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Meleagar
Joined: 16 Nov 2009
Posts: 1302
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Post: #76  Posted: Wed Dec 30, 2009 7:36 am Post subject: |
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| James S Saint wrote: |
| Meleagar wrote: |
| Free will is the acausal creative demiurge. |
So you are equating "Free will" to the uncaused action of creating (i.e. God). |
Yep.
| Quote: |
| But then you say that "some people" have God and some do not, but might think that they do. |
Well, ultimately everything is "god" in the sense that everything in a dream I'm having is "me"; however, only the lucid dream-state actor is aware that they are the dreamer, and they only have the opportunity to become aware of that because of the contextual situation they find themselves in, a dream-world of self and other.
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| Of course the problem would be that there can only be one God, by definition of "God" (cap G). So maybe you are talking about the "Holy Spirit"? And saying that some people have the Holy Spirit and some do not? I could go along with that (hesitantly). |
It depends on how you define the holy spirit.
I think "objective reality" at a fundamental level can be expressed as two necessary aspects of existence; self and other, cause and effect, god and void (quantum potential) - these are all terms that describe the two necessary, fundamental aspects of existence. Other than that, I don't think there is an "objective reality" in the sense that any particular lucid dreamer "must be" encountering the same physical universe as any other particular lucid dreamer. I think reality is much bigger and much more diverse than that.
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But now, the Holy Spirit is exceedingly logical and determining, so what does that have to do with anything being discussed? |
I don't know. You brought it up.
| Belinda wrote: |
| You do choose your beliefs yes, but your choice is influenced by your culture. |
Ultimately, I created those influences and I choose how to be affected by them. Without the free will creative demiurge, the intent of obsevation, the presence of deliberacy, quantum potential states do not collapse into any meaningful pattern. Ultimately, I create everything I experience.
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James S Saint
Joined: 14 Oct 2009
Posts: 668
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| Post: #77 Posted: Wed Dec 30, 2009 10:20 am Post subject: |
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| So you believe that everything that you experience is a dream merely caused by the dreamer? |
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Meleagar
Joined: 16 Nov 2009
Posts: 1302
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| Post: #78 Posted: Wed Dec 30, 2009 11:02 am Post subject: |
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| James S Saint wrote: |
| So you believe that everything that you experience is a dream merely caused by the dreamer? |
It's an analogy.
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James S Saint
Joined: 14 Oct 2009
Posts: 668
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| Post: #79 Posted: Wed Dec 30, 2009 12:35 pm Post subject: |
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| In your case, what is the difference? |
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Meleagar
Joined: 16 Nov 2009
Posts: 1302
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| Post: #80 Posted: Wed Dec 30, 2009 1:03 pm Post subject: |
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| James S Saint wrote: |
| In your case, what is the difference? |
Well, for one thing god never wakes up, because there's nothing to wake up to. Also, in a dream it appears there is only one lucid character in the dream - you, the dreamer, but I think than in "real life", god (the dreamer) can be lucid in any number of locations and as any number of identities in the dream. I also think there are many dreams going on at once.
For myself, I have less immediate and obvious creative input in "real life" than I do in lucid dreams; in lucid dreams I generally just stop whatever I'm doing at the point I become lucid and take off flying.
I haven't been able to do that yet in "real life", but I have been able to do quite a bit that validates, for me, that the analogy is sound.
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James S Saint
Joined: 14 Oct 2009
Posts: 668
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| Post: #81 Posted: Wed Dec 30, 2009 1:22 pm Post subject: |
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You might want to contemplate the fact that taking off and flying in your dreams is the enactment from the desire to not bother with being logical or sane ("grounded"), but to fantasize (feminize).
You propose far too many contradictions and don't seem to care. |
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OTavern
Joined: 27 Jan 2008
Posts: 413
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| Post: #82 Posted: Wed Dec 30, 2009 3:28 pm Post subject: |
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Belinda, your argument against Cartesian dualism was that it was impossible in principle because:
| Belinda wrote: |
The arguments for Free Will fail for the reason that Descartes's argument for two substances fail. The failure is due to the impossibility that a substance that is not bound to causality will meld with a substance that is bound to causality. |
My point was that a computer proves this "in principle" incompatability between causal systems (a computer, for example) and external systems is not true because causal systems can have an open architecture framework that allows for input from external systems whether they are in themselves causally based or not. It makes no difference if you refer to this as a tool or not. Give it any name you want. It still proves a causal system can be structured to receive input from external systems whether these are acausal or causal makes no difference. The open system would simply "be available" to external input whether these were causal or not is irrelevent.
| Belinda wrote: |
The computer is a tool as much as the stick that a chimpanzee uses to lift ants out of an anthill.It is a clever way to extend the animal's powers. The animal uses a tool for reasons of its powers of reason, its ability to use its hands, its need for food etc, and the availablity of the tool material and the food source.The effect of successful tool making and using is that the tool does the job planned for it. To sum up, the tool is an extension of the animal and the combination 'tooled animal' is as much caused as the combination 'sighted animal'.
