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the matter and energy that comprises our bodies and minds playing by the exact same rules that the rest of the matter and energy in the universe plays by

This is true; but then you insert an assumption as to what those rules are.

Take evolution for example: the random mutations that, like the heuristic development of a conscious intellect, enable a species to survive (compete) are no exception in the rules of matter and energy, either.

Like Brant said, the validity of an if-then proposition depends on whether or not the "if" actually is.

Free will (consciousness) is self-evident, in the present, just like your own existence. If that's the is, then the question becomes: How do the rules of energy and matter allow for free will?

It's easier to just deny free will than to answer that question.

Hold on... you're the one not answering the question, not me.

How do the rules of energy and matter allow for free will? It's easier to just deny free will than to answer that question.

But I've answered it... they don't!

Like Brant said, the validity of an if-then proposition depends on whether or not the "if" actually is.

And like Kacy has said over and over... is it not a valid premise that all matter and energy are subject to the law of identity? If so, does that not mean that M&E do not have choices in how they respond to anything? If so, does that not mean that the M&E that comprise our brains and bodies play by the same rules that all other M&E plays be?

Why will no one address this point? All I'm hearing is incredulity at the very idea of determinism. I'm hearing "free will is self-evident!", which is not an argument itself, nor does it address mine. I'm hearing that it's obvious. I'm hearing everything except for "Here's the non-sequitur in your argument".

How do you justify applying the law of identity to all M&E that exists except for the stuff that comprises our brains? Until you answer that, all I'm seeing is one big evasion.

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Kacy,

Consciousness and free will have their own identity.

They have characteristics that belong to that form of existence and not to other things.

I don't see the problem you have except for the equivalent of blaming a tree for not being a bird. It's like saying, trees have roots, dammit, and birds don't. How do you account for birds flying then? You're all begging the question and not answering me. All I keep hearing is birds have wings and don't have roots. And no one can prove that the rules of roots and leaves lead to wings!

:)

Michael

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Kacy,

Consciousness and free will have their own identity.

They have characteristics that belong to that form of existence and not to other things.

I don't see the problem you have except for the equivalent of blaming a tree for not being a bird. It's like saying, trees have roots, dammit, and birds don't. How do you account for birds flying then? You're all begging the question and not answering me. All I keep hearing is birds have wings and don't have roots. And no one can prove that the rules of roots and leaves lead to wings!

:smile:

Michael

Okay... do you agree that M&E are subject to the law of identity, and have no choice is how it behaves?

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It is both, of course. A problem with this sort of discussion is it can squeeze one into an increasingly radical position, either-or, free will or determinism. Both camps finish up making ever more fantastic claims.

(Not that I see it happening here.)

For example, a rational-selfish individual also possesses instincts and a tribalist mentality, self-evidently.

Does that refute his most important defining characteristics - reason and autonomy? Obviously not.

Which takes priority? what is always dependable? To be even slightly of free-will, which is to be in charge of one's purpose, morality and character, is an identity that sets us apart - and therefore is predominant.

Two thoughts:

1. From Rand we get "Man is a being of volitional consciousness". Note, NOT "man is a volitional being".

You want, you need, something, doesn't Hey Presto! make it so. If you can direct your consciousness towards it, and follow up with purposeful energy, you could. You are in charge of switching on and focusing, and redirecting where necessary. But control over one's self and environment isn't a given or automatic.

2. To "prove" or "disprove" free-will, is to "prove", "disprove" consciousness, and can't be done. As axiom, we can observe the results of consciousness, extrospectively, and view the process introspectively, but no more than that.

I think the 'connector' from one to the other in man's identity, is self-awareness: IE Consciousness->Self consciousness->volition. From those billiard balls ruling existence alone, the game changer (partial)was the development of man and his self-awareness.

(It's occurred to me sometimes that for some folk taking the hard determinist position, they are looking for God-by-another-name. ;) Just another 'Prime Mover' after all...)

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Okay... do you agree that M&E are subject to the law of identity, and have no choice is how it behaves?

Kacy,

To start with, I do not agree that M&E are an "it."

I've only discussed an overview of how determinism and free will can exist in the universe. Once, at the start, when I mentioned it, you dismissed it as, "obviously I disagree," and that was that.

