Straw man, as I have never claimed that you disagreed about it being a tautology, and irrelevant, as I never criticized you for using it as parody.
You need to understand that it was used in parody to be able to criticise it as such.
If you did understand that you would realise that criticising my use of it is pathetic.
But you did criticise. You still criticise. Yet you claim that you're not criticising for using it as a parody.
:shrug: What are people to think, Syne, that you really
are here to further discussion?
You have already damned yourself by vehemently agreeing it a tautology and admitting you attempted to use this meaningless tautology to make you own point. You are just too childishly to accept that and move on. "[M]otion is the characteristic of those objects that are moving" is the tautology you here claim "clarified MY position". This is all I have been criticizing you for, and you have admitted it true. Move on already.
It is MY position that uses an example of HIS tautology to demonstrate the flaw in HIS argument and how he was actually doing nothing but showing that life is a descriptor for "living" rather than life being added to make something "living".
It is not rocket science, Syne. But you continue to argue for nothing and continue to demonstrate your own pettiness and lack of understanding.
You have played every evasive, trolling game you could to weasel out of your own words. You have erected multiple straw men, including the hypocritical projection of accusing me of agreeing with the tautology you used to "clarify [YOUR] position", accusing me of criticizing you for something that could only be an intentional or obtuse distraction, and presenting the false dilemma that I must either agree with his tautology or your own.
Yep - disagreement with you is "evasion". Your lack of comprehension is my "evasion". Give it a rest.
I am saying that they are both trivially meaningless tautologies with absolutely no explanatory power, and that using the same tautology to both criticize another as well as "clarify [YOUR] position" is extremely silly.
They're not meant to have explanatory power - it is meant to highlight that they are merely WORDS... one being a descriptor for the other. Simple. But you have made a mountain, and continue to try to build on it, where there was not even a molehill to begin with.
Emergent phenomena is necessarily new ("radical novelty (features not previously observed in systems)"), and cannot be defined otherwise than additional to the sum of constituents.
And yet not a post previously you state:
"You are also arguing a straw man, as no one has claimed something added to the 'underlying activity'". Am I meant to assume that you consider there a difference between the terms "constituents" and "underlying activity" as they apply to emergent properties? I don't see any - either the constituents are there and are constituent of the underlying activity, or they are not... they are therefore synonymous here.
Yet your position changes. And I'm still meant to take you seriously?
And "necessarily new" is with regard our understanding of the system - that it is an already existent property of the system that emerges only at a certain level of complexity etc. Nobody adds anything to the system for the emergent property to arise.
"Adding to our understanding"? So are you claiming that emergent phenomena is only an illusion as well?
Yes, I am saying that emergent phenomena are illusory in nature.
Another straw man. It is actually our inability to understand the specific causes of emergent properties that makes them emergent, otherwise they would simply be determinate. So how can you claim that they "add to our understanding"?
They are determinate (in a probabilistic way) in line with the rest of the universe. But the systems are far too complex for us to identify the specific interactions that give rise to the property we only observe at the macro level. Until such time as we can (if at all) understand how they arise, they remain emergent.
"Not as perceived" implies that there is something other than perceived in contrast (which you seem indecisive on, at best). Since you have chosen to claim that this something may be illusory as well, then your definition of illusion is completely arbitrary.
It is only arbitrary if you think your perception is arbitrary, and as such you hold no reliance on your perception.
Otherwise, if your perception actually conforms at first to a practical reality (i.e. a level of reality that holds firm for practical reasons) then this gives you your first contrast to what might be considered illusory... e.g. the magician on stage sawing his assistant in half.
IF the practical reality upon which you have relied is also found to be an illusion (maybe you have been living in a virtual world all your life) then the reference point changes and you may conclude that everything is a layer of illusion upon layer of illusion. As long as the layers are distinguishable then there is always a contrast.
It is just what you choose to call illusion, nothing more. Any such argument merely begs the question.