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So what? A stick is moved causally by the hand that moves it. The question remains whether the hand was moved causally or by some other mode.
| Belinda wrote: |
Your analogy of the computer and the human fails because the supposed 'Free Will' is presumed to be a ghost mind in the machine body. Another ghost controls the ghost and another ghost controls the ghost that controls the ghost and so on.
Or a free-will mannikin that dwells within the human body. Who then controls the mannikin? Why, another mannikin! |
The fact is that a computer is capable of completing only certain functions on it's own. It's architecture requires input from external systems in order to move beyond those basic functions. A human being, while operating as a causal system physiologically requires input from the "rational faculty" which is not causally determined but is a grounds-consequents based system. Whether this rational faculty is internal as a "ghost" in the machine or external as a computer operator makes no difference because both essentially prove that a causally based system can be open to input from an inherently uncaused grounds-consequents system.
There is no need to postulate puppeteering mannikins or ghosts, only entities capable of fnctioning rationally instead of causally. Unless, of course, you want to demonstrate that having a reason for is ultimately the same as being caused to, which is nonsense. |
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Alun
Joined: 11 Jul 2009
Posts: 883
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| Post: #83 Posted: Wed Dec 30, 2009 4:21 pm Post subject: |
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OTavern, perhaps I can clarify Belinda's position with a slightly different argument here: The ontological explanation of free will, the truly 'acausal' free will, does not make sense in a causal framework because a decision making tool must be input dependent. A person does not act the same way when poked with a pin as when brushed with a feather. We do not make the same decision about buying a car as about jogging around a park.
So the idea here is that there's a black box, the mind, and when it is exposed to a situation, it produces a decision. Obviously at least some parts of this black box are mechanical (e.g. we don't decide to see yellow or feel warm), but true proponents of acausal free will are really arguing that sometimes part of the black box makes a decision that it doesn't have to make. I.e. there must be some situation in which the black box can produce at least two different outputs with exactly the same input, right?
So the question is, how does this special free will part of the black box decide, deliberate, or choose between the two or more outputs, if it is only responding to the one input? What reasons can it have that are not input dependent? Or is free will not reasonable?
I don't see a way to answer these questions, and so I conclude that there is no free will as a feature of existence itself; free will is a description of the activity we partake in, not something ontological.
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James S Saint
Joined: 14 Oct 2009
Posts: 668
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| Post: #84 Posted: Wed Dec 30, 2009 5:51 pm Post subject: |
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| Alun wrote: |
So the idea here is that there's a black box, the mind, and when it is exposed to a situation, it produces a decision. Obviously at least some parts of this black box are mechanical (e.g. we don't decide to see yellow or feel warm), but true proponents of acausal free will are really arguing that sometimes part of the black box makes a decision that it doesn't have to make. I.e. there must be some situation in which the black box can produce at least two different outputs with exactly the same input, right?
So the question is, how does this special free will part of the black box decide, deliberate, or choose between the two or more outputs, if it is only responding to the one input? What reasons can it have that are not input dependent? Or is free will not reasonable?
I don't see a way to answer these questions, and so I conclude that there is no free will as a feature of existence itself; free will is a description of the activity we partake in, not something ontological. |
That internal "free" decision maker is called "internal noise" and has been used in processors for the purpose of doing exactly what you said, producing unpredictable output. OF course the noise generator is not really uncaused, merely unpredictable.
Unfortunately many of the pseudo-intellectual crowd believe that such is a key to imagination. It isn't. It is the key to irrationality that gives the appearance of imagination. Real imagination is not arbitrary and serves a real purpose, not merely the attempt to be unpredictable.
