hotsexyangelprincess said:
I believe your inquiry is a 'non-question'. For me to answer is for me to implicitly claim that I know this reality - which I do not. Options are not what they seem to be but I will get to that soon.
Determinism is nothing
other than a statement about this reality: about how it is put together, how it operates, and what we may expect from it.
And you may claim not to know anything about this reality, but you sure live as if you do. As if physical objects may be picked up or left standing, as if chairs exist to sit in, as if food exists to be eaten, and as if other people interact with the same world that you do - the premise of language.
I am afraid you are making huge errors here. The absence of determinism is not free will and the absence of free will is not determinism. In fact, if I remember correctly, it has been claimed that the two are not mutually exclusive. Determinism does not imply that everything is as it should be (as least not the one I am advocating). Water was more on the money when she spoke of holistic causality as opposed to linear causality. From what I can tell, we, by nature, are inclined to see everything in terms of linear causality. We simply cannot see the "big picture"; we can only see: the glass falls >> it hits the ground >> it smashes >> it makes a sound. To draw on what Silvertusk has said, we cannot see reality outside of time - we are a part of it - and so this practice of assuming our knowledge of reality is "true" is fallacious in itself.
It may not be absolutely true, but it may be partly true. A holistic view of determinism simply cancels itself out, because it calls things 'determined' that we can't determine to be so. And I don't have a problem with that - it might certainly be so. I have a problem with saying that this unknown deterministic force invalidates our thinking and in some way. That is when people will claim "holistic determinancy" whenever they need to justify some action or belief, and claim ignorance of the "holistic determinancy" whenever they can't.
Because we are a part of reality and cannot view it as a whole, we can logicall only see a portion of it, and thus our knowledge is not holistic but rather linear. But note the implication here. If our view of reality is skewed, it only follows that our knowledge is skewed - for our knowledge can only be based on this perceived reality.
Not skewed, but linear, as you say. To be
able to say it is skewed, you would have to have an outside view of it. And you support my point wonderfully, that it
matters how you perceive reality. If you think it exists only of visible things, you will only trust your eyes and not your ears. If you think it only exist as far as our senses can perceive, you will only trust what you can see, hear, feel and taste. But what about inferred reality? That's what you just did in regards to the consequences of linear knowledge, and what you are doing by inferring a person has wrote these words you are reading now (since neither I nor "non-skewed" reality exist according to your immediate sensory perception).
What you are living in is a construct of
reality, whether you accept it or not. Determinism describes such a construct, and it professes to describe the one we live in. And if the deterministic construct that SouthStar and water describes is examined, you'll see it is uncomfortably conscious of its own "novelty". Because only if it is "new" can it declare something else, like free will, an illusion - but at the same time it has to say it is
not new, and it has been this way since the "first cause".
Now, as our knowledge - the way we perceive reality - is skewed, we should also know that our knowledge of ourselves is skewed. A good analogy for this I've heard is 'a knife cannot cut itself' and 'fire cannot burn itself'. If you are percieving reality, then you can obviously not be perceiving yourself at the same time - just as a knife cannot cut itself and fire cannot burn itself. But if you will insist that you can perceive yourself, then I challenge you to do this and demonstrate for us. Point to yourself, show us where you are to be found. Do not point to your face, for you are not skin and you are not nose, or eye, or lips. Do not point to your chest either. But do show us how it is at all possible that you can perceive yourself.
We perceive ourselves in our thoughts, in our actions, in our decisions - our relationship
to and interaction
with reality. You are simply referring to the limitation of our senses to describe who we
are. As children, we discover our own body along with our physical surroundings, and as we grow up we realize that there is more to us than a body. And even when we say we have a body
and a mind, we are missing something - so we use the word 'soul' as a sort of holistic placeholder. Because although we only understand in part, we must still somehow be able to refer to the "inbetween" that we don't understand and still have to walk.
When expressing who I am, I will not
point somewhere, nor will I
say something, I will simply
be who I am, who I think I should be, who I wish to be, and in a
relationship with me you will discover something about me that I could never express otherwise. And in a relationship with you, I might discover things about myself that couldn't have been expressed otherwise. The way you think and live says something about the way you will relate to others: character.
In my own theory, I have eliminated the idea of the self as a 'controller', some 'autonomous' master, and looked to neurons to account for our manifold shortcomings in knowledge. Not only this failure to perceive oneself, but many other glaring difficultines in knowledge which are incompatible with free will (outlined in another thread) force me to look away from myself and this egocentric axiom in order to find what I seek.
So after you realized that you can't point to something outside, you looked for something 'inside', but you're still stuck in the "I am just body" paradigm? I would venture to say your glaring difficulties with knowledge will be cleared up when you include your 'incomplete and searching self' in this quest for something to relate to.
Personally, I believe you can only find your true self within a personal yet wholly 'other' - a relationship with God. Deteminism invalidates your search, and consigns you to eternal incompatibility, a skewed and imperfect beginner to be looked down upon, to use water's terminology. Your perception is skewed in comparison to it, but it cannot validate you as you are, the way God does. The way a parent encourages a child who thinks he won't ever be an adult.
"Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears.
When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love." (1 Corinthians 13)
Basically, my entire theory may be wrong, but free will is biologically impossible. We need look no further than our own ignorance to know this. And that's basically an ultracondensed version of what has taken me many days and nights to outline to water. This indictment of knowledge should put to your rest your concern that our experience of reality as choice based implies that reality really is choice based. I think you should also provide the definition of free will you are operating under.
- Till I'm back from purgatory.
Free will is the ability to choose between apparent options,
despite the influences and prejudices governing our
biological nature. If it weren't for its practical application in my life everyday, I might have been more inclined to accept your theories about it. I wrote this many years ago:
"I have a body, I have a soul - for the winter I have clothes, for the fire I have coal"
If it weren't for the word 'soul', everything else would have fit into the "body" paradigm, and 'fire' and 'coal' wouldn't have had their metaphorical potential. But the presence of it, wherever it came from and whatever it describes - however incomplete my knowledge of it - requires me to be prepared for more than just fleshly needs. And when the real winter of my life comes, I won't be chilled inside despite my layers of clothes.
