having a choice does not mean it's possible to act on that choice. Not being able to control your life does not mean that you don't have free will
What?
"You may choose A or B. But not B."
Not being able to control every aspect of your life doesn't necessarily mean that you don't have free will.
It means you have a free will heavily constrained by the context and causality it exists in.
There's still an uncertainty there that we'd call you or your free will.
*Where*?
In the part we can't perfectly replicate or predict
...such as?
Such as all the parts, because we live in an entirely non-deterministic universe?
Seriously people, quantum mechanics is real. It affects everything.
Quantum mechanics really don't enter into the conversation in a meaningful way unless you have evidence that quantum fluctuations are sapiant occurances.
Quantum mechanics and quantum randomness are relevant at EVERY length scale and EVERY time scale due to butterfly effects. Get hit or not hit by a neutrino? Cancer or no cancer for you! Electron oscillates into the wrong final pair state in your initial crystal grain growth during some steel forging? The plane you were on just crashed when otherwise it wouldn't have had that part failure for 18 more hours. Get a piece of dust in your eye? And then you blink, and look like an idiot in a photo someone takes? Quantum mechanics and its subsequent randomness again! Which sperm makes it to the egg and which of your genes does it specifically have inside! Uh oh, quantum randomness here we go!
Literally all these macro effects with huge influences on your life can trivially be proven to be truly random. And, you can, by going far back enough in time trace literally everything to some true quantum randomness which produced a deviation which was relevant to us. Why does the earth weigh this much? Quantum randomness. Why do we have dolphins? Quantum randomness. Why is the moon here? Quantum randomness. Nothing in the universe is determined at t=0, quantum mechanics make ALL systems in the entire universe non deterministic.
There is an argument to be made that perhaps human decision making is SO simple and buffered that there is no possibility of a different outcome to the same set of external stimuli unless you expose the human to decades of different stimuli, but, I don't think that means that free will is not a thing. Just that human thought could possibly be so simple that we don't have it. We could build something which did.
having a choice does not mean it's possible to act on that choice. Not being able to control your life does not mean that you don't have free will
What?
"You may choose A or B. But not B."
Not being able to control every aspect of your life doesn't necessarily mean that you don't have free will.
It means you have a free will heavily constrained by the context and causality it exists in.
There's still an uncertainty there that we'd call you or your free will.
*Where*?
In the part we can't perfectly replicate or predict
...such as?
Such as all the parts, because we live in an entirely non-deterministic universe?
Seriously people, quantum mechanics is real. It affects everything.
Quantum mechanics really don't enter into the conversation in a meaningful way unless you have evidence that quantum fluctuations are sapiant occurances.
Quantum mechanics and quantum randomness are relevant at EVERY length scale and EVERY time scale due to butterfly effects. Get hit or not hit by a neutrino? Cancer or no cancer for you! Electron oscillates into the wrong final pair state in your initial crystal grain growth during some steel forging? The plane you were on just crashed when otherwise it wouldn't have had that part failure for 18 more hours. Get a piece of dust in your eye? And then you blink, and look like an idiot in a photo someone takes? Quantum mechanics and its subsequent randomness again! Which sperm makes it to the egg and which of your genes does it specifically have inside! Uh oh, quantum randomness here we go!
Literally all these macro effects with huge influences on your life can trivially be proven to be truly random. And, you can, by going far back enough in time trace literally everything to some true quantum randomness which produced a deviation which was relevant to us. Why does the earth weigh this much? Quantum randomness. Why do we have dolphins? Quantum randomness. Why is the moon here? Quantum randomness. Nothing in the universe is determined at t=0, quantum mechanics make ALL systems in the entire universe non deterministic.
There is an argument to be made that perhaps human decision making is SO simple and buffered that there is no possibility of a different outcome to the same set of external stimuli unless you expose the human to decades of different stimuli, but, I don't think that means that free will is not a thing. Just that human thought could possibly be so simple that we don't have it. We could build something which did.
All that does is make human actions determined by quantum mechanics. As I stated pages ago, all that does is shift the time at which a choice is determined.
I don't see how the random elements of quantum mechanics are an argument for free will.
They seem like an argument for randomness of determination.
How could something determined at random be the product of (or result in) choice?
Quantum mechanics and true randomness does not DEMAND free will, it simply removes us from the deterministic universe in which free will by any definition is impossible, because in a deterministic universe there is no such thing as a decision (or even like, time). Just a series of perfectly pre-ordained events which were always going to happen.
A QM universe which contains only hydrogen atoms bouncing around does not have free will, since the hydrogen atoms have no memory beyond their state variables.
Determinism is as much a supernatural explanation.
We are necessarily speaking over a conclusion that cannot be tested in the natural world in a concrete manner.
There need not be a soul for free will any more than you need a God for determinism.
All of those statements could be true and it would change nothing about my point, which is that you can have a workable concept of moral responsibility without relying on a version of free will that necessitates rejecting determinism.
Please describe how to build a moral responsibility if we have no free will cannot truly make our decisions and have no true control of our actions
I would rather argue that we are bodies continuously processing information about the world around us. We receive a lot of information passively or involuntarily as the universe presents to us. But, being also possessed of a physical body that interacts with other physical objects, the information processing is not limited to information passively acquired, and can be a part of a causal process that brings about change. Someone can be an integral part of a certain causal process, to the extent that their absence would have meant no process. If someone is an integral part of a causal process in a way that implicates both their information processing and physical body, then they are responsible to some extent because the same things that make them who they are, are the things that made the situation turn out the way it did. What makes someone responsible on this account is the fact that who they are specifically is a cause of what happened.
I will grant we are beings of information I exist as the things that have happened a big old bank of information.
How do I possess the body? I can take no act with it, all of its acts are at the end of inevitably yes I as a being of information am processed as it happens and it leaves its records with me, but that's just it further using me without any active consent to being used I cannot necessarily consent as I do not have the will to do so.
You don't possess the body, you are the body.
How?
It is at best the vessel I as a being of information am imprisoned in/shackled to
That seems like an enormous claim to just casually assume is true, as if any other idea would be on its face absurd, somehow. Like I don't even know what it would mean to be an imprisoned being of information, versus a physical organism with a brain made out of... well, brain, that produces thoughts and emotions through physical means.
"We receive a lot of information passively or involuntarily as the universe presents to us"
Willing to grant this point here
we exist as the record. If we are granting the premise I as a self aware being exist. At best that I is the record of information forced upon it by uncontrollable actions, that is processed by uncontrollable action, and is used to perform uncontrollable actions. That I is hopelessly shackled to a corporeal form it has no true control of.
Saying that we exist as the record arbitrarily excludes other parts of what we are. The record is part of what we are, but we are also the recording device, the process of recording, the process of interpreting, the interpretations, the storage system, and maybe more besides. All of those parts are necessary components of us. You keep breaking concepts by being overly reductive about what we are.
How could i be a thing i have no control over?
The recording, against my will, the process of recording, against my will, the process of interpreting, against my will, the storage... kinda also against my will,
I guess not against my will but totally without regard for my will as that will ostensibly does not exist.
That's all stuff that's happening without any other possible course.
You question "How could i be a thing i have no control over?" doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Why do you need to have control in order to be a thing?
Your "against my will" constructions also make no sense to me, because as far as I'm concerned, "my" connotes the things that are happening and the body they are happening to/with. If you can argue why the self is the record and nothing else, then my account may be wrong, but using my terms in a way that makes no sense isn't in and of itself an argument.
So that's again the point... where is the self?
If it's all interconnected dominoes working via physics then why does me end at my skin? The air around it is as responsible for its actions as anything else.
How exactly is the air just as responsible? What causal role does it play in what you do?
I mean you can't readily explain exactly how the causal forces work. ostensibly if we're going all the way down to the quantum level... every atom affects every atom near it.
On a more basic level
Without the air the body wouldn't be doing much would it?
Recall that responsibility, as I've described it, adheres to subjects whose information processing forms an integral part of a causal chain of events. I don't need to provide a detailed account of the causal chain that includes a description of all activity to a microscopic scale, because I don't need or want to say anything about events at that scale. Air is necessary for us to do anything other than die, but you need to do a lot more work to show how that makes air responsible for anything.
So merely because of an arbitrarily elected barrier because inspection to the myriad of causal forces is difficult. Like if my prior abuse is the causal factor for a bunch of my behavior why doesn't that take the lions share of responsibility off me? Isn't that causal force just as much me as anything else moving along my action? Is not every atom in the interim between that event now just as causal as the stuff under my skin?
I'll answer your questions in order. First, your experiences are part of you; how can a part of you take responsibility off you? At the same time, if you can make a compelling case that trauma is a major internal contributor to something you've done, then that should impact how we view your particular responsibility in that case.
Second, if by "that causal force" you mean something like "processing those experiences of abuse" then yes, see above. If you meant something else, then I'm not sure.
Third, no, interactions of different kinds have different kinds of results, or just more results than others. To use an exaggerated example, a supernova is more causal than the footfall of a millipede. If you want to argue for the idea that, say, if everything is caused or deterministic, then everything is the same, or something else along those lines, go right ahead.
Yeah that's the basic extrapolation everything's interconnected by causality and physics. Everything's a big interconnected machine. Attributing responsibility to anything in particular is flawed in the framing because, since we' can't really trace all the causal forces we can't really totally track where the eventuality came from. Fuck maybe gravitational disturbances prompted the activity being reviewed on a moral scale and we just couldn't tell. We could mistakenly attribute the action to the wrong body simply because some other external force fucked with their processing in a way we didn't see at the time, or can't currently comprehend.
You don't need to trace all the causal forces back to where the eventuality came from in order to hold a person responsible for what they did. You just need to show that they were an integral part of the sequence of events and as more than just an interchangeable meat sack.
Is it possible to assign responsibility to people mistakenly with this model? Of course, if the inputs are wrong or inadequate in some way, the results will reflect those flaws. That's not an argument against the model, it's an argument against rushing to judgment, and an argument for allowing revisions to assessment of responsibility if new information comes to light.
But ostensibly any meat sack you put into your exact and full context would result in the same exact result
Any meat sack I put into my exact and full context would be me.
So your exact and full context is you? Does that make other people that have affected that full context also you?
Yes, I am my exact and full context. Things that are part of or played a role in my exact and full context are not also in and of themselves my exact and full context. So no, other people or other things that are part of or played a role in that full context are not me.
Why not, they are the progenitor of your future actions are they not?
Without them adding to your context even minutely would you have still ended up at the same absolutely deterministic end? How?
A progenitor is not its product. Like, a car factory makes cars, that doesn't mean the car factory is a car or the car a car factory. I am not my parents, my parents are not me. This is pretty trivial stuff, I don't know where you're getting these other ideas from
Because if my actions aren't my own and are entirely the result of the context then the context and all members of it are me and i'm them because i'm part of their context as well. Every piece of the deterministic universe is a part of moving the state of the deterministic universe forward.
If we're already saying yeah we're essentially complex dominoes run on physics and chemicals where do we put the edge of that dominoe display considering it undeniably exists in a still larger field of dominoes?
Do we limit its definition arbitrarily by its limited perception?
Your argument is fallacious or at least incomplete because interconnectedness does not inherently and necessarily collapse all distinctions.
When you say, "If we're already saying yeah we're essentially complex dominoes run on physics and chemicals", I reply, "don't put that nonsense on me!"
Determinism is as much a supernatural explanation.
We are necessarily speaking over a conclusion that cannot be tested in the natural world in a concrete manner.
There need not be a soul for free will any more than you need a God for determinism.
All of those statements could be true and it would change nothing about my point, which is that you can have a workable concept of moral responsibility without relying on a version of free will that necessitates rejecting determinism.
Please describe how to build a moral responsibility if we have no free will cannot truly make our decisions and have no true control of our actions
I would rather argue that we are bodies continuously processing information about the world around us. We receive a lot of information passively or involuntarily as the universe presents to us. But, being also possessed of a physical body that interacts with other physical objects, the information processing is not limited to information passively acquired, and can be a part of a causal process that brings about change. Someone can be an integral part of a certain causal process, to the extent that their absence would have meant no process. If someone is an integral part of a causal process in a way that implicates both their information processing and physical body, then they are responsible to some extent because the same things that make them who they are, are the things that made the situation turn out the way it did. What makes someone responsible on this account is the fact that who they are specifically is a cause of what happened.
I will grant we are beings of information I exist as the things that have happened a big old bank of information.
How do I possess the body? I can take no act with it, all of its acts are at the end of inevitably yes I as a being of information am processed as it happens and it leaves its records with me, but that's just it further using me without any active consent to being used I cannot necessarily consent as I do not have the will to do so.
You don't possess the body, you are the body.
How?
It is at best the vessel I as a being of information am imprisoned in/shackled to
That seems like an enormous claim to just casually assume is true, as if any other idea would be on its face absurd, somehow. Like I don't even know what it would mean to be an imprisoned being of information, versus a physical organism with a brain made out of... well, brain, that produces thoughts and emotions through physical means.
"We receive a lot of information passively or involuntarily as the universe presents to us"
Willing to grant this point here
we exist as the record. If we are granting the premise I as a self aware being exist. At best that I is the record of information forced upon it by uncontrollable actions, that is processed by uncontrollable action, and is used to perform uncontrollable actions. That I is hopelessly shackled to a corporeal form it has no true control of.
Saying that we exist as the record arbitrarily excludes other parts of what we are. The record is part of what we are, but we are also the recording device, the process of recording, the process of interpreting, the interpretations, the storage system, and maybe more besides. All of those parts are necessary components of us. You keep breaking concepts by being overly reductive about what we are.
How could i be a thing i have no control over?
The recording, against my will, the process of recording, against my will, the process of interpreting, against my will, the storage... kinda also against my will,
I guess not against my will but totally without regard for my will as that will ostensibly does not exist.
That's all stuff that's happening without any other possible course.
You question "How could i be a thing i have no control over?" doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Why do you need to have control in order to be a thing?
Your "against my will" constructions also make no sense to me, because as far as I'm concerned, "my" connotes the things that are happening and the body they are happening to/with. If you can argue why the self is the record and nothing else, then my account may be wrong, but using my terms in a way that makes no sense isn't in and of itself an argument.
So that's again the point... where is the self?
If it's all interconnected dominoes working via physics then why does me end at my skin? The air around it is as responsible for its actions as anything else.
How exactly is the air just as responsible? What causal role does it play in what you do?
I mean you can't readily explain exactly how the causal forces work. ostensibly if we're going all the way down to the quantum level... every atom affects every atom near it.
On a more basic level
Without the air the body wouldn't be doing much would it?
Recall that responsibility, as I've described it, adheres to subjects whose information processing forms an integral part of a causal chain of events. I don't need to provide a detailed account of the causal chain that includes a description of all activity to a microscopic scale, because I don't need or want to say anything about events at that scale. Air is necessary for us to do anything other than die, but you need to do a lot more work to show how that makes air responsible for anything.
So merely because of an arbitrarily elected barrier because inspection to the myriad of causal forces is difficult. Like if my prior abuse is the causal factor for a bunch of my behavior why doesn't that take the lions share of responsibility off me? Isn't that causal force just as much me as anything else moving along my action? Is not every atom in the interim between that event now just as causal as the stuff under my skin?
I'll answer your questions in order. First, your experiences are part of you; how can a part of you take responsibility off you? At the same time, if you can make a compelling case that trauma is a major internal contributor to something you've done, then that should impact how we view your particular responsibility in that case.
Second, if by "that causal force" you mean something like "processing those experiences of abuse" then yes, see above. If you meant something else, then I'm not sure.
Third, no, interactions of different kinds have different kinds of results, or just more results than others. To use an exaggerated example, a supernova is more causal than the footfall of a millipede. If you want to argue for the idea that, say, if everything is caused or deterministic, then everything is the same, or something else along those lines, go right ahead.
Yeah that's the basic extrapolation everything's interconnected by causality and physics. Everything's a big interconnected machine. Attributing responsibility to anything in particular is flawed in the framing because, since we' can't really trace all the causal forces we can't really totally track where the eventuality came from. Fuck maybe gravitational disturbances prompted the activity being reviewed on a moral scale and we just couldn't tell. We could mistakenly attribute the action to the wrong body simply because some other external force fucked with their processing in a way we didn't see at the time, or can't currently comprehend.
You don't need to trace all the causal forces back to where the eventuality came from in order to hold a person responsible for what they did. You just need to show that they were an integral part of the sequence of events and as more than just an interchangeable meat sack.
Is it possible to assign responsibility to people mistakenly with this model? Of course, if the inputs are wrong or inadequate in some way, the results will reflect those flaws. That's not an argument against the model, it's an argument against rushing to judgment, and an argument for allowing revisions to assessment of responsibility if new information comes to light.
But ostensibly any meat sack you put into your exact and full context would result in the same exact result
Any meat sack I put into my exact and full context would be me.
So your exact and full context is you? Does that make other people that have affected that full context also you?
Yes, I am my exact and full context. Things that are part of or played a role in my exact and full context are not also in and of themselves my exact and full context. So no, other people or other things that are part of or played a role in that full context are not me.
Why not, they are the progenitor of your future actions are they not?
Without them adding to your context even minutely would you have still ended up at the same absolutely deterministic end? How?
A progenitor is not its product. Like, a car factory makes cars, that doesn't mean the car factory is a car or the car a car factory. I am not my parents, my parents are not me. This is pretty trivial stuff, I don't know where you're getting these other ideas from
Because if my actions aren't my own and are entirely the result of the context then the context and all members of it are me and i'm them because i'm part of their context as well. Every piece of the deterministic universe is a part of moving the state of the deterministic universe forward.
If we're already saying yeah we're essentially complex dominoes run on physics and chemicals where do we put the edge of that dominoe display considering it undeniably exists in a still larger field of dominoes?
Do we limit its definition arbitrarily by its limited perception?
Your argument is fallacious or at least incomplete because interconnectedness does not inherently and necessarily collapse all distinctions.