You keep harping on that nobody addresses your ideas, but the fact is, I did. I just didn't address your ideas in the form you wanted people to.

Briefly, form is a kind of field and the smaller parts within that field operate on randomness and/or volition. To use a crude example, the form of a finger is a kind of field, yet each finger has a different fingerprint.

There are different recurring forms in the universe: holons, what I call the small command center within a larger body, and so on. These forms are also fields.

I know that throws a monkey-wrench in the works of simplifying existence to a single principle, but it's what I observe and have learned from others who observe the same.

The law of identity includes both unchangeable field and mutable parts.

Conscious awareness lives within the parts, not the fields, which is why we are all different aware individuals, yet it can create fields. We build things we decide to build by free choice.

I can't fit that into an oversimplification.

Between deducing reality from a principle and complaining parts don't fit (or denying the existence of what doesn't fit), and observing reality and deriving principles from that, I choose (freely :smile: ) the latter.

Michael

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Okay... do you agree that M&E are subject to the law of identity, and have no choice is how it behaves?

Kacy,

To start with, I do not agree that M&E are an "it."

I've only discussed an overview of how determinism and free will can exist in the universe. Once, at the start, when I mentioned it, you dismissed it as, "obviously I disagree," and that was that.

You keep harping on that nobody addresses your ideas, but the fact is, I did. I just didn't address your ideas in the form you wanted people to.

Briefly, form is a kind of field and the smaller parts within that field operate on randomness and/or volition. To use a crude example, the form of a finger is a kind of field, yet each finger has a different fingerprint.

There are different recurring forms in the universe: holons, what I call the small command center within a larger body, and so on. These forms are also fields.

I know that throws a monkey-wrench in the works of simplifying existence to a single principle, but it's what I observe and have learned from others who observe the same.

The law of identity includes both unchangeable field and mutable parts.

Conscious awareness lives within the parts, not the fields, which is why we are all different aware individuals, yet it can create fields. We build things we decide to build by free choice.

I can't fit that into an oversimplification.

Between deducing reality from a principle and complaining parts don't fit (or denying the existence of what doesn't fit), and observing reality and deriving principles from that, I choose (freely :smile: ) the latter.

Michael

I appreciate the amplification.

To start with, I do not agree that M&E are an "it."

Yes, I was imprecise. I should've asked whether you agree that M&E are subject to the law of identity, and therefore have no choice on how they behave.

Be careful, or Serapis Bey will start accusing you of zeroing in on trivialities such as poor word choices rather than .... oh, wait... he only does that to me.

Briefly, form is a kind of field and the smaller parts within that field operate on randomness and/or volition. To use a crude example, the form of a finger is a kind of field, yet each finger has a different fingerprint.

There are different recurring forms in the universe: holons, what I call the small command center within a larger body, and so on. These forms are also fields.

I'm not really following this. Are you saying that all bodies - to include rocks etc - have a small command center inside them which makes choices on how they operate? I don't think that's what you're saying, but I have to admit I'm at a bit of a loss.

I know that throws a monkey-wrench in the works of simplifying existence to a single principle, but it's what I observe and have learned from others who observe the same.

Are you proposing that there are no single principles which apply to the universe as a whole? Or are you suggesting that I apply the law of identity to the universe to the exclusion of all other principles? I mean, I'm not simplifying existence by identifying principles that apply to existence as a whole, am I?

It's the principles which I'm simplifying - not existence. And A+A is a pretty simple principle that i thought we all accepted and whose implications I thought we all agreed on.

Conscious awareness lives within the parts, not the fields, which is why we are all different aware individuals, yet it can create fields. We build things we decide to build by free choice.

So now it seems you're saying that there's this *thing* called "conscious awareness* that lives "within the parts". (Am I understand this correctly?)

If that's true, then you've ventured into a mystic metaphysical worldview... as thought we are comprised of something more than the physical parts which comprise us.

Between deducing reality from a principle and complaining parts don't fit (or denying the existence of what doesn't fit), and observing reality and deriving principles from that, I choose (freely smile.png ) the latter.

I choose the latter as well, and I don't think we're disagreeing on what the right method of arriving at the answer here is... I think we're just arriving at different answers.