It does not beg the question at all. I did not define illusion so that anything and everything can be deemed illusory. I saw the inconsistency and concluded that, given the understanding of "illusion" that I had, it seemed free will was illusory. That the logic of the underlying assumptions might lead one to conclude that everything we perceive is also illusory is neither here nor there, and certainly is not begging the question.
Just like human perception is largely a matter of differentiation, the definition of terms is a matter of distinguishing them in contrast to other and opposing terms. Any term is only as precise as it can be differentiated. Since you admit your "illusion" may not even be but arbitrarily distinguishable, it cannot be of use in furthering discussion.
I have never admitted any such thing. Stop lying.
The illusion CAN be distinguished, not arbitrarily but specifically, through logic.
But it does seem as if you are making my earlier point. If consciousness is illusory then there is little or no grounds to call anything other than illusion.
There are plenty of grounds, but it also depends at what level of activity you are discussing. Whether we consider everything illusion also does not mean that there are not distinct layers of illusion, and one illusion might only be considered as such in reference to a lower level of activity. As long as there is consistency within the layer then there is no illusion at that level. Where there is inconsistency there is an illusion. Again, are we not able to identify a magician's trick as illusion despite watching it on television - a layer of illusion upon a layer of illusion?
I am asking for your specific chain of reasoning.
Disregarding the belligerent tone you generally use, try to be more
specific in your wording, as the way I "specifically distinguish illusion" is no different than I "specifically distinguish" one thing from anything else: if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, swims like a duck, yet is built of cogs and wheels, then the "duck" is illusion.
There really is nothing more specific than that.
Where has anyone, but you, claimed causality violated? Every effect is necessarily a future cause, and this includes the higher order effects of lower order constituents potentially being cause, in turn, over those same constituents.
Genuine free will necessitates it, as the "ability to do otherwise" other than merely the "perception of the ability to do otherwise" requires that consciousness is the initial cause of an action.
If it is not the initial cause, and all effects at the lowest level are probabilistically determined (no "ability" to do otherwise) or that the only uncaused effects are likewise probabilistically determined (e.g. radioactive decay), then everything is caused and the effects are thus probabilistically determined.
It is the inability to understand how such interactions can, at far higher levels of complexity, give rise to properties not seen at those lower levels that we deem them emergent. But those emergent properties have no actual causative power beyond those of the underlying activity. They may appear to, but to do so then the emergent property must somehow become an initial cause in a non-random manner... i.e. violate cause and effect.
Causes, mind you, that would not have otherwise occurred without the unaccounted for emergent phenomena.
This still implies that the emergent property is actually "added" to the system for it to do what it does. I don't agree - and consider emergent properties merely properties of that system but that are not explainable by the constituents etc.
Even if 100% accounted for, you would then have to admit that the constituents ultimately cause the effects on themselves, which is not dissimilar to humans having a genuine effect on themselves (ability to do otherwise).
That is not an "ability to do otherwise" other than at a level of perception, a level at which I have always accepted and agree that "free will" exists.
There is no actual "ability to do otherwise". While the constituents might cause the effects on themselves, this is merely in accordance with the underlying laws of the universe, still being probabilistically determined in how each effect comes from the cause etc.
You need to look up what begging the question means.
I know what it means, thanks.
Unfortunately it seems you accuse it merely where
you can not accept what would not make it such, even while highlighting that such might be possible.
If consciousness is illusion then there is no distinguishing anything else as otherwise, and if everything may be illusion then consciousness would be as well. It is circular reasoning unless you ever manage to take a stance on what it is "perceived other than" that could distinguish it clearly.
You accuse - yet admit that it is an accusation based on your inability to understand the way out that you even identify?? (And you wonder why I consider your tone and style tiresomely belligerent - or perhaps you don't wonder. Who knows.)
As explained, it is possible, logically, to distinguish between layers of illusion: and as such it is a flawed assumption on your part to think that because the lower levels might be illusion that it negates any distinguishing at higher levels.
