Sarkus said:
But our interpretation of the event IS relevant to *us*.
Sure - no argument - emotions are life's way of expressing the interpretation. But how does this answer the question?
If you're agreeing that there IS an objective reality and that we can only view it through subjective means, then are you not agreeing that "Acts of God" are merely subjective views of an objective reality?
First of all, we have to allow for the premise that God interacts with what we can refer to as objective reality -- if God is to be omnimax.
Acts of God "are merely subjective views of an objective reality" -- but more must be said. To say "subjective view" also entails our ethical evaluation, our values and preferences show in this. And they are important in how we lead our lives.
You can relegate it all back to the deterministically disposed personality, of course, but by that, you also discard the notion of personal responsibility.
For further analysis, see below.
Again, what is the relevance of this?
This is subjective. It is merely adding weight to the argument that there are no Acts of God other than people's subjective view of objective reality.
It is subjective, but it is not nonsense.
We do not know objective reality directly (so the premise), thus objective reality doesn't really matter for us. All we can do is view our subjective reality -- within itself.
Or are you saying there is no objective reality?
I'm not saying there is no objective reality; I'm saying that since we can't get to it, since we can't make claims about it (as long as we stick to there being an observational distance) -- thus, objective reality doesn't really matter to us.
What does matter though is the stance we will take towards this objective reality. We can't do as if it isn't there (for our sanity depends on the belief that objective reality is consistent!), but neither can we do as if we knew it. The only stance we can then take towards objective reality is an ethical or emotional one; for we cannot take a cognitive one.
The topic can be summed up in the question: "If you do not know much about something, but know it may come, what will you do when it comes?"
One can never be fully prepared anyway. So it is up to the ethical and emotional stance we will take: will we fear the unknown, will we hate it, will we embrace it, will we be indifferent; will we think it is worthless, will we think it will be superior or inferior to us?
Declare free will to be an illusion, and the law system collapses!
Okay - a couple of points on this:
1. This is a logical fallacy - appeal to emotion. Just because the law system collapses does not counter the argument that free-will is an illusion.
How is this an appeal to emotion?
2. The idea that "free-will is an illusion" is nothing more than intellectual discourse. My "illusion of free-will" works in EXACTLY THE SAME WAY as your "free-will" - so why would the law system collapse?
It would certainly be an interesting discussion in the court for someone to argue their defence from a deterministic viewpoint.
But the law does not operate with a deterministic viewpoint.
No, the law system does not operate with a deterministic viewpoint. The law system operates on the principle of personal responsibility, and personal responsibility is derived from free will.
If free will would be declared to be an illusion, personal responsibility would then be an illiusion too. As it is, the law system does not and can not operate with illusions.
If anything, one can plead temporal insanity (the equivalent of claiming that free will is an illusion), and then the law is different for such a person as opposed to one in possession of free will.
But if free will is to be declared to be an illusion, then all people who are on trial should be treated the same way as now cases of temporal insanity are treated. Nobody would be sentenced, and all would be sent to mental institutions.
The idea that "free-will is an illusion" is nothing more than intellectual discourse.
And a potentially dangerous one.
This may be so, for sure -- but what do such explanation help us? What can we do with them? What have we said by them?
This is a very "religious" thing to expect - that explanations have to help us in some way. Sometimes we see that the answer just is. It will have no bearing on the way we operate or the way the world turns. Why do things have to help us? Why do you feel the need to come up only with answers that subjectively help you?
Survival. Practicality. It is not wise to waste time and energy on things that are counterproductive to one's survival.
And yes, apparently, life is too easy nowadays, this is why people can dwell on things that are "*just* an intellectual discourse".
I disagree. Of course, from your standpoint, it seems to not "change the way you live your life".
But I think that a position like yours leads to a dissolution of personality.
No - it merely redefines what "personality" is.
It only lessens it if you hold some spiritual idea of personality that you see dwindling in the onslaught of objectiveness.
If you require religion or spiritualism to operate then you will always find it, regardless of what others come up with.
Now think of what you've said in terms of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Will you end up happy? Or will you even say that yor own happiness doesn't matter to you?
Humans are merely biological machines
Beware of the day when you will have to experience the consequences of this on your own skin.