When you say, "If we're already saying yeah we're essentially complex dominoes run on physics and chemicals", I reply, "don't put that nonsense on me!"
Then what are we other than a super complex atomic structures working in a way determined by the atomic structures it interacts with?
having a choice does not mean it's possible to act on that choice. Not being able to control your life does not mean that you don't have free will
What?
"You may choose A or B. But not B."
Not being able to control every aspect of your life doesn't necessarily mean that you don't have free will.
It means you have a free will heavily constrained by the context and causality it exists in.
There's still an uncertainty there that we'd call you or your free will.
*Where*?
In the part we can't perfectly replicate or predict
...such as?
Such as all the parts, because we live in an entirely non-deterministic universe?
Seriously people, quantum mechanics is real. It affects everything.
Quantum mechanics really don't enter into the conversation in a meaningful way unless you have evidence that quantum fluctuations are sapiant occurances.
Quantum mechanics and quantum randomness are relevant at EVERY length scale and EVERY time scale due to butterfly effects. Get hit or not hit by a neutrino? Cancer or no cancer for you! Electron oscillates into the wrong final pair state in your initial crystal grain growth during some steel forging? The plane you were on just crashed when otherwise it wouldn't have had that part failure for 18 more hours. Get a piece of dust in your eye? And then you blink, and look like an idiot in a photo someone takes? Quantum mechanics and its subsequent randomness again! Which sperm makes it to the egg and which of your genes does it specifically have inside! Uh oh, quantum randomness here we go!
Literally all these macro effects with huge influences on your life can trivially be proven to be truly random. And, you can, by going far back enough in time trace literally everything to some true quantum randomness which produced a deviation which was relevant to us. Why does the earth weigh this much? Quantum randomness. Why do we have dolphins? Quantum randomness. Why is the moon here? Quantum randomness. Nothing in the universe is determined at t=0, quantum mechanics make ALL systems in the entire universe non deterministic.
There is an argument to be made that perhaps human decision making is SO simple and buffered that there is no possibility of a different outcome to the same set of external stimuli unless you expose the human to decades of different stimuli, but, I don't think that means that free will is not a thing. Just that human thought could possibly be so simple that we don't have it. We could build something which did.
All that does is make human actions determined by quantum mechanics. As I stated pages ago, all that does is shift the time at which a choice is determined.
Quantum mechanics makes the universe non deterministic, the domino argument cannot be used because the universe doesn't work that way. Quantum mechanics says that (for example) whether or not a neutrino is heading for your DNA to give you cancer (or, more benignly to prematurely trigger a neuron such that it is recouperating and can no longer trigger its decision pathway in response to stimulus) isn't decided at the point when the nuclear decay MAKES that initial neutrino. It is decided at the exact instant when it hits you. Up till that point, even though the causal event occurred in the past, the neutrino wasn't 'heading' for you. If you had, for example a time machine and put a neutrino detector a few light days out in space in the past, then that neutrino might not have hit it, even though it had to hit it to hit you and you just travelled back in time.
Quantum mechanics brings the randomness of many many events into the 'now'. That neutrino causality chain wasn't decided 10 million years ago. It was decided at the exact instant it struck your DNA.
having a choice does not mean it's possible to act on that choice. Not being able to control your life does not mean that you don't have free will
What?
"You may choose A or B. But not B."
Not being able to control every aspect of your life doesn't necessarily mean that you don't have free will.
It means you have a free will heavily constrained by the context and causality it exists in.
There's still an uncertainty there that we'd call you or your free will.
*Where*?
In the part we can't perfectly replicate or predict
...such as?
Such as all the parts, because we live in an entirely non-deterministic universe?
Seriously people, quantum mechanics is real. It affects everything.
Quantum mechanics really don't enter into the conversation in a meaningful way unless you have evidence that quantum fluctuations are sapiant occurances.
Quantum mechanics and quantum randomness are relevant at EVERY length scale and EVERY time scale due to butterfly effects. Get hit or not hit by a neutrino? Cancer or no cancer for you! Electron oscillates into the wrong final pair state in your initial crystal grain growth during some steel forging? The plane you were on just crashed when otherwise it wouldn't have had that part failure for 18 more hours. Get a piece of dust in your eye? And then you blink, and look like an idiot in a photo someone takes? Quantum mechanics and its subsequent randomness again! Which sperm makes it to the egg and which of your genes does it specifically have inside! Uh oh, quantum randomness here we go!
Literally all these macro effects with huge influences on your life can trivially be proven to be truly random. And, you can, by going far back enough in time trace literally everything to some true quantum randomness which produced a deviation which was relevant to us. Why does the earth weigh this much? Quantum randomness. Why do we have dolphins? Quantum randomness. Why is the moon here? Quantum randomness. Nothing in the universe is determined at t=0, quantum mechanics make ALL systems in the entire universe non deterministic.
There is an argument to be made that perhaps human decision making is SO simple and buffered that there is no possibility of a different outcome to the same set of external stimuli unless you expose the human to decades of different stimuli, but, I don't think that means that free will is not a thing. Just that human thought could possibly be so simple that we don't have it. We could build something which did.
All that does is make human actions determined by quantum mechanics. As I stated pages ago, all that does is shift the time at which a choice is determined.
Quantum mechanics makes the universe non deterministic, the domino argument cannot be used because the universe doesn't work that way. Quantum mechanics says that (for example) whether or not a neutrino is heading for your DNA to give you cancer (or, more benignly to prematurely trigger a neuron such that it is recouperating and can no longer trigger its decision pathway in response to stimulus) isn't decided at the point when the nuclear decay MAKES that initial neutrino. It is decided at the exact instant when it hits you. Up till that point, even though the causal event occurred in the past, the neutrino wasn't 'heading' for you. If you had, for example a time machine and put a neutrino detector a few light days out in space in the past, then that neutrino might not have hit it, even though it had to hit it to hit you and you just travelled back in time.
Quantum mechanics brings the randomness of many many events into the 'now'. That neutrino causality chain wasn't decided 10 million years ago. It was decided at the exact instant it struck your DNA.
That's still just shifting the time of determination. The universe not being pre-determined doesn't mean that we're free from cause and effect, it just means that at the causes themselves are unpredictable.
It also continues to have no bearing on free will as a concept versus choices being determined by causal chains, which is not the same topic as the position of sub-atomic particles and the unpredictablity that causes.
Keep in mind that homophones are a thing, and words are used differently in different contexts, and you're not providing an adequate link between the contexts.
Determinism is as much a supernatural explanation.
We are necessarily speaking over a conclusion that cannot be tested in the natural world in a concrete manner.
There need not be a soul for free will any more than you need a God for determinism.
All of those statements could be true and it would change nothing about my point, which is that you can have a workable concept of moral responsibility without relying on a version of free will that necessitates rejecting determinism.
Please describe how to build a moral responsibility if we have no free will cannot truly make our decisions and have no true control of our actions
I would rather argue that we are bodies continuously processing information about the world around us. We receive a lot of information passively or involuntarily as the universe presents to us. But, being also possessed of a physical body that interacts with other physical objects, the information processing is not limited to information passively acquired, and can be a part of a causal process that brings about change. Someone can be an integral part of a certain causal process, to the extent that their absence would have meant no process. If someone is an integral part of a causal process in a way that implicates both their information processing and physical body, then they are responsible to some extent because the same things that make them who they are, are the things that made the situation turn out the way it did. What makes someone responsible on this account is the fact that who they are specifically is a cause of what happened.
I will grant we are beings of information I exist as the things that have happened a big old bank of information.
How do I possess the body? I can take no act with it, all of its acts are at the end of inevitably yes I as a being of information am processed as it happens and it leaves its records with me, but that's just it further using me without any active consent to being used I cannot necessarily consent as I do not have the will to do so.
You don't possess the body, you are the body.
How?
It is at best the vessel I as a being of information am imprisoned in/shackled to
That seems like an enormous claim to just casually assume is true, as if any other idea would be on its face absurd, somehow. Like I don't even know what it would mean to be an imprisoned being of information, versus a physical organism with a brain made out of... well, brain, that produces thoughts and emotions through physical means.
"We receive a lot of information passively or involuntarily as the universe presents to us"
Willing to grant this point here
we exist as the record. If we are granting the premise I as a self aware being exist. At best that I is the record of information forced upon it by uncontrollable actions, that is processed by uncontrollable action, and is used to perform uncontrollable actions. That I is hopelessly shackled to a corporeal form it has no true control of.
Saying that we exist as the record arbitrarily excludes other parts of what we are. The record is part of what we are, but we are also the recording device, the process of recording, the process of interpreting, the interpretations, the storage system, and maybe more besides. All of those parts are necessary components of us. You keep breaking concepts by being overly reductive about what we are.
How could i be a thing i have no control over?
The recording, against my will, the process of recording, against my will, the process of interpreting, against my will, the storage... kinda also against my will,
I guess not against my will but totally without regard for my will as that will ostensibly does not exist.
That's all stuff that's happening without any other possible course.
You question "How could i be a thing i have no control over?" doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Why do you need to have control in order to be a thing?
Your "against my will" constructions also make no sense to me, because as far as I'm concerned, "my" connotes the things that are happening and the body they are happening to/with. If you can argue why the self is the record and nothing else, then my account may be wrong, but using my terms in a way that makes no sense isn't in and of itself an argument.
So that's again the point... where is the self?
If it's all interconnected dominoes working via physics then why does me end at my skin? The air around it is as responsible for its actions as anything else.
How exactly is the air just as responsible? What causal role does it play in what you do?
I mean you can't readily explain exactly how the causal forces work. ostensibly if we're going all the way down to the quantum level... every atom affects every atom near it.
On a more basic level
Without the air the body wouldn't be doing much would it?
Recall that responsibility, as I've described it, adheres to subjects whose information processing forms an integral part of a causal chain of events. I don't need to provide a detailed account of the causal chain that includes a description of all activity to a microscopic scale, because I don't need or want to say anything about events at that scale. Air is necessary for us to do anything other than die, but you need to do a lot more work to show how that makes air responsible for anything.
So merely because of an arbitrarily elected barrier because inspection to the myriad of causal forces is difficult. Like if my prior abuse is the causal factor for a bunch of my behavior why doesn't that take the lions share of responsibility off me? Isn't that causal force just as much me as anything else moving along my action? Is not every atom in the interim between that event now just as causal as the stuff under my skin?
I'll answer your questions in order. First, your experiences are part of you; how can a part of you take responsibility off you? At the same time, if you can make a compelling case that trauma is a major internal contributor to something you've done, then that should impact how we view your particular responsibility in that case.
Second, if by "that causal force" you mean something like "processing those experiences of abuse" then yes, see above. If you meant something else, then I'm not sure.
Third, no, interactions of different kinds have different kinds of results, or just more results than others. To use an exaggerated example, a supernova is more causal than the footfall of a millipede. If you want to argue for the idea that, say, if everything is caused or deterministic, then everything is the same, or something else along those lines, go right ahead.
Yeah that's the basic extrapolation everything's interconnected by causality and physics. Everything's a big interconnected machine. Attributing responsibility to anything in particular is flawed in the framing because, since we' can't really trace all the causal forces we can't really totally track where the eventuality came from. Fuck maybe gravitational disturbances prompted the activity being reviewed on a moral scale and we just couldn't tell. We could mistakenly attribute the action to the wrong body simply because some other external force fucked with their processing in a way we didn't see at the time, or can't currently comprehend.
You don't need to trace all the causal forces back to where the eventuality came from in order to hold a person responsible for what they did. You just need to show that they were an integral part of the sequence of events and as more than just an interchangeable meat sack.
Is it possible to assign responsibility to people mistakenly with this model? Of course, if the inputs are wrong or inadequate in some way, the results will reflect those flaws. That's not an argument against the model, it's an argument against rushing to judgment, and an argument for allowing revisions to assessment of responsibility if new information comes to light.
But ostensibly any meat sack you put into your exact and full context would result in the same exact result
Any meat sack I put into my exact and full context would be me.
So your exact and full context is you? Does that make other people that have affected that full context also you?
Yes, I am my exact and full context. Things that are part of or played a role in my exact and full context are not also in and of themselves my exact and full context. So no, other people or other things that are part of or played a role in that full context are not me.
Why not, they are the progenitor of your future actions are they not?
Without them adding to your context even minutely would you have still ended up at the same absolutely deterministic end? How?
A progenitor is not its product. Like, a car factory makes cars, that doesn't mean the car factory is a car or the car a car factory. I am not my parents, my parents are not me. This is pretty trivial stuff, I don't know where you're getting these other ideas from
Because if my actions aren't my own and are entirely the result of the context then the context and all members of it are me and i'm them because i'm part of their context as well. Every piece of the deterministic universe is a part of moving the state of the deterministic universe forward.
If we're already saying yeah we're essentially complex dominoes run on physics and chemicals where do we put the edge of that dominoe display considering it undeniably exists in a still larger field of dominoes?
Do we limit its definition arbitrarily by its limited perception?
Your argument is fallacious or at least incomplete because interconnectedness does not inherently and necessarily collapse all distinctions.
When you say, "If we're already saying yeah we're essentially complex dominoes run on physics and chemicals", I reply, "don't put that nonsense on me!"
Then what are we other than a super complex atomic structures working in a way determined by the atomic structures it interacts with?
Why should I accept that if "super complex atomic structures" is a valid descriptor, nothing else matters? You ask what we are other than that, to which I must ask, why can't we be things in addition to or arising from that?
Determinism is as much a supernatural explanation.
We are necessarily speaking over a conclusion that cannot be tested in the natural world in a concrete manner.
There need not be a soul for free will any more than you need a God for determinism.
All of those statements could be true and it would change nothing about my point, which is that you can have a workable concept of moral responsibility without relying on a version of free will that necessitates rejecting determinism.
Please describe how to build a moral responsibility if we have no free will cannot truly make our decisions and have no true control of our actions
I would rather argue that we are bodies continuously processing information about the world around us. We receive a lot of information passively or involuntarily as the universe presents to us. But, being also possessed of a physical body that interacts with other physical objects, the information processing is not limited to information passively acquired, and can be a part of a causal process that brings about change. Someone can be an integral part of a certain causal process, to the extent that their absence would have meant no process. If someone is an integral part of a causal process in a way that implicates both their information processing and physical body, then they are responsible to some extent because the same things that make them who they are, are the things that made the situation turn out the way it did. What makes someone responsible on this account is the fact that who they are specifically is a cause of what happened.
I will grant we are beings of information I exist as the things that have happened a big old bank of information.
How do I possess the body? I can take no act with it, all of its acts are at the end of inevitably yes I as a being of information am processed as it happens and it leaves its records with me, but that's just it further using me without any active consent to being used I cannot necessarily consent as I do not have the will to do so.
You don't possess the body, you are the body.
How?
It is at best the vessel I as a being of information am imprisoned in/shackled to
That seems like an enormous claim to just casually assume is true, as if any other idea would be on its face absurd, somehow. Like I don't even know what it would mean to be an imprisoned being of information, versus a physical organism with a brain made out of... well, brain, that produces thoughts and emotions through physical means.
"We receive a lot of information passively or involuntarily as the universe presents to us"
Willing to grant this point here
we exist as the record. If we are granting the premise I as a self aware being exist. At best that I is the record of information forced upon it by uncontrollable actions, that is processed by uncontrollable action, and is used to perform uncontrollable actions. That I is hopelessly shackled to a corporeal form it has no true control of.
Saying that we exist as the record arbitrarily excludes other parts of what we are. The record is part of what we are, but we are also the recording device, the process of recording, the process of interpreting, the interpretations, the storage system, and maybe more besides. All of those parts are necessary components of us. You keep breaking concepts by being overly reductive about what we are.
How could i be a thing i have no control over?
The recording, against my will, the process of recording, against my will, the process of interpreting, against my will, the storage... kinda also against my will,
I guess not against my will but totally without regard for my will as that will ostensibly does not exist.
That's all stuff that's happening without any other possible course.
You question "How could i be a thing i have no control over?" doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Why do you need to have control in order to be a thing?
Your "against my will" constructions also make no sense to me, because as far as I'm concerned, "my" connotes the things that are happening and the body they are happening to/with. If you can argue why the self is the record and nothing else, then my account may be wrong, but using my terms in a way that makes no sense isn't in and of itself an argument.
So that's again the point... where is the self?
If it's all interconnected dominoes working via physics then why does me end at my skin? The air around it is as responsible for its actions as anything else.
How exactly is the air just as responsible? What causal role does it play in what you do?
I mean you can't readily explain exactly how the causal forces work. ostensibly if we're going all the way down to the quantum level... every atom affects every atom near it.
On a more basic level
Without the air the body wouldn't be doing much would it?
Recall that responsibility, as I've described it, adheres to subjects whose information processing forms an integral part of a causal chain of events. I don't need to provide a detailed account of the causal chain that includes a description of all activity to a microscopic scale, because I don't need or want to say anything about events at that scale. Air is necessary for us to do anything other than die, but you need to do a lot more work to show how that makes air responsible for anything.
So merely because of an arbitrarily elected barrier because inspection to the myriad of causal forces is difficult. Like if my prior abuse is the causal factor for a bunch of my behavior why doesn't that take the lions share of responsibility off me? Isn't that causal force just as much me as anything else moving along my action? Is not every atom in the interim between that event now just as causal as the stuff under my skin?
I'll answer your questions in order. First, your experiences are part of you; how can a part of you take responsibility off you? At the same time, if you can make a compelling case that trauma is a major internal contributor to something you've done, then that should impact how we view your particular responsibility in that case.
Second, if by "that causal force" you mean something like "processing those experiences of abuse" then yes, see above. If you meant something else, then I'm not sure.
Third, no, interactions of different kinds have different kinds of results, or just more results than others. To use an exaggerated example, a supernova is more causal than the footfall of a millipede. If you want to argue for the idea that, say, if everything is caused or deterministic, then everything is the same, or something else along those lines, go right ahead.