No, you just assume that all causes can only be bottom up, even when we cannot account for higher order emergent phenomena.
Yet you do not even realise that such an assumption requires free will, defined as "the ability to do otherwise", be the initial cause of an action.
A magician's illusion is recognized as such because we intuitively know what constitutes reality...
And if we consider that "reality" merely to be a lower level of illusion it does not negate the identification of the magician's trick as an illusion in contrast to the lower level. Whether we call that lower level "reality" or merely another, lower, level of illusion is irrelevant.
, just as we all intuitively know that we exercise some measure of choice.
We certainly perceive it as such, and intuition is a perception - so again, despite going round the houses you are back to saying "we perceive we have the ability to do otherwise", which is what I have always agreed with. It is just whether we consider the perception to be more than that, and whether we genuinely do have the ability - which requires consciousness to be the ultimate cause of an action.
You have not only failed to distinguish illusion, but that failure defeats your own analogy (which is exactly why I have been giving you the benefit of the doubt by asking you for your specific reasoning free of vague analogy).
How does it defeat my own analogy? I have distinguished the illusion, not on a practical level but on a logical one - wtf do you think I've been explaining for the last 10 pages or so, on this and other threads. And no, there is no question begging involved.
You are the one demanding to further the discussion, which cannot be done without agreement on terms. But perhaps you like being able to hide your incoherence in a warm, fuzzy blanket of philosophical vagueness.
How many times do you want me to define the terms that I consider to be applicable, and how quick have you been to offer definitions for those terms you accuse me of equivocating on? Which one do you not agree with? Provide an alternative!
"Layers of illusion" are highly subject to arbitrary choice of where to draw the line between such "layers". Here you seem to be doing so between one perception (consciousness) and another ("reality") without defining any criteria by which we should accept such a division. So this just a regress of the same distinction I asked you for, which also fails to define it.
How many times do I need to say that the criteria is logic, applied to our understanding and our perception?
And the lines are arbitrary only in as much as if there is a line that highlights an inconsistency then the line can be drawn. One such line is logically between perception of free will and the genuineness of that free will (as explained) and another is between our perception of the underlying nature of the universe, the "reality", and any objective reality (if one holds to the existence of an objective reality) - in that we can only perceive it subjectively. But that illusory "reality" is, for all practical purposes, as close to any objective reality as we'll get.
What you do not seem to get is that the terms do not matter, so long as their definitions are clear. You can call illusion flimmittyfloo for all the word matters divorced from a concise definition. Apparently conciseness "does not matter to [your] position".
What is more precise or concise than "not as perceived"?
Again you are just seem to be trying to find excuses for your lack of comprehension, but doing so in as belligerent manner as possible.
It seems you did refer to my suggestion. So who else suggested a better home for it?
No, I did not refer to your suggestion, regardless of what you might think. Stop being so pathetic and trying to score points.
river:
"First either be on one general thread topic or another
This same topic on two general topic threads is nonsense"
OnlyMe:
"And again, this discussion seems more suited to some other area of the boards.., philosophy or possibly psychology."
I have discussed just that, and it is your endless evasions that are tiresome. Neither is your vagueness in doubt, as I have fully outline the copiously mealy-mouthed imprecision and equivocations.
You have outlined what you consider to be imprecision, vagueness and equivocation, none of which are taken at face value merely on your claims, nor have you been able to support those accusations other than to yourself. Perhaps if you actually were interested in discussion you might be less interested in trying to score points and do away with the belligerent accusations that you start most responses with. Half of your paragraphs in your latest response alone start with an accusation of some description.
Ah, another appeal to emotion to serve as evasion.
Make that over half.
Consider it a resolution of mine not to respond to you further until you become less belligerent and actually show interest in discussion. (And not in a small way because these posts are getting far too long, and taking far too much of my time).
