

Surely the hard determinist does not mean this. So what does he mean? What form of “necessarily not used” does he have in mind, if not logical necessity? The only form that remains is this posited “nomological necessity,” but that would be the crux of a new dispute — with Wittgenstein, I see no valid category called “nomological necessity.” As with not ever using the fire extinguisher, so it goes with my not ever choosing Pepsi.

But I am glad to see we appear to have a new denizen of the rabbit hole.

There is no rabbit hole Pood. It’s your faulty definition that confuses the issue.

I could do anything other than what I did is a realistic mirage and it certainly doesn’t give us free will to do otherwise. I could jump off the Empire State Building I could be a mass murderer. I could drive into a parade and kill innocent people. Why don’t !? What’s stopping me Pood? The fact that I could is obvious when we are given the freedom to choose, but that freedom is constrained by our decision not to do these things because we cannot justify them. Your “would” only matters if your would turns into reality. No one is saying that the option to shoot is there. “I would” if I wanted to, but what stops you is that you don’t want to meaning that you could not, not you would not, given the conditions of your life up to that point.

No, it just means I would not and do not shoot anyone because I don’t want to. However, it is certainly within my power to shoot someone if I so desire. But, I don’t so desire, even though I could do it if I wanted to. This is called “compatibilism.”

Gosh, can’t you see how utterly flawed your reasoning is, or are you still holding on to this modal fallacy for dear life? Of course it’s within your power to shoot someone (what you call logical necessity in another time and place; we are not a rock rolling down a hill)… but only if you want to. But here’s the catch…YOU DON’T WANT TO UNDER THE PARTICULAR CONDITIONS OF YOUR LIFE, making it an impossibility to shoot when not to shoot is the preferable option!! Therefore, your choice not to shoot is not a free choice at all because you are under a tremendous amount of compulsion to stay away from ever doing such a thing.

 

[peacegirl]

We are not talking about many worlds or there rather than here, which is just another lame excuse for observed reality. All you are doing is trying desperately to give determinism a bad rap due to your dislike for the implications.

This is classic ad hominem. I will start reporting all your ad hom posts if you keep this up.

You and your damn ad homs. You are no saint Pood. You have done more to purposely hurt me in the last decade than I could ever do to you. Your threats don’t scare me. I still am trying to understand your apparent unwillingness to see why logical necessity, according to modal logic, does not mean anyone, given the same exact circumstances, could do otherwise, which is what this whole argument is centered on.

 

[Jarhyn]

Determinism doesn’t eliminate choices, it generates options, and brains are able to choose among those options. A rock cannot choose what to do after being pushed down a hill. Humans can try to break or avoid or ease the fall, and will. The hard determinists owes an explanation of the difference between rocks and animals. Granted some of our survival behaviors are instinctual and reflexive, but others are clearly a matter of planning, thinking and choosing. And, as one of the referenced articles indicates, the hard determinist owes an explanation of how future human behavior was encoded at the Big Bang, or the Last Scattering Surface, as the article would have it. I asked this a number of times and never received a satisfactory explanation as to how, for example, the jazz improv composer did not create his piece — rather, it was created by Hard Determinism. This is the hard determinist Jerry Coyne’s stance, who also calls humans “meat robots.” This view of hard determinism seems quasi-theological to me, and also a category error itself — determinism is a description of how things broadly go at the classical scale, and never a prescription.

If any other members would care to go down this rabbit hole, feel free.

If choice is defined as permitting someone to take any one of a number of possible actions in any given instance in time, that is not determinism. And if a compatibilist believes that, they are not a compatibilist, they are a Libertarian.

I’ve addressed this many times. You need not agree with what I say, but it would be nice if you would address the substance of it.

I have addressed the substance of it.

Essentially, that is inner necessity that negates the Compatibilists definition of free will and makes Compatibilism a failed argument.

The standard compatibilist position (there are variations, such as neo-Humean compatibilism) is that if you replayed a series of events, with the exact same antecedents, then some person P would always choose X. The compatibilist is simply pointing out, however, that there there is no necessity in this choice — the choice x was, is, and always will be, contingent — which automatically means it could have been otherwise. As I have tried to explain, this must be understood in terms of modalities — the modalities of actuality, contingency, and necessity. The only necessarily true propositions are those that cannot be false under any circumstances; it can never be false that triangles have three sides, for example.

If I choose x — Coke, say, over Pepsi — I am acting on a string of precise antecedents that motivated my choice. But if y is Pepsi, it is clearly within my power, at the time of choice, to choose y — it’s right there in the refrigerator, at my fingertips. Hard determinism is not an agent that stays my hand to prevent me from choosing Pepsi. It’s just that given the relevant antecedents, I choose Coke because I want to, and not because I have to.

The options exist, but what is selected by someone in any given instance is determined, not freely willed or chosen.

The error, of course, is to overlook the fact that I, as the chooser, am part of the deterministic stream, and it is therefore I myself who determines what I choose, based on relevant antecedents.

That's the very thing I don't do.

As an incompatibilist I point out that the decision maker is inseparable from the deterministic stream.

Consequently, every decision and action must proceed as determined, without deviation or the possibility of alternate decisions (which would make it a genuine choice) or actions.

At dinner, where according your taste and proclivities, in the instance of decision making you select steak and red wine, while your wife selects salad and white wine, each according to their tastes and needs.

Right, which is perfectly compatible with compatibilism.

But still wrong to label these necessitated decisions and actions as examples of free will.

Inner necessity, where the decision maker and their actions are inseparable from the deterministic stream of events is hardly a matter of free will, hence incompatibilism.

The very point I am trying to get you to address is, what do you mean by “inner necessitation” and “necessity”? Is there some form of “necessity” different from logical necessity? Surely you would not argue, I hope, that if I choose Coke over Pepsi, it was logically necessary that I do so? Surely I can imagine a world, different from our own, in which I choose Pepsi, without bringing about a logical contradiction? Surely I cannot imagine any world, different from our own, in which triangles have more or less than three sides, or in which bachelors are married? Therefore you must be positing some form of nomological necessity, and I am asking, where in the world is there such a necessity?

Who needs a whole world, a direction to look in "deterministic 5d", to find a place where you choose Coke over Pepsi? Surely tomorrow, when you decide that you prefer coke, qualifies.

 

[pood]

We are not talking about many worlds or there rather than here, which is just another lame excuse for observed reality. All you are doing is trying desperately to give determinism a bad rap due to your dislike for the implications.

This is classic ad hominem. I will start reporting all your ad hom posts if you keep this up.

You and your damn ad homs. You are no saint Pood. You have done more to purposely hurt me in the last decade than I could ever do to you. Your threats don’t scare me. I still am trying to understand your apparent unwillingness to see why logical necessity, according to modal logic, does not mean anyone, given the same exact circumstances, could do otherwise, which is what this whole argument is centered on.

Do not do ad hominem again, or I will start reporting all your ad hom posts. There have literally been dozens of them.