Yeah that's the basic extrapolation everything's interconnected by causality and physics. Everything's a big interconnected machine. Attributing responsibility to anything in particular is flawed in the framing because, since we' can't really trace all the causal forces we can't really totally track where the eventuality came from. Fuck maybe gravitational disturbances prompted the activity being reviewed on a moral scale and we just couldn't tell. We could mistakenly attribute the action to the wrong body simply because some other external force fucked with their processing in a way we didn't see at the time, or can't currently comprehend.
You don't need to trace all the causal forces back to where the eventuality came from in order to hold a person responsible for what they did. You just need to show that they were an integral part of the sequence of events and as more than just an interchangeable meat sack.
Is it possible to assign responsibility to people mistakenly with this model? Of course, if the inputs are wrong or inadequate in some way, the results will reflect those flaws. That's not an argument against the model, it's an argument against rushing to judgment, and an argument for allowing revisions to assessment of responsibility if new information comes to light.
But ostensibly any meat sack you put into your exact and full context would result in the same exact result
Any meat sack I put into my exact and full context would be me.
So your exact and full context is you? Does that make other people that have affected that full context also you?
Yes, I am my exact and full context. Things that are part of or played a role in my exact and full context are not also in and of themselves my exact and full context. So no, other people or other things that are part of or played a role in that full context are not me.
Why not, they are the progenitor of your future actions are they not?
Without them adding to your context even minutely would you have still ended up at the same absolutely deterministic end? How?
A progenitor is not its product. Like, a car factory makes cars, that doesn't mean the car factory is a car or the car a car factory. I am not my parents, my parents are not me. This is pretty trivial stuff, I don't know where you're getting these other ideas from
Because if my actions aren't my own and are entirely the result of the context then the context and all members of it are me and i'm them because i'm part of their context as well. Every piece of the deterministic universe is a part of moving the state of the deterministic universe forward.
If we're already saying yeah we're essentially complex dominoes run on physics and chemicals where do we put the edge of that dominoe display considering it undeniably exists in a still larger field of dominoes?
Do we limit its definition arbitrarily by its limited perception?
Your argument is fallacious or at least incomplete because interconnectedness does not inherently and necessarily collapse all distinctions.
When you say, "If we're already saying yeah we're essentially complex dominoes run on physics and chemicals", I reply, "don't put that nonsense on me!"
Then what are we other than a super complex atomic structures working in a way determined by the atomic structures it interacts with?
Why should I accept that if "super complex atomic structures" is a valid descriptor, nothing else matters? You ask what we are other than that, to which I must ask, why can't we be things in addition to or arising from that?
We can be, but where does the edge of personal causality lie? Where do we draw the edges of those atomic structures and elect that's the end point of causality for this determinate state.
Determinism is as much a supernatural explanation.
We are necessarily speaking over a conclusion that cannot be tested in the natural world in a concrete manner.
There need not be a soul for free will any more than you need a God for determinism.
All of those statements could be true and it would change nothing about my point, which is that you can have a workable concept of moral responsibility without relying on a version of free will that necessitates rejecting determinism.
Please describe how to build a moral responsibility if we have no free will cannot truly make our decisions and have no true control of our actions
I would rather argue that we are bodies continuously processing information about the world around us. We receive a lot of information passively or involuntarily as the universe presents to us. But, being also possessed of a physical body that interacts with other physical objects, the information processing is not limited to information passively acquired, and can be a part of a causal process that brings about change. Someone can be an integral part of a certain causal process, to the extent that their absence would have meant no process. If someone is an integral part of a causal process in a way that implicates both their information processing and physical body, then they are responsible to some extent because the same things that make them who they are, are the things that made the situation turn out the way it did. What makes someone responsible on this account is the fact that who they are specifically is a cause of what happened.
I will grant we are beings of information I exist as the things that have happened a big old bank of information.
How do I possess the body? I can take no act with it, all of its acts are at the end of inevitably yes I as a being of information am processed as it happens and it leaves its records with me, but that's just it further using me without any active consent to being used I cannot necessarily consent as I do not have the will to do so.
You don't possess the body, you are the body.
How?
It is at best the vessel I as a being of information am imprisoned in/shackled to
That seems like an enormous claim to just casually assume is true, as if any other idea would be on its face absurd, somehow. Like I don't even know what it would mean to be an imprisoned being of information, versus a physical organism with a brain made out of... well, brain, that produces thoughts and emotions through physical means.
"We receive a lot of information passively or involuntarily as the universe presents to us"
Willing to grant this point here
we exist as the record. If we are granting the premise I as a self aware being exist. At best that I is the record of information forced upon it by uncontrollable actions, that is processed by uncontrollable action, and is used to perform uncontrollable actions. That I is hopelessly shackled to a corporeal form it has no true control of.
Saying that we exist as the record arbitrarily excludes other parts of what we are. The record is part of what we are, but we are also the recording device, the process of recording, the process of interpreting, the interpretations, the storage system, and maybe more besides. All of those parts are necessary components of us. You keep breaking concepts by being overly reductive about what we are.
How could i be a thing i have no control over?
The recording, against my will, the process of recording, against my will, the process of interpreting, against my will, the storage... kinda also against my will,
I guess not against my will but totally without regard for my will as that will ostensibly does not exist.
That's all stuff that's happening without any other possible course.
You question "How could i be a thing i have no control over?" doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Why do you need to have control in order to be a thing?
Your "against my will" constructions also make no sense to me, because as far as I'm concerned, "my" connotes the things that are happening and the body they are happening to/with. If you can argue why the self is the record and nothing else, then my account may be wrong, but using my terms in a way that makes no sense isn't in and of itself an argument.
So that's again the point... where is the self?
If it's all interconnected dominoes working via physics then why does me end at my skin? The air around it is as responsible for its actions as anything else.
How exactly is the air just as responsible? What causal role does it play in what you do?
I mean you can't readily explain exactly how the causal forces work. ostensibly if we're going all the way down to the quantum level... every atom affects every atom near it.
On a more basic level
Without the air the body wouldn't be doing much would it?
Recall that responsibility, as I've described it, adheres to subjects whose information processing forms an integral part of a causal chain of events. I don't need to provide a detailed account of the causal chain that includes a description of all activity to a microscopic scale, because I don't need or want to say anything about events at that scale. Air is necessary for us to do anything other than die, but you need to do a lot more work to show how that makes air responsible for anything.
So merely because of an arbitrarily elected barrier because inspection to the myriad of causal forces is difficult. Like if my prior abuse is the causal factor for a bunch of my behavior why doesn't that take the lions share of responsibility off me? Isn't that causal force just as much me as anything else moving along my action? Is not every atom in the interim between that event now just as causal as the stuff under my skin?
I'll answer your questions in order. First, your experiences are part of you; how can a part of you take responsibility off you? At the same time, if you can make a compelling case that trauma is a major internal contributor to something you've done, then that should impact how we view your particular responsibility in that case.
Second, if by "that causal force" you mean something like "processing those experiences of abuse" then yes, see above. If you meant something else, then I'm not sure.
Third, no, interactions of different kinds have different kinds of results, or just more results than others. To use an exaggerated example, a supernova is more causal than the footfall of a millipede. If you want to argue for the idea that, say, if everything is caused or deterministic, then everything is the same, or something else along those lines, go right ahead.
Yeah that's the basic extrapolation everything's interconnected by causality and physics. Everything's a big interconnected machine. Attributing responsibility to anything in particular is flawed in the framing because, since we' can't really trace all the causal forces we can't really totally track where the eventuality came from. Fuck maybe gravitational disturbances prompted the activity being reviewed on a moral scale and we just couldn't tell. We could mistakenly attribute the action to the wrong body simply because some other external force fucked with their processing in a way we didn't see at the time, or can't currently comprehend.
You don't need to trace all the causal forces back to where the eventuality came from in order to hold a person responsible for what they did. You just need to show that they were an integral part of the sequence of events and as more than just an interchangeable meat sack.
Is it possible to assign responsibility to people mistakenly with this model? Of course, if the inputs are wrong or inadequate in some way, the results will reflect those flaws. That's not an argument against the model, it's an argument against rushing to judgment, and an argument for allowing revisions to assessment of responsibility if new information comes to light.
But ostensibly any meat sack you put into your exact and full context would result in the same exact result
Any meat sack I put into my exact and full context would be me.
So your exact and full context is you? Does that make other people that have affected that full context also you?
Yes, I am my exact and full context. Things that are part of or played a role in my exact and full context are not also in and of themselves my exact and full context. So no, other people or other things that are part of or played a role in that full context are not me.
Why not, they are the progenitor of your future actions are they not?
Without them adding to your context even minutely would you have still ended up at the same absolutely deterministic end? How?
A progenitor is not its product. Like, a car factory makes cars, that doesn't mean the car factory is a car or the car a car factory. I am not my parents, my parents are not me. This is pretty trivial stuff, I don't know where you're getting these other ideas from
Because if my actions aren't my own and are entirely the result of the context then the context and all members of it are me and i'm them because i'm part of their context as well. Every piece of the deterministic universe is a part of moving the state of the deterministic universe forward.
If we're already saying yeah we're essentially complex dominoes run on physics and chemicals where do we put the edge of that dominoe display considering it undeniably exists in a still larger field of dominoes?
Do we limit its definition arbitrarily by its limited perception?
Your argument is fallacious or at least incomplete because interconnectedness does not inherently and necessarily collapse all distinctions.
When you say, "If we're already saying yeah we're essentially complex dominoes run on physics and chemicals", I reply, "don't put that nonsense on me!"
Then what are we other than a super complex atomic structures working in a way determined by the atomic structures it interacts with?
Why should I accept that if "super complex atomic structures" is a valid descriptor, nothing else matters? You ask what we are other than that, to which I must ask, why can't we be things in addition to or arising from that?
It's not that.
We are composites of chemicals.
Society is a composite of us.
Why is our definition of self limited to our bodies if we are just as interconnected with each other?
Is the only real reason the limits of our perception, and does this neuter our own sense of free will?
After all the atoms follow the laws of thermodynamics just as we follow the laws of economics.
Frankly, seeing everyone as part of ourself would solve a great deal of collective action problems.
Determinism is as much a supernatural explanation.
We are necessarily speaking over a conclusion that cannot be tested in the natural world in a concrete manner.
There need not be a soul for free will any more than you need a God for determinism.
All of those statements could be true and it would change nothing about my point, which is that you can have a workable concept of moral responsibility without relying on a version of free will that necessitates rejecting determinism.
Please describe how to build a moral responsibility if we have no free will cannot truly make our decisions and have no true control of our actions
I would rather argue that we are bodies continuously processing information about the world around us. We receive a lot of information passively or involuntarily as the universe presents to us. But, being also possessed of a physical body that interacts with other physical objects, the information processing is not limited to information passively acquired, and can be a part of a causal process that brings about change. Someone can be an integral part of a certain causal process, to the extent that their absence would have meant no process. If someone is an integral part of a causal process in a way that implicates both their information processing and physical body, then they are responsible to some extent because the same things that make them who they are, are the things that made the situation turn out the way it did. What makes someone responsible on this account is the fact that who they are specifically is a cause of what happened.
I will grant we are beings of information I exist as the things that have happened a big old bank of information.
How do I possess the body? I can take no act with it, all of its acts are at the end of inevitably yes I as a being of information am processed as it happens and it leaves its records with me, but that's just it further using me without any active consent to being used I cannot necessarily consent as I do not have the will to do so.
You don't possess the body, you are the body.
How?
It is at best the vessel I as a being of information am imprisoned in/shackled to
That seems like an enormous claim to just casually assume is true, as if any other idea would be on its face absurd, somehow. Like I don't even know what it would mean to be an imprisoned being of information, versus a physical organism with a brain made out of... well, brain, that produces thoughts and emotions through physical means.
"We receive a lot of information passively or involuntarily as the universe presents to us"
Willing to grant this point here
we exist as the record. If we are granting the premise I as a self aware being exist. At best that I is the record of information forced upon it by uncontrollable actions, that is processed by uncontrollable action, and is used to perform uncontrollable actions. That I is hopelessly shackled to a corporeal form it has no true control of.
Saying that we exist as the record arbitrarily excludes other parts of what we are. The record is part of what we are, but we are also the recording device, the process of recording, the process of interpreting, the interpretations, the storage system, and maybe more besides. All of those parts are necessary components of us. You keep breaking concepts by being overly reductive about what we are.
How could i be a thing i have no control over?
The recording, against my will, the process of recording, against my will, the process of interpreting, against my will, the storage... kinda also against my will,
I guess not against my will but totally without regard for my will as that will ostensibly does not exist.
That's all stuff that's happening without any other possible course.
You question "How could i be a thing i have no control over?" doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Why do you need to have control in order to be a thing?
Your "against my will" constructions also make no sense to me, because as far as I'm concerned, "my" connotes the things that are happening and the body they are happening to/with. If you can argue why the self is the record and nothing else, then my account may be wrong, but using my terms in a way that makes no sense isn't in and of itself an argument.
So that's again the point... where is the self?
If it's all interconnected dominoes working via physics then why does me end at my skin? The air around it is as responsible for its actions as anything else.
How exactly is the air just as responsible? What causal role does it play in what you do?
I mean you can't readily explain exactly how the causal forces work. ostensibly if we're going all the way down to the quantum level... every atom affects every atom near it.
On a more basic level
Without the air the body wouldn't be doing much would it?
Recall that responsibility, as I've described it, adheres to subjects whose information processing forms an integral part of a causal chain of events. I don't need to provide a detailed account of the causal chain that includes a description of all activity to a microscopic scale, because I don't need or want to say anything about events at that scale. Air is necessary for us to do anything other than die, but you need to do a lot more work to show how that makes air responsible for anything.
So merely because of an arbitrarily elected barrier because inspection to the myriad of causal forces is difficult. Like if my prior abuse is the causal factor for a bunch of my behavior why doesn't that take the lions share of responsibility off me? Isn't that causal force just as much me as anything else moving along my action? Is not every atom in the interim between that event now just as causal as the stuff under my skin?
I'll answer your questions in order. First, your experiences are part of you; how can a part of you take responsibility off you? At the same time, if you can make a compelling case that trauma is a major internal contributor to something you've done, then that should impact how we view your particular responsibility in that case.
Second, if by "that causal force" you mean something like "processing those experiences of abuse" then yes, see above. If you meant something else, then I'm not sure.
Third, no, interactions of different kinds have different kinds of results, or just more results than others. To use an exaggerated example, a supernova is more causal than the footfall of a millipede. If you want to argue for the idea that, say, if everything is caused or deterministic, then everything is the same, or something else along those lines, go right ahead.
Yeah that's the basic extrapolation everything's interconnected by causality and physics. Everything's a big interconnected machine. Attributing responsibility to anything in particular is flawed in the framing because, since we' can't really trace all the causal forces we can't really totally track where the eventuality came from. Fuck maybe gravitational disturbances prompted the activity being reviewed on a moral scale and we just couldn't tell. We could mistakenly attribute the action to the wrong body simply because some other external force fucked with their processing in a way we didn't see at the time, or can't currently comprehend.
You don't need to trace all the causal forces back to where the eventuality came from in order to hold a person responsible for what they did. You just need to show that they were an integral part of the sequence of events and as more than just an interchangeable meat sack.
Is it possible to assign responsibility to people mistakenly with this model? Of course, if the inputs are wrong or inadequate in some way, the results will reflect those flaws. That's not an argument against the model, it's an argument against rushing to judgment, and an argument for allowing revisions to assessment of responsibility if new information comes to light.
But ostensibly any meat sack you put into your exact and full context would result in the same exact result
Any meat sack I put into my exact and full context would be me.
So your exact and full context is you? Does that make other people that have affected that full context also you?
Yes, I am my exact and full context. Things that are part of or played a role in my exact and full context are not also in and of themselves my exact and full context. So no, other people or other things that are part of or played a role in that full context are not me.
Why not, they are the progenitor of your future actions are they not?
Without them adding to your context even minutely would you have still ended up at the same absolutely deterministic end? How?
A progenitor is not its product. Like, a car factory makes cars, that doesn't mean the car factory is a car or the car a car factory. I am not my parents, my parents are not me. This is pretty trivial stuff, I don't know where you're getting these other ideas from
Because if my actions aren't my own and are entirely the result of the context then the context and all members of it are me and i'm them because i'm part of their context as well. Every piece of the deterministic universe is a part of moving the state of the deterministic universe forward.
If we're already saying yeah we're essentially complex dominoes run on physics and chemicals where do we put the edge of that dominoe display considering it undeniably exists in a still larger field of dominoes?
Do we limit its definition arbitrarily by its limited perception?
Your argument is fallacious or at least incomplete because interconnectedness does not inherently and necessarily collapse all distinctions.
When you say, "If we're already saying yeah we're essentially complex dominoes run on physics and chemicals", I reply, "don't put that nonsense on me!"
Then what are we other than a super complex atomic structures working in a way determined by the atomic structures it interacts with?
Why should I accept that if "super complex atomic structures" is a valid descriptor, nothing else matters? You ask what we are other than that, to which I must ask, why can't we be things in addition to or arising from that?
It's not that.
We are composites of chemicals.
Society is a composite of us.
Why is our definition of self limited to our bodies if we are just as interconnected with each other?
Is the only real reason the limits of our perception, and does this neuter our own sense of free will?
After all the atoms follow the laws of thermodynamics just as we follow the laws of economics.
Frankly, seeing everyone as part of ourself would solve a great deal of collective action problems.
At the end of the day, we're related to every living thing on the planet, and we ourselves are just a composite organism made of a while bunch of different cells and even cells within cells, forming into a membrane of activity all over a thin layer of a giant wad of crusty magma covered in water and gas.
Layers upon layers, patterns within patterns. Histories branching into histories.
Determinism is as much a supernatural explanation.
We are necessarily speaking over a conclusion that cannot be tested in the natural world in a concrete manner.
There need not be a soul for free will any more than you need a God for determinism.
