RJG -
I think you've managed to turn this into a farce again.
I can try one last time to pull you out of the mess though. How about trying to deal with the questions/responses you don't answer instead of constantly repeating yourself over and over and over?
For starters I don't see how you've dealt with the issue of this "PRIOR" you talk about. WE can take some knee-jerk responses and say "I didn't do that!" because it was not a conscious act and even if I saw it coming I wouldn't be able to stop my leg from twitching. The question then is does my knee know what it is doing more than I do? If I am merely a passenger to bodily reactions then where and how do these reactions take place?
What is more how can you talk about "PRIOR" if you are nothing? There is no PRIOR for you only some distanced representation of an assumed PRIOR, an assumption made by your apparent fallacy of conscious being? This is quite contradictory, and what is more when we dig into many problem we hit a certain barrier where things become more and more difficult to disentangle. This does not mean that making a tangled problem and ignoring the argumentation that goes against the principle is in any way a sign of intellectual progression. It is merely a refusal to take on the task of intellectual exploration and to remain talking to yourself in riddles believing it is the fault of others rather than considering the fault is firmly in your court with your scattered and ambiguous definitions that are barely parallel to common parse in these technical areas.
So answer me HOW you can know, or even make the claim to partly know what "PRIOR" is (and therefore use the term) in the first instance? You refute your own words and then continue to use them as if your very own refutation was either complete gibberish (which I am inclined to MOSTLY agree with) or that you simply have some kind of selective memory that allows you to dismiss what you yourself state two or three sentences before ... not that there can be a "before" and if there is then you should seriously present what that means rather than playing your very, VERY,
VERY old record.
If you merely wish to state you believe the universe is a clock-work universe and that you don't believe in free-will and adhere to nihilism, fair enough. Stop ramming it down everyone's throat though simply because you believe it doesn't matter ... which is kind of ironic because if it doesn't matter why are you here? Simply to antagonize fooling yourself into believing the false pretense you set out so you can excuse your own utter disregard for any kind of intellectual develop? Do you wish to confound others because you feel slighted by your own capacity? I see no reason for any of your remarks other than as either a cry for help, a frustrated reaction to your own lack of discipline/confidence/ability or a purposeful intent to disrupt other peoples thoughts with what I can only seriously consider as either troll-like toxic comments and/or an aimless drive to understand.
To be clear. I am attacking you and your thoughts. They are one and the same. I don't care who you are, but I care what you think. It is a somewhat "personal attack" in the sense of after seeing your words repeated over and over for 4-5 years without change.
Here is the evidence. You don't believe you can learn or change anything so you remain stuck in a cage pretending you incapable of opening the door and exiting into the world of "choice" and "learning":
I have a problem understanding HOW one has "...the ability to change their world". By what mechanism? We certainly can't do it simply by being aware. Where does this control come from? I know it 'feels' obvious, but when looking closer at this, it just isn't there.
sciencechatforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=51 ... eterminism
And as you wish to quote Leo :
RJG. I know we've been here before but I still don't see what point you're trying to make. Are you suggesting that you are just a mindless automaton executing a pre-determined programme? Because I'm certainly not, and if I thought for one moment that I was I would have done the only logical thing possible years ago and put an end to the ridiculous charade of living. Can't you see that what you are suggesting doesn't make sense?
Regards Leo
This old quote might open up some discussion though:
The only possible control is non-conscious control.
If you say this then I assume you admit there is control? If the unconscious control is observed consciously then do you feel it at all possible that the conscious part may have some feedback to the unconscious controlling part? If you simply choose (or not by your claim) to believe you have no effect does this mean you have no effect? Not choosing is a choice and it rightly makes no difference to the situation if you have 0% influence on anything, yet if there is a 0.001% chance you are wrong then you're living a lie that has an effect rather than living a lie that has no effect.
If you believe that consciousness is the end state of an entropic process (meaning you cannot un-fry an egg), then what does it mean if you prove this beyond all dispute? Can it proven? If we all see the evidence and see we have causal effect in the world then what would happen? Would we all just "die" and consciousness cease? Or are we put together in such a way to adhere to the so called "illusion"? If so then to what end? This effectively ends with you in nihilism and me aware of your nihilistic tendencies.
-- Updated October 11th, 2017, 11:01 pm to add the following --
Further is another case of complete misunderstandings of how to use technical language within a particular field of discussion:
When the self is conscious of itself, is this self the ‘observer’ or the ‘observed’?
SELF is neither an object or a subject. SELF is the item of thought held consciously when thinking about your own personal machinations. It is the recognition of a limit of experience known through interaction with the environment. The sense of self for a girl brought up by wolves is a "wolf-self", although language (in the verbal sense) is not needed for a sense of self and other, although some would argue it is necessary for functioning in a social way.