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I don't think energy and matter account for free will, but that free will accounts for energy and matter. This is epistemological. Kacy, you seem to be using metaphysics as an argument, but as epistemology that's a contradiction. The question is not that we don't have free will, but how we got it? Conceptual thinking. Energy and matter account for energy and matter account for neural actions in our skulls but not necessarily what those neural actions come up with as interpreted by consciousness. Consciousness is (metaphysics); consciousness interprets--thinks, reacts, etc. (epistemology). You cannot have your epistemology and eat it too, but you keep trying to serve it up to us like it's Thanksgiving dinner.

To understand human beings and human thinking we study them, not simply physics bastardized by a "razor."

--Brant

men shave, women pretend they don't, but I digress

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How do the rules of energy and matter allow for free will? It's easier to just deny free will than to answer that question.

But I've answered it... they don't!

Exactly. Isn't that much easier than saying, "Wait, if consciousness can exist as it does in humans, maybe the rules of energy and matter are more complex than I thought."

I don't think consciousness is any more phenomenal than existence itself. But why won't you admit that maybe you don't know enough about existence?

If everything had a cause, than nothing would exist. Even an initial cause would necessarily have to be deemed completely random... but why would random strike only once?

How about this: consciousness is a cause of its own. It is an effect, surely, but it is also a cause.

Billiard balls bouncing around for eternity would eventually form some pretty cool formations, but that's about it. Without something inexplicable--like how those billiard balls got there in the first place--they would not create a conscious entity.

MSK put it nicely, consciousness and free will have their own identity, just like the random mutations that helped advance life to its current stage.

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Kacy,

There are too many points to address in a single post. I'll just touch on a few.

btw - Tomorrow I travel and I'll be gone until Saturday (or Friday night). So have it. Do your worst. :smile:

I'm not really following this. Are you saying that all bodies - to include rocks etc - have a small command center inside them which makes choices on how they operate? I don't think that's what you're saying, but I have to admit I'm at a bit of a loss.

I am generally sensitive to saying all when I mean all. I developed this sensitivity trying to defend various Objectivist oversimplifications over the last few years. There is a tendency in Objectivist literature to present broad sweeping claims that just have too many exceptions to be taken as law.

So, for instance, the small command center form I mentioned is not present in everything. It just exists in a lot of things, including the atoms and molecules of the rock you mentioned. The command center does many things, but not necessarily all. Yes, that, too. One thing it does is to create or emanate a gravitational field and, maybe. other kinds of fields.

Speaking of fields, volition itself, if looked at from a certain angle, could be seen as a kind of field.

The characteristic of a field is that it extends beyond its source and impacts elements around it and makes them operate within patterns. In some cases, like certain quantum physics formulations, a field transcends space. For example, I don't know if you know of the quantum theory of twin subparticles--one in one place in the universe and another maybe light-years away. When one goes left the other does, too, and so on. That connection is a field. The pattern is identical movement. How they move is random, but they move together.

The idea of field is extremely important once you start looking at the world by including it as a structural element.

For life, there is a concept called biomorphic field that our dear Bob loves to pooh pooh. But it works like this. An acorn holds a biomorhic field within it. Some theorists even claim this field is without, but I have a hard time groking that. At any rate, the acorn cannot grow hands and feet--it must grow roots, a trunk, leaves, etc. It cannot "choose" these general forms.

However, this field does not include how many branches it will produce, how many roots, how many leaves, and so on. There is randomness and, to a certain extent, "choice" in that part (within the boundaries set by the field and the background environment . One leaf will turn toward the sun more than another even though both are positioned to get the same amount of sunlight, for example. That's really low-level, but it appears as a form of choice to me.

Are you proposing that there are no single principles which apply to the universe as a whole?

I'm suggesting that a lot of proposed single principles are bogus as universals, but not as ways to describe certain existents--that the universe is a lot more varied than many people would like it to be.

There seems to be a hunger all over the place for discovering the one true element from which we can deduce the entire universe. I gave up that hunger and, in my perception, the world suddenly popped from a black and white comic book to a full-blown color 3D motion picture with surround sound.

The way I treat universals like axiomatic concepts is that if the universal does not ultimately hold true for my consciousness, it is not universal. I'm going on the premise that I am made out of the same stuff as the rest of the universe. Therefore, if something is universal for everything but me, something got left out, therefore it is not universal.

