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You appear to be a very subjugated man. Your mind is a prison of it's own devising, to which you will forever deny the key within your very hand. This is sad.
I didn't specify a date and certainly made no promise to you, a person I've never seen before.
If you mean that I'm trapped within 'me', then yeah. I am the sum total of all that nurture and nature.
You've never seen or met me. No issues. I fully understand the human usage of "Giant Air Quotes with both hands making the quotation mark gesture" Tomorrow. Carry on.
Which is to say, according to my simple human perception, that you relinquish your human ability to decide your own fate to vanity and fallible preconceptions. imo
Are we at the point where we start playing at semantics?
Yes, and it's my choice whether I pay attention to my long term preference or short term preference. Both preferences exist prior to my deciding which one holds the stronger claim on me, and do not dictate what my choice will be.
So somehow, by only observing what happens after, you know that it must have been decided prior without me having any input into which preference won out?
I would prefer not to go to work, but I do.
I didn't use any "giant air quotes". I didn't day "tomorrow". And I owe you exactly nothing.
There needs to be an understanding of first level desires (I want something sweet) and second level preferences (I want to lose weight). That's not playing semantics. It's an explanation of terms.
You first level desire is not to go. Your first level desire is to...lie on the couch and watch TV or go to the beach, maybe meet with some friends. Your second level preference is to earn enough so that you can afford a place to live where you can lie on a couch, that you have a car that will get you to the beach, that you can afford a day out with friends. Your second level preference is to uphold your commitment to your employer and to your work colleagues. Your second level preference is not to appear lazy to others. All those reasons determine your decision.
You're playing at semantics, in order to alter the argument by defining away conflicting evidence. Because it's clear there are times when my preferences are to do something besides what I choose to do, because I have some alternate consideration besides just which action is the preferrred action.
Every fiber in my being tells me not to go to work, but again you're playing at semantics by splitting terms up ad hoc to make contrary evidence disappear.
Nope, I prefer not to go to work. But I sometimes have to subdue my preferences for the sake of other people, because no matter how strongly my preference fights against going to work I know that I have obligations that require me to set my preferences aside.
I guess that you understand simple wants and desires. A spoonful of sugar in a coffee is just that. It tastes good. Most of us have a sweet tooth - it's an evolutionary thing. Pack those carbs in when they're available right now because they might not be available later.
Ok
Sure, but I have lots of conflicting preferences. And the one I would most prefer isn't always the one I choose to do, because my preference isn't always the only consideration.
As you're defining it, is there any way to determine a preference other than based on the fact that it was the chosen course of action?
Nope, it's overcome by my obligations to other people. Not because I prefer doing such things, but because I try not to be a self-centered jerk.
How does that make any sense. You are literally saying 'Sometimes I don't do what I prefer because I preferred to do something else.'
It's the definition of the word. I just need you to understand the difference between a desire and a preference. Your preference is your decision on the course of action that you take after considering all the known variables. It's the course of action, determined by the antecedent conditions. Lucky for us that we don't have to write all that out when we want to describe it. We can just say 'You preferred to do it'.
So there was a desire to stay home but...(using the long version as above) your decision on the course of action that you decided to take after considering all the known conditions being, in this case, your obligations to others and a desire not to be seen as a self-centered jerk, was to go to work.
Nope, I am saying sometimes I don't do what I prefer because I have to honor obligations. I'd really rather not do them, but since I have to consider other people's feelings as well as my own I do them.
It's really not, as it's abundantly clear that when I say "I would have preferred sugar to stevia" I am indicating that I didn't choose stevia, even though it was what I really wanted.
We went from using it one way, to you changing the definition in such a way that there is no distinguishable difference between saying "you always choose your preference" and "you always choose what you choose."
Nope, my preference is entirely to stay home. Which is why some days no matter how hard I fight it, I end up driving past work and going home.
Nope, because I go to work out of obligation not preference.
I'm not going to repeat myself any longer. If you refuse to accept the difference between first level desires and second level preferences then I have nothing else to add.
I understand the semantic game you're trying to play by carving up the baby, but it's quite clear to me that you're simply asserting a tautology and then smuggling it into more common definitions of "preference."
You demanded I fulfill my promise to explain cosmology to another poster immediately. I reject that demand.
Sir, that is not what was initially discussed. I added to the initial post that you quoted, because it dawned on me that you didn’t understand what I initially wrote.
Since we reached the end of that line of inquiry, I have a question for you. If, as you say, free will is an illusion despite our basic experience of making decisions free from constraint, how can we maintain that our experiences are basically trustworthy? If we could be completely mistaken about something so fundamental to our experience, how can we have confidence that any of our experiences are not actually illusion?
You can critically examine them. And if you think that there's no way to know, don't worry about it. There's not much you can do.