All of those statements could be true and it would change nothing about my point, which is that you can have a workable concept of moral responsibility without relying on a version of free will that necessitates rejecting determinism.
Please describe how to build a moral responsibility if we have no free will cannot truly make our decisions and have no true control of our actions
I would rather argue that we are bodies continuously processing information about the world around us. We receive a lot of information passively or involuntarily as the universe presents to us. But, being also possessed of a physical body that interacts with other physical objects, the information processing is not limited to information passively acquired, and can be a part of a causal process that brings about change. Someone can be an integral part of a certain causal process, to the extent that their absence would have meant no process. If someone is an integral part of a causal process in a way that implicates both their information processing and physical body, then they are responsible to some extent because the same things that make them who they are, are the things that made the situation turn out the way it did. What makes someone responsible on this account is the fact that who they are specifically is a cause of what happened.
I will grant we are beings of information I exist as the things that have happened a big old bank of information.
How do I possess the body? I can take no act with it, all of its acts are at the end of inevitably yes I as a being of information am processed as it happens and it leaves its records with me, but that's just it further using me without any active consent to being used I cannot necessarily consent as I do not have the will to do so.
You don't possess the body, you are the body.
How?
It is at best the vessel I as a being of information am imprisoned in/shackled to
That seems like an enormous claim to just casually assume is true, as if any other idea would be on its face absurd, somehow. Like I don't even know what it would mean to be an imprisoned being of information, versus a physical organism with a brain made out of... well, brain, that produces thoughts and emotions through physical means.
"We receive a lot of information passively or involuntarily as the universe presents to us"
Willing to grant this point here
we exist as the record. If we are granting the premise I as a self aware being exist. At best that I is the record of information forced upon it by uncontrollable actions, that is processed by uncontrollable action, and is used to perform uncontrollable actions. That I is hopelessly shackled to a corporeal form it has no true control of.
Saying that we exist as the record arbitrarily excludes other parts of what we are. The record is part of what we are, but we are also the recording device, the process of recording, the process of interpreting, the interpretations, the storage system, and maybe more besides. All of those parts are necessary components of us. You keep breaking concepts by being overly reductive about what we are.
How could i be a thing i have no control over?
The recording, against my will, the process of recording, against my will, the process of interpreting, against my will, the storage... kinda also against my will,
I guess not against my will but totally without regard for my will as that will ostensibly does not exist.
That's all stuff that's happening without any other possible course.
You question "How could i be a thing i have no control over?" doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Why do you need to have control in order to be a thing?
Your "against my will" constructions also make no sense to me, because as far as I'm concerned, "my" connotes the things that are happening and the body they are happening to/with. If you can argue why the self is the record and nothing else, then my account may be wrong, but using my terms in a way that makes no sense isn't in and of itself an argument.
So that's again the point... where is the self?
If it's all interconnected dominoes working via physics then why does me end at my skin? The air around it is as responsible for its actions as anything else.
How exactly is the air just as responsible? What causal role does it play in what you do?
I mean you can't readily explain exactly how the causal forces work. ostensibly if we're going all the way down to the quantum level... every atom affects every atom near it.
On a more basic level
Without the air the body wouldn't be doing much would it?
Recall that responsibility, as I've described it, adheres to subjects whose information processing forms an integral part of a causal chain of events. I don't need to provide a detailed account of the causal chain that includes a description of all activity to a microscopic scale, because I don't need or want to say anything about events at that scale. Air is necessary for us to do anything other than die, but you need to do a lot more work to show how that makes air responsible for anything.
So merely because of an arbitrarily elected barrier because inspection to the myriad of causal forces is difficult. Like if my prior abuse is the causal factor for a bunch of my behavior why doesn't that take the lions share of responsibility off me? Isn't that causal force just as much me as anything else moving along my action? Is not every atom in the interim between that event now just as causal as the stuff under my skin?
I'll answer your questions in order. First, your experiences are part of you; how can a part of you take responsibility off you? At the same time, if you can make a compelling case that trauma is a major internal contributor to something you've done, then that should impact how we view your particular responsibility in that case.
Second, if by "that causal force" you mean something like "processing those experiences of abuse" then yes, see above. If you meant something else, then I'm not sure.
Third, no, interactions of different kinds have different kinds of results, or just more results than others. To use an exaggerated example, a supernova is more causal than the footfall of a millipede. If you want to argue for the idea that, say, if everything is caused or deterministic, then everything is the same, or something else along those lines, go right ahead.
Yeah that's the basic extrapolation everything's interconnected by causality and physics. Everything's a big interconnected machine. Attributing responsibility to anything in particular is flawed in the framing because, since we' can't really trace all the causal forces we can't really totally track where the eventuality came from. Fuck maybe gravitational disturbances prompted the activity being reviewed on a moral scale and we just couldn't tell. We could mistakenly attribute the action to the wrong body simply because some other external force fucked with their processing in a way we didn't see at the time, or can't currently comprehend.
You don't need to trace all the causal forces back to where the eventuality came from in order to hold a person responsible for what they did. You just need to show that they were an integral part of the sequence of events and as more than just an interchangeable meat sack.
Is it possible to assign responsibility to people mistakenly with this model? Of course, if the inputs are wrong or inadequate in some way, the results will reflect those flaws. That's not an argument against the model, it's an argument against rushing to judgment, and an argument for allowing revisions to assessment of responsibility if new information comes to light.
But ostensibly any meat sack you put into your exact and full context would result in the same exact result
Any meat sack I put into my exact and full context would be me.
So your exact and full context is you? Does that make other people that have affected that full context also you?
Yes, I am my exact and full context. Things that are part of or played a role in my exact and full context are not also in and of themselves my exact and full context. So no, other people or other things that are part of or played a role in that full context are not me.
Why not, they are the progenitor of your future actions are they not?
Without them adding to your context even minutely would you have still ended up at the same absolutely deterministic end? How?
A progenitor is not its product. Like, a car factory makes cars, that doesn't mean the car factory is a car or the car a car factory. I am not my parents, my parents are not me. This is pretty trivial stuff, I don't know where you're getting these other ideas from
Because if my actions aren't my own and are entirely the result of the context then the context and all members of it are me and i'm them because i'm part of their context as well. Every piece of the deterministic universe is a part of moving the state of the deterministic universe forward.
If we're already saying yeah we're essentially complex dominoes run on physics and chemicals where do we put the edge of that dominoe display considering it undeniably exists in a still larger field of dominoes?
Do we limit its definition arbitrarily by its limited perception?
Your argument is fallacious or at least incomplete because interconnectedness does not inherently and necessarily collapse all distinctions.
When you say, "If we're already saying yeah we're essentially complex dominoes run on physics and chemicals", I reply, "don't put that nonsense on me!"
Then what are we other than a super complex atomic structures working in a way determined by the atomic structures it interacts with?
Why should I accept that if "super complex atomic structures" is a valid descriptor, nothing else matters? You ask what we are other than that, to which I must ask, why can't we be things in addition to or arising from that?
It's not that.
We are composites of chemicals.
Society is a composite of us.
Why is our definition of self limited to our bodies if we are just as interconnected with each other?
Is the only real reason the limits of our perception, and does this neuter our own sense of free will?
After all the atoms follow the laws of thermodynamics just as we follow the laws of economics.
Frankly, seeing everyone as part of ourself would solve a great deal of collective action problems.
I was going to say this is actually seemingly at least a more fun conclusion to come to at least.
You know a little "I am he as you are he as you are me And we are all together"
It's at least a little brighter.
It kindof erases the concept of personal responsibility but at least it engenders a better reason to actually give a shit about others, because we're all technically part of the same moderately life like organism.
It doesn't really present a valid reason not to wipe out elements you feel are detrimental to the whole, but at least it gives a reason to give a shit in the first place.
The point is that data is one of the most human characters.
Like the entire point, the central theme, of next generation is "how do you define humanity".
Data stands as the example that if it is moderately indistinguishable from "human"... you just treat it as "human".
"Human" being short hand for self aware sentient being.
Thatks my point as well; in all the ways that matter, Data is Human. His only issue is he has difficulty generating emotions internally. But he’s still a material being, all of his self arising from his “positronic net.” If you somehow reverse engineered data exactly, or got Dr. Soong to build yet another Soong-type Android [or I suppose convince Data to build another himself], you would construct an entirely material being that is precisely human in any way that means anything to humans.
In that same way, humans can be material beings without some unknown, undefinable element that gives us the essence of humanity and be Human. Just with meat computer brains instead of “positronic nets”
I should probably note in case it wasn’t clear that I’m not trying to argue a nihilistic viewpoint. While I would suggest there is no inherent meaning for anything, that is because meaning is our own creation, a way of understanding the universe around us, assigning [relative] importance and enriching our lives.
In a way, think of it like this: so far out there, the universe seems to be an amazing, yet [emotionally] cold and empty place. Yet it is our interactions with it and with each other that creates the warmth that fills our world.
We are free to create meaning, even where before there was none.
I should probably note in case it wasn’t clear that I’m not trying to argue a nihilistic viewpoint. While I would suggest there is no inherent meaning for anything, that is because meaning is our own creation, a way of understanding the universe around us, assigning [relative] importance and enriching our lives.
In a way, think of it like this: so far out there, the universe seems to be an amazing, yet [emotionally] cold and empty place. Yet it is our interactions with it and with each other that creates the warmth that fills our world.
We are free to create meaning, even where before there was none.
In determinism
We create nothing
Like definitionally we aren't free to create anything.
The meaning is foisted upon us by forces we have no control of.
I think if we're treating it as the old I am he and she is he and you are me and we are all together everything's one framing the universe would be warm and full of emotion and meaning by its nature just that no part of that emotion or meaning is a choice on our part.
I should probably note in case it wasn’t clear that I’m not trying to argue a nihilistic viewpoint. While I would suggest there is no inherent meaning for anything, that is because meaning is our own creation, a way of understanding the universe around us, assigning [relative] importance and enriching our lives.
In a way, think of it like this: so far out there, the universe seems to be an amazing, yet [emotionally] cold and empty place. Yet it is our interactions with it and with each other that creates the warmth that fills our world.
We are free to create meaning, even where before there was none.
In determinism
We create nothing
Like definitionally we aren't free to create anything.
The meaning is foisted upon us by forces we have no control of.
I think if we're treating it as the old I am he and she is he and you are me and we are all together everything's one framing the universe would be warm and full of emotion and meaning by its nature just that no part of that emotion or meaning is a choice on our part.
Dude, you are not an external object that is being subjected to forces, you are a part of the system at large. You are definitely creating things, the machine that packs pineaples... its packing pineaples. If the machines was programmed to think of itself as a sentient organism, it would still be the one packing those delicious pineaples, just because its aware that is part of a system, its actions dont disapear magically, nor it stops being the agent of that action. If there was a choice or not is irrelevant for this specific point. The machine is doint that action, the same way that you are creating "thing".
Yes, with a quick verbal "boom." You take a man's peko, you deny him his dab, all that is left is to rise up and tear down the walls of Jericho with a ".....not!" -TexiKen
I should probably note in case it wasn’t clear that I’m not trying to argue a nihilistic viewpoint. While I would suggest there is no inherent meaning for anything, that is because meaning is our own creation, a way of understanding the universe around us, assigning [relative] importance and enriching our lives.
In a way, think of it like this: so far out there, the universe seems to be an amazing, yet [emotionally] cold and empty place. Yet it is our interactions with it and with each other that creates the warmth that fills our world.
We are free to create meaning, even where before there was none.
In determinism
We create nothing
Like definitionally we aren't free to create anything.
The meaning is foisted upon us by forces we have no control of.
I think if we're treating it as the old I am he and she is he and you are me and we are all together everything's one framing the universe would be warm and full of emotion and meaning by its nature just that no part of that emotion or meaning is a choice on our part.
Dude, you are not an external object that is being subjected to forces, you are a part of the system at large. You are definitely creating things, the machine that packs pineaples... its packing pineaples. If the machines was programmed to think of itself as a sentient organism, it would still be the one packing those delicious pineaples, just because its aware that is part of a system, its actions dont disapear magically, nor it stops being the agent of that action. If there was a choice or not is irrelevant for this specific point. The machine is doint that action, the same way that you are creating "thing".
The entire point of determinism is that i can't elect anything. I can't make decisions they are all made for me. I cannot take actions they are forced upon me.
I am definitely not free to do things
The argument here is against my free will to do things existing at any level
You can't say i have no free will i am free to do things.
The underlying implication is that we are not free.
In determinism the determinism itself is the only thing with any real agency to act and its acts are already determined, so it barely has agency either.
Determinism is as much a supernatural explanation.
We are necessarily speaking over a conclusion that cannot be tested in the natural world in a concrete manner.
There need not be a soul for free will any more than you need a God for determinism.
All of those statements could be true and it would change nothing about my point, which is that you can have a workable concept of moral responsibility without relying on a version of free will that necessitates rejecting determinism.
Please describe how to build a moral responsibility if we have no free will cannot truly make our decisions and have no true control of our actions
I would rather argue that we are bodies continuously processing information about the world around us. We receive a lot of information passively or involuntarily as the universe presents to us. But, being also possessed of a physical body that interacts with other physical objects, the information processing is not limited to information passively acquired, and can be a part of a causal process that brings about change. Someone can be an integral part of a certain causal process, to the extent that their absence would have meant no process. If someone is an integral part of a causal process in a way that implicates both their information processing and physical body, then they are responsible to some extent because the same things that make them who they are, are the things that made the situation turn out the way it did. What makes someone responsible on this account is the fact that who they are specifically is a cause of what happened.
I will grant we are beings of information I exist as the things that have happened a big old bank of information.
How do I possess the body? I can take no act with it, all of its acts are at the end of inevitably yes I as a being of information am processed as it happens and it leaves its records with me, but that's just it further using me without any active consent to being used I cannot necessarily consent as I do not have the will to do so.
You don't possess the body, you are the body.
How?
It is at best the vessel I as a being of information am imprisoned in/shackled to
That seems like an enormous claim to just casually assume is true, as if any other idea would be on its face absurd, somehow. Like I don't even know what it would mean to be an imprisoned being of information, versus a physical organism with a brain made out of... well, brain, that produces thoughts and emotions through physical means.
"We receive a lot of information passively or involuntarily as the universe presents to us"
Willing to grant this point here
we exist as the record. If we are granting the premise I as a self aware being exist. At best that I is the record of information forced upon it by uncontrollable actions, that is processed by uncontrollable action, and is used to perform uncontrollable actions. That I is hopelessly shackled to a corporeal form it has no true control of.
Saying that we exist as the record arbitrarily excludes other parts of what we are. The record is part of what we are, but we are also the recording device, the process of recording, the process of interpreting, the interpretations, the storage system, and maybe more besides. All of those parts are necessary components of us. You keep breaking concepts by being overly reductive about what we are.
How could i be a thing i have no control over?
The recording, against my will, the process of recording, against my will, the process of interpreting, against my will, the storage... kinda also against my will,
I guess not against my will but totally without regard for my will as that will ostensibly does not exist.
That's all stuff that's happening without any other possible course.
You question "How could i be a thing i have no control over?" doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Why do you need to have control in order to be a thing?
Your "against my will" constructions also make no sense to me, because as far as I'm concerned, "my" connotes the things that are happening and the body they are happening to/with. If you can argue why the self is the record and nothing else, then my account may be wrong, but using my terms in a way that makes no sense isn't in and of itself an argument.
So that's again the point... where is the self?
If it's all interconnected dominoes working via physics then why does me end at my skin? The air around it is as responsible for its actions as anything else.
How exactly is the air just as responsible? What causal role does it play in what you do?
I mean you can't readily explain exactly how the causal forces work. ostensibly if we're going all the way down to the quantum level... every atom affects every atom near it.
On a more basic level
Without the air the body wouldn't be doing much would it?
Recall that responsibility, as I've described it, adheres to subjects whose information processing forms an integral part of a causal chain of events. I don't need to provide a detailed account of the causal chain that includes a description of all activity to a microscopic scale, because I don't need or want to say anything about events at that scale. Air is necessary for us to do anything other than die, but you need to do a lot more work to show how that makes air responsible for anything.
So merely because of an arbitrarily elected barrier because inspection to the myriad of causal forces is difficult. Like if my prior abuse is the causal factor for a bunch of my behavior why doesn't that take the lions share of responsibility off me? Isn't that causal force just as much me as anything else moving along my action? Is not every atom in the interim between that event now just as causal as the stuff under my skin?
I'll answer your questions in order. First, your experiences are part of you; how can a part of you take responsibility off you? At the same time, if you can make a compelling case that trauma is a major internal contributor to something you've done, then that should impact how we view your particular responsibility in that case.
Second, if by "that causal force" you mean something like "processing those experiences of abuse" then yes, see above. If you meant something else, then I'm not sure.
Third, no, interactions of different kinds have different kinds of results, or just more results than others. To use an exaggerated example, a supernova is more causal than the footfall of a millipede. If you want to argue for the idea that, say, if everything is caused or deterministic, then everything is the same, or something else along those lines, go right ahead.
Yeah that's the basic extrapolation everything's interconnected by causality and physics. Everything's a big interconnected machine. Attributing responsibility to anything in particular is flawed in the framing because, since we' can't really trace all the causal forces we can't really totally track where the eventuality came from. Fuck maybe gravitational disturbances prompted the activity being reviewed on a moral scale and we just couldn't tell. We could mistakenly attribute the action to the wrong body simply because some other external force fucked with their processing in a way we didn't see at the time, or can't currently comprehend.
You don't need to trace all the causal forces back to where the eventuality came from in order to hold a person responsible for what they did. You just need to show that they were an integral part of the sequence of events and as more than just an interchangeable meat sack.
Is it possible to assign responsibility to people mistakenly with this model? Of course, if the inputs are wrong or inadequate in some way, the results will reflect those flaws. That's not an argument against the model, it's an argument against rushing to judgment, and an argument for allowing revisions to assessment of responsibility if new information comes to light.
