Ugh.
Let's imagine a room with something inside which we can experience perceptually. You and I are outside the room. We have an endless line of people who we can give money to for our little thought experiment. We tell people to enter the room and write down a description of what is inside. These descriptions keep coming back as "a pink chair" or some similar variations. Any data apart from that we begin to discard because perhaps the person isn't an English first speaker. Then it dawns on me....what if it's just a hologram? I ask the next people to wear a blindfold and stumble around and we begin to learn other things about the chair like what it's made of, how heavy it feels, what sort of finish it has, etc. We just keep collecting evidence. Now...obviously, we haven't experienced it personally nor have we built any consensus, after all, nobody knows what anyone else wrote.
Yet somehow, someway, I think we'll both agree generally on what is in the room and how accurately we can describe it. Of course we could be wrong....but it's unlikely....and if for some reason you cannot understand this....you should pity me for having to share this time with you.
This doesn't really give an example without experience, either for us(where do we get the idea of a pink chair?) or for those describing it. Our situatiion is more analogous to Plato's cave...where we're all chained together facing a wall that has shadows dancing on it. I say the shadows are not all there is, though some have convinced themselves there is no light. Only way we could be certain is if someone who isn't in chains with us came from the source of the light to tell us what it is.
It's not about my personal interests. I hate math. Hate it. Ended up doing it mostly in my head and showed as few steps as possible.
When I say interest, I'm speaking of research interests not hobbies. Math allows us to trim a lot of the fat of language as it iis basically a language consisting of nothing but adjectives.
This sounds like a complaint from someone who believes without evidence.
Not at all. It's a point of amusement for me how staunchly some want to insist that their beliefs are default and anything contrary is automatically against "evidence". Especally when the "best" arguments for such belief are arguments from ignorance(burden of proof arguments) or special pleading(extraordinary claims arguments). A horse is evidence of the horses parents, so if there is a creator creation is evidence of that creator.
Let's be clear....this isn't a case or theory. This is people who don't understand physics trying to apply it to something else they don't understand called consciousness for reasons tiat have absolutely nothing to do with either. That's what "this" is.
It's more than just physics and consciousness, it's ground floor questions that precede both.
For what it's worth, neither party would be able to explain why determinism, being a description of human behavior based on cause and effect, cannot create free will choices from the organic structure of a brain, given the brain is capable of a process of creating causes known as reasons.
Sounds a bit mystical. And is just obfuscating a notion of free will as an illusion created by physical operations. It's inconsistent.
This process of reasoning isn't available to either those who insist upon free will nor those who call themselves determinists....but is only accessible to those of us capable of understanding just how dumb the discussion actually is.
I mean seriously....the OP just admitted his view of how everything works won't change anyone's actions....and he came here in hopes of convincing people for some mysterious cause. He's onto absolutely nothing at all.
Yeah, the discussion is rather absurd. Though it's persistence despite its absurdity should raise some red flags about the underbelly of how we think about these kinds of things. If deterministic methodologies are consistently applied, then your line of "reasoning" is just creating an extraneous bit to determinism due to physical operations(processes, or whatever you want to call them)
Oh ok...how are you identifying those facts?
I know of only one fact. Everything else is window dressing. And I identify that fact by interacting with Him.
It seems to me that much of science is dependent on considering that the past necessarily proceeds to the future in a law-like fashion. There is no perpetual now, just an endless continuum we are passing through.
Magic. You didn't explain cosmic agency in any way.
If you want to call it magic, but then what is emergentism if not a fancy word for a similarly empty concept?
Emergence, synthesis, between experience and perception and intellectual capacity for abstraction...
Who cares? Nobody has remotely enough evidence. In 2021 all causes of physics were assumed to be local, until it was proven one side of the universe can affect something happening on the other side. These determinists don't know what they don't know....and if belief in their determinism changes nothing.....then we can agree the belief is worthless in describing human behavior.
At least they could pretend to speak like they believe it....but they don't.
Fair enough.
As a description not a conclusion. Make sense? Again, there's no determinists here claiming to know all the causes or effects lol. They believe it's a better description.
Sometimes proper description requires conclusion. For instance, the description of the law of identity is sufficient for its truth. Technically, we define it that A=A.Nature is nature. God is God. But the fact that the conclusion is in the description is because of the referrent. It's always true, but not always of much use.
Fair enough
Well again...I can pretend and lie if that's more emotionally satisfying. This is what I've been saying about uncomfortable truths. Reality has no regard for your feelings.
I disagree, I thnk reality is quite compassionate. I just think you've settled for some alternative(though I'm not sure what alternative that is) before you made it to the bottom of the rabbit hole.
More fundamental than what?
Whatever you think the most basic constituent of reality is.
"gives rise to like" is grammar I don't understand. Did you forget a word or two?