If we can create an electronic machine - an artificial intelligence - to have the same personality, self awareness, intelligence as a human then it will prove irrevocably that there is nothing spiritual about humanity - and that we are just biological machines.
Well, this would be so if by "spirituality" we would mean 'something supernatural, unearthly, inexplicable, mystical'. If by "spirituality" you mean some hippie buzz after you're full of LSD, or the extasis of the dervish spinning in circles -- then I think you have a very empoverished understanding of what spirituality is and can be.
Doing this would not be a "relegation of responsibility" but because it IS OUR RESPONSIBILITY to assess what it means to be human.
WHY is it IS OUR RESPONSIBILITY to assess what it means to be human?
You want to keep humanity on a plane above the realm of just a machine and you ascribe "spirituality" to it.
If we can put "just a machine" on the same plane as humanity?
As long as it is humans who design and make the robots, the robots will prove nothing about human nature.
The robots did not and can not come
by themselves "on the same plane as humanity".
If they could come on the same plane as humanity, if they would be capable of that --
and they inherently are not, as long as it is man who designs and makes them, and sustains them -- then you could compare humans and robots that way as you propose. Otherwise, we can't compare them that way.
It is not relegation of responsibility you're worried about but the possibility of facing the stark truth - removal of your subjectivity.
And I think everyone should be afraid of this.
Eh? This smacks of a person unwilling to look down from the perch they've placed humanity on and see that it is actually still on the ground.
Maybe it IS on a different level - but if you don't look down how will you ever know.
I haven't "placed" humanity anywhere. I have no absolute measures by which I could make a list and place phenomena on it.
You're too smug in your ignorance of reality to even question.
Says the smugger.
Ah, now we come to the crux of the matter.
You think that being merely "chemicals and reactions" will remove the idea of "you".
Why should it?
Not remove, but relativize it. Ever watched any science fiction films that happen in the future? They are a prediction, a theory of what happens when human life is devalued down to chemicals and chemical reactions: a person's life becomes worthless. And this is taking place already.
We are self-aware but we do not yet understand what it is to be self-aware. So you are happy to ascribe this to divinity. Why jump to this conclusion?
"Ascribe it to divinity"? Where did you get this from? I do not "ascribe it to divinity".
In the grand scheme of things we haven't even started to look for answers to that question.
Chronological snobbery. Plus, which is worse, you are assuming that there is a lot that is unknown, yet you make proportional estimations of how much of this unknown we know or not know.
Everything you are saying seems to come from an unfounded fear of losing "self" through science.
Unfounded? Why do you think it is an unfounded fear?
But this doesn't alter the reality of it.
Again, argument through fear.
You will always do as your personality dictates.
Your sum of experience / genetics etc has led you to the point you are at at the moment. You will go down the route you follow because of your personality and external causes. Your personality is telling you that if you think of freewill as an illusion then X,Y,Z will happen - and so your personality is stopping you do that.
Mine is happy to accept it, knowing it won't change one iota of the way I act, and that it really nothing more than intellectual discourse.
And yours is happy to accept that -- due to some deterministic logic. And mine is not happy to accept that -- again due to some deterministic logic.
Why do we talk then at all? It is all for naught, nothing more than an "intellectual discourse"?
Boy, have you got a thing coming!
No more than determinism dictates
And what have you said by this?
Our understanding of the relationship between cause and effect is open to research - but the "objective reality" of the cause and effect relationship remains.
No, even the ""objective reality" of the cause and effect relationship" must be questioned -- when our understanding of the relationship between cause and effect is open to research.
Neatly posing there to be a cause and an effect connecting phenomena is a scientific axiom. Unprovable.
To say that objective reality is guided by rules of causality is an unprovable statement of faith.
No - it is a logical fact.
Oh? But when we have agreed that objective reality cannot be known, and now you are making claims about it ...?
My view is that FWI is derived from cause and effect. Call it OR if you like.
FWR requires an effect without a cause. It can not exist in OR.
Please state something else that crosses the cause/effect boundary in the same way that FWR does?
As long as you are in your deterministic discourse, you will interpret everything your way, and nothing we say will have the same meaning in your discourse as it has it in ours. All we can do is poke holes into your discourse and search for inconsistencies -- but even this is futile, as those inconsistencies will be evened out deterministically.