But ostensibly any meat sack you put into your exact and full context would result in the same exact result
Any meat sack I put into my exact and full context would be me.
So your exact and full context is you? Does that make other people that have affected that full context also you?
Yes, I am my exact and full context. Things that are part of or played a role in my exact and full context are not also in and of themselves my exact and full context. So no, other people or other things that are part of or played a role in that full context are not me.
Why not, they are the progenitor of your future actions are they not?
Without them adding to your context even minutely would you have still ended up at the same absolutely deterministic end? How?
A progenitor is not its product. Like, a car factory makes cars, that doesn't mean the car factory is a car or the car a car factory. I am not my parents, my parents are not me. This is pretty trivial stuff, I don't know where you're getting these other ideas from
Because if my actions aren't my own and are entirely the result of the context then the context and all members of it are me and i'm them because i'm part of their context as well. Every piece of the deterministic universe is a part of moving the state of the deterministic universe forward.
If we're already saying yeah we're essentially complex dominoes run on physics and chemicals where do we put the edge of that dominoe display considering it undeniably exists in a still larger field of dominoes?
Do we limit its definition arbitrarily by its limited perception?
Your argument is fallacious or at least incomplete because interconnectedness does not inherently and necessarily collapse all distinctions.
When you say, "If we're already saying yeah we're essentially complex dominoes run on physics and chemicals", I reply, "don't put that nonsense on me!"
Then what are we other than a super complex atomic structures working in a way determined by the atomic structures it interacts with?
Why should I accept that if "super complex atomic structures" is a valid descriptor, nothing else matters? You ask what we are other than that, to which I must ask, why can't we be things in addition to or arising from that?
We can be, but where does the edge of personal causality lie? Where do we draw the edges of those atomic structures and elect that's the end point of causality for this determinate state.
Why does anyone need to "draw the edges of those atomic structures and elect that's the end point of causality"? You seem to think that responsibility requires that someone be the "end all, be all" of some action or event in order for them to be responsible. I'm suggesting that responsibility still makes sense, and arguably works better for our purposes if we adopt a less extreme position. All you need for responsibility is the ability to pick out a person and to explain how various aspects of what make that person into that person are directly and crucially part of the chain of events leading up to the action in question.
It's not that.
We are composites of chemicals.
Society is a composite of us.
Why is our definition of self limited to our bodies if we are just as interconnected with each other?
Is the only real reason the limits of our perception, and does this neuter our own sense of free will?
After all the atoms follow the laws of thermodynamics just as we follow the laws of economics.
Frankly, seeing everyone as part of ourself would solve a great deal of collective action problems.
A couple of points here. First, I need to reiterate that my conception of human or personal identity is not that we are limited to our bodies. We aren't just bodies, we are bodies doing something. The common concept is that we are human beings, maybe it would be better to think of ourselves as human doings.
Second, I have not seen an argument for why anyone should believe that the fact that much if not all of identity is relational entails that we should collapse everything into one existence. I can accept that everything is interrelated, but in order for that to be the case, there need to be different things that can interact and relate to one another. "This" can't relate to "that" unless they're different and distinguishable.
Determinism is as much a supernatural explanation.
We are necessarily speaking over a conclusion that cannot be tested in the natural world in a concrete manner.
There need not be a soul for free will any more than you need a God for determinism.
All of those statements could be true and it would change nothing about my point, which is that you can have a workable concept of moral responsibility without relying on a version of free will that necessitates rejecting determinism.
Please describe how to build a moral responsibility if we have no free will cannot truly make our decisions and have no true control of our actions
I would rather argue that we are bodies continuously processing information about the world around us. We receive a lot of information passively or involuntarily as the universe presents to us. But, being also possessed of a physical body that interacts with other physical objects, the information processing is not limited to information passively acquired, and can be a part of a causal process that brings about change. Someone can be an integral part of a certain causal process, to the extent that their absence would have meant no process. If someone is an integral part of a causal process in a way that implicates both their information processing and physical body, then they are responsible to some extent because the same things that make them who they are, are the things that made the situation turn out the way it did. What makes someone responsible on this account is the fact that who they are specifically is a cause of what happened.
I will grant we are beings of information I exist as the things that have happened a big old bank of information.
How do I possess the body? I can take no act with it, all of its acts are at the end of inevitably yes I as a being of information am processed as it happens and it leaves its records with me, but that's just it further using me without any active consent to being used I cannot necessarily consent as I do not have the will to do so.
You don't possess the body, you are the body.
How?
It is at best the vessel I as a being of information am imprisoned in/shackled to
That seems like an enormous claim to just casually assume is true, as if any other idea would be on its face absurd, somehow. Like I don't even know what it would mean to be an imprisoned being of information, versus a physical organism with a brain made out of... well, brain, that produces thoughts and emotions through physical means.
"We receive a lot of information passively or involuntarily as the universe presents to us"
Willing to grant this point here
we exist as the record. If we are granting the premise I as a self aware being exist. At best that I is the record of information forced upon it by uncontrollable actions, that is processed by uncontrollable action, and is used to perform uncontrollable actions. That I is hopelessly shackled to a corporeal form it has no true control of.
Saying that we exist as the record arbitrarily excludes other parts of what we are. The record is part of what we are, but we are also the recording device, the process of recording, the process of interpreting, the interpretations, the storage system, and maybe more besides. All of those parts are necessary components of us. You keep breaking concepts by being overly reductive about what we are.
How could i be a thing i have no control over?
The recording, against my will, the process of recording, against my will, the process of interpreting, against my will, the storage... kinda also against my will,
I guess not against my will but totally without regard for my will as that will ostensibly does not exist.
That's all stuff that's happening without any other possible course.
You question "How could i be a thing i have no control over?" doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Why do you need to have control in order to be a thing?
Your "against my will" constructions also make no sense to me, because as far as I'm concerned, "my" connotes the things that are happening and the body they are happening to/with. If you can argue why the self is the record and nothing else, then my account may be wrong, but using my terms in a way that makes no sense isn't in and of itself an argument.
So that's again the point... where is the self?
If it's all interconnected dominoes working via physics then why does me end at my skin? The air around it is as responsible for its actions as anything else.
How exactly is the air just as responsible? What causal role does it play in what you do?
I mean you can't readily explain exactly how the causal forces work. ostensibly if we're going all the way down to the quantum level... every atom affects every atom near it.
On a more basic level
Without the air the body wouldn't be doing much would it?
Recall that responsibility, as I've described it, adheres to subjects whose information processing forms an integral part of a causal chain of events. I don't need to provide a detailed account of the causal chain that includes a description of all activity to a microscopic scale, because I don't need or want to say anything about events at that scale. Air is necessary for us to do anything other than die, but you need to do a lot more work to show how that makes air responsible for anything.
So merely because of an arbitrarily elected barrier because inspection to the myriad of causal forces is difficult. Like if my prior abuse is the causal factor for a bunch of my behavior why doesn't that take the lions share of responsibility off me? Isn't that causal force just as much me as anything else moving along my action? Is not every atom in the interim between that event now just as causal as the stuff under my skin?
I'll answer your questions in order. First, your experiences are part of you; how can a part of you take responsibility off you? At the same time, if you can make a compelling case that trauma is a major internal contributor to something you've done, then that should impact how we view your particular responsibility in that case.
Second, if by "that causal force" you mean something like "processing those experiences of abuse" then yes, see above. If you meant something else, then I'm not sure.
Third, no, interactions of different kinds have different kinds of results, or just more results than others. To use an exaggerated example, a supernova is more causal than the footfall of a millipede. If you want to argue for the idea that, say, if everything is caused or deterministic, then everything is the same, or something else along those lines, go right ahead.
Yeah that's the basic extrapolation everything's interconnected by causality and physics. Everything's a big interconnected machine. Attributing responsibility to anything in particular is flawed in the framing because, since we' can't really trace all the causal forces we can't really totally track where the eventuality came from. Fuck maybe gravitational disturbances prompted the activity being reviewed on a moral scale and we just couldn't tell. We could mistakenly attribute the action to the wrong body simply because some other external force fucked with their processing in a way we didn't see at the time, or can't currently comprehend.
You don't need to trace all the causal forces back to where the eventuality came from in order to hold a person responsible for what they did. You just need to show that they were an integral part of the sequence of events and as more than just an interchangeable meat sack.
Is it possible to assign responsibility to people mistakenly with this model? Of course, if the inputs are wrong or inadequate in some way, the results will reflect those flaws. That's not an argument against the model, it's an argument against rushing to judgment, and an argument for allowing revisions to assessment of responsibility if new information comes to light.
But ostensibly any meat sack you put into your exact and full context would result in the same exact result
Any meat sack I put into my exact and full context would be me.
So your exact and full context is you? Does that make other people that have affected that full context also you?
Yes, I am my exact and full context. Things that are part of or played a role in my exact and full context are not also in and of themselves my exact and full context. So no, other people or other things that are part of or played a role in that full context are not me.
Why not, they are the progenitor of your future actions are they not?
Without them adding to your context even minutely would you have still ended up at the same absolutely deterministic end? How?
A progenitor is not its product. Like, a car factory makes cars, that doesn't mean the car factory is a car or the car a car factory. I am not my parents, my parents are not me. This is pretty trivial stuff, I don't know where you're getting these other ideas from
Because if my actions aren't my own and are entirely the result of the context then the context and all members of it are me and i'm them because i'm part of their context as well. Every piece of the deterministic universe is a part of moving the state of the deterministic universe forward.
If we're already saying yeah we're essentially complex dominoes run on physics and chemicals where do we put the edge of that dominoe display considering it undeniably exists in a still larger field of dominoes?
Do we limit its definition arbitrarily by its limited perception?
Your argument is fallacious or at least incomplete because interconnectedness does not inherently and necessarily collapse all distinctions.
When you say, "If we're already saying yeah we're essentially complex dominoes run on physics and chemicals", I reply, "don't put that nonsense on me!"
Then what are we other than a super complex atomic structures working in a way determined by the atomic structures it interacts with?
Why should I accept that if "super complex atomic structures" is a valid descriptor, nothing else matters? You ask what we are other than that, to which I must ask, why can't we be things in addition to or arising from that?
We can be, but where does the edge of personal causality lie? Where do we draw the edges of those atomic structures and elect that's the end point of causality for this determinate state.
Why does anyone need to "draw the edges of those atomic structures and elect that's the end point of causality"? You seem to think that responsibility requires that someone be the "end all, be all" of some action or event in order for them to be responsible. I'm suggesting that responsibility still makes sense, and arguably works better for our purposes if we adopt a less extreme position. All you need for responsibility is the ability to pick out a person and to explain how various aspects of what make that person into that person are directly and crucially part of the chain of events leading up to the action in question.
It's not that.
We are composites of chemicals.
Society is a composite of us.
Why is our definition of self limited to our bodies if we are just as interconnected with each other?
Is the only real reason the limits of our perception, and does this neuter our own sense of free will?
After all the atoms follow the laws of thermodynamics just as we follow the laws of economics.
Frankly, seeing everyone as part of ourself would solve a great deal of collective action problems.
A couple of points here. First, I need to reiterate that my conception of human or personal identity is not that we are limited to our bodies. We aren't just bodies, we are bodies doing something. The common concept is that we are human beings, maybe it would be better to think of ourselves as human doings.
Second, I have not seen an argument for why anyone should believe that the fact that much if not all of identity is relational entails that we should collapse everything into one existence. I can accept that everything is interrelated, but in order for that to be the case, there need to be different things that can interact and relate to one another. "This" can't relate to "that" unless they're different and distinguishable.
Where do we draw those distinguishing lines except arbitrarily by our limited and seemingly faulty perceptions?
Yes personal responsibility absolutely requires determining what had agency in the process.
I should probably note in case it wasn’t clear that I’m not trying to argue a nihilistic viewpoint. While I would suggest there is no inherent meaning for anything, that is because meaning is our own creation, a way of understanding the universe around us, assigning [relative] importance and enriching our lives.
In a way, think of it like this: so far out there, the universe seems to be an amazing, yet [emotionally] cold and empty place. Yet it is our interactions with it and with each other that creates the warmth that fills our world.
We are free to create meaning, even where before there was none.
In determinism
We create nothing
Like definitionally we aren't free to create anything.
The meaning is foisted upon us by forces we have no control of.
I think if we're treating it as the old I am he and she is he and you are me and we are all together everything's one framing the universe would be warm and full of emotion and meaning by its nature just that no part of that emotion or meaning is a choice on our part.
Dude, you are not an external object that is being subjected to forces, you are a part of the system at large. You are definitely creating things, the machine that packs pineaples... its packing pineaples. If the machines was programmed to think of itself as a sentient organism, it would still be the one packing those delicious pineaples, just because its aware that is part of a system, its actions dont disapear magically, nor it stops being the agent of that action. If there was a choice or not is irrelevant for this specific point. The machine is doint that action, the same way that you are creating "thing".
The entire point of determinism is that i can't elect anything. I can't make decisions they are all made for me. I cannot take actions they are forced upon me.
I am definitely not free to do things
The argument here is against my free will to do things existing at any level
You can't say i have no free will i am free to do things.
The underlying implication is that we are not free.
I should probably note in case it wasn’t clear that I’m not trying to argue a nihilistic viewpoint. While I would suggest there is no inherent meaning for anything, that is because meaning is our own creation, a way of understanding the universe around us, assigning [relative] importance and enriching our lives.
In a way, think of it like this: so far out there, the universe seems to be an amazing, yet [emotionally] cold and empty place. Yet it is our interactions with it and with each other that creates the warmth that fills our world.
We are free to create meaning, even where before there was none.
In determinism
We create nothing
Like definitionally we aren't free to create anything.
The meaning is foisted upon us by forces we have no control of.
I think if we're treating it as the old I am he and she is he and you are me and we are all together everything's one framing the universe would be warm and full of emotion and meaning by its nature just that no part of that emotion or meaning is a choice on our part.
Dude, you are not an external object that is being subjected to forces, you are a part of the system at large. You are definitely creating things, the machine that packs pineaples... its packing pineaples. If the machines was programmed to think of itself as a sentient organism, it would still be the one packing those delicious pineaples, just because its aware that is part of a system, its actions dont disapear magically, nor it stops being the agent of that action. If there was a choice or not is irrelevant for this specific point. The machine is doint that action, the same way that you are creating "thing".
The entire point of determinism is that i can't elect anything. I can't make decisions they are all made for me. I cannot take actions they are forced upon me.
I am definitely not free to do things
The argument here is against my free will to do things existing at any level
You can't say i have no free will i am free to do things.
The underlying implication is that we are not free.
In determinism the determinism itself is the only thing with agency to act.
You are not adressing anything that I said, you are just quoting me and repeating the same thing you have been saying all the time.
Why I dont think you are responding to me? because you say that "desicions they are all made for me", no one has ever said that there is an entity making desicions for you, thats just you talking to yourself. The same with taking action, either you are confused about what action means or you are refering to this weird universe entity that has a human brain and uses human concepts.
You say you are not free to do things, but at this point, I dont know what you mean by "free" anymore.
I cant say that you have no free will and that you are free to do things, and I never said it. I said you can use a word to describe a process. Free will does not exist outside language. But you can still use it to describe the human experience, like many other abstract concepts that we use daily.
And I dont know why you give the universe agency, that still seems like a concept to describe behaviour within a human perspective.
Now, if I can ask you just one tiny thing, is to answer the next question without going into the copy-paste territory.
Do you think there is a difference between the universe we percieve with our senses and the universe that is ?
Yes, with a quick verbal "boom." You take a man's peko, you deny him his dab, all that is left is to rise up and tear down the walls of Jericho with a ".....not!" -TexiKen
I should probably note in case it wasn’t clear that I’m not trying to argue a nihilistic viewpoint. While I would suggest there is no inherent meaning for anything, that is because meaning is our own creation, a way of understanding the universe around us, assigning [relative] importance and enriching our lives.
In a way, think of it like this: so far out there, the universe seems to be an amazing, yet [emotionally] cold and empty place. Yet it is our interactions with it and with each other that creates the warmth that fills our world.
We are free to create meaning, even where before there was none.
In determinism
We create nothing
Like definitionally we aren't free to create anything.
The meaning is foisted upon us by forces we have no control of.
I think if we're treating it as the old I am he and she is he and you are me and we are all together everything's one framing the universe would be warm and full of emotion and meaning by its nature just that no part of that emotion or meaning is a choice on our part.
Dude, you are not an external object that is being subjected to forces, you are a part of the system at large. You are definitely creating things, the machine that packs pineaples... its packing pineaples. If the machines was programmed to think of itself as a sentient organism, it would still be the one packing those delicious pineaples, just because its aware that is part of a system, its actions dont disapear magically, nor it stops being the agent of that action. If there was a choice or not is irrelevant for this specific point. The machine is doint that action, the same way that you are creating "thing".
The entire point of determinism is that i can't elect anything. I can't make decisions they are all made for me. I cannot take actions they are forced upon me.
I am definitely not free to do things
The argument here is against my free will to do things existing at any level
You can't say i have no free will i am free to do things.
The underlying implication is that we are not free.
I should probably note in case it wasn’t clear that I’m not trying to argue a nihilistic viewpoint. While I would suggest there is no inherent meaning for anything, that is because meaning is our own creation, a way of understanding the universe around us, assigning [relative] importance and enriching our lives.
In a way, think of it like this: so far out there, the universe seems to be an amazing, yet [emotionally] cold and empty place. Yet it is our interactions with it and with each other that creates the warmth that fills our world.
We are free to create meaning, even where before there was none.
In determinism
We create nothing
Like definitionally we aren't free to create anything.
The meaning is foisted upon us by forces we have no control of.
I think if we're treating it as the old I am he and she is he and you are me and we are all together everything's one framing the universe would be warm and full of emotion and meaning by its nature just that no part of that emotion or meaning is a choice on our part.