So now it seems you're saying that there's this *thing* called "conscious awareness* that lives "within the parts". (Am I understand this correctly?)

If that's true, then you've ventured into a mystic metaphysical worldview... as thought we are comprised of something more than the physical parts which comprise us.

Actually there another alternative.

There is a presupposition--an intellectual conceit--built into the view you presented (which is a common view in terms of normal reasoning). The conceit is that human beings are equipped with all the hardware possible for perceiving everything in the universe--either directly, or by creating instruments that bring things within the size of human perception.

On the scientific side, the claim is that human beings evolved from primal ooze up to the present, but the unspoken presupposition is that humans stopped evolving--or that any further evolution will not include detecting parts of the universe previously not perceived (because those parts cannot possibly exist).

The religious view is that God made humans and if they are evolving, He made it so. But humans will not evolve more because we are at the highest level of awareness in this material world that He will permit--that's the presupposition. Or simply God made humans as they are and that's that.

My view is that if you don't have eyes, that doesn't mean light doesn't exist. All it means is that you don't perceive light. And I think human beings are still evolving. Over the long haul, evolution has moved life from a lower level of awareness to ever higher and higher ones--until the present human level with self-awareness and conceptual volition. Is there more to be aware of out there? Can our minds evolve and develop even greater powers? The pattern certainly suggests this.

I believe it is a conceit--and nothing more--to posit the contrary. At best, it is only an opinion. Just like imagining there is more out there is an opinion. Except I have the evidence of an evolving pattern I can point to and those who believe in a more static limited view have nothing but simply saying so.

And even having that pattern, I find it more pleasing to my own sense of honesty to say I don't know a hell of a lot than to decree dogma in the form of presuppositions no one is to contest and no one dare not talk about.

I've still only scratched the surface, but hopefully you see that "mysticism" is not really a good label for this way of thinking. Instead of saying God exists or does not exist, I say the universe is pretty fucking big and pretty fucking small (pardon my French), and I'm not sure I, as a human being, have the equipment to be able to perceive all that is within it. In fact, I am pretty sure I don't. In other words, I'm pretty sure there is a lot of stuff out there beyond my possibility of awareness.

I do know I perceive what I perceive, though. And I can draw some universals about that (like existence exists). From my perspective, that's a full time job as it is. It would be nice to evolve to a higher plane within my lifetime, but I'm pretty content with what I've got. It's a hell of a responsibility to use my mind as it is and make it bloom wide open like a rose.

(That last is a metaphor. :smile: )

Michael

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We're in between micro and macro but made for survival in the context of the totality. There's a reason for the existence of human consciousness and its conceptual nature. Conceptual must be volitional or there's no point to conceptual thinking. A point is that economic surplus makes possible a kind of leisure that makes optional voyages into worlds not directly perceivable and be as gods of creation through science, art and engineering. This is the real source and nature of human evolution and some of the impact will be biological in ways we don't now know or can imagine. Covering humans up with the rubric of "determinism" is surrendering to entropy and trying to fob it off on others. In that context we do not say the (human) world is going to hell and we should do something about it; no we say, for hoi polloi intellectual anesthesia, things aren't so bad, progress is assured, there's nothing to be done but enjoy or endure the ride while is lasts, never mind Rand called such as us "social ballast."

--Brant

We find determinism in physics and free will in biology as lagniappe--but even in physics we don't know enough to refute the possibility of chaos or randomness or ? to reduce it to a "razor" refuting free will or even such as the chaos and randomness that comes from irrationality and the bugaboo of faith, so it's all eating up determinism from both ends

using determinism to argue for determinism is equivalent to axiomatic reasoning, but determinism is a supposed fact about reality and cannot non-fallaciously serve that master and the master of such an argument is attempting to master the discourse by devaluing all discourse with implicit albeit jejune superiority from a tautology, of all things!

determinism--yes, it does exist, conceptually--is like humanity existing between the micro and macro worlds, for to the extent it as such exists is the only extent we can now know it though our brains can exceed our perception, but we can never reduce it to an axiom for while reality is all about direct, physical referents of itself though only a concept generally, determinism has no direct, physical referents and cannot logically be generalized into existence beyond known existence the way reality overall can

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