Like gives rise to like, what I'm saying is that because we know conscious phenomena exists we can reasonably expect that there is something that provides conscious properties.
Ok...you want to leave room for god.
Seems to me He's the 500 pound gorilla in the conversation most of the time.
The ultimate "element"...the ground floor...the nature of nature. The thing that has no comparible. That which can only be defined in terms of itself and depends on nothing prior.
You've lost me. It sounds like you think rocks and stars are intelligent.
That would be panpsychism. What I'm suggesting is there is an invisible agent that is not composed of "stuff" but is what gives rise to being. A "being" that saying He exists is not sufficient, because He is existence itself. The thing which is responsible for the derivation of both physics and consciousness.
I hope you can forgive me setting it aside then. I don't understand "prime simple" "cosmic agency" and more there.
I don't fault you for it.
You should take note of why that is very different than what I described at the beginning of the post with the pink chair.
I've never met any Christians capable of describing this God they swear to have a close personal relationship with to any degree that's consistent in any way.
That's not really a failing, God is beyond comprehension. We don't have to be able to describe Him to have intimacy with Him. Just conversations and watching His hand on our lives. Faith begins with empty hands, a recognition that we are not as smart as we like to think we are.
Now I think you're messing with me. Did you eat meatloaf, mashed potatoes and peas last night? Did you consider the pea-ness of the peas? Is that where this is going?
Not at all, just trying to bring out a silent assumption.
"Stuff-ness"? What is this stuff-ness? Are we talkiing about physical composition? Or is it an integrating principle that allows for a tree to persist as a tree while somehow conducting a near infinite number of chemical reactions and quantum operations? Is a tree nothing but the sum of its parts, or is there an ideal tree as Platonism suggests giving it its form? What is a tree when it is not being observed by anyone?
Well don't worry about that with me. I've had to constantly argue my beliefs without any help so I've examined the fundamental underlying assumptions.
Given your confusion over my questions about ontology, I'm not sure you have. Though from your articulateness in other areas I do recognize you seem to have more of a handle on what you believe than most.
I don't recommend it. Ignore these things. Prioritize your values more pragmatically. Truth has no intrinsic value...and applied to our understanding can be fundamentally dangerous. Some truth once understood shouldn't be shared or spoken. Don't worry about truth...I can see the value of your faith. Perhaps it's imperfect, but it still holds value.
I'm finished with truth, but now I'm ready to be a fisherman. Skepticism is useful not because it is a path to truth, but because it is a tool to empty the hands of people being drawn. If you have any interest in what I mean by this, you can read Deuteronomy 19 and Matthew 4:19 and see if you see a common link.
I don't know how many times a mother has to point at a tree and speak the word to a baby before the baby makes the connection.....
But I do know that there's a rough range wherein those connections are made before they die and learning a second language is extremely difficult. Furthermore, I know that if abusive circumstances create conditions where those connections aren't made...language is lost for life...and a more feral person is limited in this way.
What sort of truth does that reveal to you and how does it make you feel?
I'm more perplexed than seeing any sort of truth.
That's all that's happening here. Nobody will be explaining anything.
Fair enough.
Agree.
I'm not invested in science. Mostly the SP500. If God shows up tomorrow, I'll believe it.
I see.
Ty. You should see what these idiots that believe in race are teaching.
It's an ongoing problem...most of my adult life was spent unlearning things that I had been taught that made me dysfunctional
One more time...I'd refer you to the thought experiment at the top. Notice how that information, while possibly entirely wrong, becomes increasingly certain the more data we collect. I'm sure you feel it to.
I can only reply to this with Scripture. For false christs and false prophets will arise and perform great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect(Matt. 24:24). and And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie
2 Thess. 2:11)
Don't try to compete with science. Just leave room for faith. There's no possibility of science explaining everything before or after you die. The set of unknowns is infinite and set of known is finite.
My goal isn't to compete with science, in fact my goal is to help provide an understanding that there is no need for such competition by understanding both pragmatically. Science proviides a great deal of information that is interesting and can be fulfilling for those engaged in the process. But what it describes is behavior, not stuff-ness. Though it does give a model of physicality that some may find compellng. On the other hand, the Bible is a work of literature and as literature can be taken at face value in order to learn about God. It's not simply leaving room for faith, but clarifying what faith is. Which is not believing something apart from evidence, but is actually an act of defeat. It's the admission that our efforts come up empty if we scrutinize them thoroughly. Faith isn't about me moving towards God, but my acceptance of God's move toward me.
Free will arguments are also useful for me, because they present a challenge to deterministic methods of investigation since iit appears a point of clear contradiction for consistent models. The discussion itself is rather ridiculous, but its because denial of either proposition appears absurd. So what can we do to harmonize them? How do we rectify conscious free will with a seemingly physically determined universe?