Dude, you are not an external object that is being subjected to forces, you are a part of the system at large. You are definitely creating things, the machine that packs pineaples... its packing pineaples. If the machines was programmed to think of itself as a sentient organism, it would still be the one packing those delicious pineaples, just because its aware that is part of a system, its actions dont disapear magically, nor it stops being the agent of that action. If there was a choice or not is irrelevant for this specific point. The machine is doint that action, the same way that you are creating "thing".
The entire point of determinism is that i can't elect anything. I can't make decisions they are all made for me. I cannot take actions they are forced upon me.
I am definitely not free to do things
The argument here is against my free will to do things existing at any level
You can't say i have no free will i am free to do things.
The underlying implication is that we are not free.
In determinism the determinism itself is the only thing with agency to act.
You are not adressing anything that I said, you are just quoting me and repeating the same thing you have been saying all the time.
Why I dont think you are responding to me? because you say that "desicions they are all made for me", no one has ever said that there is an entity making desicions for you, thats just you talking to yourself. The same with taking action, either you are confused about what action means or you are refering to this weird universe entity that has a human brain and uses human concepts.
You say you are not free to do things, but at this point, I dont know what you mean by "free" anymore.
I cant say that you have no free will and that you are free to do things, and I never said it. I said you can use a word to describe a process. Free will does not exist outside language. But you can still use it to describe the human experience, like many other abstract concepts that we use daily.
And I dont know why you give the universe agency, that still seems like a concept to describe behaviour within a human perspective.
Now, if I can ask you just one tiny thing, is to answer the next question without going into the copy-paste territory.
Do you think there is a difference between the universe we percieve with our senses and the universe that is ?
Yes
Because our perceptions would lead us to believe there's no way to predict the already determined outcome, and that we are making free choices we have agency in.
If we have no agency, but feel like we do, then our perceptions are flawed at a basic level.
Where do we draw those distinguishing lines except arbitrarily by our limited and seemingly faulty perceptions?
Yes personal responsibility absolutely requires determining what had agency in the process.
How is drawing a distinction based on an observed difference arbitrary? Arbitrary means "for no reason" and there are so many reasons to draw a line between, for example, me and my partner. We occupy different areas of physical space in separate bodies, which have been present in the world for different amounts of time and have had different life experiences. Human observation and interpretation of the world around us are flawed and fallible. That doesn't mean we ought to abandon the insights they can provide, we just need to be careful, considerate and willing to change our minds as new information becomes available.
Where do we draw those distinguishing lines except arbitrarily by our limited and seemingly faulty perceptions?
Yes personal responsibility absolutely requires determining what had agency in the process.
How is drawing a distinction based on an observed difference arbitrary? Arbitrary means "for no reason" and there are so many reasons to draw a line between, for example, me and my partner. We occupy different areas of physical space in separate bodies, which have been present in the world for different amounts of time and have had different life experiences. Human observation and interpretation of the world around us are flawed and fallible. That doesn't mean we ought to abandon the insights they can provide, we just need to be careful, considerate and willing to change our minds as new information becomes available.
Where do we draw those distinguishing lines except arbitrarily by our limited and seemingly faulty perceptions?
Yes personal responsibility absolutely requires determining what had agency in the process.
How is drawing a distinction based on an observed difference arbitrary? Arbitrary means "for no reason" and there are so many reasons to draw a line between, for example, me and my partner. We occupy different areas of physical space in separate bodies, which have been present in the world for different amounts of time and have had different life experiences. Human observation and interpretation of the world around us are flawed and fallible. That doesn't mean we ought to abandon the insights they can provide, we just need to be careful, considerate and willing to change our minds as new information becomes available.
Where do we draw those distinguishing lines except arbitrarily by our limited and seemingly faulty perceptions?
Yes personal responsibility absolutely requires determining what had agency in the process.
How is drawing a distinction based on an observed difference arbitrary? Arbitrary means "for no reason" and there are so many reasons to draw a line between, for example, me and my partner. We occupy different areas of physical space in separate bodies, which have been present in the world for different amounts of time and have had different life experiences. Human observation and interpretation of the world around us are flawed and fallible. That doesn't mean we ought to abandon the insights they can provide, we just need to be careful, considerate and willing to change our minds as new information becomes available.
I should probably note in case it wasn’t clear that I’m not trying to argue a nihilistic viewpoint. While I would suggest there is no inherent meaning for anything, that is because meaning is our own creation, a way of understanding the universe around us, assigning [relative] importance and enriching our lives.
In a way, think of it like this: so far out there, the universe seems to be an amazing, yet [emotionally] cold and empty place. Yet it is our interactions with it and with each other that creates the warmth that fills our world.
We are free to create meaning, even where before there was none.
In determinism
We create nothing
Like definitionally we aren't free to create anything.
The meaning is foisted upon us by forces we have no control of.
I think if we're treating it as the old I am he and she is he and you are me and we are all together everything's one framing the universe would be warm and full of emotion and meaning by its nature just that no part of that emotion or meaning is a choice on our part.
Dude, you are not an external object that is being subjected to forces, you are a part of the system at large. You are definitely creating things, the machine that packs pineaples... its packing pineaples. If the machines was programmed to think of itself as a sentient organism, it would still be the one packing those delicious pineaples, just because its aware that is part of a system, its actions dont disapear magically, nor it stops being the agent of that action. If there was a choice or not is irrelevant for this specific point. The machine is doint that action, the same way that you are creating "thing".
The entire point of determinism is that i can't elect anything. I can't make decisions they are all made for me. I cannot take actions they are forced upon me.
I am definitely not free to do things
The argument here is against my free will to do things existing at any level
You can't say i have no free will i am free to do things.
The underlying implication is that we are not free.
I should probably note in case it wasn’t clear that I’m not trying to argue a nihilistic viewpoint. While I would suggest there is no inherent meaning for anything, that is because meaning is our own creation, a way of understanding the universe around us, assigning [relative] importance and enriching our lives.
In a way, think of it like this: so far out there, the universe seems to be an amazing, yet [emotionally] cold and empty place. Yet it is our interactions with it and with each other that creates the warmth that fills our world.
We are free to create meaning, even where before there was none.
In determinism
We create nothing
Like definitionally we aren't free to create anything.
The meaning is foisted upon us by forces we have no control of.
I think if we're treating it as the old I am he and she is he and you are me and we are all together everything's one framing the universe would be warm and full of emotion and meaning by its nature just that no part of that emotion or meaning is a choice on our part.
Dude, you are not an external object that is being subjected to forces, you are a part of the system at large. You are definitely creating things, the machine that packs pineaples... its packing pineaples. If the machines was programmed to think of itself as a sentient organism, it would still be the one packing those delicious pineaples, just because its aware that is part of a system, its actions dont disapear magically, nor it stops being the agent of that action. If there was a choice or not is irrelevant for this specific point. The machine is doint that action, the same way that you are creating "thing".
The entire point of determinism is that i can't elect anything. I can't make decisions they are all made for me. I cannot take actions they are forced upon me.
I am definitely not free to do things
The argument here is against my free will to do things existing at any level
You can't say i have no free will i am free to do things.
The underlying implication is that we are not free.
In determinism the determinism itself is the only thing with agency to act.
You are not adressing anything that I said, you are just quoting me and repeating the same thing you have been saying all the time.
Why I dont think you are responding to me? because you say that "desicions they are all made for me", no one has ever said that there is an entity making desicions for you, thats just you talking to yourself. The same with taking action, either you are confused about what action means or you are refering to this weird universe entity that has a human brain and uses human concepts.
You say you are not free to do things, but at this point, I dont know what you mean by "free" anymore.
I cant say that you have no free will and that you are free to do things, and I never said it. I said you can use a word to describe a process. Free will does not exist outside language. But you can still use it to describe the human experience, like many other abstract concepts that we use daily.
And I dont know why you give the universe agency, that still seems like a concept to describe behaviour within a human perspective.
Now, if I can ask you just one tiny thing, is to answer the next question without going into the copy-paste territory.
Do you think there is a difference between the universe we percieve with our senses and the universe that is ?
Yes
Because our perceptions would lead us to believe there's no way to predict the already determined outcome, and that we are making free choices we have agency in.
If we have no agency, but feel like we do, then our perceptions are flawed at a basic level.
Exactly, our perception is very limited. So even if the universe is predetermined, we cant percieve it, from our point of view we do think of our own volition and excercise free will.
On the HUMAN level, we need concepts to describe our experience, this concepts dont describe universal truths, they are just a convention to ease understanding our own condition. Very much like the concept of morality, wich changes from place to place and from time to time.
So while, just like you say, from an outside persepective, by a non human observer outisde the universe, we have no choice as we are bound by the laws of our universe. But to us, inside the universe, and with our flawed incomplete senses, it feels like choice, and we observe our choices affecting the world and others. So the concept of free will becomes useful to describe a process, just like a previous poster said ,that certain mental ailnesses could prevent you from having free will, thats definitely not the free will that was being talked on the thread, but the concept is being used to describe someone who is not capable of... probably controlling certain urges? Might be usefull for lawmaking?, to establish degree of responsability, etc. all concepts that work only within human society.
Yes, with a quick verbal "boom." You take a man's peko, you deny him his dab, all that is left is to rise up and tear down the walls of Jericho with a ".....not!" -TexiKen
Where do we draw those distinguishing lines except arbitrarily by our limited and seemingly faulty perceptions?
Yes personal responsibility absolutely requires determining what had agency in the process.
How is drawing a distinction based on an observed difference arbitrary? Arbitrary means "for no reason" and there are so many reasons to draw a line between, for example, me and my partner. We occupy different areas of physical space in separate bodies, which have been present in the world for different amounts of time and have had different life experiences. Human observation and interpretation of the world around us are flawed and fallible. That doesn't mean we ought to abandon the insights they can provide, we just need to be careful, considerate and willing to change our minds as new information becomes available.
Willing
Didn't think i could do any willing
Will is real, it's just not free
Tightly contained will is not a lack of free will it's free will that can't totally ignore its context.
I should probably note in case it wasn’t clear that I’m not trying to argue a nihilistic viewpoint. While I would suggest there is no inherent meaning for anything, that is because meaning is our own creation, a way of understanding the universe around us, assigning [relative] importance and enriching our lives.
In a way, think of it like this: so far out there, the universe seems to be an amazing, yet [emotionally] cold and empty place. Yet it is our interactions with it and with each other that creates the warmth that fills our world.
We are free to create meaning, even where before there was none.
In determinism
We create nothing
Like definitionally we aren't free to create anything.
The meaning is foisted upon us by forces we have no control of.
I think if we're treating it as the old I am he and she is he and you are me and we are all together everything's one framing the universe would be warm and full of emotion and meaning by its nature just that no part of that emotion or meaning is a choice on our part.
Dude, you are not an external object that is being subjected to forces, you are a part of the system at large. You are definitely creating things, the machine that packs pineaples... its packing pineaples. If the machines was programmed to think of itself as a sentient organism, it would still be the one packing those delicious pineaples, just because its aware that is part of a system, its actions dont disapear magically, nor it stops being the agent of that action. If there was a choice or not is irrelevant for this specific point. The machine is doint that action, the same way that you are creating "thing".
The entire point of determinism is that i can't elect anything. I can't make decisions they are all made for me. I cannot take actions they are forced upon me.
I am definitely not free to do things
The argument here is against my free will to do things existing at any level
You can't say i have no free will i am free to do things.
The underlying implication is that we are not free.
I should probably note in case it wasn’t clear that I’m not trying to argue a nihilistic viewpoint. While I would suggest there is no inherent meaning for anything, that is because meaning is our own creation, a way of understanding the universe around us, assigning [relative] importance and enriching our lives.
In a way, think of it like this: so far out there, the universe seems to be an amazing, yet [emotionally] cold and empty place. Yet it is our interactions with it and with each other that creates the warmth that fills our world.
We are free to create meaning, even where before there was none.
In determinism
We create nothing
Like definitionally we aren't free to create anything.
The meaning is foisted upon us by forces we have no control of.
I think if we're treating it as the old I am he and she is he and you are me and we are all together everything's one framing the universe would be warm and full of emotion and meaning by its nature just that no part of that emotion or meaning is a choice on our part.
Dude, you are not an external object that is being subjected to forces, you are a part of the system at large. You are definitely creating things, the machine that packs pineaples... its packing pineaples. If the machines was programmed to think of itself as a sentient organism, it would still be the one packing those delicious pineaples, just because its aware that is part of a system, its actions dont disapear magically, nor it stops being the agent of that action. If there was a choice or not is irrelevant for this specific point. The machine is doint that action, the same way that you are creating "thing".
The entire point of determinism is that i can't elect anything. I can't make decisions they are all made for me. I cannot take actions they are forced upon me.
I am definitely not free to do things
The argument here is against my free will to do things existing at any level
You can't say i have no free will i am free to do things.
The underlying implication is that we are not free.
In determinism the determinism itself is the only thing with agency to act.
You are not adressing anything that I said, you are just quoting me and repeating the same thing you have been saying all the time.
Why I dont think you are responding to me? because you say that "desicions they are all made for me", no one has ever said that there is an entity making desicions for you, thats just you talking to yourself. The same with taking action, either you are confused about what action means or you are refering to this weird universe entity that has a human brain and uses human concepts.
You say you are not free to do things, but at this point, I dont know what you mean by "free" anymore.
I cant say that you have no free will and that you are free to do things, and I never said it. I said you can use a word to describe a process. Free will does not exist outside language. But you can still use it to describe the human experience, like many other abstract concepts that we use daily.
And I dont know why you give the universe agency, that still seems like a concept to describe behaviour within a human perspective.
Now, if I can ask you just one tiny thing, is to answer the next question without going into the copy-paste territory.
Do you think there is a difference between the universe we percieve with our senses and the universe that is ?
Yes
Because our perceptions would lead us to believe there's no way to predict the already determined outcome, and that we are making free choices we have agency in.
If we have no agency, but feel like we do, then our perceptions are flawed at a basic level.
Exactly, our perception is very limited. So even if the universe is predetermined, we cant percieve it, from our point of view we do think of our own volition and excercise free will.
On the HUMAN level, we need concepts to describe our experience, this concepts dont describe universal truths, they are just a convention to ease understanding our own condition. Very much like the concept of morality, wich changes from place to place and from time to time.
So while, just like you say, from an outside persepective, by a non human observer outisde the universe, we have no choice as we are bound by the laws of our universe. But to us, inside the universe, and with our flawed incomplete senses, it feels like choice, and we observe our choices affecting the world and others. So the concept of free will becomes useful to describe a process, just like a previous poster said ,that certain mental ailnesses could prevent you from having free will, thats definitely not the free will that was being talked on the thread, but the concept is being used to describe someone who is not capable of... probably controlling certain urges? Might be usefull for lawmaking?, to establish degree of responsability, etc. all concepts that work only within human society.
So ignore determinism and build from free will because it feels like free will
Determinism is a useless universal truth as you can not act upon it.
I should probably note in case it wasn’t clear that I’m not trying to argue a nihilistic viewpoint. While I would suggest there is no inherent meaning for anything, that is because meaning is our own creation, a way of understanding the universe around us, assigning [relative] importance and enriching our lives.
In a way, think of it like this: so far out there, the universe seems to be an amazing, yet [emotionally] cold and empty place. Yet it is our interactions with it and with each other that creates the warmth that fills our world.
We are free to create meaning, even where before there was none.
In determinism
We create nothing
Like definitionally we aren't free to create anything.
The meaning is foisted upon us by forces we have no control of.
I think if we're treating it as the old I am he and she is he and you are me and we are all together everything's one framing the universe would be warm and full of emotion and meaning by its nature just that no part of that emotion or meaning is a choice on our part.
Dude, you are not an external object that is being subjected to forces, you are a part of the system at large. You are definitely creating things, the machine that packs pineaples... its packing pineaples. If the machines was programmed to think of itself as a sentient organism, it would still be the one packing those delicious pineaples, just because its aware that is part of a system, its actions dont disapear magically, nor it stops being the agent of that action. If there was a choice or not is irrelevant for this specific point. The machine is doint that action, the same way that you are creating "thing".
The entire point of determinism is that i can't elect anything. I can't make decisions they are all made for me. I cannot take actions they are forced upon me.
I am definitely not free to do things
The argument here is against my free will to do things existing at any level
You can't say i have no free will i am free to do things.
The underlying implication is that we are not free.
I should probably note in case it wasn’t clear that I’m not trying to argue a nihilistic viewpoint. While I would suggest there is no inherent meaning for anything, that is because meaning is our own creation, a way of understanding the universe around us, assigning [relative] importance and enriching our lives.
In a way, think of it like this: so far out there, the universe seems to be an amazing, yet [emotionally] cold and empty place. Yet it is our interactions with it and with each other that creates the warmth that fills our world.
We are free to create meaning, even where before there was none.
In determinism
We create nothing
Like definitionally we aren't free to create anything.
The meaning is foisted upon us by forces we have no control of.
I think if we're treating it as the old I am he and she is he and you are me and we are all together everything's one framing the universe would be warm and full of emotion and meaning by its nature just that no part of that emotion or meaning is a choice on our part.
Dude, you are not an external object that is being subjected to forces, you are a part of the system at large. You are definitely creating things, the machine that packs pineaples... its packing pineaples. If the machines was programmed to think of itself as a sentient organism, it would still be the one packing those delicious pineaples, just because its aware that is part of a system, its actions dont disapear magically, nor it stops being the agent of that action. If there was a choice or not is irrelevant for this specific point. The machine is doint that action, the same way that you are creating "thing".
The entire point of determinism is that i can't elect anything. I can't make decisions they are all made for me. I cannot take actions they are forced upon me.
I am definitely not free to do things
The argument here is against my free will to do things existing at any level
You can't say i have no free will i am free to do things.
The underlying implication is that we are not free.
In determinism the determinism itself is the only thing with agency to act.
You are not adressing anything that I said, you are just quoting me and repeating the same thing you have been saying all the time.