There is no uncaused will other than one (The One) just as there is no uncaused event (despite the fantasies of the Quantum Magi). So your last statement is really true. We are participants in the original, one and only uncaused will. |
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OTavern
Joined: 27 Jan 2008
Posts: 413
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| Post: #85 Posted: Wed Dec 30, 2009 10:46 pm Post subject: |
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| Alun wrote: |
OTavern, perhaps I can clarify Belinda's position with a slightly different argument here: The ontological explanation of free will, the truly 'acausal' free will, does not make sense in a causal framework because a decision making tool must be input dependent. A person does not act the same way when poked with a pin as when brushed with a feather. We do not make the same decision about buying a car as about jogging around a park.
So the idea here is that there's a black box, the mind, and when it is exposed to a situation, it produces a decision. Obviously at least some parts of this black box are mechanical (e.g. we don't decide to see yellow or feel warm), but true proponents of acausal free will are really arguing that sometimes part of the black box makes a decision that it doesn't have to make. I.e. there must be some situation in which the black box can produce at least two different outputs with exactly the same input, right?
So the question is, how does this special free will part of the black box decide, deliberate, or choose between the two or more outputs, if it is only responding to the one input? What reasons can it have that are not input dependent? Or is free will not reasonable?
I don't see a way to answer these questions, and so I conclude that there is no free will as a feature of existence itself; free will is a description of the activity we partake in, not something ontological. |
A possible answer is that reason is an independent "dimension" that can be "tuned into" but is not internal to the black box. The human mind may be a receptor of reason as part of its "open architecture." The inputs need not be an aspect of the box itself. Consider aliens from a distant planet attempting to reverse engineer a television set. These beings might conclude that certain transistors or other internal circuitry are the parts that "create" the images appearing on the screen and they would be essentially correct as far as that goes, but as for where the images originate, the aliens would be missing a critical link in understanding the reason for the output from the TV set.
Inputs to human decisions could very well be multifaceted and may include a mixture of internal cues and consciousness as a means of "tuning" into various external streams of inputs including other conscious beings around us, "reason" itself, and other layers within an entire landscape of "conscious" dimensions. |
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James S Saint
Joined: 14 Oct 2009
Posts: 668
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| Post: #86 Posted: Thu Dec 31, 2009 12:46 am Post subject: |
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| OTavern wrote: |
A possible answer is that reason is an independent "dimension" that can be "tuned into" but is not internal to the black box. The human mind may be a receptor of reason as part of its "open architecture." The inputs need not be an aspect of the box itself. Consider aliens from a distant planet attempting to reverse engineer a television set. These beings might conclude that certain transistors or other internal circuitry are the parts that "create" the images appearing on the screen and they would be essentially correct as far as that goes, but as for where the images originate, the aliens would be missing a critical link in understanding the reason for the output from the TV set.
Inputs to human decisions could very well be multifaceted and may include a mixture of internal cues and consciousness as a means of "tuning" into various external streams of inputs including other conscious beings around us, "reason" itself, and other layers within an entire landscape of "conscious" dimensions. |
That's a pretty good analysis.  |
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Alun
Joined: 11 Jul 2009
Posts: 883
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| Post: #87 Posted: Thu Dec 31, 2009 12:50 am Post subject: |
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| OTavern wrote: |
| A possible answer is that reason is an independent "dimension" that can be "tuned into" but is not internal to the black box. |
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't you just adding another link in the causal chain here? I.e. the black box is now the mind and reason, but somewhere along the way there must be an acausal feature, otherwise it is still deterministic, and you don't manage ontological free will. Or are you really implying that basically the mind is an uplink to the purpose of the whole universe (i.e. God's purpose)?
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"I have nothing new to teach the world" -Mohandas "Mahatma" Gandhi |
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James S Saint
Joined: 14 Oct 2009
Posts: 668
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| Post: #88 Posted: Thu Dec 31, 2009 12:58 am Post subject: |
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| Alun wrote: |
| Or are you really implying that basically the mind is an uplink to the purpose of the whole universe (i.e. God's purpose)? |
Actually it really is. I don't know if that is what Tavern was talking about though. |
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Eclectic.hermit
Joined: 31 Dec 2009
Posts: 1
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| Post: #89 Posted: Thu Dec 31, 2009 1:39 am Post subject: epistemology |
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| ...the physical and nonphysical can inter react...through imagination...imagination is the strongest force in the universe...and brings about existence...imagination is a creative force... |
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NameRemoved
Joined: 28 Dec 2009
Posts: 642
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| Post: #90 Posted: Thu Dec 31, 2009 2:18 am Post subject: Re: epistemology |
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| Eclectic.hermit wrote: |
| ...the physical and nonphysical can inter react...through imagination...imagination is the strongest force in the universe...and brings about existence...imagination is a creative force... |
So it is :  |
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