Determinism, nihilism and relativism are irrefutable from the onset on.
The only way to refute them is to practically "refute" the person holding that stance.
I think it is nonsensical to speak about the concept of free will on that level.
It is not "nonsensical" - it is perfectly "sensical" - i.e. logical.
To me it is "nonsensical" to talk about a divine entity.
It's like talking about cells, and saying how there are no organs associated with them. Of course there aren't.
And that means we should discuss the nature of the cells? Of course not.
I'm not sure you understood my analogy.
To talk about free will on the level as you proposed is nonsensical inasmuch as on that level, there is noone to have this free will. There can neither be nor not be free will on that level.
If we look at cells and cells alone, we cannot say anything about the organ they make, we cannot say anything about the functions of the organ as a whole when all we have in sight are a few cells.
Or the analogy with bricks: If we look merely at an individual brick, we can't say anything about the properties of the wall -- for if all we have in sight is a single brick, we do not even know whether it is a part of a wall or not. The concept of wall is indeterminate if all we see is a brick.
That's on the MACRO level. And I'm fully with you on that.
It's only when you get to the Quantum level that probability is introduced through the uncertainty principle - and this is merely RANDOM - not a matter of CHOICE. Hence you get the probable outcomes.
Uh. To talk about choice on the quantum level -- either as present or as absent -- is as nonsensical as to talk about walls if all you have in sight is a single brick.
If all you have in sight is a single brick, you cannot make valid inferences about what the wall is like, and it would be nonsensical to make such inferences in the first place. For the concept of wall is indeterminate if all we see is a brick.
No - there is no "ex-post" knowledge when making a decision. There is only knowledge up to that point.
Yes, but any knowledge has the nature of being an ex post knowledge.
You may have an idea of what your decision will result in - but as soon as you have thought about it, that thought becomes part of the knowledge and experience you have prior to making the decision - and the sum of this determines your decision.
And my idea of what my decision will result in is an ex post knowledge. It is something I have learned from previous experiences.
Of course not. It would be stupid to try.
But then even the decision to attempt to try would be driven by the sum of your past knowledge etc and you wouldn't actually have a choice whether to try or not.
As I keep saying - whether you call it "freewill" or "an illusion of freewill" does not affect the way it works.
Calling it "an illusion of free will" is only of value when discussing it is a concept, and looking behind that concept at the underlying reality.
You do not have to believe that you are free, but not believing it will mean that you continue working as if you're not free.
Well, you say you are happy with not being free, and happy with your QM explanation -- sice your personality is so determined and everything.
But beware of the day when someone comes and puts a gun to your head, or when life turns ugly for you.
This is an argument from fear -- and it is a valid one. Maybe one day you will see what I mean.
My idea of the Universe is a closed system. Nothing can be known outside our universe. Everything that CAN be known is inside our universe. Our Universe obeys laws of physics and chemistry etc. Such laws are all-pervasive.
They may change at quantum levels etc, and are often simplified (Newtonian mechanics etc), but the Objective laws are all pervasive.
For a God to exist outside our Universe is thus irrelevant - as we are in a closed system and can NEVER experience/know this God. And this God can never interact with the inside.
That is the only idea I can come up with for a God that I find acceptable - and I find them irrelevant.
But this is another debate entirely.
Indeed. I think you have committed the fallacies of transposition of concepts into non-native discourses and discourse reductionism (not listed yet).
To transpose a concept from its native discourse into another one often renders the concept meaningless, or gives it a new meaning.
Meaning is something that emerges from the interrelatedness of elements within a system. Take out an element and put it into another system: it might become interrelated, but it won't necessarily make sense -- even though it did in the native system. But for this, you can't blame the element, but your transposing of it.
Whose fault is it that the word "babica" means nothing in English? The word is foreign to English.
But both to say that the word "babica" means nothing as well as to say that it means something is beyond your reach if all you know is English. It is indeterminate for you, and you can't make any claims about it -- neither that the word itself means something, nor that the word itself means nothing.
And similar for free will: On the quantum level, free will is indeterminate. You can neither say that there is free will on the quantum level, nor that there isn't free will on the quantum level.