Why I dont think you are responding to me? because you say that "desicions they are all made for me", no one has ever said that there is an entity making desicions for you, thats just you talking to yourself. The same with taking action, either you are confused about what action means or you are refering to this weird universe entity that has a human brain and uses human concepts.
You say you are not free to do things, but at this point, I dont know what you mean by "free" anymore.
I cant say that you have no free will and that you are free to do things, and I never said it. I said you can use a word to describe a process. Free will does not exist outside language. But you can still use it to describe the human experience, like many other abstract concepts that we use daily.
And I dont know why you give the universe agency, that still seems like a concept to describe behaviour within a human perspective.
Now, if I can ask you just one tiny thing, is to answer the next question without going into the copy-paste territory.
Do you think there is a difference between the universe we percieve with our senses and the universe that is ?
Yes
Because our perceptions would lead us to believe there's no way to predict the already determined outcome, and that we are making free choices we have agency in.
If we have no agency, but feel like we do, then our perceptions are flawed at a basic level.
Exactly, our perception is very limited. So even if the universe is predetermined, we cant percieve it, from our point of view we do think of our own volition and excercise free will.
On the HUMAN level, we need concepts to describe our experience, this concepts dont describe universal truths, they are just a convention to ease understanding our own condition. Very much like the concept of morality, wich changes from place to place and from time to time.
So while, just like you say, from an outside persepective, by a non human observer outisde the universe, we have no choice as we are bound by the laws of our universe. But to us, inside the universe, and with our flawed incomplete senses, it feels like choice, and we observe our choices affecting the world and others. So the concept of free will becomes useful to describe a process, just like a previous poster said ,that certain mental ailnesses could prevent you from having free will, thats definitely not the free will that was being talked on the thread, but the concept is being used to describe someone who is not capable of... probably controlling certain urges? Might be usefull for lawmaking?, to establish degree of responsability, etc. all concepts that work only within human society.
So ignore determinism and build from free will because it feels like free will
Determinism is a useless universal truth as you can not act upon it.
Knowing a system is deterministic is useful even if we have to rely on heuristics in most everyday cases.
I should probably note in case it wasn’t clear that I’m not trying to argue a nihilistic viewpoint. While I would suggest there is no inherent meaning for anything, that is because meaning is our own creation, a way of understanding the universe around us, assigning [relative] importance and enriching our lives.
In a way, think of it like this: so far out there, the universe seems to be an amazing, yet [emotionally] cold and empty place. Yet it is our interactions with it and with each other that creates the warmth that fills our world.
We are free to create meaning, even where before there was none.
In determinism
We create nothing
Like definitionally we aren't free to create anything.
The meaning is foisted upon us by forces we have no control of.
I think if we're treating it as the old I am he and she is he and you are me and we are all together everything's one framing the universe would be warm and full of emotion and meaning by its nature just that no part of that emotion or meaning is a choice on our part.
Dude, you are not an external object that is being subjected to forces, you are a part of the system at large. You are definitely creating things, the machine that packs pineaples... its packing pineaples. If the machines was programmed to think of itself as a sentient organism, it would still be the one packing those delicious pineaples, just because its aware that is part of a system, its actions dont disapear magically, nor it stops being the agent of that action. If there was a choice or not is irrelevant for this specific point. The machine is doint that action, the same way that you are creating "thing".
The entire point of determinism is that i can't elect anything. I can't make decisions they are all made for me. I cannot take actions they are forced upon me.
I am definitely not free to do things
The argument here is against my free will to do things existing at any level
You can't say i have no free will i am free to do things.
The underlying implication is that we are not free.
I should probably note in case it wasn’t clear that I’m not trying to argue a nihilistic viewpoint. While I would suggest there is no inherent meaning for anything, that is because meaning is our own creation, a way of understanding the universe around us, assigning [relative] importance and enriching our lives.
In a way, think of it like this: so far out there, the universe seems to be an amazing, yet [emotionally] cold and empty place. Yet it is our interactions with it and with each other that creates the warmth that fills our world.
We are free to create meaning, even where before there was none.
In determinism
We create nothing
Like definitionally we aren't free to create anything.
The meaning is foisted upon us by forces we have no control of.
I think if we're treating it as the old I am he and she is he and you are me and we are all together everything's one framing the universe would be warm and full of emotion and meaning by its nature just that no part of that emotion or meaning is a choice on our part.
Dude, you are not an external object that is being subjected to forces, you are a part of the system at large. You are definitely creating things, the machine that packs pineaples... its packing pineaples. If the machines was programmed to think of itself as a sentient organism, it would still be the one packing those delicious pineaples, just because its aware that is part of a system, its actions dont disapear magically, nor it stops being the agent of that action. If there was a choice or not is irrelevant for this specific point. The machine is doint that action, the same way that you are creating "thing".
The entire point of determinism is that i can't elect anything. I can't make decisions they are all made for me. I cannot take actions they are forced upon me.
I am definitely not free to do things
The argument here is against my free will to do things existing at any level
You can't say i have no free will i am free to do things.
The underlying implication is that we are not free.
In determinism the determinism itself is the only thing with agency to act.
You are not adressing anything that I said, you are just quoting me and repeating the same thing you have been saying all the time.
Why I dont think you are responding to me? because you say that "desicions they are all made for me", no one has ever said that there is an entity making desicions for you, thats just you talking to yourself. The same with taking action, either you are confused about what action means or you are refering to this weird universe entity that has a human brain and uses human concepts.
You say you are not free to do things, but at this point, I dont know what you mean by "free" anymore.
I cant say that you have no free will and that you are free to do things, and I never said it. I said you can use a word to describe a process. Free will does not exist outside language. But you can still use it to describe the human experience, like many other abstract concepts that we use daily.
And I dont know why you give the universe agency, that still seems like a concept to describe behaviour within a human perspective.
Now, if I can ask you just one tiny thing, is to answer the next question without going into the copy-paste territory.
Do you think there is a difference between the universe we percieve with our senses and the universe that is ?
Yes
Because our perceptions would lead us to believe there's no way to predict the already determined outcome, and that we are making free choices we have agency in.
If we have no agency, but feel like we do, then our perceptions are flawed at a basic level.
Exactly, our perception is very limited. So even if the universe is predetermined, we cant percieve it, from our point of view we do think of our own volition and excercise free will.
On the HUMAN level, we need concepts to describe our experience, this concepts dont describe universal truths, they are just a convention to ease understanding our own condition. Very much like the concept of morality, wich changes from place to place and from time to time.
So while, just like you say, from an outside persepective, by a non human observer outisde the universe, we have no choice as we are bound by the laws of our universe. But to us, inside the universe, and with our flawed incomplete senses, it feels like choice, and we observe our choices affecting the world and others. So the concept of free will becomes useful to describe a process, just like a previous poster said ,that certain mental ailnesses could prevent you from having free will, thats definitely not the free will that was being talked on the thread, but the concept is being used to describe someone who is not capable of... probably controlling certain urges? Might be usefull for lawmaking?, to establish degree of responsability, etc. all concepts that work only within human society.
So ignore determinism and build from free will because it feels like free will
Determinism is a useless universal truth as you can not act upon it.
Knowing a system is deterministic is useful even if we have to rely on heuristics in most everyday cases.
How so?
all it seemingly does is give me an easy out to say "wasn't me, it was the universe, and you shouldn't worry anyways that was always going to happen and couldn't have not happened"
The words in our language are all used to describe what we perceived. Those words still find to use, but the definitions need to be adjusted as we learn.
We still use words like "solid" and "atom", but those observations were both incorrect. We still use the words, but we updated their meaning.
The words in our language are all used to describe what we perceived. Those words still find to use, but the definitions need to be adjusted as we learn.
We still use words like "solid" and "atom", but those observations were both incorrect. We still use the words, but we updated their meaning.
Yes that doesn't argue that you can build a moral framework from determinism
You've always got to ignore it and treat it like we control our actions.
Even if us thinking we control our actions is a falsehood... it's a useless falsehood to insist upon because yeah... we gotta live with and as though the falsehood is truth.
Nothing about a free will implies or supports a moral framework. It mostly just means that you can't predict future behavior, so trust becomes absurd.
It allows us to place the onus of responsibility on individuals rather than the universe writ large.
The idea I'm responsible for my actions is predicated on the idea I have an even limited control of my actions.
Yes causality still exists, and can create extenuating situations which necessarily limit the options available and which can distribute that responsibility across a group who are then held personally responsible for limiting your options, but it doesn't totally erase that personal responsibility.
"We have no true control of our actions everything's already decided, and no matter what you want this is happening" removes all personal responsibility for action because... i'm not responsible for my action it's the inevitable end of a causal chain we play no true part in except to be used by it.
I should probably note in case it wasn’t clear that I’m not trying to argue a nihilistic viewpoint. While I would suggest there is no inherent meaning for anything, that is because meaning is our own creation, a way of understanding the universe around us, assigning [relative] importance and enriching our lives.
In a way, think of it like this: so far out there, the universe seems to be an amazing, yet [emotionally] cold and empty place. Yet it is our interactions with it and with each other that creates the warmth that fills our world.
We are free to create meaning, even where before there was none.
In determinism
We create nothing
Like definitionally we aren't free to create anything.
The meaning is foisted upon us by forces we have no control of.
I think if we're treating it as the old I am he and she is he and you are me and we are all together everything's one framing the universe would be warm and full of emotion and meaning by its nature just that no part of that emotion or meaning is a choice on our part.
Dude, you are not an external object that is being subjected to forces, you are a part of the system at large. You are definitely creating things, the machine that packs pineaples... its packing pineaples. If the machines was programmed to think of itself as a sentient organism, it would still be the one packing those delicious pineaples, just because its aware that is part of a system, its actions dont disapear magically, nor it stops being the agent of that action. If there was a choice or not is irrelevant for this specific point. The machine is doint that action, the same way that you are creating "thing".
The entire point of determinism is that i can't elect anything. I can't make decisions they are all made for me. I cannot take actions they are forced upon me.
I am definitely not free to do things
The argument here is against my free will to do things existing at any level
You can't say i have no free will i am free to do things.
The underlying implication is that we are not free.
I should probably note in case it wasn’t clear that I’m not trying to argue a nihilistic viewpoint. While I would suggest there is no inherent meaning for anything, that is because meaning is our own creation, a way of understanding the universe around us, assigning [relative] importance and enriching our lives.
In a way, think of it like this: so far out there, the universe seems to be an amazing, yet [emotionally] cold and empty place. Yet it is our interactions with it and with each other that creates the warmth that fills our world.
We are free to create meaning, even where before there was none.
In determinism
We create nothing
Like definitionally we aren't free to create anything.
The meaning is foisted upon us by forces we have no control of.
I think if we're treating it as the old I am he and she is he and you are me and we are all together everything's one framing the universe would be warm and full of emotion and meaning by its nature just that no part of that emotion or meaning is a choice on our part.
Dude, you are not an external object that is being subjected to forces, you are a part of the system at large. You are definitely creating things, the machine that packs pineaples... its packing pineaples. If the machines was programmed to think of itself as a sentient organism, it would still be the one packing those delicious pineaples, just because its aware that is part of a system, its actions dont disapear magically, nor it stops being the agent of that action. If there was a choice or not is irrelevant for this specific point. The machine is doint that action, the same way that you are creating "thing".
The entire point of determinism is that i can't elect anything. I can't make decisions they are all made for me. I cannot take actions they are forced upon me.
I am definitely not free to do things
The argument here is against my free will to do things existing at any level
You can't say i have no free will i am free to do things.
The underlying implication is that we are not free.
In determinism the determinism itself is the only thing with agency to act.
You are not adressing anything that I said, you are just quoting me and repeating the same thing you have been saying all the time.
Why I dont think you are responding to me? because you say that "desicions they are all made for me", no one has ever said that there is an entity making desicions for you, thats just you talking to yourself. The same with taking action, either you are confused about what action means or you are refering to this weird universe entity that has a human brain and uses human concepts.
You say you are not free to do things, but at this point, I dont know what you mean by "free" anymore.
I cant say that you have no free will and that you are free to do things, and I never said it. I said you can use a word to describe a process. Free will does not exist outside language. But you can still use it to describe the human experience, like many other abstract concepts that we use daily.
And I dont know why you give the universe agency, that still seems like a concept to describe behaviour within a human perspective.
Now, if I can ask you just one tiny thing, is to answer the next question without going into the copy-paste territory.
Do you think there is a difference between the universe we percieve with our senses and the universe that is ?
Yes
Because our perceptions would lead us to believe there's no way to predict the already determined outcome, and that we are making free choices we have agency in.
If we have no agency, but feel like we do, then our perceptions are flawed at a basic level.
Exactly, our perception is very limited. So even if the universe is predetermined, we cant percieve it, from our point of view we do think of our own volition and excercise free will.
On the HUMAN level, we need concepts to describe our experience, this concepts dont describe universal truths, they are just a convention to ease understanding our own condition. Very much like the concept of morality, wich changes from place to place and from time to time.
So while, just like you say, from an outside persepective, by a non human observer outisde the universe, we have no choice as we are bound by the laws of our universe. But to us, inside the universe, and with our flawed incomplete senses, it feels like choice, and we observe our choices affecting the world and others. So the concept of free will becomes useful to describe a process, just like a previous poster said ,that certain mental ailnesses could prevent you from having free will, thats definitely not the free will that was being talked on the thread, but the concept is being used to describe someone who is not capable of... probably controlling certain urges? Might be usefull for lawmaking?, to establish degree of responsability, etc. all concepts that work only within human society.
So ignore determinism and build from free will because it feels like free will
Determinism is a useless universal truth as you can not act upon it.
Knowing a system is deterministic is useful even if we have to rely on heuristics in most everyday cases.
If nothing else the criminal justice system is entirely affected by the societal belief in free will and would imo be significantly improved if we accepted the deterministic system
You know what? Nanowrimo's cancelled on account of the world is stupid.
I should probably note in case it wasn’t clear that I’m not trying to argue a nihilistic viewpoint. While I would suggest there is no inherent meaning for anything, that is because meaning is our own creation, a way of understanding the universe around us, assigning [relative] importance and enriching our lives.
In a way, think of it like this: so far out there, the universe seems to be an amazing, yet [emotionally] cold and empty place. Yet it is our interactions with it and with each other that creates the warmth that fills our world.
We are free to create meaning, even where before there was none.
In determinism
We create nothing
Like definitionally we aren't free to create anything.
The meaning is foisted upon us by forces we have no control of.
I think if we're treating it as the old I am he and she is he and you are me and we are all together everything's one framing the universe would be warm and full of emotion and meaning by its nature just that no part of that emotion or meaning is a choice on our part.
Dude, you are not an external object that is being subjected to forces, you are a part of the system at large. You are definitely creating things, the machine that packs pineaples... its packing pineaples. If the machines was programmed to think of itself as a sentient organism, it would still be the one packing those delicious pineaples, just because its aware that is part of a system, its actions dont disapear magically, nor it stops being the agent of that action. If there was a choice or not is irrelevant for this specific point. The machine is doint that action, the same way that you are creating "thing".
The entire point of determinism is that i can't elect anything. I can't make decisions they are all made for me. I cannot take actions they are forced upon me.
I am definitely not free to do things
The argument here is against my free will to do things existing at any level
You can't say i have no free will i am free to do things.
The underlying implication is that we are not free.
I should probably note in case it wasn’t clear that I’m not trying to argue a nihilistic viewpoint. While I would suggest there is no inherent meaning for anything, that is because meaning is our own creation, a way of understanding the universe around us, assigning [relative] importance and enriching our lives.
In a way, think of it like this: so far out there, the universe seems to be an amazing, yet [emotionally] cold and empty place. Yet it is our interactions with it and with each other that creates the warmth that fills our world.
We are free to create meaning, even where before there was none.
In determinism
We create nothing
Like definitionally we aren't free to create anything.
The meaning is foisted upon us by forces we have no control of.
I think if we're treating it as the old I am he and she is he and you are me and we are all together everything's one framing the universe would be warm and full of emotion and meaning by its nature just that no part of that emotion or meaning is a choice on our part.
Dude, you are not an external object that is being subjected to forces, you are a part of the system at large. You are definitely creating things, the machine that packs pineaples... its packing pineaples. If the machines was programmed to think of itself as a sentient organism, it would still be the one packing those delicious pineaples, just because its aware that is part of a system, its actions dont disapear magically, nor it stops being the agent of that action. If there was a choice or not is irrelevant for this specific point. The machine is doint that action, the same way that you are creating "thing".
The entire point of determinism is that i can't elect anything. I can't make decisions they are all made for me. I cannot take actions they are forced upon me.
I am definitely not free to do things
The argument here is against my free will to do things existing at any level
You can't say i have no free will i am free to do things.
The underlying implication is that we are not free.
In determinism the determinism itself is the only thing with agency to act.
You are not adressing anything that I said, you are just quoting me and repeating the same thing you have been saying all the time.
Why I dont think you are responding to me? because you say that "desicions they are all made for me", no one has ever said that there is an entity making desicions for you, thats just you talking to yourself. The same with taking action, either you are confused about what action means or you are refering to this weird universe entity that has a human brain and uses human concepts.
You say you are not free to do things, but at this point, I dont know what you mean by "free" anymore.
I cant say that you have no free will and that you are free to do things, and I never said it. I said you can use a word to describe a process. Free will does not exist outside language. But you can still use it to describe the human experience, like many other abstract concepts that we use daily.
And I dont know why you give the universe agency, that still seems like a concept to describe behaviour within a human perspective.
Now, if I can ask you just one tiny thing, is to answer the next question without going into the copy-paste territory.
Do you think there is a difference between the universe we percieve with our senses and the universe that is ?
Yes
Because our perceptions would lead us to believe there's no way to predict the already determined outcome, and that we are making free choices we have agency in.
If we have no agency, but feel like we do, then our perceptions are flawed at a basic level.
Exactly, our perception is very limited. So even if the universe is predetermined, we cant percieve it, from our point of view we do think of our own volition and excercise free will.
On the HUMAN level, we need concepts to describe our experience, this concepts dont describe universal truths, they are just a convention to ease understanding our own condition. Very much like the concept of morality, wich changes from place to place and from time to time.
So while, just like you say, from an outside persepective, by a non human observer outisde the universe, we have no choice as we are bound by the laws of our universe. But to us, inside the universe, and with our flawed incomplete senses, it feels like choice, and we observe our choices affecting the world and others. So the concept of free will becomes useful to describe a process, just like a previous poster said ,that certain mental ailnesses could prevent you from having free will, thats definitely not the free will that was being talked on the thread, but the concept is being used to describe someone who is not capable of... probably controlling certain urges? Might be usefull for lawmaking?, to establish degree of responsability, etc. all concepts that work only within human society.
So ignore determinism and build from free will because it feels like free will
Determinism is a useless universal truth as you can not act upon it.
Knowing a system is deterministic is useful even if we have to rely on heuristics in most everyday cases.
If nothing else the criminal justice system is entirely affected by the societal belief in free will and would imo be significantly improved if we accepted the deterministic system
I should probably note in case it wasn’t clear that I’m not trying to argue a nihilistic viewpoint. While I would suggest there is no inherent meaning for anything, that is because meaning is our own creation, a way of understanding the universe around us, assigning [relative] importance and enriching our lives.
In a way, think of it like this: so far out there, the universe seems to be an amazing, yet [emotionally] cold and empty place. Yet it is our interactions with it and with each other that creates the warmth that fills our world.
We are free to create meaning, even where before there was none.
In determinism
We create nothing
Like definitionally we aren't free to create anything.
The meaning is foisted upon us by forces we have no control of.
I think if we're treating it as the old I am he and she is he and you are me and we are all together everything's one framing the universe would be warm and full of emotion and meaning by its nature just that no part of that emotion or meaning is a choice on our part.
Dude, you are not an external object that is being subjected to forces, you are a part of the system at large. You are definitely creating things, the machine that packs pineaples... its packing pineaples. If the machines was programmed to think of itself as a sentient organism, it would still be the one packing those delicious pineaples, just because its aware that is part of a system, its actions dont disapear magically, nor it stops being the agent of that action. If there was a choice or not is irrelevant for this specific point. The machine is doint that action, the same way that you are creating "thing".
The entire point of determinism is that i can't elect anything. I can't make decisions they are all made for me. I cannot take actions they are forced upon me.
I am definitely not free to do things
The argument here is against my free will to do things existing at any level
You can't say i have no free will i am free to do things.
The underlying implication is that we are not free.
I should probably note in case it wasn’t clear that I’m not trying to argue a nihilistic viewpoint. While I would suggest there is no inherent meaning for anything, that is because meaning is our own creation, a way of understanding the universe around us, assigning [relative] importance and enriching our lives.
In a way, think of it like this: so far out there, the universe seems to be an amazing, yet [emotionally] cold and empty place. Yet it is our interactions with it and with each other that creates the warmth that fills our world.
We are free to create meaning, even where before there was none.
In determinism
We create nothing
Like definitionally we aren't free to create anything.
The meaning is foisted upon us by forces we have no control of.
I think if we're treating it as the old I am he and she is he and you are me and we are all together everything's one framing the universe would be warm and full of emotion and meaning by its nature just that no part of that emotion or meaning is a choice on our part.
Dude, you are not an external object that is being subjected to forces, you are a part of the system at large. You are definitely creating things, the machine that packs pineaples... its packing pineaples. If the machines was programmed to think of itself as a sentient organism, it would still be the one packing those delicious pineaples, just because its aware that is part of a system, its actions dont disapear magically, nor it stops being the agent of that action. If there was a choice or not is irrelevant for this specific point. The machine is doint that action, the same way that you are creating "thing".
The entire point of determinism is that i can't elect anything. I can't make decisions they are all made for me. I cannot take actions they are forced upon me.
I am definitely not free to do things
The argument here is against my free will to do things existing at any level
You can't say i have no free will i am free to do things.
The underlying implication is that we are not free.
In determinism the determinism itself is the only thing with agency to act.
You are not adressing anything that I said, you are just quoting me and repeating the same thing you have been saying all the time.
Why I dont think you are responding to me? because you say that "desicions they are all made for me", no one has ever said that there is an entity making desicions for you, thats just you talking to yourself. The same with taking action, either you are confused about what action means or you are refering to this weird universe entity that has a human brain and uses human concepts.
You say you are not free to do things, but at this point, I dont know what you mean by "free" anymore.
I cant say that you have no free will and that you are free to do things, and I never said it. I said you can use a word to describe a process. Free will does not exist outside language. But you can still use it to describe the human experience, like many other abstract concepts that we use daily.
And I dont know why you give the universe agency, that still seems like a concept to describe behaviour within a human perspective.
Now, if I can ask you just one tiny thing, is to answer the next question without going into the copy-paste territory.
Do you think there is a difference between the universe we percieve with our senses and the universe that is ?
Yes
Because our perceptions would lead us to believe there's no way to predict the already determined outcome, and that we are making free choices we have agency in.
If we have no agency, but feel like we do, then our perceptions are flawed at a basic level.
Exactly, our perception is very limited. So even if the universe is predetermined, we cant percieve it, from our point of view we do think of our own volition and excercise free will.
On the HUMAN level, we need concepts to describe our experience, this concepts dont describe universal truths, they are just a convention to ease understanding our own condition. Very much like the concept of morality, wich changes from place to place and from time to time.
So while, just like you say, from an outside persepective, by a non human observer outisde the universe, we have no choice as we are bound by the laws of our universe. But to us, inside the universe, and with our flawed incomplete senses, it feels like choice, and we observe our choices affecting the world and others. So the concept of free will becomes useful to describe a process, just like a previous poster said ,that certain mental ailnesses could prevent you from having free will, thats definitely not the free will that was being talked on the thread, but the concept is being used to describe someone who is not capable of... probably controlling certain urges? Might be usefull for lawmaking?, to establish degree of responsability, etc. all concepts that work only within human society.
So ignore determinism and build from free will because it feels like free will
Determinism is a useless universal truth as you can not act upon it.
Knowing a system is deterministic is useful even if we have to rely on heuristics in most everyday cases.
If nothing else the criminal justice system is entirely affected by the societal belief in free will and would imo be significantly improved if we accepted the deterministic system
So i can't hold my rapist responsible for my rape it is because something in their past stunted their development in some way and the universe is responsible for me getting raped for years instead of that person.
Again please build me any kind of moral framework on determinism
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Quantum mechanics and quantum randomness are relevant at EVERY length scale and EVERY time scale due to butterfly effects. Get hit or not hit by a neutrino? Cancer or no cancer for you! Electron oscillates into the wrong final pair state in your initial crystal grain growth during some steel forging? The plane you were on just crashed when otherwise it wouldn't have had that part failure for 18 more hours. Get a piece of dust in your eye? And then you blink, and look like an idiot in a photo someone takes? Quantum mechanics and its subsequent randomness again! Which sperm makes it to the egg and which of your genes does it specifically have inside! Uh oh, quantum randomness here we go!
Literally all these macro effects with huge influences on your life can trivially be proven to be truly random. And, you can, by going far back enough in time trace literally everything to some true quantum randomness which produced a deviation which was relevant to us. Why does the earth weigh this much? Quantum randomness. Why do we have dolphins? Quantum randomness. Why is the moon here? Quantum randomness. Nothing in the universe is determined at t=0, quantum mechanics make ALL systems in the entire universe non deterministic.
There is an argument to be made that perhaps human decision making is SO simple and buffered that there is no possibility of a different outcome to the same set of external stimuli unless you expose the human to decades of different stimuli, but, I don't think that means that free will is not a thing. Just that human thought could possibly be so simple that we don't have it. We could build something which did.
All that does is make human actions determined by quantum mechanics. As I stated pages ago, all that does is shift the time at which a choice is determined.
Quantum mechanics and true randomness does not DEMAND free will, it simply removes us from the deterministic universe in which free will by any definition is impossible, because in a deterministic universe there is no such thing as a decision (or even like, time). Just a series of perfectly pre-ordained events which were always going to happen.
A QM universe which contains only hydrogen atoms bouncing around does not have free will, since the hydrogen atoms have no memory beyond their state variables.
Your argument is fallacious or at least incomplete because interconnectedness does not inherently and necessarily collapse all distinctions.
When you say, "If we're already saying yeah we're essentially complex dominoes run on physics and chemicals", I reply, "don't put that nonsense on me!"
Then what are we other than a super complex atomic structures working in a way determined by the atomic structures it interacts with?
Quantum mechanics makes the universe non deterministic, the domino argument cannot be used because the universe doesn't work that way. Quantum mechanics says that (for example) whether or not a neutrino is heading for your DNA to give you cancer (or, more benignly to prematurely trigger a neuron such that it is recouperating and can no longer trigger its decision pathway in response to stimulus) isn't decided at the point when the nuclear decay MAKES that initial neutrino. It is decided at the exact instant when it hits you. Up till that point, even though the causal event occurred in the past, the neutrino wasn't 'heading' for you. If you had, for example a time machine and put a neutrino detector a few light days out in space in the past, then that neutrino might not have hit it, even though it had to hit it to hit you and you just travelled back in time.
Quantum mechanics brings the randomness of many many events into the 'now'. That neutrino causality chain wasn't decided 10 million years ago. It was decided at the exact instant it struck your DNA.
That's still just shifting the time of determination. The universe not being pre-determined doesn't mean that we're free from cause and effect, it just means that at the causes themselves are unpredictable.
It also continues to have no bearing on free will as a concept versus choices being determined by causal chains, which is not the same topic as the position of sub-atomic particles and the unpredictablity that causes.
Keep in mind that homophones are a thing, and words are used differently in different contexts, and you're not providing an adequate link between the contexts.
Why should I accept that if "super complex atomic structures" is a valid descriptor, nothing else matters? You ask what we are other than that, to which I must ask, why can't we be things in addition to or arising from that?
We can be, but where does the edge of personal causality lie? Where do we draw the edges of those atomic structures and elect that's the end point of causality for this determinate state.
It's not that.
We are composites of chemicals.
Society is a composite of us.
Why is our definition of self limited to our bodies if we are just as interconnected with each other?
Is the only real reason the limits of our perception, and does this neuter our own sense of free will?
After all the atoms follow the laws of thermodynamics just as we follow the laws of economics.
Frankly, seeing everyone as part of ourself would solve a great deal of collective action problems.
At the end of the day, we're related to every living thing on the planet, and we ourselves are just a composite organism made of a while bunch of different cells and even cells within cells, forming into a membrane of activity all over a thin layer of a giant wad of crusty magma covered in water and gas.
Layers upon layers, patterns within patterns. Histories branching into histories.
I was going to say this is actually seemingly at least a more fun conclusion to come to at least.
You know a little "I am he as you are he as you are me And we are all together"
It's at least a little brighter.
It kindof erases the concept of personal responsibility but at least it engenders a better reason to actually give a shit about others, because we're all technically part of the same moderately life like organism.
Thatks my point as well; in all the ways that matter, Data is Human. His only issue is he has difficulty generating emotions internally. But he’s still a material being, all of his self arising from his “positronic net.” If you somehow reverse engineered data exactly, or got Dr. Soong to build yet another Soong-type Android [or I suppose convince Data to build another himself], you would construct an entirely material being that is precisely human in any way that means anything to humans.
In that same way, humans can be material beings without some unknown, undefinable element that gives us the essence of humanity and be Human. Just with meat computer brains instead of “positronic nets”
In a way, think of it like this: so far out there, the universe seems to be an amazing, yet [emotionally] cold and empty place. Yet it is our interactions with it and with each other that creates the warmth that fills our world.
We are free to create meaning, even where before there was none.
In determinism
We create nothing
Like definitionally we aren't free to create anything.
The meaning is foisted upon us by forces we have no control of.
I think if we're treating it as the old I am he and she is he and you are me and we are all together everything's one framing the universe would be warm and full of emotion and meaning by its nature just that no part of that emotion or meaning is a choice on our part.
Dude, you are not an external object that is being subjected to forces, you are a part of the system at large. You are definitely creating things, the machine that packs pineaples... its packing pineaples. If the machines was programmed to think of itself as a sentient organism, it would still be the one packing those delicious pineaples, just because its aware that is part of a system, its actions dont disapear magically, nor it stops being the agent of that action. If there was a choice or not is irrelevant for this specific point. The machine is doint that action, the same way that you are creating "thing".
The entire point of determinism is that i can't elect anything. I can't make decisions they are all made for me. I cannot take actions they are forced upon me.
I am definitely not free to do things
The argument here is against my free will to do things existing at any level
You can't say i have no free will i am free to do things.
The underlying implication is that we are not free.
In determinism the determinism itself is the only thing with any real agency to act and its acts are already determined, so it barely has agency either.
Why does anyone need to "draw the edges of those atomic structures and elect that's the end point of causality"? You seem to think that responsibility requires that someone be the "end all, be all" of some action or event in order for them to be responsible. I'm suggesting that responsibility still makes sense, and arguably works better for our purposes if we adopt a less extreme position. All you need for responsibility is the ability to pick out a person and to explain how various aspects of what make that person into that person are directly and crucially part of the chain of events leading up to the action in question.
A couple of points here. First, I need to reiterate that my conception of human or personal identity is not that we are limited to our bodies. We aren't just bodies, we are bodies doing something. The common concept is that we are human beings, maybe it would be better to think of ourselves as human doings.
Second, I have not seen an argument for why anyone should believe that the fact that much if not all of identity is relational entails that we should collapse everything into one existence. I can accept that everything is interrelated, but in order for that to be the case, there need to be different things that can interact and relate to one another. "This" can't relate to "that" unless they're different and distinguishable.
Where do we draw those distinguishing lines except arbitrarily by our limited and seemingly faulty perceptions?
Yes personal responsibility absolutely requires determining what had agency in the process.
You are not adressing anything that I said, you are just quoting me and repeating the same thing you have been saying all the time.
Why I dont think you are responding to me? because you say that "desicions they are all made for me", no one has ever said that there is an entity making desicions for you, thats just you talking to yourself. The same with taking action, either you are confused about what action means or you are refering to this weird universe entity that has a human brain and uses human concepts.
You say you are not free to do things, but at this point, I dont know what you mean by "free" anymore.
I cant say that you have no free will and that you are free to do things, and I never said it. I said you can use a word to describe a process. Free will does not exist outside language. But you can still use it to describe the human experience, like many other abstract concepts that we use daily.
And I dont know why you give the universe agency, that still seems like a concept to describe behaviour within a human perspective.
Now, if I can ask you just one tiny thing, is to answer the next question without going into the copy-paste territory.
Do you think there is a difference between the universe we percieve with our senses and the universe that is ?
Yes
Because our perceptions would lead us to believe there's no way to predict the already determined outcome, and that we are making free choices we have agency in.
If we have no agency, but feel like we do, then our perceptions are flawed at a basic level.
How is drawing a distinction based on an observed difference arbitrary? Arbitrary means "for no reason" and there are so many reasons to draw a line between, for example, me and my partner. We occupy different areas of physical space in separate bodies, which have been present in the world for different amounts of time and have had different life experiences. Human observation and interpretation of the world around us are flawed and fallible. That doesn't mean we ought to abandon the insights they can provide, we just need to be careful, considerate and willing to change our minds as new information becomes available.
Willing
Didn't think i could do any willing
That's because you misunderstand what you are.
Exactly, our perception is very limited. So even if the universe is predetermined, we cant percieve it, from our point of view we do think of our own volition and excercise free will.
On the HUMAN level, we need concepts to describe our experience, this concepts dont describe universal truths, they are just a convention to ease understanding our own condition. Very much like the concept of morality, wich changes from place to place and from time to time.
So while, just like you say, from an outside persepective, by a non human observer outisde the universe, we have no choice as we are bound by the laws of our universe. But to us, inside the universe, and with our flawed incomplete senses, it feels like choice, and we observe our choices affecting the world and others. So the concept of free will becomes useful to describe a process, just like a previous poster said ,that certain mental ailnesses could prevent you from having free will, thats definitely not the free will that was being talked on the thread, but the concept is being used to describe someone who is not capable of... probably controlling certain urges? Might be usefull for lawmaking?, to establish degree of responsability, etc. all concepts that work only within human society.
Tightly contained will is not a lack of free will it's free will that can't totally ignore its context.
Either we have a will or we do not
So ignore determinism and build from free will because it feels like free will
Determinism is a useless universal truth as you can not act upon it.
Knowing a system is deterministic is useful even if we have to rely on heuristics in most everyday cases.
How so?
all it seemingly does is give me an easy out to say "wasn't me, it was the universe, and you shouldn't worry anyways that was always going to happen and couldn't have not happened"
We still use words like "solid" and "atom", but those observations were both incorrect. We still use the words, but we updated their meaning.
Yes that doesn't argue that you can build a moral framework from determinism
You've always got to ignore it and treat it like we control our actions.
Even if us thinking we control our actions is a falsehood... it's a useless falsehood to insist upon because yeah... we gotta live with and as though the falsehood is truth.
It allows us to place the onus of responsibility on individuals rather than the universe writ large.
The idea I'm responsible for my actions is predicated on the idea I have an even limited control of my actions.
Yes causality still exists, and can create extenuating situations which necessarily limit the options available and which can distribute that responsibility across a group who are then held personally responsible for limiting your options, but it doesn't totally erase that personal responsibility.
"We have no true control of our actions everything's already decided, and no matter what you want this is happening" removes all personal responsibility for action because... i'm not responsible for my action it's the inevitable end of a causal chain we play no true part in except to be used by it.
If nothing else the criminal justice system is entirely affected by the societal belief in free will and would imo be significantly improved if we accepted the deterministic system
That is incoherent.
So i can't hold my rapist responsible for my rape it is because something in their past stunted their development in some way and the universe is responsible for me getting raped for years instead of that person.
Again please build me any kind of moral framework on determinism